“Shaky, Fakey, Okay Lady”: A Story from “Brown Girls, Grown Up”

Once Keith had vocalized the nerve-shattering words “I want a divorce,” Sabira was forced to stop being afraid. Why? A soft voice whispered in her ear. Why be so scared? What are you scared of? She was scared of herself. She didn’t know what she was made of. She was a mass of bones and muscle and some other stuff that she didn’t know very much about. Embedded in that were a bunch of thoughts and memories that were further embedded with fears and worries and a whole lot of pain.

The curtains closed on the stage the night Keith told Sabira their marriage was over. Until then, Sabira’s life had been one long performance, the script written by everyone but herself. Dutiful daughter, dutiful wife, dutiful mother. She had never strayed from the script, had never even ad-libbed. At first, she thought that she should feel shattered, devastated, tortured even. Her only significant relationship was done. Her family was broken. Yet, instead of feeling grief, Sabira felt something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. She didn’t even know she still had it in her and she didn’t know why it was surfacing now. Why this feeling of all things? But she couldn’t ignore it and decided not to question it. She felt … horny. So very horny.

Keith had unknowingly handed her a key to unlock her cage, a key that she had been too scared to take hold of herself. But once he opened the door and she stepped into the unfiltered light, she tasted a freedom, the freedom to be, that had never been hers to have before. And she decided the best way to celebrate that freedom was to have sex. Hot, raunchy sex. The kind of sex people didn’t think a recently separated mother of three should be having. Shouldn’t there be a mourning period?

Sabira stopped for a moment to consider that she was behaving like a cliché, but her needs overrode all shame. And for the first time, Sabira allowed herself to be led by her needs. Refusing to hold on to the crumbs of her former life, Sabira moved out of the family home and set herself and the children up in an apartment. After unpacking the boxes from her past life, her first act of freedom was to go online and look for a hookup. She saw his picture after searching a dating app, and when she found herself staring at his full mouth, she knew she had to swipe right. His name was Malik. He was younger than her. She told him she only wanted him for sex. He brought out so many X-rated feelings in Sabira that she felt she could power the city with all the electrical currents running through her.

Malik’s skin was a nuttier version of her Pakistani complexion. Late one night, sitting in her bed propped against pillows, she draped his arm over her abdomen and admired the bleeding together of their skin tones, Malik’s color a contrast to Keith’s eggshell complexion. Malik was lying on his stomach, his face level with her belly. His long finger traced a line across the scar that ran above her pelvis.

“Which child was this?” he asked.

“The second.” She traced her finger behind his along the same scar. “It was an emergency. They lost her heartbeat and had to take her out as quickly as possible. It was over in minutes. She came out kicking and screaming.” The memory softened her eyes and a slow smile lifted her face.

“Amazing,” Malik said, his voice sleepy. His hand moved up, and he loosely held a breast in his palm. The large pad of his thumb grazed her nipple in small back-and-forth movements.

“Do you miss it?” he asked.

“Miss what?” His fingernails were cut short and when the rough ridge of his blunt nail flicked her nipple, she jumped.

“Being a wife. Having a family. All the stuff that’s supposed to matter.”

Like a slideshow at a retirement party, images from Sabira’s marriage recapped years in a matter of seconds: the afternoon Keith had proposed after coming back from a jog; getting sick with bad seafood on their honeymoon in Nova Scotia; pushing their firstborn out the birth canal while Keith wiped her forehead with a damp towel; Keith holding her hand at her father’s funeral.

“No,” she said. “It’s not mine to miss. That was someone else, someone playing dress-up for a role she’d thought she wanted her whole life. Turns out the role involved long hours, shitty pay, and a toxic work environment. Kids were the only good thing to come out of it.”

Malik rolled over and straddled her. He caught her wrists in his large hands and held them over her head.

“Have you always been so lippy?” he asked with a smile, while his pelvis ground into hers.

“But you like my lips,” she smiled back, as her pelvis rose to mesh with his.

“I like them a lot,” he whispered, and he leaned forward to place a hard kiss on her lips. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth and nibbled on its love-swollen contours. Malik broke the kiss and pushed back from her, his hard penis between them.

“Who are you, Sabira? I can’t figure you out. Mother of three, divorcée, rebel, sexual firecracker, repressed wife …”

“You don’t need to figure me out,” she told him. “Just enjoy the ride.”

“I’m enjoying,” he responded.

“Good,” she said. “That’s all we need for now.”

It was late in the afternoon the next day when Sabira pulled her car into her mother’s driveway. The black asphalt was decorated with red and gold leaves, the trees overhead seeming vulnerable in their nudity. Sabira pulled her scarf tighter across her neck, the cold in the air causing her to burrow lower in her layers.

The modest garden was peppered with cedar bushes and annuals, the luster of the late-autumn sun turning the lawn into a vibrant shade of green. Four months since her separation from Keith, Sabira braced herself for the conversation she was about to have with her mother, one she had been avoiding. She had been her mother’s shield her whole life; never did she think she would be the one to deliver a blow.

Sabira entered the front door and the smell of cardamom-infused tea greeted her. She slipped off her shoes and coat and walked up the short flight of stairs to the living room — a portal to the 1980s. High-gloss mahogany tables flanked peach seashell-shaped couches, the largest of which sat in the middle of the room like a despot, consuming too much of the tiny space, inconsiderate to its surroundings.

Her mother exited the kitchen and her small, wrinkled face lit up with a smile when she spotted her daughter.

“Beta,” she said. She walked across the room and pulled Sabira’s head down for two full kisses on each of her cheeks. Her mother’s dry lips sank into her skin, and Sabira adjusted her height to better accommodate her mother’s welcome. 

“The chai is on the table. Let’s sit and drink. Did you bring my babies with you?”

Sabira sat on the couch and leaned against the faded, yet surprisingly still plush cushions. She rolled her head on the back of the couch and her nostrils took in the long-set-in aromas of spices.

“Ma, you should think of getting a new couch, or at least get this one cleaned. It smells like a twenty-year-old curry.” Her mother ignored her and poured the chai.

“Where are my betas? Why didn’t Keith come with you? He hasn’t been to visit in a while.” Sabira accepted the tea and took small sips.

“Beta, I asked you a question.”

“Ma, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Her mother’s eyes looked at her, a big smile shaping her lips. “Keith got the promotion he was talking about months ago! That’s such good news, thanks to God. He’s been working so hard, and that’s why he hasn’t been able to visit. But now you’ll have the money to do all those renovations you two talk about!”

Oh, Ma, Sabira thought. Her mother’s innocence was unwavering, unaffected by age and experience. It would be so much easier to inhabit her world of endless goodness. But the coming crash would be much worse because of it.

“No, Ma, that’s not it.” Sabira put down her tea and turned to take her mother’s wrinkled, dry hands in her own. She turned them over and examined the long nails that were graying at the tips. Aging didn’t leave anything untouched. “We’ve separated, Ma.”

The smile didn’t leave her mother’s face. “You’ve separated what?” she asked.

“Us, Ma. We’ve separated us.” Her mother continued to stare at her. Sabira waited for her to process what she had said. Slowly, the dawn of understanding shuttered her mother’s face. The smile went away.

“What?”

“It’s over, Ma. I’ve moved out of the house. We’re going to get a divorce.”

“What?”

“It hasn’t been working for a while. Neither of us has been happy. For a long time now.”

“What?”

“Ma, the marriage was a lie. It was a lie to myself. I can’t live with that lie anymore.” Sabira’s truth was met with silence. Finally: “But our people don’t divorce.” Her mother said it as though that statement alone would save Sabira’s marriage.

“Ma, the marriage was deeply troubled. It’s over. I want to move on. I want to find joy.”

“That’s what gora people say. Our people stay in marriage. You find joy in the marriage you have. That’s what God wants of you.”

“Did you find joy in your marriage?” Sabira asked, a knot tying her throat. Her mother didn’t answer and she turned her head to play with the tassels on one of the cushions. Not looking at her daughter, she said, “Joy was not intended for my marriage. It was what God willed. Who am I to fight that?”

“Did God also will Dad to punch you?” The knot grew bigger.

“Who are you—who am I—to question these things? My marriage was set out by kismet and God’s will and I accepted it as the good woman I am. I was a good wife to your father and that’s the best I could have done. I made the most with what was given to me. I didn’t spend my time complaining, chasing wants or wishes. I treated my marriage with respect and dignity.”

In the silence of the room, the grandfather clock struck its notes and the chimes echoed in the small space. Sabira’s mother turned her face to look out the window and Sabira studied her profile. Her jaw was sagging and the ball of skin under her chin was sinking lower as she got older. Her eyebrows had almost disappeared, and under her tired eyes were deep circles, that in the sun almost looked purple. This face had been her comfort when she was a child, the face she turned to when her father yelled his angry words and threw his fists, the face she saw when she closed her eyes late at night. It was the face that had shaped her life’s choices, the face that haunted her.

“But Ma, did you treat yourself with respect and dignity?” Sabira asked softly. Her mother didn’t answer. “I do want to treat myself with respect and dignity, Ma. That’s why I need to leave my marriage. There’s no dignity in being unhappy. There’s no dignity in living a lie. There’s no dignity in accepting what is because we are too scared to want more.”

“What about the children?”

Sabira’s heart popped when she thought of the three faces that looked at her with belief, trusting her that she knew what she was doing.

“They’ll be fine, Ma. Keith and I are sharing custody. I have a beautiful apartment, with lots of light, and they’ve decorated their rooms. It’s a home, Ma. My home.”

“I don’t understand any of this. You left your marriage so you could have an apartment? With light? That makes it okay?”

“Keith asked for the divorce, Ma, not me. But he was right. He deserves more. And so do I. You may never understand, Ma, but I need to find my own way, make my own path. One that isn’t decided by the need to be good, to be safe, but by what my heart needs — even if it’s scary. I want to be scared, I want to own that fear, not have it own me. I’ve taken the good girl’s path — I got an education, I married a decent man, I had children. It’s gotten me nowhere. Please, Ma. Let me move on from this. I don’t want to be that person anymore.” A momentary pause. “I don’t want to end up like you.”

The last words came out before Sabira could stop them. Her mother’s head snapped back as though Sabira had swung a fist. The motion flooded Sabira with memories that were always ready to surface, waiting patiently under her thin skin.

“I didn’t know that’s how you saw me.” Her mother’s voice was small. It was the same voice she had once used to ask Sabira to stay quiet so she wouldn’t disturb her father. “I’ve always tried to be such a good example to you. To show you how to move forward despite life’s hardships. Not to run from them.”

Sabira leaned on the couch and bent toward her mother. She found the spot she had endlessly kissed as a child, beside her mother’s mouth, and she gave it the gentlest kiss she could.

“I’m going to leave now, Ma. I love you. But I can’t be you.”

Her mother was still sitting on the couch as Sabira drove away.

Copyright © 2026 by Sima Qadeer. Courtesy Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.