Morning of March 16th, 2021. Mount Sinai, origin spot of the Commandments. The Diagnosis—nothing biblical, just cold hands. The prognosis, however? A lifetime. Another doctor with a phony preaching. My feet swing rhythmically in the air as I glance at my mother and roll my eyes. My aberration perturbs her. I can tell by the rhythmic tap of her Vans against the blue vinyl tiles and the slight grinding of her teeth whenever a doctor passes by our room. She has sent me article upon article, video upon video, all for the sake of explaining away the cold that follows me wherever I go. I wonder when she will realize that the reason for my chill is governed by no commandments, neither scientific nor holy.
*
It began in elementary school, in the prison-like building they called PS 452. When I first saw the school, I was five and in awe of its monumental size. Three schools in one building! Four years later, I was one step away from rattling on the bars that guarded the windows of each classroom with all nine years of my might. April 13th, 2015: first attack. Standing in front of a class of thirty, hands behind my back, I inhale as I prepare to speak. “What is it you have to tell the class about your spring break, Samara?” A red-haired teacher smiles down at me as she probes and places a soft, waxy hand on my shoulder. The warmth feels new. “Samara?” Sweat partitions my back, drips onto my folded hands, each frozen in an icy embrace with the other.
*
Morningside Park, brimming with greenery. Morningside Park, brimming with tears. A rock erupts from the earth near the playground. My half-sister and I sit on it, her with a glass bottle in her hands, me with red and white striped socks on mine. A few months after the incident at 452, I have begun wearing socks as gloves for warmth, much to no one’s chagrin. She and I do not blot the silence, but looks betray all. She glances to her side, keen obsidian eyes spitting lava as they narrow at me. I can count the number of times I’ve seen her on one hand. She thrusts the bottle into my sock-covered hands, I drop it. She sighs. Silence broken.
* * *
Each run in Morningside bleeds sweat from my brow, but my fingers remain as dry as the coldest ice. Every step I take is an attempt to thaw them, but to no avail. I pass the rock near the playground, speeding by it like cars speed by the carcass of a rodent on the side of the highway. Too much. The steady beat of my hot pink running shoes against the pavement calms me; the steady, albeit elevated, beat of my heart does not. Sometimes, I stop to press my hand against my chest due to my fear, due to the what ifs. What if something is wrong? Will something go wrong? Such worries pale in comparison to the throb in my stomach every time a father on a college tour raises his hand to ask a question on behalf of his daughter and every time I see the daughter turn red and scowl at her father. I often think about who will cheer for me as I walk across the stage at my graduation—and about whose voice I will not hear.
*
Cold hands come in bursts, most intensely in the spring. I am not found without a hand warmer on my person from the months of October to May. I am often reminded, playfully, that my sachets of iron filings most likely contribute to the slow death of the planet and that I should probably use them less often. I try and I try, but no luck. Even in July, frost attacks, always when I reach my block on the way home from the subway. Glutted with grimaces, I am too uncomfortable; I can no longer pass 351 West 117th Street, then 355, 361, then home: 363. As of late, I’ve taken to walking on the side opposite my apartment and jaywalking across the middle of the narrow, one-way street. The fear of an incoming car does not register for me—a car crash is not the worst that’s happened on my block.
*
The doctor at Mount Sinai was the first one to believe me about my cold hands. The one at City MD had deemed me dramatic, my pediatrician said I was too soft; both of them felt my hands and made such conclusions. At Mount Sinai, she held my hand too, and I suppose my hand was cold then. I remember now. Upon setting foot in the hospital, my hand had turned to metal. The doctor’s affirmation of my condition gave my mother no solace.
Something must be wrong with me, she insists. She blames my condition on a lack of sleep, or an abundance of stress, or my not wearing enough layers, or my reluctance to turn all the lights on in my room. “This dark lighting makes even me feel depressed, Saam.” I think my set-up is comforting.
*
Morning of April 8th, 2015. Mount Sinai, a temporary dwelling spot for the holy. Nothing holy would happen today. What is the greatest honor to give a fallen father?
When I think of my father’s death, I do not think of my father. I remember instead the blinding white LED lighting of the waiting room, the tingling sensation I had in my calves as I sat there, the hallucination I had of a family friend, a construction worker, presenting us with a bouquet of pink roses. The sweat of my mom’s hand in mine. The prayer my mother’s mother had sent us, repeated over and over again. Subhanallah Ya Salamu, Subhanallah Ya Salamu.
Nanu said that calling Allah by the name “Ya Salamu” would cure any type of disease. She said reciting the prayer 141 times and then blowing on your cupped hands would cause a healing by the will of Allah.
I had never been religious before and I have not been religious since, but that day, I whispered that prayer with my mom 141 times, blow, 282 times, blow, 423 times, blow. Three days and two nights would pass.
*
Evening of April 6th, 2015. Near the trees and dumpsters outside of 351 West 117th Street, the permanent dwelling spot of everything unholy. A man in a navy blue sweater and khakis gasps as he lies on the ground, a girl in a cream-colored dress and Hello Kitty Vans kneeling over him. Just as the rot emanates from the trash surrounding, frost floats up from his chest, culminating in a squeeze of the girl’s small hand. Then, a shaky exhale. Nothing.
His hesitant grasp on a spindly tree trunk as he stopped to catch his breath. The toppled paper grocery bag filled with vanilla yogurt and M&Ms for me. And the chill of that sudden, throbbing silence. We had only just been talking about skateboarding.
*
I’ve always been told that I never mourned my father. I’m not sure if I did. In the days after he left, I was whisked into so many activities by family who flew in from all over the world, I sank into Kumon homework, parents of classmates were always inviting me over. I have hated every bereavement camp or group I’ve been enlisted in by my mother. I don’t know if I cried at the funeral.
From my father, I have contracted not only his raucous sneeze and awkward way of dancing, and, according to my mother, his monotone, drawling voice, but also his cold, cold hands, the only thing I can seem to remember about him nowadays. My last few memories with Dad are covered in a layer of frost, from the big graffitied rock in Morningside where we used to sit on Sunday mornings, to the feeling of his cold, calloused hand squeezing mine as he forced out my name from behind gritted teeth. The sound of a proper pair of running shoes slapping against the track is no different from the sound of my Hello Kitty Vans slapping against the pavement as I ran home to my mom that day.
Driving with him to Stop and Shop, eating my cake pop in the car with him as he sipped his hazelnut coffee, waiting as he paid for the pink roses he had chosen for Mom. Now, I squint as I lean to peer into the window of our car, but the warmth radiating from the two of us inside fogs up the glass. To see or not to see; it’s all whiplash to me. My hands grow cold at the thought of him. All I can keep hold of is his absence. My extremities mourn my father; I cannot invite the frost inside. Mourning will continue for me as long as I seek the warmth he once gave to me through a single embrace. I do not know how to stop—no professor at any college can educate me in this.
My mourning is doomed to be distal. Cold follows me like death followed him that day. From the headache he had that morning to the nausea he told me he got from the street falafel he ate that afternoon for lunch, his death may have been abrupt but we were not unwarned. The cold that spread from his hands to mine that April evening has lingered, like the worst sort of I-told-you-so. I wonder what he would have liked to hear before he left.
He whispered the azan in my ear as soon as I was born, as is customary for Muslim fathers to do for their newborn daughters. Is there an equivalent for Muslim daughters to do for their fathers in the alternate scenario, as their fathers pass? I said nothing to him as he made his journey from my world to another. Silence yields the greatest chill of them all.
*
Walking around Harlem, a young girl has tied a navy blue sweater around her waist. Her dresses and socks may change; the sweater remains a fixture. Through heat, through cold, for at least a year. Maybe more. The warmth provided by a navy blue sweater cannot be put to paper.
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