I make a sound like a mix of please and no and help. I don’t know who I’m talking to. There’s nobody but him, and he is slamming himself into me like we’re playing hockey. That’s the stupid thing I see over and over in my head: the scenes from my brother Muhammad’s extreme hockey moments video when the players slam into each other and lie tangled on the ice. Except we’re on the ugly flower sofa and it’s only one person slamming and I’m not wearing hockey gear, only a thin sweatshirt, and he’s reaching under it.
The only screams I can muster are repeated whimpers of “Mom, Mom, Mom.” I don’t know if they float up to heaven, but as he tugs at my pants, the doorknob rattles and Fizz’s mom’s voice comes down. “Janna, open the door. The girls want to come down to watch a movie. Why is this locked?”
He gets up and backs away, adjusting his clothing. I run to the stairs, then stop. He’s already gone to the spare bedroom next to the TV room and shut the door. It’s only me to face everyone. Just me, Janna Yusuf, insignificant nobody, daughter of the only divorced mother at the mosque, someone whose sole redeeming feature is being friends with Fidda Noor, aka Fizz, of the famously pious Noor family. A family that boasts about Fizz’s only male cousin: a Qur’an memorizer, a beacon of light for all youth.
I wipe my face and run upstairs to unlock the door and lock myself in the bathroom.
SAINT
I’m back from Florida and nothing’s changed.
Muhammad is in front of the kitchen sink, chugging raw eggs from a carton for a new regimen he’s on. Mom comes in and starts taking things out of the fridge, like she does every morning, to assess the day’s offerings for meal options. Yellowing broccoli is on the menu today, so I pour myself a third bowl of cereal. I’m seated at the folding card table in the corner that Mom calls our “breakfast nook.”
Muhammad wipes his mouth with the bottom of his T-shirt and turns to Mom. “So, are you calling them today?”
I shift, hiding my interest behind the Cap’n Crunch box, and hope they forget my presence in the room. I’ve been away for three days, so maybe they’ve gotten used to my absence.
“Called them already. Last night.” Mom assesses a shriveled turnip, squeezing as she rotates it. “They said to come by after noon prayers to discuss the date of the next meet. Maybe Wednesday if her dad can reschedule an appointment.”
She stands up and almost gets pushed back into the open fridge. Muhammad lunges forward for a hug that makes a bear hug look dainty.
“Thanks! I’ll go shower.” He strips his shirt off right there.
“Ugh,” I say. Bad move. They both turn to me.
“Aren’t you going to be late?” Mom asks. “I told you the flight last night would get in the way of school.”
Muhammad puts his shirt back on. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“No.” I get up. “I’ll walk.”
“No, Muhammad will give you a ride,” Mom says with that voice.
I shrug, picking up my backpack. Muhammad disappears into Mom’s room and comes back out holding car keys. He’s still in his pajama T-shirt, the one decorated with raw eggs.
We wait for the sole reliable elevator. The other one is always stuck on the fifth or fourteenth floor. The wait for either elevator is long on our floor.
“Who is them?” I blurt after five minutes.
“Who?” Muhammad looks around. Sometimes I can’t believe he’s studying economics at one of the best colleges in America.
“The them you’re going to visit. The them you’re going to shower for.”
“Oh, you mean Sarah’s parents?” He smiles a smile I’ve never seen before.
“Sarah? Sarah who?” Please not Saint Sarah.
Because I know why my religious brother would want to visit a girl’s parents.
“Sarah Mahmoud. Your study circle leader at the mosque.”
The elevator opens so I have no time to gah.
I get off at the lobby level with a huddle of people. The elevator closes on Muhammad’s surprised face as he travels on to the parking level on his own.
Oh no they didn’t. That’s all I can think as I walk to school.
My brother fell for Saint Sarah without me knowing, and my mother is helping to arrange the possibility of them getting together. For life.
Sarah’s “sainthood” means that to bestow her gaze on my brother she needs her parents’ permission, which can only be sought once a would-be suitor has his parents call her parents to set up a series of chaperoned meetings. Even to get to know each other.
Mom’s all for it because Saint Sarah loves Mom. Well, all mothers, apparently. When she first moved here, Saint Sarah surveyed the older women at the mosque to see what their areas of expertise were. Then she had them sign up to present things to the community. Mom did a talk on her thesis topic in college, “Patience and Forbearance as Markers of Resilience.”
Saint Sarah: clear, glowing skin; perfectly proportioned, neat features with a big, ever-present smile flashing perfect teeth; a steely determined head; and a Mother Teresa heart. I forgot to add: The whole package is bow-tied in a billowy, diaphanous, organically grown hijab.
There’s a very real possibility the most perfect Muslim girl on the planet may become my future sister-in-law.
REAL SAINT
It’s Thursday. Mr. Ram day. He lives on the floor below us. He’s old and tiny but sits up super straight like he’s the general in a wheelchair army. My job, every Thursday after school, is to wheel him to the community center for Seniors Games Club, hang out there, and wheel him back.
Mr. Ram’s son pays me abundantly for this and the other times I spend “elder-sitting.”
As I take him to the elevator, I compliment Mr. Ram’s clothes, to begin the walk right.
He’s wearing a dark blue striped button-down shirt with a blue-and-white polka-dot bow tie.
On his head is a white fedora with a navy-and-gray feather sticking out of the band.
His shoes are a shiny black with white wing tips.
He removes his hat and salutes my compliment. “After you,” he says as we get into the elevator, although there’s no possible way for him to go after me.
Once outside, we proceed without talking. I make sure to go around the bumpy parts of the sidewalk, giving a wide berth so that the wheelchair is easy to maneuver. Wheelchairs are heavier than they appear, and to make them look graceful, the person pushing has to do a lot of thinking ahead. I look down most of the time, but Mr. Ram looks up, waving at people as we pass.
When I was eleven and we first moved here, I’d go swimming at the community center at the same time as Seniors Games Club. Mr. Ram and I used to wait together for a ride back from Mom, and when he found out I was a reader, a real one, he became almost giddy. The week after, he brought along an illustrated copy of the Mahabharata, the Hindu epic.
“The Mahabharata is about the time after the Ramayana period.” He watched me flip pages from the seat of his walker. “The Ramayana epic covers an age when it was easy for good to prevail, the lines of right and wrong being clear to see and understand. But the Mahabharata is when people knew the rules but didn’t know the whys. They forgot them.”
“Is that why there’s a lot of fighting?” I held up a page with a chariot-filled battle scene.
“Miss Janna, every age has had that. It appears to be a by-product of civilization.”