Beneath the Same Heaven Read online

  Michael approaches me, gingerly leaning against the edge of the bed. “Mommy? Uncle Ted is here.”

  I wish we had already left. I should have just kept driving when I picked up Michael from school.

  “Kathryn, please open the door. I’d like to talk to you.”

  Michael tugs on my hand. “I can open the door, Mommy, do you want me to?”

  I close my eyes and nod my head with a tiny motion.

  My son, now the man of the house, opens the door. “Hello, Uncle Ted. Sorry, she’s not feeling well.”

  “We brought you some pizza,”Valerie, the younger one, says. At ten, she must know something is wrong, her perky pre-teen cadence sounds coached. “Here, let me set it on the table and get you some.”

  Michael stands aside, allows her passage. Amanda approaches Andrew, makes artificially happy cooing noises.

  Ted sits on the edge of the bed. I cannot greet him, cannot move.

  “Um, I understand there’s some issue about the moving process and your stuff.”

  I close my eyes. I don’t want to dwell on this topic, have to keep my thoughts moving forward. After a long pause, I force myself to speak. “Don’t worry, we’ll be gone soon.”

  “That’s not the point. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want. I mean, look, we’ve made a place for you, Janet has bought everything you would need, dishes, food, everything.”

  I stare at the ceiling. I can’t bear to see him.

  “Really, I know this sucks for you.” He lowers his voice to nearly a whisper. “I can only imagine…your husband turns out to be someone else, but he’s dead before you understand that. You’re stuck with everyone’s judgment for marrying the enemy. You’ve got to raise his kids, protect them from this shitty aftermath. And then, just as a kicker, you get a four-letter brick through your window.”

  His chronicle of my life sends me into a miasma of self pity.

  “I know you think Janet was harsh, but you probably owe her a shitload of thanks.”

  “For giving away my things?”

  “She managed your whole fucking flight from Los Angeles, it’s no small thing.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “The least you could do is show a little gratitude.” He is angry. “It’s not exactly a cakewalk for us either. And I didn’t sign up to play peacemaker between my wife and my sister.”

  Through the noxious mists of my mind I understand that Ted is not my ally. I feel my self shrinking inside my skin, whatever energy animated me, whatever sense of self-worth or responsibility once fueled me, shrivels, dries, retreats, leaving a hard little ball in my stomach. I close my eyes and take shallow breaths, allowing in only the bare minimum of oxygen my lungs require.

  “All right, if you’re going to play mute, at least get some good sleep. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.” I feel the bed spring back from his weight as he stands.

  “Girls, go ahead and finish your dinner with the boys. I’ll leave the back door open for you.”

  I wish they would leave immediately. Their immature voices grate on my ears as they pretend to enjoy my children. Michael says evenly, “You don’t have to stay, I can put away the dishes. It’s OK. Thanks for the pizza.”

  I keep my eyes shut, trying to protect myself from the humiliation of their forced hospitality. And they are gone.

  I exhale, the tension in my eyelids abates, and I allow a bland comfortless sleep to dull my consciousness.

  Then the baby is crying. Michael is talking, trying to get my attention. But an invisible lead weight above me presses, paralyzes.

  A baby’s angry cries grow louder and I hear Michael grunting with effort. I feel a plucking at my blouse. “Please Mommy,” he pleads, “feed him, he’s hungry.”

  The words mean nothing to me, they cannot penetrate the murky distance to my desiccated interior.

  Like a spider, I understand some movement at the extremity of my web. Something sacred made profane. A baby’s body is clumsily shoved over me, and a little hand haltingly positions my breast. I perceive heat, pressure.

  Michael cries. The baby is quiet. I feel nothing.

  I go through the motions for days, I’m not sure how many. My limbs perform everyday tasks like washing and dressing and feeding. I observe myself without judgment, I have become incapable of higher-level thinking. I prepare the same dinner for Michael night after night. I feed Andrew formula. I speak only as necessary. I neither laugh nor shout at the children. I do not try to retrieve my belongings, or even think of them again. I watch myself in the mirror as I comb the short hair of a woman, a person I can no longer name, a woman I no longer know.

  Tonight I sit at the table, another day’s ration of pasta and tomato sauce before us. Michael places a piece of paper on the table, the outline of a tree photocopied on its surface.

  “I need to fill in my family’s names here. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.”

  He looks at me and then at two lines at the center of the image. “I know your name, I can fill in Kathryn Capen.” He slides his finger across that line to the blank next to it. “What about this line? What should I write?”

  I understand the line is intended for Michael’s male parent. I cannot conjure the name. I see only a daunting void, a line that leads to painful questions of who and why. I consider the line no further, just lift another forkful of pasta—penne tonight, we had linguine last night.

  Michael understands I will not help him, cannot help him. He looks again at the paper, crumples it up in his hands. I hear him say under his breath, “I wish I were dead too.”

  The words reach me, hurtling through the fog of my mind. And I see him, see this tiny man, alive before me. In my sabbatical of self pity he has suffered through abandonment, not just once, but twice. He appears before me, as if out of thin air, his brown hair shaggy, his nails dirty, his clothes mismatched. He is so beautiful. I have neglected this living boy as I wallowed in my self defense against the dead.

  “Let me help you.” My voice sounds like a croak after so much silence. He pulls the paper away. “Michael, let’s see it. We can work it out together.”

  His little hand releases the ball of paper. I smooth it out and he looks at me, his need so obvious.

  “Go and get me a pencil, we can write in the words.”

  He dutifully opens one of the kitchen drawers and finds a pencil. How did he know it was there? He hands it to me, waits, watches me attentively.

  “Let’s do the easy ones first. Here is you. Write your name, can you write your name?”

  Slowly, the letters take shape, his childish handwriting deliberate, careful not to cross below the line.

  “Good. And now your brother, here, next to you.”

  “How do you spell his name?”

  I say the letters one at a time, waiting for him to transcribe each one. We continue in this fashion through my side of the tree, listing my parents, Ted, Janet, and their girls. As the weight of people on my side of the tree threatens to topple the whole thing we arrive at the empty line that could lead to others that would balance the tree, the whole cast of paternal aunties and uncles, cousins and grandparents that would connect Michael with the other side of the world.

  His hand hovers above the line. He fidgets in his seat, bites on the corner of his lip.

  “Write, ‘father’,” I say. “f-a-t-h-e-r.” He looks at me and I nod my head. When he finishes, I hold my hand out for the pencil and in my own hand I write in parenthesis deceased.

  “What does it say, Mommy?”

  “It says your father’s dead. If anyone asks, you tell them he died in an accident.”

  His eyes are trained on me, waiting for me to say more. “You don’t need to explain anything else.”

  He exhales, relieved. He pushes his way onto my lap. “Thank you for helping me. I was scared you’d be mad.”

  “Oh Michael, you should never be scared of me. I’ll always be here for you. I won’t ever leave you.” I hold him tightly
, gripping him to me, my hands moving almost frantically from his shoulders to feet, his head to chest, ensuring he is still whole.

  I carry him to Andrew’s play pen, lift the baby and hold them both to me, feel their breath on my skin. We are all alive.

  In the morning, I wake early, before the children. I walk to the door and open it. Morning shadows stretch long. The crisp air carries the scent of flowers Janet has so carefully planted. A humming bird dives to a shrub near the house, feeds from the blooms.

  I have a plan today. After I drop Michael at school, I will go to the mall. I will buy the boys new shoes, new clothes. I will take Michael for a hair cut. I will find a park and take them to play.

  I inhale deeply and return to wake the boys. I see our living space; a pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bed, a stack of unopened mail on the counter, fruit flies hovering above unwashed dishes in the sink. It’s too much. How can I possibly handle it all?

  And then I see the boys. Andrew sucks on his teddy bear’s paw and whimpers. Michael holds tight to an object, red and blue plastic protruding from the end of his fist. I kiss him to wake him. “What’s this?” I pull his fingers back, recognizing the Spiderman toothbrush. Defensively he pulls it back from me.

  “It’s mine,” he says. “He protects me at night.”

  “You hold him every night?”

  He clutches the toothbrush to his chest and nods.

  How long have I been gone? How much have I missed? Will I ever be able to fully return? I have so much work to do, maybe too much work. I see Andrew smile at me before the bear paw is back in his mouth. Just take a little bit at a time, I tell myself. Today just the new shoes and the laundry. Tomorrow I can look at the mail and call about Michael’s haircut.

  I emerge from the elevator into the mall’s giant gleaming concourse. Upbeat pop music pumps through speakers. Giant potted palm trees tower over me in the light that shines down from skylights four stories above.

  No one notices me. The shoppers, mostly women in groups of two or three, or pushing strollers like me, all appear perfectly at ease here, carrying giant paper bags emblazoned with store brands. I long for their contentment. I marvel at how they seem so perfectly adapted. None of them are crying, none appear grey with grief. One woman smiles at her companion, a dazzling smile of bright red lips.

  Maybe that’s it, bright red lipstick. I turn the stroller and walk deliberately to the department store cosmetics counter.

  “Can I help you find something?” the salesgirl asks.

  “Lipstick,” I say quickly before I change my mind. “I need some bright red lipstick.”

  “Sure. Every woman should have some bright red lipstick now and then.” She comes to the front of the counter and pulls out a wide drawer to reveal lipsticks in a rainbow of pinks and reds, oranges and browns. She looks at my face more carefully, her eyes glancing up to my hair, taking in the streak of white blonde hair. “I think you need something with a bit of cool tones, more to the maroon than the orange shades.”

  I simply wait until she finds the right color. As she dabs a bit on the back of my hand, soliciting my approval, she notices Andrew in his stroller.

  “Oh what a cute baby! He’s yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow, his color is just so different from yours. What’s his father?”

  What’s his father? Does she mean is he animal, vegetable, or mineral? Does she mean is he a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker?

  “He’s dead.”

  I watch her blanch, she flusters to recover. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  I smile, feeling a bit like Cruella deVille myself. “Just the lipstick please.”

  She busies herself with the purchase, thanking me with excessive formality.

  I immediately apply the color to my lips, observing myself in the countertop mirror. I see my brittle expression, my haircut and bright blonde streak, red lips like a target in the middle of my face. I force myself to smile. I frown and pull the corners of my mouth down. Comedy, tragedy. I smile again.

  I look different. I can be different. I will assume another identity—one I choose. I kneel down and kiss Andrew, leaving the imprint of my lips on his cheek. He kicks his feet and smiles. Once I have bought new shoes for the boys I will go to the jeweler to sell my gold.

  Michael smiles out from the stylist’s chair, pumped up to its maximum height. His eyes are so clear beneath the neatly trimmed bangs.

  “You look so handsome, little man,” the stylist coos as she pulls off the drape, revealing a bright green shirt, one I just bought today. He reaches up and touches his hair, darker than mine, but not black. No one can tell he’s half-Pakistani. Maybe Turkish, Greek, Italian even. I will say Greek if anyone asks me. Something apolitical, non-threatening.

  “Should we have some dinner to celebrate your new haircut, maybe some pizza?” I ask.

  “Really?” he is almost incredulous, “could we even have pepperoni pizza?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  We will eat pepperoni without even a moment of hesitation, without a care for whether the meat may be pork, in some way haraam, forbidden by some long-dead prophet. Our family is mine now. I will make the decisions, I will care only about my culture, my set of rights and wrongs. “We can even have it with Coke,” I pronounce it deliberately, almost defiantly, seeing my bright red lips form a nearly perfect o shape in the mirror. How American I will be, consuming our national drink, my beautiful sons dressed in matching Levis and little Ralph Lauren shirts. No one will suspect anything of me. We will be indistinguishable from the people in magazines, on billboards, in malls; people who are safe and happy and whole.

  I run water in the sink until it turns warm so I can wash the dishes. The ritual of scrubbing and rinsing plates and utensils comforts me. I have performed this task in so many different places, always feeling a satisfying sense of accomplishment to see the sink empty, to see the dishes stacked for drying. Only in Pakistan was I not expected to wash dishes, as the bhai, the housemaid, did them quietly, a faded tribal tattoo on her forearm bobbing in and out of the water as she worked. I close my eyes, allow the memory to fill my vision, before I remember the event that has changed everything. Perhaps the bhai also perpetuates this culture of revenge. Perhaps she raised her little son to seek vengeance for wrongs committed against his family. And a door in my mind slams shut, pushing away the image of her hands at the dishes. I am exiled from my memories. Those once happy places are no longer safe for me. I must remain here in the present.

  As I place the last dish on a towel on the counter, I hear footsteps in the garden coming toward my door. My brother calls my name from just outside.

  I open the door, pleased at the distraction. “Come in, come in, the boys are sleeping.” I move aside and gesture for him to join me at the table. He looks around, taking in the whole scene before he turns back to me and sits down.

  “Something different in here?” he asks.

  “I’m different.” An awkward silence settles. “And, uh, I guess I cleaned up a bit, it had gotten pretty bad in here.”

  “Yeah, Janet was getting a little worried.”

  I get up from the table, suddenly self conscious about having a guest, and open a cupboard for glasses. “Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Water?”

  “No, I’m good. Just doing mail delivery.” He places a stack of envelopes on the table, bearing yellow forwarding stickers from the post office. “You know Janet set up the forwarding request, but it doesn’t last forever, you should let all these folks know about your new address.”

  “Yes, you’re right, I’ll look in to that.” I take a wine bottle out of a cupboard, suddenly craving company, conversation. “Can you stay and have a glass of wine with me?”

  “Well, now. That’s a switch. Guess you’re back in the land of the living?”

  I pull out the cork and let the red wine splash into the glass. “I guess one can only retreat for so long.”
/>   Ted tips his glass toward me before taking a drink. “It was getting a little bit old. I wondered if I was going to have to come in here and smack some sense into you.”

  I flinch, drink my wine so I can change the subject.

  “What do you think about a car, Ted? I’m thinking I should trade in my car for another.”

  “What’s wrong with your car?”

  “Nothing. I just want something different. It doesn’t have to be new.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “And I think I want an American car.”

  “Why?” He rotates the glass in his hand. “Your Toyota will probably last forever.”

  “Yes,” I shrug. Does it look like a nervous shrug? “I just think, well, I was thinking, everything else from my old life is gone almost, so why am I holding on to this car?”

  He nods his head in thoughtful agreement. “And an American car will make you more American?”

  “I am an American and so are my kids,” my shoulder twitches defensively. “We can drive around in an American car.”

  “Suit yourself, drive American, go Yankees.” He takes another drink.

  “And can I ask you a favor?”

  “A favor?”

  “Another favor,” I say quickly, looking into my empty glass. “If I were a man, I wouldn’t ask, but you know how car salesmen are about dealing with women, especially a woman with children.”

  “You want me to play husband?”

  My back stiffens. I grip my glass with both hands. “I don’t need a husband, even a pretend one. I’d just appreciate another opinion on a car, and the fact that you’re a man might be helpful. If it’s too much to ask, nevermind.”

  “Down girl. It’s no problem. I can help you with the car, just tell me when.” He gulps down the rest of his wine, and stands quickly. “Glad to see you starting to move on. Do you all want to come for dinner this weekend?”

  I soften my posture, suddenly so grateful for an invitation. “Yes, we’d like that. What can I bring?’

  He is at the door already, his hand on the knob. “Nothin’, just wear the same lipstick, Janet will get a kick out of that.”