Free Towelhead by Alicia Erian

said.
    â€œIt’s a towelhead name,” Zack said, and he laughed a little.
    â€œWho taught you that word?” she asked.
    Zack didn’t answer.
    â€œDon’t ever use that word in this house again,” she said, and she walked off and left us standing alone in the kitchen. After a second, we turned and let ourselves out the front door.
    â€œWhat a bitch,” Zack said once we’d reached the sidewalk.
    â€œI thought she was nice,” I said.
    â€œYou would.”
    â€œShe’s right,” I said. “You shouldn’t be using that word.”
    â€œI’ll say whatever I want, towelhead.”
    We played a little badminton then, and I purposely hit a few of the birdies into the lady’s yard so we could go back and see her tomorrow.
    Later, when we went inside, Zack got the dictionary and looked up shuttlecock .
    â€œDoes it mean birdie?” I asked, and he nodded. “See?” I said. “She wasn’t trying to trick you.”
    Next he looked up towelhead . “It’s not in here,” he said.
    â€œThat’s because it’s a bad word,” I told him.
    â€œOh yeah?” he said, and he flipped the pages around to show me spic and nigger . “It’s just a new word,” he said. “They’ll put it in all the new dictionaries.”
    He went to watch TV, and I went upstairs. I was getting worried about my tampon supply for November. I had only three left in my bathroom cabinet, and Mrs. Vuoso had stopped refilling the jar on the back of her toilet. It seemed like it had been the same five tampons in there for weeks. And today was no different. I was going to go back downstairs without taking one, but then I changed my mind and slipped one in my pocket. I really couldn’t stand the idea of having to use pads again. They were dirty and smelly, and sometimes I thought this was the real reason Daddy wanted me to wear them. To make me think my body was terrible.
    When Mr. Vuoso came home, Zack told him that the lady next door had yelled at him. “What for?” Mr. Vuoso asked.
    Zack looked at me, then got up on his tiptoes and whispered something in his father’s ear. After he’d finished, Mr. Vuoso said, “All right. We’ll talk about it later.” Then he turned to me and said, “Everything else okay, Jasira?”
    I nodded.
    â€œGood,” he said, and he walked past me into the kitchen.
    I left then, and as I headed down the Vuosos’ front walk, the lady’s husband pulled into the driveway next door. He drove an old blue truck, which made me think he’d be wearing jeans when he got out, but he wasn’t. He had on a gray suit and carried a briefcase. “Hi there,” he said, and I said hi back. I thought about asking him about Syracuse, but he was already almost to his front door.
    When Daddy got home that night, he gave me a letter with my name on it. It had foreign stamps, and the person who’d sent it didn’t know how to write the address. The city and state and zip code were all on separate lines. I turned the letter over and saw that it was from someone I’d never heard of. “Who’s Nathalie Maroun?” I asked, and Daddy said, “She’s your grandma.” He told me to open the envelope, and I did, and the whole letter was written in French. I asked Daddy if he would read it to me, but he said no. He said that I could take it to school and ask my teacher for help, and that he expected a full translation tomorrow night.
    We ate dinner, then I went and sat on the couch with my grandmother’s letter. She used the same blue onionskin paper as Daddy, and her handwriting was long and slim. Ma chère Jasira, it began, which I knew meant My dear Jasira . I read that part over and over again, wondering how I could be dear to someone who’d never even met me. I guessed if I tried, I could probably have figured out the rest of the letter, but I