Girl Meets Boy (10 page)

No one in my family—none of my
older brothers or my sister, not my dad or mom, and none of the grandparents in my lifetime—has ever had a pet. Muslims don’t have pets. So it was a big, big deal for me to take a puppy home. This, however, had been my desire when these little nuclear-fired balls of furry sunshine burst before my eyes. Now, though, I was afraid the kids wouldn’t let me have one.

“If you give me a pup,” I said, “I’ll always be good to it, and I’ll never leave it.”

I picked the one with faint dark tiger stripes swirling through his cinnamon fur. I knew what I would name him.

The biker had put a pup in each of his saddlebags and buckled the straps. The pups had plenty of air, but they were crying mournfully. As I walked by, the little boy started to cry. He sat on the tip of the seat between his dad’s legs. His dad leaned down. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. He turned his head at me and smiled. “I bet this youngster here wouldn’t mind giving our little muttskinzimmers a ride to our house in his car.”

I held up my new little Muttski and said we’d be glad to.

Mom was the only one home when I walked in with Muttski peering out the neck of my coat under my chin like a baby-lion necklace. “Mother,” I said, “I’ve done a … questionable thing.”

My mother is a reticent, self-effacing Muslim wife, which is traditional. But she’s that way as a mother, too, which is not. My older brothers and sister say she was a terror to them but that she wore out by the time I came along. I knew, however, that my little friend would get a rise out of her. It’s hard for Muslims to imagine dogs as domestic, let alone bringing them in the house as pets. Back home the dogs are scavengers—they’re feral and scary, and they can be dangerous.

She walked over to me from the kitchen doorway, her whole face in a squint. She wore an oven mitt on each hand and looked like she was training for a boxing match. “It looks so real,” she said.

I lowered my eyes casually: Muttski was asleep. Before I could agree that, yes, the Americans were world-class stuffed animal makers, the door opened behind me and Dadi shot past me at typical Dadi speed with Dad moseying behind her. Mom helped Dadi off with her burka and folded it for her. There was nothing for me to do but step up.

“I have a dog,” I said. “A puppy.” Muttski woke up and squeaked as I held him through my coat.

Dadi and Dad looked at both of us as though we were sewer rats washed into our house in Dhaka City in the monsoon rains. I told them I would live on the patio with him until I could build a kennel.

I unzipped my jacket and held him up. “Look how clean he is,” I said.

Dadi gave us an iron stare. “You are a boy who has no respect for his family or his culture,” she said. I might as well have been holding a cobra. She walked through the kitchen to her room.

Dad stood his ground. “Rafi,” he said, “that animal stays outside at all times. In our house you will obey the traditions and the rules of this family.”

The Mutt and I drove back toward Huxley. I called Hank and Dave Thompson on my cell and used my Apu voice from
The Simpsons
when Hank picked up. “You are being congratulated lucky winner of one delicious chutney Kwik-E-Mart Squishee,” I said. They go nuts when I do Apu.

“M’Dude!” Hank said. He drew it out:
M’Doooooood.
He’s the one who gave me the nickname. “‘Sup, Bangladawg?” Dave said on the extension.

I asked if I could borrow a sleeping bag, and they said sure.

On the way home I bought puppy food in cans with pull tabs.

The baby Mutt and I were comfy tucked into the sleeping bag on the chaise lounge. I had my Walkman, my homework, my PowerBook, and sufficient light. Muttski had a can of water for a little drink and one of Dadi’s yard shoes for a chew toy. I was happy, but I was starved. I kept thinking Mom would bring my dinner, but she never did. I Googled “Ahab the Arab” and found that it’s an old novelty song by Ray Stevens. Ahab is sheik of the burning sand. At midnight he jumps on his camel named Clyde and rides across the desert to pillage. It’s racist, I know, but it’s hard to feel insulted by something that dumb. Kamilla Jamini, however, would be all over Ray Stevens like feculent odoriferousness on a nasty poo-poo stick.

Finally the lights in the house went out. I held a can of puppy food in my hand. My finger was in the tab when the back door opened quietly. Mom walked across the tiles with a steaming plate of lamb, rice, and eggplant. Had I been standing, I would have swooned.

Mom sat beside us while I ate. I was forced to give Muttski a second dinner so he’d leave me to mine. He lapped his water,
then he curled into the shape—he was the approximate color— of a croissant, and fell asleep. Mom ran her finger lightly from the crown of his head to the tip of his shiny little wet black nose. I was touched by the tenderness in her face, and I remembered I’d seen this same tenderness before, back home when I was a little boy.

Bangladesh, in ratio of people to square kilometer, is the most populous nation on Earth. We also rank right up there in roadkill. Smooshed rats and mongooses and snakes and cats and dogs litter the roads. This is in dry weather, mind you. Monsoon season is a whole different kettle of fish. But when I was a little boy, there was no such thing as roadkill. I’d be on my mother’s lap in the backseat of the car, my face pressed to the darkened window, my eyes peeled for the fresh horrors the highways offered.

“Oh, Mommie,” I’d exclaim, “that one mongoose got smished as anything!”

And Mom would say, “Rafi, Rafi, Rafi. You thought that was a mongoose? I’m telephoning the ophthalmologist as soon as we arrive home. You are needing glasses, dear. That was a sweater in the road. You saw the red stripes and the brown?”

I had, in fact, seen red and brown.

And Mom would tell me that the driver of a sports car set out with that sweater tied around his neck, and he sped so fast that the wind lifted it from his shoulders and pulled at the arms till they unraveled from his neck. The sweater flew over the cars and trucks like a heavy woolen bird. “And so now,” she’d say, “someone who can’t afford a sweater will find this one, wash it up good, and have a lovely sweater to wear.”

Mom conceived an article of clothing and the story of its loss for every dead animal I pointed out.

When Kerry points out a dead squirrel or a raccoon or a deer, I shake my head. I tell her it was a towel, a sweater, a really expensive winter coat exactly like one in the Land’s End catalog.

I confided to Mom what happened at the Kwik Trip with the guys who followed me. I said I was glad the deputy showed up. She shook her head, and I saw that it scared her. I told her about the biker and his little boy, and giving their two puppies a ride to their house.

Mom touched her finger to Muttski’s head again. This time she ran it along his spine to the base of his tail. Muttski twitched in his sleep.

“Rafi,” she said, “do you know how dogs came into the world?”

I told her I didn’t.

“Snuggle down and close your eyes,” she said, “and I will tell you.” She walked to turn off the patio light, then she sat back down.

I scooted Muttski up the bag and pulled him inside against my chest. I got comfy and closed my eyes.

“When God made Adam,” Mom said, “the devil was furious because God looked upon Adam as his finest creation. God had made the devil of fire, and Adam of earth. The devil claimed that fire was a superior material, and that he was, therefore, superior to Adam. The harder the devil pressed his claim, the more his hatred for Adam grew. One day the devil and Adam were arguing, and he spit on Adam, right in the center of his belly. God was outraged to see the best of his handiwork defaced in this way. He reached down, pinched away the piece of flesh and threw it on the ground. An indentation remained in Adam’s belly and in the
bellies of all of Adam’s offspring where God removed the flesh the devil had defiled. It looks like a little button.”

I unsnuggled myself and looked up at Mom in the dark. “I thought you were telling me a dog story,” I said.

She stood. “God looked at the little piece of flesh on the ground and did not want even one such small piece to go to waste. And so out of this profaned scrap of flesh God made the dog, whose duty it would be to clean up scraps forever.”

I thanked Mom for the story and for bringing me dinner. I wished her good night as she pulled the door shut as quietly as a burglar.

I looked down at Muttski. I couldn’t see if he was awake, but I hoped he wasn’t because I didn’t want him to have heard that demeaning story and to grow up with a crippled self-image. I pulled him close and whispered in his ear the true story of his origin. I spoke in Bangla, which I did a lot so he’d grow up to be bilingual, which he has.

Everybody thinks Adam was a guy full of confidence because he was God’s favorite creation. But he wasn’t as confident as everybody thinks. The truth is that Adam was lonely in the enormous new world all around him. Plus, the devil picked on him all the time. And plus again, the devil glowed ferocious with flames and brilliant shiny shimmers of heat, because he was made of fire, and Adam was made of the brown earth. The truth was that even though the devil was bad, he was beautiful, and Adam didn’t feel beautiful. Plus, he was lonely in the enormous new world.

Once the devil saw that Adam felt inferior, his hatred for him grew. One day he was bullying Adam and his contempt boiled over. He spit on Adam—as all the stories tell—right in the center of his belly.

But here’s where all the stories get it wrong.

The devil’s spit was volcanic, and it burned that hole in Adam’s belly. Why didn’t God blow on it to cool it off? Because God wasn’t around right then, that’s why. And the devil knew it. That’s something else the other stories get wrong: God isn’t always around.

When God came back, he found Adam sitting on a smooth round rock staring into the fiery sunset. Adam was feeling that everything in the world was brighter and stronger than he was. This wasn’t true, but that’s how Adam felt, so that was the world he saw. God looked into Adam’s heart and saw all of this.

God walked with Adam far from the devil’s radiance and roar. God reached into Adam’s heart and excised a little piece. He pointed to a patch of earth where flecks of pure gold lay on the surface like tiny leaves. “My son,” God said, “I’m going to make a new creature who will always love you.” God scraped up a palm full of the golden earth and mixed it with the piece of Adam’s heart. He wrung his hands together and molded the heart-earth into a ball the color of cinnamon. He rolled the ball out on the ground. It sprouted four legs, a tail, pointed ears, a bright, curious face radiant with love, and a noble snoot. The dog ran up to Adam and licked his foot where Adam had stepped in something nasty. It tickled, and in a few licks Adam’s foot was clean. Adam smiled. The dog smiled. God smiled. And Adam had a friend forever.

I told that story to my new little Mutt, and he’s always acted like he took it to heart.

There’s a problem with the story, though, and I thought about it as I lay there. What about the scar that should have marked the center of Adam’s chest where God reached into his heart? We
know that scars are lessons. How come Adam didn’t have that scar on his chest for us to inherit? I think it’s because the wound created by feeling like a dark thing in the world is the deepest wound of all. And the lesson is that the scars of the deepest wounds don’t show. We carry them inside.

Dad got me up the next morning before my run. He was already dressed in his suit and tie. No tea, no breakfast, no brushing teeth. I thought he was mad at me because of Muttski, who had already done two enormous poo-poos on the lawn. But he seemed more preoccupied than mad. We climbed in the car, then we were walking into the police station before I’d dug the sleep out of my eyes. Dad had a death grip on his briefcase. He asked to see the person in charge, and we were taken to the watch commander. The man asked us to sit, but Dad was too agitated. He introduced himself and opened his briefcase. He gave the man our passports, then he introduced me and made me hand over my Ballard ID. He pulled a newspaper clipping from his wallet; it was the photo of me from the sports section of the Ames paper. Everything since he walked outside and woke me up had been weird, but him saving any reference to me as an athlete was the weirdest thing of all. I listened to him say that I ran every day, all over town, and often after dark—and that was when I got it: Mom had told him about the guys calling 911 on me. Dad was scared that the police would see me running and think I was running away from something. Out of his case he pulled a Kinko’s sack, and out of the sack a sheaf of photocopies of the newspaper photo. He wanted every cop in Ames to know I was a high school runner, not a member of an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell. The man took the copies, shook our hands, told us not to worry, and wished me good luck in the rest of our meets.

On the way home, Dad told me that if Dadi’d had her way, he’d have been driving me to Des Moines to put me on a plane for home. I told him I was glad I wasn’t going home. He said he never wanted me out on a night run without a reflective vest and to take “that dog” with me.

And then my father surprised me as he had never before. We were passing a Kwik Trip, and he looked over. “Ah,” he said, “I see the Kwik-E-Mart. Perhaps I am treating my son one Squishee.”

I thought the smile would stretch my face out of shape forever. “Oh, yes,” I replied, “one delicious carp Squishee would be hitting the spot.”

We talked Apu English from
The Simpsons
the rest of the way home. I’d never heard him speak anything but Oxford English before or since.

I’m smiling with this memory of my father bending linguistic decorum as I bounce through the back door with my quadrupled plastic Hy Vee bag of garbanzos a few minutes after final prayers. I remind everyone that tomorrow is the Story County Fair and that they’ve said they would meet Kerry and her folks. Actually, what they’ve said is “we’ll see.”

I sit down with Dad at the kitchen table and take a little swig of his tea. Mom pours her tea at the counter. Dadi walks by and pinches my pierced ear. It’s been a year, and she still can’t set eyes on that tiny, harmless aperture without her venom rising. She’d have a stroke if she ever saw my hoop in. She’d never have noticed it that first time, but it was still a little red, and I made the mistake of telling her it was a zit. She came after my head squinching her eyes and pinching her thumbs together like an
amateur dermatologist at a middle school chocolate buffet. It was horrible. “You’ve got it, Dadi,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve got it all now.”