Jaffer is back to normal, once again the man who wouldn’t shake my hand when he arrived at our house because he had already washed for prayer. The glassy look has dribbled into gossipy interest, and Lina is absorbed by the dresses and waistlines of our faraway relatives.

It always happens like this: when it comes time for the women to dance, I put them to shame. Even when I was little it happened like that. I don’t know where it comes from, but they know it too—it’s fire. They talk about how bad I am, especially at weddings in the States, because I dance shamelessly where men can see me and not just in front of other women and a camera.

“But if we are all supposed to dance and this is one of the places where mothers see a girl they like and go tell their sons about them, then why is it bad if I dance better than the rest of you?”

“It is not proper to behave like that, like a loose woman,” my mother says.

“But if I’m happy, what’s wrong with that?”

“You shouldn’t show it. Finish.” My mother doesn’t like to argue, which is probably why she didn’t object when I told her I wanted to bring Ginna Simms to Lina’s wedding.

Ginna Simms lives next door to us here in Glendale and is the weirdest mix of Russian and Black and Chinese and Puerto Rican. She is a few years older than me and lives with her old mother and two young sons. She tells everyone that her husband was killed in a car accident, but I know the truth is that he’s a drug addict and not her husband. I also know she goes with a lot of men and watches nasty videos. I know about the videos because I watch them with her sometimes. The first time I saw one, her mother was asleep in her room and the moans and groans were so loud I was sure that it would wake her up.

“She’s deaf, don’t worry,” Ginna said, smiling a smile that made me uncomfortable. “You don’t like it?” she kept asking.

“It’s okay,” I told her.

Then I saw another one and another and I got used to them. Now I don’t mind watching them—some of them, that is. Sometimes Ginna brings ones where there are a lot of people together and close-ups of everything and they are nasty with a capital N. I refuse to watch them, but I like some new ones that are fairy-tale style, where the woman is so pretty and the man is kind of handsome and she is irresistible for him.