The Mexican Year

I’m stumbling through a dream of foggy reaching hands and doors that won’t open and shadows on clouds when I hear the barking.  Torrents of it.  Sudden and intense and approaching.  I sit bolt upright in the unfamiliar darkness, clutching the sheets to my chin, feeling my heart flutter against ribs.  The barking intensifies.  I glance around wildly.  Glowing green digits tell me it’s an insanely small hour of the night.

Tijuana.  I’m in a tiny cinderblock house in Tijuana.  With Nick.  He’s a snore droning through the thin door.

I have to reach down toward the alarm clock shining on the bare concrete floor, since I don’t have a nightstand yet.  My hand knocks over books and an empty water bottle, until it finally closes around the flashlight.  Then I slide from my new twin bed and stand at the window, aiming the beam through the interior blinds and exterior bars.  The racket is almost deafening, as if wild dogs are swarming our front yard, but I can’t see anything.  The cone of light plays across the Explorer and empty pavers.

Then silence.  Or as much silence as you ever get living this close to the border fence.  Helicopters are whupping back and forth overhead, Humvees are revving around.

The local dogs were probably chasing some of the wetbacks who muster in the neighborhood for a midnight crossing.  Or so I guess, clicking off the flashlight and returning to bed.

Sleep is a warm black tar sucking me in.  I don’t stir again until hands are clapping, insistent and close.  “Wake up.  Hey.  Nooshin.  Wake up.”  Nick is standing in the doorway, watching me with eyes like frozen propane fires.  He’s fully dressed in jeans and an untucked oxford with the shirtsleeves rolled up.  “Come see this.”

I trail him out of the claustrophobic bedroom, pausing only to shrug into my new robe, rubbing sleep dust from my eyes.  His broad shoulders squeeze into the false dawn and follow the periphery of the house.  Behind him I’m tiptoeing carefully, barefoot, dodging rocks and broken glass.

He stops so abruptly I almost run into him.  “Our first visitor,” he announces, pointing at a motionless furry shape in the trash-littered yard.

A dead cat.

I haven’t seen any cats in Tijuana.  Plenty of dogs, feral and roaming the streets, but no cats.  Maybe this is why.

Nick moves forward with a shovel in one hand.

“What are you doing?” I ask plaintively, trying not to look at the dead cat.  Its milky eyes.  The ugly spilling gash in its side, where things had feasted.  All the rusty stains around its muzzle from life leaking out.

“I need to get this thing into the trash,” he says.

I stop him with an extended fist and palm.  “Rock scissors paper.”

“What?”

“Rock scissors paper.  For whoever has to clean this up.  It’s only fair.”

Nick waves me off.  “You’re already the boss of everything indoors.  This is my responsibility.”

“I’m the boss of everything indoors?  What gives you that idea?”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”  He starts to slide the shovel under the cat, causing a slimy gray coil to ooze out.

My vision turns watery with tears, but I jab at him with my fist and palm.  “Rock scissors paper.”

“Fine.  Have it your way.”  Nick sighs heavily and plants the shovel blade-edge into the ground.  “Rock scissors paper.”  Then he makes a fist and palm and thrusts it at me.

We smack our fists into our palms in counting gestures.  One…two…three…

I make my hand flat.  Paper.

Nick’s hand is in the shape of a – rock?  I could’ve sworn it was scissors.  “Go back inside, Nooshin.  Get some sleep.”  He plucks up the shovel and turns to our first visitor, but not before I glimpse him smirking in triumph.

That’s how I find myself at the kitchen window, huddled in my new robe, crying a little.  I’m watching a man shovel a dead cat into the garbage can.  A man who cheats at rock-scissors-paper in secretive compassion, and put me in charge of digitizing an archive, and offered shelter when I had nowhere else to go.  A man I didn’t even know two months ago, when I fled my husband for the first time.  And in this moment, as dawn spills over the neighborhood like pink lemonade, I have to force myself to stop thinking about Nick – stop feeling these emotions, stop fantasizing – and go back to bed.

The morning has turned on that invisible pivot between dawn and noon.  Last thing I remember was Nick calling out  “See you later!” and the squeaky brakes of his truck backing into the street.  Then I fell asleep again.  Now I can hear the periodic rumble of jets scraping the roof, traffic humming on the asphalt roads and shuddering on the gravel ones, dogs barking in the dirt and dust.  I blow out a deep breath and watch flies buzz overhead.

Another day that begins like this, with me sleeping in late.  Maybe my body is still healing from Saman’s punches and my fence-climbing fall.  I glance around a bedroom lit with ambient daylight.  The only decor is the futon Nick thrust on me while taking a sleeping bag himself.  A few things lie here and there – backpack spilling open, several bags with new clothes inside, the Tijuana newspaper I was reading to practice my Spanish but rolled up into a flyswatter.

I pad across the bare cement into the bathroom, where I force myself to stare into the so-called mirror, just a small reflective tile above the sink.  A scrawny girl with matted hair stares back at me, eyes flat as oilstains in her tired face.  Her tanktop is soaked with sweat.  The “I (heart) MANGA” graphic across the front is barely distorted by the bumps of her chest.  The girl looks as if she forgot how to smile.

Then I realize I’m only seeing the girl in the mirror because the bathroom light turned on.  Electricity, yaayyy!  My counterpart in the mirrored tile is flickering out of stoic exhaustion, her face brightening as if Nick just cracked a joke.  She didn’t forget how to smile after all.

It’s amazing how much happiness you can fit into a little thing, like pulling a light cord — and having the bulb arc to life.  I run around the house, plugging in the television and the DVD player hooked to it.  Recharging the batteries we’ve gone through.  And omigod, using the stove’s burners and oven.

But I’m already late for today’s agenda – exploring the neighborhood on my own.  Yesterday Nick gave me a tour of Colonia Libertad and showed me how to find my way back to the house.  Now it’s my turn to prove that I’m no longer the Nooshin who hid inside her fears and insecurities during those five years with Saman.  I’m going to show Nick that I’m girlpower personified.  I’ll even draw my own conclusions about Colonia Libertad thankyouverymuch, and decide which locals are worth befriending or avoiding all by myself.

The only thing that scares me about outside is the dogs.  Mangy feral things that scrounge through garbage and chase cars and snarl at people.  The only dog I knew growing up was a slavering mastiff in Long Beach, which may explain why perros scare the poop out of me.  Luckily I now have pepper spray on my keychain.  I don’t know if anyone has ever maced an attacking canine before, or if pepper spray even works on dogs, but carrying it around makes me feel better.

I emerge into a warm overcast noon, old Polaroid camera in one hand, mace keychain in the other.  I stand in the patchy sunshine for a while, just soaking up the freedom.  For the first time I’m not seeing the mishmash of housing, handbuilt shacks next to palatial stucco homes next to fenced-in junky lots where the cardboard boxes may be inhabited instead of discarded.  I’m seeing a place where I can go in any direction I want.

First I walk north to the border fence, a strangely pathetic sheaf of corrugated aluminum that peels back in places, revealing the sliced-open chain link fencing underneath.  No wonder impoverished Mexicans trickle down this road and gather here at sunset, all their worldly possessions on their backs.  It’s easy to get through, if not across.

Then I turn around and retrace my steps toward the main drag, slowly realizing that my casual use of “blocks” to describe the distance along this street isn’t correct.  The houses just kind of spill into each other, and what I thought were side streets are actually the occasional driveway or deadend alley, as I discover when I explore one.

Backtracking to the street, I have my first encounter with the local dogs.  A couple of them trot past with tongues hanging out, kicking up little plumes of dust with their paws, not even turning my direction.  I breathe a sigh of relief so huge it almost hurts.

That’s when it hits me – the neighborhood is utterly deserted.  Those dogs are the only sign of life.  I haven’t seen a single person, not a single vehicle in motion.  Everyone is somewhere else – or just terrified of the ungodly tall girl with the evil eye.  In their absence the neighborhood has become an oasis of peace and quiet.  Except for the stupid planes thundering overhead.

The main drag is just a bigger and broader variation on the same old gravel road.  Its expanse is almost funereal.  I pause to watch a towering dust plume draw closer and closer, until it resolves into a dump truck.  The driver stares at me through his dirty windshield, mouth hanging open a little.  Apparently he’s wondering how a solitary gringa managed to wander this far from the tourist district.

Feeling more confident now, I head for the corner store, an unmistakable landmark because of its exterior – bright yellow cinderblocks fading to the color of pee.  A couple plastic patio tables and chairs sit outside the front door, unoccupied in the blotchy sun.  Inside is a claustrophobic mélange of shelves crowded with colorful boxes, glass-fronted refrigerator cabinets placed weirdly, barrels of fresh fruits and vegetables, piñatas dangling from the ceiling so low I have to duck.  I can barely turn around in the aisles, they’re so narrow.  Beneath my Nikes is a floor of perilous linoleum, heaving and cracked.

I don’t buy anything because I didn’t bring money to buy anything.  I exit practicing a checkout conversation in my head, prepping for the time when I’ll actually make a purchase using Mexican pesos.  The shopkeeper is a graying spindle of a woman watching a telenovela – soap opera – on a tiny black-and-white TV.  She doesn’t make eye contact with me, doesn’t even reply when I say “Buenas tardes!”

On my way home I find a half-dead dog flopped against an alley wall.  A plastic bag of snack crackers is tucked beneath her snout.  She looks self-reliant and pathetic at the same time.  Bending over her, I realize she’s just a puppy, really.  She doesn’t even have the strength to open her eyes when I pet her, smoothing the garbage out of her coat.  I want to bundle her into my arms and carry her home, oh god I want to…

But I don’t.  Nick wouldn’t stand for it.  He’d point out all the other starving mangy dogs that need befriending.  He’d ask me where I was going to get the bucks for dogchow and veterinarian care and blah blah blah.  He’d launch into his cruelly pragmatic speech about how Mexico is a developing country, a Darwinian crucible, and you sink or swim.  Talking about the puppy, all the feral dogs in general, but maybe me too.

“What does Christmas mean to you?”

“Say what?” Nick growls.

I point at a church of some kind alongside I-5.  One side of the building is draped in an enormous banner headlined by the question WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS MEAN TO YOU?  Below are two answers – kids opening presents with $$$ price tags still on, and Jesus Christ with folded hands praying to heaven.

He becomes stony beneath his Kangol hat.  “Like my dad says, Christmas is just a day when it’s harder than usual to get shit done.”

I find myself glancing past him, toward the blur of inland San Diego.  Somewhere out there is Nasrin and Farid’s townhome.  The one bought with my mahr as down payment.  But I’m not thinking about that right now.  I’m thinking about a chapter of my photo album that’s already come and gone.  Will my niece and nephew understand why I never said goodbye?  Why did Nasrin and I have to become enemies instead of sisters?  When will I ever see them again?  I can’t believe how quickly my life has fallen apart, and with it the family that filled my heart.

“This traffic is really pissing me off,” Nick is saying with typical impatience.  “We need to make it across the border before dark.”

Weird things start happening beneath my navel.  I’ve been trying to convince myself that Tijuana will be like all the other places I’ve lived.  A big deal, except not really.  But…across the border?  Hearing that phrase makes my tensions buzz and swarm.  And Nick seems anxious about Tijuana too.  Or worse, anxious about having me along.

Along the broad lanes of I-5 I glimpse the first of several signs like this:

“Mojados sometimes bolt across the highway,” Nick explains, using the Spanish term for wetback.  “You know, I was just reading an article in some Chicano Studies journal about the ‘Running Family’ image.  That’s what people call it, the ‘Running Family’.  Caltrans put up the signs back in the 1970s, and since then it’s become iconic in Chicano culture.”

“Iconic?  Like how?”  I love his impromptu lectures.

“Well, some Chicanos feel that it reduces an entire class of people to the status of animals – same as a deer crossing sign, right?”

“Right!”

“Other Chicanos feel nostalgic about the image.  It’s a historical legacy to them, a reminder of family roots that literally run down I-5 to Mexico.  For other Chicanos – ”

“I bet it’s also a memorial image,” I interject.  “A reminder of all the people who died following their dreams to America.  People we don’t even see in everyday life.  We just look through them.  They’re, like, transparent.  The janitors and cooks and stuff.”

“Absolutely” he nods, praising my point.  “Anyway, now there’s this initiative underway to remove the signs.  A new generation of Chicanos is flexing their political muscle and saying that the ‘Running Family’ is racist stereotyping.  Not PC, basically.”

I watch Nick nudge the steering wheel back and forth.  “What would Caltrans replace the signs with?  Something more politically correct?”

“Nothing, probably.  The signs aren’t really needed anymore.  Since 9/11 we’ve made this part of the border tighter than a buttfuck.  Now most illegal immigrants cross further east, out in the Imperial Valley, or even Arizona.”

His casual mention of anal sex makes me blush and glance away.  The view out the truck’s windows is becoming increasingly gritty.  I watched ever-smaller homes on ever-smaller lots flash past, the landscaping replaced with bare dirt and dead cars.  Even the jutting palms seem straggly and desperate.

Then a sign that makes my heart flutter and spark.  My whole stupid life compressed into a point of no return from the Nooshin I’ve always been:

I glance around as Nick pulls into a special parking lot at the border crossing.  The mood here is deadly serious.  Mexican soldiers in olive drab uniforms patrol the fringing sidewalk, scowling our direction, M-16s at the ready.  They look grown-up and professional, nothing like the laughing kid-soldiers I saw on Avenida Revolucion.  I almost pee the track pants I’ve borrowed from Nick when I notice one of them staring at our license plate and muttering into a walkie talkie.

Nick reaches over and taps the antique Polaroid camera in my lap.  “Take all the pictures you want.  I’ll be a while.”

I don’t want to take pictures.  I want to flee or something.  “Why can’t we go over there?” I ask plaintively, pointing at the regular border checkpoint, where lines of vehicles snake through the crossing posts.  Those cars and trucks aren’t moving very fast, but at least they’re not parked in front of half the Mexican army.

“We can’t cross over there because those are Mexican nationals or American tourists.  We’re something in between.”

The Explorer shifts in the sudden absence of Nick’s weight.  I watch him stride into the throng of soldiers, towering over them, lips moving.  Conversations break out.  Smiles, even.  Then he disappears behind a pair of glass doors rendered opaque with reflections.

Eventually boredom compels me out of the truck.  I keep both hands on my camera, then realize I should probably keep both hands on my purse instead, and finally settle for a hand on each.  At first I drift around the parking lot in widening circles, watching the Mexican soldiers as they watch me.  Ogle, really.  I can feel their heavy gazes like groping hands.  But that’s all they do to me.

Braver now, I head toward a chain link fence with a shallow view of the border crossing.  I’m drawn by a trolleyful of Americans spilling through customs, just like me the day I visited Tijuana and met Nick.  They’re mostly fresh-faced teens dressed like Abercrombie & Fitch models, voices ringing with enthusiasm for Mexico’s drinking age – a mere 18.  They make a show of posing by the border marker, one set of friends after another crowding against the inlaid stone.  I wait for them to fade behind the thick iron bars, then snap my own picture of the spraypainted murals they overlooked:

The slogans seem even more foreign than the language they were written in.  You never forget your homeland.  Long live the Mexican Revolution.  Between individuals as between nations, peace is respect for other people’s rights.  And other things I can’t translate with my bad Spanish.

“Nooshin!”  The summons is full of excitement.  It carries above the soldiers and smog and noise.

I trot back to the parking lot, where Nick is leaning against the Explorer with arms folded, waiting impatiently.  But not the bad kind of impatient.  A smirk is curling up one cheek.  He can’t wait to brag about something.

Like the blue-and-white trifold he thrusts at me.  My “tourist card”, even though it’s actually a sheet of paper.  Typed on an honest-to-god typewriter, with carbon marks and everything.  He explains that he fast-talked some official into granting me one without the usual requirements – a birth certificate or current passport.

I tilt my head quizzically to the right.  So what?

“Your paperwork is good for 180 days,” he says brightly.  “Without it you couldn’t have stayed with me.  Not legally, anyway.”

“180 days?”  I tuck the paper into my purse, confused.

“Yeah.  That’s the maximum.  If for some reason you need to stay with me longer, we’ll just renew it for another 180 days.”

Nick’s breezy explanation leaves me stunned.  He’s not thinking of me as a temporary houseguest, someone to resentfully urge out the door, like my mother-in-law on her interminable visits from Iran.  Nick is open to me staying with him for the next 180 days – and even the next 180 days after that!  I can be part of his Mexican year.

He’s rocking forward and back on his hiking boots, heel to toe and repeat, the eagerness devouring him from the inside.  The fading sunlight reaches beneath his hat brim and chisels his face.  He smiles brilliantly in the direction of the smells drifting over the border fence – sweet bakery scents, rotting garbage, diesel smoke.  “This is it, Nooshin.”

That last word makes it spectacular.  He says my name as if I’m a partner in some grand adventure.  Not just a wife dragged along like luggage, the way I felt with Saman.

“You ready?”  Nick is squinting at me.

“Yeah,” I say, wanting to be ready for Mexico, trying to convince myself of it, but deep down knowing I’m not really.  Not even close.

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.

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.