Actually, Siti was the most suspicious and she spread her bad vibes to the rest of us. “He won’t understand our culture,” she’d insisted when she realized that Nadia and Kevin were becoming a serious couple, when they were seen together at every party and event, so conspicuous because of the contrast in their heights and looks.

“Mama,” Nadia would begin to argue and then trail off as if she were too exhausted to continue. She would come to the apartment, sip many cups of dark coffee with my mother, and talk for hours in the kitchen. Sometimes I would join them, but when the conversation became very serious, Mama beckoned for me to leave. Nadia the Elder would apologize with a wink to soothe my insulted feelings.

She married Kevin despite the frown that Siti wore throughout the entire church ceremony. I was actually thrilled for Nadia, but dared not act too exuberant in front of Siti. Things calmed down when Patrick was born two years later and he glittered our lives with his laughter. He was only four years old when Siti died. She told me in a dream weeks later how much she especially hated leaving him. “Promise to spoil him,” she entreated me and I agreed solemnly.

A few months after Siti died, when Patrick was five and newly in school and I was newly in love and Mama had finally stopped wearing black, I noticed that Nadia the Elder had stopped being happy. She rarely smiled anymore and became very protective of Patrick, clinging to him tightly. Often, she showered him with a frightening excess of kisses, so fiercely that a few times he grew uncomfortable, pulling away from her.

I returned home from work one night, having dealt with some hard-to-please clients at the agency. As I climbed the steps and unlocked the door, I thought about my date with George later that night—we were supposed to see a Japanese film at the Ritz Theater. The sound of Patrick’s happy babbling surprised me as I swung open my front door.

My aunt sat at the kitchen table with my mother. They both looked anxious, strained, their thick, dark brows weaved together at the center of their foreheads. “Siham, you’re just as old-fashioned as Mama,” Nadia the Elder was saying. Then they both glanced up and saw me.

“What’s up?” I asked, hesitating in the kitchen’s entrance. My mother had a secret language with her sisters that I, as an only child, did not understand. The rules often had to be spelled out for me simply and clearly.

“Nothing,” they both said, my signal to go upstairs and get ready for my evening out. The expression on their faces was clear enough, so I showered, dressed, and left, slipping Patrick a handful of candy as I made my stealthy exit.

When I came home later, I checked for Nadia’s car on the street, but it was nowhere to be seen. “She’s gone,” I told George, who leaned in for a kiss, just as I glimpsed my mother watching from the second-story window, her face half-concealed by the lacy green curtain. I pushed George away and rolled my eyes upward toward the window. He followed my look in time to see my mother’s silhouette vanish.