We Are All We Have by Marina Budhos

Author:Marina Budhos [Budhos, Marina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2022-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Ammi loves houses.

Sunday mornings I’d hear the jangle of keys and I’d wake to see her standing over me, her freshly showered hair pinned up with a clip. “Come,” she’d say. “We’re going to see some listings.” I’d groan but she was already bustling around the apartment, stuffing her notebook into her big bag, filling a thermos with coffee, packing bags of nuts and sandwiches, and pushing us out the door for open houses.

In the beginning we’d look at places in the boroughs—sometimes, abandoned skinny houses in the farthest reaches of Brooklyn, their aluminum siding falling off, concrete stoops broken, garbage overflowing in the cans. Another time, a two-family in Queens with a carved aluminum gate and a satellite dish on the roof, where she wound up chatting in Urdu with a neighbor who told her about the family that was selling. Now and then, we’d do a fancy brownstone neighborhood and we’d have to wait behind people who filed up the stoop. Once inside, eyes shining, Ammi would admire the sleek kitchens and bleached wood floors; the carved pier mirror where someone had hung one hat, just so; the tasteful bedrooms with sun streaming through folded back shutters.

“What do you think, Rania?” she’d ask.

“It’s okay.” I knew we couldn’t afford any of it.

Ammi always told me how much they’re worth—That one’s three mil, she’d say. And look at that one. It’s got two rentals so they’d clear nine thousand easy, that covers a lot of your mortgage. Though Sunset Park you can get one for a million and a half. That’s where the white people are coming, so it’s a better investment.

“A two-family,” she’d murmur. “Yes, that’s the way to go.”

“Uh-huh,” I’d mumble.

Sometimes I think that’s what frustrated Ammi the most: that she couldn’t get a hold of something and make it grow. There was a time when she signed on to an herbal supplement scheme—bottles and bottles were stacked up in our closet while she tried to sell it to everyone we knew. In the end she was out several hundred dollars, and Kamal and I had to go without new sneakers for a season. But then she was on to the next idea—Uber, while studying to be a real estate agent.

When I think of those Sundays, when we’d return, to our neighborhood, our building, with its scrappy garden in the front, and our little apartment, where the hallway smells and the bulbs blink over the bathroom sink—maybe we weren’t running toward her dream but also away from something I have yet to figure out.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.