Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction

Lost in Freakin' Yonkers

LOST IN FREAKIN’ YONKERS
RANDA JARRAR New York, during the summer of ’96, sees its highest temperatures on record, and it is toward the end of this summer that I sit, my enormous pregnant belly to accompany me, on an 80 percent acrylic, 20 percent wool covered futon. I look over the tag again, and under the materials it says, made in ASU. So I’m sitting on the futon, sweating—we have neither an air conditioner nor a fan, and our window is held up by an embarrassingly huge copy of Dirtiest Jokes Volume III—and wondering: should I marry my worthless boyfriend? and: was the tag maker dyslexic? I quit worrying and start to masturbate , reminding myself that the pregnancy book says that in the last trimester the mother is “at her sexual peak,” and that each strong orgasm brings her closer to real contractions. How totally unfair this is, considering I can hardly reach my own crotch. The phone rings, and it’s my mother calling from a pay phone, wondering if she should make the Ninety-sixth Street imam wait much longer. “Don’t bother,” I say. “Tell him to forget it, tell him to go home.” “Why, habibti? Come on, do the conversion, and get married. We’re all waiting for you.” She sounds unconvinced and hurried. Who is “we”? I imagine that Mama has picked up a few Hell’s Angels and a couple of squeegee boys for witnesses on her way into the city. “He’s not even here,” I say. “He’s not converting. I don’t want him to convert. He’ll be a shitty Muslim, and a shitty husband too.” “Oh, it’s not about shitty Muslim or no shitty Muslim. Come, yalla, let’s get this finished. Conversion, marriage, boom, boom, two stones with one pigeon, do they say?” 327 1KALDAS_pages:1KALDAS pages i-72.qxd 8/3/09 2:36 PM Page 327 Leave it to an Arab to mangle an idiom beyond recognition, and to double the called-for amount of stone. “Sorry, Mama, he’s at a bar getting shit-faced. Just go home before Baba gets suspicious.” “Final, that?” “Yes. Sorry. Bye.” The sun goes down (incidentally, something my boyfriend James rarely does) and the Saturday is wrapping up and I haven’t seen James’s face since the day before. I decide to get up and call the bars. “Hey, Vinnie.” “Hi, Aida. He ain’t here.” “All right. How’s Maureen?” “She’s great.” “Yeah? OK, Vin, bye.” “Sorry, Aida.” Click. “Tony, you seen James?” “Naaah, Ai, but why you don’t come down here no more?” “I’m seven months pregnant, Tone.” “Oh, yeah, good fer you.” Click. Well, then I guess I’m going down to the bar. I beg my motherin -law, who sits on her stoop three blocks away and chain-smokes mint cigarettes all night, if I can borrow her Cadillac. She shows me her nails; she’s just had them done at the nail salon. “What’s that a decal of?” “It’s a Christmas tree, what’re you blind? I had sharp eyes when I was your age!” “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keys.” I get into the Cadillac and adjust the seat. I can probably steer with my tummy at this point. I stick my head out of the window and say, “Isn’t it too early for Christmas?” “It’s never too early to celebrate the Lord’s birthday,” she says, crossing herself. “We’re getting the lights and the garlands this weekend.” “I bet you are, you fucking psycho,” I say when the window is up, 328
RANDA JARRAR 1KALDAS_pages:1KALDAS pages i-72.qxd 8/3/09 2:36 PM Page 328 the air conditioning on high and aimed directly at my face. Mama says she knows a handful of people who have been paralyzed this way. I get to Phil’s Tavern just before closing. This is where I met James, the man who is ten years my senior. I go inside and stand by the door, scanning heads. I find him less than a minute later, talking to a blond girl with makeup so thick she’d have to claim it at an airport. When I met James, I’d just gotten off my shift, was drinking my first beer, and he was on his eighth. A cigarette butt had...