Jessica Martinez - The Vow

“Are you kidding me?” he whispers, then laughs too.

I’m laughing for real now, with relief and joy and terror all rolling through me. But I’m scared to stop laughing because I feel a little like I might cry.

“Wait,” he says. “No.”

I stop, winded.

“I can’t get married. I’m not eighteen.”

“Yeah, you can. You just have to have your parents’ permission.”

“Both of them?” In his voice I can hear he doubts me, doubts that I know anything.

“Uh…I’m not sure. You don’t think they’d do it? I mean, obviously, I’m not the Muslim daughter-in-law of their dreams, but your dad is obsessed with the your Harvard prospects, and your mom—”

“It’s not that simple,” he says, cutting me off.

“I don’t think it’s simple, but they love you, and maybe your mom can convince your dad.”

He exhales loudly. “What about your parents?”

“What about them? I’m eighteen.”

“Eighteen with all the freedom of an eight-year-old.”

“I have freedom,” I say defensively. “I just choose not to freak them out with it.”

“You’re afraid to stop for a Big Gulp on the way home from work because they might have panic attacks and call the police. They’d lose their minds if we got married.”

Mo is never this critical of them, or at least not out loud. Hearing the truth is surprisingly defeating.

“I wouldn’t tell them,” I say softly.

“Are you kidding?”

“No.” My throat tightens. A lie that big would be the worst kind of betrayal. “We wouldn’t tell anybody.”

“So not married married, then?”

“Well, like legally married. Are you asking if I’m going to have sex with you?”

He snorts. “Hilarious.”

“Because the answer is no.”

“There was no invitation. But seriously, the irony—can you imagine if people did find out? Years of insisting we’re just friends, and then we secretly elope? The humiliation would kill me.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean,” he says.

“Yeah.” My calves ache from standing all day, so I pull my toes toward me and feel the dull pain along the backs of my legs.

“So if we get married right away,” he says. “I guess that would make me a permanent resident.”

“Not a citizen?”

“I don’t think so. I think you have to be a permanent resident for a certain amount of time first.”

“Like a learner’s permit.”

“Sure, whatever. And then we get divorced.”

“Yeah.” I pull my knees up to my chin and rub my calves. I’ll be a teenage divorcée. “So what do you think?”

He lets another thick pause follow.

“My family,” he says. “I don’t know if they’ll be okay with leaving me. If I want them to.”

I stop massaging the muscles and pinch the skin on the backs of my legs just hard enough that it hurts. His family. Sometimes I forget Mo isn’t all mine. He loves them—of course he loves them—but he has to see this chance for what it is, the only way. His family will float back into life in Jordan like they never left. Sarina is so pliable, and Mrs. Hussein can be just as depressed there as here.

But not Mo. He thinks too much. He’s too outspoken, too conscious of not fitting in.

“I’d be alone,” Mo says.

“You’d have me.”

The words tumble out, falling somewhere between us. I wish I hadn’t said them. He knows he’d have me. He meant having me isn’t enough.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“That I hate that question.”

“Just tell me.”

“My brain is seizing up,” he says. “System overload. Let’s just . . . Let’s just . . . I don’t know. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” This is all wrong. He’s supposed to be ecstatic. He’s supposed to see that this is our miracle.

“Good night,” he says.

“G’night.”

I’m about to hang up when I hear “Wait, Annie, are you still there?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

I open my mouth to speak, but stop. My stock responses—It’s nothing or No problem—don’t fit. It’s not nothing. And it’s problem after problem after problem. I blink. Now that my eyes have adjusted, it looks like the mural is moving. All around me the blue strips are undulating like real currents. I’m at the center of a whirlpool.

“Annie? You still there?”

“Yeah,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “You’re welcome.”

Mo

I’m not welcome here.

The cashier doesn’t say it, but her eyes follow me around the store like target-tracking laser beams. She’s dumpy and old and has a mustache, but that doesn’t make her any less scary. She’s a killer android, and I’m her prey. I can feel her stare narrow as I pick up a Snickers, intensify as I grab a box of Junior Mints for Annie. If I pick up one more thing, she’s going to burn a hole in my hand.

She sniffs.

I glance over. I think she’s actually waiting for me to slip the candy into my pocket, so I give her a polite smile. It doesn’t do much. She follows me to the back of the store to watch me pull two Cokes from the beverage case, even though I’m trying to make it easier on her by holding the candy out for her to see the entire time.

This doesn’t happen in E-town because everyone knows me, and it doesn’t happen in Louisville because there are plenty of Arabs walking around, daring to buy candy in broad daylight. But here in Shepherdsville, I’m halfway between civilization and home. No-man’s-land. It would be better if I looked vaguely Hispanic, but I don’t. Not at all.

She looks at my folded ten-dollar bill like it might be laced with anthrax or at the very least give her herpes, but she eventually takes it and pushes my change across the counter.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I say, and leave without giving her another look.

“That was fast,” Annie says as I climb in the driver side window and toss the Junior Mints in her lap. She’s got the same zombie glare she’s had all morning, eyes glazed, mouth set in a thin line, and she’s even paler than usual if that’s possible.

She doesn’t want to get married anymore. Neither of us has said a word about last night yet, but I can tell.

“Not fast enough,” I say. “The cashier would’ve pulled a gun on me if she wasn’t worried I’d detonate my suicide bomb.”

“I’m sure.”

“She’s probably calling Homeland Security right now, telling them she just had some kid in her 7-Eleven who looked like he was thinking about waging jihad in her store.”

I put the truck into reverse and back out. Annie’s still letting me drive, which is more evidence that she’s changed her mind. She’s saying it’s because she’d rather navigate than take directions from me because I get “loud and spazzy” when I’m holding the map, but I know it’s just because she feels guilty. She’s thought the whole crazy scheme through, and she’s realized what I knew the moment it came out of her mouth last night: She can’t do that to her parents.

But of course not being able to keep me here is already eating away at her because she’s Annie, and she feels guilty about the homeless and about owning real leather boots and about unpaid library fines and I swear some days about being alive. I’m not sure how letting me drive her truck is making her feel any less guilty about coming to the realization that she can’t marry me, but whatever.

She’s going to bring it up. I don’t want her to. We both feel it wedged between us, this huge balloon of awkward—and I know her, the way she has to talk through everything—and I can tell she wants to pop it. Me, I’d rather bite my tongue off. I’m not ready for that conversation yet. She’ll probably cry again, and who knows, she might cry all the way to wherever it is we’re going. I should’ve stayed home.

Actually no. Anything beats spending the day watching my mom and Sarina bubble-wrap vases and candlesticks, taking breaks to weep uncontrollably and drink tea.

So instead I’m running errands for a man who hates me, waiting for Annie to drop an anvil on my head. As Annie explained it, her dad wanted her to pick up a desk or an armoire from a furniture dealership on Sunday, but she has some work thing on Sunday, so he said to come today, and she said a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember because it was too boring and I tuned her out.

“That woman was such a cow,” I say, and sink my teeth into the Snickers.

“You know, other people get treated like that too. Teenagers, I mean. It’s not just because you’re . . . you know.”

“No offense, but how would you know what it’s like to be you know?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m with you all the time.”

“Exactly—you’re with me. That changes everything. You have no idea how I get treated when I’m alone.”

“And you have no idea how everyone else gets treated when you’re not there,” she says. “You’re only ever you. I’m just saying maybe the whole world doesn’t hate you because you’re an Arab.”

“Seriously? Do you want to go back and ask her how she feels about Muslims in the American heartland?”

Annie puts a Junior Mint in her mouth and sucks on it. Arguing about my paranoia is a favorite pastime for both of us, but she’s backing down. More evidence of feeling guilty.

I push the gas pedal all the way down so I can merge onto the highway.

“How fast are you going?” she asks.

“For crying out loud!”

“Fine,” she says. “Go as fast as you want. I don’t even care.”

“Thank you,” I say, and point to the massive billboard floating above the trees on the left side of the freeway. JESUS LOVES YOU.

“What about it?” she asks.