What We Learned Along the Way (20 page)

Even though he wasn’t hungry, he looked at
the menu anyway. The sandwiches looked small, unappetizing and were
overpriced. He decided to go check out the gift shop. It looked
like every other gift shop he had ever been in. It had magazines,
candy, books, mugs with little teddy bears in them and tons of
cards. He looked through a few magazines, tried out a few of the
cheap gadgets and then left after buying a small bag of M&Ms.
He looked at his watch. Nearly thirty minutes had past. He decided
to head back up to the waiting room. Just as the elevator door
opened, Mariam and her parents stepped out.

“I was just coming back up to the room,” he
said.

“We’re leaving. The doctors needed to take
some tests and we didn’t want to get in the way,” Sister Halimah
said. Her eyes were puffy from crying. “We’ll be back as soon as
they call us and say it’s okay. Besides, I’m sure you all are
hungry and tired anyway. We need to get you two home.” Rashad
turned around and began to walk toward the exit with the family.
When they were about 50 feet away from the door, Jaime and Joseph
walked in, each one carrying a baby. They were taking the twins for
a checkup. Mariam noticed her first.

“Jaime, is that you?” Her sight was a little
blurry from crying, so she wasn’t sure she was seeing clearly.

“Mariam?” Jaime said, half scared and half
confused. She didn’t know if Mariam wanted to hug her or hit her.
She held the baby up higher, hoping that if she did want to hit
her, she wouldn’t because of the baby.

“That must be the baby. I see it’s a girl.
She’s beautiful,” Mariam said as she looked at the baby. Since
yesterday, she had done more crying than ever. It felt good to
smile and look at the bright face of a newborn child.

“It’s a girl and a boy,” Joseph said, holding
up the other baby.

“Twins! Nobody told me you had twins. How
exciting,” Mariam said, looking at the other baby.

“Twins?” Rashad echoed. He had turned beet
red and was sweating like crazy. Mariam was too busy looking at the
babies to notice. Mariam’s father noticed, though.

“You alright, son. You don’t look too good.
Maybe you should sit down,” Shareef said as he grabbed his
son-in-laws arm and pulled him toward the benches. Rashad felt like
he was going to faint. His worst nightmare was coming true. His
wife was about to find out the truth.

“Wait, Mr. Salaam, I’m okay. I need to talk
to Mariam. Let me go, please.” He tried to pull away, but he was
pretty weak.

“Nonsense, boy. She’s had a rough day. Leave
her to her friend. Whatever you got to say can wait til later.”
Rashad tried his best to get to back to his wife, but Mr. Salaam
wouldn’t hear of it. Rashad finally gave up. He was getting dizzy
and knew it was too late anyway. He sat on the bench and waited for
his life to come to an end.

While Joseph went to go check the babies in,
Mariam, her mother, and Jaime talked. “What are you guys doing
here?” Jaime asked.

“Guess you didn’t hear. Jihad was shot last
night. We were just headed home to get washed up and rest a little,
but we’ll be back later,” Mariam told her.

“Shot? I think I saw that on the news last
night. I had no idea it was Jihad. I’ll be sure to pray for him.”
Jaime was sad to hear about Jihad, but it was a pleasant surprise
to see that Mariam wasn’t upset with her. “Mariam, I just want to
thank you for your support. It takes a strong woman to be able to
accept these babies.” She put her daughter in the stroller and gave
Mariam a big hug.

“Jaime, we’re best friends and everyone makes
mistakes. I can’t judge you for that,” Mariam reassured her. She
took the baby boy from her mother and pulled the little hat off of
his head to get a better look. “Whoa, this boy’s got a lot of hair,
and a cute little square head. He must get that from his daddy,”
she said.

Jaime laughed. “Yes he does. Rashad has some
strong genes.”

Mariam looked confused. “What does Rashad
have to do with anything? I’m talking about the babies’
father.”

Jaime was quiet. She felt like she was going
to throw up. Rashad lied. He never told her!

Mariam was getting worried. She really didn’t
understand why Jaime would bring up Rashad and his genes. There was
only one reason she would say something like that, but Mariam knew
that couldn’t be it.

“Why did you bring up my husband?” The smile
had fallen from her face and she had given the baby back to her
mother, who wasn’t smiling anymore either. Jaime didn’t say
anything. She looked over at Rashad for some relief, but he was
purposefully looking in the other direction.

“I don’t know what to say. I thought you
knew.” Jaime said, embarrassed.

“You thought I knew what?” Mariam yelled.
“What the hell is going on?” She stormed over toward Rashad, but
ran into Joseph who was coming around the corner. “Joseph, don’t
lie to me. Who is the babies’ father?” she pleaded.

Joseph looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry,
Mariam.”

“Sorry for what! Somebody better tell me
something right now!” Mariam yelled.

Her father heard her yelling and went over to
see what was going on.

“What’s wrong, Mariam?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Ask Rashad!” she said with an
attitude. Shareef looked over at his wife who was now watching the
whole thing from the wall.

“What’s the problem?” he asked her as he
walked over.

“I can’t take all this, Shareef,” she said in
an exhausted voice. “I’m not sure, but I think Rashad is the father
of Jaime’s twins.”

“What!” he said in disbelief. He turned
around to go talk to Rashad, but Mariam had beat him to it.

“You have to talk to me, Rashad. I’m going
crazy here. Tell me something,” she said with tears in her eyes.
“Tell me this isn’t happening, honey.”

He wouldn’t give her an answer, but she could
tell from the way that he wouldn’t even make eye contact that it
was true.

“I can’t believe you did this to me! I’ve
been the best thing in your life and this is how you repay me? So
how many others are there, huh? Do Malikah and Aliya have any
children I need to know about? What about Kalimah? You get her
knocked up too?” She started calmly, but her volume rose gradually
until she was finally yelling again.

Rashad was facing the wall. He wouldn’t turn
around or say anything. He knew that nothing he said at that moment
would make a difference. People were starting to notice as Mariam
became more and more dramatic.

“Please, Sister Halimah. It was a huge
mistake, and I thought she knew,” Jaime said pitifully.

“Little girl, if you don’t get out of my
face,” she said to Jaime in a callous voice. It took all her might
to hold back from slapping her.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to
happen!” she said as she gathered her children and hurried down the
hall. Joseph was left with the furious family.

“The Prophet said you shouldn’t be angry
longer than three days,” he stammered. He always quoted Prophet
Muhammad when he was nervous. Joseph could see that his words
didn’t help, so he hurried down the hall to catch Jaime.

The Salaams ushered their daughter out of the
hospital before someone called security. While Mariam’s mother
tried to calm her and get her in the car, her father went back
inside to give Rashad some last words.

“I should rip your head off, boy. I should
knock you out right now, but you’re not even worth it. I don’t have
time to get arrested. I’ve got to go help my daughter put her life
back together. How dare you marry her knowing you had children by
someone else, and her best friend at that! You’re really something,
Rashad.” He turned around and started to walk away, but turned back
to add one last thing. “And just so you know, my daughter’s going
to be okay. She’s going to come back home with me and her mama and
she’s gonna be okay. And don’t you EVER, in your life, talk to her
again!”

He gave Rashad one last look of disgust
before going outside to take his family home. Rashad was left alone
in the cold hospital corridor. Most of the onlookers had dispersed,
but a few were left. He looked so pitiful. As he sat there and
thought about how he was going to get home, he realized he had no
home to go to. He had given up his apartment and all of his family
lived in California. He had a few friends from Starr, but he was
too embarrassed to explain to any of them why he needed somewhere
to stay. As he got up to go call a cab, an old woman who had
witnessed the whole thing walked up to him and hit him with her
purse.

“Jerk!” she yelled as she walked by.

The hit didn’t hurt at all, but even if it
had, he wouldn’t have gotten mad. He deserved it.

She’s right. I am a jerk.

He waited twenty minutes on a cab and ended
up spending the night at a small, dirty motel off the side of the
highway.

Langston and Aliya had been through five
possible wedding dates and still didn’t have one finalized. Because
Langston didn’t want a long engagement, he originally wanted a
March wedding, because it was only a month away. Aliya was uneasy
about the wedding being so soon, but she didn’t argue. She agreed
to the date, but after only one day, she had already backed out if
it.

“Langston,” she said on the phone one
evening, “I was thinking. It would be great to have the wedding in
March, but I really don’t think that’s enough time for me to get
everything together. I mean, I have to send invitations, get a
caterer, decorations, and you know it’s going to take some time to
find the right dress.”

“We don’t need all that. We can have a
simple, small wedding at the mosque. We don’t need anything big.”
Ever since he had become Muslim, he had been reading a lot of
books, and he read in one of them that extravagant weddings weren’t
necessary.

“I’m not talking about something big, but I
don’t want it to look tacky and thrown together,” Aliya
protested.

Once March was out, they discussed April,
May, June and July, but Aliya had a problem with all of them. She
wanted an outdoor wedding, and April was too rainy. May was the end
of the school years, which meant her friends in college friends
would be too busy with finals to attend. June would have been nice,
but she had already signed up to teach summer school, and July was
just too hot. No matter what Langston suggested, she had some type
of conflict. He was really starting to get frustrated.

“Aliya, what is the problem? I’m starting to
think you don’t want to do this.”

“Of course I want to do this. I just need
more time.”

“More time to plan this wedding or more time
to decide if this is really what you want, because lately you’ve
been acting weird. You know I want this, but I can’t force it on
you.”

Aliya said she needed more time to plan the
wedding, but he was right. She was really starting to have doubts
about the marriage all together. She loved Langston. He was, by
far, the best man she had ever dated, but she just didn’t know if
she could live up to his expectations. He had just converted, so he
probably expected her to be extremely quiet and reserved. He was a
successful entrepreneur, so he probably expected his wife to exude
class at all times. And, from what she had heard, Andrea was a
saint, so she had some huge shoes to fill there, too. It was all
overwhelming. She had spent the last five years of her life being
this uninhibited free spirit that lived for the moment. She didn’t
want to give all that up. She had already changed her job and style
of dress for him. She didn’t know if she could sacrifice
anymore.

Aliya’s anxiety was affecting their
relationship. She and Langston always had so much fun together, but
lately it hadn’t been the same. More and more, she was beginning to
feel self-conscious around him. Before, she would do and say
anything. Now, in front of her Muslim fiancé, she couldn’t be as
relaxed. Not only did she have to start living up to the standards
of a Muslim wife, but she also had to start thinking of herself as
a mother.

Though she was having her doubts about
getting married, she never second-guessed her relationship with
Harlem. She loved that little girl. She always wanted a younger
sister and this was as close as she was going to get.

Because of parent-teacher conferences, Aliya
had the day off. While Langston went to an all-day executive board
meeting at Chapter, she and Harlem went to the park. There were
some other children already there and Aliya tried to take Harlem
over to play with them, but she was too scared. They sat on a
nearby bench instead. Even though Harlem wouldn’t go over with the
other children, she seemed really interested in what they were
doing.

“Looks like your daughter wants to go play,”
a woman said as she walked up and sat beside the two.

“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? But she won’t go.
She’s a little too scared,” Aliya said as she gave Harlem a
nudge.

The woman leaned down and spoke to Harlem. “I
have a daughter about your age. She’s the one in the blue shirt,”
she said as she pointed at another little girl. “She’s really nice.
Would you like to play with her?”

Harlem looked at Aliya as if to ask
permission. Then she turned back to the woman and shook her head
yes. The woman walked over to the swing. She brought her daughter
back and introduced her to Harlem.

“This is Jada.”

“Tell her your name,” Aliya told Harlem.

“My name is Harlem. I’m three and a
half.”

“You wanna swing with me?” Jada asked.

“Yea.” Harlem said. The two girls ran over to
the swings holding hands.

Aliya turned to the woman. “Thanks. She’s so
shy sometimes. I’m Aliya.” She extended her hand for the woman to
shake.

“No problem, girl. I know what it’s like to
be a single mother. I’m Christina, but everyone calls me
Chris.”