Page 220 - A Woman Is No Man

“Should I have gone around advertising it? Tell me, what good would it
have done? The news had already disgraced our family name, but I tried to
shelter you! I didn’t stand by and do nothing. I tried to stop it from ruining

your lives! Don’t you understand?”
“No, I don’t!” Deya shouted. “How can you expect me to understand
something like this? None of it makes any sense. Why would he kill her—
murder the mother of his children, his wife?”
“He just—he just . . . he lost control.”
“Oh, so you thought it was okay that he beat her? Why didn’t you do
something?”

“What was I supposed to do? It’s not like I could’ve stopped him!”
“You could’ve stopped him if you wanted to!” Fareeda opened her
mouth, but Deya cut her off. “Why did he kill her? Tell me what
happened!”
“Nothing happened,” Fareeda lied. “He was drunk, completely out of
his mind. That night, I heard him screaming from upstairs. I found him on

the floor, shaking beside your mother’s body. I was terrified. I begged him
to leave before the police came. I told him to pack his bags and run, that I
would take care of you all. But he just looked at me. I don’t even know that
he could hear me. And the next thing I knew, the police were at my door,
saying they’d found my son’s body in the river.”
“You tried to cover for him?” Deya said in disbelief. “How could you
cover for him? What’s wrong with you?”

Fareeda chided herself—she had said too much. Deya was staring at her
in horror. She could see pain in her granddaughter’s eyes.
“How could you cover for him after he killed our mother?” Deya said.
“How could you take his side?”
“I did what any mother would’ve done.”
Deya shook her head in disgust.

“Your father was possessed,” Fareeda said. “He had to be. No man in
his right mind would kill the mother of his children and then kill himself.”
Adam was out of his mind. She had no doubt about this. After the police
had come and told her what Adam had done, Fareeda had sat on the porch,
dumbfounded, staring out into the sky, feeling as though it had collapsed on
her. She thought back on all her years with Adam, from his birth one hot
summer day as she squatted in the back of their shelter to years later, when

they’d made it to America and Adam had helped them run the deli, working