I am so fucking confused.
I was used to fucking everything up. People always told me I couldn’t do anything properly, everyone used to shout at me. Now, everything I do is great, and people praise me all the time. Yesterday, when I got back from the library, I heard Bebe on the phone. She was talking to Aunty Naila, telling her, “You’re right, Bella is smarter than all of us.” But “all of us” included the genius Mr Keeru, wise Aunty Naila, handsome Mr Daljeet, intellectual Uncle Raheem, and… of course, there was Bebe. I can’t find the right word for her. She is like soil itself – or water. Without her, there is no life.
She was at her English class right now. She was so excited to go to class and learn, I felt jealous. I thought, I should also enrol in some classes at Kwantlen University. Go to class for two days, work for four days. I interviewed for a job, a cashier at a shop in Strawberry Hill Mall, part-time. Bebe doesn’t let me pay rent or pay for groceries. The truth is that I can’t pay right now, even if I wanted, but it doesn’t feel good. I will feel better once I get a job. Then I can hand Bebe a hundred dollars every week.
I am handling my depression better now. I don’t wake up crying or shaking with anger. I can sleep at night, and I don’t feel a constant headache. It’s still hard for me to go out and meet people, talk to them… I feel anxious. Still, I am not even taking any medicine, and I can feel the difference!
Before, I used to feel odd all the time, on the verge of a panic attack, like something bad was going to happen, like someone was going to blame me for something, like I was going to be punished for a crime I had committed unknowingly. I constantly worried that my elder sisters were going to cheat me again, my mother was going to lecture me again, the people in my class were going to call me “black beauty” and make fun of me again, my teacher was going to call me an “idiot” again. I felt like everyone looked down on me, and I always felt hurt about it.
Now, I just feel confused.
As I start to feel better, I think about my mom, and I actually feel bad for her. My dad left her with us three sisters, all alone, and went back to the UK. I don’t know how she raised us. I called her the other day, but as soon as she found out that I was living with a Muslim family, she started telling me how they were going to convert me and marry me to an old Muslim man, or how they were going to pimp me out and make money off of me, or how they were going to send me to the Middle East to become a jihadi bride. I told her it was not like that, but she insisted I give her the address so she could send the police to rescue me. I ended the call real quick. That night, I had nightmares again. I woke up screaming. Bebe also woke up and came to check on me. She sat next to me, calmed me down until I went back to sleep. Next day, I heard her talking to Keeru on the phone. “We have to make space for Bella’s bed in the living room. Her stomach is full of air because she is always lying on her side, then she has bad dreams with Dracula all night.”
I wonder: Why is she interested in me?
My friend, Leslie, whose couch I was crashing on before I came here, and who was always pestering me about money, has a theory. She thinks that these people are so clever that they have turned me into a free servant. I was also afraid of this possibility, to be honest, but I told Leslie that Bebe seems like a simple woman, very innocent. She said that it’s always the people who look innocent who are trying to deceive you. A few days after I moved in here, I asked Bebe, “What should I do?” She didn’t understand what I was asking at all. “What do you mean?” I told her, “I am staying in your house for free; there must be some work you want me to do for you.” She started thinking. Then she said, “Bella, I have two little drawers in my room.
Bring one of them here, put it next to the sofa, and put your stuff in it. When you are in the kitchen, don’t make a mess, clean after yourself, wash the dishes you use.” I told her, “I am sorry, these are my responsibilities; I haven’t done them, but I will do them from now on. What can I do for you?” She looked irritated, “You want me to sit down and do nothing, roll around in bed all day until my bones become stiff and useless and I can’t sit or stand? No, girl, that kind of life is not for me.” Then I asked, “If I convert to Islam, you and Keeru will get lots of religious points with your god, no?” She said, “You ask too many difficult questions, your brain runs too fast (you see, even here, she found a way to compliment me). I don’t know about Keeru, maybe he wants these points, but I am half-Christian myself.”
Half-Christian? Why half? Oh, yeah, she is Sikh and also Christian and also Muslim, all at once! I started laughing. “Bebe, you are crazier than me.” She responded like it was all very simple. “My Bella, it’s all the same thing. God cannot be divided; we can give God a hundred personalities, a thousand names – it all comes down to the same thing.”
Excerpted with permission from Keeru, Fauzia Haider, translated from the Punjabi by Rafique Shahbaz, Hachette India.
