Fresh Ink

by Lamar Giles

  WILLIE

  They shot you for nothing?

  D’MARIO

  I tried to figure it out. About a week before, me and Pedro was in this hall right here.

  BIG EDDIE

  Where we are now?

  D’MARIO

  This white boy said he had some Mexican blow to sell. I thought he might have been a cop, but he sounded like he was from the South or something, so we thought he might have been legit. We was looking at the blow when another dude came rushing through the door. I thought he was a cop and I can’t do no more bids, so I lit the mother up. It turned out that the white boy was legit, and the guy I shot lived in this building. So I figured the drive-by was some revenge.

  J-BOY

  In this building?

  D’MARIO

  Yeah. Yeah. So I read the whole set wrong, and then I got killed behind it!

  J-BOY

  (staggers against the wall) Oh, man! Oh, man. This is so fucked up!

  BIG EDDIE

  Hey, man, shit happens, bro! This is what our lives were always like. We out looking to make a name for ourselves and staying in the sunlight. We doing the same thing now.

  J-BOY

  No, man, it ain’t like that.

  BIG EDDIE

  He’s right. Being alive ain’t tagging. Being alive is walking the damned streets, and making love, and listening to some music. This is just hanging on to what you know is already gone. This ain’t nothing like no life.

  WILLIE

  Yeah, but this nigger getting all sick over it and shit don’t help, either. We just got caught up in it, that’s all.

  J-BOY

  (reaches for D’MARIO but goes through him) You killed me, motherfucker! You killed me! You killed me!

  D’MARIO

  What you talking about? What you talking about?

  J-BOY

  I came through the door that night! I had to pee and was rushing to get upstairs, when I seen a white boy with his back to me. He moved aside and all I saw was the flash from the damned gun! It was you! You killed me!

  D’MARIO

  Whoa, man, your boys got me!

  J-BOY

  I didn’t have no boys. I don’t know who got your ass! Maybe some baby Gs making their bones—I don’t know! I know you killed my ass. You killed me!

  WILLIE

  This hallway is spooked, man. I’m going to go tag someplace else.

  BIG EDDIE

  Yeah, I gotta get some air. Gotta get some air.

  D’MARIO

  Man, I didn’t know what was going on. It was an accident!

  J-BOY

  (tries to grab D’MARIO again but again reaches through him) I hate you! You shit-bitch motherfucker!

  (He reaches for D’MARIO again, but then stops as he realizes it’s hopeless. He repeats himself, but in a much subdued voice.)

  You shit-bitch motherfucker!

  BIG EDDIE

  I’m outta here! (He starts slowly away.)

  WILLIE

  (also leaving) Word.

  D’MARIO

  You can’t do nothing to me now. I can’t do nothing to you. It’s too late. The shit is over. We can’t turn it back.

  BIG EDDIE, WILLIE, and D’MARIO leave.

  J-BOY sits and buries his head in his hands. We hear the sound of sobbing through the theater’s loudspeakers. J-BOY’s shoulders begin to shake as the sobbing fills the entire theater. It continues as J-BOY gets up and goes to the wall. Carefully he begins removing the tags of BIG EDDIE, WILLIE, and D’MARIO. He touches his own tag with his fingertips and then slowly wipes it away.

  Making out with Hannah Michaud was the most glorious thing to have ever happened in the history of the world. We had been officially dating for four months. Everything was exciting and new. We didn’t wear matching T-shirts or kiss in public, but it was not lost on the student body that we were an item when she showed up to my girls’ varsity volleyball games and I showed up to her photography exhibit. We were cuddly cute. It was perhaps a little nauseating, but I loved it.

  Finding places to be amorous had been a little challenging. We often resorted to the backseat of my brother’s red Ford Mustang that he couldn’t take with him to college in NYC. My parents had met Hannah and liked her but always made sure my bedroom door was open when she visited. To be fair, they had done the same thing when my brother would bring over his now ex-girlfriend, so it was a step toward equality, I guess.

  When we came up for air in the back of the car, Hannah grinned at me.

  “And at one time you were so shy,” she said. She laughed as I blushed furiously. To our peers we may have come across as an odd pair. Everything Hannah did was with exuberance and joy. Not in a corny, superficial way. She oozed free spirit and didn’t seem to have any preoccupations with high school cliques or SAT prep. She did whatever she wanted and I was a little envious of that.

  I was…well, me. Tall—about five ten—athletic, I almost always wore a high ponytail. I liked structure. I liked to have a plan. I liked to have my assignments done before they were due and didn’t understand why Hannah would leave everything for the last minute. I worried about everything all the time. Hannah didn’t seem to get anxious about anything.

  “Well, I have my moments of courage,” I said as I gently wrapped a strand of her brown curly hair around my finger.

  “Sometimes,” Hannah said kindly. There was, however, a hint of passive-aggressiveness. I knew what she was getting at.

  My Friday nights were usually taken up by dinners at my grandmother’s home. I had come out as bi to my parents a year ago, but I hadn’t told my grandma yet. There didn’t seem to be any point, since up until now I didn’t have much of a love life. That is, until there was Hannah. I hadn’t yet introduced her to my grandmother, nor had I planned on doing so anytime soon.

  “You up to anything tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Depends. I am very popular,” she said, straight-faced. She was making fun of my describing her as such at one time. She would never let me forget it. “I am free for sure tonight, though.”

  “You really want to spend time with my grandma and her friend on a Friday night?”

  “I would. I just want to know why you don’t want me to. Are you worried she’ll be upset or that she won’t like me?”

  I wasn’t sure how my grandma would react. We were close, but the conversations between us were always about the past or the future. She didn’t have any regard for the present, I guess.

  “It’d be weird even if you were a guy. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think she thinks of me doing stuff in a romantic capacity or whatever,” I said, shifting my body away from her a little.

  “It wouldn’t have to be a huge coming-out thing, Yasi. You could just introduce me as your friend.”

  “She’d guess you were more than that,” I said. My face would give me away. It was one of the things Hannah said she liked about me, my transparent feelings, particularly when she was around. It was how she had known I liked her. When Hannah walked by me or tried to make small talk, my face would flush and I’d stammer. She was the one to ask me out. I wouldn’t have asked her because I never would have dreamed she could actually like me too. I was a bit of a chickenshit.

  “I suppose she would. Anyone would, really,” she said. I stuck my tongue out at her. When she smiled at me, my insides felt like I was made up of the remnants of the blown-up and torched Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The Stay Puft residue sliming up my gut wouldn’t let me fully relax around her. It was kind of scary liking someone this much. “Mostly I just want to eat homemade Persian food. Her importance to you is secondary,” Hannah said with a grin.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. Everything that Hannah had said that afternoon ended up being on my mind at Grandma’s.

  * * *

  • • •

  The inside of my grandma’s home sometimes felt like a shrine to her family, as photos of her siblings, late husband, kids, and grandkids ove
rflowed her small living room. There was almost no room on any of the end tables or coffee table, because all the space was taken up by framed photographs. Most of the frames had pictures of me throughout the years. It was a little unnerving to have my whole life unfold in front of me while I drank tea.

  There were only two photographs of my grandfather. One was a black-and-white from their wedding day, he and Grandma smiling as they sat at a dinner table. Another was just of him, solo, in a suit, looking very serious. I had never met my grandfather. He passed away in Iran before Grandma immigrated here. My dad, a U.S. citizen, was concerned that his mom would be alone and got a green card on my grandma’s behalf. It had apparently been a difficult and long process, but she came over here when my big brother was four and I wasn’t born yet. Seventeen years later, I sometimes worried she didn’t always feel at home.

  “Befarmaeed shaam!” Grandma said to Mrs. Khodadian, her best friend who lived in the apartment above, signaling that we were welcome to the dinner table. She had prepared far too much food, expecting more than just the two of us. My aunt and her family were at a wedding, my other uncle and his wife were away on vacation, and my parents were too tired, which I thought was a lousy excuse. It seemed like, as the years went by, Grandma’s dinner nights had become an afterthought and something that was okay to skip.

  Grandma had prepared a billowing platter of long-grain basmati rice with saffron on top, two stews, salad Shirazi, and bell peppers stuffed with meat, lentils, and rice. Her hand trembled a little as she poured us doogh from a pitcher. I always told Grandma that I thought doogh, a carbonated yogurt drink with mint, was gross, but she still handed me a glass every time and told me that if I tried it again I would like it. It never took.

  “How is school, Yasaman?” Khanoum Khodadian asked me in heavily accented English.

  “Oh, um, it’s good,” I said in English. I could understand and speak Farsi, but I was always embarrassed by my accent when I spoke. It would also take me a while to adjust and I’d occasionally use Farsglish, when I would jumble the two languages together. Like, I’d forget a word in Farsi and use the English word instead.

  “She is such a good student! Did you know she has straight As?” Grandma bragged to Khanoum Khodadian in Farsi. Grandma didn’t feel the need to speak English in her home with just Khanoum Khodadian and me. My grandma understood English and could communicate pleasantries, but if a conversation ever went a little too fast or there were words she missed, she would become very quiet.

  Khanoum Khodadian did know I got straight As, because Grandma brought it up every time they saw one another.

  “Did you watch your show?” I asked the ladies in English. I was happy to take some of the attention away from me.

  “Oh yes! They voted off my favorite! I don’t know why they voted her off,” Grandma responded.

  Grandma loved Dancing with the Stars. Actually, she had an affinity for all the variety talent shows, whether they involved singing, dancing, magic, pets doing tricks, but Dancing with the Stars was her absolute favorite. What I found most amusing about it was that she didn’t know who any of the “stars” were. She’d describe the contestants as “the one with the sick mother” or “the one who used to play some sport but is now balding.”

  “Did you vote for the singer to stay?” Khanoum Khodadian asked her.

  “It wouldn’t have made a difference if I had. Besides, I don’t think it’s very fair when they have Olympic athletes or football players compete against older actors and singers. Of course the athletes will have an advantage,” Grandma said.

  My phone buzzed. Both ladies looked at me. My phone almost never buzzed. I ignored it. I didn’t want to be rude at the dinner table.

  “Answer it! Maybe it’s your parents deciding to join us,” Grandma said, hopeful in a way that made my heart break for her.

  It wasn’t my parents. It was a text from Hannah.

  I’m sorry if I pushed you about grandma today. I just know she means a lot to you. And you mean a lot to me. So it’s like the transitive property in math.

  “Who is that?” Khanoum Khodadian teased in English. My face had probably given me away again.

  “Oh, um, it’s a friend from school.”

  “I know my friends don’t make me turn the color of a pomegranate,” Grandma said in a playful tone.

  I put my phone down and covered my mouth with my palm so they couldn’t see me smile. I wanted my grandma to know who made me blush, but didn’t think it was the appropriate time to break the news. But then, when would be an appropriate time?

  “Grandma…do you think you could teach me how to cook?” I asked. Both women looked shocked. It was as if I had told them I was going to be a contestant on Dancing with the Stars.

  “Oh, I never thought this day would come.” Grandma held her hands to her chest. She had always been upset by the fact that my idea of cooking was heating up burritos in the microwave.

  “You have made your grandma so happy,” Khanoum Khodadian said as she fanned Grandma, who was pretending to pass out.

  I texted Hannah back.

  How committed are you to vegetarianism?

  Meat was kind of a huge staple in Persian cuisine. Figured I should learn menu items Hannah could eat.

  Tell your grandma not to worry. I’m not going to convert you. :)

  I laughed at that. My grandma and Khanoum Khodadian took notice and smiled at one another but didn’t say anything.

  * * *

  • • •

  I usually took Grandma shopping on Sundays. Today we were also buying ingredients for the dishes Grandma was teaching me to make.

  I pushed our full supermarket cart in the checkout line behind Grandma. The store was always crowded, no matter the time of day or night. I put Grandma’s everyday stuff onto the conveyor belt.

  “Hello. How are you?” Grandma said in her heavy accent to the man behind the register.

  “Hi there,” he said politely as he unenthusiastically scanned our items. The woman behind me with a toddler in the cart kept pushing her cart toward me, giving me little space to move. She loudly sighed behind us.

  “Ninety-seven dollars and forty-five cents,” the cashier said as Grandma pulled her debit card from her wallet. She looked about to swipe the card, but the cashier stopped her. “We do the chip now,” he said.

  “What?” Grandma said, not understanding what he meant.

  “We. Do. The. Chip. Now,” the cashier said, loud and slow. The woman behind me huffed. I squeezed my way past the cart and took the card from Grandma.

  “Sorry,” I said to the lady behind us as Grandma entered her pin information. The woman had her arms crossed over her chest, but her child with chocolate all over his face smiled at me. Grandma looked angry, but she thanked the man when he gave her the receipt.

  She didn’t say anything to me until we had loaded everything into the trunk and were seated in the car.

  “Why did you apologize to that woman?” she asked me.

  “I…well, she seemed like she was in a hurry.”

  “You never apologize for taking up space, Yasaman. You have just as much right to take as much time in that line as you want to,” Grandma said.

  “Oh, no, that wasn’t…”

  “You don’t apologize for who you are. I’m an old lady now and perhaps that doesn’t mean much in the world we live in, but I exist and I shouldn’t have to be sorry for that. As a woman, you have to know that. Don’t ever apologize for who you are,” she said.

  I nodded and held her hand. It was wrinkled but soft and smaller than mine. I kissed the back of it.

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “I’m always right. Tell your mother that,” she said. “Now let’s go! We have to get to the market before the good vegetables are gone.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I had spent the past two months on weekends preparing the dishes Grandma taught me to make. My parents were starting to get sick of
kuku sabzi, a vegetable herb frittata, though they were pleased to see that my attempts at making it were improving. I had also enjoyed going with Grandma to the ethnic food markets. We went to an Armenian-owned store for fresh and cheap produce and to a Persian bakery for dried barberries and chickpea cookies.

  When Grandma would ask where the limoo torshi was at the Armenian grocery, no one would bat an eye, but rather would lead her to the sour dried limes. They had shelves full of items from different countries, all to remind the shoppers of their favorite dishes from places they or their relatives had connection to.

  I was doing my best to follow the recipe in Grandma’s kitchen.