The Missing Pieces Of An All American Girl

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

At first, adjusting to life at my uncle’s home wasn’t easy. Although I wanted a new start, letting go of my past wasn’t easy. My aunt and uncle bought me a brand-new phone to help me on my fresh start. They randomly checked my phone three days out of a week to make sure that I wasn’t involved in any “unlawful activities,” as my aunt had put it. That included having social media accounts and of course contacting my old friends and Jamie. There were plenty of rules such as having two sets of shoes; one pair for indoors and another pair for outdoors. We had to eat all three daily meals together at the dining room table, participate in daily religious studies, go to the mosque for the weekly sermon, get sixty minutes of daily physical activities, make all five daily prayers under supervision of maids, and of course complete our at home studies along with all the group study sessions. My aunt and uncle homeschooled all of their children because they felt that they would be more successful with the one on one attention they received from tutors. Like my parents, they also wanted their children to grow up with certain values that the school system would more than likely take away. I was could truly restart my life. Unlike the homeschooling I did as a child, my cousins were taught completely by tutors and their mother was nearly never around to help them. Marcus and Marie told me that she took a two month break from work after giving birth to baby Aaliyah only because her mother insisted upon it. They said that jidah had wanted her to take off for another month, but Aminah wasn’t having it. The parents of the children took turns supervising the study groups, sometimes Aminah chaperoned when we attended group studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If there was a fieldtrip, then they all took place on Fridays and we had to write essays on what we saw, learned, and did; Aunt Aminah always went.  Other than that she was always at her husband’s medical clinics with he and father serving as the nurse (soon to be nurse practitioner).
Because my aunt and uncle spent most of their time at their four medical clinics, three medical labs, and 3 fitness gyms, they were rarely at home. They were working on one of the biggest medical empires in the United States for the embitterment of humanity and I respected them for doing so. I was very understanding towards their absences considering that they were all about achieving optimal health tailored to each person that came into their doors. These centers were spread throughout the state of Illinois and t were pretty much the best ones you could go to. My uncle was all about reforming health care and along with his team members including my aunt and her father, they were all doing a great job. They conducted researches, health classes to the public, owned low cost clinics, and even educated other health care providers on providing the public with optimal health care. Since Aunt Aminah gave birth to A
Jidah was always left in charge of the household her daughter and her husband were away from the house on business errands. Frankly, she was the heart of the house and ran it when they were present. She made sure that everything was running smoothly as she took care of Aliyah and Munirah with Marie’s help. Before I came accustom to the way the house was ran, I was sure the maids took care of the children as they did in other well to do families, but I was wrong. My uncle and aunt felt that it was the families job as a whole to raise children so that they would be raised with moral and religious values important to the family. As a Pre-Med college student, Marcus was always busy studying or serving as a medical scribe at his father’s local clinic. He followed doctors around the clinic for experiences on the days he was free from studying or helping his grandmother. As a scribe, he took notes of patient’s medical history, order tests, and send patients to other clinics when treatment wasn’t possible within his father’s clinics. Sometimes, I tagged along with Marcus to the clinics to get a glimpse of what it would be like to work in the medical field since it was a field I was considering. Working with Marcus was fun and as we worked together to carry out the demands of nurses and doctors throughout our shifts, we build a strong friendship. Saturdays and Sundays were always free days for my cousins and I. Marcus, Marie, and I did all types of leisure activities such as road trips, fishing, bowling, dining out, and other things. Although I had become close to all of my cousins, Marcus and I were much more than close cousins; we became best friends. For a while, life seemed as if it could only get better, but as we know it, life can take a turn for the worse at any given moment at any given time.
One day while Marcus and I were in the game room playing games on his Wii, Aminah came into the room and said that she needed to talk to me alone. “Can it wait? We’re in the middle of playing tennis,” Marcus said turning from our game. Marcus had taught me how to play tennis on the Wii very well and now I could play nearly as well as he could. His champion title was coming to an end and I was beginning to take over. At the moment, I was winning, and he was getting quite anxious hoping that he could turn the game around and beat me instead since we had agreed that the loser of the game would have to help out at the clinic the upcoming week. “Actually, it can’t,” Aminah said coolly as the screen on the Apple television went blank. “Did you have to do that!” we whined simultaneously as we realized that Aminah had unplugged the television again. As usual, Aminah didn’t bother to respond to our complaints. She gave me the look that was reserved especially for situations in which she felt as if I wasn’t listening to her. The next step was for her to tell my uncle that I was misbehaving so I reluctantly followed her out of the door and left Marcus to plug up the television and restart our game. “The game is still on,” Marcus said as his step mother pulled me out of the door by my wrist. “Walk with me while we have a chat,” she demanded with a kind smile once we stepped into the hallway. She was already far ahead of me and I had to skip ad hop to catch up with her. Volunteering with Marcus at te hospital, I was quite used to being left behind and my sort legs having to keep up. Ameenah had a way of being awfully stern to reinforce her authority and following it with the most gentle smiles after nearly killing you with a glare from her eyes that seemed as if she was staring through your soul. We walked down the overly  the house in utter silence until she finally mustered the courage to tell me that my parents had come to visit me and were staying over the end. Being a teenager trying to run and stay away from home, that was the last thing I wanted to hear after I had spent months building a new life surrounded by new people in a new environment. “Why are they here? Are they here to take me away?” I asked clearly frightened from the expression on my face. “No, they are here to just speak with you darling,” she replied as she kissed my forehead and rested her chin in my hair of untamed curls. That was the first time I had received a motherly kiss in a long time and it felt heavenly. I felt like a young child as Aminah’s slightly taller frame gracefully towered a head above than me with he arms wrapped around in a motherly embrace. She had offered me something so foreign to me that I never realized I was missing until that exact second. She offered me a sense of comfort and love I had once known and forgotten. “When will be here?” I asked to sound interested in the sudden announcement “I think they are here,” she said upon a the ringing from the doorbell. They way she sighed as she announced their arrival sent shivers through my spine and doubts in my mind. Why now, I thought, why now?