Butterfly Stitching Page 5

  “Sahar, why are you crying, you silly child?” Maman asked.

  “I don’t think Narges is coming with us.”

  Maman nodded, “You know, there’ll be lots of green grass in America, and butterflies too!”

  Ever since that trip to her amoo’s orange garden where Sahar met a tiny white butterfly fluttering about like magic, she had been in love with them. She was sure that in the West they traveled in groups. Hundreds of them. All different colors. Dancing around thriving thick blades of western grass. She thought of how big they must be, those American red/fuchsia/green/blue/purple/yellow butterflies.

  There might even be a black-and-orange one that was big enough to give her a lift to the corner store whenever her maman asked her to pick up bread for dinner. She would hop on its back, grab onto the antennas and ride it anywhere and everywhere. It would be beautiful. Black-and-red circular patterns on its oversized wings. Pearly drops of dreams throughout its delicate legs. Legs that never had to walk because the butterfly could fly. Sahar bewitched the black-and-orange butterfly in her mind into flying figure-eight patterns and hopping three times on its way to pick up Sahar and take her to school.

  She was still suspicious, but the thought of the lift to the corner store on top of a gigantic black-and-orange butterfly was enough to make her stop crying. Hope. Like the steamy air in the bathroom after a hot shower. Thicker than before.

  “Does Baba know?” asked Raumbod. Sahar was surprised enough to hear him speak that she found her mouth hanging open. She closed it with a snap.

  “Yes, of course he knows, honey. We both found out last night. We were going to wait until he got home today to tell all of you but I got excited and the words just leapt out of my mouth. Come to think of it, he may be a bit sour with me! Maybe I should give him a call, confess my big mouth and ask him to come home early tonight so we can all celebrate as a family!” And with that, Maman bolted out of the family room and ran to the kitchen for the telephone.

  “Maman,” Sahar called after her, “is anyone coming with us?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You know . . . anyone?”

  “Oh, sweetie.”

  “Maybe if we’re really good and we do our homework, some of our friends will come with us.”

  “We’ll do what we can. Now, I’m thinking of starting a new painting right after I get off the phone with your baba. Who wants to come and watch me paint?”

  “Yay!” The three little ones sprang to their feet.

  They could not afford a formal studio but the family room served this purpose just fine. The kids put away their homework and helped their maman spread two old, multi-colored, paint-stained and worn chadors on the floor.

  “Kids, make sure the floor is totally covered. Good. Now go on and grab your chairs while I set up my easel and paints.”

  Sahar led her brothers into the closet in their room where three tiny blue-and-purple striped chairs sat stacked atop one another. She dismantled the stack and handed a chair to each brother before grabbing the last one herself and running back into the family room. The chairs bore nicks, scratches and paint splatter from frequent use by Maman’s three angels (Sahar’s fantasy angel wings which had green-and-purple sparkles were obviously the biggest because she was the eldest). Sahar knew that once she began, Maman would not stop for anything. So she helped pack a small cooler with juice and fruit. Then she and her brothers took their seats, munched on their snacks, and watched Maman fill yet another blank canvas with worlds of shape and color. Sahar liked it best when Maman painted nude women with misshapen faces and full hips. Maman colored these women blue, gold, red or whatever color her mood demanded. Sahar watched these figures take life from the brush, as though her maman was a sort of God who created beauty where there was once only emptiness. Beauty, sadly, that was too Western and most definitely too nude to ever hang on the walls or be shown at the gallery where her maman sometimes exhibited. Beauty, instead, that was wrapped in black plastic and placed in the basement.

  “Now kids, always remember that every person has the power to dye their own world with whatever colors they choose.” Her maman pointed her brush at them. “If you find that your life’s a pale beige or boring gray, don’t accept it. Life’s no different from a piece of canvas. Pick up the brushes of your imagination and paint your world to your liking. Do you understand?”

  Sahar did understand. Or, she thought she did. Anyway, she nodded, ate her apple slices and waited for her absolute favorite part of the entire experience: the end. When Maman finally decided she had painted enough she put her brushes in a cup of water, walked over to the kids and held out both her hands so they could see the artistic residue. The three little-ones grabbed their maman’s hands with their own, examined all the different small shapes and colors on her palms and the back of her hands. Then they looked up to the painting to try to locate the color-spots’ sisters and brothers.

  “Is this red from the polka dots on her dress?” Raumbod asked.

  “No way! That red is from the streaks in her hair!” Reza said.

  “What do you think, Sahar jan?” Maman asked.

  Sahar thought about it seriously and for a very long time and then said, “I think it’s from her heart.”

  “But her heart isn’t even red, Sahar!” Reza protested. “Look, her whole skin’s a purple color!”

  “Maman put red there before she painted it over it, remember? Because her heart was bleeding on the inside.”

  Maman smiled.

  4

  “Is this it, Baba joon?” Sahar asked.

  “No, it’s not that one. Keep looking.”

  “I’m gonna be the first to find it!” Reza boasted. “You’ll see. I’m the greatest at finding things.”

  “Actually Raumbod is always the one who finds things!” Maman said. She was always choosing sides. Anyway it did not matter what Reza said or Maman thought, because Sahar had just found it.

  “This is it! I found it!” Sahar pulled the picture out of the shoe box that was assigned to her and thrust it into Baba’s face.

  “Ah! Good work my daughter!” Baba said.

  “Well that’s not fair, it was in her box!” Reza complained like usual. “How was I supposed to find it if it’s in her box!”

  “Can’t believe how cute you used to be!” Maman joked.

  “Well it took some youthful vigor to land you, Khanum.” Baba said. Maman smiled as everyone gathered behind the old print. Baba and his best friend, Amoo Hassan, were both only teenagers. They were pictured in front of a blooming apple tree, each of their fathers standing behind them. Everyone looked so serious.

  “Baba, why don’t people in old pictures ever smile?”

  “What’s that?”

  “People in old pictures. They’re never smiling.”

  “We had to hold our pose. The shutter speeds were slow.”

  “What’s a shutter—”

  “Samira, can you believe this?”

  “So happy you found it. Let me go get the frame.”

  They put the picture in the frame that Baba had bought just for this purpose, then wrapped it in brown paper and string.

  “He’ll love it!” Maman said.

  “I still can’t believe we found it among all of those boxes of loose photos!” Baba looked right at Maman when he said this, as if she’s the one who found it, giving no credit to Sahar at all. Sahar thought about speaking up and demanding some credit, but decided instead to ask the question she had long wanted answered.

  “When did your father die, Baba?” She knew he had died a long time ago, before she was born, but she did not know when, or why. Baba looked at her with pain.

  “You know, he died a month before your Amoo Hassan’s father died. They were thick as thieves, those two. So much so that they literally could not live without each other.” He turned to Maman. Their hands touched.

  “Were you very sad when your baba died?” Raumbod asked.

  “I was.”
r />   “How did you feel?” Reza asked.

  “Lonely. And very sad for my mother. But I had Hassan. Your amoo. He and I had each other.”

  “Did he take care of you?” Sahar asked.

  “Mostly your baba took care of him,” Maman said. “You baba is the older one. You wouldn’t know it now to look at him, in his early twenties, with that devilish smile and rebellious, idealistic spirit, always in trouble with the authorities, but back then, he was just a wee little boy. Your amoo really needed someone to help raise him. And your baba was always there.”

  “We were there for each other,” Baba said with the wrapped frame in his hand. Amoo Hassan would love it!

  Later that night, they all sat around the sofreh, a water-proof tablecloth on the floor that was almost always used in lieu of a table during mealtime. They drank tea with pita bread, parsley, feta and onion while waiting for the rice to cook. The framed picture, which had brought tears to Amoo Hassan’s eyes, sat in the middle of the sofreh for everyone to admire throughout dinner.

  Sahar watched her parents cozy together. They made each other miniature bites of herb-cheese pita and sipped their tea with goofy smiles on their faces. As though their happiness was stolen from someone. As though they knew they may have to give it back if fate ever asked for its return and every second was another one where they got away with theft. Every so often Baba would bury his face in Maman’s curls and whisper something into her ear. Sahar imagined that all of his whispers must be like love songs, or maybe some of the poems that her family recited at family parties. Whatever it was he was said, it would make Maman smile and present her sharp cheekbones for a welcomed kiss. Sahar felt a gentle warmth swim up from her feet to her lips and make her smile. She forgot about the Morality Police. She forgot about the sirens. For a second, there was only Baba kissing Maman’s cheek, and Sahar was happy. Then Maman pulled herself away and left to tend to dinner in the kitchen.

  Sahar crawled around the sofreh to Baba and started to pull, stretch and kiss his limp cheeks. She loved to make him smile. He had such a mellow smile. Yet there was so much strength in it. In fact, if Baba was holding her hand and smiling at her, she would be so protected that she could pass Morality Police on the street, with their ugly semi-automatic guns and hollowed-out faces, and be brave enough to throw a frown their way. He smiled at her now and put his other arm around her.

  She was reminded of the rocket attack that had woken them all at three-thirty that morning. The Red Alert was late and they did not have time to run down to the bomb shelter. They all squished together in her parents’ bedroom doorframe and waited out the attack. Explosions and shattering windows did not scare her because Baba’s arms surrounded her and her brothers like a magical force field that nothing could penetrate. Safer than the best of shelters, warmer than all the radiators in the world.

  “Gin or whiskey?” Baba asked Amoo as he got up to walk to the liquor cabinet.

  “Ah! Good man! I’ll go with whiskey.”

  “Do you know what’s in bourbon whiskey?” Maman asked as she walked in with the rice.

  “Bourbon whiskey,” Baba announced loudly as he poured out of a crystal decanter into a small glass for Amoo Hassan. “Six parts corn, one part bribery, two parts rye, two parts barley, and three parts drinking on the job!”

  Maman laughed and asked, “Irish whiskey?”

  “Ten parts malted barley, three parts kickback, seven parts fresh barley grain, one part fresh oats, two parts hush money, one part fresh rye, one part fresh wheat, and five parts hallowed souls.”

  “I got the gin,” Amoo said as he took a sip from the glass Baba had just handed him. “Sixteen parts corn grain, seven parts stupid risk, three parts malt, eight parts red, two parts glossy eyes, one part rye, and two parts buy off.”

  “Happy birthday, old man!” Baba lifted his glass into the air with one hand while handing a drink to Maman with the other. “Salamaty!”

  “Salamaty!” Maman and Amoo followed, raising their glasses too.

  Sahar raised her glass of water with the adults and motioned to the twins to do the same. They followed but only after the toast was already finished.

  “Oh—I almost forgot! Hassan isn’t the only one getting a present tonight!” Baba quickly ran into the hallway to the master bedroom.

  He was only gone a minute or two, yet Sahar treated every second with such impatience. He re-entered the room holding a burgundy-colored wooden box wrapped with a big golden bow.

  “I have something for you, Samira jan.”

  Maman brought her hands to her cheeks. “Oh my God! My music box!” Her eyes watered. “Were you able to fix it?”

  Baba untied the golden bow with a smooth elegance and opened the box to reveal the mechanical pins and wheels within emitting Beethoven’s Für Elise.

  Maman ran her fingers over it, smiling tenderly. Tears dripped down her face. “Oh, Armin, this is unbelievable!”

  “Music box?” Amoo Hassan asked.

  “Yes! It’s the first gift that Armin ever gave me. It stopped working about three years ago. It’s just been sitting on my vanity table, waiting to play again. Armin, where on earth did you find someone to fix it?”

  “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise . . . it was nothing, really,” he responded as she cupped his face in her hands and prepared to give him a kiss, “ . . . but I did have to go to eight different places.”

  “Eww, gross!” Raumbod and Reza squealed at their parents extended kiss. Sahar giggled and Amoo Hassan mocked, “Vay Khoda, could you two knock it off for just five minutes?”

  “But this is important!” Baba insisted. “This is very important.”

  “Basheh, we got it, it’s a music box and now it plays music. Blah, blah, blah!”

  The children laughed.

  “Well, basheh, we’ll stop,” Maman responded with a smile. “I think the rice is ready anyway. Armin, why don’t you and Sahar help me serve dinner?”

  That night’s culinary masterpiece was zereshk polo. Maman had added extra sugar to the red currents mixed in with the basmati rice, because that was how Sahar and the twins liked their zereshk polo. Nice and sweet. The chicken was broiled tonight, and when Sahar took a bite the tender flavor dripped like heaven in her mouth. Maman passed the yummy crunchy taadig rice around the sofreh and each cross-legged eater took their share. Persian salad and a bowl of carrots and cauliflowers that Maman had pickled herself were served with the meal. Sahar liked to alternate bites of zereshk polo with bites of salad.

  During dinner, Maman made some comment about Amoo Hassan seeming pale and asked if he had lost some weight. That was when Baba paid particular attention to his friend’s clothing. “Hassan, why do you dress like this?” he said, gesturing to Hassan’s green cotton t-shirt, the wrinkled and frayed collar. Sahar thought he looked very handsome with his wonderful curly hair all slicked back.

  “Well, you know, I—”

  “Wait a minute,” Baba interrupted. “Hassan, why can’t you lift your fork?”

  Everyone froze, as though someone had pressed the pause button on a magical VCR in the sky.

  “Well, I . . . er . . . well, my shoulder hurts. That’s all. No biggie.” He raised his fork to his mouth with seeming ease and a fake smile. He convinced no one.

  Sahar watched Baba’s fat eyebrows with the overgrown hairs come together into a large frown. She leaned into her brothers and they all giggled until they were spanked by their baba’s glare. When Baba was angry, it was like all the storm clouds in the world moved to the target on his forehead. And he was angry now. He leaned as close into Amoo Hassan’s face as he possibly, “How did you hurt your shoulder?”

  The clock’s nine rings chimed through the awkward silence of the dining room. They were followed closely by the kitchen alarm clock, telling them the saffron-rice pudding was ready.

  “Sahar jan, go and shut off the oven,” her maman said.

  “But I don’t want—”

  “Now.”
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br />   Not wanting to miss whatever juicy story was about to unfold, Sahar leapt off the ground and ran into the kitchen. The flooring creaked under her feet and the Persian rug shifted a bit to the left. She turned off the timer, turned the gas oven’s dial all the way to the left until she heard the slight click, then ran back and slid into her spot around the sofreh in such a hurry that she almost fell into Reza’s lap. The twins giggled and were again glare-spanked at by their baba.

  “I didn’t hurt my shoulder per se,” Amoo Hassan said. “It’s just a bit sore from helping my neighbor, this lonely widow, move her couch to the other side of her living room. Now why she wanted to move it to begin with is beyond me, because frankly I liked her couch where it was before. And I can’t for the life of me understand why her own son couldn’t have shown up and offered a litt—”

  Baba grabbed the back of Amoo Hassan’s collar and pulled it down fast, interrupting the fairy tale. There were long gashes on his shoulder, flesh that had once been moist and contained now stood outside his skin, all shrivelled and dry, surrounded by purple-and-blue bruises. Suddenly, the thought of rice pudding did not sound at all appetizing.

  Sahar knew what this was. She had seen them doing it to people on the street.

  Baba let out a big sigh. He released Amoo Hassan’s shirt and buried his face in his hands. Poor Amoo Hassan gulped air back into his lungs. Sahar and her brothers did not say a word, anxiously awaiting whatever reaction they were sure would come from their parents, but they said nothing either. The twins seemed worried and confused. Silence filled the room like a blanket of punishment while that weird muscle on Baba’s lean forearm that twitched when he was extra upset went into action.