Invisible Girl (24 page)

Sadness seeps through me, resonating with the cracked rubble of endless dismissals from my mother. I feel a leaden paralysis.

He locks his mouth back onto mine and reaches out a clumsy hand to pull me around on top of him. He grabs the necklace by mistake and the string snaps. I jerk my head up in horror. The beads fly high into the air, spinning in the sunlight, shooting rays of colored brilliance around the room.

Vignettes pound into my head with every flash of the beads. My mother’s face: drunk, contorted, yelling. Me: trembling, running, wetting, hiding. My mother: bangles, biceps, raging, striking. My dad: blind, passive, worthless.

I gasp for air, but the images keep coming with every flash of the beads. Amal: laughing, warm, friend. Her mother: solid, safe, cradling. Me: open, pouring, growing, light, lighter, floating.

I feel a roar inside of me starting from the bottom of my feet and blasting into my head. My body wakes as if from a deep dream.

I plant my feet on the floor and with all my might start to stand at the same time I spin to my left. I rip out of Andrew’s grasp and reach out and grab Eleanor Roosevelt. The book is firm in my hands. Weighty. A Warrior Woman book filled with Warrior Words. I pull myself to my full height and point the book at him like a saber. “Get out.”

Andrew rubs his hand over his eyes, a bleary-eyed sleeper waking to a shocking sight, like seeing snow in the middle of the summer. He can’t process that someone like me could stand up to someone like him.

He shoots me a look of the purest contempt. “Whatever, freak,” he spits. He staggers to his feet and stumbles out the door.

I remain standing. Triumphant and strong, stunned by my own power. I’m so tall I almost scrape the ceiling. Then I notice the beads winking on the floor. I fall to my knees and start picking them up, one at a time, cradling them in my shirt, even as the tears start to fall and I know with a bottomless relief that I will never be the old me again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

On Friday, I leave school at noon with Amal. She was given a study hall on Fridays at this time because it’s the Muslim time for the services at the mosque, just like Sunday is for Catholics. I feel so special that she’s invited me into this private part of her world. I had Aunt Sarah sign a permission slip for me so I could leave school early today. She signed it immediately, almost forgetting I was still around since she’s been so relieved to have me leaving.

Amal and I sit in the backseat of her dad’s car with our heads bent toward each other while her father drives. I’m dressed just like Amal and her mom, wearing a long black skirt and a long-sleeve shirt. I have a scarf tied around my head so that no hair peeks out. The necklace, painstakingly strung back together by Amal and me, shimmers around my neck.

Her father glides the car to the curb and we all get out. The mosque is not a fancy building. It’s a long rectangle with a smaller rectangle on top. It’s made out of red brick with arches of bluish green tile that remind me of fish scales. There are four square white pillars in front.

Inside, the women go to the right and men go to the left. Amal and her mother motion to a shoe rack. We take off our shoes.

Amal’s mom is speaking to a young woman with long black eyes and arched eyebrows in a dark, gray suit. She’s really pretty and reminds me of what Cleopatra would look like if she had her bangs pulled back under a scarf and was an attorney. While they’re talking, Amal grabs my arm and says, “You want to see everything?”

She takes me to a big map that I think is some kind of a joke because it has Africa smack in the middle of it and I’ve never seen a map like this. That seems strange. I look back harder at the map to see if I missed something. I must be blind; it’s a map of the
Muslim
world. The green shows countries that are more than fifty percent Muslim. I start listing them mentally—Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq—when Amal nudges me. “Look,” she says.

She’s pointing to a picture of a mosque in Egypt. The Muhammad Ali Mosque is big and white with lots of rounded roofs.

We enter the women’s bathroom, which has a sign that says, WHILE PERFORMING WADU, PLEASE DO NOT WASH YOUR FEET IN THE SINK. USE FAUCET IN NEXT ROOM.

Amal directs me into another room. She is excited for me to share a part of her life no one else knows about. We walk over to a marble bench with four jets low on the wall. Two women with lined faces wearing long dark cloaks are washing their feet. These women look impressive, as if they could have known Moses.

“Before praying,” Amal says in a low voice, “you have to wash your face, mouth, nose, hands and feet. It’s okay since we just washed at home.”

I nod. The way Amal acts makes me want to share a Christmas with her. I wish I had a nice family with cozy traditions so I could invite her to see our ways.

Amal and I settle in on the carpet of the women’s prayer room. Lots of people sit on the floor by us. Some of the older women sit on chairs. I never knew there were so many different kinds of Muslims. Amal told me on the way over that not all Arabs are Muslim and not all Muslims are Arab. That’s certainly true here. Some of the ladies are black, or I guess I should say “African American,” like Aunt Sarah does. Some of them look Chinese but I don’t know if they actually are Chinese or what Aunt Sarah calls “Asian.”

The older women look the most like what I’d expected, with saggy skin under their eyes, lots of gold bangles and long smocks of yellow, purple and gray stripes. One girl definitely looks like a princess. She’s covered in white silk and has delicate features and soft small hands.

Along one wall is a bin that contains scarves and long skirts. Two college girls in blue jeans and T-shirts grab clothes out of there and throw them on. I’m shocked they are Muslim since they look so un-Muslimy.

A man starts speaking over a microphone and it’s in English. I listen and it’s kind of like church except the man’s voice is heavily accented. He uses
v
’s for
w
’s and says
vellfare
and
vell-being
. He also accents some words on the wrong syllables. Beyond the interesting way he speaks, nothing he says is any different from what priests say, like about being good and helping your neighbor.

After he finishes his speech in English he does it in Arabic. After that everyone stands, then bows and bends, then stands, then kneels and touches their heads to the floor, then gets back on their knees, then touches their foreheads to the floor, then stands. They do this four times. Then it’s over.

Amal looks at me shyly. Her eyes tell me that this is what she has to give me after I gave her my secrets about my family and the ugliness of my breakup with Andrew last Saturday at Annie’s. “Thank you,” I whisper to her. “Thank you for letting me come.”

Her smile spreads softly all over her face. She reaches out a hand and gently touches the necklace. “You know, we’re supposed to switch every week.”

My hands rush to the back of the necklace to unhook it. I hope she doesn’t think I intended to keep it. If anyone’s going to keep it, it should be her. They were her gems after all.

“Here,” I say quickly.

She stops me. “I was actually thinking that a perfect time to exchange would be over winter break.” She pauses, then says with a squeal, “When you come to visit me! My mom promised she’d work it out with your dad.”

I have someone to visit. Someone who will miss me.

I throw my head back and blink away tears. I’m too full to speak as we catch up to her parents and the four of us walk out into the light.