a pillow that he extends to Dad – my dad. The boy grins victoriously at me but in a way that Dad completely misses.
Stunned by having found a new brother, an ugly and mean one, I look at my dad for an explanation.
“Why is he calling you Dad?” I want to ask but don’t. I am my mother’s daughter after all and know well how to hide my true feelings.
I show my disapproval the only way I can, by not eating or drinking anything at the house. Mom didn’t want me to eat there anyway – something my dad did not like nor understood. Mom had just read a newspaper article about a woman who poisoned her stepchild. What Mom had missed was that Dad’s wife had no reason to poison me since I was not in her way. I was not living with them nor was I entitled to anything Dad had – I was not his legal child.
All the way home I try to release the big painful bubble growing inside my throat, but I can’t. I feel betrayed and sad. I know now how Mom feels.
At home, I tell Mom the whole story, thinking she would be mad too. But she doesn’t seem bothered and tries to make me feel better instead.
“Honey, your dad loves you very much. This boy didn’t have a father ever since he was little. Your dad probably allows him to call him Dad to make him feel better. He is not going to take your place. You have a big heart. Maybe you can have some empathy for this poor kid.”
Now, I would have probably screamed at Mom for being gullible and teaching me to be just like her. But at ten, I worshiped Mom and wanted to be just like her. So I forgave the boy for the time being. I even felt sorry for him for years to come until I finally understood the game that mother and son were playing.
Mom was an angel. I have never met anyone as forgiving as her. Mom was never mad at the woman who took her place. She felt sorry for her – to marry for money was beneath my mother.
The funny thing is that my dad didn’t have much money – at least not as much as people thought. Dad had great furniture and a house full of valuable Persian rugs and beautiful objects – courtesy of Mom who selected them and even paid for many of them. So he appeared rich. Additionally, Dad had a pension, and in Iran your spouse receives your pension after you die. My dad was over seventy when he married the second time.
Mom and I ended up living a good life. She managed somehow. Mom always got me what I needed and more. Dad, on the other hand, had a rough time growing old, especially once he became dependent on the witch he married. I was here in the States but apparently the witch treated Dad very badly during his last years when he needed help and craved tenderness the most. My mom would have taken care of him like a loved one.
A couple of years after Dad passed away, his wife was coming back from a trip where she had just collected Dad’s pension, and died in a horrible car accident on a mountainous road. The driver lost control of his vehicle and sent the car and its passengers down a cliff.
Everyone was pleased, but Mom was genuinely sorry when she heard the news. She said no one deserved to die like that. I sometimes felt as though Mom was not from this world. I am reminded of what one of my parents’ friends said after hearing about the accident:
“You get what you deserve.” It makes me grin.
“I didn’t raise you to be mean. Revenge does not become us,” Mom says with a frown as she looks at me from the top of her thick glasses. I knew she could not be gone long – not until I am done with the Shenaas-Nameh and she is sure it is still in one piece.
“Mom!”
“Everyone made a choice. I made a choice to leave. Your dad made a choice to start a new life. And --”
“Mom, please stop. I am not a child anymore. I know why he did what he did.”
“You do?”
Mom doesn’t expect this. She has forgotten that I am now close to the age she was when she left Dad, and that all these years I have collected little facts. Perhaps she doesn’t know I found out that my dad’s sister’s greed was behind the divorce – something Mom knew but hid from me. Dad’s sister was after the little money Dad had and was worried that he would leave it all to Mom and me. The greedy woman used to live in a different city but once she moved to Tehran, everything changed in our lives. The evil woman, ironically super religious too – which goes to show you that religion does not make you holy – started bad-mouthing my poor mother behind her back every chance she got and encouraged Dad to leave us. My mother was always kind to her. She encouraged Dad to help her and her kids. Mom even took care of the wicked woman’s son while she, Dad’s evil sister, was living with her second husband and supposedly didn’t have room for the boy.
“Everyone I lend a hand to turns around and bites my hand,” Mom used to say. I tend to agree with her now.
The actions of Dad’s sister don’t mean Dad was innocent in all this. To me, he had no excuse. He should not have listened to others when it came to his life and the people whom he said he loved the most. After all these years, I have come to the conclusion that behind that strong exterior, Dad was hiding a timid personality.
“I don’t want you to think of your Dad this way. He loved you very much. He was a good man,” Mom says, reading my mind.
“Really, Mom, are you that gullible?” I am somewhat angry with her now mainly because I see myself in her.
“Will you close that Shenaas-Nameh? It is falling apart.”
That is my Mom, changing the subject whenever she doesn’t want confrontation. Then it dawns on me that I cannot change her. She is the sweet, gullible Mom that I dearly love – the one person who has loved me unconditionally all these years and has made many sacrifices for me. So what if she is too trusting
“The world would be such a great place if everyone were as simple and open as you are,” my husband reminds me from time to time when I complain about being credulous. “It is others who have to change themselves to be more like you. Don’t change yourself.”
His favorite story for demonstrating my naiveté - sorry, simplicity - is of a video store visit. We were both looking through a different shelf for a good comedy to rent when I announced that I'd found one.
“This is really funny.”
“It is? How do you know?” he asked, expecting me to say I had read or heard about the movie.
“It says here that it is hilarious,” I pointed to the back of the box.
We – Mom, me, and most people in my family – are simple. We don’t understand the games others play.
Why would you want to understand?” Mom asks. “People who play those games need to feel good and secure about themselves. I don’t feel insecure and I know you don’t either.”
She pauses for a second and then says: “Someone has to take those sheets off my beautiful furniture. I feel as if I am in a morgue.” Mom sighs as she gets up and disappears again.
The mehman-khaneh of my childhood house is back to normal now. The angel I call Mom has done her magic and our furniture looks inviting again. One of my toy cars has just found a parking spot under the Yin and Yang coffee table.
“Where are you coming from?” I ask the passenger of the car.
“Memory lane, on the other side of the city,” the young girl in a blue tee shirt and jean shorts replies, pointing to the other side of the rug as she pulls on her mom’s jacket. The woman has impeccable taste: a dark brown suit, beige top, and brown movie star like stilettos. I wish I could wear those heels.
My son is calling me from downstairs.
“I am here. In the bedroom.” I hope he is not going to be as gullible as I am, I think to myself.
Mom appears again, shakes her head the way she always did when she didn’t want to just laugh at me.
“You turned out okay, didn’t you?” is what she wants to say.
The last page of Mom's Shenaas-Nameh is empty. She didn’t have a child and therefore all those rows reserved for names, gender, and birth time and place of children are left blank. The very last page has an ugly stamp to mark the end of her life – officially.
“But I am always here with you,” she reminds
me with her loving smile.
Notes
This is the third in a series of five books to come. If you have enjoyed reading this story, you can find additional information about this book and the future ones at mojdeh.com
Copyright by Mojdeh Marashi 2011
About The Author
Mojdeh Marashi is a writer, translator, artist, and designer whose work is deeply influenced by the ancient and modern history of Iran. Her stories merge the world of magical realism in Persian literature that she grew up reading, the reality of the world she lives in today, and the utopia she dreams about. She was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to U.S. in 1977.
She is the translator (from Persian, with Chad Sweeney) of The Selected Poems of H. E. Sayeh: The Art of Stepping Through Time (White Pine, 2011). Her fiction was published in the anthology Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: Women of the Iranian Diaspora (University of Arkansas, 2006).
She holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts as well an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She lives in Palo Alto, California.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends