happened if Mammy had shown up like she was supposed to either. Sometimes Laila
wondered why Mammy had even bothered having her. People, she believed now, shouldn't
be allowed to have new children if they'd already given away all their love to their old ones.
It wasn't fair. A fit of anger claimed her. Laila went to her room, collapsed on her bed.
When the worst of it had passed, she went across the hallway to Mammy's door and
knocked. When she was younger, Laila used to sit for hours outside this door. She would
tap on it and whisper Mammy's name over and over, like a magic chant meant to break a
spell: Mammy, Mammy, Mammy, Mammy... But Mammy never opened the door. She didn't
open it now. Laila turned the knob and walked in.
Sometimes Mammy had good days. She sprang out of bed bright eyed and playful. The
droopy lower lip stretched upward in a smile. She bathed. She put on fresh clothes and
wore mascara. She let Laila brush her hair, which Laila loved doing, and pin earrings
through her earlobes. They went shopping together to Mandaii Bazaar. Laila got her to play
snakes and ladders, and they ate shavings from blocks of dark chocolate, one of the few
things they shared a common taste for. Laila's favorite part of Mammy's good days was
when Babi came home, when she and Mammy looked up from the board and grinned at
him with brown teeth. A gust of contentment puffed through the room then, and Laila
caught a momentary glimpse of the tenderness, the romance, that had once bound her
parents back when this house had been crowded and noisy and cheerful.
Mammy sometimes baked on her good days and invited neighborhood women over for tea
and pastries. Laila got to lick the bowls clean, as Mammy set the table with cups and
napkins and the good plates. Later, Laila would take her place at the living room table and
try to break into the conversation, as the women talked boisterously and drank tea and
complimented Mammy on her baking. Though there was never much for her to say, Laila
liked to sit and listen in because at these gatherings she was treated to a rare pleasure: She
got to hear Mammy speaking affectionately about Babi.
"What a first rate teacher he was," Mammy said. "His students loved him. And not only
because he wouldn't beat them with rulers, like other teachers did. They respected him, you
see, because he respected them. He was marvelous."
Mammy loved to tell the story of how she'd proposed to him.
"I was sixteen, he was nineteen. Our families lived next door to each other in Panjshir. Oh,
I had the crush on him, hamshiras! I used to climb the wall between our houses, and we'd
play in his father's orchard. Hakim was always scared that we'd get caught and that my
father would give him a slapping. 'Your father's going to give me a slapping,' he'd always
say. He was so cautious, so serious, even then. And then one day I said to him, I said,
'Cousin, what will it be? Are you going to ask for my hand or are you going to make me
come khasiegari to you?' I said it just like that. You should have seen the face on him!"
Mammy would slap her palms together as the women, and Laila, laughed.
Listening to Mammy tell these stories, Laila knew that there had been a time when