Roseheart

by Catherine Dehdashti

  We do not move. We remodel—we bump out our bedroom and the extra bedroom because they’re both so small. The remodeling generates an amazing disaster, and having the house opened up as summer turns to fall and fall turns to winter means lots of insects are able to get inside and settle there for the winter. Our house becomes home to thousands of what look like ladybugs to me—the newly invasive Asian ladybeetle. We vacuum them up every day, but they fly around all the time, walking across Jerry Seinfeld’s face while we watch T.V., and having parties on our warm, south-facing living room window.

  We get started with this remodeling project almost as soon as we know I’m pregnant, but each phase seems to take a hundred years. Hiring a contractor is a ridiculous idea to Naveed, and we can’t afford it anyway. My dad can’t get this, and he thinks Naveed is just being eccentric. “Why don’t you just write out a check?” he asks him when he comes to our house for Thanksgiving.

  Soon, the stress of remodeling gets to me because I’m helping and it seems like we never get to do anything else. I want to go to the coffee shop with Savi and work on my farm-family novel, which is almost done, while she works on something she’s writing. But if I do, Naveed will go out with his buddies too, and we have so much work to do before the baby comes.

  Naveed has been in the wiring phase forever. I hadn’t even thought of wiring as a phase. I thought it would be done in one day over a month ago when Naveed’s electrician friend came over to help do it.

  “I don’t get what you are doing that is taking so long,” I say. “There’s still no flooring other than the plywood and there are tools and stuff everywhere. When are we going to get to the floor? I thought by now I would be painting, but you’re stuck on the electrical. Maybe we should hire a contractor.”

  My instinct is to feather my baby’s nest. I want to paint, stencil, and buy baby furniture. Instead, my next task after wiring will be to stuff pink fiberglass insulation between two by fours.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Naveed says. “Electricity isn’t something I want to get wrong.”

  “But we’ve been snaking these same cords through the studs for two months! Pulling them through, pulling them out again, rerouting and undoing. Anytime it looks like we’re almost done, you take it apart again!”

  “Look at it this way,” Naveed says. “You want to go to Dunn Brothers and work on that shoe book today, right?”

  “Shoedog,” I say. “And no, I’m working on a different novel now. It’s about a family that lives on a hog farm.”

  “But how long have you been working on Shoedog? I think you started it right around the time we met. That was years ago. Why haven’t you finished that one? I’ve only been working on this wiring for two months.”

  “Well, putting wire in a wall isn’t art,” I say, and I stomp out of the house.

  Savi has just called to say that the writer Jamaica Kincaid is speaking and signing books today at a private college an hour away, so we meet at the nearest parking lot between us along Highway 35W and then take my car the rest of the way. When she takes questions, I ask the writer how she manages to write and raise her children. Being pregnant, I’m worried about being able to do anything once the baby comes.

  “Nobody asks male authors that, I bet,” she says. But she answers me anyway. While her husband has his own music studio out in the woods, she’s developed the attitude that her art is a domestic activity, like cooking, and she just fits it in, writing in the kitchen at a built-in desk where her teenager takes over, putting his feet up on her manuscripts. But she does it. It works for her because she accepts her domesticity. I will sustain myself on Kincaid’s sage advice for years, thinking of it as some sort of neo-feminist Goddess wisdom. Years later, Savi will tell me that Kincaid has divorced.

  Soon, the work that is invisible to people who have never thought about what is inside of a wall, is done. Naveed’s friend, a licensed electrician, comes back to inspect and approve, and I cross my fingers that it would pass inspection even if the inspector weren’t a personal friend doing it for free. We’re finally cleared to put up the wall boards.

  Being pregnant, I can’t help lift the huge sheets of gypsum, and Naveed can’t do it alone. This time, instead of calling his buddies again, Naveed wants to tap my side of the family.

  I call my dad. Dad seems happy to be asked to help with the manly work. My sister Courtney is also gung-ho about showing off her carpentry skills she gained in high school when she spent half a year in the vo-tech program.

  Courtney arrives first, Courtney the former tomboy who in recent years has blossomed with feminine beauty and acquired pink blouses and gauzy skirts. She surprises me today by wearing tough bootcut jeans and Timberland construction boots. She seems to have acquired a construction worker’s tan just for the occasion and is wearing a white wife-beater tank top even though it’s winter. I think she wants to impress my dad with her muscular forearms, with her strength in lifting wall board and using the power drill.

  Dad arrives with his own special surprise. “I have a little present for you,” he says. There is something wrapped in newspaper. I cannot imagine what this will be because Neil isn’t a big shopper. I take it from his hands and unwrap it. It takes a moment to remember what this is, and then I raise my hand to my mouth. “Where did you find it?” I choke out.

  It’s the light switchplate from all of the bedrooms of my childhood, a wooden scene that looks Scandinavian, a boy and a girl. The boy is holding out a little carved wooden shoe for the girl. He is perhaps her cobbler, perhaps her prince. It’s probably this thing from my childhood that made me love shoes.

  The switchplate doesn’t exactly fit this newer light switch, so Naveed and my dad work on a retrofit as soon as the big boards are screwed to the wall with a rectangle cut out for the light. The walls aren’t prepped and painted yet, but the guys temporarily affix the switchplate to the wall. They can’t wait for me to see how my new baby will have the shoe boy and girl switchplate that I had, that my dad kept in a box where he would be able to find it all these years later.

  Pregnancy Brain

  Rushing on all of my projects at work in time to have an easy project hand-off before my baby’s due date, I make a lot of errors.

  On a publication meant for agricultural students who may end up working at fruit orchards, I type, “Store harvested apples at approximately 320 degrees F.” I try to tell my boss that any reasonable person would know I meant 32, but I have to get the whole thing reprinted and the company has to eat the expense. On another print order, I type the wrong Pantone color code. The scientist calls my boss when the delivery guy drops off five thousand copies of his manure application guide printed in bubblegum-pink.

  But it’s another incident that almost gets me fired. I apparently dropped the o in a proposal addressed to a county commissioner. Never leave the o out of the word county.

  My boss calls me into his office, smiles at my belly, and tells me that I need to pay more attention to detail if I want to continue working there. I see his smile as feral and his sharp white teeth as dangerous. I promise I will not make such mistakes again as I back out of his office.

  When I’m not fretting over my workload and my pregnancy brain, I dream about having a luxurious eight-month maternity leave in front of me, during which I will do my best to maximize my infant’s happiness and intelligence by stimulating its mind as much as I can. And when I’m not doing that, I’ll be finishing my two novel drafts.

  Goldfish, my baby’s nursery theme, are arriving daily in the form of my eBay orders of stuffed animals, wall decals and figurines. Savi and Matthew give us a mobile that they made together out of origami goldfish hanging from a birch crossframe.

  I’m not picky about whether the decorative items are specifically goldfish, and even an orange clownfish has made its way into the nursery. I can’t find any kind of orange fish this year in crib bedding though, I guess because goldfish aren’t in style. It’s a big year for frogs.


  All of these things we need to get ready for the baby cost a lot, even though Savi hosted a baby shower for me and some of my friends from work. Savi had even invited Melinda, probably thinking there was no chance of her flying in for it, but it turned out that Melinda’s parents had wanted her to visit too. She came for the weekend, killing two birds with one stone. The wives of Naveed’s buddies came too, and my mom and some of her bridge lady friends.

  All in all, it ended up being a lot of work for Savi so I pitched in on the cooking. Goli Joon made cookies—the same kinds I’d made for my wedding, with rice flour and chickpea flower, cardamom, rosewater, and orange blossom essence.

  Even Melinda brought a cheese plate, giving Savi an opportunity to correct her when Melinda said it was artesian cheese.

  “It’s artisan, or artisanal rather,” Savi told her, “unless it’s from a well.”

  “I said artisanal,” Melinda replied, a stone cold lie.

  The baby shower brought in a lot of the things from our Babies ‘R Us registry and most of what we needed, but we’ve still been buying more. We’ve never spent so much money—much on credit, but it seems important to get everything just perfect.

  Naveed is also finally buying a dining table that is not literally garbage, like the old one that he had picked up from a curb the night before a garbage day long before I met him. He had said we would buy a new one, but although the purse strings are loosened, there isn’t much money in the purse.

  He goes for the Scandinavian look, natural cherrywood with clean lines. Contemporary is really in. I think people are so overstimulated by media overload that they need the starkness in their homes. I don’t usually like contemporary, but it lets my eye rest inside this house, which is too full of garish things from the Persian bazaar. Some modern design wouldn’t hurt. But Naveed cannot pay full price or even sale price for something this expensive. On the internet, he finds out that the set can be had for much less in Canada, and even less than the reduced price because their dollar is so weak right now.

  For five days Naveed and three friends go ice fishing in Canada with the excuse of going to pick up our dining set. This is how it is living with Naveed. Everything must be had for less, for the rock-bottom price so low that the salesperson will hate you by the time you walk out the door. And everything must be had with something more, a “free gift,” a bonus, or ice-fishing trip, that you squeeze out of the deal.

  The baby nursery is finally done, just in need of a coat of seafoam green paint, which I apply. For five days in the house without Naveed, Goli Joon and I arrange the room, buy baby things, and set out toys. I insist on sewing the curtains, without help from Goli Joon. I want to choose the fabric at Minnesota Fabrics, and Goli Joon declines to go with me because she’s still so busy cleaning up sheetrock dust.

  Going to the fabric store is an easy thing to do with Goli Joon. Whenever I offer to take her somewhere with me alone I feel smug, like I’m doing her some grand favor by offering her an outing with me. But I have to admit that, even though she’s my mother-in-law, there are times when we go to the fabric store when it almost feels like we’re friends. I genuinely want her to come with me today and ask three times. After her third “no,” I even ask one more time, but she says she’s too tired, needing a rest after all the dusting and also wanting to color her hair and read the poetry of Parvin Etesami.

  I call Savi to see if she wants me to pick her up. Matthew’s catamaran is parked in their backyard for the winter, the rainbow-striped sail full of holes. She’d like to buy Sunbrella sailcloth. For that we have to drive all the way to the ten-acre S.R. Harris fabric warehouse north of Minneapolis, instead of the nearby Minnesota Fabrics. I don’t mind though, because I imagine the possibility of finding goldfish fabric at S.R. Harris.

  Savi invites me for more shopping after the fabric warehouse, but I’m down about not finding the perfect fabric, and I’m so big with the baby now that walking around the huge store has worn me out. I tell Savi I need to go home and lie down.

  Pulling into our street at the same time I do is the neighbor couple and their two kids. The girls get out of the car and start an impromptu snowball fight.

  As I kick open the front door, my big pregnant belly and the rolls of curtain fabric preceding me into the house, Goli Joon is sliding the pocket door of her dining/bedroom shut and has vanished behind it before I can greet her. I yell a hello anyway, but she doesn’t answer me.

  I think she was pretending to be napping because she doesn’t want me to know she’s been sitting at the window worrying about her son as usual, or about me. Now that I’m pregnant with her grandchild, she worries about me when I’m out driving in the snow and ice.

  But something is out of the ordinary in the living room.

  The silver teapot of our samovar is out on the fireplace hearth, next to a pile of poetry books. Hafiz is written in English on the cover of one of them; the rest of the book is all Persian script.

  We usually just use a regular porcelain pot; the samovar is for when we have guests. The matching silver sugar bowl sits next to it, piled high with sugar cubes and saffron rock candy. I slide open the kitchen door and see, in the plastic dish drainer, two freshly handwashed glass teacups. And not only that. I look closer at the tray, and I see a ring of something red, or purple. Is that wine?

  But dinner is on the stove. It’s ghormeh sabzi, the stew that takes so long for Goli to make because she always chops all the herbs by hand. Except…on the other side of the sink, drying on a dishtowel, I spy that old Black & Decker food processor that I never use because it’s impossible to put together.

  From this, I have to deduce that:

  Goli didn’t want to spend all day cooking

  she had something better to do than chopping herbs

  she put together that impossible old food processor, or

  somebody else helped

  I peer out the kitchen window that faces the back of the house. It looks cold and lonely out there and I know nobody has used that back door since Naveed took out the garbage before he left for his trip. But I peer closer out the window and see tracks—jogging-shoe footprints—in the snow.

  Part III

  Millennium Baby

  I’m watching the Eiffel Tower fireworks on T.V. from my labor bed in between contractions. There are also Ferris wheels in London. In between contractions, Naveed is laughing in the New Year with the nurses. They’re all happy that the whole Y2K computer glitch thing wasn’t a problem over in Europe, so it shouldn’t be a problem here.

  Then, after hours of fruitless labor and no progress, Naveed gets tired and asks for a cot. So much for the birth partner thing. After his little rest, things pick up and he helps deliver our daughter, the first “millennium baby” at Fairview Southdale Hospital. Yep, Southdale. In between visits here, Naveed and Goli Joon can go to the Southdale Mall across the street.

  We name our daughter Simeen. It means “of silver,” and Goli Joon says it’s the name of the first female in Iran to publish a major novel. I confirm that it fits her when I first hold her in the operating room after the doctor pulls her out at twenty-seven minutes after three in the morning.

  We don’t get through the first day without one of my sisters asking if the name sounds too much like semen, but I let the question roll off me. Enough worrying about names.

  Naveed is in love with her already and says, “She is my True North” like this is some kind of sappy dog sledding movie.

  In the hospital they have lactation consultants who go around and watch the babies nurse in order to give the mom tips on how to make it easier. The consultant who comes into my room, which is filled with flowers in vases and a four-foot tall Mylar balloon in the shape of a baby bottle, says there are three types of nursers. Simeen is a “gourmande,” meaning that she tends to nurse like she’s having a six-course French dinner. It’s pretty time consuming having a baby like this.

  Laura visits us in the hospital every day. She holds Simeen so I c
an nap when Naveed and his mom take breaks at the mall. She’s pregnant now, and can’t get enough of my baby, nestling her next to her own baby bump.

  We go home and I settle into a long maternity leave—months on end with Simeen and Goli Joon, and an occasional visit from my mom, who comes over sometimes after work in her nurse’s smocks patterned with hearts and teddy bears.

  And just as Niloofar suggested so long ago, that day I sat down with her at the Dinky Kebab, Naveed and I begin to plan on Goli Joon taking care of the baby when I return to work.

  Americans

  Simeen’s fortieth day on earth means something to Goli Joon. I don’t know what—maybe just that she isn’t a newborn anymore. Naveed also honors the occasion with his famous mixed-berry pancakes with whipped cream and pulverized pistachios.

  Simeen cries a lot and we have to gently walk around bouncing her all the time. I can only calm her by singing and nursing, but for her fortieth day, Goli Joon whispers a prayer in her ear that makes her stop crying. Also, Yasmin Noury rings the doorbell, and when I answer she gives me a gift for the baby, a little stuffed giraffe. I invite her in, three times, but she just comes in far enough to see the baby. She coos at her for just a minute and goes back to her house.

  When Goli Joon burns wild rue in the foyer after she leaves, I ask her not to because I don’t think the smoke is good for the baby. I put the cute baby giraffe away in my closet, hoping to save it from the garbage can. It seems like Goli Joon thinks that neighbor is a witch. Ever since the day Goli Joon put Yasmin’s welcome cake down the disposal, I’ve wondered what exactly is going on with our family and theirs. The neighbor doesn’t seem like a witch to me.

  Although sleep is a distant dream, and the ceaseless crying makes me crazy and frustrated, I’m so happy that it seems unnatural, and I determine that it’s hormonal and chemical, some lucky inverse of the post-partum depression my Mayo Book of Pregnancy and Baby’s First Year warned me about.