The Mexican Year

My studio apartment feels as roomy as it did four years ago.  Almost as roomy, anyway.  The otherwise pristine emptiness is ruined by a last furnishing – my futon – left behind for Nooshin’s use.  I stand over it critically.  Does it have a future with me in Tijuana or not?  I know what Phoebe would say.  Trash it.  She hated sleeping on my futon even more than she hated fucking on it.  The futon really is a piece of crap.  Just a rickety pine frame with a discount mattress on top.  But what can you expect from a starving undergrad who became an even-more-starving grad?

The toilet flushes.

Nooshin emerges from the bathroom.  She’s wearing her sunglasses and that cowled hijab thing that makes her look like a Sith lord.  But no bandage across her nose.  Its bridge remains fat and purple.

“Don’t look.  It’s still gross,” she says, walking over to a little corner of habitation – her suitcase and backpack.

I watch her squat down and paw through her belongings.  She wears the same Old Navy hoodie I remember from Avenida Revolucion, the same stovepipe jeans, the same Nikes.  I’ve finally met somebody more impoverished than me.  But that’s not what my libido notices.  It’s focused on Nooshin’s bony ass, which looks like an upside-down heart from this angle.  My dick is getting hard – and pinned in the wrong direction.  Shit.  Not good.  I quickly reach into my pants and reorient it.

“You hungry for lunch?” I ask, all cool-like.

“Nah.  Not really.  That was a big breakfast, you know?  I’ll probably be good until dinner.”  She’s lying.  She wolfed down the Egg McMuffin I bought her – peeling off the Canadian bacon first – and then pretended to be full.

“I know a great taco joint.  Just a few blocks away.  We can walk it.  They’ve got a fish taco you have to taste to believe.”

She straightens up…up…up…until she’s sunglasses-level with me, a few dollar bills clutched in her hand.  “I’ve got some money for lunch.  I’ll buy you something.”

“Forget it.  I’ll buy both of us something.  You can owe me.”

“Not this time.”

“Yes this time.”

“Nick.  Please.”

“No.”

Nooshin’s full lips compress into a thin line.  She wheels off.  “You have to let me pay.”

“As soon as you’re cashing a paycheck from the University of California Regents.”

“But I thought Hercules said the funding wouldn’t be released until sometime in January.”

My grin becomes false.  Hercules told me the supplemental grant funding would hit in January or February – if it hit at all.  This is the worst economic crisis the State of California and its university system has ever faced.  32% tuition increases for students, 10% pay cuts for faculty.  When a living legend like Hercules doubts his ability to get something done, it’s bad news.  Very bad news.

But I don’t say that to Nooshin.  “So you pay me back sometime in January.  I’ll float you until then.  I’ve got enough money.”

She leans over the sink, staring out the kitchenette window at Koreatown.  For a really long time.  Without speaking.

“What?” I ask.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but…”  Her shoulder blades rise and fall in the hoodie.  “It’s hopeless, Nick.  You have to give me a job, and drive me around, and buy me food.  All because I’m hopeless.”  Her hands tighten on the sink edge.  “You’ll end up resenting me.  You’ll end up hating me.  The same way my family does.”

I take a deep breath.  “Remember what you told me?”

“When?”

“When we first met.  On Avenida Revolucion.”

“I’m not sure…”

“You pointed at your eye and told me ‘God made me this way.’  Do you think God made you to be hopeless?  To be resented and hated?”

Nooshin turns around, accusing in her Sith lord cowl.  “Nick.  You’re so insincere.  You don’t even believe in God.”

“We’re not talking me here.  We’re talking you.  And you believe in God.  Right?”

“Yeah.  I do.”

“A god who allows your husband to beat you up?”

She hesitates.  “No, but the Quran – ”

“Nooshin.”

“What?”

“Do you deserve your broken nose?  Was it willed by God?”

“No.”

“And your family, treating you the way they did yesterday.  Do you deserve that?”

“Well, no.  At least, I don’t think so.”

I confront her across a small apartment that brings us closer than we intend.  “Look, I don’t know anything about being a Muslim.  I’m just your friend.  I signed up for this.  But me and God agree that you’re not hopeless and you don’t deserve this shit.”

“I know you’re just saying that.  But I’m going to pretend you really mean it, because it’s sweet.”  A tear spills from underneath her sunglasses.  Then another.  She tugs her hoodie sleeve over a hand and wipes her cheeks.  “I need a plan.  For getting out of this mess, I mean.  A better plan than just try harder.”  The tears are coming faster now.  “Like, I can only stay here until the end of the month.  So that means I need to find a new place by the new year.  And I don’t have any money.  Do I sell my plasma or something?  Is there some hotline I can call for help?”

“You need a plan to get a plan.”

“What do you mean?” she sniffles.

“It’s something we used to say back on the farm.  When the problem cascade got out of hand.  The combine was down, the crop was too wet to harvest, the corn futures were for shit anyway.  I’ve totally lost you, huh?”

Nooshin nods.

I wander over to the other window and look down on my Ford Explorer from a third-story angle.  I’ve been paranoid about its security ever since I returned from Thanksgiving and found the tires slashed, the quarter panels defaced with spraypaint.  I wonder if my truck will be any safer in Tijuana, where a dozen people get killed on a bad day.

Behind me a small voice says, “I guess I just go back to my parents.  I don’t really have any other options.  Maybe that’s what you were trying to tell me.  But I’m going to stay here as long as I can.”

“Shit.”  The word hangs against the glass.  I stare through it at La-La Land, a seemingly endless expanse of wealth slouching through hazy sunshine toward the Pacific.  Drive past the Han Kook Supermarket – the western boundary of Koreatown – and you’re in the high cotton of Wilshire Country Club, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, UCLA, Bel Air.  Nooshin comes from the opposite direction.  Inland, past downtown and into the hand-to-mouth grit of East LA.  I saw Terrazas Park for myself yesterday, and it wasn’t pretty.  Of course, neither are my new digs in Colonia Libertad.

“You don’t need to stay here with me.  You should go back to Tijuana and get on with your research.  Just call me when the funding is released.”  Nooshin pads into the bathroom, rips off some toilet paper, and blows her nose.  “Ouch.”

“Shit shit shit,” I say, briefly fogging the glass.

“You know, this is scintillating entertainment, watching you swear at the window.  But I’d rather do something else.  Call me crazy.”

“Me llamas loca.”

It takes her a beat to get it.  “Ha ha.”

I begin to pace the room, clomping despite the carpet.  “You can’t go back to your parents.   After what I saw yesterday that’s fuckingly obvious.”

Now some real mirth from her.  “Nick.  I don’t think that’s a word.  What you said right before obvious.”

“Don’t interrupt me.  I’m trying to get on a roll here.”

“Sorry.”

“And you can only stay here until the end of the month.  And you have no money to stay someplace else, at least not until I get the funding and you can start digitizing the archive.  So – what?”

She’s giggling.  “You made the f-bomb an adverb.  The adverbial f-bomb.”

I fight an urge to laugh, then another urge to crush her in my arms.  “Look, you don’t have to go back to your parents.  That’s not your only option.  You can stay with me.  In Tijuana.”

Her mouth hangs open.  Then snaps shut again.  Her throat moves, swallowing shock.  “Nick, I – I…oh god.  You’re going to make me cry again.”  She reaches into the bathroom for more toilet paper.

“Stay with me.  At least until I’ve got the funding and you’re making money, okay?  Then you’ll have options again.  You’ll be in a position to do whatever you want.”

“I can’t accept.  It’s so not fair to you.  I’ve already been such a burden!”  The waterworks are back.  She discards a wet wad of toilet paper and reaches for more.

I step closer.  Behind the smoky tint of her sunglasses I can see her right eye jerking in its socket.  “Too bad, dude.  I’m not leaving without you.”

“You…you have to.”  Nooshin winces as she blots her cheeks, which swell into her broken nose.  “Ouch.”

“Give me that.”  I take away the toilet paper and do it for her.  I’m close enough to smell the Egg McMuffin on her breath.  She’s never looked so kissable before, and my libido is running with the throttle wide open.  But that isn’t why I’m doing this.  Okay, okay.  Not the only reason.

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.

It’s Christmas Eve – Noche Buena in Mexico.  Tijuana is sloshing with amped-up religiosity, Catholicism stoned on pagan throwbacks.  Nativity displays that would spawn ACLU lawsuits north of the border are everywhere – on government building lawns, in bus stations, at schools – and all with empty mangers, waiting for the Baby Jeebus to be added today.  Partygoers break pinatas with seven streamers, one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins or the seven tribes of the Nahua, depending on who you believe.  Mobs of people ebb and flow through the streets, snarling traffic as they follow a costumed donkey-riding Mary led by a dude dressed as Joseph.  Churches bulge with parishioners supplicating themselves into a frenzy at the feet of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus’ mom with an ethnic makeover.  Native nochebuena flowers – called poinsettias in America after 19th-century U.S. Ambassador Joel Poinsett – are crowding horizontal spaces in every lobby and home, adding Christmas cheer and reminding the world that the Aztecs’ favorite color was blood red.

But none of that shit is keeping me awake.  Another Christmastime ritual is – the mass crossing of the border.  A couple hours before midnight and I’m watching through the barred front window as ghostly figures drift down the street toward la frontera.  They eddy against the rusting steel panels that cover the vulnerable chain link fence underneath, a teeming mass of shadow-people bursting toward the day-bright hills on the other side.  Their mass crossing is fueled by two idiotic beliefs – that the Border Patrol only fields a skeleton force during the holidays, and anybody making it to America today will receive a Christmas gift of citizenship tomorrow.  In reality the Border Patrol fields more agents, not less, and anybody caught today will wind up right back in Tijuana tomorrow.  Pressed against the glass I can feel the vibrations of a helicopter, thropping the night air overhead, probing the darkness on this side of the border fence with a beam of glaring light.  But the real noise comes from the humvees crashing up and down the hills, a mad orchestra of revving engines and grinding gearboxes and the occasional honking horn.

Headlights creep down the street, washing over small clots of would-be Americans.  A flashlight is aimed out the driver’s window, jumping from one house to the next.  I figure it’s a cop or cabbie trying to find their way, since there are never streetlights on a gravel road like this.  I take a step back from the window and prepare to settle myself into the sleeping bag again – until the flashlight hovers on my house and the vehicle pulls onto the front lawn, mistaking the pavers for a driveway.  With no drapes I’m forced to squint into the headlights, raising my arm into a bar of shade across my eyes.  I glimpse a shadow moving through the glare to the front door.

The knocking starts urgent and just gets worse.  “Nick?  Nick?!?  It’s me, Nooshin!”

What the hell?  I grab the long weight of my D-cell Maglite, half-flashlight half-club, and open the door prepared to use it either way.

“Nick…”  The gangly silhouette sags in relief.

I play the beam over Nooshin in shock.  It looks like she was in a fight – and got her ass kicked.  Her hair is a wild tangle spilling out of her headscarf and sweatshirt hood.  Through it I can see a broken nose, fat and purplish across the bridge.  The discolored swelling reaches across her cheeks and up to her eyes, puffing them into exhausted slits.  Her upper lip and chin are angry red skin, irritated with wiping, and her sweatshirt is caked with dried snot and blood on the sleeves.  My business card with the address on the back is clutched in her bony hands, the left one adorned with a too-tight gold band.  The leg of her jeans is ripped open from the knee down, flapping like a singular bell-bottom, and that sock is stained pink on the outside.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I finally manage to say.

“Yeah,” she sighs.  “I look pretty bad, huh?”

“Like you fell down the stairs a couple times.  Come on in.”  I pivot on a bare heel, flashing the Maglite around the living room, and guide her over to the papasan chair.  “Here.  Let me help you with that.”

Nooshin untangles from her purse with difficulty and collapses into the padded wicker shell of the chair.  Watching my flashlight beam dash into the bathroom and then the kitchen, she makes a sympathetic noise.  “I’m sorry you don’t have electricity yet.”

“Me too.  Remind me never to move to Mexico during Christmas again.”  I’m back with a first aid kit and towel dampened in bottled water, bending over her and gently blotting at her broken nose.  Her eyelids flicker and close in my Maglite’s frizzy wide-angle light.  She could pass for dead if it wasn’t for the little bubble of blood in one nostril, pulsing with every breath.  Something feral and murderous uncoils inside me.  “Who did this to you?  Saman?”

The name makes her flinch.

“You need to call 911 and sic the cops on that motherfucker – ”

“No,” she interrupts.  Then with more force, “No!”

“Nooshin, listen to me.  Your husband should go to jail for what he did to you.  If you file a police report – ”

“Nooo…”  It’s a trapped moan.

I touch the plain gold band that pinches her ring finger.  “Is this from him too?”

She thrashes miserably, trying to yank the ring off.

“Whoa.  Just relax, okay?  We can get it off later.”  I shift down to her calf, disinfecting and band-aiding the crusty zig-zag laceration.  “I’ll take you to a clinic later.  Broken noses usually heal on their own, but better safe than sorry, right?”  Then I play the Maglite over her purse, partially unzipped and spilling things like an antique Polaroid camera onto the cement floor.  “You’re traveling light.”

A single disconsolate sob pierces the darkness, and me with it.  “He’s waiting to take me back to Kansas City.  My family is on his side.”

“I suppose all your stuff is still at my place.”  I put the beam on Nooshin.

“Yeah.  My suitcase, anyway.  My phone is at my parents’ house.  And the rest of my money.  The money I had with me, I spent it all on the bus down here, and the border cab, oh god…”

“You took one of the cabs right at the border, huh?  They’re expensive as hell.”  I prop the Maglite on the floor, aiming it toward the tiny bedroom.  Then I unroll the spare mattress pad and sleeping bag.

“What am I supposed to do, Nick?”  Her voice is going high and stricken.  “I don’t even have a single dollar!”

“Can you tone it down a little?  You’re freaking me out.”  It’s true.  The white-hot urge to hurt Saman the way he hurt her has been eclipsed by emotional shards, cutting through me so fast I can’t even tell what they are.  I take a deep breath and scoop up the flashlight and start digging through a Hefty bag of clothes.  “You take the bedroom.  Here’s some of my clothes to sleep in.”  I toss her sweatpants and a retro-style Atari t-shirt.

In the circle of fuzzy light she’s standing up and hugging the clothes to her chest.  Tear-tracks are glistening on her cheeks.  Her crooked eye is wandering toward the Pacific.  “What do I do, Nick?”

“Don’t worry about it now.  We’ll get this sorted out in the morning.”  All the emotional shards within me are collapsing into something foreign and tender.  I war with myself, trying to regain my icy distance.  “As far as money goes, I’ve got some.  So don’t worry about it right now, okay?”

Her bruised and puffy face is arriving at a new conclusion about me, and desire – a tentative, awkward desire – is part of that conclusion.  Nooshin rushes past the flashlight’s glow, wrapping me in a pathetically grateful hug.  Matted hair brushes my face.  Her scent is sweat and grime.  At first I vacillate, still pointing the Maglite at the empty papasan chair.  Then I hug her back.  She feels breakable in my grasp, barely held together and trembling like a palsied calf.

Today is dwindling with every revolution of my parents’ wall clock, a delicate metal starburst with an electric cord trailing down.  The taupe walls are dominated by framed panoramas of Iran that say TEHRAN and ESFAHAN and YAZD at the bottom.  On the horizontal surfaces is a plethora of framed pictures, always filled with disapproving relatives.  Only Grandfather looks on me with perpetual kindness, his eyes like warm stones.  I’m thankful he’s dead and can’t be dragged into the final negotiations.  Dad and my uncle-in-law Gamal failed to salvage a compromise that never really existed in the first place.  I insist on a divorce, Saman refuses to grant one.  Even the families have to accept the impasse now.

Headlights bounce and steady on the curtains, then go dark.  I turn down the sound on the television, just in time to hear a car door slam out in the driveway.  There’s a pause filled with nothing much except my breathing.  The doorbell chimes.

I glance into the home’s interior.  “Dad?  Mom?  Can one of you get that?”

The doorbell escalates to knocking.

“Coming!” I yell.  I unfold myself from the couch and pad over to the door.  Through the peephole is a bulbous nose with a mustache beneath it.  “Who’s there?”

“It’s me.  Let me in,” a male voice demands.  The knocking is impatient now.  Becoming angry at me.  “Nooshin, let me in!”

I surrender with practiced obedience, fumbling at the lock and ushering Saman into the foyer.  I haven’t seen my husband in a month, not since I pawned my wedding ring and fled to San Diego for the second time.  Everything about him is familiar and unfamiliar at once.  He slouches with a resentment that borders on hostility.  His flat inkspot eyes are unreadable and his pockmarked cheeks are stretched wide by a grimace.  The seams of his Adidas track suit can barely contain his straining bulk.  “Hello my wife,” he says in cold Farsi.

“Hello my husband.”  I’m retreating from him as if repelled.

“I fly back to Kansas City tomorrow with Gamal and Afshar.”

“I know.”

“I had to see you first.  We need to work this out.  I’ve been trying to call, but…”  He drags a hand down his face, trying to hide his frustration.  “How can we work this out when you’re blocking my calls?”

“I don’t think there’s anything to work out.  But it’s okay if you come in.  We can talk in the living room.”  I retreat even further, backing into the kitchen.  “Can I get you something to drink?  Do you want some tea?”

“I don’t want to talk around your family.  Or back at the hotel with my family.  Let’s go somewhere we can work this out, just the two of us.”

“Go – where?” I ask uncertainly.

“I don’t know.  Let’s just start walking.”  Saman’s back is already turned to me.  He pauses to issue a summons over his beefy shoulder.  “Wife, come on!”  Then he steps into the milky night, a silhouette hazy with streetlights.

I hesitate in miserable indecision.  So much for never talking to him again, never seeing him again.  And what is there to work out between us, anyway?  Our marriage is over.  I’m filing for divorce as soon as I can afford it.  I should just lock the door behind him.  Good night and good riddance.  But then he’d make a scene.  Omigod, would he ever.  My family would be humiliated in front of the neighbors.  Someone might even call 911.  And instead of blaming him, Dad and Mom would just rage at me, like it’s somehow all my fault.  I can already hear their voices, angry barbs of Farsi so the neighbors and cops don’t understand – Why are you shaming us like this? and Saman is still your husband, go talk to him!

I wrap a hijab around my head and grab my purse off the kitchen counter and chase after him.  He waits in the driveway next to his uncle’s rental car.  Barely glancing my direction, he chooses a direction – east – and begins walking down the sidewalk.  I fall in beside him.  Terrazas Park isn’t a pretty neighborhood, but it comes close at Christmas time.  Homes are fringed in colored lights.  There are illuminated Nativity scenes on lawns.  We even see an inflatable polar bear in a Santa hat.

“Look at all the decorations,” I finally say, eager to break the tension thickening between us.  “It’s Christmas soon.”

“You know where I went wrong?  I didn’t take you to Iran.  We should’ve gone back.”  Saman says it with deceptive blandness.  I can see that his hands are bunching into fists.  “If you returned to Iran, you would’ve understood the traditions you’re forsaking.  You would’ve understood me, and my family, and yours too.  We’re Persians, Nooshin.  You as well.”

“No I’m not.  I’m an American.”

That makes him chortle.  “There’s no such thing as an American.  There are people who live in America.  This country is only 200 years old.  Our civilization is 4,000 years old.”

“Sometimes I think that’s the best thing about America.  There aren’t 4,000 years of stuff getting in the way.  People can be anything they want here.  Everyone has that freedom.  And if you don’t like who you are, you just change.”

“I thought you wanted to be my wife.”  The statement is poignant with betrayal.  “I came to America knowing you chose me.  That was a great comfort when I was homesick, or discouraged, or…”

“Scared?” I volunteer.

“When I was homesick or discouraged.”

We wander along the sidewalk in silence.  I watch the darkness clog with neon signs in English and Spanish, stoplights soaring above intersections, halogen security lighting.  A highway ramp leads to Disneyland, to Santa Ana, and the lumpy shadows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  For some stupid reason I’m thinking about the highway mileage signs that count down to MEXICO.  They’re in San Diego, closer to Nick than I am.

Saman asks, “Why did you want to be my wife?”

“I didn’t, really.  It’s just what happened next.  When I was a senior in high school, my family, they wanted to marry me off.  Because I wasn’t going to college, and I’m, um…”  I look down at my Nikes.  “I’m not much of a catch.”

“That’s true.  Your eye, your body – I was repulsed at first.”  He shrugs lackadaisically, as if excusing an unavoidable first impression.  “But I was told you had a heart of gold.  You would be a faithful and godly wife.  And for five years you were.”

The godly part makes me wince.  “I don’t know if I’m a good Muslim, either.”

“I could be a better Muslim myself.  I don’t like going to mosque here, may God forgive me.  This country, it, it…”

“It…what?”

“It isn’t what I expected.  I thought I would adjust, but…  I miss Iran, wife.  More every year.”

We’ve reached the only park in the neighborhood.  At night it seems nonthreatening, almost quaint.  Paths meander beneath the halogen security lights.  Graffiti is drained of gang colors.  Palm tree trunks soar into darknes.  The layout of parking lots and picnic areas hasn’t changed.  I quickly find the same picnic table chained to its concrete pad, the same grill leaking ashes onto the crabgrass and dandelions.

“I met you in this park.  Your picture, I mean.  At Norouz.  The matchmaker…”  My voice dies into misery. 

Saman watches me with an inscrutable expression.  “If you don’t come back with me to Kansas City, your family will disown you.  Don’t you understand that?  They’ll kick you out.  You’ll have nothing left.  Nothing.”

“I’ll have my job.”

He flashes with anger.  “The job that guy gave to you!”

“I always wanted a job.  Well, I finally got one.”

“You had a job!  A lot of jobs.  Keeping the house.  Cooking.  Doing the laundry.  Packing and unpacking for moves.”  A recitation of my worth to Saman.  I’m a maid who puts out.  “Why won’t you come back to Kansas City and live with Aunt Euda?  You like her.  That way we can reconcile.  I know we can, wife.  Wife?”

“Don’t call me that anymore.  I’m divorcing you.”

“No you’re not.  I won’t grant you a divorce.  I refuse.”

“You can’t stop me.  California has, um…”  I don’t know the Farsi translation for no-fault divorce, so I switch to English.  “California lets either spouse get a divorce, no matter what.”

“That is the law of America.  We are married by the law of God.”

“Yeah, but the law of America is all that really counts.”

He stiffens in outrage.  “You put the law of America above the law of God?”

“No!  Of course not.”  I can’t look at Saman anymore.  My gaze wanders to a chain link fence and its weird stretching shadows.  “But even God allows a wife to divorce her husband.”

“If I fail to provide for you, or abuse you, or cheat.  Have I done any of those things?  No!”  His voice is back to a harsh and grating Farsi.  “If I grant you a divorce, my family will think I’m guilty of those things.  For the rest of my life.”  Anger brings him closer.  “I won’t let my family think I’m guilty of those things.  I’m not guilty!”

I shrink against the picnic table, still not looking at him.  “Then tell your family I’m the guilty one.  Tell them it’s my fault.  I don’t care.”

“Then everyone will say I let my wife wander like a wild camel!”

“I want to go back to my parents’ house.”

“Look at me!”  His breath is sour on my cheek.  “I said look at me, wife!”  He wraps his hand around my jaw and twists my head.

This close Saman seems barely in control of himself.  His sneer is twitching spasmodically.  The matted V of his exposed chest is heaving.  He concentrates on me with uneven effort, eyebrows pulling together into a single hairy line and relaxing again.  For the first time in my life I’m afraid of him.

He fumbles inside his track suit top, yanking out the thick braid of his gold necklace.  Something dangles from it, flashing in the lights.  The wedding ring that used to be mine.  “This isn’t yours anymore,” he says, tucking it back into his tracksuit.  “You have to earn it back.  This is your ring now.”  He digs a plain gold band out of his pocket.

“What?  I’m not wearing any ring.  I’m divorcing you – ”

He drops his gaze, taking in my posture.  I’m pinning my arms against my chest like a protective shield, my fists are tucked under my chin.  Then he lunges at me.  We tug-of-war over my left hand.

“No!  Stop it!  Stop it, Saman!  Stop it or I’m yelling for help!”  The threat only makes him furious, baring teeth as he snarls with effort.  I try to yank free, screaming “HELP!” until he punches me in the stomach.  The scream dies into a gurgle as all the air goes out of me.  I fold over, choking harshly, desperate for breath.

“You must never disobey me again, wife.  Never!”  He gropes me roughly, sliding hands into my long hair, grabbing fistfuls.  I croak with pain as he jerks me toward him.  We crush mouths in a brutal kiss.

“HELP!” I immediately begin to yell again, as soon as I break away.

One hand tightens its grip on my hair, twisting me toward him.  The other draws back in a fist…only to come at me again, plowing at my face in excruciatingly slow motion, closer and closer and closer, and it takes forever just to close my eyes –

An explosion goes off in my skull.  Blazing shocks of light and pain.  Darkness rushing.  Nothing.

———————

When my eyelids flutter open again, I’m drowning in underwater shadows.  I gasp in panic – and just like that, I can breathe again, hyperventilating through my mouth.  I blink a few times, squeezing tears out of my eyes.  The neighborhood park hovers back into focus, contoured with the glare of halogen security lights.  I’m slumped at the picnic table, but tilting sideways.  Saman is working the plain gold band onto my ring finger.  His shoulders are hunched with the effort.  Its circumference is barely larger than my knuckle.

Something salty and metallic is trickling into the back of my throat.  “You broke my nose,” I say in English.  It comes out sounding like you brode my node.

“I’ll do worse if you were with another man!” he threatens in Farsi.  Suddenly all I can see are the hairy knuckles of his fist.  “Were you with that guy?  Did you give yourself to him?”

“No!  I didn’t give myself to him!  I swear to you on the Holy Quran!” I plead desperately, flinching away.  “Oh god, please Saman.  Please don’t hit me again.  Please!”

The fist goes away.  “There,” he says in a defiant tone, and holds up my left hand for me to see.  The band is over my knuckle and pinching tight.

I stare dully at the ring, and my husband’s not attractive, not unattractive face behind it.  Snot and blood are leaking down my lip and into my mouth.  I cough and fleck everything with dark spittle.

Saman recoils a step.  He digs in his pocket cursing.  “This isn’t easy for me to say, but I forgive you.  I forgive you for all the humiliation you’ve caused me.”  He finds a tissue and wipes at his face.  “We’ll put this behind us and live as husband and wife again.”  The used tissue lands in my lap.  “Now clean yourself up.  We’re leaving.”

“Where are we going?”  I make dabbing motions with the tissue, my face numb beneath it.  “Are you taking me back to my parents’ house?  Or to the emergency room?”

“We’re going back to Kansas City.”

Back to Kansas City.  I gasp at the insanity of it.

“And back to Iran, soon.”  He pats my knee affectionately.  “I’m making arrangements to visit my paternal grandparents.  They live outside of Qa’en, in the mountains by Afghanistan.  There’s a picture of the village hanging in our hallway – ”

Hot wires of panic are flaring inside me, trying to break through my skin, propelling me into motion.  Everything is speeded up and herky-jerky, as if I’m piloting someone else’s body.  I make the girl clutch her purse and stagger upright and flee.

“Come back here!” Saman bellows.

I rush into the chilly blackness of the night, heading for the nearest parking lot.  The ground is uneven and littered with trash – cigarette butts, Taco Bell wrappers, 40 ounce malt liquor bottles.  “Help!  Ayudame!  Call the cops!” I yell when I encounter some Hispanic kids in a low-rider, smoking pot and drinking from paper bags.  They just crane their necks, curious to see my pursuer.  Saman’s face is a mask of rage.  If I was afraid of him before, I’m terrified of him now.

I abandon the parking lot, running through a playground and over a bedraggled hedge and into the gravel lot of a used car dealership.  Plastic pennants ripple overhead as I zigzag through a maze of vehicles, slamming into sideview mirrors.  Saman is yelling unintelligibly behind me, his voice ragged and faltering.

I’m halted by a tall chain link fence at the back of the property.  Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  But I can’t go back either.  I take a precious moment to dig in my purse, searching for my mobile phone.  I need to call 911 – but I can’t.  Stupid me.  The phone is right where I left it, recharging in my old bedroom at my parents’ house.

“Nooshin!”  The word is closing fast.

I sling my purse over a shoulder, settling it firmly in my armpit, and scramble over the fence.  Try to scramble over the fence.  Straddling it I lose my balance and topple the rest of the way, slashing open the leg of my jeans with a loud riiippppp and thudding into the asphalt.

The fence keeps rattling even after I fall off it.  Saman is yanking furiously, his fingers knit around the links.  “I’ll never grant you a divorce,” he pants.  The harsh floodlights of the used car dealership are blanching him into a pale monster.  “Not in this world, not in the afterlife.”

I look up at him from a crumple of pain.  “There’s nothing you can do about it.”  My anger helps me stand up, an unsteady process, until I’m taller than him.  “I’m divorcing you, Saman.  This marriage is over.”

He closes off into hostility and self-pity.  All I’ve done is estrange him even further.  Not like I care anymore.  We’re both startled by a muffled jangle in his sweatpants pocket.  He answers his phone, never peeling his eyes from me.  “Nasrin?  Yes.  I’m with her.  It’s not going well.”

I start edging backwards, into the alley that runs behind the dealership.  “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll call the cops on you.  You’ll lose your green card and get deported back to Iran.”  I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I feel better saying it.

Saman hesitates, cellphone still pinned to his ear.  “What are you going to do, live like an unkept woman?”  The euphemism Persian males use instead of prostitute.  “Your family won’t take you back.  You’re an embarrassment to them.”

I take another step backwards.  “Do you want to get sent back to Iran?”  And another.  “Do you?”

He mutters into the phone some more.  “I’ll be waiting for you at your parents’ house.”  Then he crunches across the gravel, receding into the used car lot.

Maybe Saman really is going back to my parents’ house.  Or maybe this is as much of a head start as I’m going to get.  I turn and resume running – more of a fast limping, really.  Pain is radiating from my left leg.  My Nikes crunch on broken glass fanning out from a dumpster.  I exit the alley into an asphalt lake, the local strip mall’s parking lot.  I’m hoping to spot a police car or mall security SUV, but there isn’t a vehicle in sight.  All I glimpse is a derelict pushing two lashed-together shopping carts, moving slowly through cones of light.

I spot salvation on the far side of the parking lot and across the street – a Metro Transit System stop.  I head toward it, slowing even further.  My leg is hurting more with every step.  It’s a victory to reach the corner and its flashing DON’T WALK sign.  I limp through the deserted intersection while a stoplight clicks overhead.

The transit stop occupies most of the corner, a slanted metal roof and three wide plexiglass panels, almost opaque with gang graffiti.  Cement garbage cans and recycling bins are placed at regular intervals, alternating with benches.  I collapse onto the nearest one, barely smelling the freshly mown grass because I can’t breathe through my nose.  A gigantic bus schedule rises from a glassy pedestal.  At first I only see my depressing reflection – the ripped jeans dangling from my leg, blood leaking into my mouth and down my chin, my right eye trying to tear itself out of the socket.  Then I refocus on the numbers and times underneath.  The next bus arrives a few minutes from now.  I don’t know where it’s going, and I don’t care.  I wipe my face with a sweatshirt sleeve and pull the hood over my hijab for warmth, then gingerly lie down on the bench to wait, using my purse for a pillow.

The old Crown Victoria is a majestic pile of junk gliding down the gravel street.  It comes to a halt like a rusty barge running ashore.  When the engine shuts off I can hear the 747s on final approach to the airport again.  The car’s original color is lost to history.  Now it’s blotchy from years in the Mexican sun and a few mismatched replacement parts.  The windshield has a bad chip mark that’s spiderwebbing into opacity.  Through it I can see Mr. Sedesco, my local neighborhood rental agent and archive finder.  Today he’s looking more Norman Rockwell portrait than usual.  Must be the suspenders.

I’m sitting on a cinderblock outside the front door and drinking warm beers.  I’d prefer to be drinking cold ones – or just working on my academic shit – but I need electricity for that.  Ergo the timing of Sedesco’s visit.  I haven’t seen the defrocked Catholic priest lookalike since I paid him the final $100 for finding me the Korea Textile maquiladora archive.  I rise to my boots in greeting, which consists of going inside and leaving the door open behind me.

Sedesco is searching for a kid to pay to watch his car.  Nobody except an auto recycler would steal it, but it’s just part of doing business here.  Got to grease the palms, keep the natives friendly.  Too bad the street is deserted – except for the feral dogs, of course.  He leans on a rusted-out fender and pats at his balding brylcreamed hair and looks around with obvious mercantile intention.  Still no kids materialize.  Finally he gives up and shuffles across the patio pavers, one sloooooow arthritic step after another, making his way into the shadowy house.

“Welcome to Tijuana, kid.  It’s great you got all moved in.”  Sedesco talks around his pipestem, clenched in a fine set of dentures.  He can’t resist a jibe at my indoor camping mode.  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“I bet you say that to every tenant.”  I sip from my can of Budweiser.  “Like I said on the phone, I need electricity.”

“Sure you do.  Why do you think I’m not grousing for one of those beers?  Because I know they’re warm as piss.”  He click-click-clicks a light switch to no effect.  “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.  Never move in during the holidays.  Everybody checks out at the utility companies.  You can’t even find somebody to bribe.”

“Are you telling me I’m screwed until the new year?”

“Of course not.  You’re with me, kid.  I put you in this house, right?  I’ll get you juice too.”

“You said you know people who know people.  That sounds like you’re setting me up for an expensive solution.”  I kick a dust bunny along the floorboards.  Where the hell are they all coming from?  “I’m just a starving grad student trying to stretch my pesos.  Maybe it’s cheaper for me to wait.”

“Sure it’s cheaper.  If you don’t mind living in the dark with no stove or refrigerator.”  Sedesco pauses dramatically.  “Or you could pay me $100 and get juice tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is the day before Christmas Eve.”

“You think I don’t know that?  I’m not kidding.  I know people who know people.  I make a call to start things rolling, you got a meterman at your house in an hour.  He unlocks your meter and presto, you got juice.  How’s that for a Christmas present?”

I herd the dust bunny out the front door.  “$100 is a lot of money for a hookup that’s supposed to be free.  Especially since I’ll have to the pay the meterman too, huh?  That could be another $50 right there.”

“Not for you, kid.  You can negotiate him down to $20.  Maybe even less.” 

“Same as I can negotiate you down?”

“My $100 is firm,” Sedesco laughs.  “You allow smoking in here?”

“Sure.  What the hell.”

He struggles to light his pipe, an awkward ballet of liver-spotted fingers.  “So?  What do you say?  $100 for juice tomorrow?”

I pretend to consider his offer, scowling out the barred front window.  I’m fitting together the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle.  No electricity in the first place.  The electric company’s unresponsiveness.  Sedesco’s fortuitous call to check in.  His offer to help while refusing to discuss specifics on the phone.  The fact I bribed him for cheaper rent on this place.

Yep.  This is a shakedown.  No fucking doubt about it.

Sedesco is conspiring with the local office of the Comision Federal de Electricidad – the national electric company.  His accomplice is somebody who can sit on a customer service complaint during the holidays, when the office is mostly deserted.  Together they’re preying on a fresh American transplant, assuming I’m just another gringo who doesn’t know how Tijuana works and can’t live without his electricity.  What will I pay for light, a stove that works, cold beer in the fridge?

Sedesco is no dumbass.  The elderly dude senses my suspicion, all the untidy details, a payday receding fast.  “I’m trying to help you, that’s all.  A meterman might not make it out until second week in January.  That’s three weeks from now.  21 days of drinking piss-warm beers.  You really want to wait that long?”

“You’re shaking me down, gramps.”

“What?  I drive all the way out here, and you, you…”  He tries to fake injury – which might work better if he’d also learned to fake dismay.  “That hurts, kid.  That really hurts.”

I can’t stop a grin.  “For chrissake.  You’re the worst actor ever.”

“Who says I’m acting here?”

I watch the elderly sleazebag hide behind a gust of pipe smoke.  The sunset of his life, and he’s forced to hustle harder than a corner drug dealer in East LA.  But he knows more people in Tijuana than I ever will – including that accomplice in the electric company.  Before this year of fieldwork is over, I’ll need to know people who know people too.  Sedesco wasn’t the most promising start to my Mexican network, but he’ll have to do.

“Maybe I’ll call you if I get fed up waiting for electricity.  Or maybe I’ll call you if something else comes up, like the maquiladora archive did.  You can always teach me a thing or two about Tijuana, huh?”

“You know what they say about knowledge – it don’t come cheap.”

Sedesco shambles past me and into the daylight.  Not one but two grubby neighborhood kids have materialized to sit on the hood of his Crown Vic.  Their dirty faces turn to him with expectation.  He clacks his dentures at them, stomps an orthopedic shoe.  The kids ignore his demands to scram.  The standoff threatens to escalate past name-calling to rock-throwing.  I’m stuck living in this neighborhood, so I wander outside to wave a couple dollar bills at the kids.  They immediately abandon the car.  Sedesco climbs into his rusty barge, rewarding me with a sour nod through the spiderwebbed windshield.  Our negotiation for whatever comes next has already begun.