“We have hummus!” my mom exclaims, placing a platter down on the table, using the end of it to scoot the apple pie out of the way. And there it is, an impossibly large spread of store-bought hummus, a little dish full of olives, and some poorly chopped-up pita bread.

My heart sinks, and I glance over at Amina. Her mouth is open just a little, and she looks like she’s trying to figure out what to say.

She looks at me, and I shrug. I mean, what am I supposed to do?

“Hey—” I start.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Becker, I, uh, have to make a phone call,” Amina says before I finish anything. She flashes me a glare and walks out of the house, closing the front door behind her.

“I told you that was going overboard,” my dad grumbles, shaking his head.

“Hummus? Seriously?!” I look from my mom to my dad, and my mother has a deer-in-headlights look on her face, like she can’t process what just happened. I get up and walk toward the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Amina is standing in the middle of the tiny street, looking down at her phone, and catches me as I close the front door.

“Told them about me?” she asks, shoving her phone in her pocket. “That’s what they think?”

“Amina, they didn’t mean anything—”

“My family didn’t have some spread for what they assume your white family likes. A green bean casserole or, like, a platter from Panera Bread.”

“That’s not—” I close my mouth and snort, trying so hard not to laugh.

“You think this is funny?” Amina asks.

“Come on, that Panera Bread joke was hilarious. You’re funny.”

Amina digs the toe of her boot into the cobblestone street.

“I’m sorry,” I say, taking a few steps toward her. “They really do mean well, I swear. And I did tell them about you. I talk about you all the time. Every day. They’re tired of it. I’m the sorry one. I’m the one who never wants to talk about why this”—I point at myself and the house and then at her and then just gesture all over the place—“why this might be complicated and weird. My outside doesn’t match the inside. And I can’t help that.”

Amina snorts.

“Oh, now you get to laugh?” I ask.

“Maybe.” She grins. “It’s just like that horrible sandwich of yours. That Gobbler mess?”

“I don’t get it. What about it?”

“On the outside, you’re sure it’s just this one simple thing. A sandwich. And then inside it’s a jumbled mess, stuff that doesn’t belong together. Things you wouldn’t assume based on what you see on the outside.”

“Hey, I am not a sandwich.”

There’s a pause, a silence in the air.

And then we laugh.

Yuna and the Wall

Yuna and
the Wall