Faded

"Christopher" is home. All the couches are pushed back against the walls and there is plastic on the floor. Nadia’s family brought their maid to help our own two and "Carmela" runs from room to room, hijab billowy and sheer in her wake. The room is full and children are crying screaming running eating; hands tied together or pants falling down. Men on the left. Women on the right. Too blatant to really even deem mentioning. This aunt and that aunt and the other are round and brown with deliberate brows and housedresses in chartreuse and olive or cerulean and indigo. Bright bright with gaudy CZs and gold bracelets and hijab with floral prints that contrast so violently to their dresses that they nearly match. When the men return from the mosque, dinner has been set up on the buffet by "Melphi" and the others. "Carmela" ushers "Roe" (another SIT student) and I back over to the chair-less side of the room because the “men are coming”. Twenty-some beautiful, polite, intelligent, capable women sit beside one another on ornamental rugs and tile, gossiping about Nadia and telling Hamdoon to get away from the light socket, while their counterparts retrieve piles of piping-hot food from the dark wood table. Five minutes. Ten minutes. We wait until they have served themselves, and some have had seconds, before we are invited to the table.
9:54 and nearly everyone has gone home. I go down the three stairs to my room and close the door. Then I lock it. As silly and crass and raunchy and homey as I can manage, I turn up my Wayne so I can just hear him above the hum of the air conditioning.

your money man it’s just so timeless,
and I’m in the mood to get faded, so please bring your finest,
and what are all your names again, we’re drunk, remind us,
are any ya’ll into girls like I am, let’s be honest

Right on, kiddo. Good night.