Noureen's Dilemma

Noureen’s Dilemma
By: Goke Akinniranye









Noureen chewed the dried flesh of her lips while her classmate Keith was expatiating on the death of Princess Diana. She turned her head to look at the clock, which filled her with dread because class was far from over. Then, all of sudden, Noureen found herself standing in front of her English class of twenty-eight. Her breathing was rapid and deep. Her twitching fingers were slippery with sweat. Her beating heart cowered in her chest. She could imagine her father scolding her for these physiological responses while wagging his sausage index finger at her. He often scolded her when she was anxious about the most mundane activities such as buttoning her coat in front of others, answering the telephone, or ordering a cheeseburger and fries at McDonald's. Noureen was slightly relieved that the face, which brought her great dread, wasn’t amid the sea of seemingly judgmental faces in front of her. Mrs. Kramer was commenting on Keith’s presentation on the death of Princess Diana. Noureen’s body clenched with every word Mrs. Kramer said because they were delaying the inevitable. Noureen had the flash drive plugged in, and the presentation was already up on the projector screen. All she needed to do now was speak, but Mrs. Kramer was preventing her. Her topic was her favorite author, Roald Dahl. She worked all week on the project, and she was as usual too busy and her brother too stoned. Noureen was a smart girl. She did relatively well in all her classes, but when it came to presentations, she often choked. A few years ago, in third grade, she cried in the middle of her presentation on photosynthesis. She promised herself at the beginning of the year that she would conquer her fear of public speaking. She was in middle school now, the big leagues, where her appearance and social prowess were under great scrutiny. Noureen also needed to do well on this project. It was forty percent of her final grade. Noureen had an A, and she wanted to keep it that way.Once Mrs. Kramer stopped talking, she turned and looked at Noureen with a smile. Noureen looked at her in kind. Mrs. Kramer was a large woman in her late forties. She had a soft, jowly face and yellowish, jagged teeth that reminded students of a jack-o-lantern. The jagged-tooth smile quickly faded and Mrs. Kramer asked, “Well?” Noureen dimly said “Oh” and gingerly went to the computer to start her presentation. Noureen was glad she did not have to deal with a random computer malfunction like the one she dealt with in her dream last night. However, Noureen already started the presentation with a fumble and whatever confidence she initially had started to crumble with every utterance. The mask of fearlessness she wore was slipping off. During the presentation, Noureen looked more at her flash cards or her feet than at her own classmates. She spoke timidly in “Uhhs” and “Umms” rather than in English. Her voice was as stiff and rigid as her body, and the enthusiasm she grew acquainted with last night was nowhere to be found. Most of her most eloquent comments were tangential in nature. In seconds, Noureen knew she had failed miserably. It was over. She could imagine her father bowing his head in disappointment. At this point, Noureen knew she would be lucky to make a B on this project. She wanted to leave the class in tears like she did in third grade, but she had to go on. Once she was finished, she went on to pull up a video of an interview with Roald Dahl. Noureen closed the PowerPoint presentation and searched for the video in her flash drive. She clicked on the clip titled “RD Interview.” A black screen appeared, and strange cheap music started to envelope the room. Then, before she could click the mouse, two naked women lying together in bed filled the projector screen. The whole class exploded. The girls screamed in horror while many of the boys yelled with unbridled delight. At that moment, she knew she should have double-checked her flash drive before she left for school. Mrs. Kramer rushed to the desk and closed the video before the students could see anything else while Noureen, frozen with embarrassment, only stared at her flash cards looking for answers.
Mrs. Kramer ordered the class to quiet down, grabbed Noureen’s wrist, and pulled her out of class. Once they were outside of class, Mrs. Kramer, who seemed to tower over Noureen, asked what happened as she pressed her large hand on Noureen’s shoulder.
“My brother did it! He has been caught watching that stuff. Our family computer has a virus because of it,” Noureen spat.
Mrs. Kramer’s face still rang skeptical, and she asked Noureen to follow her. They walked to the office of the assistant principal, Mrs. Vaughn. Noureen sat on the black wooden chair that was outside of Mrs. Vaughn’s door while Mrs. Kramer explained the situation to Mrs. Vaughn. Noureen was later asked to come in. Mrs. Vaughn was a stern woman in her early thirties. She had short brown hair and a slim frame, and wore tiny wire-rimmed glasses. She seemed small as she stood next to Mrs. Kramer. Mrs. Vaughn politely asked Noureen to come inside her office.
“What happened, Noureen?”
“My brother did it. I saw him look through my pencil bag while I was falling asleep. I forgot to double-check my project this morning. He has been caught watching that stuff on our family computer.”
Mrs. Vaughn and Mrs. Kramer looked at each other.
“I’ll handle this,” Mrs. Vaughn said and with that Mrs. Kramer left.
“Noureen, I’ll have to call your mother in order to corroborate your story.”
Noureen simply shook her head like she often did. She only spoke when necessary. She spent most days shaking her head either up and down or side to side. Noureen returned to the black wooden chair while Mrs. Vaughn made the call to Noureen’s mother. Noureen sat quietly on the chair, and she looked at the clock on the wall. It was 2:15. She would have been in World History learning about how the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs. At this hour, the only thing Noureen would learn was how red her mother’s face could get. In order to pass the time while Ms. Vaughn called her mother, Noureen rubbed her still slippery hands on the arms of the wooden chair that seemed too big for her. She focused her attention on the small cracks of the chair and not the impending doom that was her mother. She the noticed the sunlight sifting through the window blinds. They reminded her of the summers when her parents would fall asleep on the big charcoal-gray couch in the middle of the afternoon. Noureen would notice how the sifted light would fall perfectly on their faces. Her brother and sister would often interrupt their long naps with super soakers or water balloons. Her father would quickly get angry and curse in Arabic, which made her mother laugh and in turn her father’s face would soften and even he would let out a light chuckle. Noureen’s mother, Doris, arrived to the school with the tired, drowned eyes and the scent of disinfectant and vomit Noureen had grown accustomed to. The only thing absent from her mother’s usual appearance was the smell of alcohol on her breath. Noureen was brought into the office with her mother. Mrs. Vaughn relayed what happened.
“Noureen here told me it was her brother who left the…um… explicit video on her flash drive. I wanted to know if that could possibly be true.”
Noureen’s mother tried in vain to look shocked.
“Her brother, Driss, has being going through a rough patch ever since his father and I divorced. He pulls disgusting pranks like this all the time.”
Noureen was surprised for two reasons: First, her mother referred to her brother by name. She usually called her brother “idiot” or “weed-head.” Second, her brother did not pull pranks. He usually was never home until late in the evening and always returned home incoherent and unreasonable. There was a fight between her mother and Driss almost every night. Noureen, like her sister, often pretended to sleep through the screams and the bawling. Mrs. Vaughn decided to leave Noureen with a warning, and Noureen was allowed to leave school early. However, Noureen wanted to stay at school. She did not want to endure the wrath of her mother. Once the car door slammed, her mother closed her eyes and ran her hand over her face. She then admonished Noureen for divulging such sensitive information about her brother, and then paradoxically spewed out a tirade of grade-A insults about him while Noureen remained silent during the entire drive. When they arrived home, Noureen noticed that the stained hardwood floor was scuffed, and the large charcoal-gray couch, although slightly tilted, remained in the living room. A few days ago, Noureen, her sister, Sana, and her mother tried to move the couch out of the house, but to no avail. Then Driss and his friend Paul offered to help move the couch, but despite their macho posturing, they could barely lift it. Noureen went up to her room. Her mother immediately went to the phone and called the homes of her brother’s friends. This plan often failed. All of his friends would deny seeing him and her mother would end up traipsing all over the neighborhood. Noureen heard the familiar door slam follow the banging of the phone. She decided to start on her homework and began to remove her school supplies out of her backpack. The note cards she used during the presentation fell out. The memory of the abortive presentation was brought back to life. She ruminated about her stutters, abandoned utterances, her mispronunciation of Roald Dahl’s name, and omission of key facts. Noureen set her forehead on her desk while reliving every painful moment. Her rumination and hand-wringing were interrupted by a slamming door and muffled screaming. Her brother had been found. Noureen wanted to leave her room and listen to their argument by the stairwell, but she was always caught, and she did not want to attract any more attention. She stayed in her room and waited for the battle between Driss and her mother to end. It always ended the same way: with no one winning. During the dispute, her mother would invariably utter the phrase “If your father was here…” Eventually, the once cogent argument would dissolve into an acidic battle of name-calling. After the dust settled, her mother would end up crying while Driss would be in his room doing God knows what. Sana used to play the role of mediator during these fights but soon grew exhausted. Her sister was going to go off to college in a few months, and simply wanted to leave home, which she now affectionately referred to as “hell hole.”
“If Dad was here, this shit wouldn’t happen,” she often told Noureen.

Noureen knew this was true. Under their father’s rule, this would never occur. The flames of discipline he raised above their heads would burn any aspiration for mischief. Noureen knew, without a shred of doubt, her brother would not have been caught by the police with a waterpipe in his backpack or suspended from school because he blew up a toilet with a cherry bomb if their father was still around. Although Noureen and her siblings did not currently sleep soundly, knowing their father was no longer there made them rest more easily and be less vigilant. His thick mustache and piercing brown autumn eyes no longer haunted them. Noureen saw that it was almost five. She heard her brother stomp up the stairs. She then heard the unfamiliar sound of her door knob turning, but it left as quickly as it came. She then heard the familiar sound of a slamming door, the clanking of metal, the gurgling of water, the hissing of smoke, and eventually the sobbing of her mother. Noureen stared at her flash cards looking for answers.