“Really?” He tilts his head, curious. “That’s unexpected.”
“Yes, it was very unexpected.” I can’t criticize her, not out loud anyway, so I try to communicate with my eyes that her visit was not a pleasant surprise.
Ike gets it. “Hey, come here.” He takes my hand and leads me outside, around the corner of the building to a side walkway. Then he kisses me, pressing me against the wall, anchoring me.
“That was a pretty funny text message you sent.” He lifts my hair and kisses my neck in three spots, each below the other, giving me delightful chills.
“Text message?” I murmur back, waiting for the fourth and fifth kisses—this could go on forever and be all right with me. I’ve completely melted into the moment and left his mother far behind. It’s amazing what a few soft kisses can do to a girl.
“The one saying I can bang you anytime.” He pulls back to look at me, amused. “You have no idea what that means, do you?”
My blush starts even before I figure it out. “Do I want to know?”
“You should know the context, I suppose.” He fake-whispers it in my ear, then laughs. “I mean, I wouldn’t want my wife going around telling other guys they can bang her anytime.”
I get a mental picture of myself obliviously saying this to Josef, to Danny, to Edgard—to any of my male friends from English class—and start to giggle. “I’m going to ask Danny to teach us more slang this semester,” I say. “Especially this sort of slang.”
“I’m sure Eva can teach you if he doesn’t.”
“This is a good point.” Eva’s got the foulest mouth of anyone I know. It’s a matter of great delight for her to shock me with her crude language.
“So what’d my mom want?” He watches me closely as he asks.
“Well . . .” I hate to ruin this lovely moment. I wish I didn’t have to tell him. Even more, I wish it hadn’t happened. “She saw a lawyer who told her our marriage is—what’s the word?—
fraudulent
.”
He pales. “She didn’t.”
“And she’s carrying around the telephone number to the Immigration or Homeland Security people in case she wants to call and have me deported.”
His eyes darken with anger. “She wouldn’t.”
“It was horrible, Ike. Just
horrible
.”
He takes a step back and runs his hand through his hair, smoothing it, even though it’s already very smooth. I can tell his mind is circling around the news over and over.
“I explained about the path, but—”
“She left a message for me earlier asking if I’d filed Form I-130 yet. That’s the green card application, I assume?”
“My sister has all the immigration paperwork in a file for us,” I say. “I’m not sure what that particular form is, but she’ll know.”
“Let’s file what we can today,” he says. “And then we’ll pay my mother a visit.”
I really, really don’t want to do this.
“Don’t you think it might be better if you see her alone?” He shakes his head. “Ike, she really wasn’t very nice. She told me I should go back to Iran. That I don’t deserve to be here. That I haven’t
earned
it.” As I choke on my words, I think, why can’t I speak with Ike’s steadiness? Or Eva’s brashness? Or Ardishir’s reasonableness? My words always come out so shaky, so emotional, so laced with fear. I hate this about myself.
Ike takes my hand. “My mother’s completely out of line. She’s just trying to intimidate you, and you can’t let her.”
“She was pretty convincing.”
“That’s what intimidation is all about.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “And that’s why you have to come with me when I go see her. You can never make things easy for people who make things hard for you. Never—understand?”
I say yes, I understand.
And I do—in theory, anyway.
“Now, go enjoy your class,” he says. “And afterward we’ll get that paperwork filed, and then we’ll go talk with my mother. And it’ll all be good.”
I let out a big, stressful breath. “You really think so?”
“Absolutely.” Ike grips me in a huge hug. “Don’t give her more attention than she deserves, which is very little at this point.”
“But, Ike”—I need to see his eyes, so I pull back from his embrace—“if I could just somehow prove to her that I love you, that I’m not doing this just for—”
“Absolutely not,” he says. “You don’t need to prove anything to her. She’s not the judge. Not the jury.”
“But she
is
your mother.” And
my
mother-in-law.
“You want to prove how much you love me?” Ike moves me back against the wall and lifts my hair off my neck again, readying to resume his distractingly soft kisses.
“Yes,” I murmur, pretty sure his suggestion will be bedroom-related.
But my new husband once again surprises me. “Don’t give up on us,” he says. “That’s all I’ll ever ask—that you fight for us. That you never walk away from what we have. That you don’t let anyone scare you away.”
I pull him close and hold him tenderly. The thought of our being apart is too horrible to contemplate. It is only here, with him, that I feel whole, and safe, and good.
“I will remember the path,” I vow.
He laughs—already this is becoming a joke between us. “You do that.”
Then he kisses my neck and I shiver deliciously on this already hot day, and after we kiss for a while more, he goes back to work and with a much lighter heart, I continue on to English class.
Chapter 13
I
’m early for class, so I have time to apply for a library card. I’ve wanted one ever since I attended my first English class here, and I’ve spent many afternoons going up and down the aisles, peeking at titles and reading pages here and there, feeling like I’m getting away with something. Now I’ll be able to take books home and savor them. Books amaze me.
Books are ideas. They’re expression, inspiration, provocation.
The Bible, the Torah, the Koran—all books of stories that people use to get or keep power. They do more, of course. They provide comfort. They inspire. They justify—both good and evil behavior. I think a well-told story is more powerful than any person ever could be, because people die but stories can be handed down century after century, year after year. They can hold people captive; they can set people free. I think it’s the stories people tell that, in the end, will bring down regimes.
Now that I’m to live in America, I want to read what free people read, and my plan is to start with Ike’s favorite book,
The Great Gatsby.
The librarian, when she learns this is the first library card I’ve ever applied for, comes around the counter and helps me find the book, which is filed in the fiction section under the author’s last name. Then she shows me how to use the self-serve checkouts, which I think are very nice for privacy reasons, and she even gives me a sticker that says, MY VERY FIRST LIBRARY CARD
.
I proudly affix it to my chest, thank her, and dash down the stairs with my new book to the conference room where my English class meets.
Agata and Josef are already there, and they cheer as I enter. I haven’t seen them since Las Vegas, and we’re now even more bonded in our friendship, because we all got married on the same day, by the same Elvis Presley impersonator. Danny, our ponytailed hippie instructor, looks up from organizing some papers at the head of the table and comes over. He throws his arms around me, lifts me off my feet, and twirls me around.
“I heard the good news!” He sets me back down, then impulsively hugs me again. “This land is your land, baby!”
“Can you believe it?” I say. “This land
is
my land!”
“Absolutely, I believe it,” he says. “You deserve every happiness. And it wasn’t an arranged marriage! I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear that. You’re just . . .” He tilts his head, and I can tell he’s trying to find words that won’t offend me. “That’s not who you are. I didn’t want that for you.”
“I didn’t want that for me, either.” I’m so glad I can finally admit this.
We chat a bit more before he introduces me to the new members in the group, a married Chinese couple named Alicia and Chen, who are graduate students at the University of Arizona. They’re sitting with notebooks and pens ready. I say hello; they say hello back. I say welcome; they say thank you. And we all smile, smile, smile. I remember back to my first day of class—how I envied the other students’ obvious camaraderie and was eager to become part of the group, yet nervous about having to speak. I wonder if they feel the same way today as I did back then.
“How long have you been in the U.S.?” I say.
“We have been here since January,” Chen says. “Four months.”
Longer than me!
“And do you like it here?”
“Very much,” Chen says with a broad smile. Alicia nods and smiles, too. I wonder how being married is different here than being married in China, and how being in America has changed their relationship.
“Welcome to the class,” I say. “I’m sure you will find it very much fun. Most of these people have taken the class for years.”
“It’s a good group,” Danny says.
“Will everyone from the last session be here again?” I ask.
“Everyone except for Edgard,” he says. “He decided to take some medical-translation classes at the community college. He’s hoping his green card will come through soon and then he’ll take his medical exams.”
“This is good,” I say. “Good for him.” In Peru, he was a doctor, but since he’s been in the U.S., he’s been washing dishes in a Guatemalan restaurant on Fourth Avenue. This has always made me feel sad for him, to go from being a doctor to a dishwasher, but he has never complained about it. “And no Nadia,” I add.
“No Nadia,” Danny agrees. “Which is a good thing, right?”
“Very good, yes,” I say. “I spoke with her on the phone, and she has not yet had her baby, but very soon, she says.”
“Good for her,” Danny says. “She made a smart move.”
“Yes, she’s very brave,” I say. “And Eva? She will be taking this class, too, yes?”
“She’ll be here.” Danny grins. “God help us all.”
I laugh and explain to Alicia and Chen about Eva. “Eva is a German woman, and she says some very . . . what’s the word?”
“Obnoxious?” Danny offers.
“Outrageous,” I say. “She says some very outrageous things. Please don’t let her offend you.”
“She
vants
to a-fend you,” Josef says. “She is
not
good girl.” He smiles at me. “Tami, she is very good girl.”
I smile at him and then notice that he is set up to sit behind Agata rather than next to her. This is how they sat last term, before they were married, when they pretended they didn’t have feelings for each other.
“Why don’t you sit next to your wife, Josef?” I say.
“Because I vant to sit next to you,” he says.
“Agata?” I ask.
She waves her hand like this is a question not worth her time. “He talks-a too a-much.” I laugh, because beneath her grumbling, Agata very much enjoys the attention Josef pays her. “Ve are here to learn to talk to others. Ve already know how to talk between us.”
Josef covers his heart with his hands, very dramatically. “Yes, ve speak the language of love! Ve make love like teenagers!” While Agata rolls her eyes, Josef throws back his head and laughs his old-man laugh. When he notices my embarrassed face, he opens his arms in an unapologetic manner. “Vat? You are a newlyved. You know how it ees.”
I feel my face redden. “Well . . .”
“Well, vat?” Josef demands.
“Yeah. Well, what?” At the voice, I turn to the doorway. It’s Eva, my foulmouthed friend. “Don’t
tell
me you haven’t had mad, passionate sex with that husband of yours yet.”
I’d like to at least pretend to be offended at what she’s said, but I can’t. I can only laugh. Eva is
too rude.
Yet as far as my sexual relations with my husband are concerned, I just don’t want to talk about it. I know I have lots to learn, but no way do I want my entire English class trying to teach me! I’ll leave that to Ike, and maybe to my sister, and maybe, just
maybe
, occasionally, to Eva. But not to the whole class.
“Is that a wig?” I say, hoping to distract her. Eva’s got a plunging neckline on her sexy halter top and superhigh heels, paired with denim cutoff shorts. There is nothing unusual about this. But her hair’s different. It’s a pretty light brown instead of its usual blond, and it’s maybe five inches longer than it was in Las Vegas, and quite a bit fuller and prettier.
“You like it?” She strikes a pose. “I’m so damn bored in this town that I’m running out of things to do.”
“You could get a job,” Danny says.
“Right.” Eva gives him a look. “Can you really see me taking orders from anyone?”
After she sits down, we spend the next two hours getting to know Alicia and Chen by asking them questions about themselves, their families, and China. Then our talk turns to restaurants, and we discuss how strange it is that there are no small drinks in America—the smallest drink is actually a medium drink, and then it goes to large and extra-large and then often to something called supersize, which is a truly crazy amount, enough for a whole family to drink for a week. We practice ordering from an American-food menu—How did you want that burger done? Ketchup, mustard, and onion? And did you want fries or coleslaw? And to drink? Regular or diet? There is so much to learn about living in America—so many questions to be asked! So many choices to be made!
When Ike and I arrive at Maryam’s house later, we find her inside, sitting on the couch—crying. Only,
crying
isn’t the right word.
Weeping. Sobbing.
These words are better to describe her. Horrible pictures race through my imagination of all the bad things that might have happened to my parents back in Iran. And who is there anymore to help them? Or the baby! Is there a problem with the baby?