A Sister to Honor (18 page)

“I picked her up from the hospital.” From the fridge Lissy pulled a V-8. She considered a quick spike of vodka but resisted. “I thought you two should talk.”

“We have talked,” said Shahid.

“I thought we three should talk, then.”

“Coach, this is my sister.” Shahid went over to where Afia was lowering herself gingerly into one of the two Danish armchairs in the living room. Her scarf was neatly arranged, her sleeves tugged down to her wrists. Scattered on the floor were the pieces of another Dora puzzle. Stepping over them, Shahid circled the chair. Lissy had seen menace in him many times before, but only on the court. The girl looked straight ahead, not at her brother. Quickly Lissy moved to the other armchair. She offered Afia tea, but Afia shook her head. “This is my sister,” Shahid repeated, “and with due respect, Coach, I know what is best for her. You do not.”

“Shahid, sit down.” Lissy kept authority in her voice. Shahid returned to the couch, sipped tea. His face was a storm. “I hear you're borrowing money from Carlos.”

“Just for a couple of days. I'm expecting a wire.”

“And you've been pushing Afran. To take over at number one, if you have to be gone?”

He shrugged. He did not look at her.

“It's good of you to hit with someone who
wants
the extra practice,” Lissy went on, “but coaching isn't your job.”

“I'm sorry, Coach.” He lifted his dark eyes, bloodshot, the lids sagging. “I overstepped. But this has nothing to do with my sister and me.”

“When you're preoccupied with her, it does.” Lissy sipped the V-8, missed the vodka. “And she has rights, you know, Shahid. If she wants to date someone—even your roommate—”

“Miss Hayes, stop.” Afia sat way forward in her chair, her palms pressed together in a plea. “My brother loves me,” she said. Her voice was strained, breathy. “He is a good brother. You act as you do,” she said, turning to Shahid, “because you must. I know that. And I must love Gus.”

Afia stood. As she took a place on the couch next to her brother, the scarf fell away a bit, exposing her glossy hair. Shahid leaned back against a cushion and regarded her. When she took his hand he flinched, but he didn't draw it away.

“You know what Baba says,” he told her softly. “It is a disease.”

She smiled ruefully. “I am ill, then.”

Shahid said something in Pashto, and Afia nodded. He said more, and as he pressed his case her head drooped on her neck like a flower wilting on its stem. Finally she raised her head and answered him in English. “It is not Gus you need to stop,” she said. “It is me. I am not controllable, Shahid. Kill me if you must and leave me here. But I will be no good to Zardad.”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” said Lissy. “What do you mean, you're no good? You are good, Afia. Look, falling in love is not a crime.”

“It is for us,” said Afia.

“No, it is not. It is not a crime,” Shahid corrected his sister. “Not when the man is approved. Not when it hurts no one. But now.” He looked with soft eyes on Afia and then waved his hand uselessly, as if at a stream of gnats. “She is ruined. Her life is over. And worse besides. You know that.” He continued in rapid Pashto to his sister, who began, silently, to weep. “Unless she goes back. She must agree.”

“Goes back to Pakistan.” Lissy was incredulous. “You mean after she graduates. Or gets her medical degree.”

“I do not. I mean tomorrow night.”

“What? Afia, is this what you were expecting?” She turned to the girl. But Afia's face was tucked downward, studying the weave of the sofa cushion. She turned back to Shahid. “You're going to put her on a plane,” she said, “in the middle of her sophomore year, to go marry some guy she doesn't give two hoots about.”

“It is our custom, Coach. It is the family—”

“Give up her whole education. Give up the love—well, we don't know if it's the love of her life, but—”

“Exactly.” Shahid sat forward. He gulped his tea. “We don't know. You don't know. You give us that talk about honor, Coach. Every year I listen to it. But not once do I hear you mention the honor of a family. The honor that is a woman's duty.”

“I don't agree.” Afia sat erect. She let the scarf drop to her shoulders. “This duty. I do not accept it now. I am not a dirty girl. I am not a blackened woman. But you win,” she said to Shahid. She finished in Pashto, talking quickly to her brother, her hands moving in the air. Then she turned back to Lissy. “I have said to him,” she explained, “I do not know where this third photo, it comes from. I do not find it on Internet.”

“What third photo?”

“Pictures of her,” said Shahid, “with—with Gus. They are . . . objectionable.”

“To my family,” Afia said, “who now may . . .” She looked down at her nails, scraped at an invisible bit of dirt. “Punish me,” she whispered.

“So don't go to your family!” said Lissy. “Why would you send her home?” she said to Shahid. “Is it the money? Because she could get a job here, Smith has scholarship funds—”

“It is not the money,” Afia interrupted. “It is what will happen. To my sisters. To my mother. My father's business. I am angry with Shahid. But Shahid is right.”

Shahid sat forward. He took both his sister's hands in his. Slowly, as if they each might break, they wrapped their arms around each other. Shahid whispered in Pashto, and Afia answered. If Lissy hadn't heard the English words they had just pronounced, she'd have thought they were comforting each other for something that was past, that was being grieved. Lissy felt flummoxed. Here she had meant to negotiate a problem, to steer Shahid to see how stupidly jealous he was acting. Now brother and sister were embracing over some insane notion of dignity that would send the girl packing. Lissy felt awful. She wished Ethan were here; she had lost her bearings. She stood, stepped into the kitchen, and tipped a healthy shot of vodka into the can of V-8. When she came back, Shahid had stood up.

“Tomorrow we go to the airport,” he said.

“I must go back to Northampton first,” said Afia. She looked up at him, supplicating. “To see my professors. To thank them.”

“Get your stuff, then. I'll take you.”

Miserable, Afia shook her head. She wiped tears from her cheeks. “I don't want you to take me, Shahid,” she said. “Please.”

He sighed. He held his breath. He looked at Lissy, a familiar look from all his matches:
Coach, help me out here.
She reminded herself she loved this kid. She loved his intensity, his dedication, his grace, his loyalty. But her throat squeezed closed. Finally he said to Afia, “Then you'll have to stay here in Devon,” he said. “We must leave tomorrow.”

“She said she would take me,” said Afia, gazing at her own feet.

“She?”

“Me,” said Lissy. “I said I would. And I will, Shahid. You and your sister have made your decision. That I think it's wrong isn't here or there.”

“It's not your responsibility, Coach.” He looked around the room, as if he had lost something. “And don't you have Chloe?”

“She's with her dad. She's fine.”

“Please, Shahid lala.” Afia touched her brother's chest, then moved away. “I will be ready tomorrow. Three
P.M.
” She stepped into the hallway, pulled her coat from the rack. When she reappeared in the sitting room she had her boots on, her bag over her shoulder. “Coach Hayes?” she said stiffly.

“So you don't even want me to drive you home?” Shahid asked, a catch in his voice.

“We will fight, Shahid lala. And I honor you. I am done fighting you.”

Shahid took a step toward her. She held up a hand, stopping him. He turned again to Lissy. “You are taking her straight to Northampton?” he asked. “You are sure?”

Lissy's smile, when she put her arm on Shahid's shoulder, was shaky. It was almost five. They had to stop by Gus's place, to return the snake and pick up Afia's clothes, but she didn't want to say Gus's name at that moment, when everything felt so out of kilter. Nothing about these siblings made sense. And so she lied. “Without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars,” she said. “Now finish your tea, and leave the porch light on for Chloe and her dad.”

•   •   •

A
lready the sky was indigo, darkening to black, no moon. Quickly, before they pulled out of the driveway, Lissy sent Ethan a text message:
GTG to Northampton. May not get back for dinner. Give Chlo extra squeeze for me.
Afia hardly spoke as they drove back up to the main road and through the town. Lissy let the silence grow. Plenty of time to talk on the road to Northampton. Plenty of time to remind the girl that she was in America, she had options. Time, too, to figure how best to get Shahid back to his old self, to the player who could stride onto the court and beat Harvard. The wind still blew, with stray flakes of wet snow slapping the windshield. The roads would be icing up.

“You sure you don't want to stay here?” Lissy asked as they pulled into the drive by Gus's garage.

“No. I would see Gus again. I cannot do that. I cannot say good-bye. To my professors, yes. My roommate. But not . . . not Gus.”

Afia had freed the snake cage from the dark handbag and set it on the floor. Now she lifted it by its handle and hoisted the green bag and her own purse with her free hand. “Here, let me help,” Lissy said. Leaving the engine running and the headlights on to light their way, she stepped into slush that was beginning to crisp at the edges. “I'll unlock the door. Give me the key.”

“In my pocket,” Afia said. Lissy dug the key out, on a keychain with a rabbit's foot, and went ahead of the girl down the soggy path. A calico cat appeared from a row of bushes and rubbed against her leg. “They are not supposed to be out,” said Afia as another cat, blond and annoyed, shaking its ears against the drifting snow, trotted around the side of the garage.

“We'll get them in, then. C'mon, kitty kitty,” said Lissy. She fit the key into the lock of the old door, its paint more peeled than sticking. A narrow set of windows afforded her a glimpse of Gus's den, where a blue light shone on the far side over a home aquarium. The place would reek of animals, she figured. Gus usually carried just a whiff of his hobby with him, no matter how much he sweated on the court or showered after.

She pushed the door open and flicked on an overhead light. She caught a glimpse of the room—secondhand furniture, stacks of books, throw rugs over oil stains on the concrete, a bouquet of tired flowers on the blocks-and-board coffee table, another cage in the corner, a litter box. Then her sense of smell kicked in. No, this smell wasn't right. It wasn't a smell of cats or amphibians or urine, it wasn't mold or sweat. It was a more rotten stench. Fertilizer. And something burning, something sulfuric.

She turned to Afia, whose eyes when they met hers went wide with alarm. Without explaining it even to herself, without even naming the thing she suddenly knew was there, Lissy grabbed the girl's arm. “Get out of here!” she said.

She yanked Afia from the door, the plastic cage rattling in her arms. Together they slipped on the walkway. Afia fell to her knees. Lissy grabbed the cage and hauled her up. The car was far, far away. They could not run fast enough.

When the blast came, she thought the word:
bomb
. The word seemed to propel her through the air and onto a wet pile of snow by the bushes. Her head slammed hard onto a chunk of ice. When she lifted it, the garage behind them was lit red from the inside. The door lay on the walkway. The cage she'd been holding lay scattered, in shards. She thought she saw a moving slither of white against the wet snow, and then it was gone. Smoke billowed out, a heavy ash.

A
fia kept moving, moving. You had to keep moving. That was what the survivors had done in the Peshawar bazaar. You stayed and the second blast came, or the snipers. Smoke everywhere; behind her, large things crashed and splintered. Fire, behind the smoke, in the cold air. She kept moving. From the far side of the path came Coach Hayes's weak cry: “Afia!” She crab-walked that way, stumbled over something large—the door, cracked in two—went down on her knees. She reached the car door, the passenger side. Her hand as it pulled the handle was gray with ash. Back out by the street, neighbors' lights were blinking on.

“Miss Hayes,” she said when she'd made out the moving form in the snowbank by the hedge. “Coach Hayes, are you injured?” She knelt. Her clothes, she realized, were torn, her scarf gone. “Can you move? Can you speak?”

The coach's face was black with ash, bleeding from the right cheekbone. She waved an arm at Afia. “I can't hear you,” she said. She put a hand to her ear and drew it away. No blood there. “I can't hear anything!”

Of course. That happened in the bazaar too, people deaf from the explosion. Strength surged through Afia's limbs. They had to go, now. Shahid had lied. She loved him. She had submitted to him. She wanted to scream not in pain but in grief. If Shahid could harm her, she was lost, lost. And he was a Pashtun, he would not stop. She placed her arms under the coach's shoulders, pulled her up, dragged her to the car, pushed her into the passenger seat, slammed the door.

Move. Fast. Don't stop. Shahid could be coming, Shahid was surely coming, following them from the coach's house, Shahid—oh, Shahid!—would kill them both.
You should scare a little easier
, he'd said. Her brother, her betrayer. The car's motor still purred. Afia had been behind the wheel of a car once before, with Gus, in an empty Smith parking lot. Now she found the
R
on the steering column and pressed the accelerator. The car leaped backward, down the drive, into the street, and hit the curb on the other side before Afia found the brake, thank Allah the brake, and then the
D
and the accelerator again, and they jerked down the street.

Coach Hayes sat crumpled, her hands against her ears as if the sounds were too loud. Trying to control the steering wheel and the accelerator and the brake, the car bucking and heaving from Campus Avenue to Main Street to Pittsfield Road, Afia glanced fretfully to her right. Finally, at the corner of the state highway, Coach Hayes lifted her head. By then the windshield wipers were whipping back and forth: Afia had set them off and didn't know how to stop them. A fire truck passed, its lights cartwheeling. “Can you hear?” Afia asked. “Did you hear the siren?”

“I'm not sure what you said,” Coach Hayes answered. “Your voice is a buzz. My ears keep ringing. Afia, a
bomb
went off in that house.”

“Yes, I know.”

Coach Hayes took her left hand away from where it had been rubbing her ear and placed it on the steering wheel. “Turn the car around, Afia. We've got to go to the police.”

“No.” What was she supposed to tell her?
Shahid is killing me. Shahid has to kill me.
Coach Hayes couldn't hear those words. Afia couldn't say them.

“Okay,” said the coach. “I'm getting some sound.”

Thank Allah. Both of them alive, neither deaf or shattered. Only Gus's house gone, his animals dead, and Shahid—Shahid could be anywhere, he could be behind them, they had to keep moving. Afia pressed the accelerator again and turned onto Route 7.

“The police,” Coach Hayes said again, her hand still on the wheel. “The other way, Afia.”

Afia shook her head. Keeping her eyes on the dark road, she reached her right hand to the back of the coach's head. A large bump there, and sticky; her hand came away smeared with blood. “You have hematoma,” she said. “Maybe concussion. It will heal.”

Coach Hayes let go the steering wheel and snatched Afia's wrist. “Stop the goddamn car,” she said in a low tone. “Pull off on a side road if you want. This is my car. If someone got the plate, they're going to look for me. Stop the fucking car.”

It was too much, too much. Afia's leg started to shake. Ahead, a side road. She turned the wheel and the car skidded to the right.
Brake
, she thought,
brake
, and found it, and with a jolt the car drove into slush and rocked back. She pushed the lever into
P
. Filling her ears was the sound of the heater, the
slup
of the windshield wipers, the soft splat of wet snow falling from branches overhead, and their breaths—the breathing of two women, alive, a soft panting.

Reaching across her, Coach Hayes turned the windshield wipers off, then the headlights. The world went black. Afia gripped the steering wheel tight, to stop her hands from trembling. So. Whatever he had said about a plane ticket, Shahid had lied: He had meant to kill her. To kill her. Her breath sucked in at the thought of it. He would have driven her to get her things at Gus's; would have gunned the car in reverse just as she triggered the bomb. Only because Coach Hayes was driving had he insisted,
you are taking her straight to Northampton
, because he didn't want to kill his coach. He would succeed, eventually, just as the proverb said:
Revenge took a hundred years, because I was impatient.

But Shahid had once brought her to America, had saved her that way. Maybe he would murder her. But to her last breath she would put herself between him and these
Amreekans
who could never understand.

“There's a ringing in my ears,” the coach said, “but it's dying down.” She lifted a lever, and the backrest reclined; she leaned her head back. In the darkness, Afia could not tell if her eyes were open or shut. “Try talking,” the coach said. “Try telling me what's really going on.”

“I'm sorry,” Afia said. “Can you hear me?” She felt the coach nod; nothing else moved. “If you are promising, no police,” she continued, “you can leave me here. You don't need for to be involved.”

“Shahid is my responsibility,” Coach Hayes said in a flat voice. “I am involved.” She reared up from the reclined seat and reached into the back of the car. She thrust a plastic bottle into Afia's lap. “I'm thirsty,” she said.

Her own mouth, Afia realized, tasted of ash. Her throat felt burned. She uncapped the bottle, and for a moment both women drank. The water felt silky.

“And I can't leave you off here,” the coach said. “It's the middle of nowhere in February.” Her mobile rang with the sound of a black woman singing—shouting—about respect. When she pulled it out and flipped it open, the phone lit her face, gray with ash. She put it to her ear. “Shahid,” she said.

Afia gripped her arm. She shook her head,
No, no.

Coach Hayes pulled away. “We'll need you for the match,” she said into the phone. And then, “You're letting me know now. That's the point. Honesty, right?” After another pause, “The question isn't whether you make Wednesday's practice, Shahid. The question is whether you communicate . . . Okay, good . . . One more appointment with Dr. Springer . . . I don't need to know what you talked about. But I wish—” She broke off. Having adjusted to the scant light, Afia could see Coach Hayes's eyes as the coach regarded her. Bright in her ashy face, their expression was confused. “We need to trust each other, Shahid. Loyalty, remember?”

She replaced the phone. In a swift move, she turned off the ignition and pulled out the keys. She popped the seat back up and shifted sideways. “I'm stronger than you,” she said calmly to Afia, “so if I want us to go back to Devon and the police, that's where we'll go. If you want something else, you'd better talk to me. Now.”

How, Afia wondered, did you begin to fathom this woman? From the start—when Shahid confided in her that not just the coach, but the director of all athletics at Enright, was female—she'd thought Coach Hayes a freak. What sort of woman threw her body around like that? What sort chopped off her hair, shouted at men, let them smell her sweat? Even Coach Hayes's stride, when Afia first saw her on a visit to Enright, looked wrong. The coach moved from the hip and kept her shoulders back, but loosely, not like a warrior. She had a narrow waist, breasts she did nothing to camouflage. She was married, she was a
woman
, not a perverse attempt at a man, yet this life of the body was what she had chosen. Afia had challenged all her teachers in Nasirabad. She had set her sights on being a doctor, no matter how many men teased or harassed her. Ignoring her mother's cautions, she let everyone know she was smarter than her brothers. And still, Coach Hayes made no sense to her. But they were in Coach Hayes's car, and Coach Hayes had just saved her life.

What were the laws in America? They executed people; that much she knew from Khalid. If strangers made trouble, they deported them. And they—not Coach Hayes, maybe, but the police, the judges—hated Muslims. “Someone,” she said softly, “is trying to kill me.”

“Who? Shahid?”

“No!” she said—too fast, too loud. “Someone else,” she added quickly. “My family. I don't know.”

“How do you know they weren't after Gus?”

“Maybe they were. It is the same thing.”

“Because you're sleeping together.”

Afia hid her face. No one else had said those words, not even Gus. And they weren't doing that, not the way Americans meant.

“Afia, don't beat around the bush. A bomb just went off.”

“Maybe someone is hurting just Gus. But I do not think.” She shut her eyes.
Gus
, she tried to think. Brilliant and gentle and warm Gus, who loved her and would protect her, only now he was in the hospital and somehow she had put him there, and now all his pets were dead and she had killed them.

“Was that an accident Gus had?”

Run from the truth
, Afia told herself.
Run.
“Yes,” she said. “An accident. He meant for to check those brakes. But he was busy with start of term. He should not have been coming to me,” she said. This much was true. “I have been telling him I am engaged, he must stay away. But it was this Valentine's Day custom, he was wanting to bring flowers, chocolates. Chocolates,” she repeated, and it sounded like the saddest word in the world.

“I see,” said the coach, in a voice that said she was seeing what Afia did not want her to see. “But someone might be wanting to hurt Gus now. And you. And if you just take off—”

“If I am at Gus's garage, they will think it was Shahid who sets a bomb. They will think, he is killing me for honor.”

“And if you take off, what will they think? Afia, get your head straight. You had the key to the garage. If you run away, the police will suspect
you
.”

That hit her head like a hammer blow. Afia drank more water while she thought it over. The water was icy and sweet. If they suspected her, she could be jailed for a time, maybe even deported. Of course, Gus would try to prove her innocence. And Coach Hayes would march up to the judge and tell him what really happened, how Afia couldn't possibly set a bomb and then walk into it. But still. If she let them catch her on the run; if she confessed. She would turn attention away from Shahid for a few days at least. And in those few days, before they could arrest him, Shahid might leave the country. Because this was not a place where a brother could claim
pashtunwali
as a defense for attempted murder. This was America.

She still felt Shahid's arms against her back, his breath on her shoulder. It was all she needed: to know he loved her. He could not hate her, no matter how
tora
she became, no matter how stained. He was simply obeying Baba. He was doing what brothers must do. Only she could save him from his awful duty.

“I will leave myself here,” she said. And with that she opened the car door and stepped out into six inches of frigid slush.

•   •   •

H
ours later, Afia sat before a woodstove in a remote cabin, waiting for sleep to give her respite. In Coach Hayes, she thought, she had met her match. The coach had physical strength on her side, Afia strength of will. They shared a deep sense of loyalty, by which Afia would not betray her brother and Coach Hayes would not abandon her. Once Coach Hayes had wrestled her back into the car, they had agreed to one night's truce. Coach Hayes would not report the incident; Afia would not claim to have set the bomb that had almost killed them both. Coach Hayes would find out if Shahid had a solid alibi. Then Afia could come forward with the truth of what had happened at Gus's garage and not fear implicating her brother.

“We can go to Shahid right now,” Coach Hayes had said as she maneuvered the car back onto the road. “I just spoke with him. He didn't even know we were going by Gus's place. He thought we were on the road to Northampton.”