by Nancy Belgue
“Oh no,” I said. “Soon they won’t have any money left!”
“That may be so,” my father said. “But again, Bahram’s mother did not scold him. Instead, the next morning, she gave him the last of their money and told him that now he must save them from starvation. All day he searched for cocoons to buy, but by evening he was still empty-handed. At the edge of the town, he saw a group of men gathering sticks to build a fire. When the fire was blazing, one man picked up a box and started to add it to the blaze. ‘What have you there?’ Bahram asked the man. ‘It is an animal,’ the man replied. ‘Why would you want to burn an animal? asked Bahram. And the man laughed and said, ‘If your heart bleeds so much for this animal, then give me a hundred dirhams and it will be yours.’ And because Bahram could not bear to see an animal harmed, he forgot what his mother had said and gave the man his last hundred dirhams.”
“He didn’t!” I said, sitting straight up on the bed.
“Sometimes you must do what is right whether or not it is in your best interests,” said my mother.
“What was in the box?” I asked, poking my father and reminding him to get back to the story.
“It was a snake,” my father said. “Bahram jumped away when he saw it, thinking the snake would spit poison at him. But this was a very special snake. ‘Don’t fear me,’ he said to Bahram. ‘You have saved my life. Snakes do not harm those who bring no harm to them. Indeed, we are the guardians of the hearth.’
“Bahram hung his head in his hands. The snake asked why he was sad. ‘I have spent my last one hundred dirhams,’ Bahram told the snake. ‘My mother and I will starve.’”
“Exactly!” I said. “What is he going to do now?”
My mother shook my fingers lightly. “Tell me that you would have done the same thing,” she said.
“I couldn’t let you starve!” I said.
“But you couldn’t let an innocent creature die either, could you?” asked my mother.
“No,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know! “What happened then?” I asked my father.
My father glanced at his watch. “I think I will have to tell you the rest of the story tomorrow,” he said. “It’s after ten o’clock.”
“No!” I said. “I won’t be able to sleep unless I know what happens!”
“Tomorrow,” my father said. He yawned. “Even I am getting tired. I have to work tomorrow!” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Sleep well.”
After he left, my mother pulled the covers up to my neck and tucked the edges tightly under the mattress. “That’s how it must feel to be in a cocoon,” she said.
“Do you think Bahram and his mother starve?” I asked her.
“I don’t think so,” my mother said. “I like to believe that no good deed goes unnoticed.”
“I wish Dad didn’t have to go away,” I murmured.
“I wish he didn’t have to go either, but he does. He needs to do it just as much for himself as for us. Do you understand that?”
“Why can’t things stay like they are right now?” I asked. The words of the fortune-teller echoed in my head. Beware of danger.
“Nothing stays the same forever,” my mother said. “It is just the way life is.” She nudged me. “Not all change is bad, you know.”
I didn’t know about that. In one day, I’d lost my seat beside my best friend and found out my father was going far away. If this was change, who needed it?
“Go to sleep now,” my mother whispered. Then she went out and pulled the door shut.
I stared out at the night sky. There were ghosts out there, I thought—lots of ghosts, wandering around looking for places to sleep. My mother tells me that I need to think peaceful thoughts before bed, but sometimes my brain gets clogged up like a kitchen sink. One thought would not drain away. It kept swirling around and around and around.
Beware of danger, beware of danger, beware of danger.
Chapter 4
My father had already gone to work when I got up the next morning. As I poured cereal into my bowl, I wondered how the story of Bahram and the Snake Prince would end. As a writer, I saw nothing but trouble ahead.
My mother put on her red cape and started to pack my lunch. Sometimes she does things backward like that. My father says she is eccentric, which means she doesn’t do things the way most people do.
On the way to school, my mother hummed a song under her breath. She always hums when she is worried. My feet felt like they were locked into a pair of big lead boots.
School did nothing to cheer me up. Oprah flashed me a smile, but then she started talking to Zain like she’d forgotten all about me. I took my new seat right under the teacher’s nose, kept my head down and poured all my thoughts into my journal. Sometimes my journal is my best friend.
It was that way the whole week before my father went away. Each day I got up, ate my breakfast and walked to school alone. I didn’t run into any of my friends in the apartment building elevator—not Mr. Singh, or Auntie Graves. My mother was helping at a recreation center on the other side of town and had to go on the streetcar earlier than usual, and my father was either sleeping or working.
I waited all week for my father to finish the story, but it seemed like he’d forgotten all about it.
“He’s working lots of extra shifts,” my mother explained when I complained to her. “He wants to make as much money as he can before he goes away. Now, don’t mope. In one month, everything will be back to normal.”
The night before my father went away, I came home from school and my mother was polishing the silver samovar. She picked up a clean cloth and handed it to me. “You can polish the lid.”
“Tell me the story of the samovar again,” I asked.
She rubbed her cloth over the base. The silver glowed like a soft summer moon. “A very old Iranian man who knew your father as a boy gave it to us on our wedding day.”
“Where were you married?” I asked.
“Colette,” my mother said, “you have heard this story a hundred times!”
“I know,” I said, “but it is my favorite story.”
“All right,” my mother said. “But first we must have a cup of tea!” She went to the stove and put on the kettle. While the tea brewed, I rubbed and rubbed, thinking that, if only this was a magic samovar, I could make a genie come to life and get three wishes. My mother brought the tea to the table. “I am polishing the samovar to use tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow your father is going away, and we must make tonight a celebration.”
“Why should we celebrate something that is sad?” I asked.
“It is only sad for today,” my mother answered. “In one month he will be back, and it will be the beginning of a new life. We must celebrate his return.”
“That seems like bad luck,” I said.
“Don’t be so negative,” Mom said. “When the samovar was given to your father and me, the old man who gave it to us said that we would have a long and happy married life and drink many cups of tea with our large family.”
Well, he was wrong about that, I thought. It didn’t look like I was ever going to have a brother or a sister. It didn’t even look as if I was ever going to know my own grandparents. My mother must have been thinking the same thing, because a cloud of sadness covered her eyes. She stopped polishing for a minute, then shook her head and smiled.
“I have invited a few of our friends from the building to join us after supper,” she said. “Go do your homework and then come and help me make some treats for our guests.”
I put my backpack on my bed and pulled out my journal. I wrote: My father leaves tomorrow for Iran. He is going to ask his parents to help him become a teacher. I stopped and looked up at the posters, then started to write again. I wish I could go with him, but I need to watch over my mother. Ever since the lady read our tea leaves, I have been thinking he should not go. I don’t think my mother wants him to go either. But I can’t tell him this. And neither can she.
I hear
d the door to our apartment open, then my mother’s excited voice calling out, “Hamid!” My father was home.
I stuffed my journal under my pillow. My mother was right. It was wrong to think bad thoughts.
After dinner, my father put on Iranian music. As my mother lit the flame under the samovar and put out a tray of desserts, people began to arrive. There were pastries filled with nuts called baagh-lava and my favorite, a sweet made from rosewater, pistachios and saffron called halva. Mr. Singh and his wife brought some sweets called boondi ke laddoo. Auntie Graves brought bananas fried in butter and covered in brown syrup, which she said was how they ate bananas back in Louisiana, where she had grown up.
I poured endless cups of tea.
“Your parents are very lucky to have so much happiness,” said Mr. Singh. He handed me his cup.
I nodded.
“If you and your mother need anything at all while your father is away, you must come to us,” he said.
Mr. Singh always made me feel as relaxed as a sleeping cat. It was good to know that he was just down the hall.
By nine o’clock, everyone had put their teacups in the sink and said their goodbyes. I stood between my mother and father at the door and shook our guests’ hands as they left.
“Off to bed now,” my father said as he closed the door behind Auntie Graves. “We all have an important day tomorrow.”
I crawled into bed and waited for my father to come and tell me good night. It wasn’t until I was almost asleep that I felt his weight on the side of my bed.
“Sleep well, Colette,” he said in his softest voice.
I opened my eyes. He was excited to be going, but he looked tired too. I wanted to ask him to tell me the rest of the story of Bahram and the Snake Prince, but he gave a giant yawn, then leaned forward to whisper in my ear.
“I will see you very soon. And while I’m gone, you must be very helpful to your mother.”
“Will you tell me the rest of the story of Bahram when you come back?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “It will be the very first thing I do.”
He pulled up the covers and tucked them around me. An airplane flew by my window, and he pointed at it. “I will wave to you from the sky tomorrow,” he said.
I hugged him tight around the neck. “I will miss you.”
“And I will miss you. But I am carrying many pictures of you with me, so I will have your face to look at all the time. And I will introduce you to my parents.”
“Wake me up tomorrow before you go,” I told him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Promise!”
“I promise.”
When he was gone, I turned on my side and stared at my posters. I wanted to fall asleep and dream about the beautiful mosque.
Chapter 5
Rain pattered against my window. The white and blue tiles of the mosque were washed out in the gray light. I pulled on a sweater and went out into the hall. Maybe I would start the tea and surprise my father and mother in bed with a tray.
But when I went into the kitchen, I saw my mother sitting at the table, her sketchbook in front of her.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“He has left for the airport,” she said. “His friend, Marco, came and picked him up an hour ago.”
“Gone?” I said. “Gone?”
“Yes. You knew he was leaving this morning.”
“He promised to wake me up and say goodbye,” I told her.
She held out her arms. “Come here,” she said.
I folded my arms over my chest.
“Colette,” she said, “he didn’t want to wake you. He thought you needed to sleep so you would be able to concentrate this morning in school.”
“School! ” I said. “He promised!”
My mother dropped her hands. “Well, you will just have to forgive him. He changed his mind.”
“When I’m a parent, I am never going to make a promise I don’t keep. I am never going to change my mind about anything!”
“Sometimes we have to be flexible,” my mother said.
“Never!”
“Don’t sulk, Colette,” my mother said. She beckoned. “Would you like to see the picture I drew?”
I inched toward her. Once she drew a picture of a homeless old person that was so sad, I got tears in my eyes. My mother loves people. If it was up to her, my father says, we would have an apartment full of street people.
She showed me her sketch. It was a picture of my mother, my father and me. There were my dad’s handsome brown eyes, his serious expression and the little freckle just below the line beside his mouth that made it look like a question mark. She had drawn herself with her hair falling into her eyes and her red cape swirling out beside her. I was carrying a notebook and looked like I was trying to memorize something. All of us had wings! And paintbrushes! And we were painting the leaves of the big tree that grows beside the community garden in the park.
“You drew us painting the leaves!”
My mother smiled and pulled the drawing out of her sketchbook and gave it to me. “I thought we could use a little magic today.”
“You’re right,” I said, putting the drawing carefully on the chair beside me. “Let’s have pancakes. I’ll make them!”
The sun was just starting to rise, pale and watery, by the time we sat down to our breakfast. My mother poured me a cup of tea and said, “Let’s make a plan for every night while your father is away. This afternoon we’ll go to the art gallery and look at the paintings.”
“Okay,” I said.
My mother waved me off to school. “I’ll meet you at the front entrance at three thirty,” she said. I ran all the way across the community garden. Spike didn’t appear, which seemed like a good omen.
Oprah was talking with Zain. She waved when she saw me. Zain gave me a sour look, but I remembered my father saying the best way to handle someone who was mean was to kill them with kindness, so I told her that she was wearing a cool sweater. The look of shock on her face was worth the effort it took to be nice. At lunch, I turned my marooned seat around and faced toward the class. Everyone laughed, and the lunch monitor started calling me Teacher. With the art gallery to look forward to, the day zipped by, and before I could even finish my independent reading, the bell was ringing and it was time to go.
There was no sign of my mother, but that wasn’t so unusual. She doesn’t pay attention to time all that well. I hung around until most of the kids had gone home. Mrs. Muncie saw me as she was leaving.
“Still here, Colette?” she asked.
“My mother’s late,” I said. It had started to drizzle, and I shivered.
Mrs. Muncie said, “I go in your direction. How about we walk together?”
“What if my mom comes and wonders where I am?”
“Is there a route that you always take?” Mrs. Muncie asked. “We could go that way, and then if your mom is coming, we’ll meet her.”
“That sounds all right,” I said.
As we crossed the park and headed down the alleyway, the graffiti on the walls seemed even scarier than usual. There were giant dragons and wizards. And knights carrying lances and riding horses with wild eyes. There were dinosaurs and a vampire that looked like it was about to jump out of the wall and grab me.
Sirens wailed in the distance. My mother hates the sound of sirens because they sound ominous. Ominous means bad things are about to happen.
When we came out of the alley and headed toward King Street, the flashing lights of an ambulance blinded me. Mrs. Muncie tsk-tsked under her breath. I guessed she thought sirens and flashing lights were ominous too.
The sidewalk and the street were clogged with cars and people trying to get around the stopped traffic. As Mrs. Muncie and I crossed to the other side of the street, I looked over my shoulder and saw Auntie Graves. She was wearing a triangle scarf that bobbed up and down as her chin trembled. Tears streamed down her face.
“I know that lady,” I s
aid to Mrs. Muncie.
Mrs. Muncie looked toward where I was pointing.
She gasped. Her face went gray.
I turned and looked back at the street.
One of the ambulance drivers stood up, and I saw something red spread out on the ground.
“Come with me, Colette,” Mrs. Muncie said. She pulled me toward the coffee shop on the corner.
I wrenched my hand away and started running.
“Colette!” Mrs. Muncie screamed. Before anyone could stop me, I was kneeling at my mother’s side, staring into her face.
There was a puddle of blood under her head, and her red cape was torn and dirty. The paintbrush that she stuck in her ponytail was broken in two. I picked the pieces up and put them in my pocket.
“Get this kid out of here,” yelled one of the ambulance drivers.
A thin brown hand touched my arm. It was Auntie Graves. “It’s her mother,” she said.
The driver’s face changed. “Can you take care of her?” he asked.
Mrs. Muncie appeared beside Auntie Graves. “I’ll help,” she said.
Someone began to cut my mother’s cape, and I started to scream.
Mrs. Muncie pulled me away. I clawed and fought, but she was stronger than I was. I heard Auntie Graves telling the policeman my mother’s name and where we lived.
Then they loaded my mother onto a stretcher and drove her away.
Chapter 6
My mother says that sometimes we have to accept things without knowing why they happen. She says that’s faith. My father says it is better to take things on faith only if you know the reason why. Then my mother says that isn’t the point of faith. My father just nods and says that you have a duty to prepare yourself for life, and faith can’t do that.