Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (9781101601990)

by Nayeri, Dina

  Two weeks after graduation, they elope and move to New York City, a rash decision fueled by the unfortunate combination of a Dutch beer, a whiskey sour, an old-fashioned, a sidecar, and a martini. Yes, she is reckless. She can be, because American divorces are easy. And American divorcées are considered seductive and brave.

  These are the things she remembers about her elopement: throwing away the guilty Hermès scarf. Trying to throw away the credit card and failing because Yogurt Money is sticky stuff. The ache of missing a father she hasn’t seen in more than a decade, because, for all his books and philosophies, Baba Harvard can’t walk her down the aisle.

  Months pass. Soon after her wedding, Mahtab too has to face motherhood, because a baby with James is inevitable. Her father-in-law mentions it every day. At first he suggested it in passing, joking and laughing about his future grandchildren. But recently he has been grumbling about it, taking James aside and waving his hands in his face.

  She realizes now that motherhood is the fate that will take her . . . eventually.

  A baby will end your childhood says her old friend, the pari that used to perch on her mailbox in California. It will tie you to this man, this city.

  Yes, it could mean the end says Mahtab’s logical other self.

  Certainly it will mean the end says a new voice, a bitter old lady with bad breath and spindly fingers who Mahtab fears might be her . . . someday. The banshee in old age.

  No, a baby is not worth her journalistic dreams. So much could happen if a child enters her world. There will be no more freedom of movement. Her own mother had to sacrifice an entire life, her whole history, for her daughters. She had to leave one of her babies behind. What if Mahtab has to abandon a child? What if she has to sacrifice everything? What if Cameron comes back with news of Iran, with adventures she can write about for The New York Times, and the landscape of her world changes?

  Never, she thinks. She will not have a baby. Not ever. Not for anyone. She has a career to tend to, worlds to discover and unveil for the world’s best newspaper.

  See? Mahtab doesn’t need a child, or anyone at all. That is her greatest strength.

  In the days after the wedding, Mahtab and James have frequent dinners with the Scarrets in Connecticut. There is something uncomfortable about the Scarret home. Have you ever seen American houses like this on television? I can tell you exactly what it looks like, with its untouchable furniture and decanter of scotch waiting between the cream couch and the deep-cherry grand piano. One night at dinner, over the rim of his whiskey glass, James’s father asks if they’re having problems conceiving.

  “We’ll have kids when the time is right.” James squeezes Mahtab’s hand.

  “The time’s right now,” Mr. Scarret slurs. Mahtab wishes she had the authority to take the glass away from him and send him off to bed. “I’m almost sixty.”

  Mahtab feels the calm rushing out of her, abandoning her body and running down the street. She is beginning to hate James’s father. But despite her fury, she doesn’t lose control. She knows that, in a free world, the decision to have a baby is hers only.

  A few hours later she and Mrs. Scarret get up to do the dishes. Mahtab returns to the dining room for the last plate and overhears her father-in-law mumbling to James in the living room. “Not ready?” he says in his whiskey-coarse voice. “What’s the holdup? Back in Iran, she’d have four babies strapped to her back.”

  Maybe James expresses all the shock and fury that is owed to the world just then. Maybe he only drops his head and sighs, mumbles something conciliatory. Or maybe in that moment he musters up all the bravery and movie heroism he didn’t have when he was a scared college boy in a bar. Maybe all of those things happen in another universe, and in this one Mahtab just storms into the dining room, grabs her handbag and James’s keys, and blows out of the house, leaving ajar the thick wooden door of the Scarrets’ home.

  All night long she tosses and turns. She can’t shake the image her father-in-law has created—the image of herself as a village girl. Did Baba Harvard lie? Maybe it’s true that orphaned children can never be adopted into better worlds, an immigrant will always look like she belongs back in the village, and fatherless girls will remain fatherless.

  She holds on to these thoughts and rolls them around protectively, maternally, in the warm space between her chest and her pillow. And so something with its own life does develop and grow inside her that night. Not a baby, but the first whispers of an epic misstep, an idea that she will later remember simply as the Lie—almost inevitable in both its ease and its potential to solve so much in one go—exactly the kind of thing that has caused so many people to misunderstand Mahtab over the long years out of Iran.

  When the night is almost over and sleep doesn’t come, her thoughts turn to her parents. Outside a few scattered memories and the many conversations she has invented over the years, she has no evidence of Baba’s temperament or beliefs. She tells herself that Baba would defend her against Mr. Scarret and his baby-obsessing, ignorant-about-Iran ways. Despite all the fathers she has coveted throughout her immigrant life, the fatherly shoulders she has admired and inanimate protectors she has created, Mr. Scarret has never tempted the lonely daughter inside her, and that is quite a statement from a girl who watched longingly as Jose did dishes and Mr. Arganpur drank tea.

  She wonders what her mother would say and picks up the phone, because this is a privilege that Mahtab still has—calling her mother instead of trying to imagine.

  “Why so sad, Mahtab jan?” Maman croons. “Be thankful. You are a girl from Gilan! Look at where you are now. You can do anything you want, and a baby is the best thing. A baby will make you immortal.” When Mahtab is silent, she adds, “Leave it in God’s hands. Try. If you are not able, that is your answer.”

  And there it is, the moment the idea emerges and takes form. If you’re not able, that is your answer. In this vague appeal to a higher power Mahtab finds her solution, this directive given by a mother who believes in the power of simple things. She dreams up the big Lie now, but you mustn’t hate her for it. She does it only for the most Iranian of reasons—to satisfy everyone and give them what they need, a cool sip of yogurt. She may be educated by Baba Harvard, but she is still a wild creature. It isn’t her fault. It is written in her Caspian blood.

  “Okay,” says Mahtab, before hanging up the phone. “Love you. Miss you. Zoolbia.” They laugh at the old joke, because zoolbia is a syrupy pastry, a word we used to say as toddlers instead of zood-bia, which means “Come soon.”

  It is a Sunday when Mahtab first utters the words out loud. I can’t have children—it’s so easy. Done. Finished. Free. Now it is up to James and his family to accept it or decide blatantly to violate every possible Eastern and Western rule of goodness and decency. Because who can blame a woman who is willing but unable? She doesn’t feel guilty over what she is doing. She is escaping the way her mother escaped from Iran. She feels heroic, virtuous, noble. Also maybe a little less scared. She breathes deeply once or twice. It’s the freedom of abandoning her twenties and being fourteen again. The freedom of having—not becoming—a guardian. It feels good. When James smiles sympathetically and takes her hand, a wave of relief and affection washes over her.

  Now she is released from this conversation. She can go back to documenting the injustices in the world, back to impressing Baba Harvard with her post-graduation talent.

  What power she has! That is the thing about Mahtab. She chooses all that happens to her. She doesn’t want babies and so she doesn’t have them, and in doing so she gives me such hope. A legacy can be so many things besides children. I will have a legacy one day that has nothing to do with Cheshmeh or Reza or Ponneh. It will be something entirely from within me. A piece of Saba Hafezi left in the world.

  Mahtab is a skilled journalist, so naturally she has plenty of research to back her story. Last week,
as she rifled through facts and figures and the language of disease, she realized something: that she could create any fiction and wrap it in a cloak of verisimilitude, using the world’s collective knowledge. These moments of authorial power have given Mahtab a thrill ever since we were young and she made up stories about the Sun and Moon Man. Her story is flawless: Infections. Scars. Damage and more damage. She is getting into some bad business now—Mahtab the taker of risks, controller of her own destiny. Mahtab the dreamer, the sleeper, the abandoner of lonely sisters.

  “Don’t worry,” James whispers. “We’ll just adopt. We’ll adopt a little girl. Maybe one from Iran.” He cuts a piece of his own breakfast pastry and places it on her plate, as one would do for a sad child. Mahtab picks at the bread and makes room in her heart for the torrent of guilt that will remain with her from this instant, for the rest of her life.

  She tries to make out the expressions on her in-laws’ faces. Mrs. Scarret is sympathetic, obviously looking for something positive to say. Finally she settles on the noncommittal. “There are always options, dear, in this day and age.”

  Mr. Scarret looks at the table, pokes his bacon with his fork. His jowls hang in a gray, deflated sort of way that clashes with the carefree pastel pattern on his sweater. “Can’t they operate?” he asks so loudly that the couple at the next table looks up. “I’ll research it,” he breathes. “You kids can have whatever resources you need.”

  Now Mahtab throws herself into her work as a reporter. She is good at it, a star. For months she lives with the daily expectation that something will happen, and one day it does. She picks up the phone and it is Dr. Vernon, her ob-gyn, asking that she come in. (“Yes, it is urgent. Yes, today, please.”) She enters his office, situated in the center of a cul-de-sac of private offices in an upscale neighborhood, with all the trepidation of a child being summoned to a special convention of a dozen furious principals. She sits in the waiting room for ten minutes before giving her name. When her turn arrives, the doctor himself comes to get her. He is a kind-looking man in his late thirties, blond and gray-eyed, quick and petite in his crisp slacks and white coat.

  “Mrs. Scarret,” he begins, without asking her to sit or change into a gown or fill out papers. The sound of her new name briefly distracts her. “This is a bit delicate.”

  “Is something wrong?” Her barely audible voice seems to confirm his suspicions.

  “It’s just that . . . my wife is in the So-and-So Women’s Club. . . . Do you know it?”

  “Yes,” she whispers again, “my mother-in-law is chair of—”

  Dr. Vernon interrupts with three forceful nods. “My wife ran into her there. And they got to talking, and . . . I’m sorry to interfere, Mrs. Scarret, but is everything okay with you? Why have you told your family that you can’t have children?”

  Mahtab breathes out, because Dr. Vernon’s voice isn’t the condemning, hateful one she expected. “I . . .” she begins, unaware that she is crying now, ruining her lady-journalist makeup.

  “It really isn’t any of my business,” Dr. Vernon assures her. “I wouldn’t even be prying, if—and by the way, when Katie told me how bad she felt for you, I didn’t tell her that it wasn’t true. Patient-doctor confidentiality—but I’m worried, Mrs. Scarret, because if you said something like that . . . well, you know that it’s not even a good story, right? I mean, besides the obvious fact that you are totally normal, the disease you cited does not cause definite infertility. A simple medical journal will tell you that.”

  “I know,” says Mahtab, almost silently.

  The doctor leads Mahtab to a chair, hands her a Kleenex. He lowers himself into a swivel chair and blurts out the rest of his prepared speech. “Mrs. Scarret. May. Can I call you May? You aren’t doing anything more drastic, are you? According to my records, you are not on birth control because, well, you said you were trying to start a family. So I just need to make sure. It is my job to make sure.”

  “What would I be doing?”

  Dr. Vernon shrugs. “Pills that haven’t gone through me, home remedies, and such. It’s the nineties, but you wouldn’t believe the things that go on.” He coughs and adds, “Mostly with teenagers of course . . .” He clears his throat, waiting for Mahtab to release him from this chore.

  “Thanks, Dr. Vernon,” she says, and gets up, “but you don’t have to worry.”

  The lobby is empty. The doctor shakes her hand with both of his and tells her to “be well and please do call if you need us,” before disappearing into his private offices. Who’s “us”? she wonders as she surveys the room. She decides to sit for a minute, just to get her thoughts together. Her hands are shaking. She doesn’t trust herself to drive. Outside the sky is turning gray and the cul-de-sac looks dismal and ordinary. Women’s magazines are fanned out on the generic wooden tables that sit on ugly shag carpeting. Then Mahtab begins to weep loudly into her sleeve. She knows it’s unseemly, that it makes her pathetic and weak, but she finds that she can’t help herself.

  She doesn’t notice the receptionist running over to hold her hand or Dr. Vernon rushing back out and picking up the phone. She doesn’t register his lame attempt at lifting her mood by changing the CD from classical to jazz, the only two options in the office. She sees only the wet blur of brown and pink and white where the tables and the magazines and the carpet used to be. She recognizes the feeling of not knowing what to do and of things unraveling, a caravan overturning and crushing her chest; the vague lonely notion that if she called Cameron right now, he would explain away all her failures with a masterful quip about poetic license and lunacy. Where is Cameron? Where is my friend? Another outsider to look in on the world? And then, minutes later, she spots the Scarrets’ royal blue minivan slicing through all that endless gray concrete outside.

  James and his father burst into the office. Mr. Scarret shakes hands with Dr. Vernon. Through the window, Mahtab spies Mrs. Scarret waiting in the car, tapping her long fingers on the dashboard and probably chewing the lipstick off her lips. She feels sorry for her mother-in-law, for all the trouble she has brought into this peaceful American family, a family that has probably never seen a day’s worth of real drama.

  “What’s the matter?” she hears her father-in-law whisper. His voice is coarse and sympathetic, and she resents him for empathizing with the inconvenienced doctor.

  “I’m sorry to have called,” Dr. Vernon stammers. He is intimidated by James’s father, a much older, more prominent man. “She just . . . she needed some help.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Um . . . look, sir, about the fertility problems . . .”

  But James’s father cuts him off. He puts a hand on the doctor’s forearm and shushes him like a subordinate. “We already know,” he says sadly, and Mahtab realizes that James has found her research. Maybe his father has done his own, as he said he would do when she told the Big Lie. He jokes awkwardly, “Kids and that damn research library, like giving a pistol to a monkey,” and laughs twice—up and down.

  Mahtab shuts off her mind, turns her attention to the kind receptionist, as James and his father and Dr. Vernon discuss her in a far corner of the room. She notices James avoiding her and tries hard to hate them for their hushed whispers, tries to imagine them wearing turbans and passing cruel judgments, but she fails. She tries several times.

  Then, as she rests her head on the receptionist’s shoulder, Mr. Scarret comes over and kneels down beside her. The way he does that, the way he squats down so they can be face-to-face—like fathers do to their children on the first day of school—draws the tears out of Mahtab again. Beneath the salty droplets dripping over her lips, her skin feels thin and cracked, like rice paper or brittle seaweed. She tries to say “I’m sorry,” but Mr. Scarret shakes his head. He puts an arm around her shoulder and helps her up. When she tries again, he says in a tired voice, “It’s okay now, sweetheart.” In the background, Otis Redding sings a song that
he sang at her wedding, and Mahtab walks in step with her father-in-law, thinking what a funny way to dance.

  But it’s nice, letting go of the last and the worst of the Immigrant Worries, that pesky fear that when you enter a new country, you will be forever alone.

  No, she is not frightened now—of being an outsider, or a failure, or poor, or unimportant. Her refugee skin is shed and gone. Her father-in-law says, “It’s not all that bad, now, is it?” and she shakes her head, unafraid of being alone. I too am no longer terrified of loneliness in strange lands. How nice, Mahtab thinks, to shed the skin of an immigrant. To do wrong and be forgiven like a true daughter, to be adopted into a new country with its own flesh-and-blood fathers. And to relive all the moments she missed.

  Seaside Pilgrimage

  (Khanom Basir)

  The whole town knows the story—the real one—though no one talks about it, because that’s our way. We prefer pretty lies to ugly truths. But we remember it every time Agha Hafezi sighs, and we replay it in our minds every time Saba mentions Mahtab.

  In 1981, when the girls were eleven, the family went for a week to a beach house on the Caspian Sea. It was only a short drive from Cheshmeh, but in those days Agha Hafezi didn’t want to go far from his own house. “If you pretend it’s a long journey,” he told the girls, “it will feel that way. Pretend it’s a pilgrimage, like in your stories.”

  “A pilgrimage to Mecca?” Saba asked, wiping summer dew from her face.

  “No,” Bahareh snapped, because she hated all mention of Muslim things.

  “Hush,” said Agha Hafezi. “No more of this talk.” They fought a lot in those days, though the girls never noticed. They probably went back to making up jokes, eating raisins and smoked chickpeas, and pretending they were going to see the mismatched carpet-weaving girls in Nain. Oh, these Hafezis and their trips! To the sea for fresh-caught fish, to Qamsar to smell the rosewater from the highway, to Isfahan, the center of the world, to Persepolis for culture, to Tehran for visiting family.