Towelhead by Alicia Erian

them.”
    â€œNo!” he yelled, but I ignored him.
    â€œBirdies?” Melina said when she answered the front door, and I nodded. There were pencils sticking out of the messy bun at the back of her head.
    After she let me in, she asked if a picture she’d just hung on the living room wall looked straight, and I said it did. It showed a sandy-colored building set into a rocky cliff. “What is that?” I asked.
    â€œGil’s old house,” she said.
    â€œIn Syracuse?” It didn’t really look like Syracuse.
    She laughed. “No. Yemen.”
    I tried to think of where that was.
    â€œHe used to be in the Peace Corps,” she said.
    â€œWhat did he do?”
    She shrugged. “A lot of stuff. Mostly, he dug sewage systems.”
    â€œOh,” I said.
    â€œToilets,” she added.
    I nodded.
    â€œSquat down,” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œBend your legs and squat.”
    I did this, and she said, “No, more.”
    I squatted more.
    â€œEven more,” she said. “As far as you can go without letting your butt touch the floor.”
    When I’d gotten as low as possible, she said, “That’s how they go to the bathroom over there. There’s no real toilets. They just dig a hole in the floor and crouch over it.”
    â€œThey do?” I said, standing back up. My thighs were kind of sore.
    She nodded. “Can you imagine doing that when you’re pregnant?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMe, neither,” she said, laying a hand on her stomach.
    â€œI guess I’ll go get the birdies.”
    â€œOh,” she said. “Okay.”
    I went through the kitchen and let myself out the back door. I didn’t really like when Melina touched her stomach, and I didn’t want to talk about her being pregnant. I wasn’t sure why, and I felt kind of bad about it, but that was just the way it was.
    Zack had already gone inside by the time I got back. He was sitting in the living room, trying to watch HBO. His parents didn’t subscribe to it, but sometimes it seemed like you could see naked people through all the scramble lines. “Don’t you want to play badminton anymore?” I asked.
    He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the TV.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause,” he said, “you’re hitting the birdies over there on purpose. So you can go and talk to that lady.”
    â€œI am not,” I said.
    â€œI’m never playing badminton with you again,” he said, and he got up and went to his room. I turned the TV off, then went to the bookshelf and took down the dictionary. There was an atlas at the back and I found Yemen, right under Saudi Arabia.
    That night at dinner, I said to Daddy, “You know the people that moved in next to the Vuosos?”
    â€œDo I know them?” he said. “No, I don’t know them.”
    He liked to do this sometimes. Answer my exact question instead of the real one I was asking. I sighed and said, “Do you know that some new people moved in next door to the Vuosos?”
    â€œYes,” he said this time. “I do know. The woman needs to cover her stomach more when she comes outside. No one wants to look at that.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “her husband used to live in Yemen.”
    Daddy crunched on the cartilage from his chicken drumstick for a moment, then swallowed and said, “How do you know?”
    â€œMelina told me,” I said. “That’s his wife.”
    â€œWe don’t call adults by their first name,” he said.
    â€œBut she said I could.”
    â€œI don’t care what she said. Find out her last name and call her that.”
    After dinner, Daddy packed up his clothes and went over to Thena’s for the night. They had been seeing each other regularly since their first date, but Daddy wouldn’t let her come to our house anymore. He said he didn’t want to have to deal with her fussing