An Infidel in Paradise (17 page)

“I didn’t raise you children to run from your problems.” Mom’s voice rises passionately.

I want to say that she didn’t raise us at all and that the one who did hightailed it out of our lives the first time he got a better offer, but even I know that wouldn’t help Mandy’s case, so I appeal to Mom’s sympathy.

“They’re calling her Moandy,” I whisper. It’s not like Mandy doesn’t know what they’re calling her, but she doesn’t have to hear it from me.

“I don’t get it.” Mom’s brow furrows.

“You know. Mandy,
Moan
-dy.”

“She should just ignore them,” Mom reasons. “After all, it’s such a silly name.”

I sigh. “They’re little kids, Mom. The rapier wit doesn’t kick in till puberty.”

“Who’s calling her Moandy?” she asks, slumping against Mandy’s door, the weight of the problem finally sinking in.

“Everyone, the kids on the compound.
Every
one.”

“The other
Canadian
kids are calling her that?” She sounds so shocked I have to smile. Sometimes you’ve got to wonder how parents get through the day without feeling disappointed a million times.

“Yeah, Mom.” I shake my head like it amazes me too. “I know it’s hard to believe, but even our fellow countrymen aren’t being nice.”

Mom’s face suddenly clears like a storm passing. “Well, that’s easy to solve. I’ll speak to their fathers. I work with all of them. Heck, I’m the boss of half of them.”

“Oh my God!” I finally lose my patience. “Mom!
Hamsters
learn faster than you. Little painted turtles
that end up under radiators every time they escape learn faster than you.”

“There’s no need to be rude, Emma,” says Mom, scowling. She straightens and throws up her arms in exasperation. “So, what am I supposed to do?” she demands. But it’s one of those rhetorical questions that precedes a parental rant, so I keep quiet and wait it out. “Am I supposed to just sit back and let her be miserable?” she shouts. “Am I
not
supposed to do anything to help her? Should I simply let her give up without a fight and hide in her room all day?”

She pauses, but I give it a second to see if she’s finished. When she doesn’t continue, I state the obvious. “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do, Mom. Just let her work it out in her own time. Leave it alone.”

“Well, I can certainly see I’m not needed here,” Mom huffs, but I have a horrible feeling she’s close to tears.

I try to think of something to make her feel better. “You gave it your best shot, Mom. You were just trying to help.”

“But I never get it right, do I?” She is definitely close to crying, and I know I should just leave it alone.

“Maybe if you just listened to us more –”

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Tears stream down her face, and she doesn’t even bother to hide them. “You’ll never forgive me. Everything I do just makes things worse. Well, you know what? Since you’re so smart, you can babysit.” She pushes past me, furiously wiping her eyes as she storms down the hall to her bedroom.
“I’m going to the office,” she shouts before slamming her bedroom door.

I go into my own room and listen to her banging around for several minutes as she gathers up work to take with her. She doesn’t speak to either of us; she just slams out of the house like she can’t get away fast enough.

I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling, wondering what Vince is up to. He left early to hang out with Michelle at the other compound. He spends most of his time over there. I can’t say I blame him.

It’s hard to believe that Sundays used to be my favorite day of the week. It was Zenny’s day off, so Dad and I always cooked breakfast. We’d make way too much food – pancakes, fresh fruit, sausages, eggs. Mom would bitch about the mess in the kitchen, but she would sit down and eat with us. It was the only day of the week we ate together like a family. Mom was never home early enough on workdays, and she often had some crisis come up on the weekends. But Sunday mornings were sacrosanct. We sat around the table, sometimes for hours. There was talking and laughter.
When did it change?

When did the conversations become stiff with undercurrents of anger and blame? When did Mom’s absences become more frequent and Zenny start making excuses to stick around? When did the seed of Dad’s unhappiness germinate and grow so large it blocked out everything we were? And how could I not have seen it?
How could I have thought Zenny was warm and kind and not suspect for one minute that she was stealing my father?

The phone rings. I retrieve the handset from the hallway and carry it into my room, grateful for the distraction. I flop back down on my bed.

“What’re you up to?” Angie’s voice lifts my spirits. “Can you come over or are you still grounded?”

“Actually, I’m not sure if I’m grounded, but I can’t leave the house anyway. I’m babysitting.”

“Bring Mandy. She can hang with my little sisters.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I can get her out of her room.” My attention is caught by a flash of green on the balcony. I sit up.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it? Don’t worry. I’ll be right over.”

She hangs up before I can respond, so I stand up and walk over to the sliding glass door that leads out to the balcony. The balcony runs the length of the second floor, and a lime-green mustached parakeet is perched on the railing. I’m enchanted. I’ve lived in Asia for seven years, but not until Pakistan did I ever see parrots in the wild. I slowly back away from the glass and out of the room so I don’t frighten it, and I walk down the hall to Mandy’s door. I lean in and listen, but there’s no sound.

“Mandy,” I call softly. “There’s the cutest little parakeet out on the balcony.”

“I don’t care.” Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been crying.

“I’m going to get some food for it. What do think he might eat?”

“Go away.”

“Come on, Mandy. You know you’re better with animals than I am.” This is a total lie. Mandy’s hyper. She terrifies anything small and annoys the hell out of anything too big to get out of her way.

“He might like toast,” she says and pauses for a minute. “With cinnamon.”

“What a great idea.” I hope she can’t tell I’m smiling. “Since I’m making it anyway, could I make you some as well?”

There’s a deep sigh on the other side of the door and another long pause. “Okay,” she says finally.

By the time Angie arrives, Mandy and I are sitting at the kitchen table eating cinnamon toast with milky tea. The parrot is long gone.

“Mandy, how are you, sweetie?” Angie gives my sister a big hug before she comes over and hugs me. Strangely, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

“Do you want some toast?” I ask, getting up to pop some more bread in the toaster. It’s nice sitting in the kitchen. It’s a small narrow room, more a service kitchen than a regular eat-in kitchen, but it’s still more homey than the dining room where we normally eat. It’s weird that I never feel comfortable being in here when Guul’s working, since I used to spend hours with Zenny in our Manila kitchen.

“So, what are we going to do today?” Angie asks, looking from Mandy to me.

“You guys don’t have to babysit me,” says Mandy. “I just want to go back to my room.”

“You can’t do that,” exclaims Angie. “We have big plans, right, Emma?”

“Sure,” I say, though I can’t think of a single thing that would take the sting out of being Moandy-Mandy.

“Do you want to come over to my house?” asks Angie. “My sisters are dying to meet you.”

“No,” says Mandy forcefully, licking cinnamon sugar off her fingers. “I just want to stay home.”

“All right,” says Angie, undaunted. “We could play a game. What games do you like?”

“I don’t feel like playing,” says Mandy quietly. “I just want to be by myself.” She stands up and starts to head out of the room. I barely resist the urge to tackle her, I’m that desperate not to let her sink back into her own misery. I can’t explain it. I didn’t used to give Mandy’s happiness much thought. But happiness didn’t used to be such a rare commodity that I had to think about ways to capture and preserve it.

“Secret City!” I shout. It comes into my head like a flash, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.

“What?” says Angie, a small perplexed smile on her face.

But Mandy doesn’t say anything at all. She just stops in the doorway and turns to look at me, her eyes shining. We hold each other’s gaze, and so many memories pass between us it’s like we’re beating with one heart.

“Secret City,” she breathes.

And though Angie doesn’t understand, she hears the wonder and excitement in my sister’s voice and leaps to her feet. “Secret City it is, then!” she crows, gleefully clapping her hands.

Families that move a lot, like us, can’t always have traditions like normal people. Favorite places, rituals, activities, and even trusted friends are left behind each time we move. We can’t put up the Christmas tree in the same corner or hang stockings over the same fireplace. Chances are, there won’t be a fireplace and there may not be Christmas trees. But that only makes the traditions we
can
maintain all the more precious.

Dad built our first Secret City. I was only three, but I remember it. For rotational kids, it’s an idea that’s so obvious you wonder why everyone doesn’t think of it yet so inspired it takes on mythic proportions. We create a city with the one thing we can be sure will follow us to every new home: hundreds of sturdy empty packing boxes in all shapes and sizes.

In Nairobi, we created a rabbit warren of two- and three-storey ramshackle homes ambling throughout our yard. We were smaller then and light enough to sit on the top floors, and we spent days out there, insisting Asabe, the nanny, bring our meals out on a tray. In Thailand, we filled the living room. Our cardboard homes sprouted turrets and elaborate casement windows as we took over the design work from Dad and became more adept at cutting and building. In Manila, we started in Mandy and my shared bedroom, building
walls and roofs over our beds, adding curtained windows, and we traveled by tunnel through the bathroom that connected to Vince’s room, where he’d built an elaborate fort, complete with tinfoil moats and plastic crocodiles.

It’s been three years since we built our last Secret City. It was always our first activity after the movers left. It kept us occupied in the first few weeks, helping us over the transition. Suddenly I remember something else. I remember how neighborhood kids flocked to it. A lot of our earliest friendships were Secret City inductees.

“You realize,” I say to Mandy, “not just anyone can play in your Secret City. It has to be a really special friend, someone you can count on.” And a smile passes between us as we start building our most tantalizing Secret City yet, with Angie as our first recruit.

“F
or the last time, he is
not
in love with me!” I glare at Angie and tear off another piece of naan, ready to throw it at her if she says one more word about my now-legendary conversation with Mustapha over the weekend.

She grins and uses her own naan to mop up the last of her
daal
.

It’s only Monday lunch, but word has already gotten around our little group that Mustapha and I have agreed to be friends. Only, every time Angie says
friends
, she insists on sketching quotation marks in the air.

“Right,” she says. “I keep forgetting you’re just friends.” There go the hands, and another piece of naan soars across the table, hitting her squarely in the forehead. Leela retrieves it from where it’s landed on the floor and adds it to the growing pile in front of her.

“You really must stop teasing her,” scolds Leela, though she’s obviously struggling to put on a stern face. “She’s wasting food and she’s not eating again.”

“You should have seen them when we came out of the barn, though,” says Angie. “They were holding hands. If we hadn’t interrupted, they would have been kissing for sure.”

“It’s about time,” interjects Jazzy.

“We were shaking hands, not holding them.” I tear off another projectile. “I think you’re just trying to distract us from the fact that you and Ali disappeared into the barn all by yourselves. What was that about?”

“That’s a good point,” says Tahira primly. “It was very wicked of you to leave Emma alone and even worse to go into the barn alone with a boy. Did you even think of your reputation?”

“Of course she thought of it,” crows Jazzy. “She thought, ‘I’m sixteen! Screw the virgin rep, it’s time to get laid!’ ”

“Jazzy, keep your voice down!” hiss Leela and Tahira almost in unison.

“I’m not denying anything,” says Angie. “Ali’s a cutie.”

“Of course,” says Tahira. “But you would not have sex with him!” It’s not clear whether this is a statement or an order.

“The point is, I admit I’d go out with Ali if he asked me,” says Angie.

“You’d go out with anyone if they asked,” says Jazzy. “You’re just desperate for some action.”

“Yeah, and how’s it going with Johan?” asks Angie.

“The guy’s completely clueless,” sighs Jazzy. “I don’t think he even realizes I’m flirting with him.”