Chapter 15
“Mitra-joon, I am Olga.”
“Really? Not Mary Poppins?”
“Hah. I was happy to hear the sound of you on my machine, joonam.”
“Oli-joon, I’m sorry about the other night. Was I mean? I don’t remember.”
“No, azizam, not mean. Funny. Like always when you drink wodka.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t funny after I woke up the next morning. I slept for most of the last three days.”
“Afareen! You deserve this. Sleeping is good for sorrow. And sleeping with someone else is very good.”
“He was on a business trip, so there was none of that.”
“Ah.”
“Where were you when I called?”
“I went to doctor for checkup.”
“Everything okay?”
“Doctor says five polyp in my colon now. Don’t worry; not cancer. He want to take them out, but I do not want operation again. It is all right; not really pain, just aching.”
“Don’t have any operations over there, Olga.”
“But doctors are good here. We have everything. You should see how many women are having the face-lifts, making the boobies bigger too. The noses, of course, made smaller. And Botox very in fashion.”
“Of course it is.”
“Hah, you being smart-alex.”
“Alec. Yes. Anyway, thanks for calling me back.”
“Why you thank me? I am not stranger.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Oli. It’s just that I’ve been calling you too much lately and getting all emotional.”
“So what? If I be living in America, I be living next to you, and you be talking to me all the times. This make me happy. I mean, not happy to hear you unhappy, but happy to listen. For what am I on this earth? But, Mitra-joon, maybe you go see doctor.”
“I’m not sick, Olga.”
“You ’pressed, joonam. I hear this in your voice.”
“I’m not depressed. I’m sad. There’s a difference.”
“You sad. You nervous. You angry. Go see psych-aye-trist. Ask for the blue pill. You know it saved me.”
“Not this again, Olga. I’m not taking Prozac. It gives me the shakes.”
“Mitra, you are a stubborn child. There are other medicines for suffering besides the Prozac. My doctor told me. So many people here now take this, even the young ones.”
“No. I just have to get back to work. That’s my Prozac.”
“Basheh, but you not working. Too much happening in your house. Those village women, they keep you from taking care of yourself.”
“Olga, I hardly see them.”
“Doesn’t matter. You thinking about them. They in your life. And now One Year is passed, it is time to wake up.”
Mitra’s jaw ached from grinding her teeth. As if to stress Olga’s point, Akram appeared on the deck and tapped on the door, returning to her iteration of the village well not two hours since she’d left. “Oli-joon, you’re right.”
“What?”
“I said, you’re right; I have to do something about this situation, but let’s talk later. Someone’s at my door.”
Mitra motioned for Akram to come in and went to put a load of laundry on. She realized that she’d resigned herself to Akram’s social visits and while she didn’t treat her as she would a friend or neighbor—with undivided attention—she had let the woman make it a habit. Mitra was polite, but went about her business. She hadn’t realized what an imposition it was until now.
Mitra plunked Akram’s tea in front of her, letting it slosh. Whatever Mitra’s feelings, not to serve tea was outside the boundary of etiquette.
“May your hands not ache,” Akram said, as always.
“It is nothing,” Mitra replied, as always. Rote Persian pleasantries.
Mitra uncovered the lid of the lump sugar bowl and sat down to busy herself with a pile of accumulated mail. This was the moment to bring up the issue of Akram’s use of the house while Mitra was gone, but Mitra was at a loss for how to voice her displeasure without sounding petulantly displeased. Akram would apologize in an obsequious and hurt tone, and it would sound to the both of them like an exchange between spoiled princess and bullied servant. This was the dynamic, false though it was on its face. Mitra tried to see Akram the way Julian did. “She’s just confused, Mitra. Wouldn’t you be? She’s never known anything different. We have to teach her.” Mitra hated those lines; they sounded like something from a Kipling story about the civilized enlightening the natives. As if the Western world was devoid of poor, uneducated, and bitter people.
Mitra sorted through her mail, opened a handwritten bill from the gardener for her property in Woodside, discarded a pretentious local magazine called Gentry, and slurped her tea. She felt like her father at the breakfast table, reading the newspaper as if no one else was there, no one worth his attention anyway. The thought shamed her, and she lifted her face and forced a smile.
Akram tugged back her scarf since Julian wasn’t around. “Your family was well, Mitra Khanoom?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“My condolences again for your loss.” She sighed heavily with feigned grief. “May your sister and her children rest in God’s hands!”
“Yes, thank you very much.” Mitra bit the inside of her cheek. How she hated this fakery. “Is Salimeh coming up?” she asked as she wrote a check for the gardener.
Akram tsked. “She went early for a study group.” She sighed heavily again. “She left without saying her namaz, lazy girl.”
“I’m sure God won’t mind if she says it later.”
“She stays up late with her books and then cannot wake at dawn to honor Allah. Only a bad girl sleeps through her prayers and later says them fast and sloppily.”
Mitra had made Salimeh’s ESL classes a condition of the women’s residence in her house, but Akram couldn’t let go of the idea that such independence could only lead to an immoral end. In Fremont she had forbidden her teenage daughter from venturing without an adult beyond the cul-de-sac where they squatted. Mitra guessed that no mother would feel comfortable with new rules set by an outsider, but instead of taking it up with Mitra or making an effort to try alternative ways to keep an eye on her daughter, Akram upped her expectations for obedience and berated the girl, yelling often and loudly enough for Mitra to hear, and using debasing words that Mitra recognized from the village maids her uncle Jafar used to send over before Auntie Golnaz found Olga: unladylike, unworthy, sloppy, and “pickled,” which was what spinsters were called—a fate all of the girls dreaded, no matter how young they were. Mitra had also noticed the bruises along Salimeh’s arms, and she suspected Akram—pinching, she surmised—but Julian said that malnourishment often caused people to bruise easily, and that they shouldn’t assume the worst until Salimeh was healthier; he’d bought a basketful of supplements for her to take. And maybe he was right, Mitra thought. She was being too judgmental.
“Don’t worry about Salimeh,” Mitra said. “She’s a very good girl.” These words, said so many times, rarely put an end to Akram’s complaints about Salimeh. Mitra had begun to feel like a worn-out husband who longed for some peace after a hard day’s work. And Akram’s constant appeal for Mitra to validate her grievances, as if they were co-mothers, tested Mitra’s patience. Perhaps they were, in a way, like co-mothers. After all, they were only two years apart in age, but Akram, at forty-two, looked as lined and liver-spotted as a granny.
All the more reason to pity her, Mitra told herself. “Akram-joon,” she said, trying for a compassionate tone. “Your daughter is smart, sweet, helpful, and pretty. Have faith that everything will turn out all right.”
Faith was a word that triggered Akram’s religiosity, causing a pause for the usual “Inshallah”s and a few moments of silent respect. Mitra tried not to think about how, for this woman, “everything” and “all right” meant that her daughter would find a man to marry her and take care of them both. It was for this reason that Akram wanted so badly to visit Kourosh’s house more often: she hoped to find a husband for her daughter through her associations with the other Iranian women, and through Kourosh. She hadn’t realized that moving in with Mitra would cut her off from this network, that Mitra didn’t mingle with Iranians. Marriage for Salimeh was the only favorable option Akram could imagine. Mitra, of course, was not an example of another possibility; Mitra was an alien, an aberrant female, certainly not a role model. Case in point: one day early on, Akram announced that she was praying to God for Mitra’s motherhood, that surely God would reward Mitra for taking a pair of poor women into her care. When Mitra explained that she and Julian were not married and that she didn’t want children, Akram willfully misinterpreted the situation and vowed to make a nazr—a covenant with God—that if He led Julian to marry Mitra and caused her to conceive, Akram would make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Imam Hossein in the holy city of Mashhad. Yeah, Mitra thought, and who was going to make that happen? Hadn’t the woman come to America to escape the poverty of widowhood and to end the cycle of dependence for her daughter? Or was she really “just visiting”? More likely, she was allowing the world to take her along, like a bobbing piece of debris in a canal.
“I have finished the ironing,” Akram said. “Perhaps you have more for me to do?”
The ironing. It was what Akram did. That and mending clothes. She darned socks, took in seams, adjusted hems. She touted herself as a fine seamstress, and in the beginning Mitra imagined that she might help Akram develop a little alterations business. She bought her a sewing machine from Costco and collected clothes from neighbor friends—Karen and Mrs. Tokuda, who was looking for someone to sew pillowcases for her. Akram ruined everything. Worst of all, she destroyed Mrs. Tokuda’s Japanese silk fabric, sewing it into uneven squares, forgetting to leave one side open for inserting the pillow, then rending the fabric as she removed the stitches. Socks were darned so tightly that they puckered at the toes, creating a lump in one’s shoe. Trousers were hemmed too short, and skirts too long. When confronted, Akram would bridle with insult and insist that Mitra was mistaken, as if Mitra didn’t know any better. And so Akram’s “work” had devolved mostly into ironing, which she did well. But how much ironing could there be? Even Mitra’s sheets were ironed now, not that ironed sheets weren’t a lovely thing.
“I’ll have some ironing for you after I do the laundry today,” Mitra said. “And I’ll ask Karen if she would like you to do some of the boys’ things.”
“All right. Perhaps you could buy some more handkerchiefs as well; I have finished decorating the last batch.”
“Okay,” Mitra said, unable to meet Akram’s eyes. The handkerchiefs were a boondoggle. Akram stitched little geometric designs into them, sometimes created an uneven pastel border. She’d presented these handkerchiefs to Julian, who at first didn’t have a clue what they were for. “Blowing your nose,” Mitra had said, then, under her breath, “wiping your ass.” Julian had thanked Akram profusely, smiling as if someone were pulling strings attached to the corners of his mouth. Later, he’d said to Mitra, “Hankies are awfully unsanitary.”
“Duh,” she’d replied. “I’m sure Akram imagines you wearing them in the breast pocket of your white coat, displaying the design to the envious eyes of your coworkers.” In the end, he doled out the hankies to the little girls in the pediatric ward to use as diapers for their dolls.
Mitra felt the vibration of footfalls on the deck stairs, and soon enough Salimeh appeared at the back door. Mitra smiled and waved her in. Salimeh bounced through the sitting room in a pair of Mitra’s old running shoes that she’d stuffed with cotton. She let her backpack fall to the floor and sat across from her mother, who eyed her suspiciously and said nothing.
“How was your study group?” Mitra asked.
Salimeh nodded. “Great,” she said in English.
“What?” snapped Akram.
“I just said that my study group was good, Maman,” her voice soft and fearful.
“Then say it so I can understand.”
“Forgive me.”
Salimeh looked down at her hands, and Akram was pleased. Mitra’s father used to try to make her do this with her elders. Anahita had it down pat as a child; she rarely looked straight into anyone’s eyes, not even people her own age. But Mitra had made a point of never looking away, rudely holding someone’s gaze for too long when she was introduced to elderly guests in her parents’ house, just to irk her father. She’d told Salimeh several times to “look at me when I’m talking to you,” explaining that Americans think you’re hiding something or you’re untrustworthy if you can’t look them in the eye.
“Have you made any friends, Salimeh?” Mitra asked, setting a glass of tea in front of her.
Salimeh half rose in distress. “I can get a tea for myself, Khanoom. Please, you embarrass me.”
Akram shook her head in exaggerated disappointment. Mitra put her hand on Salimeh’s shoulder and pressed her gently down. “I was next to the tea, so I got you a glass. It’s my house and my tea. You’re not a servant here. So, any friends?”
“There’s a girl from Africa. She shared her apple with me during the break.”
“A black?” Akram snapped.
“Yes. She wants to start college when her English gets better. She’s very kind.”
“Is she Moslem?”
“I don’t know. She wants to become a doctor.”
“Does she wear hejab?”
“No, Maman.” Turning to Mitra, Salimeh continued. “Then she wants to go back to her country and work in a hospital.”
“That sounds great,” Mitra said. “Does she live nearby?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask her next time.”
“Good. Maybe you can do something together. A walk or an ice cream.”
Salimeh blushed, eyed her mother. “Maybe.”
Akram said, “You have no business making friends with a black infidel who thinks she can become a doctor.”
“Want some cookies?” Mitra asked Salimeh.
She shook her head, sipped the tea. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”
Mitra filled a plate with mini palmiers and placed it in front of her. “You don’t have to be hungry for cookies.”
“You spoil my daughter, Khanoom.”
“Nonsense,” Mitra said. “She’s finally putting on some weight. She looks good.”
“Yes, maybe she will find a husband after all.”
Salimeh nibbled at a palmier, eyes fixed on the plate as if she might read her fortune in the crumbs. Mitra was reminded of Ana when she was that age, not because Salimeh looked at all like Ana, though she had filled out quite a bit in the last months—no more bony wrists, cheeks now pillowy and pinkish despite her olive skin color, no longer swimming in the gray sweat suit Mitra had given her. It was her demeanor that reminded Mitra of Ana, her anxiety about pleasing her mother and Mitra at the same time, despite their opposing positions. A strenuous task. Mitra suddenly remembered what Aden said about how Ana had not presented her complete self to Mitra, how she behaved in certain ways with certain people. Maybe what had really tormented her sister was her desire to be both traditional and modern. Instead, she did what Salimeh was doing: not just switching between languages with Mitra and Akram, but trying to accommodate the wishes of each one. For Mitra, her identity was either one or the other, a choice. Obviously, Ana hadn’t wanted to make that choice, and maybe Salimeh didn’t either. No, Mitra thought. Maybe they simply couldn’t figure out how.
The doorbell rang and the knocker sounded in quick succession. Only Mrs. Tokuda did that, demanding as she was. Mitra went quickly to answer it, surprised at how eager she was to see her neighbor from two doors down. And there she was, all four feet ten of her, silver pageboy haircut, silk pantsuit with a Nehru collar, black ballet slippers, arms cradling an iron teapot covered with a fawn-colored cozy. She always brought over her own tea.
“Ah, today you answer door.”
“Sorry, Tokuda-san. I was really tired from my trip.”
She waved Mitra’s words away. “Glad you home,” she said, stepping in and glancing down the hall to the kitchen. “That silly woman here?”
“Of course,” Mitra said, rolling her eyes.
Mrs. Tokuda peered up at Mitra’s face. “You looking bad,” she said. “You drink some Japanese tea. Feel better.”
“You know I hate that stuff.”
Mrs. Tokuda headed down the hallway. “I hate your stuff too. Like drinking hot juice.” Mitra smiled and followed.
Akram and Salimeh rose when Mrs. Tokuda entered the kitchen. “Good afternoon,” she said loudly, bowing curtly. Akram and Salimeh mirrored her, though Mitra was sure Mrs. Tokuda would have preferred a deep Japanese bow to indicate the distinction in class. And age, of course. Mrs. Tokuda was an amazing eighty-seven years old and she never let anyone forget it. She was a Judo Master, a sensei, a one-of-a-kind woman. A recent article in More magazine had dubbed her “The Ageless Athlete,” and she now had an arm’s-length waiting list for the self-defense class she held in her studio living room, a space that Mitra had remodeled with skylights and state-of-the-art matted flooring. Once in a while, Mrs. Tokuda would try to lure Mitra to the class, but Mitra always replied, “Never again.” The bruises on her arms and back had lasted weeks.
Mrs. Tokuda set her teapot on the table and went directly to grab a cup from the cupboard. Mitra poured herself another glass of tea from the samovar and placed a bowl of dates on the table. Akram’s expression was sour; the level of disgust between the old woman and her was equal.
Now they were all sitting at the table, Mrs. Tokuda chasing bites of a date with slurps of her green tea, a habit she’d picked up from Mitra—“a Persian thing not too bad.” Salimeh plucked another palmier from the dish. “You have good appetite,” Mrs. Tokuda said. Salimeh gave a puzzled frown. Mitra translated. Salimeh smiled with crumbs stuck to her lips and nodded her head. Akram said to Mitra, “Is the tight-eye making fun of my daughter?”
“Not at all,” Mitra said.
Mrs. Tokuda flashed a fake smile at Akram. “Is the barbarian complaining?” she asked Mitra.
“Not at all,” Mitra said, watching as Akram smiled falsely back.
“She is stinkier than usual today,” Mrs. Tokuda said.
Mitra chuckled quietly. “You’re so bad, Tokuda-san.”
“I only speak truth.”
“Be careful. The girl is learning English pretty quickly.”
“My English is not normal English; she no understand. Anyway, better she know her mother is idiot.”
“Stop. You’re making me laugh.”
Salimeh opened her ESL workbook. “Good you study,” Mrs. Tokuda said, pointing to the book and enunciating her words.
Salimeh looked up. “Yes,” she said.
“Most important thing is education.”
Mitra translated.
Akram snorted, looked away. Mrs. Tokuda crinkled her face into a severe sneer. She’d put two daughters through college and one through law school; the other was a therapist. Neither were married, and that was just fine with Mrs. Tokuda. “Husbands are like heavy rocks in pockets, pulling women down and down.” She’d been widowed after the war, after the internment camps. Her mother had been a geisha in Kyoto, which was how Mitra thought she got her independent streak, as well as a distinctive bias toward the rare male who showed modesty and humility. She liked Julian.
Salimeh undid her scarf and let it fall to her shoulders. Her hair was stick-straight and shiny. Mrs. Tokuda said, “She walks in the neighborhood without that scarf on, you know.”
“I know,” said Mitra.
“Soon maybe she show the belly too. And the barbarian mother have heart attack. We be rid of her.”
Mitra sputtered, coughed up half a raisin. “What? What belly?”