Unanticipated Turn

SEVENTEEN

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Meenah gnawed on the lollipop, staring levelly across the table at her mother.

She was typing away on her calculator, completing the bills with Ameer in her arms. Most of the time, she hired a personal accountant to take care of their finances, especially because she was busy with work, but whenever she did them herself, she wasn't in a good mood. She often crunched away at numbers whenever she needed to take her mind off things.

"Is that your Harvard application?" she asked distractedly, her attention still on the bills in front of her yet clearly sensing my attention.

Rather gloomily, Meenah looked down at the application. She was getting pretty far. So far, she had accomplished filling in her name and the date. She could have done it on the computer, like 99.9% of the applications, but her father had requested she complete it by hand. If she didn't know any better, she would assume he would take it and go to the campus to deliver it personally.

"Yeah." Meenah swallowed the hard candy.

Glancing at the clock, she realized an hour had already passed since starting.

Nuwaira nodded as her fingers clicked on the table's calculator. She sighed. Again."Ameenah." She looked up at her, her dark eyes observing Meenah. The bruise on her face had diminished somewhat, but there were still traces."Do I disappoint you?"

The question took her off guard.

Meenah placed the lollipop stick on the table, the leftover residue sticking to the corner of her application and staining it purple.

"What do you mean?"

As she brushed her bangs to the side, she scrutinized her closely. She had just come home from work twenty minutes ago and had sat down next to her. It didn't happen every day. She was evidently struggling with her own thoughts."I love you, Ameenah. You're so special to me. You remind me so much of my mother-in-law…" her lips twitched."Mama was a spitfire and she always had a temper. When things didn't go her way, she would make them go her way."

Her mother hardly ever talked about my deceased grandmother, the one who named me Ameenah.

Meenah didn't think she was a spitfire like her grandmother.

She was reserved, quiet, and she took her father's fist like a scared dog.

"Work is always so busy and stressful. I just think that I disappoint you. As my role as your mother." She looked down at her botched finances and Ameer."You know I love you, right?"

Her hand reached over to touch Meenah's and she stared at it.

"Yeah, Mom, I know that," Meenah replied quietly, only because she loved her, too. She was my mother. She couldn't hate her. The same went for my father. He was a jerk, but somewhere, very deep inside me, she still loved him."I just think you are expecting things of me that I don't want to do. I don't want to go to Harvard. I don't want to be a doctor."

Her hand hesitantly moved off Meenah's hand and her face carefully rearranged itself.

"You want to be an artist?" It sounded so foreign on her tongue."But Ameenah, couldn't you do that on the side? You could become a doctor and do your artwork on the side. You could be so successful."