boyfriend or contacts. Supposedly six months after that I can get a learnerâs permitâafter I pass another stupid testâbut Mom says sheâs not letting me near the wheel of her car until I get my act together.
Iâm always the oldest in my class because I got held back in second grade. âEveryone develops at her own speed,â Mom says, but I feel like one of those slow-go tractors with a big red triangle on the back about to turn onto the superhighway, which is Washington-Jefferson-Lincoln-Lee High School. Todd calls it Cover Your Bases High. Iâm scared to death. Luckily, Emily is smart like Adeeba. I polled my class, and sheâs the only one who knew where Sudan is. Sheâs faster than me at everything except the 100-meter dash, and she can read newspapers in Spanish. Although thereâs no chance weâll be in the same math class, we both put down world lit and American history, so weâre bound to overlap somewhere, and she can still check my homework. Unless she turns into the passing lane and whips right past me.
I know itâs really crummy that you didnât get to go to school, but I wish I didnât have to.
âWhat would you do all day if you quit school?â Mom asked me once.
Babysit. Itâs not just the money, though I make a lot. I really like little kids, and they really like me. Mom says I have a gift. At least I have one.
Whatâs your gift, Nawra? Besides sayingsâyou know a lot of really good sayings.
Love, K. C. (Iâm no madame.)
In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate
27 May 2008
Dear Madame K. C. Cannelli,
Peace be upon you. How are you? Are you strong?
Umar passed into the hands of God last night. Umm Hakim wrapped him in the tobe he had chased in the wind just a month ago because we have no burial cloth.
Some people think this is wrong because white is for death, all of us the same as we prepare to meet God. Yet the colors suit the children, who are the brightness in our life. Even here the children sing and clap and make mischief. The old women complain, like Kulthum bint Issa, who was always scolding Umar for stealing her spoons for his games and kicking up sand as he ran. But today she rocks silently on her mat.
A child is a child of everyone.
No one has donkey milk to give the children when they cough. So many have fevers, and when the flux comes, they dissolve, like sugar in hot tea.
Too much of anything makes it cheap, we say, except for people, who become more valuable.
All the khawaja talk about now is washing hands. Theyhave organized some of the men to burn the donkeys and cows that collapsed near the wells.
The children cried because the smell of meat made them hungry.
Forgive me for burdening you with my sadness.
Your sister, Nawra
K.C.
M AY 2008
âTell me one result of Prohibition,â Emily says.
âMass production. The Great Migration.â
âCome on, K. C. Prohibition. Like prohibit . . . Like weâre not allowed to do it . . . â She holds her hand up in the air, tilts her head back, and opens her mouth.
âFish! Feeding! Gargling! Karaoke!â
âIâm not playing charades.â Now Emilyâs all prickly.
âWhat the heck were you doing?â
âGuzzling whiskey. Prohibition prohibited alcohol, Eighteenth Amendmentâremember? All those bootleggers. So organized crime increased.â
Behind my back, my fingers find the indent between the cinder blocks. It reminds me of sixth grade and Jimmy Ladd, who liked to pin me against the hall wall when we were kissing so he could press his whole body against mine. Itâs embarrassing to think how many people saw us. Maybe he was showing off, though I wasnât anybody to show off. He scared me a little, and not only because I thought my glasses would fall off and smash. But at the same time the pressure was sort of exciting, that anyone could be so interested in me,