Chapter 23
Mitra squinted at the tube of the jetway and spotted her mother between the hulking arms of two businessmen, their suit bags hanging off their shoulders like slaughtered game. Shireen’s haircut was indeed a bit butch, but it suited her petite form. She might have been less attractive from a male point of view, but she looked more serious, which could only be good. Of course she had freshened up before disembarking; Mitra imagined her during the descent, holding a compact mirror to apply her rouge and lipstick, a cover-up stick to hide the darkness under her eyes, eyes that now darted with concern, searching for Mitra. Eyes that finally spotted her daughter and filled, it seemed, with an inner light. Relief.
She waddled with the weight of a stuffed handbag and a carry-on. They kissed on both cheeks, and Mitra took the bags. “Too heavy,” Shireen said, reaching for the handbag. “I carry one.”
“No, Mom. I’m fine.” Mitra gestured with her head. “Let’s move out of the way, let the other passengers by.”
Shireen looked behind her sharply. “Oh, excuse me,” she said to no one and everyone. She switched her heavy mink coat from one arm to the other. Mitra stopped herself from mentioning that the fur would not go over well in San Francisco. There would be plenty of time for her mother to learn the rules of the West.
On the freeway into the city, Shireen was frightened by the force of the rain. “Coming down like dogs and cats,” she said, leaning stiffly forward in the passenger seat, peering into the blurry darkness. “Can you see the road? I cannot see it.”
“Relax, Mom. I’m used to it. This is how it rains here in the winter, and I know the road. Are you warm enough? Should I turn the heat up?”
“I am good. Not so cold here. Snowing in New York.”
“It doesn’t snow here.”
Shireen looked at her doubtfully. “Huh,” she puffed, absorbing this odd fact.
Mitra laughed. “And from April until October, the sun shines every day.”
Shireen’s eyes widened. “Like summer in Tehran.”
“Sort of. In the city, though, it’s cold and foggy in the summer. The city weather is different than in the suburbs. We have something called microclimates.”
Shireen nodded her head slowly. “I feel I am in a different country.”
Mitra glanced at her, found herself reaching over and laying her hand on Shireen’s. “You are,” she said. Shireen hid her surprise at Mitra’s touch and quickly skimmed her thumb across the top of her daughter’s hand before Mitra drew it away. Shireen blinked back a surge of tears.
When Mitra downshifted to climb the steep hill to her house, Shireen gripped the safety strap. “Oof,” she said.
“This is nothing, Mom. I’ll take you on a tour of the city tomorrow. The hills are amazing.” Mitra hadn’t thought about this part of her mother’s visit: the sightseeing part. It would be a thrill to show her mother around, take her over the Golden Gate, up into the Headlands, down to Big Sur, to Alcatraz, and eventually up into the Sierra to the beauty of Lake Tahoe. And her mother would appreciate all of it in that winsome way she and Anahita shared—faces unabashedly showing wonder and approval, not a prideful bone in their bodies. As Mitra pulled into her driveway, she glanced up at her house and realized more than ever before that this was her home.
Sali stood waiting in the center of the kitchen, wringing her hands. Mitra recognized the trepidation on her face. Of course the girl would be frightened. What if Mitra’s mother was as coarsely judgmental as her own? Mitra scolded herself for not thinking to reassure her earlier, but was pleased Sali hadn’t retreated to hide in her room; she was prepared to face the music.
Mitra introduced them, and Sali bowed from the waist. “Salaam, Khanoom,” she said in a strong voice. Shireen bowed less deeply and salaamed in return, but it was her earnest smile that put Sali at ease. Gesturing toward the spotless stove and its steaming samovar pot, she said, “I have made tea.” On the counter was a plate of butter biscuits.
Shireen looked at her watch. “Vai, what a good girl, but it is too late for tea. I will not sleep.”
“Of course, Khanoom,” said Sali, her eyes downcast.
Shireen was struck by how much this girl reminded her of Ensi, the young maid with the cleft palate who’d come to them so long ago by way of Golnaz, and had gone back to Iran and thankfully married, and then faded like so many once-knowns into the miasma of the theocracy.
“But a glass of simple hot water will be perfect. And, of course, a biscuit,” Shireen said.
Sali smiled broadly and moved to the stove. Suddenly, Shireen understood how useful the maids from Iran had made her feel as she taught them how to keep house and watched them marvel at America’s curiosities: washing machines and American Bandstand and department stores; frozen dinners, garbage disposals, and housewives in short-shorts. How long had it been since she’d felt she knew more than someone else?
Mitra took Shireen’s mink and stowed it in the coat closet. “Sit, Mom, I’ll take the bags upstairs.”
Shireen sat down at the kitchen table, thought twice, and called out to Mitra. “Azizam, bring me my slippers when you come back; they are on top of the clothes in the suitcase.”
Mitra smiled as she struggled up the stairs with the carry-on and the big blue American Tourister suitcase they’d collected at baggage claim; her mother couldn’t bear to wear street shoes at home. At home. Was this Shireen’s home now? The reality was, she was probably here to stay. Yusef’s pride would prevent him from taking Shireen back without a list of harsh concessions, if at all. The question was whether Mitra could help her mother be happier here than she was back in the hollow nest of her New Jersey life. Should Mitra dare hope that, after all these years, someone might consider following her across the country? Did her mother’s arrival feel like an intrusion into the life she’d created for herself in San Francisco? Well, yes—a welcome and wonderful intrusion. After all, she hadn’t left the east because of a desire to be alone, but because of the need to be left alone in her desires.
Unlatching the suitcase, she breathed in a mixture of Shireen’s flowery perfume and the faint shoe polish odor she associated with her parents’ closet. Shireen was a master packer, organizing items according to drawer and closet placement—shoes and belts at the bottom, underwear in the left quadrant, socks and hose in the right, shirts in the lower left, grooming articles next to those, then a layer each of trousers, blouses, dresses, jackets. On top: robe, nightgown, and slippers in a plastic bag. Such obsessive organization would have irritated Mitra once, but it only amused her now. Hadn’t she inherited a strand of this trait from her mother? It wasn’t something she would have admitted to twenty years ago, but those had been the uncertain days when she hadn’t settled into who she was. A time when she might’ve worried that her mother’s presence in California would stifle her or burden her. And what did she feel now? Excitement, for certain. Hope, maybe. Hope for what, she didn’t know. She removed the slippers from the plastic bag. Soft black leather, thick crisscross straps, a slight heel. Like holding a worn book of fairy tales.
Mitra had given Shireen the room where Sali had been staying; it was the largest of the guest rooms. She’d moved Sali down the hall to the small third bedroom. Looking around, Mitra noticed that Sali had folded down the bedcovers in a diagonal on one side, spread a white bathmat over the carpet next to the bed, and placed a fresh bottle of Evian next to a water glass on the nightstand. On the other nightstand sat a vase of holly berries from the garden. In the bathroom Shireen and Sali would share, next to the toilet was a small tin watering can (rubbed as clean as when Mitra had first bought it a year ago) that Shireen could use as a manual bidet. Mitra smiled. She wouldn’t have remembered to provide this; Iranians didn’t trust mere toilet paper for big jobs.
She closed the window she’d cracked earlier to give the room a fresh smell, headed back down to the kitchen, and set Shireen’s slippers at her feet.
“Ah! Thank you, my daughter,” she said, removing her pumps and sliding her small feet into the mules.
Sali poured Mitra a glass of tea. Mitra sat and wrapped her hand around the warm glass. “You must be tired, Mom. It’s after midnight for you.”
Sali slid into the chair next to Mitra, across from Shireen.
“Yes, I am tired, but now I am also relaxed. The airplane splintered my nerves.”
Sali kept her eyes on her folded hands, which rested on the table. “I like the airplane. Taking off is like a ride at Luna Park.” She had brought her chair as close as possible to the table in an attempt to hide her pregnant belly, which had grown to watermelon proportions now that she’d entered her eighth month.
“Luna Park!” Shireen exclaimed. “I have not thought of that place in years!” She addressed Mitra in English. “It was amusement park, like a—what do you say?—caravel.”
“Carnival,” Mitra corrected.
“Yes. I have good memories of it. Tell me, Salimeh-joon,” she said, switching back to Farsi, “do they still sell Akbar Mashti ice cream there?”
Sali smiled. “Oh, yes, Khanoom.” Her eyes were still appropriately downcast, but the smile broadened and her cheeks took on a shiny blush. Bless you, Mom, Mitra thought. Not that she had ever seen her mother show anyone open disapproval—and she knew Shireen was scandalized by Sali’s situation—but she hadn’t dared hope that her mother would make such an immediate effort to establish a sweet relationship with the girl. Respected auntie and obedient niece, benevolent queen and revered lady-in-waiting—in the space of five minutes, these two had found their roles.
Mitra screwed up her face. “You mean that ice cream with pistachio and rose water in it? Yuck.”
Shireen shook her head and gestured with an open palm at Mitra, saying to Sali, “See what America has done to my daughter? Who can think Akbar Mashti ice cream is yuck?” She winked at Sali, who giggled. “Yuck,” she pronounced again. “This is an essential American word, my girl.”
* * *
Mitra woke with anxiety the next morning. Her mother was here! What the hell was she going to do with her? In the glow of her arrival last night, Mitra had foolishly forgotten about the rest of her life, namely, the flurry of work she’d taken on since she and Julian parted.
While the winter rains prevented her from demolishing and reframing part of the house in Sausalito, the interior renovation of the Victorian on Dolores Street was in full swing. She’d reached a point where in the early morning, as she placed her tea on the desk in her office and lifted the blinds to see either the sunlight or the fog on the Bay in the distance, she felt a flood of self-possession, a grip on her life that could only come from having a full day of achievable tasks ahead of her. But this morning—her mother’s first morning in San Francisco—Mitra felt compromised. She had a guest in her house. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had someone over for dinner, let alone spending the night. She hadn’t even shopped for her mother’s favorite foods: nine-grain bread, unsalted butter, blueberry yogurt, raw spinach, sunflower seeds. She looked at the clock. It was almost 8:00 a.m.! She was meeting the flooring guy at nine. Shit. How had she managed to consider taking her mother sightseeing last night? She was thinking like a Persian woman, she knew, but it couldn’t be fought; the rules of hospitality were etched in her psyche. She jumped out of bed, pulling on her jeans as she hopped to the bathroom, and brushing her teeth so quickly that the toothpaste came out in clumps when she spat. She took the stairs at an uneven clip while buttoning her flannel shirt and stopped dead in the kitchen.
“Good morning, my daughter,” said Shireen in Farsi with a broad smile.
“Good morning,” Sali echoed.
But for the fact that Shireen was wearing her muumuu, the two women could’ve been sitting at the table all night long.
“I overslept,” Mitra blurted. It was an apology.
“Good!” said Shireen. “I’m sure you needed it.”
Sali began to get up. “Your chai—”
“Sit. I’ll get it.”
The samovar kettle bubbled on the stove, and the windows were slightly steamed up. Mitra couldn’t remember when the kitchen floor had been so warm against her bare soles. The butter smell of fried eggs came to her, and she glanced over at the drainboard, where a clean frying pan had been placed to air-dry. She put her tea on the table and took a quick inventory while tucking her shirt into her jeans: half a piece of toast sitting in a bread basket she hadn’t used in months, strawberry jam, cream cheese, two plates with the sticky yellow smear of yolks, and her cloth napkins. “I’ve been looking all over for those napkins,” she said. “Where did you find them?”
Shireen pointed to the cabinet above the oven. “There. Same place I put my own.”
“Oh.” Mitra sat down, brought the tea up to sip, and instead managed to dunk a loose strand of hair into the liquid. Shireen leaned forward and gently drew it away, blotting at it with her napkin. For a second, two decades melted away and Mitra chuckled at herself. “I’m such a klutz,” she said.
“Some things do not change,” said Shireen. “I know you will say no, but shall I make you some eggs?”
Mitra shook her head. “Listen, Mom, I’m sorry, but I have a meeting at one of my projects.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ll try to make it quick.”
Shireen bridled. “Quick for what? Are you not working? Don’t you stay in the office all day?”
“What? Uh, yeah, yes, usually. But you’re here. We’ll go—”
“Salimeh-joon is going to show me the neighborhood.” Sali nodded eagerly. “The market, the pharmacy, then maybe the Persian store. I am so excited to walk; so many years of driving everywhere.”
“Well, Mom, San Francisco isn’t like Manhattan, where you’re better off without a car. The hills can make a person who’s not used to it very tired, and we have terrible mass transit, so don’t even try—”
“Don’t worry, my daughter. I am not a frail old lady. And I know how to get a taxi if I need one. I have lived in this country for over forty years. Do not treat me like a foreigner. I want to explore. Salimeh is with me. You do your work and we will see you for dinner.”
With this, Shireen stood up. “I will shower and dress now.” She planted a kiss on the top of Mitra’s head and disappeared up the stairs. Mitra met Sali’s cautious gaze, then allowed herself to expel a laugh. Sali’s jaw loosened and she giggled. “I like your mother.”
Mitra cocked her head. “Yeah, I’d forgotten how likable she can be.” And Mitra recalled the sometime-Shireen of her childhood: when the house was filled with visitors who needed three square meals, snacks, toiletries, reading material, beds made, laundry washed, jokes laughed at, troubles aired, spats mediated, children entertained, soap operas translated, doctor checkups scheduled. This was a Shireen she’d forgotten, her mother in the absence of her father.
* * *
In the space of a week, Shireen learned everything she needed to know in order to run Mitra’s household. Consequently, every evening, they ate a full-blown Iranian meal—basmati rice, stews made with eggplant or split peas or kidney beans, kebabs, yogurt and cucumber soup. Shireen insisted on dinner guests: Mrs. Tokuda, of course, but also the small group of neighborhood friends Mitra had managed to put at a distance over the past year with unanswered doorbells, unreturned telephone calls, and the impenetrable posture that turned a grieving person into a narcissist. Karen and the kids, Andy and his partner Misha (“They are fruities, no?” “Gay, Mom—we say gay.”), with whom Mitra had had a running backgammon match for three years.
Within that week, Shireen had diagnosed Carlos with a reflux problem and bought him a supply of antacid pills that she placed by the now-decaffeinated morning mug of coffee he took into Mitra’s office. She bonded with his wife, Carmen, who owned a cleaning service, over ammonia, detergent, and lemon oil, and introduced their boy, Juan, to animal crackers and rock candy. Jezebel, as befit her feline disloyalty, took a liking to—no, a preference for—Shireen’s lap as the three women watched television in the evenings. And Mitra, in her bed at night, found herself feeling a certain relief at the presence of her mother in the house, just across the hall. Relief? Or was it—dare she admit?—a sense of security? She’d never felt such a thing in her parents’ house, unless she counted the times she slept in Olga’s bedroom. Not that Olga would’ve saved her from some kind of danger, just that she and Olga, in their nearness, were braver in their individuality. Having her mother near rather than far was like the difference between getting lost when you were driving with someone as opposed to when you were alone; even if the passenger couldn’t read a map, you somehow didn’t feel as panicky. It was a confidence, a strength that came merely from the presence of someone else, from another person’s need for you to act competently. And wasn’t this, in fact, reciprocal? Both of them—the mother and the daughter—were feeding off the need of the other. And why not?
Shireen, for her part, had never slept so well. At least not since childhood when she woke to larks chirping in the plane trees outside her window, the aroma of brick-oven-baked bread wafting through the house, the delicate splash of water sounding from the courtyard as the servants performed their ablutions. Shireen woke in the morning in nearly the same curled position in which she fell asleep, the night having passed as smoothly as a silk thread through the eye of a needle. What had she so often proclaimed to her friends at dinner parties when they complained about their husbands’ snoring? That she’d become inured to Yusef’s rattle, to his jerky movements, even to the cacophony of his frequent urine stream in their toilet. It had been a lie! A lie that even she had believed. For decades, she now realized, she’d slept as episodically as a cat, in fitful fragments. She’d denied any problem. And now, such joy she got from being a woman with a bed of her own!
As the weeks went by, she occasionally wondered how Yusef was handling life without her. She’d expected to think of him more often, to miss him. Part of her wanted to miss him, if only to make worthy their years together. Several times during dinner, the phone rang and the party hung up after Mitra answered. Shireen found herself holding her breath, heart thumping, but she realized this reaction was more to do with an anxiety about Mitra being subjected to Yusef’s abuse than anything else. When she thought about the east, it was the graves she pictured. Vivian had agreed to hire someone to care for the plots, and Shireen trusted Vivian, but she still worried about bird droppings soiling the tombstones, fallen leaves obscuring the engravings, and the lack of fresh flowers. Well, she thought, if that was all she missed . . .
Salimeh was Shireen’s surprise. She was a good girl. Smiling often, eager in the way of curious children, helpful to a fault, and well-mannered. She was pak—pure—despite her condition. Shireen, who had always defined herself as a conservative woman, marveled at her lack of disapproval—even of sorrow—for Salimeh’s circumstances. Had America changed her? Perhaps she’d seen too many TV talk shows where women displayed their mistakes and misfortunes as if they were wares on a blanket at the bazaar. Or perhaps she knew now that so few outcomes in life could be controlled. Unless, of course, one was a woman like her eldest daughter, a woman who bound herself to no man. And yet, her Mitra was lonely, unfulfilled somehow—something a mother sensed despite confident words and frequent laughter. That boy—the one Salimeh called Mitra Khanoom’s Mister-Doctor, her voice fading for a moment as if remembering a martyr—he still filled the shadows that crossed her daughter’s face. But Shireen said nothing.
She also asked Salimeh nothing about how she had come to be pregnant or about the mother who had disowned her. Some things, Shireen believed, were not mitigated by talk; only kind words and actions over time could bleach bad memories and build trust. Anyway, these things were not Shireen’s business. She was a guest, perhaps indefinitely, but a guest just the same, and she had always prided herself on resisting gossip and nosiness. It was one of the reasons that her friendships with other transplants from her country were pleasant, but superficial. It was something she and Mitra had in common.
When Shireen found herself thinking about what would happen to Salimeh and the coming baby, she told herself that Mitra had a plan. Mitra always had a plan. And knowing her daughter’s penchant for pragmatism, she speculated that it involved giving the baby up for adoption. Mitra would believe, and rightly so, that a girl Salimeh’s age should not sacrifice her future to the burdens of a child. It would be best for the child as well. Still, Shireen could not erase her feelings about adoption, about orphans. In Iran, they called them side-of-the-road children. That was where the poor left the extra mouth they could not feed or, for whatever reason, did not want. The children died there, or were taken by the authorities to an orphanage, from which they rarely emerged until they were grown. The mere fact of their abandonment was a stigma, a curse almost, that prevented them from being wanted by anyone. They came from bad stock, from people in such dire straits or lacking such humanity and sense of goodness that they could abandon their own offspring. For in normal families, orphans were always adopted by relatives; children were not only of the parents, but of the family. What was a person without a family? Shireen knew she had to shed this bias, that in America an adopted child was deemed a precious gift, that bloodline was often dismissed as unimportant. And she thought this was correct and fair. But some things were ingrained, and when she allowed herself to contemplate Salimeh’s growing belly, she was sad.
For her part, Salimeh never mentioned her pregnancy. She would’ve liked to forget it, and sometimes, since Shireen Khanoom had come, she did. It was only when she lay in her bed in the quiet dark that she became aware of the movements in her belly and a shivery fear ran through her body. Like that frightening movie she saw on the TV of the lizard-like monster eating its way out of a man’s stomach. That confusing word alien, used for imagined monsters from other planets and at the same time for people like her who took ESL classes. She would have given her eyes to move back in time and erase what she had let happen to her. If she had only refused the glass of soda from the handsome boy when she went to borrow the flour. If she had only been able to keep her eyes open.
But such thoughts came only at night now. Shireen Khanoom kept her too busy, and made her laugh. Unlike her own mother, Shireen Khanoom was never still. She was like a train that never stopped. Not a fast or noisy train, but a smooth and gentle monorail, like Salimeh had seen when Kourosh Khan took them all to Disneyland.
Already Shireen Khanoom had developed a routine for them. After breakfast, they visited the neighborhood shops: the florist to admire and smell the flowers, the hardware store that sold everything for the house but that Khanoom complained was overpriced, the women’s shoe store where the shoes looked like they were made for men, the gift shop that sold tiny statues of rosy-cheeked little boys and girls kissing, where Khanoom liked to read the greeting cards and giggle. The market, of course, where Khanoom and the Chinese man behind the counter talked like they were old friends, understanding each other even though their accents made it difficult for Salimeh to follow the conversation. As they passed the dry cleaner, Khanoom would wave at the Hindi lady in her sari, and then at the fat Spanish man working with his hands in the cobbler shop. There was one shop they had visited only once. It had a very strong smell and glass cases filled with small items that reminded Salimeh of the hookah her grandfather used to smoke as he sat in his corner, his crooked legs folded beneath him. The blond man behind the counter wore an amameh on his head, and this looked very strange to her; the last time she’d seen an amameh was on the head of a mullah back in Iran. Khanoom had suddenly said, “Oh!” and pulled at the sleeve of Salimeh’s jacket until they were back on the sidewalk.
Sometimes Khanoom bought Salimeh a little something—a bag of the round chocolate candies with the letter M on them or a vial of flowery perfume. Salimeh was embarrassed by this and quietly asked Khanoom not to buy her things, but Khanoom told her, “It’s nothing.” And yesterday, Khanoom took her into the secondhand clothing shop and bought her a pair of jeans made with a stretching material in the waist to fit over her belly. “Now you won’t have to wear those messy-looking sweatpants to your class,” Khanoom said, and Salimeh had to look away to hide the tears in her eyes.
When they were finished visiting the shops, they went to the ice cream parlor. Khanoom loved ice cream; she liked it soft, almost drinkable, and while Salimeh scooped spoonfuls into her mouth, Khanoom sat patiently waiting for her vanilla to soften, telling stories of when Mitra Khanoom and her poor sister were children.
Khanoom was so different from Salimeh’s maman—from any maman Sali had ever known—that she sometimes thought she was dreaming. Such kindness, and never a disappointed look. And Khanoom loved to cook, which was Sali’s favorite task. Her maman had believed her cooking superior, and she’d made Sali stand behind her and watch everything she did over her shoulder, to prepare for her life as a wife. But in the afternoons, when Sali came back from her class and Shireen Khanoom was done with her siesta, they would begin cooking the evening meal, and Khanoom was not content with Salimeh merely watching over her shoulder; she showed her how to chop, to sauté, to stir ingredients, and then bade her copy, gently correcting or praising. Such variety of food Salimeh had never known. Her maman had used onions, turmeric, and tomato sauce in everything, mixing in lamb or chickpeas or potatoes, sometimes fava beans. But Khanoom grabbed every kind of vegetable at the market, marinated meats in spices that smelled as pungent as the farms at home, and baked her rice to perfection, each grain separate, plump, and elongated. As they cooked, they watched cooking shows on the small TV that sat on a shelf in the wall made especially for it, and Khanoom particularly liked an old lady with a cluck-cluck chicken voice who Khanoom said was famous for teaching American women how to make food like the French, and who made a big mess when she poured ingredients into her bowls, and who once dropped a whole hen onto the floor, picked it up, and put it back in the pan. Khanoom had clamped her hand over her mouth, then said, “Well, never mind. It is a TV show. They probably throw it out.”
The only thing that was not wonderful was Dr. Julian’s absence.