“No one would ever really tell me,” I answered. “When I got older, I figured it was one of the nuns, and they just didn’t want me to know which one. I tried to figure out who it might be, which is when I started watching everyone around me really carefully. I thought if I could read their body language, I’d be able to figure out which one was my mom.”
“Did you figger it out?”
“Never did,” I said. “Learned a lot of other shit.”
I laughed.
“There was a girl there named Marie.” I recalled the heart-shaped face of the redhead. “She was a couple years older than me, and she’d been sneaking out of the convent at night to meet up with some guy. I found out, and she offered to fuck me to keep quiet.”
“Did you take her up on it?”
“That’s how I lost my virginity!” I exclaimed with a grin.
“Ha! Ha!” Jon laughed. “That’s custom!”
I finished up my beer, and Jon clacked his fingernails against his chocolate milk glass.
“I might be able to find out,” Jonathan said quietly. “I mean, they gotta have a birth certificate on file somewhere, right?”
“I have documents signed by the Mother Superior as my legal guardian according to the State of Ohio,” I told him.
“What’s the date on it?”
I glanced up at him and narrowed my eyes.
“My birth date,” I said. “May fourteen.”
“Are you sure?”
The server interrupted us at that point, and we ordered a round of the same microbrew. I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes and thought about it. The idea that the date I had always assumed was my birthday might not be what I thought it was pissed me off.
I had to know.
“Okay,” I said, “see what you can dig up.”
“No worries, bro,” he replied. “I’ll
see what I can find on the interwebs.”
When we parted ways, I slowly walked between the buildings to get back to my apartment. I passed the drunks and the tourists without a glance, my head focused on two different memories.
One was the time I flat out asked Mother Superior if she knew who my parents were, and the look on her face told me she did, even as she lied about it. I reminded her about that particular commandment, which earned me a full day of prayer to reflect on my sins.
The other memory was Lia.
Again.
Her body, her voice, her eyes when she glanced back at me before boarding a bus to Phoenix – it was stuck in my head on repeat as I reached my apartment and took Odin out for a late-night walk. She was stuck in my head when I lay down to sleep as well, but the dreams I had were of a different sort.
The girl is young, maybe seven or eight years old, and she’s wearing a long robe, but isn’t yet old enough to be required to wear the hijab, the traditional women’s scarf, around her head. She watches me from a dark corner as I struggle with the ropes around my wrists.
It’s taken hours to shake the bag from my head, and my eyes are still adjusting to the light.
“Salam,” I croak from my dry throat.
The girl’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t come closer or reply. I’m not sure what I would do if she did say something back – I only know about a dozen Arabic words, and I’m not about to embark on a long conversation. I focus on her eyes, but she keeps looking away. I nod towards a large barrel.
“Ma?”