We had heard pow, pow, pow—but didn’t know it was guns. An hour later there was a knock on our door and Mama wondered why Daddy was knocking and why he was late. It wasn’t Daddy. It was a tall fat cop, carrying his cap in his hand. Her mouth fell open and he coughed and then told Mama that Daddy was shot and killed at the end of our block. Mama screamed and almost collapsed on the floor, but the cop caught her and helped her to a chair and waited until she calmed down. I froze so much I heard no more words he said. I figured he was talking because his mouth was moving. Maybe three days later Mama stopped saying Daddy was killed. She said he passed into his immortality.

“What’s that?” I’d asked.

“It’s living forever. It’s being in heaven and he’s in a better place.” She kissed her wedding ring three times, then put her hand over her heart.

“I feel we’re in a worse place,” but she shook her head back and forth, her mouth turned down, her eyes watering—telling me I better stop saying that. I stopped.

Mama now works two jobs to pay bills plus save money she insists I’ll need later. She cleans rich hotel rooms in the day and big offices in the evening a long walk away, leaving me home alone with the door always locked. Since Laundromats cost money, she washes our laundry in the kitchen sink and hangs it on two clotheslines strung across the bathroom. Once a month I wash everything when she’s not feeling well.

When I’m taking a bath, laundry often hangs over me like I’m in a closet, but we don’t have lots of clothes so it’s not so bad. Sometimes I think of it as my secret cave, and I can think about anything that pops into my head. I let my thoughts pop, pop, pop for a minute or so. Or more. Or less. I’ll think about boys or school or popcorn or water dripping from the faucet and I should turn the faucet off or anything. One time when I was walking to the bakery with Daddy, I told him I wanna be a writer. He smiled. I told him about my favorite teacher, Miss Garcia. She has shiny dark hair and fine red lips and gentle green eyes. He smiled. Daddy was good-looking and I liked walking anywhere with him, even Jimmy’s tobacco store where old men sat around for hours smoking smelly cigars, arguing and laughing and slapping their knees. One of them told me I was pretty. I liked that, but felt so embarrassed, I couldn’t say thank you. The words got stuck. I wished they didn’t get stuck.

Our apartment we have now only has one small bedroom that barely fits a double bed, but I know we’re in a safer neighborhood cause I don’t see people getting in fights here and screaming their heads off or begging for money or sleeping on the sidewalks. Before we had two bedrooms. Mama and I now sleep in the same bed.

Sometimes, I see her staring out into space like she’s lost.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, I hear her breathing loud and shaky like she’s going to start crying in bed beside me, making my stomach hurt, making me chew my fingernails.

Sometimes, I imagine Daddy is still with me and I whisper to him and he whispers back. One time before he was immortal, Daddy said, almost in a whisper, like it was our secret, “Bypass God and forgive yourself. Then forgive others, like it’s all water under the bridge. You’ll feel better. The flowing stream of life. Trout and catfish jumping out of the water showing off, and pretty water lilies, girls and boys swimming, then someone yelling nasty names. Then a dead fish and some old tin can floating by in the cool refreshing water, the bad and good all flow under the bridge. All gone. Life brings forgiveness, if you let it.”

The All Gone stream made me feel I had the smartest, best daddy in the world and I took hold of his rough-skinned hand.

We eat lots of black beans, rice, cheese macaroni, and oatmeal in powdered milk. When Daddy wasn’t immortal, we drank real milk, had tasty hamburgers with lettuce and tomatoes and ketchup twice a week, fried chicken on Wednesday, a Sunday pork roast and went to the movies once a month. Why did Daddy have to die?

Sundays we go to church and Mama prays to Jesus that nothing bad will happen to me. Then she puts her arm around my shoulders. Occasionally she smiles. I pray that Daddy’s okay. Then we walk to the library, and I get books for the week. Once I found a book titled The House on Mango Street. I didn’t understand all of it but that made me more curious, and I read it in four days. It was better than any Harry Potter story. It was about ordinary people who didn’t fly and never needed to. I hope to write stories like that, about wanting to have something all your own, about trying, and not giving up and being yourself.

For Sunday dinner we eat one chicken thigh each, potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes, an apple for dessert, and talk mostly about how I’m doing in school. Mama’s saving money for me to go to college. She says I’m gonna be a teacher. When I said I wanna be a writer cause Miss Garcia said I’m good at it, she wrinkled her forehead, pointed her finger at me and said, “Don’t you say that. Even if I have to work myself to death, you’re gonna be a teacher.”

I looked at my bare feet and said, “Yes, Mama,” hoping she wouldn’t see the dirty smudge on my toe. She did, then she wiped the smudge off and trimmed my toenails. Then she brushed my hair. Then she tied my hair up in a ponytail with a blue ribbon she pulled out of her pocket. I wondered where she got the ribbon. I once saw her look in a garbage can and pull out some artificial flowers, but she washed them, in case they had germs. She went over to the kitchen cabinet, reached up to the top shelf and got a chocolate bar, broke off a piece, and handed it to me.

It’s summer and all our windows are open for any cool breeze that might breeze by. I like when a word can mean two different things even in the same sentence. Like being both a noun and a verb or just two different things. Like breeze can mean a soft wind or something easy to do. Words are fun. What would life be without words? What would I do? Bark? Meow? I imagine myself barking. It’d be a little bark. I imagine barking in school and in my dreams. I almost giggle. I imagine my mama barking like a big dog in the kitchen cooking a pot of beans, washing dishes or ironing. I giggle. I imagine her in church with everyone and all her singing would be howling. I laugh so much I almost fall out of my chair.

The window shades are up, and the curtains pulled back. One is tattered. Tattered means torn or kaput. I like saying kaput. I like saying doodad. Bamboozle is even better. Some afternoon sun glitters a corner of the linoleum floor that looks dull and gray even after I’ve mopped it. I hang my head out the window cause I’m bored and finished all my cleaning, dusting, and ironing. Mouth-watering smells rise from the apartment below. Music and laughter float up. Is it a party? Are they having ice cream floats? There I go again. Float, float. Are they dancing? I’ve seen people dancing but I’ve never danced except at home when no one can see me twirling, swinging my hips, and tapping my feet. Tap, tap. I’ve never been to a party. You have to bring a present. You need money to buy a present. I once found fifty cents on a sidewalk and spent it on candy. It was fun not telling Mama. If she found it, she would’ve saved it. She saves any money she finds, even pennies. She once picked up a bobby pin and a rubber band on the sidewalk and saved them after washing them.

A dark-haired girl sticks her head out the window below and turns her head to the right and left. Suddenly she looks up. Did she know I was up here looking at her? She grins and says, “Hi, my name’s Basmah,” and I say my name’s Nina and she invites me to her place. I finished all my chores, so I figure I can visit, cause it’s only one floor down.

Her apartment has yellow curtains and green cushions and some red ones on the blue sofa. There is no party, just Basmah and her mother. We sit on the floor on a small rug with every color I know. Mama never likes me sitting on the floor. She says I’ll get my clothes dirty and dirty clothes don’t impress anyone, but clean perfectly ironed clothes do, even if you’re poor. It makes a person think a poor person is a hard worker and will do the best job. “It’s the little things that matter,” she says, almost smiling.

Basmah gives me a flaky pastry and says, “It’s baklava.” Her mother has long shiny black hair, a funny laugh, a soft voice, big hips and she says they’re from Lebanon. She asks Basmah to go to the store down at the corner and buy her some yogurt, lemons, cucumbers, and for Basmah and me—ice cream cones, if I want to go along. Yes, I do.

Outside, I tell Basmah my daddy was murdered. After I say that, I fear I shouldn’t have. Mama doesn’t like talking about it cause it makes her feel like it just happened. Sometimes, I hear her crying when she’s in the bathroom at night. She cries more around Christmas. Daddy was killed a few days before Christmas.

Basmah says she saw a man killed back in Lebanon, right in front of her and got splattered with some of his blood and the man’s killer was never caught. I hope when Daddy was murdered his blood didn’t splatter. I don’t tell her they never found who killed Daddy. Mama says the police never tried very hard cause they didn’t care. She said one cop told her he likely wasn’t the intended target. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time—as if that was going to make us feel better.

We both take a deep breath as we walk to the store. I want to ask Basmah if she has a father but don’t. I ask if she was born in Lebanon. She was. And how long she’s been in this country. Fifteen months. “Do you ever miss it?” I ask.

Her Never, never, never, makes me think she’s angry, angry, angry. Sometimes I like a string of the same word. Like beads around your neck. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

I regret asking the question and fear she now dislikes me, so I say I’m sorry.

“It’s okay. I didn’t mean to get angry.” She gives me a friendly bump in the arm. I do it back and we grin like best friends.

On the way back home, we don’t say much except how good the ice cream tastes and what our favorite flavors are. I don’t tell her I only get to eat ice cream on my birthday and once in a while Mama buys it for no reason.

One day Mama comes home early and sees Basmah and me sitting outside on the front steps talking, and she tells me to come home with her. We walk up the four flights of stairs. She rubs her head like she’s got a bad headache. There’s sweat on her face. There’s lots of laughter coming out of someone’s apartment. There’s yelling in another. There’s an empty candy wrapper on one of the steps. She picks it up. The corners of Mama’s mouth are turned down. They often are. I want to turn them up and get her to chuckle. My stomach hurts. She opens our door, throws the candy wrapper in our trash, and puts her plastic purse on our wobbly kitchen table. She takes me by my hand and says, “Nina, stop playing with that girl and stay home. I’ve told you before—stay home.”

“Why?” I try to not look mad cause that upsets her.

“It’s not safe out there. Your father was . . . taken away on the street.” I know she almost said killed. “And I’m not going to have something happen to you, leaving me with nothing.” She holds her hand over her mouth, closes her eyes, and squeezes her other hand tight. I feel bad and wish she’d say something. Her face gets wet with tears. Empty minutes pass as if she’s going to disappear right in front of me. Help.

I don’t know what to do, what to say. I want to say she once told me our new neighborhood is safer than our old one. I wish she’d stop crying. Help.

I wish she'd laugh again. Please.

I wish Daddy didn’t die. Why?

I’m glad I never told her I went to the store with Basmah. Finally, she removes her hand from her mouth and says, “Plus she’s Muslim. The Muslims did 9/11. You can’t play with her.” She turns away and makes dinner. While cooking, she says the same exact thing again as if I didn’t hear her before.

Help still doesn’t help and Why gets no answer.

Then she talks about more things I’ve heard before like her lazy brother she hasn’t heard from in years, and he owes her a hundred dollars, and her favorite aunt who died in 9/11, and her uncle who started drinking too much after 9/11. As she talks, I look at dry black beans in a bowl that she’s gonna soak in water and cook tomorrow. I take one bean and place it on the table and another and another and somehow, I find myself laying a whole line of beans round and round in a circle cause it feels like she’s talking in circles. And her uncle who died from too much drinking and how she had to start working when she was sixteen cause her father got real sick and couldn’t work and she couldn’t finish high school and go to college, even though she was smart enough. She says she wanted to become a teacher and how she hates walking past a college on her way to work and seeing bunches of students and she tries not to hear anything they say cause it makes her feel left out. She gets quiet, and it kind of scares me cause I don’t know what’s gonna happen. The beans now form two neat circles. Then she says when I graduate from college it’ll make it all worthwhile. She sits down and rests her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands and closes her eyes like she’s trying to find the All Gone stream. I put all the beans back in the bowl and we just sit there.

I don’t understand. I’m sad and wonder if I’ve done something wrong. I have no words cause they’re all jumbled and disappear before I can say them. I never lost words before, not even in class. I remember my teacher, Miss Garcia, saying I talk sometimes when I shouldn’t, but she gave me an A in English. She said if it was allowed, she would’ve given me an A plus. When I go to bed and can’t fall asleep, I fear if I don’t become a teacher, my mother will become homeless. At our last apartment, I once saw a homeless woman pooping in an alley. I could see it coming out. It was disgusting. I don’t want Mama to become homeless. If she was homeless, I’d be homeless. Wouldn’t you feel scared?

A few days later I’m bored and look out the window. Basmah is playing down on the sidewalk with other kids. She sees me; we wave.

Soon there’s a knock on my door. I hope it’s Basmah, my friend. Yes, it’s her. I think of Mama, so I tell her I must stay inside and can’t play. She says talk isn’t play and we can talk if we stick our heads out our windows. That gets us smiling.

She leaves and goes downstairs. In no time, we’re sticking our heads out for talk-time, and she tells me when they were coming to this country, they stayed in Paris for a week with relatives and she went up the Eiffel Tower and saw the whole city. I know where Paris is cause I have a world atlas Mama bought in a thrift store. Sometimes, it’s hard to hear her cause of all the street noise. Basmah then says she has an idea and she’ll be right up. In a minute, she knocks on my door and gives me a jump rope and says to lower one end of it down to her window when she gets back there.

I do what she says, half-fearing maybe I shouldn’t and I’ll regret it, but I’m curious and can’t resist. I hope nothing bad happens. If I get caught, maybe I could lie. I’m not good at lying. I get red in the face and worry Mama knows I’m lying and she’ll get angry and I’ll get punished. When she gets angry, she goes on and on and I want to disappear, leaving not even a trace, not even a little puddle of me.

Basmah takes the end of the rope and ties a bag to it. “Pull it up and open the bag. There’s a baklava is in it.” For several weeks, we talk like that, and I get another baklava and a cookie called maamoul she says is made with dates and walnuts. And knafeh that’s made with nuts and cheese and orange blossom water. They’re so good I think I’d like to visit Lebanon when I grow up, even though I don’t like the funny-tasting halvah.

On a rainy day, Basmah gets the idea to do the rope thing in the stairwell—me standing out in the hallway above her. Since it’s quieter, we start doing it that way. One time I gave her a drawing of things I see from my window. One time I sent her a story I wrote about the two of us walking up the Eiffel Tower and talking to two boys on the way up and they asked if they could kiss us, and we said no way. That got us talking about what it must feel like to kiss a boy. We both agreed we weren’t interested.

When school starts again, we’re in the same class. We’re assigned seats next to each other in the back of the class. That means it’s meant to be cause Daddy said if you really want something to happen and it does with no effort on your part, it means it was a blessing just for you and we should be thankful for any blessings we get.

We play at recess. We sit together in the library and whisper about what we read. Sometimes we whisper about boys and which ones are okay and which ones aren’t. Who’s cute and who isn’t. Who’s smart and who’s stupid. Who’s nice and who’s a jerk. I tell her what jerk means. She whispers how you say jerk in Arabic. She’s the third person I know who speaks two languages. She whispers how to say shut up and butthole in Arabic. We giggle quietly cause we’re in the library. It’s fun to giggle. Sometimes, giggles make others giggle even if they don’t know what’s so funny.

I help her with English, and she helps me with Arithmetic. Mama likes that I’m getting better scores on my Arithmetic tests, but I don’t say Basmah helped me. One time, she even slipped me answers on a test.

Mama says, “See when you study harder, you get better grades. You need good grades for college.” I nod, real pleased on top of fearing I might get caught. Feeling good and bad at the same time is confusing.

Mama chugs her coffee in the morning so she won’t be late to work. She likes being ten minutes early. I like saying chug. She still doesn’t know Basmah and me are best friends. It gives me a feeling of independence like I should have some rights, but I also feel guilty like maybe she should know cause she is my mother. Plus, I worry that maybe she’ll find out and punish me. That just makes me take extra care that I don’t talk much with Basmah except at school. Then I get confused cause sometimes Mama says hello to Basmah and even asks how she’s doing and like she really means it. After she gives Basmah a candy mint, I feel it’s now okay to tell her about Basmah and me being in the same class. Mama doesn’t seem upset. She just keeps eating spoonfuls of our hundredth dinner of black beans and rice. But I’m eating baklavas even though it’s just beans and rice. I’m in Lebanon. I’m in Paris. I’m seeing the world. Then, Mama asks if Basmah is a good student and I say she always does her homework and gets only As in Arithmetic and As or Bs in everything else except for the C she gets in English. Mama nods like she likes what I said.

Probably someday, maybe next week, maybe tomorrow, I’ll tell her Basmah is my best friend. And maybe I’ll write a story about the two of us and change everyone’s names and it won’t happen in the Bronx. It’ll happen some place in California or Arizona or Hawaii. Her name will be Elizabeth and she’ll like Lebanese desserts but she’ll be born in London cause Mama likes reading about royalty, if she has the time and isn’t exhausted.