Elm Creek: A Readymade Family, Volume 1

9

NINE

The day of Ya’qoob’s nikkâh fell upon the family in mid-July, about a month after Noorah had accepted Ya’qoob’s proposal. Though it was to be a night of celebration, the excitement Hâroon felt for his brother was dampened by Ibrâhîm’s inconsolable rage that seemed to be ripping apart the house he and Lila shared with the volume of his screams when he was trying to bathe him in the late afternoon for the event.

Hâroon somehow managed to finish washing Ibrâhîm amidst the screams, screeches, and kicks, dry him, and dress him. Then he carried him out of the bathroom and took him to the den, where his sister, already bathed, dressed, was playing.

“Ibby is crying again,” Yusrâ said, looking up at her father. “Don’t cry, Ibby. We can play.” Her voice sounded cautiously hopeful, because she’d noticed as much as Hâroon had that Ibrâhîm didn’t play with her anymore.

Hâroon set Ibrâhîm down beside her in the hope he’d join her, but he was quickly disappointed. Ibrâhîm immediately jumped up from beside his sister and moved to a corner by himself, where he rocked and hummed, shutting everyone out from his bubble of isolation.

Yusrâ sighed.

Across the room, Lila, already dressed and sitting on the couch, stared at Ibrâhîm with an expression of annoyance. “We have to do something about him, Hâroon.”

Hâroon, ignoring her, watched Ibrâhîm helplessly. He didn’t even recognize his son. He was a completely different child than he’d been a few months before. The playful, chattering child he’d been was gone. In his place was a child Hâroon didn’t know and couldn’t understand. He never spoke, and he alternated between periods of quiet solitude and raging tantrums. Just about anything could set him off and Hâroon didn’t know what he was doing wrong or how to fix it.

He was also getting sick quickly and easily, which only made him more irritable than usual. He had chronic diarrhea that Hâroon couldn’t figure out the cause of and was constantly covered in rashes, and once a rash finally seemed to clear up, a new one appeared. Before the changes that had started showing up after his second birthday had passed, Ibrâhîm had always been a robust child who rarely got sick.

None of the doctors he’d seen in the last month since he’d started noticing the alarming changes could pinpoint the problem in either factor—the behavior and development or overall physical health. Ibrâhîm’s original pediatrician had suggested he needed a good thrashing to get him in line to stop the rages. Hâroon had immediately moved his children to Serenity Children’s Hospital after that, but none of the other doctors he’d seen since could help either. They were as mystified as he was over how a happy, quickly developing child could lose all of his skills and turn into the angry, raging child Ibrâhîm had become, nor could they pinpoint the causes of the diarrhea, rashes, and constant illnesses.

Lila was no help at all. When he needed her support and cooperation the most, she did the exact opposite. All she’d been doing the last month was complain about Ibrâhîm. While Hâroon and Ya’qoob, Maryam and Sâlih, and ’Alîyâ and Yahyâ went from doctor to doctor and talked to everyone they knew in desperate search of someone who might know something that could explain what had happened or point them in the direction of someone who could help, Lila seemed to have mostly washed her hands of Ibrâhîm. If there was someone else—anyone else—who could take care of Ibrâhîm in her stead, she was quick to hand him off. Though Hâroon had never thought her as much of an enthusiastic and nurturing mother, the complete opposite of his own, he hadn’t thought she could be so uncaring that she’d hand off Ibrâhîm to anyone she could convince to babysit just because she didn’t want to manage him. She didn’t seem worried at all—just frustrated and annoyed that Ibrâhîm wasn’t acting like she wanted him to.