What We Learned Along the Way Read Free Page B

to put her in her place, but a bigger part was that she
secretly admired Aliya for being so strong and independent. Aliya
never worried about what others thought of her and didn’t spend her
life trying to impress people. She was free to be herself.
    Though she was the youngest in the group, she
was the first to have her own place. It was decorated so nicely
that you wouldn’t think a 20-year-old lived there. It looked more
like a swanky apartment that belonged to a 30-something fashion
designer or maybe an up-and-coming artist. It was full of color and
texture. Jaime loved all the art on the walls. Her favorite was her
framed black and white picture of Ella Fitzgerald.
    Jaime dreamed of having her own place, but
her parents wouldn’t hear of it. They wanted her to stay home until
she got married. If she was as bold as Aliya, she would have told
them she was an adult who could take care of herself. She would
have said it would be good for her to step out on her own and start
to establish her own life instead of having it dictated to her. She
would have told them getting a job and making her own decisions
wouldn’t make her a bad Muslim, but she couldn’t say any of that,
not to their faces anyway. Sometimes she felt so trapped that she
wanted to scream.
    While Jaime sat on the couch and imagined
what it would be like if Aliya’s apartment where her own, everyone
else raided the fridge. “Take anything you want,” Aliya yelled from
the bedroom. Mariam and Malikah were already busy feasting on
pizza, chips, cookies and ice cream.
    “I really shouldn’t be eating this,” Malikah
said between bites. “I’m trying to lose 20 pounds, so I can be
skinny like yall.”
    “For what?” Mariam asked with her hand in the
potato chip bag. “You have a cute body. Why are you obsessed with
losing weight?”
    “Because I’m sick of being fat.”
    “You obviously haven’t memorized the house
rules,” Aliya said as she came into the kitchen. She had changed
into a pair of sweat pants and an oversized tee. Even then, she was
beautiful. “In my house, we don’t talk negatively about others or
ourselves. We only talk about how fabulous we are and how all the
men love us!” Aliya laughed as she grabbed a bottle of water from
the table and sat down with her friends. “No, seriously, though,”
she said softly as she put her arm around Malikah. “Don’t ever
doubt how beautiful you are. You are always comparing yourself to
us, but the man you’re going to marry won’t want a woman that looks
like us. He’ll want you.”
    “And how do you expect to attract a good man
if you don’t even like yourself?” Mariam added.
    While the other girls talked, Jaime was
quite. Finally, someone noticed.
    “Why are you so quiet, Jaime?” Mariam asked.
It wasn’t normal for her to pass up a chance to talk about herself
in front of everyone else.
    “Oh, no reason.”
    “She’s probably scared her parents will find
out she’s been listening to music with us pants-wearing heifers,”
Malikah joked. Jaime remained quiet. Malikah knew then something
was wrong. The Jaime she knew would never take a shot from her
without firing back an acidic response.
    “Talk to us, Jay. What’s wrong?” Aliya asked.
Jaime looked around at her friends. Then she put her head down and
began to cry. They were all shocked. They hadn’t seen Jaime cry
since she was 7 and accidently ate a piece of ham.
    “Do you ever feel like you’re suffocating?
Like you literally can’t breathe? Like you’re standing in a room
full of people trying to yell at the top of your lungs, but no
sound is coming out?” She paused for a second to catch her breath.
“Aliya, look at you. You’re younger than all of us and you’ve done
so much for yourself already. And you,” she said, turning to
Mariam, “you’re so driven, so dedicated.” Then she turned to
Malikah. “Even you, Malikah,” she had to think for a second for
something to say about her, “I know