“Oh, god,” Kathryn says. “Clifford, did you take him to the hospital?”
“Me?” (The thought hadn’t crossed his mind.)
“It’s just a black eye,” Dorian says.
Kathryn (kneeling now): “Something could be broken or fractured.”
“It’s not, Mom.”
“Who did it?” Mitch says.
For a few seconds, Kathryn’s mind, suffering the backlash of last night’s intoxicants, can’t catch up with the question. Then suddenly—
“You got in a fight?”
He looks away.
“You got in a fight at that party.”
“Kate,” Mitch says.
Cliff (raising his hand, but not waiting to be called upon): “Mom, it wasn’t his fault.”
“Did I ask you?”
“Dorian,” Mitch says, “sit down, okay? Kate, please sit down and listen to him. Cliff, just don’t open your mouth.”
“Do I have to be silent in a standing position?”
“Sit.”
He sits. Dorian is already in a chair. Kathryn looks at the three of them, all seated at the table now: a confederacy of males. Standing alone against the sink, she says: “I can listen from here.”
She listened. She listened quietly to my whole story. Standing the whole time on the other side of the room. As if she didn’t want to be near me. I told the truth. That four other kids had been invited. All of them Muslim, though one not Arab. I said that everything had been fine for a while. We were swimming and the girl even wanted a picture with me and Plaxico. But there was this one kid, Omar. Who kept antagonizing me. Which didn’t bother me so much, and I didn’t say a thing back. But when he told the girl to shut up— (“And what was her name?” my father asked. “Who.” “The girl.” “Oh. Khaleela.” “Khaleela,” my brother said. “A lovely name.”) And I continued with the story, explaining how I told Omar to not be rude to her. And how he called me an Aryan. To which I didn’t say a thing. Just walked away. And then there was lunch. (“What’d you have?” my brother asked. “Shwarmas.” “Mm.”) And then after lunch, we all went out to play croquet. And I wasn’t saying anything. I was just playing the game and he started it again. Used that word like it was my name. And the girl (“Khaleela,” my brother interjected) told him to cut it out. And Omar told her to shut up again … My heart was beating fast now, you could hear it in my voice. I’d thought the emotions had died down, but they were still hot. Like with embers; if you blow on them, the fire starts again. (“Go ahead,” my father said.) And I told them that I told Omar that if he spoke to her like that one more time — (I took a breath and let it go) — I would knock the towel off of his head. (“And then,” my mother said, “he hit you.” “No.” “You hit him first?” she said, and my father said, “Will you let him talk, Kate?”) And then I told them that I never did hit him and he never hit me. Omar and his two friends held my arms. The one who threw the punches was Karim.
As he finishes speaking, it seems to Dorian that his parents are separated by a vast distance. He is right — and also wrong. Because even as Kathryn and Mitchell Wakefield foresee the coming schism (we are not going to view this the same way; we will not agree on what to do about this), they are also bonded, as atoms are bonded by the sharing of electrons, by the unstoppable empathy of mothers and fathers: they both feel the same pain and shame — and, also, the same exact hostility. Mitch’s imagination is under siege by a vision of himself chokeholding an eleven-year-old orphan so Dorian can bust up his face without interference. And Kathryn wants a phone number. She wants a number to dial and someone to tell off. A voice in her head already rehearsing the diatribe: Who the fuck do you people think you are? But that’s not my voice, she thinks back. That’s not me.
She says: “So you used a racial slur.”
“Yes, but—”
“In front of all those kids you said that.”
“Mom,” Cliff said.
“Did I ask you,” she said fiercely. “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Goddammit, Dorian. What is wrong with you—”
“Look,” Mitch says, “they ganged up on him.”
“Three against one,” Cliff specifies.
“Actually, four.”
Their father (taking a deep breath): “We should probably report this.”
“Report,” Kathryn says.
“To the police.”
“No way.”
“Kate, they assaulted him.”
“We are not calling the police. We are not going to get a kid from the camps mixed up with the police.”
“What would happen,” Dorian says.
But no one answers. None of them moves or says anything more for a long minute. Finally, Mitch gets up. To make some food. He lays a hand on Dorian’s shoulder. Then opens the refrigerator. At the sink, Kathryn has turned her back on them. She is looking out the window — and from the table, Dorian is looking at her. Both listening to the fragile shells of eggs being broken, one after another, against the rim of a bowl.
What would happen.
The question is on Will Banfelder’s mind, too. He has always been friendly with the Wakefields. When he crosses paths with one of them while driving on the cul-de-sac, he waves hello. In the autumn, when the lawns of the subdivision are overspread with red and orange leaves, should he see Mitchell with a rake and a bucket, he will walk across the road and start a conversation about the weather or the foliage further north. But maybe “neighborly” is the more accurate word for this kind of relationship. Truth is, he is not close with them. In a way, it could be said he doesn’t know them very well at all. So how can he blame them (any more than he can blame Dorian for ending that call yesterday) if they report this incident to the police. Put yourself in their shoes:
What if Karim came home bloodied and bruised — and you found out that three white boys had held him still while a fourth …
But that’s different. How? The two situations are not the same. Yes, they are: four kids versus one; you can’t argue with numbers. I’m not talking about numbers. What then. Power. Power. As in, who has it and who doesn’t. Right. The two situations are different because of the power dynamics. You learned nothing over there, did you. There wasn’t anything to learn. The war couldn’t teach you anything? It was senseless. You and your platitudes. Thirty years later and you’re no smarter now than you were then. That’s why you’re still fighting, and there’s still no end in sight. I’m not fighting. Yes, you are. You’re all fighting, every one of you, every single day. On desert sand and in corporate boardrooms, in the blogosphere and in the sphere of memory and even in the sphere of dreams. You are fighting this war in your sleep … While, upstairs, Karim Hassad stands at the bedroom window. Holding a smartphone as if it’s a kind of buoy keeping him afloat. Twenty-four hours have passed — a whole afternoon, night, and morning — since his touching of the command: SEND. There has been no response from Abdul-Aziz. He must have done something wrong. Or perhaps the picture was lost and the sheikh received only the words:
I DID THIS.