The Sweetness of Tears (9 page)

He came to visit me in Chicago for a long weekend at the beginning of my last year in college. I showed him around the city—Navy Pier, the Sears Tower, the Magnificent Mile, and the Field Museum. And talked him into trying Pakistani food, taking him to Mashallah Restaurant on Devon Avenue.

The restaurant was crowded and we had to wait a few minutes before getting a table. When one opened up, Zahid, the restaurant owner, who I’d gotten to know over the past couple of years, seated us, handing us menus. I showed off my Urdu, asking him about his family—his mother and father in Karachi, his sister in New Jersey. Chris looked obligingly impressed.

Zahid asked, “The old professor isn’t with you?” referring to Professor Dunnett.

“No.”

He looked at Chris, curiously, and asked, in English, “This is your boyfriend?”

“No. You’ve seen my boyfriend. This is my brother, Chris. He’s visiting from California.”

Zahid nodded and then turned, in a hurry, to put some tables together for a huge Pakistani family that was waiting at the door.

Chris said, “You and Dan getting serious?”

“I don’t know. I guess.” Dan was a friend of Chris’s from high school. He’d asked me to the prom at Christ Academy and we’d been together, chastely, ever since. He was going to school at Wheaton and came out to spend the day with me, now and then, in Chicago. He’d spent most of the weekend with us.

Chris said, “He’s a good guy. But I’m kind of glad he couldn’t come tonight. Haven’t had a chance to talk to you alone all weekend.”

I looked at Chris, smiled, and nodded. I’d invited Dan along with us everywhere on purpose.

“What’s up with you, Jo?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so— far away. You have been, really, ever since you started college. Haven’t been to PPSYC since high school. You used to love camp.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Oh, so I am?”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You hardly ever come home. When you do, it’s like you’re not really with us. Everyone’s noticed. Mom and Dad, I mean.”

I had no answer. None that I was free to share. “Has— did Mom say anything about this?” I knew the answer. She’d never raised the subject of the silence that had grown between us since she’d told me the truth. And I’d never told her about meeting Sadiq.

“No. But I know she’s hurt about it. It’s like you’re avoiding us or something.”

“I—I don’t know what you mean, Chris,” I lied.

I was relieved when Zahid came to take our order.

Chris scratched his head doubtfully at all of my suggestions, saying to Zahid, “Not too spicy, okay?”

“Oh, but Pakistani food
is
spicy, my friend,” said Zahid.

“Well, go easy. I can’t take spicy food.”

“It’s good for you, my friend.”

“Maybe so. But it’s not in my genes.”

Zahid laughed and said, “Your sister. She can eat food so spicy that it would make
me
cry. Isn’t that so?” It took me a second to rustle up the chuckle he was expecting in response. My mind was still on what Chris had said about his genes.

Zahid left to pass our order on to the kitchen, and I brightened up, forcefully, saying, “So, tell me about the new version of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ that you and the band are working on.”

That kept Chris talking until dinner arrived. I had another little conversation, in Spanish this time, with the Mexican waiter who served us.

As I helped myself to some curry and tikka and naan
,
Chris said, “I’m proud of you, Jo.”

“Huh?”

“I wish I could be as focused as you are. I mean, you decided what you wanted to study right from the get-go. You stuck with it. And you have something to show for it. Four languages.”

“Five,” I said. “English counts.”

“Well, five then. That’s how many times I’ve changed majors. So far. I have no idea what I’m doing at school. And you’re gonna be done at the end of the year.”

“You have your music.”

“Yeah. But who knows if that’ll go anywhere? And I have no idea what else to do with my life.”

A little later, my plate nearly empty, my belly full, I watched Chris cautiously pop some naan into his mouth. Then he pushed some curry around on his plate.

He said, “So. You really like this stuff?”

I realized that apart from some naan, he hadn’t eaten a bite.

“We’re going to have to stop and get you a burger on the way home, aren’t we?”

He grinned. “Yup.”

I finished my last bites in silence, slightly annoyed with him, and even more with myself for dragging him there.

When Zahid came with the bill, he stopped to chat some more with Chris, teasing him about how little he’d eaten. Then he asked, “Which one of you is older?”

“She is,” Chris said. “But only by a half an hour. We’re twins.”

“Twins?” Zahid stared at both of us more closely.

I asked, “How do you say ‘twins’ in Urdu?”

“
Jurwa
. It means ‘joint.’ Half-hour’s difference, eh? But you don’t look like each other! Except for the eyes, of course. Both brown.”

I knew Chris was rolling his at me, the way we always did when people said things like that, not getting the difference between identical and fraternal. But I couldn’t look up to roll mine in response. I studied the bill carefully, hoping that Chris wouldn’t see through the careful blankness of my face.

Suddenly, before I could stop myself, I asked, “Do you know who Mendel is, Chris?”

“Nope. Should I?”

Hesitantly, I asked, “You took biology in high school, didn’t you?”

“Sure.” Grinning, he said, “You know I was never very good at paying attention in science. Or math. Or English or history for that matter. What’s the deal?”

I stared into his eyes, brown like mine, on the edge for a few long seconds—before backing off, shaking my head. “Never mind.” It was the closest I ever came to sharing the secret that belonged to him as much as it did to me.

D
ays after Chris came to visit me in Chicago, the flight path of four airplanes changed the world.

When I talked to him on the phone that week, Chris said, “Everything’s different now, Jo.”

“I know.”

“Remember how I said I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life?”

“Yes.”

“I do now, Jo.”

I heard the conviction in his voice and envied it. In a world now flooded with fear and doubt, I wanted what he had, dismissing what Grandma Faith had said about the dangers of certainty.

Professor Crawley called me into his office a few weeks later. He told me about the career options that were more lucrative now, and more in demand, than when he’d first mentioned them. I grabbed at the sense of conviction that he offered, leaving behind all the reasons I’d wanted to study languages in the first place—to do what Grandma Faith did, to connect with people so that I could help them. What I’d intended to do before—Grandma Faith’s whole approach to life—seemed suddenly naïve, too simple for what the world had become. Because now, among the people who spoke one of the languages I’d stumbled into studying—fresh from the strangeness of Sadiq’s story—there were some who were even less comprehensible than he had been, the source of a hatred I couldn’t fathom, no matter how well I understood their words, the source of mass murder in the name of a god that could have nothing to do with the One I worshipped.

Language, Professor Crawley told me, was a weapon now. And I could use that weapon to help in a war that my country hadn’t asked for. I applied for the job. And got it.

Signing all the contracts was scary. Confidentiality clauses galore. All the secrecy involved made me hesitate, wondering what exactly I was getting myself into—national secrets, now, on top of the personal ones I already kept, buried deep inside the color of my eyes and Chris’s. But I didn’t dwell on the doubts hidden in that hesitation. For the second time in my life, I climbed over them, taking on a role I’d never imagined I’d want. And, just like before, the doubts came with me, eventually forcing a reckoning far more difficult than the one I’d dealt with before.

Angela

The sinning is the best part of repentance.

Arabic proverb

I
t seemed like a lifetime ago, that weekend when Chris went to visit Jo in Chicago. I worried my heart out that she would give away the secret I’d asked her to keep—the truth that had driven Jo away from me no matter how much we both pretended things were the same. Now, both of my babies were gone. For the first time in more than twenty years, I was back where I started. Confused. Not knowing who I was, now that I didn’t have either one of my children around to define me. I had nothing to do but mope around the house, dwelling on the past, on the life I had before I had them, on the details of that life, which I’d shared with Jo, laying them all out for her, hoping she would understand.

How lonely it had been, before I became a mother. How dull.

D
on’t be so dull, child! No one buys a dull-looking doll. Put a smile on that face of yours—paint it on if you have to!” my grandmother, Grandma Pelton, used to say to me when I was young. She’d clap her hands. “Liven up, liven up, Angie!” Dull was the very worst thing a person could be in Grandma Pelton’s eyes. She herself was anything but—a bustle of noise and energy that wouldn’t tolerate any dullness around her.

To “liven” me up, she’d hustle me into the kitchen and scoop me up some ice cream—with a look over her shoulder to make sure the coast was clear. Grandpa Pelton didn’t approve of snacking between meals. He didn’t approve of a lot of things. Not that it mattered. He spent most of his time in his study—reading and writing, preparing the sermons he delivered every Sunday in the nondenominational, evangelical church he’d founded when he settled back in the States. He was from another time—old-fashioned and formal. I never saw him out of his shoes and socks, not even first thing in the morning. And he never left home without a tie around his neck.

In the kitchen, Grandma Pelton would tell me all about her and Grandpa Pelton’s travels around the world, about China, where Mom was born. Her words sparkled, bouncing off the kitchen walls, like light reflecting off the sequins of one of her favorite Sunday sweaters—always pink or baby-blue. Grandma Pelton’s head was a smooth, shellacked helmet of steely gray, stiffly flipped just above her shoulders. The whole package of her appearance might have looked ridiculous to someone who didn’t love her like I did. To me, she looked sweet as candy.

I spent more time with her than I did with my own mother, more nights at my grandparents’ house than at our own small apartment three blocks away, because Mom, after she went to night school to get her nursing degree, mostly worked the night shift: the pay was better.

Grandma Pelton was the only one who ever talked about my father, who’d left my mother when I was a baby. The subject was off-limits with Mom. The few times I’d asked her about him, the shadows in her eyes made me feel bad for bringing him up.

Grandma Pelton told me that Mom was a junior in high school when she met my dad—Todd Rogers.

“It was love at first sight,” Grandma Pelton told me. “They got engaged right after high school. Your grandfather didn’t like him at first. He thought he was too coarse. Too common. But Todd’s people were good, churchgoing folk and your grandfather came around, eventually. Your father joined the Marines, like his father and grandfather before him. I remember Todd’s graduation from boot camp—we all drove down together to attend. Oh, my—he was so handsome in his uniform. And your mother and he were so in love. They got married a few months later, living like gypsies for a while, on bases all over the place, coming home for Christmas sometimes. They were so happy. Even happier when Ron came along. When the war in Vietnam started, you were barely on the way. Your father got sent over right at the start. That’s how it is with those Marines, first ones to get sent in when there’s trouble in the world. So he wasn’t here when the stork flew you in. Your mother came home with Ron to be with us while he was over there—I took care of Ron when your mother went to the hospital to have you.

“I don’t know what happened when your dad came back. But he was different, that was clear. Todd’s father had died while he was away. He might have been able to help with—whatever it was that was bothering him, having fought in a war himself. Your mother never talked about any problems they were having. Instead of staying on in the service, like he’d planned to—to make a career for himself in the Marines—Todd decided to get out. Your parents got themselves an apartment around the corner—same one you live in now. He was barely home—two months, maybe three?—and then, suddenly, he was gone. It was a real shock to all of us. Faith, naturally, was brokenhearted. And none of the rest of us could make any sense of it. Not even Todd’s mother. Your grandma Rogers. She died a couple of years later. We didn’t even know how to get in touch with him to let him know his mother had passed, so he missed the funeral. I tell you, the man just packed up and left everyone and everything behind, no looking back. It was a hard time for your mother. Divorce is a mighty serious thing—a tragedy. A national one now, the way it’s spreading through homes today. Like a wildfire. It’s all because women won’t let men be men anymore. But with Faith—it wasn’t her fault, I know. She was a good wife to him, the way we’d raised her to be, following his lead, giving him the respect she owed him as a good Christian wife, never trying to be the boss. And he repaid her by abandoning his duty as a husband and a father. Broke our hearts, too—your grandpa’s and mine—to see her marriage crumble. Well, your mother went through a dark patch. Stayed away from church for a while. Said she couldn’t stand all the pity. As if sympathy were a bad thing! She moped around for a couple of years, trying to put the pieces back together. But you can’t do that when one of the biggest pieces is gone, can you? And moping doesn’t get you anywhere. Don’t you become a moper, Angie. Didn’t raise your mother to be one, either. She got through it, eventually. Picked herself up after a time and made the best of it. Went back to school. Got a job so she could support you and your brother. Not the way things should be. Not even close. But she made the best of it.” Grandma Pelton always nodded approvingly at that part.

I don’t know when the Christmas cards started coming. From my father. But it was years after he left us. No return address. Same message every year.
Dear Ron and Angie, thinking of you and hoping you have a wonderful Christmas. Love, Dad.

“Christmas is easy,” Grandma Pelton said one year to Grandpa Pelton when they didn’t know I was in the room. “Everyone remembers Christmas. Notice how there’s never a card for the kids’ birthdays? That would be something. To actually remember when they were born.”

By the time I was in high school, when Mom started going off on her missions, and my brother, Ron, was away at college, I was too old to be cheered up with ice cream and stories. I was restless, angry at my mother for leaving me behind, acting out. Grandma Pelton didn’t know what to do with me. I’d get in trouble at school. She’d keep it from Grandpa and never told Mom when she came back. I’d be good for a while. Then, when Mom would take off again, so did I.

I fell into what Grandma Pelton called a “wayward crowd.” It began with the boy I started seeing—an older boy who lived up the street. Denny. He wasn’t the first boyfriend I’d had, but he was the worst: a high school dropout who rode around town on a motorcycle. Grandma couldn’t stand him. She tried to stop me from seeing Denny. But I didn’t care. I used to sneak out at night to be with him—one of those secrets that Grandma kept from Grandpa, when she found out. I started to cut school. And smoke with my friends in the bathroom. I was suspended for that. Twice.

But I settled down whenever Mom came home.

It might have gone on like that and eventually been all right. Except that Grandma Pelton died at the beginning of my senior year in high school. I took it harder than anyone realized. Whatever shaky kind of faith I claimed to have at the time became even shakier. Growing up the way I did, in the heart of a good, Christian family, rooted in the kind of faith that should have been a guiding light from early on, I have no excuses.

I remember how horrible that Christmas was, without Grandma Pelton. Leading up to it, Mom and I fought all the time, about everything. She was leaving on another mission—to India—in a few weeks, and I was terribly unhappy about it. Christmas morning, I remember, I threw a tantrum over a pair of jeans I’d been expecting and didn’t get. Jordache, as I recall, the must-haves of the time.

“I’m sorry you’re so disappointed, Angie. I just couldn’t afford them. Fifty-dollar jeans!”

“That’s all I wanted for Christmas! The only thing I asked for.”

Mom was shaking her head. “Do you know, Angie, how disappointed I am that you would even want them? Do you know what fifty dollars can buy? In terms of food and medication for the kids I work with? I’m talking about saving lives. Even if I had the money, I wouldn’t spend it on a pair of fancy jeans for your behind. I know better than that, even if you don’t.”

Looking back, I can’t say I disagree with her. But I hated the way I felt. Dismissed. Thrown over. I begged Mom not to go away on her next trip, not to leave me with Grandpa Pelton.

“I have to go, Angie. You know I do. I’ve made a commitment. And I’m needed.”

“Then let me come with you.”

“You have school. You can come with me in the summer. After you graduate.”

That was no consolation. Mom hadn’t seen my report card. She didn’t know that there was no way I was going to graduate in June.

The Christmas card from Dad came a few days late that year. For the first time ever, there was a return address, in Los Angeles, on the envelope—something Mom pointed out to Grandpa Pelton before handing the card over to show him.

“Looks like he didn’t go far,” Grandpa said, handing the card back. He shook open the paper to read with his coffee, putting the matter away from him.

Mom fingered the writing in the card and gave a sigh before handing the card back to Ron, who, without a word, gave it to me to read.

I dug the envelope out of the trash later, wiped the wilted lettuce off it, and put it away. Before going to bed that night, I wandered into Mom’s room and asked, “Why did Daddy leave?”

She sighed and put down the book she was reading. “I told you before, Angie. I don’t know why he left. I wish I did. I wish I had an answer for you. But I don’t.”

What she said made me furious. I didn’t believe that she didn’t know. Only that she wouldn’t tell me. When Mom left me in Garden Hill that time, I got into more trouble than ever before, trying to shake the dull off me. Only this time, Grandpa was in charge. No ice cream from him. Just lectures, at first. He’d pace, hands behind his back, throwing words in my direction, words that washed over my head without cleansing any of the anger and confusion in my heart. One night, I took Mom’s car for a ride with Denny and some of his friends. Somebody had some liquor. We got pulled over. Denny was driving—he was drunk and they threw him in jail for the night. But I didn’t stop seeing him. Not until he dumped me for another girl in the neighborhood.

When I got suspended from school a third time, it wasn’t tobacco I was caught smoking. Mom was still away. Grandpa Pelton had no idea how to handle me. I see that now and I don’t blame him. He said some nasty things. And I said even nastier ones back.

One of which was: “You’re not my father! You have no right to tell me what to do!”

He lifted his hand at that one, but managed to stop it before it got anywhere near my face. Teeth clenched, he yelled, “I thank God for that! You have the morals of an alley cat and if I hadn’t promised your mother to take care of you, I’d say that’s where you belong!”

I took that as an invitation to run away. I wanted to start fresh, to get away from all the trouble I was in at school, to be somewhere I could belong without having anything from the past hanging over me. I knew where I was going without having ever really planned it.

I took Greyhound to L.A. It was scary being out on my own, and I had to work hard to resist the urge to go back home, thinking about how worried Mom would be when Grandpa told her I was gone. But Grandpa Pelton had a temper that, though slow to rise, could be fierce, and knowing that I’d tested it enough lately, I didn’t want to turn around and bear up to the hollering I’d be in for back at home.

It was easy enough to find the house on the map I bought at the bus depot, a little place, not far from the freeway in the San Fernando Valley. I stood outside of it for a long time, too scared to ring the bell. It was early evening, maybe five o’clock, and it didn’t look like anyone was home. What was I supposed to say if he answered the door?
Uh—hi, I’m Angela. Your daughter. Remember me?
I retreated from the porch and walked up and down the sidewalk for a while. Pretty soon, a beat-up old station wagon pulled up in the driveway. A woman was driving. She got out and hustled a couple of kids out of the car and into the house I’d been casing for almost an hour—a boy carrying a guitar and a girl, younger, in one of those ballet tutus and slippers. For a second, I wondered if I had the wrong house. It took a while before the truth even crossed my mind as a possibility. The woman was his wife and those were his kids. The moment I realized, I hated them.

Eventually, I worked up the nerve to ring that bell. A tall man with fading, sandy-blond hair answered. It took me a moment to recognize him from the photographs in the old family album at home. It was my father. Apparently, he was a schoolteacher and had been home since four o’clock, inside all the time that I’d paced the sidewalk. It was even more awkward than I’d been afraid of. After a few minutes of me stammering and him stuttering back, he let me in the door, still dazed. I met his wife. Connie. Their son, Cory. He was thirteen years old. And their daughter, too—Michelle, who was seven. They didn’t know about me—Cory and Michelle, I mean. Connie did. She pretended to welcome me, smiling and saying how glad she was to finally meet me. As if there had ever been any wish or plan to ever meet me before.