Free The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

college students to build houses for poor people.
    When Kim returned with the tea, Amina couldn’t help herself. “Excuse me, but do you practice some religion?” She had been afraid of offending George’s cousin, but Kim smiled as if this were a question she was eager to answer.
    “I don’t, but I’ve always felt the lack of it. My mom is pretty Christian—you’ve probably noticed already—and she still gets on me about going to church. Somehow it never made sense to me.”
    “These are souvenirs then?” She was pleased she’d remembered the word and hadn’t had to resort to “knickknacks.”
    Kim nodded. “That’s exactly right.”
    “And what is that plant, please?” She pointed to the pot with the red flower, but Kim shook her head.
    “I just went to the nursery and picked out whatever I thought was pretty. I don’t know anything about plants.”
    “Amina’s been doing a lot of gardening,” George said. “Our grocery store isn’t up to her standards.”
    Amina knew he was teasing her, but she flushed anyway. “The grocery store is the most wonderful I have ever seen, only the large-sized vegetables are not as tasty as homegrown.”
    “Oh, I agree,” Kim said. “I wish I had a garden—I’d love to see yours.”
    “I will be happy to show you. Only it’s not very beautiful right now.” Amina sipped her tea, which was both familiar and not—the bitterness of the herb masked by licorice and honey. She wished Kim had returned from France last month, when her dinner-plate dahlias were in bloom. George had said they were so beautiful that they didn’t look real. “But please come,” she said hurriedly. “Right now I have no job, so I’m free all the time.”
    “Amina’s going to look for work as soon as her green card comes,” George said.
    Kim looked very serious. “What do you want to do?”
    “Any job,” Amina said. “I am not particular.”
    “She was first in her class in Bangladesh,” George said. “She worked as a tutor for the college entrance exams.”
    Kim looked impressed—the first person in Rochester who had, when George insisted on mentioning it. “I have a friend who teaches in the Monroe County system,” she said. “I can ask her if you want.”
    “She has to get her degree first,” George said. “She passed her O levels—that’s the British system—just studying on her own.” George suddenly sounded as if he were back at the green card interview, reciting her credentials to the ICE officer. “But then she didn’t have the opportunity to go to college.”
    “I dropped out,” Kim said. “I don’t know if George told you—pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Everyone warned me, George included, but I didn’t listen.”
    “You convinced yourself you couldn’t do it,” George said.
    “He used to help me with math when I was a kid,” she said. “But then he went off to Buffalo for college, and I think I just kind of gave up.”
    “You didn’t need help with the writing,” George said. “I remember Aunt Cathy bragging about it—you always got As in English.”
    “I liked to read,” Kim said. “But I was terrible in math.”
    “I’m the opposite,” Amina said.
    Kim nodded. “Well, but I’m sure you’ll keep going with school. I get distracted—I’ve always been that way. I wanted to go to India, which turned out to be the best thing I ever did. Have you ever noticed that—the way the best and the worst things in your life can be all twisted up, so you couldn’t have done one without the other?”
    It wasn’t that she didn’t understand Kim’s idea, but that she knew this kind of abstract talking made George uncomfortable. He didn’t mind discussing his feelings, or even her own, but he liked them to be presented in a rational way that emphasized cause and effect. She might say, “I feel down today because I miss my parents,” and that was fine, but he didn’t want to hear, for example, about her mother’s