Nooshin
Monday
November 12, 2007

Today I dedicate to avoiding the inevitable. I leave my cellphone turned off. I spend all day people-watching at the neighborhood park. I spend all night memorizing the San Diego Union-Tribune at the local McDonald’s until it finally closes, kicking me out into the chilly moonlight. Even then I dawdle back to my sister’s townhome, arms wrapped around myself for warmth, trudging slowly. But that’s why they call it the inevitable. It always comes, this time in the form of Nasrin looming disappointedly over the kitchen table, over me and my steaming bedtime tea. She drops the phone into my lap. “It’s your husband.”

At first nothing happens when I move my lips. I have to swallow my fear and try again. “Hi Saman.”

“You are not coming home after all? Thanks, Nooshin. Thanks for telling me. I thank you.” His words turn edgewise and slice through me.

“I, I’m…”

“Sorry? It is too late for sorry. You have shamed me. I talked to your sister and brother-in-law today. I must ask them what my wife is doing — and then I hear about that guy!”

My heart stops beating. Nick. Omigod. He’s referring to Nick.

“Did you think it would be a secret from me? You are dragging my family name through the farmyard. My wife, acting like a common whore!”

“It’s not like that!” The kitchen swims in tears. I wipe my cheeks with a shirtsleeve. “I swear to you, it’s not like that.”

“You met him before this. You met him on the internet! You met him on the internet, and went out there to see him, and — ”

“No! Listen to me. Please, just listen to me.”

Light spills out of the hallway. I can hear Nasrin’s hushed tones urging a child back to bed. The light clicks off again.

“You are not saying anything,” he snarls in my ear. “You never say anything!”

“What? I’m the one who never says anything? How can you say that? You’re the one who never says anything! You never eat dinner with me and tell me about your day. You just sit in front of the TV like a turd — ”

“Turd? Tell me what that word means! What are you calling me?”

Another English word that Saman hasn’t learned yet. I rephrase my anger. “You always watch TV instead of talking to me.”

“It is all my fault? I am a horrible husband? I made you do this?” He laughs disdainfully. “I give you a roof over your head. I give you a car to drive. I give you a cash card. You do not even work — ”

“I want to work!”

“You would humiliate me like that? As if I cannot provide for you!”

For a while our voices fall silent. The long-distance hum is like an emotional current, buzzing and tangled between us. I watch the microwave clock turn from 11:37 to 11:38. “I’m sorry,” I finally whisper.

“It is too late for apologies. I am furious with you, Nooshin. Furious!” Saman exhales into the phone a couple times, trying to calm himself. When he speaks again his voice is deadly soft. “You will come home. Immediately.”

“You ran out of clean laundry. Didn’t you? And I bet there’s dirty dishes stacked to the ceiling. That’s the only reason you want me home. That’s all I am to you. A maid who puts out.”

He groans in exasperation. “The housework is your responsibility. Your responsibility! I provide for us.” A timeless quid pro quo. “That is our marriage for five years. What has changed? I do not understand what is different now. Nothing is different now!”

His words blanket me in despair. Nothing is different now. That’s the whole problem. I can’t live with nothing being different anymore.

“Nooshin! You will come home immediately!”

“You forgot my birthday again,” I murmur, blinking away tears.

“What?”

“My birthday. You forgot it again. It already came and went.”

“You know I am not good with dates! I would forget my own mother’s birthday if she did not remind me.”

“Do you remember our anniversary? How about that date?”

“Stop it.” A plea, not a command.

“I know your birthday, Saman. May 11th.” I start to shake like a car going over potholes.

He curses me in Farsi and hangs up.

The enormity of what I’ve done — what I’m still doing, what I may do — is a vast shaming guilt, something deep inside me that rots long after our argument fades and dawn bleeds through the blinds and Nasrin finds me right where she left me, at the kitchen table avoiding the inevitable.