A Bit of Earth

There were two good reasons why Maria didn’t respond when she heard the announcement over the airport terminal intercom.

The first reason was the announcement itself: “Attention, please, this is gate B32 calling for a passenger who was on flight 6789, arriving from Islamabad with connections in Dubai and Brussels. Passenger Mary Latif, please report to the nearest information desk or meet your party at carousel eleven in the baggage claim area. Passenger Mary Latif, please report . . .”

Considering that her name wasn’t Mary, she felt pretty confident about not turning up to the nearest information desk or meeting her party.

If they weren’t careful with a name, what would they do with an unattended kid?

And the second, which was more significant, was this:

Maria did not want to be found.

This would probably be deemed unpleasant behavior by any adult. Especially given that Maria knew she was being searched for by two frantic women, one of whom was worried she might lose her job.

And those adults would be right. Even Maria would admit to it.

She was unpleasant.

There was no one more unpleasant in that airport at that moment in time than Maria.

Well, probably.

She’d walked off the plane past the McDonald’s line, after all, and there was always some child having a meltdown over the Happy Meal toy and making the adult with them regret their life choices.

That child, and the unending noise of terminal four, despite it being barely four in the morning, was part of why Maria was here, in the very corner of the baggage claim area with a heap of unclaimed luggage around her.

It wasn’t like she was grabbing people’s bags from under them. If they were here without owners, well, they were free for use.

So she was using them, to make a tower of solitude. And ignoring the two women, not all that far away, panicked about where she was. Because she was unpleasant.

Maria had also heard the words “hostile,” “ungrateful,” and “nasty,” in the year since her parents died. Ambreen Phuppo, her father’s half-sister, liked to sum Maria’s attitude up in one quick, angry match strike of Urdu: “Maria! Badtameez.”

Which is “unpleasant,” “ungrateful” and “nasty,” bundled up with an extra pinch of guilt and a jab at your bad manners.

Maria didn’t mind. Bad manners kept her sharp. She didn’t want her aunt to think she actually liked her bossy and clingy nature-and when Phuppo washed her hands of Maria and shipped her off to America, it had only confirmed Maria’s approach to life. Badtameez girls were girls who didn’t get hurt.

Even hidden as she was beneath duffel bags, wheelies, and one or two large suitcases, Maria snapped to attention at the sound of her name.

Or at least something close to it.

“Yes, her name’s Maria,” a woman said.

The breathless voice definitely didn’t belong to Yusra, the weary cousin of a cousin several hundred times removed, who probably regretted promising to chaperone Maria to New York on her way to rejoin her husband in Milwaukee.

Yusra would say her name right: Mah-ri-a. Quick. Clever. Unpleasant, when you made it too sharp. Like her.

Not Ma-rhee-ah: dragged out like a lazy, sticky piece of gum.

So it had to be the lady from the alumni organization. Gillian the liaison, or something like that. It sounded like an unpleasant bump, the kind Maria got on her tongue from green mangos or hard candy-both things she hated more than anything else.

But it suited the lady, with her white pantsuit, long blond braid, and smile frozen as neatly as if she were a newscaster in a paused recording.

Maria couldn’t remember the name of the organization, but it had something to do with where her parents had gone to college and the circle of lawyers and fellow activist types they’d been friends with.

Maria scowled.