Pillow Talk

13.

"You were barely even drunk. I saw you give the focus the rest of your drink." Muhammad stood at the edge of my bed and occasionally would take the covers off my feet and tickle them to my dismay.

"I don't think it's a hangover head ache. More like a stupidity head ache." I pulled the cover over my face and groaned. "I just can't believe I actually did that. To my own dad."

The bed sank down as Muhammad climes in the covers with me. "I know what will make you feel so much better." He peeled the cover off my face and smirked at me. "We could both take a 30 minute drive to a little sleepy town named Jeffenson and talk to a middle age Muslim woman who will most definitely ask you many questions about your personal life like when did you get your period and what your favorite backstreet boy is." Muhammad brushed a piece of hair away from my face and smiled. "But she's making falafel, so I think it's worth it."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world. Let me just get dressed."

"Perfect, because she makes way too much food and gets mad when I don't eat all of it."

---

We sped on the almost empty highway, sunglasses perched on our noses to protect us from the sun. Every so often, I would look over at Muhammad, his eyes were focused on the road and when someone would cut him off, his brows would furrow and he would mutter something in language I didn't understand.

I loved the way the air rushed in my curls and that when you closed your eyes, you would feel like you were almost flying. I wanted to live in this moment forever. I wanted this for as long as I loved and a little more even. But all things seem to end. We arrived to his mothers house, everything was clean cut, not a single leaf out of place. We pulled into an already open garage door.

"Maybe she was already expecting us. That's a little weird." We both got out of the car and Muhammad was about to that the garage door controller when his mother suddenly rushed into the garage.

"Do not close that." She was dressed in a beautiful dress that swept the ground gracefully. All the colors went together in harmony, colors that you wouldn't think would go together. A few black hairs were peeking through her head scarf and I could tell she was flustered. "Please do not close that. Please." She walked over to where Muhammad and I stood and took the controller down from the wall.

"I thought that you were coming later, your uncle was going to come over and clean it off before you came here." Her arm was slightly shaking, her eyes kept shift back from her son to outside.

"Mom, what's wrong?" Muhammad gently placed an arm on her shoulder and ducked his head so that he was eye level with her. A foreign language rolled off his tongue sweetly and swiftly. She replied in a language that is didn't know either. His mom placed the controller in his hand and we all walked outside, he looked over at me and mouthed, "I'm sorry."

Muhammad lightly tapped the garage controller to reveal a sloppy scrawl written in black spray paint. "Go back towel head".

"I have been apart of this community since I was 20 years old. I took care of these people children for years for free. I gave these people music lessons for free. I gave these people a safe haven when things went bad at their home. I've been a pillar to this community since I first came here. I don't understand why they would do this." Muhammad's mom fingers started to play with a loose string from her head scarf and closed her eyes.

"Ever since they gave Trump that freaking microphone, people think that's it's okay to say whatever the hell they want. People think that it's okay to go around and say these things to me. I am apart of this community." She brought the sleeve of her shirt and whipped a tear that was forming in her eye. "They can't just do this."

I walked over to the side of the house while Muhammad was comforting his mother and grabbed the house and turned it on. I walked back to the front of the house and sprayed the garage door until the hurtful words were nothing but black dye floating down the driveway and into the street. "I just couldn't look at it anymore." I whispered to them.

Muhammad's mom nodded her head and slammed her eyes shut. "I'm sorry that I'm not being a good host. Can we just please do this another day? A day before you leave for Berkeley? I just want to go back to bed and sleep for awhile." Muhammad mother picked up her skirt, the end of it turning wet from the water.

"Of course. Are you sure you don't want me to say with you for a little while? I can if you want me to. It's no problem."

"No, I'm just tired now. And I don't want a word of this to your sisters. They're already so worried about me since your father passed on. Just please, nothing to them."

We said our goodbyes and exchanged hugs and we were back on the road. Everything was quiet and no one dared to move. The only sounds was the sounds our lone motor as we breezed through the now empty street. We were almost half way back to LA when Muhammad drove to the side of the road, he turned off the motor and put his head on the steering wheel. His breath became ragged and tears began to splatter onto his lap.

"I just don't know what to do sometimes. It's a lot more complicated then just moving my mother some where else, or finding the people that wrote that on he garage door because there are ton more people that will just go around and say those things. I learned from a very young age that people can be so cruel to people that are different from themselves."

Muhammad had never cried in front of me, and it was difficult to see that. Of course I had been discriminated against, many time even. But to see what had been written on that wall made me want to scream and yell and fight. But I knew that none of it would ever help.

"As long as these people walk around, and say whatever the hell they want, my mom will never be safe. As long as people still have that horrible littlte nugget in their mind that makes them hold their purse a little tighter when I walk by. Or makes them wait for another elevator when they see me, there will never be peace."

We drove in silence.