"Okay, let's be real. We're not all going to the funeral, right?"
Calvin broke the silence around the kitchen table, where one seat remained hauntingly empty. Their mother had excused herself some twenty minutes ago, much to the unease of their father, who kept pointing his wary gaze to the staircase.
"Calvin," Talia snapped, shooting him a glare, "let's at least be respectful."
"Okay, but are we really gonna sit around all silent for the rest of the day?" He fumbled with the knot on his burgundy tie for a moment before tossing it behind him, hard expression giving way. "Look, I feel horrible for Mama, but I need to know what's going to happen. I don't think I can miss another day of school and still pass junior year." Looking away, he added in a broken mumble, "I just wanna graduate, guys."
"Alright, listen." Their father pulled himself out of his trance, fingertips brushing his temples. "This is not something your mother and I have ever discussed. Her father passed away long before we married, and my parents—may they both live very long lives—are still around, thankfully. At the same time..." His hand grazed the nape of his neck. "I know how both of you feel about your grandmother, and to be frank, this week at work might be one of the busiest I've had in years. These next few clients are the difference between being able to afford your private school and your college tuition without batting an eyelash."
Talia lifted a finger. "Baba, you know I can take out—"
"Nonsense." He waved her off and turned back to her impatient brother. "I understand your sentiments, Cal. And truth be told, I can't make you go to a funeral you have no interest in attending, as much as I wish we weren't in this situation."
"Maybe I should go talk to her," Talia suggested. "It could help."
Her brother and father stared at her like she'd grown three heads. "Talia, maybe you should—"
Steeling herself, she ignored them both and floated to the marble staircase, mind somewhat detached from her body. As she mounted each step, she thought about the worst that could happen.
She'll ignore me?
Nothing I haven't experienced before.
With all the possibilities ticked off her mental checklist, Talia found herself by her parents' bedroom, the door ajar. She ducked away from the small bit of open space and arched her neck towards the door, trying to make out any sounds of emotion. Her mother had been strangely reserved downstairs, pale face flashing before her eyes.
The same one met her vision when she finally entered their bedroom.
She sat at the edge of the king-size bed, palms pressed flat into the white comforter, eyes trained on the empty suitcase on the floor, where random articles of clothing littered its sides. An oversized Stanford sweatshirt enveloped her body, appearing odd against her charcoal work pants. She'd always been slim, and a good three inches shorter than Talia ever since she'd hit puberty, but in that moment, she looked painfully small.
Unable to hold herself back, Talia made it to her beside and lowered herself to the mattress without waiting for a reaction—because there wouldn't be one. Even when her body was only two inches from hers, that same dread weighed down her mother's cold hazel eyes, empty suitcase bewitching her.
Closing her eyes, Talia snaked one arm behind her back and then rested her head on her shoulder. When she felt the slightest bit of tension leave her muscles, she wrapped the other arm around her front and hugged her mother for the first time in almost five months.
"I'm sorry, Mama," she whispered.
It took only three words for her to fall apart. Elbows meeting her knees, her mother buried her face into her hands and kicked away the empty suitcase before them with the top of her foot. Tears clogged Talia's throat as she watched her mother release ugly, burning sobs from the depths of her soul.
"Oh God, my mother was a horrible, horrible woman." Now it was Talia's turn to freeze in place, her mother's words an almost concussive blow to the head. "She was cruel, unfair, and knew how to hit where it hurt. She loved her sons more than her daughters, even when all three of us turned out more successful than them. No matter how hard my dear father worked, nothing could ever compare to all her family's wealth that hadn't gone to her. And even when life gave her so many blessings, wonderful sons-in-law, healthy grandchildren, and a beautiful home for all of us to enjoy, her eyes were always on everyone else." Through an obnoxious blow of her nose, she finished, "I don't know if I feel sadder for her or for every life she ruined. Because there were so many."
When words had found her mother, they had escaped Talia. For a moment, she couldn't believe these were the true thoughts she bore about her grandmother, the same woman who had been a painfully inevitable part of every one of her summers as a child.
"But you used to go back so often," Talia whispered, rubbing mindless circles down her mother's back. Heavy tears replaced her violent sobs, running down her cheeks faster than her wad of tissues could catch them. "Are you sure you mean all of that?"
"Oh, I held onto all these stupid hopes, Talia," her mother choked out. "From so long ago, too. It's not a coincidence that I came to grad school in California of all places. Or that your aunt married a man who works in Qatar...or that the other escaped to medical school in Australia. All of us thought if we created some distance between us and our mother, she'd finally see our value. Instead, it gave her more time to love our brothers and poison the last of those who truly loved her." She turned to Talia and cupped her cheek, thumb sweeping over the one tear that had escaped her eye. "You don't know how over the moon your father and I were when we found out I was pregnant with you, ya rohi. I didn't care if you were a boy or girl—hell, twins or triplets. But for those nine months I carried you, I couldn't bear to tell my mother that she was finally going to have a grandchild. If she couldn't love me...how could she love a girl who's half of me?"
Talia's emotions kept betraying her, sending even more droplets down her cheeks, especially when her mother reached forward and held her during a time she should've been holding her. She pushed her head into the front of her father's sweatshirt, arms locked around her back. As his signature cologne filled her nostrils, Talia hated that he'd still wedged himself between them, his tender love always having rendered her complacent with a good relationship with only one of her parents.
"A-all this time I thought it was because there was something wrong with m-me," Talia stammered, voice trembling as she felt her mother's fingers brush her hairline. "That she h-hated me. I thought—I thought I was an embarrassment."
"Only I embarrassed myself, Talia," she said, holding her tighter. "It shouldn't have taken over twenty years to realize I will never have what your father has. Hell, Salma has hugged me and heard me cry more than all of my family members have combined." She ran the heels over her palms under her eyes, releasing a painful chuckle. "I love what your grandparents have given you and Calvin, but that whole trip in January... No, I couldn't bring myself to talk to you from how ashamed I was that one side of your family had you running to the other, knowing it was all my fault."
"Don't say that," Talia whispered, looking off into the distance. "You didn't have control over everything. I never even got to meet my other grandfather."
"You would have loved him," she breathed, forcing a smile. "He had that same gentle soul of your father; I don't even think he knew how to raise his own voice. And he loved math just as much as you do." After a moment, her mother took Talia's hands in hers. "I never want you to think the same things I do about my mother. And even if you do... I'd rather have you tell them to me in person. I don't think I can bear to do the same to a gravestone now."
As those painful words left her mouth, her father appeared in the doorway, head resting against the white frame. Her mother didn't notice him at first, eyes still trained on their locked hands. The smallest of smiles graced his lips as he took in the sight himself.
"Nadia," he said softly, making her head pop up, "I found a flight that leaves later tonight. Do you prefer an airline?"
"Anything but Air France," she said. At his knowing nod, there was clearly something about that trip they weren't telling Talia, but she didn't prod.
Coming back to her senses, her mother let go and stood up, forgetting her legs were just as weak as they'd been in the kitchen. When she stumbled, her mother leapt to her rescue, but Talia caught her first and pushed her back down to the mattress.
For the rest of the day, she stayed by her side. She loomed in the background while her mother purged her closet and found every article of black clothing hidden on the shelves, even giving her a few of her own dark pieces. After she'd tired of thinking about death and mourning and funerals, she stretched herself across the rug beside her and distracted her with stories from her life. When she was out of horror stories from Topology and done recounting her (legal) adventures with Neela, she turned to the one person she could talk about for days.
By nightfall, Zaid was no longer her secret.
***
He was all Talia thought about when an eerie quiet had settled in the house.
At well past midnight, she had to resist the selfish urge to call him, knowing she had to comprehend the concept of time zones eventually. As she huddled under her covers with the AC on high, she couldn't keep her eyes off the letter in her open bedside drawer, the one she'd shoved in there in January.
It would come to mind every few weeks, sometimes during an especially heartfelt conversation or on a very lonely Sunday night full of homework. Each time her fingers had gripped the edge, skimming over the sealed flap with a hint of insatiable curiosity, she'd curbed herself, knowing it wasn't the time, that she could wait longer.
Tonight, she couldn't wait.
With the weight of the world over her head, she hoped his poetic words could take some of it off and yanked open the seal. As she unfolded the sheets of paper, she froze, an uncontrollable scowl crossed her face.
Of course, he'd written two versions of the letter, one in English and one in Arabic, meaning she never even had to learn to read the language at all. She flattened them both and placed them side by side on her bedsheets, eyes darting between the two as she made out what she could on the right and filled in most of the blanks on the left.
Dear Talia,
You were a gift to me this winter: a perfect ray of sunshine from the West in the gloom of the East. And as this light prepares to leave me, I've begun to ruminate more on the true meaning of a country, after having lived in a new one for the last five months. I realize that a country is all but a piece of land full of people. It is these people who breathe life into its dirt and form the ubiquitous culture that binds them to that corner of the earth, no matter how big or small.
Yet if a culture was a material concept, it would require its adherents to never leave the land in which it was formed, tethering them to its borders much like roots cement a tree. Instead, it permits its people to fly away like leaves on a blustery day, knowing that even if it scatters them across the world, they can never sprout from another type of tree.
With this realization, I will never ask you to come back home with me and certainly not on the pretense that your identity is any less your own if you don't. But, if one day your heart is so inclined, I will buy you the first plane ticket I can find...because there's still a part of me over there left for you to discover.
Now, if I was overconfident in the timeframe to learn this language, as I often am, then I know your nose is practically brushing the ink right now; your neck bends farther as you squint to capture every torturous dot and letter. But when you finish reading, I have only one more demand: that you hold your head up high and keep it that way; for you must let no one fool you into believing you should be anything but proud of who you are.
Because this person, the one for whom these once idle words found themselves a place on this piece of paper, is exactly who I fell in love with.
After lying barren for twenty-one years, my heart only has room for her now, and I am convinced it will only grow fuller in her absence—until the universe unites us for good.
As for now, I simply wait from the other side.
Yours always,
Zaid