Grandmother often rebuked us. “Shame on you if you have to learn about religion and faith from the Muslim janitor’s daughter.” But one day, as we were leaving the church after the service, she noticed that Tahereh was wearing a little cross around her neck, and her eyes filled with tears. She kissed Tahereh on the forehead and after that day I never heard her say “the Muslim janitor’s daughter” again.
Tahereh’s mother was still looking out of the door. She was barefoot and the wind made waves of her long black skirt. Her bare calves were very pale. They looked ghost-like; if I put out my hand to touch them, it would surely go straight through them.
At parties, when the talk turned to the school janitor, my father and the other men used to say, “What a shame that a woman like that is chained to such a crazy dope addict.” My mother and the other women would pretend not to hear.
On the day that Tahereh’s father beat her mother and the commotion brought us running out to the school courtyard, my father wanted to intervene but Mother got angry. “What’s it to you? If she wasn’t so pretty would you still care?”
Tahereh’s father was still dozing. I was thinking what an ugly man he was when suddenly Tahereh whipped off her chador, dashed across the room, said, “Race you!” and took off running.
By the time I was up and out of the room, Tahereh had already reached the grave of the priest and was skipping around the stone. Tahereh never just walked. She ran, or skipped, or jumped. No boy was as good at skipping as she was.
When I got to the grave, I said, “Your prayers didn’t work.”
Tahereh snickered. I wondered why she was laughing.
On the days that she came to do our laundry, Effat always said at sundown, “I have to go, or my prayers will be late.”
Mother had once said, “Why don’t you pray here?”
Effat answered, “No, ma’am, I mustn’t.”
One morning when I was playing cops and robbers by myself among the hanging sheets and towels on the ground floor, I asked Effat, “Why can’t you pray here?”
Effat tightened the scarf around her head, looked around her once, and said in a low voice, “I just can’t, dear! There is a cross in this house. My prayers will be invalidated!”
To Tahereh I said, “I meant that your prayers will be invalidated. You can’t wear a cross when you’re praying!”
She put a hand on her hip. “Who said I have a cross?”
“You do!” I insisted. “I’ve seen it myself.”
She put a finger through the chain on her neck and held it out in front of her. “Come here and look.”
A small Allah hung from the chain.
I asked, “Where’s the cross?”
She swung her braid behind her head and laughed. “For school and church, I wear the cross. For prayers, it’s Allah.”
Together we scrambled up to sit on the priest’s gravestone.
“Why do you have both a cross and an Allah?” I asked.
She shrugged and swung her legs. “Because they’re both pretty.” Then suddenly she said, “Hey, what about…”
I lowered my head. “It died.”
She tilted her head. “Poor thing.”
For a few moments she stopped swinging her legs. Then she put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a sweet bun, broke it in two, and held out half for me.
I didn’t want to think about the ladybug anymore. I showed Tahereh the big toothless mouth. Now that I wasn’t alone, I didn’t feel afraid. Not of the gaping mouth, not of the church, not of the graveyard behind it.
Tahereh wolfed down the bun and started to laugh.
Sometimes I thought that Tahereh really was a sorcerer. Of all the people I knew, she was the only one I didn’t need to explain things to. Like the baby frogs that were hidden in the grass by the harbor, or the one particular sunflower seed which didn’t look like the rest. Other people couldn’t see the angels and demons I saw in the clouds, and laughed at me. My mother didn’t laugh, but I had to show her exactly where they were and even then they didn’t seem to be of much interest to her. For Tahereh, everything was interesting. Shapes in the clouds, baby frogs, and even difficult words in Persian and Armenian. Sometimes she found stones on the beach that looked like people or animals, and which were more beautiful than the stones I found. The most important thing was that Tahereh wasn’t afraid of anything. I had learned from storybooks that only sorcerers were fearless.
Tahereh pointed to the principal’s window and said, “It’s just like a loose tooth. It’s hanging there just like his loose leg.” And she giggled again. One slat of the shutter in the principal’s window hung forward in the breeze.
I didn’t laugh. Like all children at our school, I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at the principal, even when he wasn’t around. Tahereh was the only one who wasn’t scared of him. She limped behind his back, making fun of the way he walked, and when she talked to him, she never flushed like the rest of us or started stuttering. The principal treated her differently than the rest of the students, too. He forced himself to reply to our greetings and never let us get away with even the smallest mistake, but he was always kind to Tahereh. We noticed that he smiled one of his rare smiles when he was talking to her, his face losing its perpetually stern, somber expression and almost seeming friendly. When he pushed the straight black hair away from his forehead with his long bony fingers, I thought of the fragility of the seashells that I had found on the shore.
When talk turned to the principal, my mother and the other ladies said, “What a shame that such a handsome man is crippled.” My father and his friends used to grow quiet, and then someone would cough and change the subject.
Tahereh looked at my head. I waited for her to laugh but she didn’t. “You did the right thing by shaving it. It will be much easier to wash your hair now.”
She tossed her braids over her shoulder and took a deep breath. “I wish I could shave all my hair off like you. I hate having my hair washed. It hurts.” One could never predict what Tahereh would say or do next.
She jumped down from the gravestone and said, “Come on, let’s play hide and seek.”
It was getting dark.
“Okay,” I said. Then I hesitated. “But the graveyard is off limits.”
Tahereh’s eyes sparkled. “You hide wherever you want and I’ll hide wherever I want. Close your eyes!”
I put my head down on the gravestone, closed my eyes, and counted to 100. When I opened my eyes and stood up, it had grown darker, and the light from the two windows seemed even brighter. The wooden door of the janitor’s room moved. I thought maybe Tahereh had gone in there. As I got closer, I heard voices.
Tahereh’s mother said, “Are you imagining things again? I’ve told you a hundred times, he hasn’t laid a hand on me.”
The voice of Tahereh’s father was garbled. “You told me but I don’t believe you. You’re waiting for me to die. Dream on! I have no intention of dying, and he would never marry you anyway, not in a million years. I know these people. They take up all the air and then act as though we don’t even exist.”
I heard the sound of Tahereh’s mother crying and then the door opened wide. I felt I had done something wrong and pressed myself to the wall. Tahereh’s mother had taken off her chador and the light from the room shone on half her face. She looked like the picture of an angel I had won from the priest one Sunday. When she saw me she wiped away her tears with one hand, then with the same hand she stroked my face. “Are you looking for Tahereh? She must be around here somewhere.”
A breeze blew across my face, drying the moisture from her tears. I took a few steps away from the wall, and then I turned and ran.
When I reached the first gravestone in the back courtyard, I stopped and looked around. There was no sign of Tahereh. The long grass swayed in the wind making the graves seem to appear and disappear.
I said to myself, “Don’t be afraid! Tahereh is hiding behind one of these gravestones.”
I call
ed out, “Tahereh!”
There was no answer. I wanted to go back, but I froze. It was just like in my dreams when I wanted to run but couldn’t.
I looked at the statue of the merchant’s wife, sitting in the middle of the grass. Her head was bent over her book, which was obscured by the darkness.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned, thinking it must be Tahereh. It wasn’t. It was someone much taller than us. I raised my head and saw a pair of stern eyes and a bony hand that pushed back the hair on its forehead.
A choking sound emerged from my mouth. It was like the whimper of a dog that’s been muzzled. I turned to escape. The grass rustled and my eyes fell on the statue of the merchant’s wife, who I saw had raised her head and was staring at me. Then she lifted her hand and pulled her stone shawl over her shoulder. I couldn’t breathe.
I pushed past the principal and ran.
It was as if I was outside of my own body. My legs moved, a muffled whine escaped from my lips, my eyes saw the head of the merchant’s wife and the somber face of the principal, and my hands clenched into fists that beat on the door of our house. As soon as my mother opened it, I passed out.
A bowl of water sat on the bedside table. My mother dipped in a handkerchief, which she wrung out and draped over my forehead.
My father was pacing in the room. “He didn’t say what happened?”
My mother’s gold bangles jingled. “No. He was just very afraid. He has a fever.”
“I don’t understand why he’s afraid of everything!”
“Are you starting this again? He’s a child, for heaven’s sake.”
“A twelve-year-old boy is a child? When I was twelve, I was a terror!”
My mother’s bangles clanged against the bowl of water. “And you’re still a terror! Thank God Edmond doesn’t take after you in character or in looks.”
My father was a short, heavy man who did not like to be reminded that he was short and heavy. He sat on my chair and put his feet on my desk. My mother hated it when people put their feet upon tables. My father kicked the desk hard several times. “I know it was that Muslim janitor’s girl who scared him. For Christ’s sake! A twelve-year-old boy shouldn’t be scared by a little girl. When I was twelve…this is all your fault! Haven’t I said he shouldn’t play with her? It’s a good thing you only have this sissy boy to look after. He’s always either in the street or in other people’s houses.”
The damp handkerchief itched my forehead. My mother said, “Jesus Christ, he’s started again.”
My father was still wounded by my mother’s words about his appearance. “Why can’t you learn from Shakeh? She’s bringing up four kids, but they’re always clean and polite, and so is her house. Arsham is two years younger than Edmond and he goes hunting with his father. You only have one kid, and he dies of fear if he sees a rabbit.”
Mother’s bangles stopped jangling. Nothing he could have said could have hurt her more. My mother had never managed to get pregnant again after me and even her own sister would say to her from time to time, “Stop smoking cigarettes and trying to read your future in the coffee grounds at the bottom of your cup, and look after your house for a change.”
My father was still talking. “I’m sure it was the janitor’s daughter. Don’t let me hear about him playing with her again.”
My mother pressed the handkerchief so hard on my forehead that it hurt. I thought that if they knew it wasn’t Tahereh’s fault, they would still let me see her after school. I tried to think of an excuse to exonerate Tahereh without also mentioning my run-in with the principal.
I cried out, “The graves…”
My mother jumped. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”
My father sat silently for a few moments. Then under his breath he grumbled, “A thousand times I’ve said that this broken-down area is no place to live. He has a graveyard instead of a playground.”
My mother stroked my face. She pulled the covers up to my chin and said, “Sleep now, my darling. Sleep.”
She stood, picked up the bowl of water, and went towards the door of my room. As she passed in front of my father, she said, “And I have said a thousand times, whenever you buy another house, I’ll rent this place out and we can move.”
Through my half-closed eyes, I saw that my father was chewing on his moustache and following my mother with his eyes as she left the room.
I hid my head under the covers. When I emerged again, the lamp had been switched off and the door was closed. I was tired but couldn’t sleep. Where had Tahereh hidden? Had I been scared of the graves or of the principal? Why had it seemed that the statue of the merchant’s wife had lifted its head? I thought of my mother’s sister’s claims that Father wanted to claw Mother away from her house. But the merchant’s wife had been looking at me. She looked like someone. I remembered the tear-drenched face of Tahereh’s mother and the words of her father. “I know these people.” Which people did he mean? Why had Tahereh’s mother cried? Why wasn’t I like Arsham who loved to go hunting? Why couldn’t people see the shapes in the clouds? Surely I had only imagined the hand of the merchant’s wife adjusting her shawl? The rhythmic jingling of my mother’s bangles coming from the sitting room lulled me to sleep.
The next day my mother wouldn’t let me go to school and brought me breakfast in bed. She had made soft-boiled eggs with buttered toast and hot cocoa; all my favorite things, which my mother seldom had the patience to make for me. She sat facing me on the edge of the bed.
After each spoonful of egg or gulp of cocoa, I said, “Thank you.”
It was as though by thanking her again and again I was apologizing. Each time my parents fought because of me, I felt guilty. My mother stroked my face a few times and straightened out the bedcovers.
Finally she said, “Enough! Why do you keep thanking me?” She turned her head towards the window.
I knew that from where she was sitting, she could see the mossy tiles of the church roof and a piece of the sky, which was cloudy that day. Suddenly my heart caught and I began to cry. My mother held me tightly for a few moments. Then she got up, picked up the breakfast tray and left the room. Her eyes were red.
As usual, I felt numb when I had finished crying. I pulled the covers up to my chin and looked out of the window. From where I was lying, I could see the principal’s window with its closed shutters. I wondered if it was possible that he had forgotten about what had happened yesterday. My oldest cousin was now in his last year of high school and often told us stories about his time at the elementary school and the principal’s punishments. If my grandmother overheard, she would say, “That’s exactly right. Children must be disciplined properly.”
The principal had moved to our town a few months before my parents’ marriage, and most of the Armenians saw him for the first time at my parents’ wedding.
One time I overheard my mother say to her sister, “When I walked into the hall in my wedding gown, he was sitting there, facing the door and smoking a cigarette. He looked just like a painting, like he’d come from another planet, far away, or from a time past.”
My aunt laughed. “So that’s why you turned around and went to the bathroom and cried for half an hour?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother said, and tried to laugh, but it sounded forced.
The principal had no family or close friends in our community. He rarely accepted social invitations and spent most of his time after school in his room. Other than Tahereh’s mother, who cleaned his room, the priest was one of the very few people who ever visited him and spent any amount of time there. My grandmother said that before moving here, the principal had wanted to be a priest himself. I had often seen him coming and going to the church at night.
My mother, smiling gently, used to sigh, “Such a godly man.”
My father snickered. “What a foolish man! There are better things to do at night.” And he’d pinch my mother’s cheek and laugh. My mother reacted as though there were a roach on my father’s h
and and shoved it away. This only made my father laugh louder.
The sound of the school bell woke me with a start. I got up and stood by the window. The children were playing in the schoolyard. Anush, hand on her hip, was arguing with one of the boys. Tahereh was there too but she didn’t look up at my window once. The bell rang again and the children formed lines for each class. The principal stood at the front and spoke to them. Tahereh’s mother went up and down the steps a few times carrying trays of tea. School ended and the children went home. Then the teachers left, too, and Tahereh’s mother went back up the stairs with a broom and dustpan. Defeated, I sat on my bed and thought that I didn’t have a single friend, when Mother suddenly popped her head into the room. “Tahereh is here to see you.”
I jumped joyfully off the bed.
Mother rocked back and forth on her feet. “Don’t tell your father.”
I squirmed inwardly with joy and tried to figure out what I wanted to show Tahereh first: my books, or my toys?
Tahereh came in. She glanced around the room and went straight over to the window. She was wearing her navy-blue school uniform. The back of the skirt was faded to a different color than the rest of the uniform.
I searched for something to say. “The back of your skirt is dirty,” I offered.