Scrunched down low in the passenger seat of Nick’s truck, I watch a cloud-dotted afternoon settle over Terrazas Park and its gritty blocks.  Including this one.  The familiar cookie-cutter tract homes project an air of siege.  Curbs, mailboxes, even long-parked cars have been defaced with graffiti marking gang territory.  Ground floor windows are barred or landscaped with thorny bushes.  Pit bulls stare from rope leashes.  Chain link fencing rusts, privacy hedges are shaggy and overgrown.  I’m tormented by the FOR SALE and BANK FORECLOSURE signs sprouting from crabgrass lawns.  Nasrin said that will be Dad and Mom, if they’re forced to repay the mahr.

“Fourth house on the right?” Nick asks.  His head is on a swivel, taking it all in.  “That kind of maroon-looking one?”

My reply is to nod.  I don’t have many words left in me today.

A wide driveway swallows us up.  When I was in junior high Dad laid concrete alongside the garage.  This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where people assumed it was a pad for that RV we could never afford, that boat and trailer.  Everyone knew it was overflow parking for the extended family.  This week I watched the driveway fill with the mullah’s minivan, the old-lady cars of my aunts, Nasrin’s Saturn, a rental car belonging to Gamal and Afshar and Saman.  Two families mobilizing to save a marriage that binds them tighter than it binds me.  But the concrete is empty and showing its oil stains now.

Nick throws the truck into park and looks over at me.  “How’s the nose?”

“The nose is still fine.”  I can pretend there’s no honking bandage on my nose, but other people can’t.  That’s why I’m hiding behind a pair of sunglasses and my cowled hijab.

“You look like a supermodel who just got a nosejob.  All slumped down and incognito, like you’re trying to avoid the paparazzi.”  His grin is teasing with desperation underneath.  He’s trying to break the tension.

I squirm miserably.  I hate to be the center of attention.  Especially his center of attention.  Looking right at me with those icy blue eyes, he’s so handsome it’s unbearable.

“Let’s get this over with.”  The truck rocks as he climbs out.

At least one of us can march right up to the front door – and it’s not me.  I’m sunk in a swirling hopelessness, like flushing myself down a toilet.  The old Nooshin is going…going…almost gone.  Two months ago her biggest worry was a marriage that made her feel dead inside.  But her family still loved her, and she was better off than unemployed, no place to call home, skipping meals to save money.  Even now my stomach is rumbling.

Nick is waiting impatiently on the stoop.  A screen descends over my eyes and I judge him the way I would a Persian man.  He’s empty-handed, no flowers or a dessert for a visiting gift.  His outfit was scrounged from the bare cement floor of his house in Tijuana.  It would never occur to him to say “Salaam!” when the door opens.  And a million other shortcomings.

“Relax,” he says.  “It’s going to be alright.”

I’m not in the mood for his steely confidence.  I know better than him that it’s going to be not-alright as soon as he rings that doorbell.

The door is metal with brown paint flaking off.  It opens a confused crack to show Dad’s face tilting up.  “Who are you?  Nooshin?  What’s the meaning of this?”

“I’m here to get my stuff,” I manage to say.

“This man isn’t your husband,” Dad accuses me in Farsi.  He opens the door a little wider to get a better look at Nick.  It also gives us a better look at him.  He’s bleary, unshaven.  The breeze pulls at the too-big arms and legs of his tracksuit.  A sallow hand rises to pat at his frizzy head.

I stick to English.  “Dad, I want you to meet – ”

“You’re a whore.”  The Farsi curse hits me like a blow.  Dad’s dead eyes are coming alive, an effect magnified by his cheap plastic glasses.  “You’re a whore and a disgrace.  How dare you bring this man here.  How dare you!”

Suddenly Nick’s splayed hand is holding the door open.  Dad tried to slam it shut on us.  “We’re not leaving without Nooshin’s stuff.”  Muscles in Nick’s arm flex.  Dad is putting his small weight against the door.  “Dude.  Just get her stuff and we’ll be out of here.”

“Who’s here to visit?  We’re not expecting anyone.”  Mom is a stream of Farsi approaching from the kitchen.  “Is it Nooshin?  Did she finally come back?”

“Stay inside, wife!” Dad huffs.

Like that stops her.  She appears behind him, reeking of garlic and parsley and still holding a wooden spoon.  An apron is tied around her striped housecoat, a headband restrains her ash blond mane – but she’s too shocked to cover her hair in front of Nick.  Her mouth hangs open before the words come out of it.  “Blessed Prophet!  What happened to your face?”

I reach up and pull my cowl tight around my sunglasses, blocking out her scrutiny.  “Saman…”  The word is an agony in any language.

“See what that asshole did to her?  He beat up your daughter.  Broke her nose.  Nice, huh?” Nick says in English.  He releases his bracing hold on the door and steps back.  “Now would somebody please get her stuff?”

“Who the hell are you?” Mom demands.

“Mom, he’s – ”

She cuts me off with a raised spoon.  “I want to hear it from him.”

“Nick, don’t – ”

But he isn’t listening to me either.  “I’m Nick Roberts.  Nooshin’s friend.  I’m the one who took her to the hospital.”

“You think you are taking responsibility for her now?”

“Stop talking to him!  This is none of his business!”  Dad spits on the stoop, almost hitting one of Nick’s hiking boots.  His voice is the fatherly growl that terrified me as a little girl.  “Nooshin, get in the house.”  He grabs my wrist.  “Now.”

I’m tugged forward.  Or backward, to my old life.  I don’t know which.

Behind him Mom has taken off her apron and used it to cover her hair.  “You can still reconcile with your husband.  It’s not too late.  You know it’s the right thing to do, for his family as well as ours.”

“Nooshin!  In the house!  Right now!”  Dad is bursting into a furious sweat.  It gives his skin some color, makes his glasses slide down the beak of his nose.

It’s easy to yank free from his frail grasp.  “Dad, listen to me.  I filed a police report.  Against Saman, for assaulting me.  Now he’ll have to give me a divorce.”  The assertion seems to come from somewhere else.  Someone else.  All I can feel is guilt.  A remorseful, panicky guilt.  “I didn’t mean to talk to the police!  I kind of got trapped into it.  The hospital, they wanted to know how it happened.  They thought Nick maybe did it.  But…Dad?”

All the newfound life has drained from him.  He’s shuffling into the house.  The afternoon sun dwindles on his back.

“You ungrateful little bitch.  You don’t know what you’ve done.”  Mom sags against the foyer wall, her eyes going unfocused.  “Why do you hate us so much?”

Awkward silence.

Down the street a Hispanic family is loading Christmas presents into a minivan.  Nick wears his handsomeness like a mask.  I can’t tell what’s behind it, other than a cold and inscrutable appraisal.  Am I ruining his life too?  Mom has decided to give me the silent treatment, a punishment that Nasrin and I dreaded more than spankings.  She pulls the apron from her head and retreats to the kitchen.  I’m remembering a line I scribbled in an old notebook – when I finally get something, it’s only the blame.

Dad’s voice rattles closer in the house.  “You’re dead to us, Nooshin!  Dead to us!”

A large object hurtles out of the doorway.  My backpack.  It thunks me in the chest before I can react.  I stagger back a step.  “Ouch!  That hurt.”

No one is waiting to apologize.  The door has slammed shut.  Brown paint flakes swirl and sink.

Nick swoops an arm down and grabs my backpack.  “Come on.  Let’s get out of here.”

I depart the same way I arrived, stumbling after his broad shoulders in a daze.  He tosses my backpack into the rear of his Ford Explorer, where it clanks against camping gear.  Music assaults my eardrums when he turns the key in the ignition.  Something punky and nihilistic, a bad match for the holiday season.  Not that I care.  I feel like I’m past caring about anything.  We pull out of the driveway and slam toward the highway overpass.  I almost break my nose again when Nick stomps on the brakes for a red light.  “For chrissake,” he says.  But tenderly, reaching over to belt me in.