The gatekeepers notebook, p.30
The Gatekeeper’s Notebook, page 30
Kalila watched the two and smiled.
Despite it all, Melvin’s been a godsend to this family.
Kalila felt grateful to see that Melvin’s magic seemed to be rubbing off on all of them.
“Okay guys, in the car,” instructed Kalila, anxious to leave. “Melvin, there’s room in the back seat for your bag. Hamza, take the front seat.”
Without complaint, Melvin got in the back, strapping in and holding his bag of treasured bulbs securely on his lap. Hamza scooted in the front, ready to leave. Kalila leaned on her open door and waved at the guys in the truck. “Follow me,” she yelled. They still had a long day ahead of them.
The very instant the truck revved up its engine, the front door across the street flew open and out stomped Amara, wearing a pair of men’s flip-flops and a black overgarment that looked more like a muumuu.
Oh no. Not this again.
Kalila had hoped to be long gone before Amara had the opportunity to start her next round of drama.
Amara lumbered to the edge of her property, her hands cupped around her mouth. “You can run, Kalila, but you can’t hide. What you did to me, to my husband, and my family—trust and believe, it’s all going to come out. Every last nasty detail.” Amara flipped Kalila the bird.
Kalila slid into the car. “Lunatic.”
“You can bet your ass, this isn’t over,” shouted Amara through the glass. “Not by a long shot.”
Kalila started the engine.
“You home wrecking whore,” yelled Amara at the top of her lungs. “They should’ve sent you to jail for what you did.”
Hamza went to unroll his window to respond, but Kalila seized his arm. “Don’t!” she snapped. “Don’t give that crazy woman the satisfaction.”
From the back seat, Melvin hugged his collection of tulip bulbs close to his heart and began to rock and moan.
“Are you okay back there, Melvin?” Kalila asked, once safely off their block and far away from Amara’s taunts.
Melvin didn’t reply, but his groaning and rocking simmered down. Head tilted to the side, he clicked his tongue three times.
Hamza winked. “Yeah. He’s fine, Ma.”
Their newly acquired three-bedroom home was substantially smaller than what they had all once enjoyed, but for all its lack of footage, it felt safe. Contained. Away from the stress and painful memories left behind. For once, Kalila felt genuinely at peace.
Without missing a beat, Hamza asserted ownership of the bedroom facing the front yard. Kalila offered Melvin the master bedroom since it was considerably larger, and he needed the extra space for all his bookshelves with the possibility of a few more shortly. Kalila didn’t need the space. She was more than content to lay claim to the smallest bedroom; more of an office since it didn’t have a physical closet, but she didn’t care. She’d make do. She just wanted peace and quiet. A place to think. A place to heal. A place to rebuild and a place to forget.
Kalila
On any other night, Kalila would have made the guys take their own folded clothes upstairs, but tonight being Friday meant movie night, so she decided to cut them some slack. With the laundry basket in hand, she headed upstairs, beaming with pride at the two of them snuggled on the couch sharing a bowl of popcorn. Melvin held the bowl on his lap while Hamza giggled and pointed to the screen, shouting, “This is the funny part.” Domestic bliss never felt so good.
As expected, Hamza’s room looked as if a tornado had hit it. Sports equipment on the floor, a desk piled high with books and papers. Even the night table had been lost under the strangest collection of junk and wrappers. Kalila grudgingly left Hamza’s nicely folded clean clothes on the bed, wondering if they’d ever actually make it into the drawers.
Melvin’s room, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. Clean, orderly, logical. Nothing randomly left on the floor. Bed made to precision. Even his bookshelves were dust-free and tidy.
His bookshelf.
Kalila fingered the spines of the sketchpads lined up in chronological order.
Hmmm…I wonder what he draws?
Kalila glimpsed over her shoulder making sure she was alone. She placed the laundry basket down on the floor quietly, wary of getting caught prying. For no reason in particular, she selected the fourth book toward the end on the last shelf, closest to Melvin’s desk and began casually thumbing through the pages.
Wow…he’s talented.
Kalila turned the pages, quite impressed until her eyes and brain registered precisely what—and who—she was looking at.
Oh—my God.
Kalila’s fingers trembled as she held the sketchpad. Drawing after drawing depicted in meticulous, painful detail the life she labored to conceal, the life she tried to leave behind. “I’ll be damned.” That old all-too-familiar dreaded feeling of being exposed was now resurrected and taking control.
Melvin missed nothing. Kalila standing outside of the hotel, Roger’s car parked next to hers.
Wait—
Kalila peered closer.
Holy crap—had Amara been there as well?
Watching?
No! Spying!
“Astaghfirullah.”
In a frenzy, Kalila flipped through page after page, one image more revealing than the next. The fights, the sorrows, Bashir’s last night before…
She choked back sobs.
The funeral…
Alexa?
Glancing back at the door, Kalila’s thumbs moved a brisk mile a minute; skimming through the endless pages. “What the—?” In some, Melvin had seen fit to draw angelic halos above her head, but she didn’t have time to figure out that one.
In a panic, Kalila wanted to snatch every last one of Melvin’s books and destroy them. One by one, ripping out every page.
Stay calm.
Think, damn it—think.
However, as crazed with fright and as out of control as she felt, Kalila knew that, in the long run, destroying Melvin’s pictures wouldn’t accomplish a thing. Nor would it stop him from drawing. Melvin, with a mind like a time warp filled with memories stuck in a perpetual, compulsive loop, would undoubtedly feel compelled to draw those awful pictures again.
After every agonizing passing minute, another, more corrosive wave of dread hit as she grasped the enormity of this new problem. She’d be screwed if Hamza found out what secrets lurked within those anything but innocuous pages. Scared to death, Kalila pressed the book to her chest, gasping, and unable to control the rapid pulse of her heart racing in her throat.
What do I do now?
She’d have to be careful. Nothing would get past Melvin. He’d be watching her day and night, and logging into that brain of his her every movement. Kalila knew it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t keep from drawing any more than he could stop breathing.
Kalila let out a feeble, frustrated whimper.
What a sick irony. Just when I thought all my problems were behind me. And now this.
“Damn it.”
All this time she believed Melvin had been a gift, but in reality, he’d been her punishment. His presence under her roof was akin to inviting the earthly-breathing version of the Umm al-Kitab, the Mother of all Books, where all of Allah’s knowledge of the existent and nonexistent resides; the tally of each person’s deserved blessings and earned sins.
She could hear the guys talking loudly downstairs. Their movie must have run its course. Kalila forced herself to return Melvin’s book to the shelf, moving listlessly like the perpetually condemned. She carefully placed the sketchpad back exactly where and how she found it while ignoring the overwhelming impulse pounding in her head to tear the incendiary pages apart with her bare hands.
Kalila laid Melvin’s folded clothes on his bed and stole one last fleeting peek around the room, making doubly sure she hadn’t disturbed anything else before closing the light and slipping out.
Hamza and Melvin were still downstairs. From the noise they were making, it sounded like they were straightening up before calling it a night.
Panic-stricken, she leaned on the wall and closed her eyes, scarcely able to breathe, no less think clearly. Unable to fathom how all her efforts to sever the connections from her tainted history had been for naught. And to think, after everything she’d been through, she had done nothing but replace one suffocating physical wall for a new, more complicated prison. With Melvin’s damning drawings lurking about, she’d forever be a prisoner of her past.
Kalila exhaled, beaten.
What had Amara yelled? I can run but not hide?
She’d been right about that.
Pulse racing, she bent over and clasped her knees, struggling to inhale through her mouth to fight back the wave of nausea ready to consume her.
“Ya Allah,” she pleaded in a soft, yet urgent supplication. “Tell me what to do now…Please, Allah, don’t let Hamza find out what I’ve done. He’ll never forgive me.”
Footsteps.
Kalila quickly fixed herself. “All finished for the night, guys?” she asked from the top step, watching them climb upstairs, pretending as though nothing in the world was wrong.
“Yeah,” said Hamza yawning. “I’m beat.”
“What about you, Melvin?” she asked, unable to stop leering at him, second-guessing her every move. Before speaking, Kalila had to intentionally assuage the curt inflection determined to seep into her voice. “Ready for bed?”
Before Melvin could respond, his foot somehow wedged behind the other, causing him to stumble backward, gripping the railing in the nick of time.
“Careful!” she shouted, reaching out to steady him, but as soon as the declaration left her lips—in that tiny, infinitesimal, micro-second of time, a compilation of muddled, ugly, beyond evil thoughts careened through Kalila all at once.
“Damn, dude, take your time,” said Hamza, helping his mother to steady him.
“Take your time, dude” Melvin repeated, completely unfazed.
Somehow, someway, Kalila would have to make sure Melvin’s fastidiously penciled, capsulated pictures charting her past transgressions would never see the light of day. She’d have to figure out something. If not, her future, her relationship with her son—everything depended on the destruction of those drawings.
“Careful, Melvin.” Kalila cautioned. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
Qasim
Amara shut the bedroom door and turned up the heat. From their master bathroom, she filled two basins halfway with warm water, one without soap. She dipped her elbow repeatedly under the faucet to check it wasn’t becoming excessively hot. By the bed, she spread one large, clean towel under Qasim’s motionless body to keep the mattress dry and used another cloth to keep him warm.
“All ready for your bath?” she asked.
Eyes wide open, Qasim stared stonily at the ceiling, incapable of responding, but that never dampened Amara’s incessant need to chatter. In fact, he believed she rather enjoyed keeping up a one-sided, uninterrupted conversation; basking in her element.
Dipping the washcloth in the warm water, Amara wiped Qasim’s eyelid from the inner corner—out. “Now doesn’t that feel nice?” She patted his eyelid dry, ready to repeat on the other side. A thin line of drool slid down the side of Qasim’s stubbled chin and along his neck.
“Oh, no. Look at the mess you’re making.” She wrung out the washcloth, and dipped it back in the soapy water to bathe his face and neck, roughly tackling his ears last.
Qasim released a raspy—gurgling, asphyxiated sound. Amara leaned over, her face close to his as if attempting to decipher what her husband just tried to say.
So far, the prognosis for a full recovery looked grim but not completely ruled out yet. “Miracles do happen,” reminded Qasim’s chipper doctor at each visit. Still, therapy had done nothing thus far to help him regain his speech or movement.
“Now, now. No complaints from you,” she murmured, rinsing the film of soap off his freshly scrubbed face, neck and ears. Amara then carefully folded the towel in half over Qasim’s body, exposing his torso. The muscles around his hair follicles contracted, encasing his chest and arms in goosebumps.
“Aw, you’re cold,” she said, continuing to take her time washing the rest of his body from head to toe, one side, then the other, placing the towel back over him when finished.
“I need to change this dirty bath water before washing your privates.”
Qasim heard her tromp into the bathroom. With every heavy-footed step, he cursed her; calling her a barrage of bitter, vicious names, all rattling around in his head, but refusing to transverse his lips.
“I’m back.” She plopped down at the edge of the bed causing it to dip and creak. Since his accident, Amara had put on more weight, eating everything in sight, apparently no longer concerned with what Qasim thought.
She squeezed out the soapy rag, then rolled him to his side. Leaning in closer, she checked his back for sores or areas of irritation.
“You’ve always had such a cute butt, Qasim,” she goaded, running a washcloth repeatedly between his chilled, chafed cheeks. Once done, she rolled him onto his backside, and grabbed another clean rag, and plunged it in the foamy water. “Okay, you. Now for the fun part.”
Wet cloth in hand, Amara massage-cleaned Qasim’s penis, pulling the foreskin back and forth until he involuntarily became erect. Since leaving the confines and safety of the hospital, Amara had gone out of the way to deride and disparage Qasim at every opportunity.
“Oh my,” she mocked. “Look at you.” Her hand slid intentionally slow up and down his shaft. “I have to tell you, I’m always amazed it still works.”
Qasim twitched; his strained breaths came out in short, clipped pants.
“Stop it!” she yelled, her flushed round face contorting into an ugly amalgamation of power and cruel disdain. And then in a split second, her features calmed, forming a half, wicked smile.
“Time to refresh this,” she said, indicating the water. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Amara waddled to the bathroom, water sloshing and spilling from the washbasin with each heavy footstep.
Over the past few months, Qasim had come to dread the sound of running water.
Moments later Amara returned. “Ready, sweetheart?” she asked standing over him. Using two hands, she lifted the heavy, soaked washrag out of the plastic basin and began twisting every last drop of icy-cold water over his nether regions, causing him to jerk, shrivel up, and grunt out in agony.
“Now, now,” goaded Amara, cackling. “Don’t be mad, silly. I couldn’t let you stay all stiff like that, could I? Why—that would be cruel.” She reached across the bed for another cloth. “Time to clean up,” she said, positioning a wet, icy towel across his bare chest.
Utterly helpless and cold, Qasim could do nothing but moan.
Amara bent over him, seething. “You should have left that bitch alone. And now look at you.” She tossed a couple of the used towels across the room. “It’s not like I didn’t warn you, but did you listen?”
His lower lip protruded downward. A single, angry tear slid down the side of his cheek.
Amara gathered up Qasim’s soiled laundry on the way to the bathroom. “By the way, big shot. Your fuck buddy and her bratty kid left this morning.”
Qasim did know. In fact, he committed everything Amara said or let slip out to memory. Dark, damaging secrets he longed to one day reveal and use against them all.
“They moved out today. Needed one of them big trucks. I watched them fill it with all the nice stuff you and her idiot dead husband bought for her.” Amara emptied the water from the basin into the tub and yelled. “And get this—she took that retard, Melvin, with them. One big happy family, minus you of course.”
Robbed of his ability to respond, Qasim subsisted purely on the hate and venom locked deep inside his head, unable to break free.
If I ever regain control over my body, I’ll make you pay, Amara—I’ll make you sorry you were ever born—you evil, sadistic bitch.
I’ll hunt you down.
You first.
Then Kalila.
I’ll destroy you both.
Acknowledgments
Books need a home and somebody to love and cherish them. They also need folks who think that the words contained inside books are worth reading and sharing. In a forever changing publishing world, I want to sincerely thank my incredible publisher and the entire DKP team for the continued support and care given to each one of my book babies. You rock~Alhamdulillah!
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To my talented cover designer, Patrick Knowles: Thank you for investing the time and energy to create a cover that speaks so powerfully to the story. Now, about those elves… <—I win.
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To my friend and fellow book addict, Dr. Jen Bradly: thank you for your valuable insights. Your suggestions and guidance required me to dig deeper, work harder, which made for a more dynamic read and highly complex characters. You are a blessing.
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To my dear friend, Susan Moore Jordan: Where do I start? Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading, and re-reading, and checking, and correcting my many comma disasters and Saharisms. I have, and continue to learn so much from you. xo.
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To my kind, generous, and super-talented friend, J.C. Wing. Thank you for proofing my book baby before we set her free into the world. I can’t thank you enough. xo.
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To my incredible, brilliant, early readers: Harriet Van Houten, Anne Quirindongo, Catherine Schratt, Belinda M. Gordon, Kelly Jensen, and Diane Bukoski. Thank you, my friends, for hanging in there with me, believing in me, encouraging me, listening to me whine. I am so blessed to call you my friends.
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To my family: You have never made me feel guilty for the long hours I spend behind my computer. Instead, you ply me with food, tea, snacks and endless amounts of hugs. Equally as amazing, you guard my writing time sometimes better than I do, and that means the world to me.
