Chapter IV

Kara II

Conor drove a two-door teal 1996 Chevy Cavalier, with a heavy engine block on the front wheels that kept the car grounded. I drove a little red 1990 Isuzu rear-wheel drive pickup truck. Two-wheel drive trucks were the cheapest vehicles around — you could get a new one with air-conditioning for under $11,000 — but without ballast in the back they swung madly on bridges, and you felt like you were on a rope bridge across a windy river. Mine was six years old and with only 34,000 miles on it when her Dutch farmer owner, somewhere in the rolling woods where Olney becomes Laytonsville, parked her in his long driveway facing the road and died. It was advertised in the Gaithersburg Gazette for $5000, but the orange-bearded evangelical son with the very light eyes gave it to me for $4000.

I ask just one thing, he said to me softly, his eyes scrunched by the sun: Could you leave my dad’s lucky charm? The lucky charm was a small silver cross, hanging on a thin silver chain from the windshield mirror.

It would be an honor, I said, right hand on the open lapel of my lime green salwar. It was a clear sunny day, and we took a picture from his disposable camera, and the picture sits in a ziplock bag in my glove box, glossy and bright, its back stuck to the back of my MVA vehicle registration. A tall, red-bearded, flannel-shirted, straight-lipped Dutchman with eye corners permanently scrunched from staring at the sun stands an uncomfortable foot away from a shorter, perennially smiling, black-bearded salwar-shirted Pakistani. The Dutchman stands straight, arms folded in front, and the Pakistani’s arms are behind his back, left wrist in folded right palm as his torso and shoulders lean closer to the Dutchman. The picture is my talisman. I said a small prayer when I handed my registration to a cop who pulled me over for a broken tail light. Puzzled by the glossy back, he flipped it over and looked at the picture, looked at my smiling face, and I only got a friendly warning.

I loved my little red truck. It was light like me, and on long bridges on the Chesapeake Bay or over the Delaware river wind gusts buffeted the open sidewalls of the empty truck-bed, and I would imagine being blown over the barrier walls and far into the open water, swan diving out the window and landing clean and parallel to my little red truck.

I run lightly to Connor’s two-door car, flip the passenger front seat to the front and reach to grab his bag from the back seat. What a clean car. Run the bag to the truck and bungee it to the hook in the left corner of the bed behind the passenger seat. My big bag is bungeed on the other side, behind the driver’s seat, where it stays on clear days. I check the passenger compartment and it is clean. Other than the boot gravel inside the hole in the carpet under the clutch pad it looks okay. Then she is in the car and belting in. I’m electric.

My kindly Imam, at the community center cum weekend mosque on 355, with large cheeks and small eyes and the Punjabi uncle accent flashes into my mind. Remember, boys, he says to the group of high school and Montgomery college boys standing together in the corner in the paved stone deck behind the Casey Community Center: The Prophet, Sallalaihu Allaihi Wasallem,  he taught us to be kind and use restraint in speech. Some of the boys grew up here in Maryland, but most immigrated from Pakistan and India. They speak only English with each other, but at home they watch Bollywood movies. All they want is sex with white girls, and all will marry a desi girl with a family connection. All I want is to love her.

Paisanos is in old town Rockville, and I decide to take the long way, all the way down Shady Grove and then left on 28. After I pick up the food, I’ll take 28 straight to the boonies of Poolesville. This is the farthest we go outside of our three towns, and it’s in the country, and taking this order on a busy day means you lose two or three other orders. But I love driving on the empty roads.

Gum? She holds her hand out with a Wrigley, and I see a criss-crossed mash of lines etched into a three by three inch square on her inner arm, just below her elbow.

I shake my head.

She chews hard as she fingers her cross with her right hand. Her legs are so pretty I can’t look.

Yeah I cut myself, she says. It’s not what you think.

It’s just little cuts, sometimes big cuts but usually little cuts. See.

She holds out her arm closer than she needs to. Four long lines cut into a jagged two-by-two inch square. Filled inside with a jagged, oblique crisscross pattern.

It helps me be strong.

People say it’s crazy, but fuck them.

I’m going to become a police officer.

I turn to her all the way as I can’t turn my neck, try to catch her eye and see what’s inside, maybe give her something, but she’s facing straight ahead, chewing hard and eyes scrunched shut.

My father is fucking my little sister, she says.                                                                              

Out of the clean crisp blue sky she says that. Eyes tight. Left fist in a ball on her lap. With the thumb and forefinger of her right hand she’s playing with that little cross so frantic.

He drinks half a bottle of whisky and does four lines of coke and fucks my little sister.

Then she opens her eyes and tears stream forth silently.

I reach to the glove box and offer restaurant napkins, and she shakes her head hard and wipes the tears on her baggy light blue half sleeve.

I mean I think he is. She’s so weird. She won’t even talk to me. If I tell Conor, he will kill him.

Her voice sounds like fingers pinch her throat.

We’re at the left turn light on Shady Grove and 28. She takes my right hand off the gear knob and puts it on her knee, her small left hand tight on mine. I turn my palm up and her hand opens and she wraps her little fingers tight around my long brown fingers and her face softens into a scrunchy. And then she puts my hand in the middle of her lap and her small white hands cover my bony brown knuckles. And her lower lip quivers, and the soundless tears splatter on her hands.

The light changes to green and there is no-one behind me, so I stay.

I’m going to kill him, she says. Flat. Real flat.

Go, she says with her little chin. The light is still green. I shift from neutral straight to second with my left hand, switch my left hand to the steering wheel and turn left.

Sorry, she says, and puts my right hand back on the gear knob. I’m crazy.

It’s okay.

Sorry I said that.

Are you sure about that?

No.

Conor knows?

I don’t know what he knows. I just know how she was when I saw her at church. And now I haven’t seen her in two years.

Why?

She shrugged. He got shot. We thought he’d die, but he lived. And then they stopped coming to church, and no one knows where they are.

Did you try to find them?

Me? No. Father O did.

O?

Ogbonna. But everyone calls him Father O. Conor would see him every Sunday afternoon. He helped Conor a lot when mom died. When we ran away from home we went straight to church, and he took us into his home.

 I brake as we approach the light on Research, downshift, brake again, downshift all the way to second and then neutral. I can only look straight but all I sense is her. I know there is a drop of perspiration in the hollow under her full lower lip and I want to feel it on the inside of my upper lip. I want to lay in the grass and hold her in my chest and let her cry forever.

The light turns, and I shift to first.

Will you teach me to drive stick?

In my chest, a little something jumps with joy.

You want to shift for me?

She smiles. I don’t know how.

Put your hand on mine.

She unhooks her belt, slides closer. It’s a warm day, and I have no AC. I smell her smell.

That smell makes me happy.

Even now, some days I go to sleep with her smell.

The sight of her loose washed brown hair, bangs falling on her eyes.

Her neck.

The feel of her soft fulness in my mouth.

The smell.

Her perfect little hand on mine on the gear knob, and we shift to second. 28 is wide open. Now, I say, and we shift up. That was third, I say.

She smiles again, and I feel it in my chest. When do we shift to fourth?

Only if the light ahead is green.

The light at Nelson is green, and we shift up, but just ahead the road bends sharply. I slide my hand over hers, calluses on the back of her fingers.

Time to downshift.

Why?

Because it helps the truck stay grounded. Now, I say, and we shift down to third. On the rolling turn the silver cross on the mirror swings a small slow arc to me and back.

Why do you have a cross?

With her right hand she steadies the little cross. Then she pulls out her own little silver cross and kisses it. This is my mom’s, she says.

The homes on this part of 28 are small and old and pretty. We’re approaching the downtown, and the speed limit is 25.

She eyes the cassette tape sticking half out of the tape player.

Wow, she says, pulling it out and turning it around.

It’s a cassette tape.

I know, she says. I found some that were my mom’s.

She pushes it in, ejects it, pulls it out and looks at it with wonder. So cool, she says and puts it back in and ejects it again. Why do you have one of these?

It came with the truck.

And the tapes?

They came with me, I say and smile.

How do you go to the next song?

You press forward.

She presses forward and the listens intently as the tape whirs. Then she presses play. It’s grunge rock from Pakistan. Angry music, but hopeful, not all dark.

It’s good, she says.

What language is it?

Urdu.

Is that your language?

My native language is Shina, as I am from the north. But everyone in Pakistan speaks Urdu.

Wow. How many languages do you speak?

Just Shina and Urdu. And a little Burushaski.

What’s that?

Burushaski.

What a cool word.

Yes, it’s different from the other languages in Pakistan. It’s a European language, I think. The Hunza people — they live on the north side of my mountain — they speak it.

Wow, she says. Say something.

In Urdu?

No, in your language.

Well, Urdu is my language also.

Which was the first language you spoke?

Shina.

And the second.

Probably Urdu. Or Burushaski. My father’s friend who visited often was from Hunza. They speak Burushaski.

Is he dead?

No.

I don’t think so.

Some day I will go back and find him.

You said was.

We are in the narrow part of 28, where it’s one lane behind old town, almost at Paisanos. My stomach hurts when she talks of him.

How do you say I love you in Burushaski?

I love you?

Yes. You do. She laughs. How do you say it?

You don’t.

What?

I don’t know, but maybe you can’t say it in the romantic way.

Why?

When you say I love you, you express something that is not expressed in Burushaski.

She is silent, contemplating this.

The word for love in Burushaski is the same as the word for the pain of labor.

She jumps. Excited. So when you love you are in pain?

Maybe.

In order to love, you have to know pain.

Kind of. Maybe. But not in my language. I speak Shina and Urdu.

My mother died while she was in labor with my little sister, she says.

Maybe when I give birth, I too will die.

We are stopped at Nelson and Mannakee. I turn to her.

How does that feel?

What?

Your mom.

What about my mom?

How does it feel? My dad was shot in the neck. I didn’t see, but I know it happened. So when I think of him I feel him in my neck. And my throat.

My throat is on fire. Twelve years, and now is the first time I said it.

Like a hole. Like a big hole in my belly that will never fill.

And Conor?

What about him?

I shrug. I don’t know what I’m asking. My throat is burning, abbu pain throbs my head, and I have to close my eyes and see out of the pinched corners.

I love Conor, and he’s always been there for me. But he’s not my mom.

I nod.

They play a lot of this type of music? Like rock? In Pakistan?

I nod.

My mom was from Mexico, you know, she says. I found her tapes. But I don’t have a tape player. Now I can play them in your truck.

The song ends and now a qawwali by Nusrat. She ejects it. Holds the tape with her left and puts her right forefinger inside the rollers and unspools the tape.

Hey, I say softly.

Sorry, she says, and puts her hand on mine on the gear stick. I look at her with pinched eyes and her eyes go soft. She spools it back. Are you in pain?

I shake my head.

But she knows I am.

We’ll get you some water.

*

We’re parked in the long narrow Paisanos lot that runs perpendicular to the street, about 40 yards from the entrance and by tree-lined end of the lot. I grab the mapbook to memorize the map, and each of us unhooks a bag from the back. There’s a sharp pain in my head and I’m walking slowly behind her, head down. If I keep my eyes almost shut and just enter the pain so the pain loses meaning. A tall white guy with big shoulders and a mustache and a big white Baltimore Orioles hat kicks the door open cause he’s holding two pizzas flat and a styrofoam box on top of the pizzas. Mozzarella sticks or chicken wings probably. I stumble past, and he stops to stare at me, and I keep walking. Says something I don’t hear, and I move on. I open the door for Kara and turn, but she has stopped way back and is turned to him.

Hey asshole, Kara yells at his retreating back. He turns to her. She puts her bag down, walks up to him, stops, right fist pulled up to her chin, left arm hanging loose and low for an upper cut. All five feet three inches. Strong legs planted strong into the asphalt.

What did you say, asshole. Chewing gum hard and voice soft. Say it again, asshole.

He looks down at her and his mouth opens and shuts.

C’mon. She draws it out slow. Say it again, asshole.

He mutters something, turns swiftly and walks fast toward his black truck, stumbles and almost falls. Drops the styrofoam box and mozzarella sticks fly into the asphalt. Fuck, he yells.

Keep moving, asshole, she yells. When he opens the door to his black pickup, he turns back and yells, but by then I’ve grabbed her hand and we are going inside the dry warm brick oven smell of the pizzeria, holding hands, big insulated green bags on either side, and the kind-eyed mustached son of the Palestinian owner of Paisanos Italian is smiling from behind the counter. Hey guys, he says warmly. No traffic Sunday? Pies almost done. Can I get you some water?

When I am driving out of the parking lot, I turn my body to the left to see if there are cars.

What’s up with your neck, she says.

Nothing, I smile.

Where do you put this? She folds up the mapbook. I’ve memorized the route.

I point to the sunshade above her head and she tucks it in, unclips her seatbelt, and scooches over so she is in the center of the cab, her legs  slanted to the right of the gearbox. She puts her hand on my neck and kneads. Strong fingers, and I bend my neck forward with the pressure. Her lovely thighs spread flat on the seat of my truck where I lay my head. Her smell. Lean back, she says. Just lean into my hand. So I do. She just cups my neck in her palm and lets her fingers gently undulate under my neck.

My mother’s closed eyelids flash before me. My head in her lap, her hands under my head, her eyes closed. Her rocking back and forth, praying, then falling asleep praying. So much love.

Do you use eye-liner, she asks me softly. I don’t believe you, she says, as I am beginning to respond. I smile.

It’s better now.

Good. But she stays where she is, by my side, left hand on my lap. I am so uncomfortable in my pants.

With her right hand she reaches out and opens the little glove box latch and it falls open under the weight of everything inside, and the pens, registration, and my father’s two notebook that I stole from my father’s little bookshelf tumble to her feet. She tucks it all back in, picks up the big bound book with the faded map on top. What’s this, she says, then reads the faded print out loud. "Atlas of the Karakoram. Published in 1958”.

It’s a map book, I say, and reach to put it back in.

Wow, she says. She’s suddenly interested, shifts to her own seat and opens to the middle, to the only page I ever open. On the right page in the right center is a line in black lead that goes north from Rawalpindi to Chilas where the man with the soft eyes gathered his tribals, from Chilas west and then sharply north to Gilgit where he massacred my people, from Gilgit along the Bagrote to where it stops in a circle of red. And in the brightest cobalt blue pencil I’ve darkened the Bagrote river that goes right by my little village of 40 homes. When you’re sad, Abbu would say, just go and sit by the water. You’ll be okay. My river. So brilliant blue in the treeless winter mornings you couldn’t look at it from afar. And siting right by it you couldn’t look away.

She looks at me and I close my eyes so only a chink of my left eye is open. It’s a one-lane road with few cars, I’ve been to this home before, and it’s all the vision I need to drive.

She puts one hand on my lap. Your home, she says softly, pointing to the red circle?

I smile with my lips shut.

When did you leave?

When I was 9.

Why?

Because my brother killed someone.

Who?

Some man.

Wow.

Some man he thought killed my father.

Was your father a nice person? 

He was passionate.

But good?

Always.

I’m sorry, she says.

I shrug.

How old was he?

13.

What?

My brother was 13 when I last saw him.

What was he like?

Good. Kind. Studious.

How old was your dad?

I shrug. I don’t know.

I think my brother will kill my father.

I look to her sharply and my neck croaks.

But don’t worry. She exhales a belly laugh snort. I’m gonna be a cop, so I can kill him first. Legally.

A low moan escapes my throat.

Sorry, she says, and her left hand goes back to my neck.

No, I say, but her fingers are firm, and her palm is warm.

And the tips of her fingers of her right hand run lightly over the rough old paper. Rough and white in places where the pages stuck together and I pried them loose.

Give it me to for a day, she says. I’ll laminate it.

No. I’ll stop you. And I hold her left wrist on my neck and put it on the seat.

Why? She smiles. It will preserve the book.

I hate killing.

Of course you do, Ali.

To kill someone is terrible, Kara.

Not when they’re evil.

No one is evil.

My father is evil.

Whatever is in your father is in you. In Conor. In me.

Yes! Her voice is suddenly sharp, her hand heavy and still on my neck. I hate it. But it’s true.

Not just in you, Kara. It’s in me too. It’s in all of us.

Left here.

Almost too far, I pull a sharp left and she holds the tall salad bag stacked with three large salads and three smaller cannolis tight between her knees.

We’ve pulled up to the home on Sugarland Road past Darnestown, a mile past Seneca  and a mile before Dry Seneca, a wide flat brick rambler with an overgrown yard and a rope swing on 40-foot high branch.

I jump out and unhook the giant green insulated bags, check the pies, still flat and hot. I pick one bag and put it in her arms, and she holds it flat and opening toward her face, so the three boxes in the velcro-shut box face her. I grab mine and follow her up.

Smiling Ali, Mrs. P yells in delight. And you brought a friend!

The three grandkids pour out of the house and she shoos them off as we walk in, pushing the biggest one out of my way as he is almost on top of me. Wait, she yells. You! Wait! I always forget their names, she says to Ali like she wants to hug him. But I remember yours.

We unload slowly. The chubby little monster is almost on top of me. Oh my god that smells good, he says.

Hey, Kara says! I forgot the salads and dessert.

She runs back to the truck.

Hold on, says Ms. P when she hands them over carefully holding the paper bag from the top and bottom, only a little wet at the bottom. Comes back with another $5. For you, she says to Kara. Now you both have a tip.

Hey, she says, as I back up into the driveway to turn around. She’s got the map on her lap.

Look. She points to a spot right above the river, where Seneca meets Dry Seneca and a little further up.

Little Church Ignatius Way.

Let’s go here. Please. We have time.

On the way, she sits in the middle, head my my shoulder, palm on my lap. Firm. And I realize for the first time I left Gilgit, I am happy.

You’re a saint, Ali.

I don’t think there are any saints.

And I will need your help.

Me?

Yes you.

How?

You will see.

What’s a saint?

Father O talks about St. Michael defeating the devil. But maybe it’s a metaphor.

Maybe there are holy people but no saints?

Huh. But you believe in the saintliness of Mohammed?

The holiness of Mohammed.

What?

Once, when I was 8, I asked my Peer if he was a saint. Ammi was our teacher, she had just taught us the word saint. In English. He said, no, there are no saints.

What about the Prophet, I asked.

Rasulullah was a man, like you and me. He was a man who was chosen to be the messenger of God.

Aren’t you supposed to say peace be upon him?

I blush, and she laughs. That’s pretty much all I know, she says. I learned that from the class.

Yes, I say. In Arabic they say Sallallahu ‘alai hi wa salam after his name. It means may Allah bless him.

And what did you say to your Peer?

I smile my silly smile.

What did you say, Ali, she says, pressing my fingers gently into my thigh.

I asked him if I could also become a messenger of God.

And?

I laugh my silly laugh.

And what did he say?

I shake my head.

I need a messenger of God, Ali.

Another time, I remember, my father said to my Peer, I am angry at them because they are evil. And my Peer said to my father: Then be angry with me also. Because in me, I see the cruelest person on earth.

I hate that he’s my father. Because of him I have his anger. I have his evil. Turn right!

I swing right at the dead-end on River. She’s my navigator. I don’t know where I’m going, just that it’s farther from civilization.

Okay, left here.

I am almost late on the turn, hidden from the road with the dense green temperate rainforest, but I swing left anyway and the truck screeches but listens, and we’re in a narrow tree lined gravel street going toward the river.

Okay pull in.

I pull into an empty gravel lot with weeds all over, and  a very old little white church on the right, the end farthest from the river. I pick up the CB radio.

Hey Big Bo?

Nothing.

Big Bo?

Hey Ali, it’s Flora. Big Bo is sleeping outside.

Hey Flora. Radiator leak. I need a break. I delivered Sugarloaf.

Sugarland?

10-4. Yes.

10-4 Ali. Take care.

I pull into a space in the far corner. The lot is bounded on the west and south by the floodplain forest and beyond that the Potomac river, but it’s 12:30 p.m. and the sun is beating straight down on the gravel, and there is almost no shade except at the edge of the forest.

Let’s go.

Where?

Inside. She jumps out and looks at him.

It’s abandoned, Kara.

No. And she points to the car. One car in the long eight-car lot, a 1980s gray Plymouth Reliant with a sharp dent almost in the middle of the hood like someone hit it with an axe. Rust in the dent and under the wheel wells.

Come. I want to check it out.

You go. I’ll wait here.

Come. Please.

I look at the church. It’s a small one-story white wood building with the old old wood paint chipped and falling off, and where the paint peels the wood is gray and black. An incongruously colored alabaster steeple that looks like it was glued on to the church roof many years after it was made. A one-story flat-roof white home affixed to the back with a ten-foot backyard that ends in the forest. I look into the forest, which is inviting.

I need to pray.

Pray inside. It’s really hot outside.

I can go in the forest.

Bugs in the forest. Come in and pray.

I look at the church.

It’s probably closed, I say.

It’s not, she says. It’s a Catholic Church. It’s always open for worship.

I’m really okay out here.

Come, Ali. Please.

I look away from that terrible looking building and into her beautiful gray eyes. And then into the deep forest.

Okay.

There’s a small flashlight in the glove box. Behind the books. Get it, please.

* * *

Next —> Chapter V