Elm Creek: A Readymade Family, Volume 1

21

TWENTY ONE

By the time sunset and Maghrib had passed, the Scott home was finally clean. The house smelled strongly of antiseptic cleaning detergent; what had been destroyed and could not be fixed had been thrown; everything that had been taken from its place and scattered throughout the rooms had been put away; and the trash had been taken out. Lila had yet to return, and the house was quiet with the exception of the occasional hums and screeches coming from Ibrâhîm.

Hâroon lay stretched out on Ibrâhîm’s bed, thoroughly exhausted, as Ibrâhîm paced the room, humming to himself and occasionally picking up some toy or other of the ones scattered on the bedroom floor to manipulate or play with. Yusrâ was quietly putting together a puzzle. With the exception of a short break he had taken to pray Maghrib, Hâroon had been cleaning nonstop for hours. He had scrubbed, swept, mopped, thrown away, and organized from room to room. Though absolutely exhausted, he was never more grateful that his mother had ensured her sons knew how to keep a house just as well as her daughter. He obviously wasn’t getting any help from his wife—she had yet to return home and he didn’t have the slightest idea where she even was. It was late enough that he was beginning to feel concern overshadow his anger, but he was too tired to make the effort to head out and search for her like he would a wayward, sneaky teenager.

Ibrâhîm started picking up the pieces of the puzzle his sister was doing and began to toss them around the room, hitting the cabinet, the closet door, and the bed frame. He shrieked happily with each sound the impact of wood on wood made. Hâroon knew he should stop him. The puzzle hadn’t been cheap and the pieces could be lost if he let him continue throwing them around. But he couldn’t gather up the energy to do it, so he watched him in resignation, hoping he would be able to find all the pieces later.

“Hey!” Yusrâ complained. “Stop it, Ibby! I was doing that!”

Ibrâhîm didn’t notice his sister’s displeasure. Hâroon hoped a fight wasn’t going to break out. He didn’t have the energy to handle two unhappy toddlers. Thankfully, Yusrâ elected to find herself a book to look at instead of picking a fight with her brother when he paid no attention to her rebuke. She sat quietly on her bed looking at a picture book as Ibrâhîm continued to toss and throw puzzle pieces.

The occupation of the twins and the time he had before he was required to prepare for ’Ishâ allowed Haroon’s mind to wander. It wasn’t long before his thoughts turned to his earlier decision to take on another wife for both his and the children’s sake—nothing proved the need for it more than today, though he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it or how he was going to find the right woman. Back home in the countryside, there had been a close-knit, though small, Muslim community that would make seeking out the right kind of wife easy; it would not be that simple in the city. The Muslims he saw were few and far between with barely any connection between each other, and he had no guarantee of finding out what he needed to in choosing a wife. He sighed in aggravation. Though marrying a second seemed to be the answer to most of his problems, it obviously wasn’t going to be easy to find someone.

The slow click of the lock on the front door, followed by a quiet creak as it opened, an indication of someone sneaking in, ripped Hâroon from his thoughts of the future to the present. Lila had finally returned home. Judging by how quiet she was being, he hazarded a guess that she was trying to slip past him without facing a confrontation on where she’d been the entire day. As tired as he was and as much as he didn’t feel like dealing with her, he knew he couldn’t ignore what she had done. With great effort, he pulled himself up to sit and rose as he swung his legs over the side of the single-sized bed.

“Stay here,” he said to Yusrâ, not wishing her to overhear anything she shouldn’t. “Your mother is back so I’m going to talk to her. ”

“Okay, Daddy,” Yusrâ said, turning a page of her book.