Chapter 16
When Julian got back from soccer, Mitra was dressed and pacing the living room. “We need to go for a walk,” she said.
He dropped his gym bag and picked at his damp T-shirt: a British flag with the word GREECE under it. “Gotta jump in the shower first.”
She stopped pacing, stood with her hands in her jeans pockets, shoulders tense. “You can shower when we get back.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re out of here.” Her voice sounded at once pleading and angry.
She was silent as they climbed the hill away from the Sunday bustle of Twenty-fourth Street. Usually they took their weekend walks past neighborhood shops or at farmers’ markets or craft fairs; sometimes they hiked in the Headlands across the Golden Gate, but they rarely walked the quiet residential streets; Mitra did this often enough on her own in order to stay familiar with home sales and renovations. She led him toward a bank of eucalyptus trees along the ridge, and they sat down on a weathered wooden bench. The peeling bark of the massive trees reminded Mitra of shedding skin.
“Salimeh’s pregnant,” she blurted.
“What? Shit. You’re joking, right?” Stupid words, all of them.
“Take a good look. One thing a Moslem girl knows is how to make her body invisible and her face unreadable.”
Julian put his elbows on his knees, held his head with both hands. “Did she tell you this?”
“No, Mrs. Tokuda noticed it.”
“She’s been looking so much healthier, filling out.”
“Exactly.”
“And she’s happier, even a little carefree. You think she’s in denial?”
“Either that or she’s adept at hiding and playacting like most Persian girls.” Like Ana, Mitra thought.
“How far along is she?”
“Mrs. Tokuda surmised seven months.”
“Jesus, that far?” He sat up, looked at her. “You think the mother knows?”
“Of course she doesn’t know.”
“How could she not?”
“She’s a mother whose worst nightmare is this. I mean, you’re a doctor, and you didn’t even notice.”
“That’s not fair. I don’t live in the same room with her. We barely communicate—just good morning, how are you, good night. I doubt she knows the English word for pregnant.”
“Still.”
“You’re blaming me? Come on, Mitra.”
She stood up, walked a few paces away, then turned. “It was your idea to bring them here. Your idealistic sense of chivalry, and all these exoticized notions you have about Iranians. Tell me, if they were British or American, would you’ve considered taking them in? A couple of homeless strangers?”
“I see I should be more like you, eh? Cold and insular.”
Touché, she thought. His face was red with anger, a muscle next to his eye twitching. Her words had cut him, and she immediately regretted her callousness. He was right; this wasn’t his fault. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just freaking out.” She tried to remain calm, but she couldn’t tamp her fury. “How did this happen?” she said, flinging her arms up.
“She’s a teenager,” he huffed. “Evolutionary imperative.”
“You’re making jokes?”
“Not really. It’s true. I just can’t imagine her having a boyfriend. She’s so shy.”
Mitra sat up straight. “Do you think she was raped?”
“Jeez, Mitra. By whom?”
“By anyone! By Kourosh!”
“Mitra!”
“It happens and you know it. All those girls in the refugee camps where your mother works? Raped and pregnant, you told me. Men prey on women everywhere. I mean, I’m not saying it was Kourosh, but it had to have been someone who had access to her in that house of his.”
Julian was silent, staring, thinking.
“You have to talk to Kourosh, Julian. He’s going to have to deal with this—her care, an adoption, whatever. They’re his family members.”
“Agreed,” he said with a sharp nod. “I’ll call him and set up a time to talk tomorrow at the hospital.” He looked up at her. “Now stop pacing and sit down. We have the first step of a plan.”
She sat, and they both stared down the hill at a boy playing fetch with his dog. The breeze fluttered through her hair. It was cool; the fog was coming in. “It’s amazing how we don’t see things that are right in front of us.” She was trying not to think of Ana and Kareem. “Those little pimples around Sali’s mouth, the slight pregnancy mask on her cheeks, her wider neck, swollen fingers. I saw it all as soon as Tokuda mentioned it.”
He took her hand, and she didn’t resist. “Those are some fancy medical details you seem to know.”
“When Ana was pregnant, I went back east every few months, made sure I was there for the births. Nina came early; I almost didn’t make it. Bijan didn’t have the stomach for labor or delivery— one of those people who has to use the toilet whenever someone is in pain or bleeding.”
Julian chuckled. “I’ve known interns like that.”
She smirked. “How comforting.”
“Come on, let’s get some Chinese takeaway and watch a movie. Until I meet with Kourosh, there’s nothing we can do.”
“I have no appetite, Jules. I just need to think.”
“All right. So we’ll think.” He stood up. “I need that shower. My sweat has turned to ice.” He turned and Mitra rose to follow.
“Jules,” she said. “I think I need to think about this alone.”
He stopped, turned back. “What’s going on, Mitra?”
It was the perfect opening, but she sidestepped it. “This is what’s going on. I need some time to absorb it. I know you like to talk things through—and I love that about you—but I’m different.”
Julian rubbed his eyes. “It’s more than that, Mitra. I can feel it. Something happened back east. Why won’t you tell me?”
She shook her head. “What happened was the death anniversary of my sister and her kids. Isn’t that enough? A year has passed, a whole year, and I lost myself.”
He sucked in his breath. She reached up quickly and put her hands on either side of his face. The ends of his curls gleamed red in the misty sunset. “Please, Jules, give me a little space?” She paused. “A few days?”
It was a temporary lie, she told herself, a lie born out of love and affection. And necessity. The situation with Sali had to be resolved before anything else.
* * *
Julian loathed the hospital cafeteria, but on short notice, it was the most convenient place to meet Kourosh after morning rounds. Fluorescent lights and worried faces staring into space, tissues balled up and dropped into empty paper cups and trays, lips moving in prayer, legs bouncing under tables. Anxiety like a mist in the air.
Julian grabbed a coffee and sat at a corner table to wait. Kourosh was always late—for soccer, for his patients, for staff meetings— and this put Julian in a fouler mood than he already was. He hadn’t slept well the last two nights. Among other things, he wasn’t used to his own bed with its lumpy pillows. He’d forgotten how noisy his fridge was and that he’d canceled his cable TV subscription, which meant the distraction of a decent football match was out of the question. Distraction was the path he’d decided to walk after Mitra told him she wanted “space,” that ridiculous word that could mean nothing important or something essential. He wasn’t stupid; he could tell when a woman wasn’t into him, but he felt confident it was temporary. It was tough not to ruminate over what was going on in that willful head of hers. He was trying to be patient, but he was pissed, mostly at himself. He should never have brought those women into their lives. Sure, he felt sorry for the girl, but the situation was complex now. Kourosh needed to take them back so he and Mitra could move on with their lives.
Julian was almost down to the last drop of his lousy coffee, ready to take the lift back up to his department, when Kourosh came sauntering in, white coat flapping behind him like a cape.
“Hey, man, sorry I’m late. Had a patient with a rash that stumped me.”
“No problem,” said Julian, not meaning it. “Figure it out?”
“Nope. Story of my life. Rashes and zits. I should close my office to teens, start doing Botox exclusively. Hold on, I’ll get myself a coffee.”
Kourosh’s cologne was overpowering. His hair, gelled and neatly combed away from his forehead, gleamed like a new black car, like his shoes. Julian heard him joking with the cashier, a flirty laugh. Who would guess this guy had a frazzled wife, three young children, and a houseful of dependents? On his best day, Julian couldn’t be bothered to put on a tie.
“So, what’s up?” Kourosh asked, sliding into the chair opposite.
Julian cleared his throat. “It’s about Akram and Salimeh.” He heard his own poor pronunciation of the names and suddenly felt self-conscious, as if Kourosh might not take him seriously.
“You know I can’t thank you enough for helping me out with them.” He said this every time they saw each other, as if the words were an installment on a debt. “I’m getting close to figuring it all out. Been talking to a friend of mine who has an apartment in Fresno—he bought it as an investment—just waiting until the lease is up with the current tenants.” A few weeks ago, it was a different friend with an apartment in Santa Rosa. But Julian hadn’t cared so much then. Was Mitra right? That he liked the chivalry of it? It was true that he saw promise in Sali: she was curious and eager with a character that could be sculpted, the moldy traditions chiseled away. Was this an imperialist attitude?
“So I think in a couple of months,” Kourosh was saying, “I’ll be able to take them off your hands.”
“The girl is pregnant.”
For an instant, Kourosh’s smile disappeared. Then he reconstituted it and snorted. “Hah! Impossible!”
Julian remained silent, expressionless. Let it sink in.
The smile disappeared again, and Julian could have sworn he heard the guy gulp. Kourosh fiddled with his cup, his spoon, his empty sugar packets. “This . . . this . . . it . . . can’t be. I mean, how?”
“You tell me. She was living at your place.”
Kourosh wriggled in his chair, frowning, eyes darting with rapid thought. Julian relaxed a little; in this stunned behavior, he saw what he’d hoped to see: that Kourosh was blameless. The guy wasn’t a lech. Almost as bad, however: he was an oblivious buffoon who hadn’t protected Sali.
Finally, Kourosh managed to say, “This is just terrible!” His voice was a strained whisper; Julian had never seen him so emotional. And then, with balled fists, trembling lips, and set jaw, he said, “That slut!”
The words were so unexpected, Julian sat stunned, and before he knew it, Kourosh was on his feet, suddenly in a rush, saying how he needed to digest it all, but he had to get home, he was exhausted, could they talk about this tomorrow when his head was clear? And he was gone.
I’m a colossal moron, Julian thought. He was so embarrassed by his naïveté that he related the gist of the meeting to Mitra that evening in the simplest of terms, saying that Kourosh was horrified by the news and needed some time to figure out what and how to deal with it. He clasped his phone and braced for words of angry judgment, but all he got was a quiet almost dispassionate voice—“Huh. Okay.”—and he wished he could see her face to figure out whether she was in shock, as he was, or if she was shutting down the way she often did when she grieved.
He asked her what she’d learned from Sali about who had done this to her; they needed more ammunition to force Kourosh’s engagement. Again, that remote quiet voice: “I haven’t told her yet that I know she’s pregnant.” He couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t like her. “Well,” he said, wishing he could rush over there to shake her loose. “Now that Kourosh knows, you better do it or we could lose control entirely.” With Mitra, it was all about control. He knew her well enough to use that like a rocket booster.
* * *
Mitra knew she had to do more than just watch Sali, but she felt paralyzed, unable to say or do a thing. Watching Salimeh made her fingers itch. From behind a window or on the deck, she tracked the girl as she left the house or returned, walking her own desire line through the struggling succulents in the backyard, to and from the apartment door and the gate into the alley. Mitra imagined Sali’s flesh beneath her clothing, swollen with the hormonal fluids of pregnancy, faintly giving off the fragrance of warm milk. She felt wistful for Ana’s pregnancies, a yearning to touch her sister’s living skin once more. Ana’s joints and muscles had ached both times, so when Mitra visited, she armed herself with a jar of Nivea cream and gave her sister massages, an act she found tedious and uncomfortable with anyone else, but now gave her a sense of redemption for those years of childhood malevolence.
Watching Salimeh, Mitra felt Ana’s muscles slowly relaxing under her fingers, heard Ana’s sighs and moans of pleasure and relief. Her brain was thick with emotion. Any benefit she might have gotten from the few days of rest after returning from the East Coast was gone. She knew this was stress and grief and shock. Too much at once. Her thoughts were disjointed and incomplete, though she had to admit a relief in being able to shift her focus away from Anahita and Aden and Kareem. At night, she dreamed of Nikku and Nina in a miniseries of their lives, as they said their first words (kiki for cookie, fava for flower), as they giggled with their first teetering steps, as their dimpled hands found security in her own, looking up at her with trusting eyes: why this, why that, why, why, why—Mitra’s favorite question. Ana saying, Of course you don’t mind answering the whys; you don’t have them twenty-four/seven. And she dreamed of babies, faceless babies. It made her not want to sleep.
After Julian related his encounter with Kourosh, she felt numb and then resigned. She realized that she hadn’t put much faith in Kourosh coming to the rescue, but Julian had and still was. He would have to find out for himself how rarely people stuck their necks out. She, on the other hand, would swallow her pride and call Olga for advice.
It was early morning in Tehran, almost a full twelve hours difference.
“Yes, hello, yes,” Olga answered, startled from sleep, pretending alertness.
Mitra laughed. “Put your teeth in, Olga-joon. You sound like Sylvester.” She imagined the yellowy enamel nuggets attached to metal wires immersed in a glass of water, Olga’s two fingers dipping in to retrieve them, shake the water off, and click them into her mouth.
“Sylwester? Who is Sylwester? Forgive me, I have gotten old; I do not remember the names of your friends anymore. I have even forgotten some of your younger family members, which is very impolite of me. Please remind me.”
“The cat, Olga. Sylvester the Cat.”
“Aah,” she said, chuckling a morning rasp she called her Old Goat’s Voice. “Cartoon cat,” she said in English.
“If I don’t remind you of America, you’ll forget everything. You won’t even know it’s me on the phone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Mitra laughed. “Say that again, please.”
“Ridiculous.” Redickoolas.
Mitra took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to wake you up, Olga-joon, but I have a problem. With the village women.”
“Oh, God,” moaned Olga. “What I tell you? Village people always make problem. More bad than Afghanis coming here with no money, no home, no future, like Mexiki in America. Anyway, Afghanis not bad people, just ole-fashioned and poor, like Mexiki looking for hope. But Irooni village people, they try to take over you life. Very stupid and big-headed, like American hillbilly Jed Clampett. They have nothing, know nothing, want everything. Want to pull you down like donkey with too much hay on you back. I tole you best to find other donkeys to carry them, but you tell me I am es-snob.”
“Do you want to know the problem, Olga, or do you just want to give me a lecture?”
“Okay. I stop talking.”
“Good.” Mitra swallowed. “The girl is going to have a baby.”
Silence from Olga was the profoundest of reactions. Finally, “How did this happen? Is she bad girl? Going off with boys?”
“I don’t think so. It happened before she came to live with us. I haven’t talked to her yet. I don’t know how to talk to her. Or to the mother, who doesn’t know.”
Olga sighed. “Mother is bigger problem than girl.”
“That’s what I was thinking too. But I want to help the girl. She’s sweet, Oli; I want to make sure she’ll be all right.”
“Best thing is ’bortion. Mother never know.”
“It’s too late for an abortion.”
“Vai. This disaster problem.”
Mitra gritted her teeth. “I know. So what do I do about it?”
* * *
The next evening, Mitra found Salimeh in the yard gazing up at the stars and the roiling fog. Mitra’s steps on the gravel path were loud enough for Salimeh to hear, but the girl didn’t move until Mitra sat down beside her on the stone bench. She made to get up in polite greeting, but Mitra touched her shoulder to keep her seated.
“The nights are often cold in San Francisco,” Mitra said, glad she’d given Sali one of her old ski jackets. “But with the fog so low in the sky like a blanket, it sometimes makes me feel cozy to be outside.”
Salimeh nodded in agreement, continuing to look at the sky or shyly into her lap. Her scarf was so tight she had a double chin. Mitra had needed only a glance to see her swollen nose and tear-brimming eyes. So, Mitra thought, she was upset, perhaps despairing, but she’d been hiding it well from everyone.
“I miss the stars,” said Salimeh. “Back home in my village, they’re very close.”
“I remember them being close in Tehran.”
“You miss Iran too, Mitra Khanoom?”
“No, I only visited twice. I was a little older than you the last time. My father sent me because he thought I was too wild and that a summer with my uncle Jafar, who was traditional, would teach me manners and respect for my elders.” She shook her head, remembering the grand house with its heavy dark furniture and whispering servants, its one black-and-white television, before which her perpetually depressed aunt sat. Her children were summering in America, and Mitra was clearly not a good stand-in for Kareem and his sisters, not that she’d tried to be. She had a sudden image of Kareem and a ten-year-old Ana in the Devon house together, but she pushed it away. To Sali, she said, “I looked at the stars from my uncle’s rooftop. His house was in Shemran, which was still a suburb in the foothills back then. I bet I saw them as clearly as you did in your mountaintop village.” Sali nodded and sighed.
The rooftop had been one of two bright spots for Mitra that summer; she could sneak up there at night and pretend the house was hers, imagine how she would change it to suit her. The other was her uncle’s garden—acres and acres of it thick as a forest with wells and pools and a small stream, rosebushes as ancient as Cyrus the Great probably, fruit trees at every turn. The only way you could tell you were in the middle of the high desert was to look up at the brown mountains with their glaciers on top, like puddles of cream. She remembered in a flash the secluded corner hidden by honeysuckle vines, the rough texture of the kilim on her buttocks, the initial pleasure, and the disappointing diminution of it. A boy her age, his first time, the relief when she learned he was leaving for boarding school in England before the week was out. If not for luck, she could’ve found herself in Sali’s situation. Who could she have leaned on? Certainly not her parents, whose sympathy would have been compromised by their own shame and sense of victimhood. And suddenly she knew: she would have had Olga. Even if only to stand by her side without judgment, she’d always had—and still had—Olga’s presence to give her courage.
She put her arm around Sali’s shoulder. “Anyway, I didn’t have a very good time. I felt out of place.”
Salimeh nodded. “I know how that feels.”
Mitra pulled the girl against her. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “You don’t want to greet your baby with a sneeze and a cough, do you?”
Registering Mitra’s words, Salimeh snapped to her feet and clamped a hand over her mouth; even in profile, Mitra saw the horror in her wide eyes. She wrapped her fingers around Salimeh’s wrist. “Don’t be afraid.” The girl wrenched herself free, stumbled toward the bushes, and vomited. Mitra contained the urge to go to her, hold her head the way she’d done with Nina and Nikku when they were sick. Salimeh wiped her mouth on the tail of her scarf. She turned slightly, eyes downcast, weeping. “Khanoom, I don’t know . . . I can’t remember . . . I never would . . . I’m not a bad girl. . . .”
Mitra stood. “Come on, we’ll go inside and talk. We’ll find a solution. You’re not the first girl in the world to have a baby without a husband.”
* * *
Olga had told Mitra to meet with Akram alone, without Salimeh. And when Mitra tried to say that Olga was perhaps overreacting, Olga made her promise on the soul of Anahita that she would follow this advice. After a quick call to Julian to tell him what Sali had said, Mitra descended the deck stairs and knocked on the apartment door. Already she was mentally exhausted and bleary-eyed, as she used to be after standardized tests. She looked at her watch. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. Julian had called an hour ago and she’d told him she would call him back, but if it got too late, so be it.
“It’s open,” she heard Akram say in a gruff voice, her tone changing when she saw Mitra. “Khanoom,” she said meekly, standing up from her bedroll.
“Salaam,” Mitra said solemnly. She hadn’t been down here but once since they’d moved in. Nothing was changed. Still no furniture but Mitra’s old oak kitchen table and chairs and two twin mattresses. She’d told them to look through the adjacent garage for anything they might want to use—bookcases, a trunk, wall hangings, some old curtains, cheap tchotchkes—but they hadn’t brought in a thing. It occurred to her that she should have urged them several more times to do this, or simply fetched items and put them in the apartment for them to pick through. Iranians can’t receive a gift without sustained persuasion, but Mitra hadn’t bothered. She nearly blushed.
“Can we sit?” she asked, gesturing toward the table.
Recovering from the shock of Mitra’s presence, Akram uttered a quick yes-yes and scurried into the kitchenette to light the kettle for tea. She was bare-headed, and her hennaed hair fell in a messy thin braid down her back. She brushed crumbs off a chair, and Mitra sat.
“Salimeh is in the garden,” Akram said. “I will call her.” She made to dash for the door.
“She’s upstairs,” Mitra said, stopping her. “I saw her. It was cold. She’s watching television.”
“I am sorry. It is not right. She should come down.”
“It doesn’t matter. I want to talk to you alone.”
Akram frowned, wrung her hands. The kettle whistled, and she poured two very dark teas and brought them to the table. She sat and slid a cracked bowl of lump sugar between them. The table was sticky with splatters of old food. Akram stared hard at Mitra, waiting.
Mitra inhaled. “Akram Khanoom.” She paused. “Akram-jaan,” she said, using a more formal endearment that felt distasteful on her tongue. “Your daughter was raped.” It was the first time she’d ever said this word in Farsi; she hadn’t known it until Olga told her on the phone.
“What? What are you saying?”
“She is pregnant, Khanoom.” Mitra looked down at her tea.
Akram was mute. Then she began to shake and sputter. Finally, she was able to choke out “no” several times. Her beady eyes darted in an effort to figure out, Mitra supposed, exactly how such a thing could happen. Mitra tried to help by explaining in as soothing a voice as she could muster. “It was a boy from Kourosh’s street, someone visiting a neighbor. She does not know his name, and she never saw him again. It happened when she went to borrow some flour. He offered her a soda. I think he drugged her. She remembers nothing. It was not her fault.”
Akram looked at Mitra wild-eyed. “A boy cannot help himself when a girl draws attention to herself. My daughter is a whore.”
“She is a child,” Mitra said. “Boys are not animals; they can control themselves.”
Akram’s body seemed locked in a prolonged shiver. “Please, Khanoom, take us to the doctor who can end the pregnancy. I will find a way to pay you back.”
Mitra shook her head. “The baby is already stirring,” she said. “No doctor would do it.”
Akram slouched and hugged her abdomen, keening and rocking. She raised her arms and began striking herself on the head, cursing herself, asking God to kill her. Shit. Mitra hated this melodrama. The maids used to act this way when they broke something and wanted Shireen to forgive them; they would launch into self-flagellation and wailing. All for pity, which they usually got. If Julian were here, he would have urged Mitra to comfort and soothe the woman, perhaps wrap her arms around Akram until she calmed down, the way one might do with a toddler having a tantrum. Mitra didn’t move; the melodrama was working the opposite magic on her. When Akram began striking her chest, Mitra snapped, “Stop it! Calm yourself!”
Akram sucked in her breath as if Mitra had punched her stomach. The deep indentations beneath her cheekbones turned blotchy with anger. Despite the wailing, no tears streaked her face. What an actress, Mitra thought.
“Don’t you have any feelings for your daughter? She was attacked, and she’s been suffering for months.”
Akram’s expression turned sour. “God kill her,” she said.