Towelhead (29 page)

We turned onto our street, then pulled into our driveway. I still had the magazine in my lap, and now I reached down to get my backpack. It was the same pack I took to school, except with the books taken out and some pajamas and a toothbrush put in. “You are going to be sorry when we get in that house,” Daddy said, opening his car door.

I opened mine, too. I felt slow and stiff. Part of it was my leg hurting and not wanting to move it around more than I had to, but another part was my feeling confused about going into the house with Daddy when I already knew what would happen. I didn't understand why I would do that, not really. “Hurry up,” Daddy said. He was already at the back door, turning the house key. Then he pushed on the door and left it open for me to follow him. It didn't make sense. I was supposed to go in there and get hit.

I shut my car door and walked down the driveway until I reached the edge of the Vuosos' front lawn, then I cut across it. I walked faster, holding the magazine and with my backpack jiggling. Every time my left foot hit the ground, my thigh hurt.

I crossed Melina's driveway next, then began cutting across her front lawn. I reached her front walk and ran up the steps. Her car wasn't in the driveway, so I unzipped the tiny pocket in the front of my backpack and took out her house key.

As I opened Melina's screen door and pushed the key into the lock, I heard Daddy calling my name. I looked quickly over at our house and saw him standing in our driveway. I went back to turning the key and didn't look at him anymore, even though I heard the
whoosh
of grass under his feet and the sound of his calling was getting closer. It didn't matter, because the door was opening now and I was stepping inside and shutting it quickly behind me while Gil watched me from the couch.

 

He seemed a little surprised at first, but then he acted like it was no big deal. “Oh, hey,” he said. “C'mon in.”

I didn't move. I knew Daddy would be coming soon, and I wasn't sure what to do. “Is Melina here?” I asked.

Gil shook his head. “She's at prenatal yoga. She'll be back soon, though. You're welcome to wait.” He wore a dark knitted cap that made him look like a friendly burglar. In front of him, on the coffee table, were several different piles of papers. I figured he was paying his bills.

Just then there was a loud, quick knock on the door. “Hello!” Daddy called. “Open the door, please!”

I looked at Gil. I was too ashamed to ask him to help me. I was holding the
Playboy
magazine, and after having glanced at it once, I could see he was trying not to look at it again. If Melina had been there, I would've asked her to do something, but she wasn't there. If I had been alone, I would've locked the door and listened to Daddy yell. But there was just Gil, so I moved to open the door.

“Hang on there,” Gil said, getting up suddenly from the couch. “I'll get that.” Then, coming toward me, he said, “You look like you need a tissue. Why don't you go and use the bathroom upstairs.”

I touched my face. I guessed I had been crying. I wasn't sure if it was from my leg or running away.

“It's the second door on the right,” Gil said.

I nodded and turned and started up the staircase. There was no carpet on it like at the Vuosos', so each wooden step made a sound. I thought I could feel Gil watching me as I climbed. I hoped he would wait to open the door until I stopped making so much noise, and he did. Daddy's knocking didn't stop until I had rounded the corner of the upstairs hall.

With every step, I could feel how bad it was for me not to go home with Daddy. It would've been pretty bad if I had turned back when he'd first called my name outside. And definitely a lot worse if I had answered his knock at Melina's door and gone back with him then. But now, with Gil talking to him instead of me, with my shutting myself into a room deep at the center of Melina's house, I couldn't imagine going back without Daddy killing me.

I didn't use a tissue like Gil had told me to. I just locked the bathroom door and held my body against it in case Daddy or Gil tried to come in. Because I was pretty sure Daddy would convince Gil to give me back. Daddy knew how to act with other people to make himself not seem crazy.

I could hear them talking for a long time, even though I couldn't understand what they were saying. My shoulder started to ache from pressing it into the door, but I held it there anyway. I didn't care about any pain I got from myself.

After a while—half an hour? forty-five minutes?—the talking stopped and I thought I heard the door close. I pressed my shoulder even harder now, hearing someone coming up the stairs, then down the hall. “Jasira?” Gil said, knocking on the door.

“Yes?”

“Did you get a tissue?”

“Yes.” I was thinking that Daddy was secretly with him, and that Gil was trying to trick me into coming out so he could give me back.

“Well,” he said, “I just wanted to let you know that your father went home. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, even though I didn't believe him.

“Okay,” he said.

I didn't know what to do then. The door made a slight creak as I pushed my shoulder into it a little bit more.

“Jasira?” Gil said.

“Yes?”

“Melina will be home soon.”

“Okay.”

“Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you.”

“All right then,” he said, and after a second I heard him head back down the hall.

I waited for it to be a trick and for him to turn around and come and get me, but he didn't. He just thumped down the stairs. I decided then that it was possible that we were the only two people in the house.

Finally, I moved away from the door. I sat on the toilet and rubbed my shoulder. A few minutes later, I stood up and washed my face. I went in my backpack and got my toothbrush and brushed my teeth, too.

Soon I heard the front door open downstairs, followed by Melina calling out that she was home. Then I didn't hear anything for a few minutes. Then someone was climbing the stairs and coming down the hall. “Jasira?” Melina said, knocking on the door.

“Yes?”

“Can you please open up?”

I unlocked the door and opened it.

“Hey,” she said. She was wearing sweats and a man's blue oxford shirt. The buttons in the middle wouldn't reach, so she had just left them open.

“Do I have to go home?” I asked her.

“Do you want to go home?”

“No.” I started to cry again because I had never told the truth like that before. Melina told me to come here, and I did, and I didn't even mind so much that we were hugging Dorrie between us.

 

We didn't really talk about anything after I came out of the bathroom. Melina just told me to put my stuff in Gil's study—except for the
Playboy,
which she didn't ask me about, but which she took away from me and put in her room. When she mentioned that the couch in Gil's study folded out to be a bed, I tried not to get too excited that I might be staying over.

We went downstairs then and sat in the living room. Melina knitted, I read my book, and Gil went back to his papers. It turned out that they weren't bills, but stocks that he was trying to change around to see if he could make more money. Now that he wasn't in the Peace Corps, Gil worked for Merrill Lynch.

I wasn't sure what to read in my book anymore. I wasn't sure what there was left to know about. Then I found a part about kids who had done sexual things that they hadn't wanted to do, but their bodies had gotten excited anyway, just like mine with Mr. Vuoso. The book said it wasn't my fault, and that I was human and not a plant, and that that was why it made sense that my body might've acted that way.

Melina said she was too tired to cook dinner that night, so Gil made food from Yemen. I was a little bit disappointed since it was kind of like the food Daddy cooked, but then when I tasted it, it was a lot better. “This meat is nice,” I said. “Daddy's is always dry.”

Gil nodded. “The Arabs overcook everything.”

We were sitting around the Formica table, with Gil closest to the kitchen in case he needed to get up to get something. Melina had to sit with her chair pushed way far out from the table because of her stomach. Her fork had to travel a long way from her plate to her mouth, and sometimes food fell off of it and onto her blue shirt. It was funny to me because for some time, I had noticed that all of her clothes were stained in that exact same spot, and now I understood why.

It was beginning to feel weird that we hadn't really talked about what had happened earlier, so finally I asked Gil what Daddy had said to him.

“Well,” Gil said, “that he wanted to take you home with him. That sort of thing.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“That you were in the bathroom.”

Melina laughed. Gil laughed a little, too.

“Then what did he say?” I asked.

“He just kept kind of saying the same thing over and over again: that you were his daughter and he was there to pick you up.”

“And you kept telling him no?” I said.

“Pretty much.”

“Isn't he going to come back?”

Gil shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Will I have to go back then?”

“I thought you said you didn't want to go back,” Melina said.

“I don't.”

“So don't worry about it.”

“Don't tell her not to worry about it,” Gil said. “She's worried.”

“I just meant that no one's going to make her do anything she doesn't want to do,” Melina said to Gil. Then she turned to me and said, “No one's going to make you do anything you don't want to do, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

Later, while we were all watching TV in the living room, there was a knock at the door. “That's Daddy,” I said.

“How do you know?” Melina asked.

“I just do.”

“Well,” she said, “do you want to go upstairs?”

I nodded.

“All right. We'll wait to open the door.”

I got up from the couch and went upstairs. Instead of locking myself in the bathroom, though, I stood just around the corner in the hallway so I could hear everything. Melina must've opened the door this time, because I heard her say, “Oh, hello.”

Daddy said something I couldn't hear then, and Melina said, “Sure, c'mon in.”

“What can we do for you?” Gil said.

Daddy laughed. “What do you think you can do for me? I'm here to take my daughter home.”

“Well,” Melina said, “she doesn't want to go home with you.”

“So?” Daddy said. “This is enough shenanigans.” Then he yelled, “Jasira! Let's go! C'mon!”

I didn't move. Part of me felt sorry for him that he didn't know where I was in the house, but part of me liked it, too.

“Excuse me,” Melina said, “but I just told you: She doesn't want to go home with you.”

“This is none of your business,” Daddy said. “If you don't give her back, that constitutes kidnapping!”

“I doubt it,” Melina said.

Then I heard Daddy say something to Gil in Arabic—something loud and long—and Gil said something back to him.

“Speak in English, please,” Melina said, which I could've told her not to do since now Daddy would never speak in English around her. I was right, too. Even though Gil started speaking in English, Daddy kept going in Arabic. “What's he saying?” Melina asked Gil.

“He wants to call the police,” Gil said. “I'm trying to talk him out of it.”

“And tell them what?” Melina asked Daddy.

He ignored her and said something in Arabic to Gil. “Well,” Gil told Daddy, “I guess I just don't see the harm in her staying with us for a couple of days. She'll come back when she's ready.”

Even though he was still speaking in Arabic, I was beginning to think I could understand what Daddy was saying. Like when Gil said I would come back when I was ready, he probably said, “Who cares about when she's ready? I'm her father and she'll come back when I say.” And when Gil said that Daddy might be sorry if the police came since information could come out that might not help Daddy, he probably said, “What information? There is no information.” And when Gil said, “Well, there's got to be some information because she's limping a little on her left leg,” Daddy probably said, “She's making it up.”

Finally, I heard the front door open and close. “You can come down now,” Melina called, and I came out from around the corner and walked down the stairs. “We got rid of him,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“He'll probably be back,” Gil warned.

“So?” Melina said. “We'll get rid of him again.”