“Hey, baby girl,” my father said, his voice still gravelly, filled with something ominous. I felt the unrest within him. I knew, somehow, that the wave was about to crash down around me. In the back of the classroom, two girls began to bicker over a doll, but I held back, feeling latched into another world.
“Daddy,” I whispered. “Is Mom really okay? She sounds weaker than she did last week. And I know you had that appointment. You can’t keep things like this from me.”
I could hear my father’s footsteps as he moved away from the kitchen. I heard the click of the door, telling me that he was locking himself away in his study. After clearing his throat again, he said, “It’s true that we didn’t get good news, Angie. But I don’t want you to panic about it.”
Shooting down into the chair beneath me, I felt my knees begin to quiver. “Please, Dad. Don’t keep this from me.”
“We found out that the tumor is growing larger, Angie. And the doctors are fearful that the cancer will spread if they don’t do the surgery soon.”
“But Dad, we can’t afford the surgery yet…” I rasped, trailing off. “Can’t they do something? Do the surgery first, have us pay for it later? It seems like time is really important. Why can’t they see that?”
My dad grunted, sounding aghast. “You try to tell these guys that you can’t pay. They just wave you out the door, telling you to get better insurance.”
“And the checks I’ve been sending? Still not enough?” I asked, knowing the weight of the truth. It was never going to be enough. The type of surgery she needed was in the hundreds of thousands, far more than my paltry teaching paycheck.
“It’s helping, baby,” my dad told me. “It’s just not quite enough right now. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe I can take on another job,” I stuttered, my mind racing. I didn’t yet speak Arabic, but I could stagger through anything at a side job. I could work at the grocery store, or as a waitress. With enough fumbling and hand gestures, I saw no reason this couldn’t be my life. A life devoted to sending money home.
I would strive as long as I could to keep my mother alive.
“Let’s talk about something else,” my father said, his voice gritty and tinged with tears. “How are you doing, all the way over there? Your mother won’t stop talking about how you need to date. You’re 25 now, baby. You should start looking for someone. Even if it has to be someone from across the planet.”
Snickering, I drew my fingers beneath my eyes, mopping up the tears. “Yeah right.”
“Just think about it, will you? If these are your mother’s last few months on earth, then just know she wants you to be living your life the way you want to. Not just struggling to make us comfortable over here.”
“Ha.”
“I know. Selfishness was never one of your strong suits,” my dad said, chortling. “You were always giving the kids at school your toys. You gave them away right and left. Couldn’t keep anything in the house.”
“I wasn’t that good,” I sighed, frustration brimming. “I was never as good as you thought I was.”
“You’re right. You were better.”
The call ended a few minutes later, with my father having to leave and help my mother brew a pot of coffee. Apparently, she was now too weak to hold up a pot of water, to pour it into the top of the machine.
I shuddered as I said goodbye, feeling the tears rally once more. A sob escaped my throat, and then another one. Before long, I was a crumpled mess on my desk chair, mopping at my eyes with a pile of Kleenex.
When I finally blinked my eyes open, I realized the entire second grade class—all nineteen of them—were gathered around me. One of them, a little girl named Aya, had her hand across my shoulder, patting it softly. Many of the kids looked self-assured, certain that if they could just be there for me, I would be all right.
“What happened, Miss Peretti?” one of them whispered, his accent erring on the side of British, despite being raised in Al-Jarra. His parents were English, and spoke in that accent at home. Yet he’d taken on a few of my American slang words, dipping into one dialect after another. One culture after the next.