“If you’d asked me before, I’d have said no. You’re going to take her an hour away? Or to the other park—two hours away?”

“I wanna go, Mama,” Hanadi says. She wriggles down her aunt’s leg. “Please, please.”

“Never mind. We’ll go for ice cream,” Muneer says. He turns to his sister. “You’ve ruined it. I told you not to say anything.”

“You say ice cream, but I know you’re lying.”

“The shop’s down the street. You know where it is.”

“Don’t fight,” Hanadi says, and Lujayn takes her hand and whispers something to her.

As Lujayn and Hanadi walk across the porch, Saeedah feels her anger like a separate being inside her—a child squirming in her belly or a jinni possessing her. She lunges for Lujayn and grabs her arm.

“Get away from my child!”

Not shocked or scared, Lujayn emanates angry heat. Her full weight rams into Saeedah, who has to catch herself from falling. Hanadi erupts in tears. Muneer takes her in his arms. The meter between them and Saeedah seems like an ocean.

“Lujayn!” Muneer says.

“You saw she came at me. I was trying to take Hanadi from the fighting.”

“Let Lujayn and Hanadi stay outside while we finish talking.” Muneer steps inside, ushering Saeedah into the living room, as though he’s the one who lives here.

Saeedah resents his implication that she’s failed to protect her daughter. Whenever Muneer comes back, these situations slip from her control. Nothing matters but Hanadi’s tears, which sit on her cheeks whole and perfect, tiny reminders of everything Saeedah has ever done wrong as a mother. Through the bay window, she watches Lujayn and Hanadi in the yard, poking sticks in the grass.

“Are you going to keep us from seeing her? The thing we came here to do?” Muneer says to Saeedah. He’s taken his boots off to come inside, left them neatly by the door, their toes and heels lined up perfectly. His socked feet seem too intimate. What’s changed in her? In Jidda, it’s customary to take your shoes off in someone’s home. It’s nothing special. Here, the sight of his shoeless feet on her wool carpet suggests a closeness they’ve lost.

She sits in the rocking chair. The urge to fight has leaked out of her.

“Fine. Take her for ice cream.”

“We’ll be back in an hour.”

She doesn’t believe him.

She has begun to tire of the phone calls. Once a week, during Saturday morning cartoons, he calls, as arranged. Hanadi lies flat on her stomach, legs kicking the carpet beneath her. She keeps her eyes on the black-and-white TV, barely larger than a toaster, that Saeedah bought at Zayre after Muneer took the color set.

Whenever the phone rings, Saeedah gives it to Hanadi without answering it. “Talk to Baba.”