Free The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji Page B

hand and put it on her face, smiling through them. “See? These are sweet tears, Sadiq. So very, very sweet.” I stepped back from her, because she was so unfamiliar. Even the smell of her was foreign. But she welcomed me into her home. She and Sabah and Umar, the crocodile. But it was their home. Not mine.
    While I was there, only a year—until I graduated, early, from high school and went away from them to college—I met Jo’s mother. Angela. I was still fifteen, new to America, living with my mother though I had already, long before, learned to live without her.
    W hen I was done telling Jo my story, on that day she was born to me, I looked up to catch an expression on her face that was plain and easy to understand, despite my having never learned to read her stranger’s features. She had come to ask who I was. And the answer I had given her was one that she did not understand. I realized, almost immediately, that what I had told her would drive her away and out of my reach.
    Since then, I have tried and tried to call her. I keep thinking of more I should have said and also of what I shouldn’t. Her departure had been abrupt, as sudden as her arrival, coming before it was my turn to listen. That, too, keeps me awake at night—the questions I would have asked, which surely I had the right to ask, but which she gave me no opportunity to voice.
    The boxes in my living room are all gone. I have delayed my trip twice already. Today, when I called her, she picked up. She was sorry, but there was nothing more she wanted from me. She was glad to have met me, she said, very graciously. But that was it.

Jo
    Drop, drop, slow tears,
    And bathe those beauteous feet,
    Which brought from Heaven
    The news and Prince of Peace.
    Phineas Fletcher, “A Litany”
    F or a while, that day with Sadiq, I lost myself—dizzy in the spiral of his stories inside of stories. It took a lot to keep my face clear of all that I felt in response to what he told me—pity, disgust, revulsion. Until the end, when his eyes—dark brown and dominant—came back into the room and found mine, staking a claim I had no intention of granting. I left him as fast as I could, chased away by the questions I didn’t give him a chance to ask.
    I knew what those questions would have been. About my mother. But I didn’t want to talk about her. I didn’t want to hear about her, either. Not from him. To see her through his eyes would have been too much—making her as alien to me as he was.
    He might have asked about Dad, too. Scenes with him flashed through my mind. Going into his workshop when I was little, when I knew Mom was too tired to listen to me. He’d be sawing or hammering away. When he’d see me, he’d put down his tools, clear a space on the counter for me to sit on, lift me up to place me there. I’d start talking. He’d resume working and listen—his hands busy, his head nodding. His hands would pause as he looked at me, from time to time, smiling, laughing, or frowning to let me know he was still paying attention. He didn’t talk much himself. His favorite joke was that I never gave him a chance to. Eventually, the sight of those hands working would catch my attention so fully that I’d run out of words.
    One day, when Dad and I were in the car on our way to the library, we stopped at a red light and saw a homeless guy standing at the corner. He was holding up a sign—homeless vet. Dad pulled the car over and took the guy with us into the coffee shop around the corner. My father bought him a meal, me sitting next to Dad, sipping on a milk shake, my eyes staring at the long-haired, bearded, scary-looking stranger across from us at the table. When we were done, we took the guy back to his corner and went on to the library as if nothing had happened.
    Except, when he turned the key to start the car, Dad said, very softly, “That could have been me. It would have been. But for your mother. She saved me. Brought me to Christ. Gave me a reason