I held steady as my heart sustained a hairline fracture.

How long had he been in the hospital, drugged and dissected, that he couldn’t remember what day it was?

“Yes,” I said. “I do have school tomorrow. I just couldn’t sleep.”

He laughed. The fracture deepened.

“Me neither,” he said softly. Sighed. “I miss you all so much.”

I clenched the phone desperately. “Maman said you’re coming home tomorrow. She said you’re doing better.”

He went quiet.

“Mamanet khabeedeh?” Is your mother asleep?

“Yes,” I said, my eyes burning, threatening. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Hichi, azizam. Hichi.” Nothing, my love. Nothing.

He was lying.

“Baba?” I was holding the phone with two hands now. “Are you coming home tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” he said in English. “I don’t know.”

“But—”

“Babajoonam, could you wake your mother for me?” Back to Farsi.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “Yes, of course. I’ll—”

“It’s so good to hear your voice,” he said, sounding suddenly faraway. Tired. “I haven’t seen you lately. You’ve been busy? How’s Zahra?”

My eyes were filling with tears, my traitorous heart tearing apart. My father was dying. My father was dying and I had not been to visit him, had not wanted to talk to him, had delighted in planning his funeral. I suddenly hated myself with a violence I could not articulate, with a passion that nearly took my breath away.

“Yes,” I said shakily. “Zahra’s good. She—”

“Khaylee dooset daram, Shadi joon. Midooni? Khaylee ziad. Mikhastam faghat bedooni.” I love you, Shadi dear. Did you know? Very much. I just wanted you to know.

Tears spilled down my cheeks and I held the phone to my chest, gasped back a sudden sob, pressed my fist to my mouth.

My father did not talk like this. He never talked like this. I’d never doubted that he loved me, but he’d never said it out loud. Never, not once in my entire life.

“Shadi? Rafti?” Did you leave?

I heard his voice, small and staticky, the speaker muffled against my shirt. I brought the phone back to my ear, took a breath, then another.

“I love you, too, Baba.”

“Geryeh nakon, azizam. Geryeh nakon.” Don’t cry, my love. Don’t cry. “Everything will be okay.”

“I’ll go get Maman,” I said, eyes welling, hands trembling. I no longer trusted myself, no longer understood my mercurial heart. “I’ll be right back.”

Eighteen

At dawn, I broke down my mother’s door.

I’d never gone back to sleep. I’d run up the stairs with the cordless phone, woken my mom as gently as possible, and, once I’d pressed the receiver into her hands, tiptoed back outside to wait. I stood in the shadows, held my breath. I was waiting for her to emerge, waiting for news about my father.

She never came out.

Instead, my mother had been crying for hours, the muted, muffled sounds no more easily ignored than a piercing scream. I felt close to vomiting as I sat in the hall outside her bedroom, sat in the dark like a dead spider, arms wrapped around legs crossed and bent at the knees. I held myself as I shivered, shivered as I waited, waited for it to stop, for her to stop crying, to go back to bed. I waited so long I heard the whine of a hinge, a soft close. I felt Shayda move down the hall, felt her warmth as she sat next to me. Our shoulders touched. She didn’t flinch.

We didn’t speak.

I’d knocked on my mother’s door a hundred times, rattled the handle to no response. I stood again and pounded on it now, shouted for her to open the door. Only once, weakly, did she respond.

“Please, azizam,” she said. “I just want to be alone.”

The sun was coming up over the horizon, splintering the world in blinding strokes of color, painting the white walls of our house with a terrible, morbid beauty.

I left.

I ran down the stairs, ignoring Shayda’s sharp, relentless questions. I slammed open the connecting door to the garage, rifled through my father’s toolbox, retrieved a hammer, and charged back up the stairs, recognizing my mania only in Shayda’s horrified face. I didn’t care. I couldn’t take it anymore, not now that I knew, not now that I knew what my mother was doing, why she was hiding.

I couldn’t just stand here and let it happen.

Shayda looked at me like I was crazy, tried to yank the hammer out of my hand. She insisted that our mother deserved her privacy.

“She’s upset,” Shayda said, more gently than I knew her capable. “She’d gotten her hopes up about Baba. She’ll be okay in the morning.”

“Shayda,” I said, flexing my fingers around the hilt. “It is morning.”

“This is wrong. Maman has the right to be left alone. Sometimes it’s good to cry—maybe it’ll make her feel better.”

I looked her in the eye. “You don’t understand.”

“Shadi, stop—”

“Go back to bed,” I barked at my older sister.

Her eyes widened. “Oh my God. You really have lost your mind.”

I swung the hammer.

Shayda screamed. I swung it again, three more times, shattered the cheap metal knob, splintered the thin wood. I kicked the door, slammed it open with my shoulder.

I tossed the tool to the carpet, found my mother in her bathroom.

She was sitting on the cold tile in a robe, her bare legs stretched out in front of her. She was staring at the ground like a broken doll, her neck limp, a pair of open cuticle scissors clenched in one hand.

I saw the marks on her shins, the cuts that scored the skin but had not yet split. She was not bleeding.

“Maman,” I breathed.

When she looked up, she looked no older than me. Terrified, shame-faced. Alone. Tears had stained her cheeks, her clothes.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said in Farsi, her voice breaking. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.”

I dropped to my knees in front of her. Took her hand. Pried the cuticle scissors from her fingers, tossed them aside.

“I kept thinking of you, and your sister,” she was saying, tears falling fast down her face. “I couldn’t do it.”

I lifted her up, braced her head against my chest as she shattered in my arms. Her cries were desperate, ragged, gut-wrenching sobs. She clung to me like a child, wept like a baby.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”

I felt, but did not hear, a soundless movement. I turned my head carefully, slowly so my mother wouldn’t notice. Shayda was standing in the broken doorway, staring at the scene in a state of paralyzing disbelief. I felt true love for her in that moment, felt our souls solder together, knew our lives would be forever forged by a similar pain.

We locked eyes.

She covered her mouth with her hands, shook her head. She was gone before her tears made a sound.

My mother went to work an hour later. Shayda and I went to our respective schools. For all the world we were your garden variety of incomprehensible Muslim, one-note and easily caricatured. We articulated limbs, moved our lips to make sounds, smiled at customers, said hello to teachers.