We tiptoed through the master bedroom even though Jennifer’s parents weren’t at home. The angled windows above the bed looked like ghūl eyes. I didn’t believe in such things anymore because my dad told me they were made up by storytellers to scare children. But my mom told me sometimes people in real life could behave in ghoulish ways.
Jennifer pointed at the pearl-encrusted wooden trunk at the foot of the bed. “It’s an antique. Everything in here is. It’s been in the family for a century.” Her adoptive mom, Barb, had said the exact same thing about the farmhouse when my mom dropped me off earlier. The house was near the big curve on Whitaker Road, hidden among a patch of oaks and pines. Beneath their shade was a black gravel driveway, and as we drove across it, waving at Barb who stood at the end of it, my mom reminded me to be polite because of the family’s deep roots in our town.
Barb was at the market now, but had told us to get in the pool. Jennifer had other plans.
“Can we look inside the trunk?” I asked her.
“It’s locked. There’s a letter from my birth mother inside.” Her right hand rested on the trunk. Her left was balled into a fist.
I tried to lift the lid but it wouldn’t budge. “We need the key.”
“I know. Will you help me look for it?”
“I don’t know, Karlie. I mean Jennifer.” In her room earlier, I’d promised to use the name her birth mother had given her, which would take getting used to.
She’d also asked, “Have you always had the same name, Najiyah?”
I’d been staring at her white quilt with the green trees embroidered on it, the mouths on their jolly faces wide open, music notes floating all around. “Yes, it was my grandmother’s name.”
“Is your grandmother still in Arabia?” Jennifer loved to call it that even though my family was from Palestine. She also kept asking if we had flying carpets and brass lamps with jinn inside. I explained that those things were just part of our folktales.
“No,” I’d said. “She died. But sometimes my mom feels her presence.”
“I feel my birth mother’s presence.”
“Is she still alive?”
“I don’t know.”
She’d glared at a crooked plank on the parquet floor; I wished I hadn’t asked.
I wasn’t sure if Jennifer should read the letter because she got upset very easily. On the playground during recess sometimes, she’d start wringing her hands and rambling about infinity and magical codes taking over the world. I wanted to be playing kickball with the other kids, but our moms were making us be friends, and I couldn’t disappoint them.
Jennifer just stood by the trunk staring at me, and I knew she wouldn’t stop until I agreed.
“Where have you looked so far?”
“In there.” She pointed to an upright dresser with a tiny slot between its twin sock drawers. My eyes stopped on a photo above the dresser of a much younger Barb standing on the steps of the farmhouse in bell bottom jeans. Her belly was round and her hands rested on the bump as her wide sleeves billowed in the breeze. “Open it.” Jennifer insisted.
Inside was a stash of patinaed keys. “Have you tried any?”
“Those.” She pointed at two pushed toward the back. “Ted and Barb are never gone long.” She’d been avoiding the words “Mom and Dad” recently. My mom had tasked me with convincing her to stop doing that on top of requiring me to be her friend to satisfy our 4th grade teacher, Mr. Novak, who believed Jennifer’s “mind tricks” happened less when she was around me. My dad was appalled by the whole thing because he was a doctor and thought she needed counseling. My mom reminded him to be careful because he worked with Ted at the local hospital.
“You can keep watch in the hall, Najiyah.”
I straightened my bikini strap and sighed. Her eyes pleaded with me.
“Please! I’ll get in major trouble if they find out I was in here.”
“Alright.”
Jennifer started digging through the pile of keys as I tiptoed back through the room and into the hall. I ran my hand over the bunched-up towels that I’d left on the credenza earlier. They were plush and warm from the sun.
Outside, the driveway was empty and still. The weathervane on top of the barn teetered, and the carved metal bird at its pinnacle appeared to cry out as it moved. Behind the barn, the pool’s sparkling water gleamed golden in the sunlight.
I noticed the credenza had a drawer, so I pulled on the handle, half-expecting there to be more keys. Instead, there was a pack of tealights that smelled of pine needles and made me think of holidays when my grandmother was still alive. She’d visit us from Bethlehem and we’d set up the olive wood nativity set and sing Christmas songs together in Arabic. At bedtime, she’d brush my hair and tell me stories from 1,001 Nights. Her favorite, “The Tale of the Three Sisters,” had brave princes who got turned into stone, but were turned back again when a clever princess saved them.
I heard Jennifer stepping softly over the braided rug between the trunk and dresser, the floorboards creaking beneath her. I was worried. If she didn’t find the right one, her mood might shift, like when she talked about infinity. And when it shifted, she could get mean.
It happened at school one time when we had our presidential term paper assignment. I picked Lincoln, and got to writing. She picked Washington, but couldn’t focus, so she was in a bad mood for days. During recess that week, she didn’t talk, just stared up at the clouds.
Days later, Mr. Novak kept me late to ask why I only wrote a single line of text. The paper in his hand bore my name in clumsy lettering, followed by the words: Everybody knows George Washington chopped down his father’s cherry tree.
I assured Mr. Novak it wasn’t mine, but when he searched through the stack again, he found nothing else with my name on it. He called my mom who got my rough draft from the recycle bin and brought it in. It was identical to the paper that said “Karlie” on it. When Mr. Novak confronted her, she cried and pulled my hair, saying I’d stolen her report and put my name on it. Then, she hauled off to smack me, but he steered her away.
Jennifer came out of the master bedroom shaking her head. “None of them worked.”
My throat closed when I saw her face. “Sorry. But you have to tell me when you get to read the letter. Promise?”
The corner of her lips curled up as we headed down the stairs. “Promise.”
After three rounds of Marco Polo, the sun crept behind the barn, the weathervane’s metal bird still rocking back and forth. Barb hadn’t come back from the market yet.
“I’m cold,” I said. “And I think my mom would want Barb watching us.”
“It’s okay. We’re good swimmers.”
“I know. But it’s cold.”
Jennifer pouted. “I thought you loved swimming.”
“I do.”
“Please stay in.”
“I don’t want to, Karlie.”
“Call me Jennifer!” she shouted.
“Sorry. Jennifer.” As I gripped the ladder handle, she splashed a wave of water in my face.
I rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m trying, but it’s hard, you just told me today.” I was about to pull myself onto the first rung when she yanked me backward.
“CALL ME JENNIFER!” she yelled as I plunged below the surface.
Flailing underwater, I couldn’t figure out which direction was up. I tried to swim away, but she was stronger and held me under.
Still submerged, I saw sparkles all around, like tinsel. Then, everything was starting to go dark when a force rushed through me, allowing me to thrust against her.
After a single breath, she tried to push me down again, but I hopped onto the ladder and pulled myself upward, skipping the rungs and leaping onto the deck.
I dashed away, coughing, trying to catch my breath. I ran past the lawn chairs, leaving my towel behind, springing across the gravel driveway as the black pebbles bit at my bare feet.
When I reached the porch, I saw a car, but it wasn’t Barb’s. I opened the front door and saw Ted sitting there. His briefcase was on the table next to the phone.
“Najiyah, what’s going on?” He looked at the water dripping down my legs.
My teeth chattered. “May I call my mom?”
“Of course. Are you alright?”
My lips quivered and tears flooded my eyes. “Karlie needs help.”
He ignored the comment and went upstairs. “I’ll get you a towel,” he muttered.
I dialed my house, and when I heard my mom’s voice, I breathed in full.
“Mom?”
“Habibti? What’s wrong?”
“Can you come get me please? I don’t think I’m helping Karlie anymore.”
My parents listened as I shared everything. They stopped making Karlie and I be friends, then we learned that by winter she’d be transferring schools.
In the end, they decided not to confront Ted and Barb. They wanted to keep things civil and were just glad I’d survived. My mom thought it was a miracle. My dad said I rescued myself.
One day at school that fall, before she left, Karlie tapped me on the shoulder near the kickball field to tell me she had some news. Singing trees and yelping birds surged through my mind like riptides. I thought of running, but the joy on her face calmed me.
Her parents had given her the letter. I wanted to know why, and where the key was, and why they’d tormented her. But all she cared about was assuring me she was right about something she’d told me in her room that day. Remember you said you feel your grandmother’s presence and I said I feel my mother’s. It’s because she’s part of me, Najiyah. That’s what she wrote, she’s part of me and will always be with me in spirit.
I was about to correct her, to tell her it was my mom who said she could feel my grandmother’s presence, but instead, I smiled and wished her well. Because even though my dad said an adrenaline rush is what saved me that day, I understood the whole story now.
Contributor Notes
Reem Hazboun Taşyakan is a doctoral candidate in the Literature Department at University of California, San Diego. She conducts research on sociopolitical themes in Arab American novels of the post-9/11 period. She is an editor for Alchemy, UCSD's translation journal, and served as its editor-in-chief from 2022-2024. She obtained her BA in Creative Writing and her MA in Near Eastern Studies from University of Arizona, then worked as a lecturer of Arab literature and culture at San Diego State and University of San Diego before beginning her PhD. Reem’s poetry and prose work has appeared in Other People, Eclectica, and Grist. She’s currently working on two novels.
