Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens Read online

  “Your Grace,” I say politely.

  The cloth wrap of his face turns toward me.

  “Thrive I in my dangerous affairs of hostile arms,” declaims the king. I wince. He sounds only marginally better than a phone-recorded playback of the show. “Myself myself confound … It cannot be avoided but by this. It will not be avoided but by this.”

  “I know.” And I should have known better. I lost the proper distance, poured too much of myself into the role, and let a vicious, relentless, murderous thing stand up as a part of the solid world.

  I shrug off my coat and drop it into a front-row seat before I take the stage. My cane makes a new and louder noise against the hollow wooden stairs and then another sort of noise when it treads the boards.

  King Richard crosses the stage in my direction. He uses the length of pipe as his own huge, heavy cane. It marks up the floor with each thunk. The prop sword points directly at me like an accusing index finger.

  I take up a fighting stance. My legs protest. I’ve asked too much of them today already. They know it. They want me to know that they know it. I shift a little more weight to my cane, and that feels more stable. Tripods are harder to tip over than bipedal things, don’t you know. It isn’t just about the weight distribution, either. Those three points of contact send up sensory data about the ground, expanding proprioception and kinesthesia—which are two of my favorite tongue-twisting words to over-enunciate backstage as vocal warm-ups. Try them. Works even better than “red leather, yellow leather.”

  Canes are also useful for parrying sharpened stage foils.

  “Defend thee!” roars the king.

  I put several piles of coiled cable between us, hoping he’ll trip over them, but Richard is nimble on his two peg legs.

  The king is made out of lumber, cloth, and my own repurposed pain. Now he wants even more raw material. He’ll need an additional dose of pain from me in order to build himself up further. That’s fine. I can share. And I’ve been squeezing idiopathic sensation into my cane with every step. Now I draw that pain back out. The sword is sharp and shaped to inflict itself upon others.

  I’d love it if my pain-made blade would cut right through the cheap steel of his stage foil. It’s not that sharp. But the two swords do strike off sparks when they meet. This is deeply satisfying.

  Richard keeps right on spouting our lines. “I myself find in myself no pity to myself!” The king of shreds and patches has nothing else to say, no other words to use. He also fights in familiar loops. I know what he is going to do before he does it, so my sword arrives in that spot before his does. I cut patches and shreds away from him.

  “Spleen of fiery dragons!” I shout at him, just for fun. I love that line.

  He swings his pipe at me. I already know that the blow is coming, but it almost gets me anyway. That pipe is too heavy to parry. Besides, I’m still used to doing his side of the fight choreography. Now I have to switch roles and try to play the heroic Richmond instead.

  King Richard is also bigger than I am, and stronger. He’s theatrically larger than life, just like I made him. And I’m all worn out from making him. I slip up. He gets through my guard. Ow.

  “See my shadow in the sun!” he roars, exultant. The king just has to gloat. And when he gloats, he shifts his attention to the wider world that should be paying rapt attention to him. But the seats are all empty. There’s no one else watching. And right at this moment he isn’t watching me.

  I take advantage of this self-congratulatory moment and cut his head off.

  Richard collapses. All the found and repurposed pieces of his body scatter across the stage, losing themselves again.

  I don’t collapse. Not quite. But I’m not very steady at the moment. I let my idiopathic blade dissolve.

  The word pain does too much work, you know?

  It’s like sorry, which really shouldn’t have to carry both “I sympathize” and “this is all my fault.” And we keep putting pain right next to suffering, as though they mean exactly the same thing. But sometimes they don’t. Pain can be background noise. Bad music playing in some other room. Rain on the roof. The sound is always there, but I don’t always notice it. And there’s no other way that I’m somehow supposed to be.

  I think that you might understand. But I’m not sure I can drop my guard enough to tell you how my body works. Even though I sometimes get hints that you do want to know. And not out of pity. Or lurid curiosity. I hope not, anyway. But I can’t tell for sure. I wish I knew for sure. That would make it so much easier to ask you for help. But I’m bleeding right now, because Richard did manage to stab me that once, so I need to stop thinking about the way you sometimes bite your lower lip when you look at me. I need to stop wondering what that might mean and finally ask.

  I need a little help.

  I almost call Abuelito first, because I promised him that I would, but I don’t want to wake him up. He’ll just be frustrated that he can’t bandage me over the phone. Maybe I’ll give the old man an update from the hospital.

  I want you to take me there. I hope I don’t bleed all over your car. There is blood seeping between my fingers as I press torn shirt fabric against the stab wound. I drop my cane so I can take out my phone. The stylish chrome handle makes a thump against the stage.

  Help.

  I haven’t sent that text yet. I haven’t told you anything. But I’m going to. I will.

  Plus One

  KARUNA RIAZI

  “IT’S AN INVITATION from God,” her mother had said.

  Or did she mean a gift?

  There certainly hadn’t been a phone call crackling with distant importance in the middle of the night or a chance encounter in the masjid. But Hafsah could tell her mother was relieved that the invitation had been extended to them at all and wouldn’t be in the mood to deliberate exact semantics—though she wasn’t entirely sure if you could consider it given for free, like gifts were. After decades of prostration, the grooved patterns in the janamaz, their embroidered prayer rugs, gave testimony to the continuous history of worship, supplication, or whispers in the night. No voice ever responded, but there was always a hope that a day would come where an answer might appear like this.

  Of course, there was also the fact that Hafsah and her family were the ones to be paying a visit, and not the other way around.

  Their living room floor certainly wasn’t fit for the type of company (if you could consider God on the same scale as visiting cousins from overseas or the occasional auntie from the masjid who could remember you from when you were “this high”) that could tug you miles, over the ocean and across expanses of acrid sand, for the sake of worship and piety. Unless, you know, said company didn’t mind wading through piles of unfolded clothes and inching over spare pairs of Crocs (oh, the embarrassment) to nestle in and have a nice meal of half-eaten granola bars and leftover samosas.

  “I know,” Hafsah said. “But I’m not sure if that invitation mentioned me, specifically.”

  Her mother put aside the pair of pants she was folding and raised an eyebrow. “And now I’m wondering why you don’t think that invitation would mention you. Specifically.”

  This was exactly what Hafsah didn’t want to think about right now, but at the very same time, the thing she wanted to discuss most. She didn’t mind the invitation. Honestly. Hajj was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  It didn’t often feel that way, considering the amount of available brochures, agencies, and groups to entrust with your passports and identities and very life, and how they promised to protect you on a second visit, or even the lesser pilgrimage of Umrah, or the proud and rather tanned pilgrims who returned with plenty of heartwarming testimony and faith-affirming stories to be passed around at the next community iftar, already speaking eagerly of their next trip back eastward.

  But it was complicated by multiple fees and inconveniences that arose when you least wanted them to, from her parents having to arrange their wills, to asking for days off from wo
rk and school.

  In particular, Hafsah wasn’t looking forward to explaining to her teachers that a pilgrimage wasn’t a pleasant day trip, like being excused to go to Disneyland.

  The packing wasn’t the hard part, nor mustering up the amount of social tolerance and extroverted spirit required to attend the nightly prep classes at the local masjid along with the rest of their designated group.

  She wanted to say that the classes didn’t scare her any more than the usual religious admonitions and anecdotes, where death was always a handspan away, and the chance to abide by the rules of earth in order to gain Heaven was fleeting. She wanted to say that, out of everything else going on, they were the least of her worries.

  But they didn’t scare her when she was already on edge from trying to fumble through what should have been an easy conversation with someone her age while worrying that she had black pepper speckling the gaps between her teeth.

  Bad nights were a different story.

  What was hard, particularly on bad nights, was what the classes chose to emphasize: mainly, the fact that the rigors of hajj might mean you wouldn’t see your family again. Hafsah could see visions—of the horrible stampedes and falling cranes and devastating fires of previous years—flash before fellow pilgrims’ eyes as they picked over soggy dumplings doused in spiced yogurt and shyly made friends with the people they would be sharing rooms and buses with for the next few weeks.

  And then there was the whole “this is what is meant for you, and you should put your heart and soul into it” prerequisite everyone—parents, Qur’an teachers, even envious friends—seemed to stress. That scared her a lot, just like it frightened her whenever she stood to pray and her mind drifted away from her body, ignoring her folded hands and furrowed brow in favor of playing a Top 40 pop song on repeat, jumbling the right supplications on her tongue. Or how her brain reminded her just how much she’d left undone on her daily to-do list for the sake of listening to that song until she knew every lyric, every eyebrow-raising moment of innuendo (which her parents never picked up on, thankfully). Her conscience taunted her, prodding her with every bouncy word as she stood, folded her hands, bowed down, raised her head. Prayer should have settled down her nerves and untangled her stomach.

  Instead, it became another step in her daily march of shame. The constant Hafsah Is a Bad Muslim show.

  Hajj felt like the kind of social event for which the invitation was printed on eggshell-colored paper with gold trim and would be kept out of reach—on a shelf, on a mantelpiece, by a parent’s bed—until it had to be taken out and presented at the beginning of a receiving line. The kind of event wherein your parents knew how to mingle comfortably, while you reached for the wrong fork.

  And, no matter how much her mother reassured Hafsah, it didn’t feel like the type of event you brought a plus-one to.

  Particularly the plus-one Hafsah always had with her.

  “You’ll feel better once you get there,” her mother said after a moment passed. She gave the pants a confident pat as she settled them in the suitcase.

  That’s what she always said.

  “You’ll not regret going.”

  That’s what Hafsah always hoped.

  And finally, looking her daughter firmly in the eye: “This isn’t the type of thing where you’ve been invited by mistake. The visa worked out—for you. The money was there—for you. You are wanted there.”

  You.

  Just you.

  That was what Hafsah was worried about.

  * * *

  Hafsah and It had been together for as long as she could remember.

  Really. Some days, her father tried to tack down a proper date, tried to convince her that there had been one particular day when It had sidled up, taken a liking to the way her face looked when she was sulking (pursed lips and blotchy cheeks), and had tagged along with her ever since.

  Maybe It had latched on that one time Hafsah sat on the overcooked asphalt of the masjid parking lot as she clutched her scraped knee and bawled, insisting to her mother that something, somehow, had forced her tender skin to meet the concrete.

  Maybe It had lingered on her lap through her cousin’s wedding reception, disrupting the gold, glittering joy of the shaadi by nudging her so that she dragged her sleeves through her plate, or forced her forward with a well-timed shove during family pictures so that her elbow got tangled in the alarmed bride’s nath and tugged the poor woman’s nose downward with the earring’s chain.

  Regardless of when It arrived, It was still there. She could point at It, in the midst of scattered dishes and broken promises and the sludgy days when even breathing felt like a prolonged act of energy squandering. And everyone else averted their eyes, moved on and away while It nestled at her feet, smug and unchallenged.

  Just a year ago—a terrible year punctuated by prolonged night terrors—Dr. Khalid, the family doctor, had grasped her by the shoulders and told her, very reassuringly and seriously, that it was just a “teenage phase” and if she just appreciated her parents a little more, it would all “blow over.” (The air quotes were Hafsah’s, supplied to the original discussion in the car on the way back from the office, which no one else seemed to appreciate—though she could never be sure if it was her attempt at humor rather than submitting to tears, or her lack of acceptance in her own guilt, or the fact that It was still curled on her lap and hardly blinked through the whole ordeal.)

  Hafsah wished it was just a phase. Really. And no one seemed to understand that—how she really felt, how unenjoyable it truly was—or realize that there were days and nights when Hafsah tried to wrest Its weight from where It was pressing down on her chest and making it hard, so very hard, to breathe.

  It wasn’t a pastime. It wasn’t a pleasure. It was not one of those things you did to aggravate those around you, smugly, like plastering gum to the bottom of a restaurant table or placing a plastic snake on your aunt’s shoulder. It weighed on her. No one ever seemed to account for that, though.

  As long as It wasn’t with them, they didn’t seem to care. Her friends gave It wary looks during slumber parties for an hour or so. Just as long as it took Hafsah to reassure them that It wasn’t their parasitic problem, their permanently strung albatross about the neck. Then they were giddy again with their popcorn battles and careless sprawling about the pillows and sheets.

  Her parents tried. They really did. But theirs was less of a dismissive acceptance and more of a hyperaware “This is happening, but it will be over soon” state. Hafsah could see an edge behind their otherwise bright smiles when It prowled into the dining room at her heels. Like Dr. Khalid, they insisted that it was just a stage, while their anxious gazes belied their confidence.

  She wished they were right. It was one of those things you just went through, like that embarrassing Bon Jovi obsession back in fourth grade or having braces at thirteen. So much would be easier that way.

  Including getting through a security line.

  Which, as it turned out, on the afternoon of their journey, was going to be a problem. After bypassing the hurdles of an unbothered Uber driver, a clog of equally eager bodies, and suitcases and exhaustion in the otherwise streamlined vein of the JFK terminal, It couldn’t allow her to have a good beginning to the journey.

  That wasn’t part of Its agenda.

  She was sure, horribly sure, in a way that prickled up her spine, that the TSA agent could see It, smug and confident, taking a step for every one of hers. Why else would she be tapped, out of every other hijab-wearing, wary-eyed woman in the line, marched past confident, privileged travelers—the type of people who didn’t have names, identities, or skin tones that would irk security—in order to be roughly patted and asked about her intentions, her vocal inflections, why exactly she was so reluctant to ease the cloth on her head back from her ears?

  They could all see It, she was sure. That was why the rest of the waiting passengers murmured. That was why they eyed her as she tugged and tucked herself and the
tatters of her dignity back in place, then returned to her family, red cheeked and warm in spite of herself. Her mother briskly patted her on the shoulder and told her that she was fine, it was fine, head up, good girl.

  “It happens to all of us,” a young sister remarked to the air, jiggling her son on her hip. “Sometimes it’s, you know, jewelry. The safety pin on your shoulder.”

  The thing that has currently draped itself about your neck.

  “They shouldn’t do that to her going through the second time,” the leader, Imam Fazli, quietly informed her father. “God willing, that experience was just one of those things that you go through to make you a little apprehensive about the journey. Maybe a belt buckle or a ring she forgot to slide off, you know. Just make a prayer and it’ll be fine.”

  Just pray hard and It won’t be able to cling on. That was what they always said about Shaitan, the devil. If you make the right invocation to God, the devil has to flee, his wiles and bidding strewn before him. Perhaps he’d even have time to turn around and ball up a tight, trembling fist: “I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that girl and the way she was able to pray me away!”

  Maybe that was the problem with Hafsah: She took the wrong things too lightly. She could conjure up the Cursed One himself in her mind’s eye and dwindle him down to a white-toothed, seedy, and travel-stained door-to-door salesman. She did homework instead of afternoon prayers, then tacked them onto her evening obligations as an afterthought.

  At least that was better than the clammy-palmed experience of asking a teacher for a spare classroom, fumbling to prostrate herself onto her scarf rather than the grimy floor for lack of a rug, being all too aware—thanks to her weird-wired brain and its lack of concentration—of the whispers of other students as they passed and saw her movements and deemed them strange.

  Glad tidings to the strangers, she had heard repeatedly in masjid gatherings, from the mouths of many imams and khatibs as they finished Friday sermons before prayers. But you couldn’t feel glad when you felt that heavy gaze of censure and suspicion against your back—and, for Hafsah in particular, the added sensation of Its tail tapping in time with every soft yet carrying statement.