Invisible Girl (22 page)

Amal’s breath has a tiny snag at the end of it. I look over from my bed to hers, remembering that after we raided the refrigerator around two in the morning, we were so tired we decided to forgo the floor and just drop into the sturdy comfort of the beds.

Morning sunlight splinters through the cracks in her blinds. I stare in disbelief at the blood on my hands. I press my fingers together. The blood feels sticky and oily at the same time. It smells dark and earthy as if it were never meant for open air.

I want to scream but I can’t.

I look wildly to see if the window is smashed behind the blinds and wonder how I could have slept through some kind of attack.

Amal murmurs and rolls from her stomach onto her side. I twist toward her. Maybe she can call an ambulance. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I must be in shock.

I know that’s true because I can’t feel where my wounds are. Gingerly, I run my hands over my body, starting at my neck. There is nothing on my torso, front or back. I hope my legs weren’t attacked. I don’t want a crisscross mess of scars so that little kids on the beach will whimper when they see me and run for their mothers’ arms.

I start to slide my hands past my hips when I feel something I’ve never felt before in my life. A trickle.
From inside me.

I’m giddy with my stupidity. No one attacked me in my sleep. This is the long-awaited arrival. I’ve just gained entrance into the world of cramps, Midol and sanitary products.

And I’ve ruined the sheets of someone I hardly know.

Amal moans again, flops around and opens her eyes. “Hey,” she says. “How did you sleep?”

My hands sit on top of my pubic area under the covers in the heart of the stickiness. Tough question.

Amal sits up in her bed and puts her legs over the side. “My mom said she’d make us
konafa
for breakfast. It’s kind of like a Rice Krispies treat but with shredded wheat and syrup—” She notices my face and stops. “What’s wrong?”

I have nowhere else to go. I’m imprisoned in this bed in my own coming-of-age evidence. “Um, Amal, I, ah, just started my period.” My cheeks are already flaming red so I tell her all of it. “For the first time.”

She jumps up, her eyes wide open. “Like, in the bed?”

I could die I’m so embarrassed. “I’m sorry about your sheets,” I whisper. “I’ll pay for everything.” But she’s already running toward the door.

“Don’t move,” she shouts over her shoulder as if I’m an accident victim, cruelly abandoned by a drunken driver.

Within seconds Amal’s mother is in the room. The layers in her face are splitting and splicing. The wariness I first saw is breaking up like cracked dirt on a sun-baked ground. Her boldness grows through it in a tulip of eagerness. She grabs my hand and kisses my forehead. “First,” she says, “let’s get you cleaned up.”

I step out of bed, startled at the huge red spot on the front of my nightgown. She gives me a moment in the bathroom by myself and then comes in and explains the options of tampons or pads and laughs about the days when women wore belts and napkins.

After I’m put back together, she looks me in the face with strong womanly eyes and says, “This is a wonderful moment for you because the good things in your life will not change because of this moment.”

I look at her totally confused.

She takes my arm and talks as we walk down to the kitchen. “When I was twelve we moved from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. My father was an engineer. He was offered a job with an oil company for a lot more money. We moved there immediately, excited by all the things we would be able to afford.”

We’re in the kitchen now. It’s warm with cooking and scented with syrup. Amal and I swing into the booth around the little kitchen table. Her mother brings us the
konafa
.

“When we got to Saudi Arabia, I found that all the women had to wear an
abaaya
, a long black cloak, over their clothes and a
nekab,
a black veil, over their entire faces. The first week I was there, I was sick with a very high fever and not allowed to go out. Each day I stared out my window at these black, shadowy women until I was convinced they were black ghosts. I had nightmares about them forming a circle around me that got tighter and tighter until they were so close to me I thought I would suffocate in all that blackness.

“You see, in Egypt, women didn’t have to wear the black. In Egypt women had jobs and drove cars.

“On the first morning after my fever broke I woke up in blood, my first menses. I was excited for this because you know, as a girl, you hear about what happens to the older girls’ bodies and you want it to happen to you. My mother came into my room, and when she saw the blood, she cried. At first I didn’t understand, and then she came back with a sack and took out ghost clothes for me.

“For the next three years we lived in Saudi Arabia. Every time I left the house I had to push all my color and my life into the dark clothes. I had to walk in a shroud where the sun couldn’t shine and the air couldn’t stir. Many times I stumbled because I couldn’t see a curb or a crack in the road.”

Amal’s mom sits down at our table and looks at me fiercely. “But, me not seeing wasn’t the worst part, do you understand? The worst thing was, no one could see
me
. When you are a ghost, you are invisible.”

I choke on my
konafa,
cough and grab for my glass of juice.

Amal’s mom hovers over me, concerned that a piece of food has lodged itself in the wrong area of my throat. She has no idea that she is talking about my own life.

I think of how long and how hard I tried to shape myself into someone my mother would love. How I thought if I were strong and smart, my mother could see me. But it never worked. When the fires from the bottle scorched down her throat, she never saw
me
. I was just there as wood for her fire, something to attach her flames to so they wouldn’t burn her up from the inside out.

And so I became a ghost in my own home.

I don’t want to be invisible anymore.

Amal’s mother had to move to a country where she could take off the clothes that made her invisible. Maybe I too am moving to another country. A new country where my mother can’t hurt me and I don’t have to eradicate myself to survive.

I look up and meet Amal’s mother’s eyes. Strength from her starts to flow into me—not too fast or too hard, which would knock me down. Just little by little, making a fresh lake of truth inside me, starting to drown out all my lies so I’ll never again have to worry about them springing forth and striking her in the face.

We sit for a moment quietly. Amal and I finish our
konafa.
The sun bends through the window, warming the room, and then Amal’s mother says the worst possible thing. “Let’s call your mother—this is a big day for her too.”

I freeze. I’m back in our living room trying to hold on to her slippery red dress. The chain belt is sharp against my face. Her nail digs into me so I lose my grip. Then she’s out the door. Into the car of a strange man. Through the rain, smaller and smaller, a speck on the road, then nothing.

The sweet taste of the
konafa
in my mouth turns sour. Shame scorches me. I look down at my hands with the jagged, bitten nails.

Amal’s mother doesn’t notice anything strange. She rises to put a pot into the sink, saying casually, “You may want to use the house phone. Sometimes we can’t get the best cell reception inside.”

I lift my head and stare at her broad, solid back. I dive down into the lake of truth she’s poured inside me. It’s chilly at first and I’m afraid I’ll drown, but I keep staring at her until her strength bends toward me and I’m treading water and breathing deeply.

I press my palms onto the table and push myself up even though my body feels like it weighs two hundred pounds. I walk slowly over to stand behind her.

The water is running into the pot and she doesn’t hear my footsteps. She picks up a sponge and plunges it into the soapy water, scrubbing vigorously.

Amal must think I’m weird for silently creeping up behind her mother like a stalker and says, “Steph, what’s up?” just as her mother turns around.

I look straight into her liquid eyes.
Can I really do this?

My heart pounds like thunder. Sweat pricks my hairline and a tsunami of tears rises behind my eyes.

I hold steady, digging the nails of one hand into the palm of the other.

“I can’t call my mother,” I say in a rough bark like there’s glass in my throat. “She left me. She beat me up and then she left me.”

It is all I can do to push the words out. The storm breaks. Tears pour out of my eyes and I stumble.

Amal’s mother catches me before I fall, pulling me against the soft fabric of her shirt and the solid warmth of her breasts. We slide to the floor, right there in the middle of her kitchen, where she pulls me onto her lap and whispers, “It’s okay” over and over, until I cry myself out and tell her all of it.

CHAPTER TWENTY

It’s hot outside and I’m sweating by the time I ride back to Annie’s house.

I park the bike in the garage and walk into the house. Music blasts so I know Annie’s parents must not be home. I look out the French doors and into the pool. Bathing-suited bodies float, dive and run around. Drops of laughter sparkle upward, wet jewels in the sun.

The group is over. Guys, girls. I can hear the mixture of voices. I don’t see Andrew but spot JKIII flying off the diving board, slicing into the cool water.

Emily comes running into the house, sees me and stops. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

I turn and start toward the stairs and up to my room. “Wait,” she says.

I turn slowly, unconsciously bracing myself.

“Um, Annie told me to ask you when you got back if you wanted to come out and join us. She said to tell you Andrew’s here.”

Huh, I didn’t see him outside. I look at Emily and realize that her coming in was no accident. She’d probably been coming in intermittently, looking for me. She’d be the perfect emissary for Annie to send. Because of her blandness, she was always the least threatening and the least rude of the group.

The question is, Why am I suddenly being courted by the very group that threw me out on my ear?

I run my eyes over the merriment outside. I feel a little shiver run through my stomach when I see Andrew run, then dive into the pool.

“Why don’t you go get your suit?” Emily invites.

I hesitate.

She takes out the big gun. “Annie said to tell you she was sorry.”

I blink. The queen has bowed. It would be asking too much for her to do it in person. Emily is her diplomat, reopening the castle to me. My heart pounds. “Okay,” I spit impulsively.

I run up the stairs and slip on my suit. I’m a little nervous about going back into the mix again, but Emily will have told everyone that I’ll be joining them. And what if Andrew found out I was home and upstairs hiding out like a loser?

Besides, I want this.

I walk out. Andrew shoots a light spray at me as I go by. The drops land on me, sizzling, burning, like they came straight from the fire inside him. The kiss from the premiere party blasts through my body and I blush, as I always do around him. He smiles, white teeth against tan skin, knowing he has me.

There’s an empty chair next to Annie. She calls me over and motions to it. It’s weird since so much has happened, but maybe she has an “Old Annie” in her that she’s trying to get rid of, like I am, to let a new and better “her” take over.

I swing down onto the chair. “You need lotion,” she says and tosses me a bottle. I smear it over my chest, stomach, arms and legs. When I lean back in the chair and start to put it on my cheek, she holds out a small, exquisite bottle. “Use this for your face. It’s from my dermo. He handles all the stars.”

Which means this must be the stuff you read about that costs five hundred dollars an ounce. I reverently take the bottle from her hand and gently squeeze two tiny dots onto my fingertips. I rub them all over my face even when I can’t feel them anymore so as not to waste a speck. I nestle the bottle safely in the towel on the side of her chair.

“Thanks,” I say quietly.

“No problem,” the queen says with a beneficent smile.

Leslie walks in front of my chair and sits down on the end of it. “I heard you slept over at Amal’s last night,” she says, her voice neutral.

“Uh huh,” I say, now fully reclined and dropping my lids closed.

I don’t see her, but I know Eva has come to sit on the bottom of Annie’s chair because I can hear her trademark bracelets jingling. Leslie continues. “You should have been here last night. We had a spa night.”

I don’t even have time to open my eyes to make sure she was talking to me, because Annie jumps in. “Omigod! I have a great idea. Let’s all stay overnight at the Beverly Hills Hotel next Saturday. We can get massages, hang out in those amazing robes and order room service.”

Excitement whips through me. A hotel in Beverly Hills? With fat, fluffy robes that you see in movies and a Swedish woman rubbing out all the kinks in your back? And
room service
? Lounging in robes, giggling with girls while a polite guy in a uniform rolls in a cart with fragrant silver trays?

I’m afraid to say anything in case she says, “Just kidding.” I just wait and slip a hand up to my cheek to pat the movie star sunscreen, certain I can feel the high-quality ingredients holding their own against the sun’s harsh rays. Could the overnighter be for real?

Annie continues, her own voice escalating with excitement. “My mom will set it all up and stay in a connecting room, but the five of us can all stay in one.”

Now my eyes are fully open. I am totally suffused with the old thrill of being part of the epicenter of cool. Part of Annie’s chosen. Then it smashes into me.

The five of us.

My heart drops to my feet. So that’s it. I haven’t become more fascinating to the group because of something about me or even the fact that I’m going out with Andrew. Annie hasn’t undergone introspection and decided to lead a more meaningful, kinder existence. There is no fun night in a hotel being set up to start over and really bond. I am just a pawn to leave Amal, the Big Enemy, completely out in the cold. Amal, a girl who hasn’t done anything to Annie except be the recipient of her drunken boyfriend’s lustful gazes.