The Dream Bumper

Chapter 4

Days to follow I was determined to find a job. The idea of working in a restaurant soon found its way out of my priority list of the places I wanted to work at, thanks to Fraser.

Saying Hello on the phone had soon grown old since the days after quitting Caesar’s, I took to newspapers to find vacancies and made numerous phone calls, only to be told, “…the opening has been filled” or  “…we’re not hiring,” when damn right they advertised those openings to the public. The worst part of the telephone enquiry came down to when I wanted some information about the job advertised, the lines almost immediately went dead.

I huffed and puffed in frustration. Enough was enough to wallow in my misery. I made a thoughtful decision to stump the streets of important towns and the city to possibly find something; just anything, which would keep me busy, out of the suffocation and boredom of sitting at home and the constant nagging of my sister-in-law.

Takuya, I thought, came to assist Ma during her mourning period and as the first daughter-in-law of the family, the family had high expectations. But what I thought never really mattered when she did whatever she liked, talk back at Ma however she liked, treated me badly with swear words anytime she feel liked and Mahmoud kept silent over it. Damn right, she even had Mahmoud tugged at the edge of her wrapper.

No day pass by without her taunts either directed to me or twisted in such a way that I wouldn’t know who she was referring to, but her true colours were known to everyone. Ma said nothing of her misconducts. Aziz tried as much as possible to be out of the house before twilight, only to return well after midnight.

A home where once everyone gathered for dinner or lunch, talking about almost everything of interest, teasing and sharing wisdom, but now you hardly see anyone around to chat with much less eat together as a family.

Aziz came home early a week before I started varsity, at around nine at night, passed my room and came around. He had bags under his eyes as though he hadn’t sleep for days now. It amazed me the plethora of assignments, research and studies medical students have to devout to getting their degrees and my brother was no exception. He had no time for smoking, playing video games or chasing after girls. But the last part changed as he seemed to loosen up a bit and now that Papa wasn’t here to monitor his decorum, Aziz changed girlfriends every month. Zahra for a month, the next month, Katy and the next…I lost count of how many and couldn’t definitely remember all of their names.

“Hey… why ain’t you sleeping yet?” asked Aziz, as he stood by my door. He leaned on the doorframe, hand pulled up to hold the edge of the door. A familiar body perfume spread through my room and my suspicion rose. A female perfume on his shirt, a red lipstick at the corner of his collar, missing buttons on his shirt- that explained a lot.

 “I’m unable to sleep,” I said honestly, as my thoughts were all over the place and nothing seemed to make sense. At least, I’d the room to myself now since Fatim had to move to another room across mine but I missed her by my side when we used to do pillow fighting, at the end of which I could barely move my legs to my bed as my body would be exhausted and yearning for sleep.

Now I missed even that.

He made a face and I cast my eyes down, “is something bothering you?” he asked. I didn’t know how to deal with my problems at this moment, talking about it was ideal but I wasn’t that kind of a person. The only person I confided in was Papa. Ma used to feel jealous of our closeness some times. Papa would make her understand that I would grow up and one day I would be gone to my husband’s house.

I thrust my body up from bed with a novel in my hand, placed it on the table and walked to the window. Even the night seemed dull and gloomy. The wind seemed to be resting as the clouds darkened and grew denser in the sky, the lake bereft in warm causing room temperature to rise. The stars retreated farther into heavens, a heavy grunt sound came from the sky and suddenly it became lucid: it was about to rain.