I tried to explain what happened to my mother, but she wouldn’t listen and I felt so bad at my being so stupid for going in the street and for making Hanan get hurt and for making my mother hate me that I cried. My mother picked up the bike and walked with it in front of me, sometimes turning around to yell how stupid I was or to give me a loud stare. I wished it had been me who had fallen so hard, because for sure Hanan was going to die and it would be my fault for being so stupid to brake when I did.

Hamdi and Fay were very nice to me and told me not to worry about Hanan, that she was fine and that, no, the bike would not be sad. Sometimes it’s best to be wary of people who can see things. . . .

I didn’t see Hanan for a few days. All I could think about was her crying and the blood she had all over the place and how she was probably dead now and that I had killed her. One morning, my mother told me that we were going to Hanan’s house to see how she was doing.

“I have to bring her something to apologize with.”

My mother stared at me but said nothing.

“I’ll take the bike.”

“You may not give her your bicycle. That was a present to you from your uncle Hamdi and from Auntie Fay.”

“I don’t care. She has to have it because it’s my fault. I can’t ride it anymore. I won’t go if I can’t take the bicycle.”

But my mother surprised me. “We will not go then.”

And we didn’t. I kept my bicycle and after a few days I couldn’t figure out why I had wanted to give it to Hanan in the first place. I still rode it on the little drive by our house and the other kids came over to ride it too. Hanan didn’t come to play for a couple of weeks, even though her mother told my mother that she was just fine, just scared by all the bleeding, especially between her legs. My mother explained that there are some places that have lots of blood in them, so they make an injury look worse than it is. “Between your legs is one of those places,” she told me. “It’s not a good place to have an accident.” Hanan didn’t have any injuries besides that, only scrapes and scratches.

One funny thing was that her mother saved her bloody underpants and wrapped them in a newspaper from the day we had the accident “so when she gets married, she‘ll have proof that she’s a girl,” which I didn’t really understand.