The Sides of Paradise

On a cold autumn day in November, the city had started to clock out and retire for night. The

tired trails of cars sat and shifted, scorning each other with vexatious honks and beeps.

Speckles of gray suits and drunken breaths tumbled their way out of bars and pubs all the way

from FiDi to Midtown. Anxious Mobs clamored around a rusty, skinny pole like a ritual to

summon the next empty and working bus all the way home. Every business day, every week,

the clamorous happenings upon the New York concrete were the only things to keep their

promise underneath the waning purple sky.

Khadijha had kept it as well. Leaned upon the grungy edge of the Plaza Hotel, she had a

divine seat to the fluttering eyes of the white collars, homeless population, and everything that

had sat in between. Sighting in every single molecule of life with each inhalation from her warm,

dwindling cigarette. But it was only up here, for the last 15 minutes of every shift, that she could

look at the evolving biome of the city. The only time where apathy can fully overtake her and she

wasn’t bound by the labels of ‘Maid’, ‘The Help’, or ‘That girl who cleans the room’. At least for

the night. At least for the night, she rests from scrubbing the infidelitous tubs and remaking

tossed beds of the rich. Khadijha could finally shed the submissive facade to retreat back to her

own rugged plane.

As she got off at the Franklin Ave stop of the 4 train, a warm solace had drenched

khadijha with familiarity. Her legs had tiredly walked her up the steps from the train station back

into the explicitness of flatbush. Unlike the doclice mesh of elegance and professionality that

Midtown had put up during the day, Flatbush was loud all the time. The roads were worn with

the liberal honks from dollar vans, the hypnotizing scents of oils from the white tables of

Caribbean street vendors, and an urban mosaic of ninety-nine cent stores, braiding salons, and

bodegas. This worness was, however, just as memorable as a brown blanket from when you

were a baby or when you got your first scar after winning a race in elementary school. It was all

Khadijha knew and she wouldn’t have had it any other way. What else beyond the city would’ve

allowed her to be in the comfortable limbo of her late teens? To give her a hideout until she

became of the age where she didn’t care about finding anything ‘better’? To be just comfortable

with these circumstances that may follow her until death? This was the same dialogue that had

followed her on her walk home to her small one bedroom apartment that she had shared with

her cousin, Tina.

If someone had told Khadijha that Tina would've been the one to take her in after all the

disruption that had happened to her, she probably would have thought you were talking about a

different girl. Ever since Khadijha could remember, Tina never had best regards from their family

nor other adults in their life. ‘Fast’, ‘Grown’,’Hard Headed’, these labels had quickly become

verbal tethers to the then teenage TIna. Whether it was because she wore red lipstick or found

a crop top of her favorite band on clearance at the mall, Khadijha quickly found out that it was

easy for the adults to print these traits onto Tina’s dermis to avoid looking underneath. When

Tina was sixteen and dating Joe, a twenty five year old fry cook, it was easier for grandma to

ask “why were you sleeping with a grown man?” then “why was a grown man sleeping with a

sixteen year old?”. It was the syntax of questions directed to Tina that was the brush to paint the

image of Tina as the unruly child who had constantly put herself in dangerous situations. An

image that became the eyes for which everyone they knew had seen Tina as, including

Khadijha. It wasn’t until some years later after that Khadijha had found herself alone and Tina

was the only one to offer aid, the unruly child. To a preteen, an offer someone like her would've

been questionable but it was within the risk that Khadijha had realized that Tina wasn’t the

succubus boogie man that she was warned as. In fact, late nights of cheap ramen and movies

after she had moved into Tina’s apartment had led to the realization that they had more in

common than the adults would have led them to believe. Their shared interests had innocently

started off with having the same favorite vegetable pizza slice from the parlor down the block or

liking the same musician and talking about their upcoming releases. As they got older, the

brutality of the world crept into their bonding sessions. The conversations became less about

which guys they had a crush on and more about how they were degraded by their superiors at

work and school or how they had to walk around the block for endless amounts of times before

walking home to shake off the creepy men who followed them. The world became dirtier and

both walked the line, with Tina always being in front to guide her smaller cousin with the little

flame her body could muster up. As Khadijha walked into the apartment, she almost fell from the

bombastic greeting that Tina only showed to her in their comfortable abode.

“Thank god you're home!” Tina had relievingly cried as she playfully wrapped her arms

around khadijha.

“ I almost thought you were gonna leave me in this shitshack all by myself.”

The building that their apartment had belonged to barely provided the bare necessities.

The pipes and radiators had half heartedly worked just like the HUD office workers they

complained about the problems they had faced. But when the response times on the phone got

longer and longer, they learned to improvise with gallon bottles of water and electric heaters

they got from a guy Tina knew. Like everything else in the world, they only had themselves to

rely on. Their desires for outside help were nothing but frivolous to those who already had the

necessities.

“The trains were bad. It was for a long time too.” Khadijah has exasperated as she

dropped off her worn and stitched bookbag near the front door.

“Some kid was probably subway surfing and turned into sludge or something.”

“Well you’re here. Now come get your plate of food.” Tina said as she ushered Khadijah

to the table.

“Tonight’s spaghetti but I attempted to make garlic bread to go with it too!”

It was times like this that Khadijha had appreciated her cousin’s culinary attempts, even

if it didn’t land on target. With all the disruption that has happened in Khadija's life, Tina never

failed to try and bring some normalcy to their abode whenever she could. As she brought over

the pot with the pan of bread sitting on top of the table, Tina quickly unpacked everything and

made khadijha’s plate. With every tap of the messy tongs placing red sauced pasta on the glass

plate, Khadija noticed peppers of bruises on Tina’s arm that weren’t there before. Tina had

started working as an exotic dancer around three years ago down at a gentlemen's club on

Pennsylvania Ave. It wasn’t ideal work at an ideal spot but it was a better payout than dealing

with the ungrateful customers for minimum wage. Plus, Tina had expressed enjoyment with

working with the other girls there. But it didn’t mean that they didn’t have their fair share of

disgruntled Johns who quickly became mad if they didn’t get the attention from the girl they

wanted. Usually, Tina couldn’t wait to make them and their shenanigans the topic of

conversation for dinner every night before her shift. For her to not even be itching to talk about it

worried khadijha. But she knew better than to question Tina on matters like that. Even though

they were closer than most cousin’s were, she knew that Tina appreciated some of her privacy

to be for her mind only. Before Tina could finally sit down to make her own plate of food, Tina’s

phone started to ring. It was a number with a code that neither girls could recognize being from

the city. However, Tina still answered the phone in their bedroom that was far across from the

dining table. Khadijha wanted to wait for her cousin to finish the call but the r\avenous hunger

that she felt in her stomach commanded her brain to dig in regardless of her absence.

In the midst of swallowing down the warm, flavorful noodles with periodic chomps of the

garlic bread, she looked up from her plate to the pale face of her cousin. She proceeded to

awkwardly stop eating.

“What’s up with you? You look as white as a ghost.” Khadijha softly jokes to break the

coldness Tina's face brought into the room.

With a seeming loss for words, Tina tried to wrap her face into the familiar one that she

knew her little cousin would best respond to but it wasn’t morphing into the one that she wanted.

Instead it morphed into one of ingenious genuinity that led her to eventually look away at a loss

for what to do.

“K, your mom called.”

Khadijha’s face joined Tina’s in the blankness. In the space of things that were thought to

not be possible and to never come into tangible fruition, everything about the call had broken

that rule.

“What did she want?” Khadijha asked with the same blankness, still trying to grasp how

a part of her life that she had pronounced dead resurrected itself back into her life.

“She wanted to let me know that she was back in the city.” she said, only making contact

with her plate on the table.

“She was also wondering about how you were doing.” also said Tina, with a little glimmer

of hope that it would’ve at least cheered Khadijha up to the reality of her mother returning.

“I hope you kept her wondering” khadijha said matter of factly. She stood from the table

to put away the rest of her dinner. It was safe to say that the surprising news had spoiled her

appetite.

“K, you can’t keep this grudge forever hun.”

“Why not? Why is a daughter not supposed to be mad that her mom left her for a bum

and a dream on the west coast?”

“I know K but we both know Jean already.” Tina pleaded reassuringly as got closer to

Khadijha.

“Her head wasn’t right but she tried, it’s just that she lost it at the worst time.”

Khadijha’s eardrums became filled with cement to the growing list of excuses Tina had

made for her mother’s absence. This wasn't the first time Khadijha was hearing these

testimonies on a version of her mom she never remembered existed. At small family gatherings,

aunties, uncles, and family friends alike never failed to hound her with questions if she could get

ahold of her mother or pleas for her to understand that her mother hasn’t had the easiest

childhood and that it changed the way her brain worked. It was words that a nineteen year old

Khadijha could understand but a 13 year old K was too hurt and too busy pleading for the

presence of her mother to sympathize. The last time Khadijha had seen her mother was during

the first quarter of her seventh grade school year. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the

exact month. Neither did she care too. All the little fragments that she couldn’t sweep from her

mind about that day had entailed her coming home from school to an empty apartment with an

envelope on the table. It was filled with five hundred dollars and a blue inked pen drawing a

smiley face next to the phrase ‘Luv u’ on the inner part of the flip seal. Her mother’s absence

wasn’t anything unusual at the time. Jean’s presence had always been a revolving door for the

entirety of Khadijha’s life. Everytime she had let the flattering words from a man she had just

met swoon her into a higher reality, her vessel as a mother slowly depleted from khadijha’s life.

It often stayed like this until she was no longer the object of desire for a new beau. It was only

then that she would crawl back into the embrace of the role as a mother to replace the

emotional unavailability that was given to her by her lovers. The cycle had started itself over and

over again throughout various times of Khadijha’s childhood. In the meantime, she learned how

to stretch the crumbs of devices she was left with while her mother roamed in the land of

adoration. Microwaved canned soup, public broadcasting, and the basic skills of cleaning were

all remnants of what her mother’s absence had been like. But Khadijha always knew it was only

a matter of time before she came back. Sometimes it was days, sometimes it was weeks. Two

weeks at max. However, that day with the envelope felt different. The lingering presence of Jean

had no longer felt tethered to the home they shared. In fact, it felt as if a soul had not

contaminated the apartment with liveliness. It seemed as if this last man had finally cut the cord

from her for good. When Khadijha had expressed these concerns to the elders in her family, the

empty reassurances of how her mother would be back soon or that she should hold for a little

longer came in floods over the crackling landlines soon to be cut from the overdue phone bill. If

Khadijha had not taken the risky decision of calling Tina for the tiny chance, she would’ve still

been stuck in the bubble of delusion that her mother would be back for her soon. However, this

fragile hope wasn’t a delusion anymore. Her mother had finally returned and wanted to insert

herself a picture that was trashed years ago.

The next morning, Khadijha retraced her steps back into the land of facade during her

daily commute to the Plaza. As hard as she tried to become entranced by the melodic song

“Eyes Without a Face” by Billy Idol, her mind ran its own consciousness in wondering what her

mother was doing back in New York. Did she want money? Was Jean looking to bum off of her

only child? Was what’s-his-face with her? All the usual skew of questions had been pinned for

inspection by a girl who was abandoned by her only parental figure on the cliff of puberty.

Khadijha thoroughly believed that her mother had come with a well thought out agenda in her

luggage. Probably ready to put on and perform with the mask of sympathy for the monetary

gifts.

When Khadijha had reached the front entrance of the hotel, trucks of foldable white

tables and flowers reminded Khadijha of a very important event that was being put on at the

hotel. If she had to guest, it was either a wedding or one of those galas rich people had thrown

to periodically strut their wealth or to cover up some major wrongdoing on their behalf. The

turbulent news from yesterday had knocked that information right out of her head but she wasn’t

one to show her woes on the job. She proceeded to the faculty locker rooms to change into

uniform. She smoothed out the wrinkles for her blue branded maid uniform to prepare for a day

scrubbing the ills of the rich along with cleaning up the garbage that came from their myriad of

nightly escapades.

Usually while she cleaned, her headphones emitted a rotation of songs from the police,

Billy Idol, Madonna, and other artists with songs that can help ease the mental burden of being

a shitpicker for people brackets above her. As the last song proceeded to play after Khadijha

finished cleaning room number twelve on the tenth floor, a scene between a mother and young

girl had broken the visual pattern of spatial disorganization that she had been subjected to for

the last few hours. Khadijha couldn’t really hear what the mother was saying the young girl as

Blondie’s “Rapture” was blaring through her eardrums but it was pretty evident that the

conversation wasn’t something endearing. The mother’s face had turned red and was agitatedly

pointing to a large stain on the child’s expensive, glimmering dress. The scolding had

emphasized the mother’s screeching crow’s feet and smile lines as the girl’s soft, full face

became red from the tears it produced.

Even though Khadijha was no stranger to drama that involved her wealthier, pale

counterparts, this specific incident had triggered a memory that had invaded the tightly meshed

cranium of Khadijha. When she was five, she had gotten christened at a church that was

frequently attended by her grandmother on lexington ave. This ceremony was supposed to be

performed at most months after she was born but her mother had never placed the priorities of

organized religion high on her list. However, the constant urging and nagging from her

grandmother to her mom eventually led to the rare event of her mother caving. On the blistering

day in July, Khadijha had seen her mother speed through the maze of chaos that had been

curated in preparation for her christening. After getting dressed, her mom had sat her on their

couch that was relatively a little high for a short Khadijha at the time. From the barrage of phone

rings to a pile of her mother’s clothes that had been vetted as not fit for the holy arena filled with

their family that Sunday, the stress had been clearly sensed by a juvenile Khadijha that morning.

However, she was suddenly overcome with the urge to pee. She would usually ask her mom to

help her with the bathroom, episcally now with the fluffy white dress that she was placed in this

morning. But, her mom’s hecticness and advised her against the action. Instead, she carefully

plunged off the couch to independently relieve herself in the bathroom. What resulted was a

small but obvious rip in the seam of her tights. A wave of fear had rushed over khadijha and

before she knew it, her mother had run over to investigate the thump that she had heard from

her bedroom. Small khadijha had miniscule welts of tears in her eyes from the feeling that

something went wrong. But instead of a switch or a brigade insult, her mother had brought over

a bottle of clear cutex and a load of kisses to ease the visual and emotional results of one

Khadijha’s inaugural attempts of independence. No loudness, no switches, no hitting. It had just

been a clean and clear swipe of cutex over the rip in her tights as mama had rubbed Khadijha’s

twisted hair. However, her flashback quickly ended as soon as the mother had realized that

Khadijha was watching her in a trance. She had quickly picked up her daughter and scoured off

into another more private corner of the floor. Khadijha had also realized own visual intrusion and

returned back to work, but this time with a more somber epiphany on the situation within her life

at the moment. How many of these small but loving moments did she have with her mom? How

many were locked or thrown away by her abandonment? Khadijha wanted to snap out of it.

Even though those snappy moments couldn’t replace the amount of hurt and emptiness she

was to swim in by Jean’s abandonment, the unfilled little girl within Khadijha couldn’t help nudge

at the idea that maybe mama wanted to finally come back for her. To rub her head once again

and fix the rips that she had caused by leaving as she had once done before.

At her break, Khadijha decided to briskly walk to and back from the local deli to pick up

her lunch to replenish her body before fulfilling the last half of her shift for the day. As she

crossed the street back to the hotel, she stopped in her tracks as soon as she hit the sidewalk.

The world began to slow down around as the figure who has harassed her mind for these many

years has finally showed up in the flesh: Jean. Before Khadijha’s body could viscerally repulse,

Jean’s calloused hands and wrinkled jacket had wrapped around her estranged daughter’s

body.

“Hi baby,” Jean cooed as she still heartedly embraced Khadijha, burying her head into

her daughter’s neck.

“Before you asked, Tina told me where you worked so I stopped by as soon as I could to

see you.” Jean had pulled back a little. At this angle, Khadijha could get a better look at her

mother's now middle aged face. But she looked as if she was aged by more than time as her

small facial bruises and pock marks would suggest.

“Twelve is the time you working folk go to lunch, no?”

“Yea but I got fifteen left on mine.” Khadijha detachedly responded.

“Oh shot,” Jean’s face slowly turned into a frown from the verbal non chalantness her

daughter had expressed.

“Well, I’ll be in town for a while but really I wanted to come by and give you something”

Jean had wrangled through her pockets of forgotten receipts and dirty tissues that she had

collected over the years. She then joyfully fished out a cloth tied to opposite corners of each

other to form a soft, flat pyramid.

Khadijha was hesitant but her body had betrayed her and still accepted the physical

gesture from her mother. Then they stood there for a moment, Eye to eye. The meeting of their

corneas had been like connecting the pipes of an infinite abyss of their history. To rawly melt into

each other despite wanting to run away from a pain that they both knew but was too big for any

of them to clearly name. They stood on it in the streets of Midtown and smelt it in every breath

they took in the city. The world had put them there to once again linger together, in the unique

pains they both had shared.

“I never stopped thinking of you, you know?” Jean had admitted with vulnerable eyes

that was drastically different from the whimsical attitude she had been remembered for

originally.

“I wish I did.” Khadijha had died and Pandily responded, trying to hold back the gates of

pain that she buried deep within herself.

During the last fifteen minutes of her shift, she finally came to the beach to the same

grungy ledge with the same, dwindling cigarette. While she was looking down upon the moving

parts of the city as she always did. Khadijha had become curious about the compartment of

what was actually in the cloth that her mother had given her. After she smothered her cigarette

on the ledge, she carefully took out the tied up cloth and started to unwrap it. She stood for a

moment. In the nuzzled into the wrinkles of the cloth was a necklace that she thought she would

never see again. The silver chain had gained quite a bit of rust while still holding onto a charm

that retained the shape of half a heart. It was one of the few things Jean had gifted to a young

khadijha before she left. Khadijha then realized that it was one of the things that she was

looking for while she packing to move in with Tina but the search was to no avail until now.She

was actually shocked that through the years of chaos and dysfunction that Jean had left in her

wake, her mother held onto the one thing that she that was just an empty gesture to soothe her

cries of loneliness for mama.

Khadijha began to rub the old chain between the pads of both her thumb and index

fingers, taking in all the years of wear that it had sustained from being on Jean’s person on the

West Coast. The rubbing had gone on for about five minutes but Khadijha didn’t know why.

Maybe it was the only time she could unabashadley embrace her mothers presence as a

pacifier for a crying baby. Maybe it was to desperately connect to a time when she didn't call her

mom’s neglect neglect. Whatever it was, all the faces Khadijha had known about her mother

had started to hit her at once. When she looked up from the necklace, she no longer just saw

the purple sky. Instead, she saw the subtle gradients of orange, blue, and red that had

accompanied the protruding color as well. The world no longer felt like layers horizontally

stacked upon each other. Every version of everyone and everything had placed themselves into

a room of life, waiting for something or someone to be an undying audience to their

juxtapositions. In the blurry reflection of the rusty half heart, Khadijha too started to see

fragment images of her own face split in different ways as well.