Dreaming in English (15 page)

Mrs. Hanson peers at me, trying to see through my eyes all the way into my heart.

“I feel for your situation,” she says. “I honestly do.”

Then she shrugs, which tells me that maybe she really doesn’t. “I know you’re in a tough position, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to go back. It sounds like women have very tough lives in Iran. The thing is . . .” She raises her chin. “It was wrong for you to get married like you did.”

“It wasn’t . . . what’s the word . . . ideal,” I acknowledge. “I very much would have liked for you to be at our wedding. My family, too. My sister says maybe we can have another wedding ceremony and bring the two families together.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Hanson says, “that’s so not going to happen.”

“Oh,” I say, my hopes plunging. “Okay.”

“The thing is—” She gives me a mean mother-in-law look. “It’s illegal, what you’re trying to do. Ike could go to jail! And you could be deported. I saw an immigration lawyer yesterday, and he flat out said he wouldn’t even
consider
taking you on as a client because you’re so
obviously
engaged in marriage fraud.”

She saw a lawyer?

She
saw a lawyer?

Tears well in my eyes, threatening to spill onto my face.

Marriage fraud
.

Jail
.

Deported
.

These are horrible words, all of them. “Please, I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know
exactly
what I mean.” Her hatred for me is sharp, and shocking. Her words slice my insides, tear them to shreds.

“I don’t,” I say. “It’s not illegal to marry someone you love.”

“Oh, give it up.” She leans too close. She’s a predator, and I’m her prey. She’ll devour me at any moment. “You may have fooled Ike, but you haven’t fooled me. You sit there looking so pretty. So quiet, so respectful. But underneath it all, you’re a master manipulator.”

Feeling a blush spread across my face and neck, I look desperately to Rose’s house, needing an ally, as this is far from a fair fight, but she’s not anywhere in sight.
Help me out here. Somebody, please help me out. Ike. Maryam. Somebody.
I look at Old Sport, who’s lying on top of Mrs. Hanson’s feet doing his usual
heh, heh, heh
. Couldn’t he at least come lie at
my
feet? But no. There’s no one to take my side. I’ll have to speak for myself.

“This is the path that Ike and I have chosen,” I say, as firmly as I can. “And—”

“Oh, stop with the path! If I hear about this stupid path one more time from either of you, I’ll—” She leans toward me. “Just—enough already. Okay? I have your number. I know what you’re up to, and it’s not going to work. You’ve involved my son in what amounts to a federal offense. So don’t tell me you’re in love with him, because that’s
not
a loving thing to do. Now—” Her voice again turns friendly. “Have you filed your residency paperwork yet?”

The answer is no, we haven’t, but from the change in her tone I know instinctively not to tell her this. This is what she came to find out. The banana bread was an attempt to give me a false sense of security, to lull me into thinking I was safe. Interrogators do this sort of thing in Iran, too—they try to make you feel comfortable so you say things they’ll then use against you. I know better than to be tricked in this way.
And this isn’t a prison
, I remind myself.
I can leave at any time
. I
should
leave, right now
.

“Thank you for visiting,” I say, standing up. “Please excuse me, but I must leave for my English class.”

“Sit back down,” she says. “We’re not through.”

My knees are quivering, but I stand resolutely. “No, thank you.”

She rummages in her tote bag, pulls out a business card, and shows me the back of it. “See this? This is the phone number to Immigration Enforcement. This is the number I call to have you deported.”

Immediately, I sit back down.

“That’s better,” she says. “Now, we’re going to come to an understanding, you and I.”

I think I already understand her well enough. She, however, has yet to try and understand me.

“Ike came to me,” I tell her. “This is something you have to know. I had my airplane ticket back to Iran. I was ready to leave. It cost very much money, too. Thousands of dollars. I wasn’t trying to trick him. I never even told him about my visa situation.”

“No, you had your sister do your dirty work for you.”

The problem with talking to mean people in a language you’re just learning is you can’t very easily ask them to explain what certain words mean. I didn’t understand
master manipulator
or
I have your number
, and I don’t understand
dirty work
, either. This is why my English class is still necessary. To help me deal with people like her.

“I prayed about this,” she says. “I prayed about what to do.”

I cringe, for there are few things I dislike more than when people say things like this. To me, it always seems that what they’re really doing is looking for justification to do whatever it is they intend to do anyway. “And what did God tell you to do?” I ask.

With a look of serene righteousness, Mrs. Hanson pats my hand. “To ask you to leave.”

Oh, really? “Where am I supposed to go?”

“Back to Iran,” she says.

Not for one instant do I believe God told her this.

“I don’t think God recognizes borders,” I say. “I don’t think God cares one bit about the silly lines men draw on their silly maps.”

She narrows her eyes. “You don’t belong here.”

I narrow my eyes right back. “I belong with my husband. I belong with Ike.”

“You haven’t
earned
it,” she says. “To immigrate to America, there’s a legal process to follow, and you haven’t followed it.”

“There
is
a process to follow,” I say. “You’re right about that. But I
am
following it.”

My understanding of the law is this: If I came to the U.S. on a tourist visa for the sole purpose of getting married in order to stay, that would be illegal. But if I came for a visit and just
happened
to fall in love—well, then it would be okay. The immigration people would let me stay.

The problem is, I did both. It’s true, my family specifically tried to arrange a marriage for me so I could remain after my visa expired, but we were unsuccessful. It’s also true that I fell in love with Ike—despite my best efforts not to, in fact—and that he proposed, and that I accepted.

Now, I’m not going to tell the immigration people about my original intention, and I’m sure Ike won’t, either. But Mrs. Hanson might—which leaves my precarious fate in her unfriendly hands.

A
fter Ike’s mother makes a few more immigration-related threats, she leaves. I don’t see her out. Instead, I remain at the patio table, stunned and horrified. Her last words were to reassure me it was nothing personal, what she was doing; it was her job as a mother to protect her son and really had little to do with me at all. I believe her—of course it’s nothing personal. How could it be? She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t look at me and see me for who I am. Because of where I’m from, when Mrs. Hanson looks at me all she sees is trouble.

So much for catching my breath. So much for embracing the day. Thanks to her, I can do neither. What is it about mother-in-laws? Why are they so often unkind? I think it’s about power. It all comes down to power, all the ills in the world. People with power never want to relinquish it. To maintain it, otherwise decent people turn cruel. I’ve seen it too many times in my life to believe anything else.

I look at Old Sport, still lying near Mrs. Hanson’s chair, and think maybe this is why people like dogs. They don’t care about power. They just want you to pet them and like them, and being with you is all they need to be happy.

“Come here,” I say, wiggling my fingers to attract his attention.

Old Sport obliges, getting up from his comfortable spot and coming over to me. Then he watches me and waits, wagging his tail.

“I’m sorry I screamed in your face this morning,” I say. “I’m just not used to having a dog in bed with me. Or anyone, actually. So I’m sorry, okay?”

“I’ll get better at this,” I say. “At being a dog owner, I mean. It’s probably not so hard, right? How about . . . should I . . . pet you?” I hold my hand over his head. “Is that okay, if I pet you? You won’t bite me, will you?”

Heh, heh, heh,
he says, which tells me nothing, but his tail wags faster, which I understand to be a good sign. And so I pet him, and as I do, he plops down onto my feet.

“I’m going to have to go to my English class soon,” I tell him. “So I’m going to have to move my feet, okay? You’re going to have to get up in a minute. I just wanted to give you some advance warning about that . . . okay?”

Old Sport doesn’t acknowledge that I’ve said anything. Instead, he watches a pair of birds splashing in Rose’s birdbath. I’m very impressed that he isn’t rushing over trying to eat them. I think it shows maturity on his part.
Good dog.

“Old Sport?”

He looks back to me.
Heh, heh, heh.

“What should I do about Ike’s mom? Do you think she’ll ever give me a chance?”

I take his silence to mean no, she won’t.

But
he’s
here. Old Sport likes me, and dogs have a sense about people, don’t they? So maybe I’m
not
such a horrible person as Mrs. Hanson thinks.

“I do love Ike, you know,” I tell him. “I love him like crazy.” Old Sport’s wagging tail whacks against the patio’s flagstone. He believes me. I dig my hand into Mrs. Hanson’s loaf of banana bread—there’s no way I’m giving it to Maryam—and scoop out a handful. I offer it to Old Sport. “You want this?”

He’s on his dog feet instantly, and I’m all of a sudden terrified.
He can’t eat out of my hand. That’s just . . . too gross ... too much.
I toss the chunk of banana bread a few feet from me and am greatly relieved when he bounds over to it. I use it as a diversion, too, and go inside to wash my hands and load my backpack with my camera, lipstick, and the pair of walking shoes Ike gave me soon after we met. It strikes me that Ike is a funny gift giver—shoes and a cell phone. Even his willingness to marry me—he’s romantic in his practicality.

By the time I set off for class, the temperature is greater than ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, with not a hint of cloud or breeze, but I hardly notice the heat. I hardly notice anything.

Any other day, after crossing Campbell Avenue at Third Street, I’d pause to watch the soccer game on the center grass on the University of Arizona campus, played by intent, shirtless men who come from every imaginable continent. I’d pause to watch the band practice on the south lawn and the cheerleaders with their high-ponytail hair and pom-poms as they practice flips and cartwheels and show off their strong, tan legs in short, bouncy skirts. I’d notice the people at the bus stop, the students on bicycles and skateboards. I love the free life here very much and never tire of people-watching, but today, it’s all relegated to the background. Today, it feels dangerously at risk.

After passing through the gates leaving campus, I cross Park Avenue and am on University Boulevard, with its restaurants and clothing stores and coffee shops—most notably, the Starbucks where I first met Ike—my first, favorite, and forever barista. I’d had a plan, this morning. I was going to get in line and act like the person I was three months ago, when we met for the very first time.

That day, I stepped inside Starbucks, closed my eyes, inhaled the deep coffee smell, and in my memory was taken back to my grandmother’s home in Esfahan—my only relative who always made coffee. I spent many days there as a child, skipping through the citrus trees in her courtyard, hopping from brick to brick, young enough that
hejab
was not yet required of me, young enough not to have to sit with the grown-ups inside, as Maryam did, and listen to them say the same things over and over again about what a failure the revolution was, how it wasn’t smart to have traded one corrupt leader they knew well for someone it turned out they did not know very well at all. They talked of lessons learned: Beware of the charismatic man who speaks the words our hearts long to hear, who railed against the Shah’s misdeeds and corruptions and excess and promised to create a more just society—without ever explaining that he would silence his critics by executing them at a rate of four or five per day. They talked of sanctions and hostages and inflation and frozen bank accounts and the war with Iraq and how the Americans were supplying Saddam Hussein with mustard-gas weapons to kill the soldiers of Iran.

I hated these conversations—they went around and around and depressed all the grown-ups. My mother—this is strange for me to think back to, now that I know more about her past—would sit in a straight-back chair with her knees tucked to the side and her lips pressed together. I always thought she must find their words as dull as I did, for she didn’t participate in these discussions but rather only sat compliantly, waiting for the visit to end, while I would happily play outside in the courtyard, collecting pecans that had fallen from the trees, until my grandmother called me inside. As I’d step into her warm kitchen, the smell of her coffee would overpower me—just as it did at this Starbucks halfway around the world. That first day, I was flustered at having to order for myself in English. Ike was so nice to me that day, and on every day since.

Today, when he sees me, his face lights up. He arranges with his coworker and friend Josh to take a quick break and comes around the counter, kissing my cheek in greeting. “Hey, you! Having a good day?”

“Your mother brought me banana bread to give to Maryam,” I tell him.