Chapter 4: Visions

My feelings for Ryan waxed and waned like the moon we learned about in Science. I desperately didn’t want to feel anything so I could usually control how I felt. Plus, I was young.

7th grade was going by pretty quickly. It was a time when most of my friends still acted like kids and felt like kids and didn’t think about girls at all, although that was starting to change. Mark had a crush on a girl named Karry, who apparently was just another popular dumb blonde. I heard her gum-chewing voice in the hallways, screechy and annoying. I had no idea what Mark saw in her, but that’s probably because I couldn’t judge by looks.

My voice began to change near the end of 7th grade, and so did Ryan’s. We took a music class during the 7th grade school year(our elementary school hadn’t had the money to fund it) and I was learning how to play the saxophone. I didn’t need to see the instrument itself to play it at first, but there were difficulties when playing sheet music. I, instead, played by myself and learned the musicality of the instrument itself. I focused on it until I could hear its clear sounds better than the scratchy squeaks other kids were making. I learned to play the songs I liked by ear and not by music on paper.

Ryan learned to play the violín. He wasn’t great at it, but he was a fast learner and we soon learned to play duets just by playing by ear. I convinced myself that I didn’t like him, only liked him as a friend, and tried to wipe all the feelings away.

I started having recurring nightmares in the summer before 8th grade. Sounds mixed in and out of my dreams: the low commanding voice of my ‘father’, the rough, humorous voice of Lamar, the still-high voice of Jeffrey. Then, all of the sudden, I was back in the mosque. I heard my grandmother’s soothing voice mix in with the others, but not until now did I understand what they were saying, and they were all saying the same thing…

“Aaaaaaalam, Aaaaalam,

You will never belong here,

Your glazed-over eyes will never see the light,

You are ugly, scorned, rejected,

No one will ever love you,

You are cursed like your parents were

They hated you and abandoned you

Just like your Grandmother

If she had loved you, she wouldn’t have left

Your life means nothing

You see nothing, you are nothing…”

Their voices faded in and out, and all of the sudden I felt a pool of sticky blood covering my hands and knees. I wanted to scream, but I was drowning in the thick liquid; it poured into my mouth as soon as I opened it. I couldn’t breathe. I was dying.

--

I must’ve screamed.

It was June when that first nightmare came. Derek ran into my room first to find me convulsing on my bed, screaming and crying. My voice was hoarse, my hands pinned to my sides, my tears seemingly never-ending.

It wasn’t a one-time thing.

Every night, I had the same nightmare with the same voices and the same blood. After about a week of this, my ‘parents’ had had enough. My ‘dad’ took me to therapy.

“So, David,” the therapist began. Her voice was smooth and her words casual. When I heard her voice, I thought of the blood again. Sticky. Oozing.

I coughed.

“Describe your dream to me,” she said. I told her in vivid detail and I listened to her pen scratch the paper. I waited patiently for it to stop before she started talking again.

“What is this they were saying to you? Aalam?”

“That was my name before I was adopted.”

“Do you have a special connection to that name?” She waited patiently through the silence.

“Well,” I said, “To be honest… I never felt like I was connected to the name David. It’s just not me. Aalam is the name my grandmother gave me, it is my Indian name. It is the only piece of my past I have left.”

She tapped her pencil on her paper. Dad, next to me, adjusted his tie.

“Well…. Maybe you could start asking people to call you Aalam?” the therapist suggested.

“No,” Dad and I said at the same time. He cleared his throat. “No, we named him David. It’s his Christian name.”

“Very well,” said the therapist. “David, why did you say no?”

“Because-this is hard to explain-I feel like the name Aalam is not something I want to share. I want it to be mine, and only mine.”

--