Hot Pink in the City (5 page)

After dinner, Uncle makes tea. Auntie does
practically everything around the home, but he'll actually make
tea. It's his one domestic chore. He puts a kettle on the stove,
and then he organizes newspapers and magazines on the coffee table.
I sit at the small dining table that's between the kitchen and
living room. The tea is done. Uncle asks if I want any and I say
no. I'm too busy observing him that I don't want to have anything
scorch my throat.

I notice some faint cracks in the wall and
the grains of rice that have fallen on the tablecloth. I'm a
daydreamer, someone who can count ceiling tiles in class or study
the inside of her mouth with her tongue when taking a test not
studied for. Now my mind isn't able to distract itself. Uncle blows
on his tea and sips on it. Sluuuuurp. Sluuuuurp. Sluuuuurp. I've
never heard that sound come from a human before, but that's Uncle's
loud tea-drinking sound. He sounds like a vacuum suction.

He eats a piece of baklava. Auntie's baklava
has the right amount of buttery crispiness in each layer. Since I
had lokum with pistachio already, I pass on the baklava with
walnuts. Maybe tomorrow I'll taste it, if there's even a tomorrow.
It's amazing how a small tape seems to be dictating my life, my
happiness, and my whole entire stay in a city I was looking forward
to exploring. It doesn't even matter that I'm in New York City. I
could be in London, Paris, or Amsterdam... my actions from earlier
today would dim the brightness of any city.

It's as I predicted. Uncle heads to his
shelf, where all the cassettes are. "What am I in the mood for?" he
says in English.

"Why don't you play something instrumental?"
Nasreen asks. "Don't you love it when you get a break from a
singer's voice?"

"I do like that, but I want to hear lyrics,
something that will put me in a good mood. How about Googoosh?"

"Yes, play Googoosh!" Nasreen insists. She's
a bit loud and fake. She doesn't even like that type of music. If
it's not in English and doesn't involve guitars, she doesn't care
to hear it.

Uncle's thin, brown fingers skim through his
cassettes and records. They have large, bubbly Arabic, Farsi, or
some other foreign script, while the bootleg materials have inserts
covered in marker. If only the markings on the Kulthum tape had
been more conspicuous -- I would have noticed that a full tape was
in the cassette player and we wouldn't have recorded over it. This
dread wouldn't be seizing me right now.

"I love Googoosh, but I will play her some
other time. I think I'll play Umm Kulthum."

My body becomes rigid while Nasreen turns
pale -- I mean, paler than normal.

"Where is that tape?" Uncle mumbles.

"I know, play some Fereydoun Farrokhzad!"
Nasreen squeaks.

"No, no, I want to hear Umm Kulthum," Uncle
protests. "All day long I've thought about listening to 'Ya
Zalemni,' my favorite song of hers." The shelf of cassettes,
records, and 8-track cassettes is Uncle's world, his old world, him
bringing his country to this new one. I was born here and have
never been in the Middle East, but when I listen to my parents'
songs, images of mountains, rivers, hills, deserts, men in turbans,
and women in headscarves come to mind. That music conjures up an
exotic place that's part of me, a place I don't completely know
about. I'm sure the music must mean even more to Uncle since he
grew up there. And I ruined a slice of the old country because I
was dying to have Madonna songs. It's up to me to fix this, to
distract him so he drops this idea of hearing Umm.

"Where is that tape?" he asks. "I cannot find
it!"

"I have my camera with me," I say. "Why don't
we take some pictures? My parents asked me to take pictures of all
of you, and I don't want to leave it for the last minute."

"Yes, it's picture time," Auntie gushes with
a smile. "Go get your camera."

That was close, and I'm glad I caught my
aunt's attention. Her enthusiasm spreads to Uncle. I get my camera
from my purse and bring it. The problem is that Uncle and Auntie
believe in being stiff in pictures. Uncle wants to take a picture
of Nasreen and me, and he tells us to sit with our hands in our
laps. Since when do I sit like that? Auntie lifts my hair so that
some of it hits my shoulders. She licks her finger and takes a
swipe of Nasreen's eye shadow that has smeared under her eyes. When
she gets out of our way, Uncle snaps a picture of us like that.

This is so uncomfortable, but this is how
they take pictures here. Nasreen has shown me family albums before,
and it's like looking through pages and pages of mummies. Everyone
is standing straight, arms at their sides, or sitting down with
their hands in their laps. Everyone faces forward, with no profiles
or semiprofiles to be seen. I love it when I'm with my friends and
we take pictures, because I jump up, stick my tongue out, and put
my arms around people, and my face can be seen at all types of
angles. Uncle and Auntie are against lively pictures for some
reason.

"Now Nasreen will take a picture of Asma and
us," Auntie says.

I stand by the window, against the radiator,
and Uncle and Auntie sandwich me. They have their arms at their
sides as if they're in the military. I make a move to put my arms
around them. "No, no," Auntie says. "Stay still and look at the
camera."

I put my arms down, feeling awkward and
unnatural. These pictures are going to look horrible. We take turns
snapping pictures so that I get to sit or stand -- like a mummy --
with all my relatives, except Omar who's still out. Auntie made me
promise to leave some film for him. With my camera back in its bag,
I sit down. I sigh in relief, from both having the picture-taking
ordeal out of the way and from Uncle being distracted from his
request to hear Umm. I was wrong about that, though.

He's back to the shelves looking for the
tape. "I could have sworn I put the tape in this box."

What more can I do? We just spent a half hour
taking pictures, with Auntie and Uncle fussing over me on how to
pose. I have to do something else.

"Owww!" I howl, grabbing my head with both
hands. My fingers clutch sticky tendrils of hair covered in Aqua
Net. "Owwwwwww!"

"What's wrong?" Uncle asks.

"What's going on?" Auntie asks.

"I think I have a migraine," I say. I cradle
my head in both hands, my eyes squeezed shut. "It hurts so
much."

"Get some aspirin," Uncle orders Auntie.

"That'll help, but I need some peace and
quiet," I say, lowering my voice, because it pains me to hear any
type of loud sound. I'm pretending and hating myself for doing so,
but I'll do anything to get Uncle's mind off Umm Kulthum.

"Lie down," Auntie says. She grabs me by the
arm and leads me to Nasreen's bedroom as if I'm an invalid. She
pushes me by the small of my back up the bunk bed. I close my eyes,
but then open them when Auntie hands me a glass of water and
aspirin. Sitting up, I swipe my hand over my mouth and drink the
water. The aspirin is tightly stuck in the folds of my palm. I'll
save it for when I have a real headache.

Lights are turned off, voices are hushed, and
everyone is quiet because of me. "No, no, don't go in there right
now," Auntie tells Nasreen. "Go there when you're ready to sleep.
And you don't play any music to disturb your niece." I'd love to
talk to Nasreen right now, but Auntie is keeping her away from me
because of my faux illness. I'll talk to her when I'm feeling
better in a few hours. I'd also like to brush my teeth and wash the
thick makeup off my face. I can't pretend I'm ill every single
night whenever Uncle mentions he has a yen to hear Umm. I need to
find a replacement tape, and fast.

Chapter Six

I wake up in the middle of the night in a
sweat with a loud voice pounding into my head. My heart jumps in my
throat, and then I remember where I am. I'm in Uncle's basement
apartment, which I used to think was cool, but now I perceive it as
freakish and deathly. Disoriented, I sit up, high above the floor
since I'm on the top level of the bunk bed, yet I'm looking
straight through a window, where the curtains have opened, probably
from the movements of my tossing and turning. Between the exterior
bars of the window and the iron fence that's a barrier between the
stairway and the street, I see people's headless bodies float by. A
woman talks into a payphone, which is right outside the window.
Payphone users have disturbed my sleep during previous visits.

"I have no money for a taxi!" the woman
screams.

I'm not the only one with money problems, I
see.

Memories of what I've done hit me hard. The
tape. Omar's greedy hands reaching out for money. My mom thinking
everything's okay when clearly I messed up on arrival. What am I
going to do?

I scoot closer to the window and part the
curtains some more. It's past midnight, but people are still out,
walking, alone or with others, in sneakers, in pumps, in sandals.
Someone walks by with a boom box blaring, the large eyes of the
speaker meeting my own eyes. Angling my head to look down the
street, I see lights of restaurants and bars that are still open.
It's hard finding places in Miami that are open this late, but in
New York anything's possible. That's what I need to believe: the
possibilities that lie in this city and how anything can be fixed.
I'm in a big city, not my hokey little suburb in Miami. Somewhere
in Manhattan there has to be another Umm Kulthum tape I can
purchase to replace the one I destroyed.

A huge moth the size of a cockroach lands on
the window, and I have to stifle a scream. Insects scare the crap
out of me. I pull the curtains together and lie back down, feeling
a little bit better. I dip my head underneath my upper tier to
check on Nasreen. She's curled up in a ball. I'm about to lie back
down again, but then her eyes fly wide open, the whites bright and
illuminated by a nightlight. I jump, gripping the sides of my
mattress. "What are you doing up?" I ask.

"What are you doing up, young lady?" she
counters.

"I can't sleep."

"Neither can I. So what shall we do about
this sleeplessness?"

"I don't know." I shrug. "Can we watch
TV?"

"Not unless you want the Wizard of Oz
snitching to my parents," Nasreen whispers.

I chuckle, but not too loud. Uncle is the
noise Nazi, and Omar hides behind his curtain like a fascist
tyrant. Even though he's in the alcove, I wouldn't be surprised if
he's up at this time to watch us.

"If you want to watch TV, it has to be my
way," she says.

"What way is that?" I ask.

"Come to my lair..."

I climb down, intrigued. I didn't know
Nasreen had a lair. The apartment isn't that big, so I wonder where
she'll take me to watch TV. Omar dominates the living room, since
he has his curtained nook there, and the kitchen and dining area
are too close to the master bedroom, where Auntie and Uncle
are.

Expecting Nasreen to take me somewhere, she
instead opens her closet. It's a large closet or maybe a small
walk-in. She invites me into the darkness. Inside, she pulls a
lightbulb chain that illuminates us and puts a towel at the bottom
of the door. "We can't have any light escape," she says.

Whoa, she's really against having Uncle find
out what she does. What parents don't understand is that their
children have secret selves, secret lives. My parents would never
believe what I paste in my scrapbook, the thoughts in my head, my
dreams of being a famous singer and dancer, and the boys who woo me
in my daydreams. Now Nasreen is showing me another side to her, but
I'm still confused. "Why are we here?" I ask.

"Sit down," she says. She sits on the floor,
and I follow suit, crossing my legs. I notice the walls, which have
crayon drawings all over them. Looking at the doodles Nasreen did
as a child, I feel like I'm studying prehistoric man. She drew the
sun and moon, and people with circles, triangles, and squares for
heads.

"I didn't know you were an artist," I
say.

"Trust me that I received punishment for my
artwork as a kid," she says. "My parents were horrified that I did
this in my closet. I even drew on the living room and kitchen
walls."

I smile, thinking about a rebellious little
Nasreen. I position my limbs the best I can. I'm feeling cramped
with our bodies hitting the wall and door. Nasreen already pushed
hangers to the side, but her clothes still brush the back of my
head. The light overhead is dim, and, as my eyes adjust, Nasreen
takes a pile of clothes and throws them aside to reveal a small,
six-inch TV. "One of our neighbors left this outside the garbage
chute, and one day after school I rescued it. Dad doesn't know I
have it. This is how I watch TV late at night, but I keep the sound
low so no one can hear it."

One cousin lives behind a curtain and another
in a closet. Interesting. And it's kind of scary how Uncle is so
controlling. Even my parents don't complain if I stay up late to
watch TV or listen to my Walkman. They admonish me that I should go
to bed early so I can wake early, but they don't make a big deal if
I go to sleep at one or two in the morning. As I inhale the scent
of stale perfume and mothballs, taking in this odd room within a
room that Nasreen hides in, she turns the black-and-white TV on,
adjusts the rabbit ears, and tunes in to a syndicated sitcom.
Three's Company
segues into
Too Close for Comfort
.
Those shows are all the same to me with their canned laughter and
repeated storylines, but I actually laugh, but not too loud. We
can't get loud at all.

"I haven't told any of my friends I watch TV
or read in this closet," Nasreen whispers, her pajama bottoms
rubbing against mine. "You better not breathe a word."

"Of course not. And who'd believe me?" We're
in a different level in this basement apartment, and I'm touched
Nasreen has shown me her sanctum.