I wanted him to hear, in this story, a bit of my story. A bit of his own, even.

But once we bowed and the crowd snapped in applause and flowers appeared, there was only this: The director waved to her mother. The tech designer hugged hers. A cast member, speaking in rapid Dutch, answered a call from her parents. And I received my daily text.

“hi aisha. how you been? hope you studying.”

***

On the last day of May, hours before I left home for the summer, I heard some of the screaming that formed, for close to nineteen years, the soundtrack to which I’ve lived.

It was my parents. And, as usual, they were arguing.

My mom was cleaning and had swept my “Unspoken” program into the trash by mistake.

My dad saw. “WHAT you doing?” he cried. “You crazy?”

I didn’t know what to make of his outrage. Was it just a convenient way to blame my mom, again, for something or the other? Did he share my reverence for the thinning and fraying sheet? Did this matter?

My mom, exhausted and weary, retreated to the kitchen. My dad, bitter and strained, asked me to follow him upstairs.

He was cleaning out his closet and needed my help.

I stood there, hands empty, while he emptied out suitcases and shoeboxes and emerged, finally, with a thinning and fraying sheet that looked suspiciously like the one he’d rescued.

“Read this,” he said.

It was a program. For a rendition of “Beauty and the Beast.” Staged by graduate students at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His alma mater.

And, sure enough, there was his name. Not next to MAURICE, though. Or GASTON. But STAGEHAND.