After another week of arguing about everything and nothing, yet also enjoying each other’s company even if they didn’t want to admit it, Joni’s doctor’s appointment finally rolled around.
“Was your mother hoping for a boy when you were born?” Joni surprised Nadirah by asking when they were sitting in the waiting room.
An elderly woman overheard the question, exchanged looks with Nadirah, then smiled in amusement as she glanced back down at the magazine she’d been reading.
Nadirah placed her head in her hand at the same time she shook it, somewhat embarrassed. “Joni, where do you come up with these things? And at all the wrong times?”
“Well, now that I know your middle name, I couldn’t help but ask because it’s a boy’s name. It means master in Arabic. It’s so ugly too, compared to your first name, and…”
“And I don’t believe anyone asked you, Miss Blunt and Opinionated.”
Nadirah’s embarrassment was turning to annoyance, and the lady with the magazine was having a harder time hiding her amusement.
After a ten-minute wait, a nurse called them in and weighed Joni.
“She’s only a hundred and five pounds?” Nadirah said.
“Yes, ma’am. Don’t let her lose any more weight.”
“But that’s about what you are, right?” Joni said.
“Wrong,” Nadirah said. “Try one twenty.”
Next, the nurse led them to an examination room, where she took Joni’s blood pressure. “Doctor Smith will be with you shortly,” she said when she was done.
Alone in the room, Joni asked, “When am I going to meet your mother?”
“Joni, be quiet. We’ll play this game later.”
“Not everything’s a game, you know.”
“I said be quiet.”
“Yes, boss.”
A moment later, the door opened, and in came the doctor. “Hi there,” he said with a professional smile, extending a hand to Joni.
Doctor Smith was an average-looking man with an average build and was perhaps in his late thirties.
He sifted through Joni’s file, then said to Nadirah, “She’s insured through you?”
“Yes,” Nadirah said. “Before she fills you in on the main reason she’s here, I’d just like to say that I want her checked out thoroughly. According to her, she hasn’t been to any kind of doctor for ten years.”
“Twelve,” Joni corrected.
Both Nadirah and the doctor smiled, and Nadirah said, “Little Miss Picky here will be quick to correct you if you’re not a hundred percent accurate.”
The doctor smiled, then said, “So no physicals or gynecological appointments of any kind in a long time, huh?”
Joni shook her head. “I just want to know what’s going on with my ear.”
The doctor and Nadirah uttered a quick laugh, and Nadirah said, “She gets impatient at times, too.”
“Okay,” the doctor said. “I can refer her to a GYN if she’d like on the way out. For now, what seems to be the problem with your ear?”
Joni explained about her ear, the surgery she’d had, and the problems she was experiencing at the moment.
“Well, I’m just a general practitioner, and this is certainly out of my league.”
“I figured as much,” Joni said, getting another laugh out of the doctor and Nadirah.
“Sorry for her directness, Doc,” Nadirah said. “See, she has a blog titled My Brain in Print. What she really needs is to carry a sign around saying My Thoughts Out Loud.”
The threesome laughed, then Doctor Smith said, “It’s quite alright.”
“I just meant that I understood that I would have to go through you to see a specialist,” Joni said.
“Oh, I know. But yes, I’m going to have to refer you to someone who knows a lot more about this than I do. Congenital atresia can be a rather complicated thing. What we need to do first is have you sign a Release of Information form allowing Boston to send us a copy of your medical records. Chances are the specialist is going to want to do x-rays and even some CAT scans in order to determine if the problem is related to the frame that was constructed or if it’s something going on inside.”
“Well, I hope someone can figure it out because I don’t know what to think at this point. All I do know is that the frame has changed somewhat,” Joni said.
“Changed how?”
“I don’t know. It’s like it’s shifted, and I can feel part of the plastic trying to push through the skin.”
“Our skin does thin out with age,” the doctor said.
“It’s not just that. It’s become very sensitive. I can’t even sleep on that side.”
The doctor checked her ears, nose, and throat, and listened to her heart.
After giving some routine blood and urine samples for testing, Nadirah dropped Joni back off at the house and then returned to work.
A few days later, Nadirah took Joni for her GYN appointment.
“Why do you want me thoroughly checked out, as you put it when we saw Dr. Smith?” Joni asked Nadirah in the waiting room. “I’m not going to be around long, so why do you care?”
Before the forensics officer could answer, a nurse came into the room and called Joni’s name.
“Yes, that’s me. Can I bring her with me?” Joni asked, pointing at Nadirah.
“Sure,” the nurse said, swapping smiles with Nadirah.
Joni prepared for the exam, which seemed to take forever.
“Everything’s looking good so far,” the lady doctor concluded after the exam. “Someone will call you if anything of concern turns up at the lab.”
A few days after the exam, Nadirah received a call after work.
“Oh, good,” Joni heard her say. “I’ll let her know. Thank you for calling.”
Nadirah and Joni sat at the living room table, their laptops back to back, TV droning in the background and getting on Joni’s nerves.
“Your test results came back,” Nadirah said, clicking off the phone. “Everything looks good.”
“Great. Now, aren’t you glad I’m not some diseased creature from hell?”
Ignoring her, Nadirah turned off the TV and picked up her guitar.
Joni smiled widely. She’d heard her play several times before. She was one of the best guitarists Joni had ever heard.
“Sing,” Nadirah commanded once she started an old Linda Ronstadt song they both knew well.
Joni sang as Nadirah played, which had become their ritual two or three times a week.
“Sometimes I wish I could sing like you,” Nadirah said.
“Sometimes I wish I could play like you,” Joni said.
Nadirah sneezed for the tenth time that day. “And now I wish I could stop sneezing.”
“Did you do it?”
“What?” Nadirah asked, fetching a tissue from a nearby box and becoming irritated. “You need to talk in complete sentences, Joni, and stop talking in riddles.”
“Did you prank call me back years ago? And were you really not interested in me?” Joni asked. She could see that Nadirah hadn’t expected this.
“Boy, you really don’t give up, do you, Joni Lee?”
“Those are the only two questions I have left.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“It is totally so. I swear.”
Nadirah hesitated and appeared to be choosing her words carefully.
“It’s okay,” Joni said. “Whatever you say is okay. It won’t change anything.”
“Then why ask?”
“Just curious.”
Nadirah blew her nose slowly, as if buying more time to think about the best way to answer her questions. When she threw the tissue away, she said, “Joni, why can’t you accept that we can’t have all the answers to everything? I mean, what’s wrong with just letting things go and moving on? Isn’t that what you said you wanted to do?”
“I would like that, yes. But first, I want to know the answers to those two questions.”
Nadirah studied Joni, uncertainty in her eyes. She gazed intently at her, eyes shifting from one eye to the other as if searching for some sort of truth or hidden meaning that may be lurking deep within Joni’s soul. Finally, she said, “Joni, I’ve learned things about you in the weeks that you’ve been with me. I’ve learned that you’re not only crazy, loud, and a pain in the ass, but you’re very smart. I never expected to learn so much about Joni Gilstein of all people, but you’ve definitely got a very brilliant mind.”
“Now you’re the one talking in riddles. What does that have to do with anything?” Joni asked, frustrated that she wasn’t getting a straight answer.
“It means that if you really sit and think about it, I think you’ll figure out the answer to your questions on your own.”
“But assumption isn’t the same as actually hearing it from you. What could you possibly have to lose by telling me whatever the truth might be?”
“Enough, Joni,” Nadirah said sternly, placing her guitar against the wall in the corner of the room and turning the TV back on.
If silence was supposed to speak a thousand words, Joni wondered, then had Nadirah just answered her questions? And if so, what were the answers?
“No heels, okay, Joni?”
“Okay, but do you mind telling me where we’re going?” Joni asked Nadirah that Saturday morning as they scrambled to get dressed.
“To my mom’s house.”
“Oh, so I finally get to meet her, huh?”
“Yes, and you better be on your best behavior and not say anything stupid either.”
“Yes, boss. Do you also want to pick out what I wear today, boss?”
“No, but can I make a suggestion?” Nadirah asked, dressed casually in jeans and a tee.
“What?”
“I really like that little pink sundress with the flower design around the neck.”
“Okay. I’ll wear that.”
“And please, no makeup. Just a touch of that pink lip gloss is really all you need, if even that.”
“Yes, boss.”
Nadirah fed the cat while Joni finished dressing. When she was done, Nadirah looked at her and said, “Very nice. Very sweet, soft, and feminine looking.”
“Ah, but still not fuckable, huh?”
The forensics detective nearly jumped at the unexpected statement, causing Joni to burst out laughing. “That was a classic reaction!”
“Okay, smart ass, get it all out of your system now. Before we leave.”
Once on the road, Joni had to make a conscious effort not to think about Nadirah’s reaction to her statement, but even then, it was hard to hide her amusement.
And Nadirah wasn’t stupid, even though she never once took her eyes off the road. “Cut it out, Joni.”
Trying to snuff her laughter, Joni asked, “Does your mother know about us?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you plan to tell her?”
“Yup.”
“And how is she going to take it?”
“Not well.”
Soon after, they pulled up to a modest home in a small town that appeared to be a somewhat upscale community. The people there weren’t necessarily rich, but there were no gang-banging welfare bums loitering about either to suggest that anyone was struggling. The houses and the yards were well manicured, and the area seemed peaceful despite the houses being set closer together.
Nadirah parked her car in front of a double-car garage, took Joni around back, and let them in through the kitchen with a key she had on the key ring that was hooked to her belt loop. “Mom, I’m here!” she called out.
“In the living room,” came the reply.
Nadirah and Joni walked through the kitchen and into the living room.
“I saw you pull up,” Nadirah’s mother said, who sat in a plush chair by the large bay window in front of the house. Then she noticed Joni. “Oh, who’s this?”
“This is my new but very temporary wife, Joni.”
Joni studied the woman, considerably taller than her daughter but frail-looking. Her gray hair hung straight to the shoulders, and her eyes were the same shade of brown as Nadirah’s.
Joni wasn’t sure how to read the woman at first. She seemed unsure as to whether or not she should laugh or scream. “I hope this is a joke,” she said instead.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Haddad,” Joni said, trying to hide her discomfort as she extended her hand to the woman.
The woman took it hesitantly, almost as if she were afraid it would bite her, and said, “It’s Mrs. Just because my husband’s dead doesn’t make me any less married. But you two shouldn’t be married at all. You’re going to hell!”
“That’s okay, I don’t mind,” Joni said. “I’ve been there before and personally…”
“It’s only temporary, Mom,” Nadirah said, cutting Joni off while glancing dangerously at her. “She needed insurance, and I could use the tax write-off.”
“Oh, tax write-offs,” Mrs. Haddad spat, waving a hand. “You don’t need any such thing. You make enough money, and no sin is worth it. Especially this kind of sin. Texas knows that. Didn’t you hear about that couple? They won’t even bother with that couple that was married here and wanted to get divorced down there. They know better. They don’t want nuttin’ to do with it.”
“Interesting concept,” Joni said, “how they think that those who live in sin should continue to live in sin.”
“Shut up, Joni,” Nadirah hissed. Then, turning back to her mother, she said, “Really, Mom, you have nothing to worry about. As soon as the new year rolls around, I’m getting rid of her.”
“I hope so. Why don’t you just be friends instead?”
“That’s all we have been,” Joni said. “Friends, roommates, and fighters.”
“Fighters?”
“Well, we argue a lot,” Nadirah said, “and I yell at her at times, like right now by telling her to keep her mouth shut and not talk so much.”
“This one’s too little, Nadirah,” Mrs. Haddad said to her daughter. “You abused all your other little friends I knew weren’t just friends.”
What?!
Joni did not like the sound of that at all. Especially after the vivid and violent dreams she’d had.
“Yeah, I’d like to strangle her at times, but I won’t.”
“You haven’t been beating on her?”
“No, Mom. Not at all.”
“Wow,” Nadirah’s mother said. “I guess this one is different.”
“Hey, I must be special,” Joni said with a mock smile.
Both women ignored her, and Mrs. Haddad said, “But you still shouldn’t have married her.”
“Mom, I have a right to live my own life as I see fit,” Nadirah said, becoming just as irritated with her mother as she was with Joni. “Get over it.”
“You’ll only have yourselves to blame in the end when things go wrong, Nadirah.”
“I’d blame the straights,” Joni said. “They’re the ones that keep having gay babies.”
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