“It’s crazy,” Kamala sighs, careful to nod so it doesn’t look like she’s ignoring him. The local crime reports seem to have fascinated her father, long after they finally settled in Brooklyn.

“There wasn’t this much crime in Jersey!” he insists regularly. “It was paradise compared to here. Now we all have to be careful about which street we happen to walk on, it’s ridiculous.”

“That’s what happens when the parents aren’t involved. These boys would be getting ready for school like Kamala if they were too busy studying that night.”

“Tt, yeah,” Aamir scoffs, drawing both his sister, and more importantly, their father’s attention.

“Is there a problem?”

Aamir fixes him with a spiteful look, as Kamala’s resigns herself for an exhausting round of petty bickering. “You never took an interest in our education. You just said, “You will grow up and be doctor, or I will grow old without a son.”

“And yet, here you are,” their father quickly deadpans.

“You know how long it actually takes to become a doctor? How could I be willing to go through all that schooling? Why would I? It’s not like you ever helped me with my homework or anything. You never said I was doing a good job.”

“Never said…Aamir, I had another child to take care of, rent to pay, a new job—you think I had time to sit back and tell you what two plus two was?” Yusuf asks bluntly.

“Well, I’m just saying—who knows how far I would’ve gotten if you had.”

Their father is, for a moment, at a loss for words. When he glances at Kamala, she can only shrug minutely. Soon, when he does find the words, they are quick to make Aamir to feel as if he’s been pushed onto the floor.

“Four!” Yusuf declares. “Two plus two is four! Get ready for your shift, doctor!”

“Yusuf,” Muneeba scolds lightly, from her place at the stove.

“Don’t “Yusuf” me. Our son could’ve been anything he wanted, but now he’s decided it’s my fault he flunked out of college.”

“That’s not what I said!” Aamir hisses.

“Aamir, your life is the way it is because you are lazy. You’ve always hated hard work. When your mother and I came to America—“

“Oh my God.”

“—we had nothing. And then as if it wasn’t hard enough feeding ourselves, we had you. But I found work. I found a way like always, because sitting around waiting on someone else to fix our problems would’ve meant starving together as a family. You have been raised in a land where anyone can become anything if they just work hard enough, and here you are with a head start your mother and I used to dream of.”

“Oh, yeah, because America is just so great, everything’s perfect in America.” Aamir returns spitefully, escalating in volume with his father.

“America is the reason you have everything! The reason you never have to worry about running water, about whether or not you’ll have food on your plate, a warm bed in the winter, air conditioning in the summer!”

“If it’s so great why are they always trying to keep people like us down? They don’t want us here, they just want us to slave for all the billionaires that walk over everyone.”

Yusuf is quiet again for several moments, staring at Aamir who returns his intense gaze with one of his own. Finally, their father sets his paper down, and minutely leans forward in his seat.

“If it isn’t great, why are you able to sit there, without a job, without a cent to your name that didn’t come from your father’s account, and tell him that he is the reason for your failure.”

Kamala glances between both of them, careful not to break the silence that follows. The spats between the men in her family usually peter out before they can become this intense. Even her mother can only watch quietly.

“Okay, can we just relax—“ Kamala tries, much too late.

“Mind your business.”

“Don’t talk to your sister that way,” Yusuf commands sharply.

“Abbu, it’s okay.”

“It’s real easy for you to throw everything in my face about college when you didn’t even go.” Aamir jabs, to his mother’s immediate rebuke.

“It wouldn’t be so easy if you’d done anything with your life since then rather than sponge off your mother and I.”

“You want me to go?” Aamir demands. “Is that it, you want me to go that bad?”

“I’d like for you to go and do something. Anything, I don’t care what it is—just pick something and commit!”

The quiet that follows Yusuf’s pleading threatens to smother her. It’s all Kamala can do to quickly rise from her seat, bag in hand, and prepare to walk out having finished her eggs.