My mother sighed.
But when I started putting on my shoes, she sharpened.
“Koja dari miri?” she said.Where are you going?
I knew it was only out of courtesy for her guest that she didn’t rip open my spleen right there on the living room floor, and it filled me with no small amount of joy to see her like this, something like herself. I didn’t mind at all that she would no doubt kill me later.
“I forgot my phone at Zahra’s house,” I said quickly, affecting nonchalance. Insouciance. Indifference. I hated Shayda. “I need to run back and grab it.”
“Alaan?”Right now?
My mother peered out the window, at the increasing darkness. Zahra’s house wasn’t far from here, only about four streets down. For a few months Zahra’s proximity to our new house had been the only fringe benefit in moving. Three months ago, when I’d been sent to the nurse’s office after passing out in the middle of second period, I couldn’t get ahold of anyone. Instead, I called Zahra’s mom, who sent her husband to pick me up. He left work, bought me five different kinds of medicine I didn’t need, and letme sleep in Zahra’s bed. I was so astonished by their kindness I wrote them a letter right there in Zahra’s bedroom, at her desk, using her paper and pen. It was a long letter, the contents of which were an exaggeration of emotion, embarrassing in their sincerity. I’d left the letter in their mailbox. Walked home. Said nothing to my own family about my day.
Zahra told me, when I went back to school, that her parents had found my letter. She told me at lunch. She kept peering at me over her sandwich, looking at me like she’d never seen me properly before, like maybe I was crazy.
“That was a weird letter,” she’d said, and laughed. She kept laughing.My parents thought it was sweet, but I thought it was so funny.It was a joke, right?
My mom didn’t know that Zahra and I were no longer friends.
I never told her what happened, because telling my mom what happened would only cause her to worry about me, which would break my vow to spare her the need to ever worry about me. I didn’t want her to worry. Not about me. Not about anyone. And yet—
Even in this, I was occasionally a failure.
My mother was still staring out the window, and I could tell she was about to forbid me from leaving the house. I could feel it, could see the words forming—
“Zahra’s waiting for me,” I said quickly. “I’ll just run there and be back. Ten minutes!”
I slammed the door shut behind me.
Fifteen
The day my brother died, my mother was making ghormeh sabzi. The kitchen was warm with the heat of the stove, the air heavy with the smells of caramelized meat and fresh rice. I was sitting at the kitchen table, offering no assistance at all as she cleaned up the mess. I was in a daze, watching her with unusual fascination as she took apart the food processor she’d used to mince a half ton of parsley. I’d seen her do this a thousand times before—had done it myself—but that day I felt numb as I sat there. Incomprehensibly paralyzed.
My father was pacing, lecturing the air as my mother worked, as I sat. I’d tuned it out, most of it. I thought about Shayda, who was at the mosque; they had a youth group on Friday nights. I hadn’t gone, despite her insistence that I accompany her, and I was regretting that decision then. I watched my mother place dirty bowls in the dishwasher, watched hershoot my father an irritated look as he stalked across the living room—a look he didn’t catch. I glanced at him, at his two tufts of dark hair, at his salt-and-pepper beard.
He was in a frenzy.
That morning, my father had needed to move my brother’s car, because Mehdi had blocked the garage with his Civic. My dad was in a hurry, running late for work, and asked me to fetch my brother’s keys. I did, because I knew precisely where they were: in a pocket of his discarded jeans, lying on his bedroom floor. It was still early, and Mehdi, who was in college, did not have class for at least another two hours. I snuck into his room while he was sleeping, stole his car keys, crept back downstairs. Placed the keys in my father’s hand.
Too often, my mind stopped there.
I could seldom convince my brain to remember what happened next. I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want any of these memories, these distorted loops of sounds and images. I didn’t want to remember that it was me, me who betrayed my brother. I handed those keys to my father, my father who kissed me on the cheek and said, Merci, azizam, and promptly discovered a six-pack of beer in my brother’s back seat.
My dad waited all day to lose his mind.
His anger festered while he was at work, his imagination spiraling. He managed to convince himself of all kinds of things, all without my brother’s assistance, without the clarity that might be provided by a single conversation. I’d heardhis theories that night, sitting at the kitchen table while my mother stirred the stew with a wooden spoon.
“He’s drinking, doing drugs, maybe selling drugs—”
“Mansour.” My mother spun around, horrified. “Een harfa chiyeh? We don’t know what happened,” she’d said in Farsi. “There’s still a chance the alcohol didn’t even belong to Mehdi.”
My father laughed out loud at that. His eyes were flinty, furious.
My mother was angry, too, but she said she wanted to wait until Mehdi got home, wanted to give him a chance to explain himself.
Calm down, she said.
My dad very nearly exploded at the suggestion.
