“Pick something,” Rasheed said to Aziza. Aziza hedged, stiffened with embarrassment. “Hurry. I have to be at work in an hour.”
Aziza chose a gum ball machinethe same coin could be inserted to get candy, then retrieved from the flap door coin return below.
Rasheed's eyebrows shot up when the seller quoted him the price.
A round of haggling ensued, at the end of which Rasheed said to Aziza contentiously, as if it were she who'd haggled him,
“Give it back. I can't afford both.” On the way back, Aziza's high spirited facade waned the closer they got to the orphanage.
The hands stopped flying up. Her face turned heavy. It happened every time.
It was Laila's turn now, with Mariam pitching in, to take up the chattering, to laugh nervously,
to fill the melancholy quiet with breathless, aimless banter.
Later, after Rasheed had dropped them off and taken a bus to work,
Laila watched Aziza wave good bye and scuff along the wall in the orphanage back lot.
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down
and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.
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