I have to know. I take a deep, shaky breath.
“Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” she says, but she won’t stop staring out the window at the darkness outside. I swallow hard.
“Is everything okay with Auntie Mina?” I hesitate, then continue. “After Thanksgiving, and … that dinner. And the time when she came over to have tea. She looks awful.”
My mother stands in front of the sink, as still as a stone, her face unreadable. I can hear Mikaela fidgeting around the other side of the doorjamb. I wish I’d told her to stay upstairs.
“Mom!” I say insistently. “If something was wrong, you’d tell me, right? Is she—did something happen?” I know she’s hiding something. I stare at her hard. Finally, she turns back toward me.
“Sunny, I need you to listen to me now,” she says in a low, tense voice. “I don’t want you to mention this to your dad. Not yet. Mina says everything’s fine, that this is all just going to blow over. She says it’s really not a big deal. She doesn’t want your father worried.”
“Um, okay,” I say. “But what—?”
My mother rolls her now-empty water glass around and around in her hands, then puts it back on the counter. “Well, I don’t know how to sugarcoat this, so let me tell you. Your Auntie Mina and Uncle Randall got into a big fight last night. She wants to quit her job, wants a change of pace—teaching instead of working in the corporate world.”
“That sounds okay.” I shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“Well, Randall hasn’t been in favor of that. He wants her to keep working at Jones & Gonzalez. They’ve been arguing about it for weeks. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things haven’t been going so well in their relationship since … ”
Mom clears her throat, her eyes troubled. “Anyway, she just called me on my cell phone and was nearly incoherent. She told Randall today that she thought they should go to a marriage counselor. Apparently he really lost his temper and … ” She lowers her voice to nearly a whisper. “He grabbed her.”
“Grabbed?” I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. “What do you mean, grabbed?”
“She’s fine, Sunny. She just left the house for a little while so he could cool off.”
I pace across the kitchen angrily, thinking about the bruise on Auntie Mina’s shoulder. That word “grabbed” is utterly inadequate and wrong. Words bubble up to the surface of my mind, furious words that I stuff back down. I stop in front of my mother, my fists clenched at my sides. “This has happened before, hasn’t it? And you didn’t tell me.”
“Sunny, I’m sorry,” she says miserably. “But you were so young. We thought they worked it all out. Randall had lost his job, and he just wasn’t himself back then.” She pauses, and I stop breathing for a moment. “He had a breakdown. He pulled every dish out of the cabinet and slammed them to the floor one by one.”
“I don’t remember that.” I glare at her, even though I’m not really angry with my mother.
“Like I said, you were just too young. You were only six. Mina calmed him down, though. They talked it all out. He found his new job, he found her a job there, too … they were so happy.” She reaches a hand toward my shoulder but I duck. I start pacing again.
“So now what? I’m just supposed to pretend nothing happened? Pretend he didn’t hit her?”
“Nobody said anything about hitting,” Mom says, but she looks uneasy. “Mina doesn’t want to tell Dad because she’s worried he’ll do something drastic. You know how he feels about Uncle Randall.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I wanted her to let me tell him,” she continues, “but she insisted Randall just needs to cool off, that’s all.” She smiles at me worriedly. “I hope she’s right.”
“I—okay.” My shoulders slump, and all of a sudden I’m exhausted. “I guess I’ll go upstairs and finish studying with Mikaela.” I peer at my mom, but she seems to be pulling herself together.
“She’s still here? You should probably take her home before it gets late.” Mom starts loading the dirty dinner dishes into the dishwasher with a clatter.
“I will.” I back out of the room and flee up the stairs, Mikaela at my heels.
“So, did you hear all that?” I say, once we’re safely behind closed doors. “I knew something happened to Auntie Mina. I heard it. I just didn’t know what.” My voice gets a little shaky and I try to stuff the fear back down, try to keep myself calm.
“Yeah, but … don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure it wasn’t just a good guess?” Mikaela picks at a loose thread on her black blazer, not meeting my eyes. “Or maybe your subconscious was noticing the signs at dinner on Sunday, and then manifested them in the form of, like, your mom’s voice?”
“Mikaela, believe me!” My voice takes on a pleading note. It seems like the more evidence is in front of her, the more skeptical she gets. “I’ve thought exactly what you’re thinking now—until it kept happening.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“Mikaela, do you remember the first day you came over to my house, after we went shopping?” She nods warily, her dark eyebrows drawn down into a hard line. “You came in and met my parents, and I wasn’t sure if you maybe would hate my house and think we were these rich snobs or McYuppies or something. But you were so cool. And then … ” I take a deep breath. “I heard you. You wished you and your mom could have a new house and a new life to replace what your dad took away, and I just was so—I really admire you, Mikaela. You’re a lot stronger than I am.” It takes an effort, but I meet her eyes.
She just stares at me, her expression blank. My heart races. Maybe she’s going to say she doesn’t recall ever thinking that. Maybe she’s going to finally admit she doesn’t believe me and thinks I’m making it up.
“I remember that,” she says slowly, tugging on one of her many tiny silver earrings. “I thought you must have the perfect life.” She gets a wry little smile on her face and shakes her head, making all the tiny braids bounce around.
“I know you don’t,” she says after a minute, in a bleak voice. “Nobody does. But at least you have your underhearing—something that gives you a clue about what’s going on and what things mean. I don’t have anything like that.” She sits on the bed, a dejected look passing across her face for second. Then her expression slides back to normal and she’s tough, cynical Mikaela again. We clean up our nail polish mess and our American Lit homework, and I drive her home.
She doesn’t mention underhearing again, or talk about her situation with her mom. In fact, she’s quiet the whole drive back to her apartment. Distant. Almost like she’s scared by what happened.
Or like she doesn’t want me to know what she’s thinking.
eleven
“So last night I helped my parents decorate the ‘interfaith tree,’” I tell Mikaela as we pull away from her apartment complex the following Sunday.
Slurping on her coffee, she almost does a spit-take. So I explain: golden Stars-of-David hang next to crucifixes; a fat Buddha dangles above a small ceramic tile with intricate Islamic calligraphy. Mom’s idea. All the yoga geezers love it. The tree’s even made from recycled materials.
By now, we’re already downtown. Citrus Canyon’s fake-old-timey Main Street slides past through the window, complete with wreath-festooned lampposts and windows sprayed with artificial snow.
“You’re just full of surprises,” she says. “Can you imagine having one of those in the Orangewood Mall? That would be great.”