Ethan Chatagnier - Warnings from the Future

The refrigerator contained so many vegetables that they didn’t all fit in the crisper. Zucchini sat in a plastic bag on the shelf. I picked up a half a bunch of celery, which had gone limp. Two-percent milk. Commercial Greek yogurt. A rotisserie chicken. Margherita pizzas in the freezer. Pistachio ice cream. I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Muslims did not eat pork; the women wore scarves or veils; they prayed in the morning and evening, maybe more, on mats that they faced toward Mecca. And with that I’d exhausted my knowledge of the religion, though for some reason I’d always felt I had a deep, or deep enough, understanding of it.

Peeking into a nook off the dining room, I thought I might see mats laid out on the floor. The room was empty, making me think I was correct about this being their prayer room, but the only mats were hung from the wall like tapestries. On one little delicately engraved table was a group of beaded strings, something like rosaries, but in varied colors. I would have thought they would take those with them, needing them wherever they went. I would understand more soon enough. I didn’t bother with the computer in the office, figuring it would be password protected and not wanting to sit down, to allow time to slip by unnoticed. The entryway had a nicely constructed set of cubbies, mostly filled with shoes. They all had a taste for chic footwear, and while surely they had each departed with a pair on their feet, it must have been hard to leave so many behind. It was no warehouse, but now there was no looking at the sets of shoes without seeing their empty spaces as their defining features.

I should take off my own shoes, I thought, but it seemed too late for that.

In horror films, heading up the stairs can be a fatal mistake. There was a bit of that chill as I took to the steps, though the danger I felt was not a physical one. I felt as if I was about to walk in on the Malik family’s murdered bodies, though I knew I’d seen them drive away not an hour ago. The hallway was quiet and still. Even with the light on, it had a particular emptiness.

But the girls’ rooms were girls’ rooms. The one with clothes on the floor, boy-band posters over an unmade bed, and rumpled lined paper and worksheets spread chaotically around the desk belonged, I assumed, to Safiya, the younger daughter. That would leave as Amina’s room a spotless, well-decorated space, appointed in an adult style. The walls were painted a latte color. An oval mirror in an ornate silvered frame hung above a writing desk. A small jewelry tree sat on the dresser, adorned with a few dangling necklaces and earrings. The one exception to order was an overcrowded bookshelf, with paperbacks stacked sideways on top of the properly shelved books, filling in all the negative space. There was a stack on top of the shelf as well, with library labels on the bottoms of their spines.

The master bedroom was not in a normal state. It did not appear ransacked, but it didn’t look untouched either. Piles of women’s shirts were on the floor in front of a dresser. A pile of pants was on the bed, which appeared to be a California king. I had seen the rooms of messy people—my mother’s side of my parents’ room—and this was distinctly different. An empty duffel bag sat outside a slightly open closet door, looking deflated. Beyond the visual evidence of the Maliks’ life in this room, there was a tour of scents that I believe could have led me through the space if I closed my eyes: sandalwood, soap, jasmine. I was sure the fragrances could be mapped to different parts of the bedroom, but I could not read that map, and so they seemed to me as jumbled as this hastily evacuated chamber.

I opened one of the small top drawers of the dresser: socks. I opened the next drawer. In the front was a pile of women’s underwear, a bit drab, showing too many times through the wash. Behind that was an equal-sized pile of silkier, lacier stuff in a variety of colors. Behind that, but not exactly tucked away, was a sleek purple vibrator. I picked it up by its white plastic handle and held it aloft. Its surface was nearly reflective. I turned it on, and it waggled its long finger at me. I’d never held such a thing before and I didn’t feel comfortable doing so. I turned it off and put it back.

On Mrs. Malik’s nightstand was a book I recognized. My mother had tried to convince me to read it. On its cheesy cover, a mother was standing on the beach, holding her young daughter and looking out at the sea. Elena Ferrante, the cover read. They had left their smartphones in a cluster on the bed, which puzzled me until I thought of the GPS trackers they contained.

It was the bathroom, though, that was in the greatest state of disarray. Socks on the floor, other clothes. In the bathtub were three piles of women’s hair, and though I had not seen their hair uncovered before, except for Safiya’s when she was younger, I knew whom each pile belonged to as easily as if they had been labeled. What is it that makes hair younger? That distinguishes the hair of a woman from the hair of a girl? But I knew that the long, silky pile of black hair was Mrs. Malik’s, and that the two thinner, duller, messier piles belonged to her daughters.

One of the dual sinks was furry with the salt-and-pepper trimmings of Dr. Malik’s beard. The other sink was stained with a maroon hair dye, the open box on its side nearby, empty. In between the two was a just-opened cylinder of styling wax. I could tell it was new because the plastic safety seal was right next to it. Cosmetics were loosely scattered around the counter. All the lids were back on, but they had not been put back in the open case that held a deeper repository of shades and colors. Glinting amid the mess was a simple gold heart-shaped locket on a thin chain. I picked it up to look inside. There were two portraits, one of each girl.

I did not put it down. The redhats would be by in a day or two to go through the place, and I did not want to think of it melted or thrown in the trash, or the pictures replaced with those of two white girls. This was the last I wanted to see of the place. I knew I would not sleep again that night, that I would lie in bed with that feeling in my stomach, and it would not be until sometime in the midmorning that physiological need would wrestle down worry and I, like my mother, would sleep through the day.

I turned off each light as I retreated through the house by the same path I’d entered. I rolled up the garage door quietly and left it slightly open for the cat that did not exist. My house and the Maliks’ house were dark twins in the night, the facades only superficially different. As I walked back inside, I thought of my mother for some reason, and how she was in a different world than I was at the moment, an interior world whose lights never went off, where staff still wandered the halls, sat at the stations, and tended patients, some of whom would be awake as well. I didn’t think anything more about her. I just pictured her there.

As I crossed through the kitchen, the lights flipped on, and I froze where I stood. My father was in the same chair I’d seen him in earlier, watching me. His hand was still stretched out to the light switch next to him. I felt a momentary, reflexive disdain for him, and then a wave of shame for that reaction. He had always judged me. Maybe in the way all fathers judge their sons. Maybe worse. But oh how he was judging me now. From the first moment, his eyes were on the locket that dangled from my fist, as if he’d known where to look. He never met my eyes. I knew he was thinking of the shoes, the dentists. Living under his judgment so long had been like holding up a boot trying to crash down on me. To finally see myself through his eyes—to see what I was holding, to know where I’d been—was like letting it. How I’d judged him, too, and for so long. For his softness, for his aura of defeat. For his preemptive disappointment in me. But now I could see that he was so defeated because he had seen the future. He had seen the future long ago, and now it was here.