When was it that the idea of heaven and hell first coalesced
in my mind? It must have been during those slow summer days in the apartment on
Elmdale. The one I was born in, literally, my mother having been traumatized by
her sister’s hospital birth stories. By the time I, her third, was ready to
enter the world, she was an experienced home-birther and my parents’ bedroom would
go on to be the delivery room for my younger brother too.
I remember sitting at the front room window overlooking the
street, watching the dust motes in the air, wondering at their providence –
divine? Was that fairy dust? No, just the regular kind. They would hang in the
afternoon light, waiting for a breeze to determine whether they’d end up dust
on the sill or fly away. I’d study the dust motes as only kids can, filling my
sight and horizon with their mysterious movements. And I’d think about God and
religion.
I heard those words a lot in our home. Our home, where my
father was a Muslim and my mother was a Mormon. Our home of uneasy alliances
and fragile peace. A peace so fragile I once broke it with a tiny angel
figurine. It was a parting gift from Great Aunt Mabel. She let me pick one out
from the countless beautiful little people that covered every surface of her
pink doilyed sitting room. I chose a beautiful blonde angel, with a long white
dress, glittery wings, and golden halo.
When we got home, I excitedly showed it to my dad, which
resulted in another bewildering parental argument that ended with powdered
figurine in the air. Muslims do not believe in haloed and winged angels.
Muslims do not keep idols in their homes. I should never have called it an
angel when I ran excitedly to show it to my father, who’d stayed back, as
always, to work. If I’d only called it a fairy, perhaps I’d still have it to
this day. But then maybe I wouldn’t have learned about heaven and hell the way
did, when I did.
There were two religions in my world – Muslims and Mormons –
and I was a Muslim. And that meant no angel figurines, no trick-or-treating at
Halloween, no more shorts and tank-tops in the summer, no tap-dancing lessons,
no shimmying in the school winter musical – when everyone else shook their booties,
I, in concession to my inherited faith would hold very still then. If not? Then hell.
What was hell? A bad place. You didn’t want to go there. There, people were
burned for being bad.
But these rules didn’t apply to momma. She was Mormon. She
wore dresses, had experienced marshmallows and gummy worms, could eat meat
outside our house and shimmy if she wanted to. We believed in one god, and she
believed in a god, his son and a spirit. Momma went to church where she got special
little bits of bread and water, and we went to masjid where sometimes we’d get
donuts. Momma couldn’t have coffee and we couldn’t have pork. Neither of my parents
could drink or gamble, and we were all supposed to be kind and honest. Her
rules were hers, and ours were ours.
What did that really mean though, beyond the ominous and
empty words of God and religion? I don’t recall asking or maybe my dad’s
answers were too complex or evasive to understand. I was only five or six when
all of these realities, like dust motes and broken figurine particles, were
still settling. So there was never a sudden epiphany of what me being Muslim,
and momma not, signified. Not like when I realized on the way home from
grandma’s house that my grandparents were old and would die, and in fact, we’d
all die. Or when a summer trip to visit my dad’s family suddenly illuminated
the mystery of his darker skin, preference for strong tea, and somber songs in another
language.
What all of it really meant would take years to sink in, but
back then, in those sleepy simple days, I was certain only that it was not good. I
know this because the first thing I ever prayed for, in a quiet whisper gathered
in my tiny child hands, was for God to fix it. Make momma Muslim. It was prayer poured
over the dull muffled debates that leaked under my bedroom door at night. Make momma Muslim. It harmonized
with the sing-song squawk of the swing-set that babysat me across the street. Make momma Muslim. And it would churn those dust
motes in wait for wind or gravity to determine their
final destinations. In wait for God. As I still am. Please God, make momma Muslim.
