A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

She stops speaking and Hadia is so still she can’t exhale for fear an answer will be asked of her. Then Mumma says, in Urdu this time, “Everything. Everything we could think of doing that was good, we tried to do.” And Hadia relaxes to hear it in Urdu: it doesn’t change the words but it does change their effect, and Mumma covers her eyes with her hand again and whispers, “He hasn’t woken up all day. When I go into his room and shake him, when he opens his eyes to mine—it’s like he’s not even there. It is like there is no one behind his eyes.” Mumma is not crying. So why is Hadia? After she leaves Mumma, she steps straight into Amar’s bedroom. He is asleep, his curtains drawn shut. She is smarter than this. She did not study so seriously just to miss a symptom in her own brother. “Amar,” she whispers. No response. He was gone all night again, so it is not so alarming for him to still be sleeping. She tries to remember what he was wearing last night, but it had been dark. A jacket dropped by his bed. She lifts it, goes through the pockets, nothing. Sets it down again. She sits at the edge of his bed. He sleeps on his side, with his hand curled under his face like a boy. She lifts his jacket again, turns it inside out, uses her hand as sight and there, by the breast pocket, she catches a clean rip. Inside, her fingers brush against a plastic bag, and she knows that this is what she has been looking for. Four identical pills, round and white. In the hallway light she examines ...