Life Is Funny (3 page)

So anyway, what happens is me and Mara and Jessie are in the girls' bathroom before the lunch bell when JaNeesha comes out of the last stall, and she gets up in Jessie's face. She goes, “That's mines.” She's talking about Jessie's beeper, which Jessie got for her birthday two weeks ago from her grandma. So anyway, JaNeesha's kind of small, but she's strong and everybody knows it ever since last year she beat up some boy who got transferred for pinching her tit, which she didn't even really have tits yet.

“You bugging,” Jessie says. Usually she talks more like me, with more white English and all because her grandma is kind of like my aunt Eva about that, but when somebody's in your face, it's better to talk normal. So anyway, I can tell she's crazy scared because she's real small and not too strong, which everybody knows, even though she fights hard.

The thing is, you're supposed to take your friend's back if they get jumped. But JaNeesha used to be my friend, too, and we never had a fight, and I'm not real sure what I'm supposed to do: take Jessie's back against JaNeesha's or JaNeesha's back against Jessie's. I think I'm supposed to take Jessie's back since we're the best friends right now. But then Mara does a real kind friend thing because she gets close to me and goes, quiet so nobody else can hear, “I got her back if you got to check out.”

But I stay where I am because maybe it won't get like that anyway, and I want to see what's going to happen.

So JaNeesha goes, “That's mines, motherfucker.”

And she grabs for Jessie's beeper, and Jessie jumps up mad quick right on the sink so she's way taller then the rest of us, and she goes, “What you got to start with me for, bitch! That ain't your beeper, and you ain't getting nothing till I shove it up your behind!”

JaNeesha plays like she's going to crash Jessie in the knees and right off that sink, but Jessie kicks out real hard, and the next thing you know, JaNeesha's teeth are all over the floor, and now Jessie won't have to worry about people starting with her anymore.

Then JaNeesha looks at me with crazy blood pouring out of her mouth and tries to yell something, but she kind of can't, I guess because it hurts and she's missing all these teeth, and then here comes Ms. Lyons, screaming, and if it weren't for Jessie looking so scared up there on that sink and JaNeesha bleeding all over everything, I'd laugh because white people scream for the dumbest reasons and never get loud when they ought to.

So then after the principal gets through talking to everybody who saw, this eighth grader Indian girl who comes from the high school to peer-tutor Jessie and some other kids for math on Thursdays, this girl, Sonia, who stepped out of the third stall right when Jessie got up on that sink, she tells us if you don't want to see the guidance counselor on the second floor, there's some old art closet where there's a couple of chairs and some old mattress and you can stay in there if you want to be by yourself and nobody ever finds you, not even other kids if you don't want because you can lock it from the inside.

So now that's why I'm sitting here, because I have to be alone to try and figure out two things that are getting on my nerves, bad. One of them is what do I do to stay out of fights at least for the next seven years until I'm done with high school because I'm supposed to graduate and my aunt Eva will kill me if I don't, but everybody's always wanting to fight, and then you get suspended and kicked out and all that mess. And then the other thing is what do I do if I don't want my brother, Nick, to be touching me on my privacy every night and he comes and does it anyway?

Sonia

Monique

Sam

Drew

Sonia

Gingerbread

Sam

Josh

Carl

WHEN MY FAVORITE brother said the man who jumped off the Statue of Liberty was Sarim, I didn't believe it. Nif is honest as a reflection with me, but still. I just couldn't picture Sarim up there, on that stone pedestal underneath Liberty's toes, floating along balloonlike in that peaceful way he has and then spinning out of control, popped, zigzagging up and over the edge. I couldn't believe it.

Not even after the whole neighborhood gathered in our living room, the women staying nearer to the kitchen and the men sitting on our couches closer to the television. They were all talking about Sarim, about the way his body must have looked crushed into the lower balcony's cement, the way the cement must have looked. Mostly they spoke in Hindi, the Asian tones automatically sounding more like grief to me than anything English, and I still didn't believe it was Sarim. My mother and the other women cooked all week, for the neighborhood gathered at our third-floor apartment. They gathered here because we are across the street from the brownstone building where Sarim lives. Used to live.

I believe it more now. It's been two weeks, and he hasn't come home. And my four older brothers swore it was Sarim's body they saw at the funeral before it was sent back to Pakistan to be cremated. And everyone says it was his watch and his wallet, his Bic pens and Certs and his tigereye touchstones they found, scattered near and far from the body, like coins around the center of a gory wishing well. I guess it must be him.

Even now nobody wants to use the word
suicide
because killing yourself goes against the beliefs of my religion, and everybody feels uneasy with improper behavior. Lots of things are improper for Muslims. Especially for girls. Especially in my family. Wearing shorts, cutting your hair, doing poorly in school, arguing with anyone who is older, talking to a boy or to a man who is not related to you. I've always made my parents proud of me by appearing to follow each rule perfectly. Up until Sarim, I made myself proud, too, and pleased, because when you behave properly, you know just exactly where you belong. And knowing where you belong is very comforting, like a large hand resting on the top of your head.

I'm not sure what happens after you die. I think my brothers learn about that at their school or maybe during their weekend religious classes, but not even Nif talks about those things with me. I've read enough to know that a lot of Americans don't believe in God, don't think there's anything after death. For others, there's heaven and hell, or reincarnation. I want to find out what Muslims believe, what I'm supposed to believe, but the person I'd normally ask isn't here anymore.

*  *  *

I worry about what happened to him. First I worry that he's somewhere out there and can see everything that I'm doing and hear everything I'm saying. That his spirit is like eyes and ears of air. That if he thinks there are moments when I'm not missing him and thinking about him, his feelings would be hurt. Which is why I try to whisper his name at least every half an hour, why his photograph has to be admired every night in my closet, behind a stack of blankets and with Nif's pen flashlight. Why I excuse myself from every class every day at least once to pray in the girls' bathroom for him, why when I'm alone I'll speak out loud to him, hoping he will hear.

I miss you, Sarim, I hope it didn't hurt too much, Sarim, I know you're not crazy, Sarim.

I have to say his name with each new sentence so that he will know it's him I'm talking to.

Then, other times, I worry that he's nowhere. Blackness. Not even blackness. Nothingness.

*  *  *

Sarim moved to Brooklyn, across the street from my family, just before the school year began. The first time I spoke to him was two weeks later, on his twenty-sixth birthday, when he had a party for the whole neighborhood. He charmed all the parents and the grandparents with his quiet, small-smile face and with stories of growing up Muslim in France and then returning to Pakistan to discover an entire world of boys just like him: dark-skinned and praying five times a day. Even my mother and father let him make them laugh and told him to knock on our door anytime he might need milk, bread, or company.

After the women had swept away any sign of biscuit crumbs or crumpled napkins, after almost everyone had left with sugar stomachs and tea breath, Nif and I and three kids from the next block stayed to play one last game of hide-and-seek. I'd ducked into the front coat closet to find Sarim already there, grinning at me through thick wool sleeves and dangling knit scarves, pulling me in before I could blink. We talked for a long time before we heard my brother clomping toward us. I forgot all about the rules.

Sarim told me he was a graduate student studying law. He told me he'd grown up in a small town near Paris, the only child of a widow. He didn't remember his father, who died in some kind of accident when Sarim was only three months old. Sarim asked me all about the eighth grade and about my family and how I felt when I left Pakistan. He talked to me as though I were an adult; he listened as though everything I said were actually important. He was the first one who made me feel like me.

On the short walk home that night, Nif pulled me back from my parents and older brothers and threatened to tell my father about the closet. I shouldn't have even talked to Sarim. Shouldn't have shut myself up inside a box with him where our legs could bump and our faces almost touched in the dark. Shame filled my throat and ears like a hot swarm of bees. If you're a part of my family, you want to be the most perfect you can be. You want your parents always to lift their heads high when they speak about you to their friends. You want always to know yourself what you do and don't deserve and where you belong. To have all of that, it's very important to follow the rules. It's important not to question your father or husband or any holy man or to ask for explanations. You must trust the wisdom of the men. You must follow their wisdom at all times. The embarrassment my parents would feel when they discovered how terribly I'd behaved would sit on our home like a wet stink. They might send me back to Pakistan.

“If it is too difficult for you to follow our laws here in this country, Hanif,” my father had once said after Nif had been spotted by a neighbor sneaking out of a movie theater, “you will have to go home, where temptation is not always so near.”

But when I told him he was right and that I would confess to my father immediately about the closet, Nif got nervous. It's a brother's responsibility to help a sister keep from being improper. As the one closest to me in age and in friendship, Nif knew he would be disgraced a little bit along with me. So he never told, and even with my shame, I didn't either. I meant to, but that night I noticed that I could see from my window into Sarim's. He waved at me.

*  *  *

Sometimes Sarim disappeared for a few days. I wouldn't spot his light blink on, wouldn't pass him in the street. I never had the courage to ask him where he went, and he never told me. But I began to know when to expect his disappearances because just before them, the circles under his eyes would be darker than usual, the small smile more fixed, and his soft, steady walk would lighten into a float.

What?
he'd ask me sometimes, a lot of times, when I hadn't said anything. I always thought he was just tired, exhausted.

Law school must be very hard,
I'd answer. He would nod and hand me one of his brown-and-yellow ribboned touchstones.

These make it easier,
he'd say, letting me hold the smoothness for a moment. I never knew what he was talking about, really, but the feel of cool shine in my palm distracted me from asking anything more.

You're not crazy, Sarim,
I whisper a lot these days.
I'm sure there's some other explanation.

*  *  *

We became friends without anyone knowing. The shame faded, or maybe it hid somehow, like a virus or a cavity, and I stopped worrying that we were doing anything wrong. Even though we talked on the street when nobody was looking or spoke at neighborhood parties and festivals in a crowd that probably thought he was my cousin or uncle. Even though sometimes, on a detour home from an errand for my mother, I would visit quickly in his apartment. Fifteen minutes there, ten minutes here.

He wrote me notes and left them under his front stoop mud mat folded into hard packages, little blue-lined squares filled with slanted ink.

Dear Sonia,

Yes, I do know how to cook, though I rarely have time to prepare my own meals.

Regarding our discussion of waves, I believe that water does not move forward so much, but rather seems to rise and fall in place.

I prefer butterscotch to licorice.

Yesterday, there was a dress in the red shade you admire in a shop window on Seventh Avenue.

Sonia, every dog does not bite, nor does each bee sting. For each schoolmate who insults you, there must be fifty who do not. And for every Muslim terrorist, there are thousands of us who oppose violence. Tell those who are cruel to you that in their cruelty, they are the terror. Then inform them that they are forgiven, for such forgiveness may shame some toward kindness.

Love,

Sarim

After a while, not even Nif knew how close Sarim and I had become. In public we had to pretend we didn't know each other very well. Pretending always made me smile inside, a special secret between Sarim and me.

*  *  *

So when he died, when he killed himself, I wasn't expected to cry but to marvel. To whisper with the others and watch his blanket-covered body on Channel 7. I wasn't expected to leave the sink running until it overflowed or to lose my homework and fight with Nif. I wasn't expected to rip my fingernails bloody, to forget to shower, to lose ten pounds. Maybe it was because these things were not expected of me that nobody noticed them.

At school I try hard to keep my slippery feelings hidden inside some outer hardness. I picture my skin as a brown eggshell hiding the slimy mess of its insides. It works until the end of gym today, when some kids begin to guess whether that Statue of Liberty man was dead even before he hit the lower balcony that caught him.