The Mexican Year

This postage stamp of a house is shot through with sunbeams and dust particles when I emerge from the bathroom, putting away the improvised toilet plunger I built out of coathangers. Across the street a racing-striped minivan is engorging a family of Mexicans dressed in their Christmas best. They mill across their hardpan lawn, occasionally casting a curious glance at the royal blue Ford Explorer with Iowa plates, their new American neighbors. In the distance a churchbell is tolling the hour, one solemn gong. You might presume they’re headed for mass like good little papists, but I happen to know they converted to Mormonism a couple years ago, apparently in hopes of securing an interest-free loan to start an auto repair shop. The shit you learn from gossipy storekeepers.

“Hey Nooshin, come out here! I’ve got something to show you!” Then I catch myself and start laughing. “Well, not show you. It’s still kinda smelly in there. Just listen.” I lean into the bathroom and slap the toilet handle. Water rushes and gurgles and finally dies into leaky quiet.

The bedroom door opens a crack. Her right eye peeks at me, the dark iris slowly drifting away. “You fixed it?”

“Hell yeah. The toilet is officially working again!”

“Yaayyy.” The exclamation barely reaches my ears, it’s so unenthusiastic. The door closes again.

“You ready to go?”

“I still can’t decide what to wear.” Nooshin’s voice is a muffled groan of frustration. “God, maybe I should just stay here.”

“You can’t stay here.” I never figured her for the type of woman who obsesses over clothing, but apparently she does. “You’re coming with me, ready or not.”

Hinges creak behind me. “How does this look?”

Nooshin is frowning down at her floral-print shirtdress, a pattern of sunflowers on a soft yellow background. The top three buttons are open, revealing her sharp clavicles and the white scoop of a tanktop underneath. I follow the line of buttons to a shirttail hem, then bony knees and thin calves and and finally a pair of brown lug-soled boots that make her even taller than me. The effect is ruggedly delicate, if that makes any sense.

“What do you think?” she asks, raising her gaze shyly. “Be honest.”

“I liked you better with that big bandage-thing on your nose.”

“Nick. No making me crazy. I need you to tell me what you really think.”

“I think you should stop fishing for compliments and get your ass in the truck already.” I refuse to believe a girl can be this fucking clueless that she’s beautiful.

Driving around Colonia Aviacion, I toss her an oversized map of Tijuana and give her a crash course in the vitals of navigation. How she can fix her position by triangulating from local landmarks — the runty skyscrapers of downtown, antennae-studded Miraval Hill, dead towering smokestacks in the nearby industrial park. Where she can catch the express bus to the tourist district, or a reputable taxi. What roads to follow to the San Isidro and Otay Mesa border crossings.

“You mean…” Nooshin’s face tilts at me in excitement. “…I’ll get to drive your truck?”

“Not fucking likely. This is Mexico, last time I checked. But you’ll need to know a cab driver is taking you in the right direction.”

“Oh. Right.” She jots another note on the map spread across her lap.

Next I loop around General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport, named after an interim president who died in corruptacular retirement in La Jolla, California. The airport looks more municipal than international, just a couple stubby runways lined with rusting aluminum hangars. The control tower is whitewashed and decorated with the next best thing to a Nativity display — a Nativity banner. Adjoining it is a single-story terminal about the size of a tour bus.

I slow down — unnaturally slow, for my lead foot — so we can watch jets scream over American airspace and scrape the border fence as they land. Nooshin is enthralled by the spectacle of gigantic aircraft shoehorning into the minuscule runways. Until she realizes we could die a horrible flaming death if a 747 trips over the fence and pancakes into our house.

Back in our neighborhood I cruise the asphalt streets first, then the gravel ones, pointing through the dirty windshield at places she is — and isn’t — allowed to go. When she asks, I readily admit the distinction is arbitrary. I’ve already made the rounds of these places, introducing myself to shopkeepers and clerks and waitrons, feeling them out. If I got the wrong vibe, any sense that they might try to take advantage of Nooshin’s unfamiliarity with the language and culture and currency, then wham — I put them on my blacklist.

I’m worried her reaction will be hostile, bristling with resentment at being told what to do and what not to do. God knows my female colleagues at UCLA would scream bloody murder — even if they’d never been south of Beverly Hills, let alone south of the border. But Nooshin just blinks in surprise, glancing around at the storefronts and open-air stalls and sidewalk vendors selling crap out of carts. “You talked to all of them? Thinking of me?”

“Well, uh…yeah. Partly thinking of you, at least.”

Nooshin aims a lopsided grin across the cab at me. Beside the still-purplish bridge of her nose those dark eyes are narrowing — in appraisal, in validation, in something like amusement — and I get the eerie sensation that she’s reading me like a comic book.

“And here we finally are,” I announce, executing a sharp pedestrian-scattering turn into the parking lot of Wal-Mart, the new consumer epicenter of Colonia Aviacion and anchor tenant for an attached stripmall of glassy American-style stores.

There’s an explosion in the passenger seat. “Nick, look — it’s a Wal-Mart! I didn’t know they had Wal-Marts here. And over there, that store must be, like, the Mexican version of Old Navy, and — hey, is that a video store?” She whirls around and grabs my right bicep in both hands, squeezing my arm in excitement. “It is! We can rent videos, Nick! Videos!” A rueful laugh. “Now all we need is electricity.”

“This is the one place in our neighborhood where you’ll be okay at any store. They’ll give you the right change, and they take plastic too. But best of all…” I extricate my arm from her grasp and use it to point due east, out Nooshin’s window at a receding avenue. “Two blocks that way is our house. You can walk here anytime you want. During daylight, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoes happily, too distracted to gripe about the no-Nooshin-at-night rule. “So what are we waiting for? Let’s go check it out!” And she slides out of the Explorer, bubbly with delight, an unrecognizable version of the girl who showed up at my place on Noche Buena.

I trail after Nooshin’s billowing shirtdress, admiring the flashes of thigh whenever the wind catches it right. I assume her cheerfulness is due to the prospect of shopping, that familiar and reassuring chick-ritual. But then she glances over a sunflower-patterned shoulder at me and halts, a hand outstretched to hold mine — “Nick, come on!” — and time seems to stop for a moment, until she catches herself reaching and hurriedly uses the hand to pin back her bangs, whirling like a storm cloud around her shy embarrassed smile.

Nooshin
America in the rearview mirror
Monday
December 25, 2006

Scrunched down low in Nick’s truck, I watch a pleasant cloud-dotted afternoon settle over San Diego. This is our third stop of the day, after Nasrin’s townhome and UCSD’s Central Library. My paranoia is finally ebbing. No Saman anywhere in sight, no sister or parents either. Farid answered the door at the townhome, a solitary ally carrying out my things from the guest bedroom. Nick was right about my brother-in-law — he’s on my side. His swarthy face was set with concern, and he hugged me goodbye like he never does. Then he shook hands with Nick. I barely noticed the gesture at the time, but now I can’t stop thinking about it.

We’re the only vehicle at this roadside park, well-manicured and dotted with sago palms that stir lazily in the breeze. The jungle gym and basketball courts are deserted except for birds flitting about. Beyond the park is a shaggy hedge of Chinese elm, so high I can only glimpse red tile roofs behind it. In the distance is the sweeping powder blue span of the Coronado Bridge, gliding across the shimmery waters of San Diego Bay. Nick is the fastest-moving thing in sight, jogging back from the park’s restrooms.

“How’s the nose?” he asks, settling himself behind the wheel.

“The nose is still fine,” I say crossly. I can pretend there’s no honking bandage on my nose, but other people can’t. That’s why I’m hiding behind a pair of sunglasses and Nick’s KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ meshback with the brim pulled down low.

“You look like a supermodel who just got a nosejob. All slumped down and incognito, like you’re trying to avoid the paparazzi.” His grin is teasing but infectious.

I do a little smiling and a lot of squirming. I hate to be the center of attention. Especially his center of attention. Looking right at me with those icy blue eyes, he’s so handsome it’s unbearable. Desperately trying to change the subject, I stammer, “Wh–what does Christmas mean to you?”

“Say what?”

I point at the Lutheran church across the street, draped in an enormous banner headlined by the question WHAT DOES CHRISTMAS MEAN TO YOU? Below are two answers — kids opening presents with $$$ pricetags still on, and Jesus Christ with folded hands praying to heaven.

He becomes stony beneath his Kangol hat. “Like my dad says, Christmas is just a day when it’s harder than usual to get shit done.” Then he pauses with the keys in the ignition. “Any other stops?”

I find myself glancing inland, toward a chapter of my photo album that’s already come and gone. Regrets flood through me. Why did Nasrin and I have to become enemies instead of sisters? Will my niece and nephew understand why I didn’t say goodbye? How can my parents cobble together the money to repay the mahr? I can’t believe how quickly my life has fallen apart, and with it the family relationships that filled my heart.

“No more stops? Then let’s get moving,” Nick is saying with typical impatience. “We need to make it across the border before dark.”

Weird things start happening beneath my navel. I’ve been trying to convince myself that Tijuana will be like all the other places I’ve lived. A big deal, except not really. But…across the border? Hearing that phrase makes my tensions buzz and swarm. And Nick seems anxious about Tijuana too. Or worse, anxious about having me along.

Barely onto the broad lanes of I-5 I glimpse the first of several signs like this:

“Mojados sometimes bolt across the highway,” Nick explains, using the Spanish term for wetback. “You know, I was just reading an article in some Chicano Studies journal about the ‘Running Family’ image. That’s what people call it, the ‘Running Family’. Caltrans put up the signs back in the 1970s, and since then it’s become iconic in Chicano culture.”

“Iconic? Like how?” I love his impromptu lectures.

“Well, some Chicanos feel that it reduces an entire class of people to the status of animals — same as a deer crossing sign, right?”

“Right!”

“Other Chicanos feel nostalgic about the image. It’s a historical legacy to them, a reminder of family roots that literally run down I-5 to Mexico. For other Chicanos — ”

“I bet it’s also a memorial image,” I interject. “A reminder of all the people who died following their dreams to America. People we don’t even see in everyday life. We just look through them. They’re, like, transparent. The janitors and cooks and stuff.”

“Absolutely,” he nods, praising my point. “Anyway, now there’s this initiative underway to remove the signs. A new generation of Chicanos is flexing their political muscle and saying that the ‘Running Family’ is racist stereotyping. Not PC, basically.”

I watch Nick nudge the steering wheel back and forth. “What would Caltrans replace the signs with? Something more politically correct?”

“Nothing, probably. The signs aren’t really needed anymore. Since 9/11 we’ve made this part of the border tighter than a buttfuck. Now most illegal immigrants cross further east, out in the Imperial Valley, or even Arizona.”

His casual mention of anal sex makes me blush and glance away. The view out the truck’s windows is becoming increasingly gritty. I watched ever-smaller homes on ever-smaller lots flash past, the landscaping replaced with bare dirt and dead cars. Even the jutting palms seem straggly and desperate.

Then a sign that makes my heart flutter and spark. My whole stupid life compressed into a point of no return from the Nooshin I’ve always been:

I glance around as Nick pulls into a special parking lot at the border crossing. The mood here is deadly serious. Mexican soldiers in olive drab uniforms patrol the fringing sidewalk, scowling our direction, M-16s at the ready. They look grown-up and professional, nothing like the laughing kid-soldiers I saw on Avenida Revolucion. I almost pee the track pants I’ve borrowed from Nick when I notice one of them staring at our license plate and muttering into a walkie talkie.

Nick reaches over and taps the antique Polaroid camera in my lap. “Take all the pictures you want. I’ll be a while.”

I don’t want to take pictures. I want to flee or something. “Why can’t we go over there?” I ask plaintively, pointing at the regular border checkpoint, where lines of vehicles snake through the crossing posts. Those cars and trucks aren’t moving very fast, but at least they’re not parked in front of half the Mexican army.

“We can’t cross over there because those are Mexican nationals or American tourists. We’re something in between.”

The Explorer shifts in the sudden absence of Nick’s weight. I watch him stride into the throng of soldiers, towering over them, lips moving. Conversations break out. Smiles, even. Then he disappears behind a pair of glass doors rendered opaque with reflections.

Eventually boredom compels me out of the truck. I keep both hands on my camera, then realize I should probably keep both hands on my purse instead, and finally settle for a hand on each. At first I drift around the parking lot in widening circles, watching the Mexican soldiers as they watch me. Ogle, really. I can feel their heavy gazes like groping hands. But that’s all they do to me.

Braver now, I head toward a chainlink fence with a shallow view of the border crossing. I’m drawn by a trolleyful of Americans spilling through customs, just like me the day I visited Tijuana and met Nick. They’re mostly fresh-faced teens dressed like Abercrombie & Fitch models, voices ringing with enthusiasm for Mexico’s drinking age — a mere 18. They make a show of posing by the border marker, one set of friends after another crowding against the inlaid stone. I wait for them to fade behind the thick iron bars, then snap my own picture of the spraypainted murals they overlooked:

The slogans seem even more foreign than the language they were written in. You never forget your homeland. Long live the Mexican Revolution. Between individuals as between nations, peace is respect for other people’s rights. And other things I can’t translate with my bad Spanish.

“Nooshin!” The summons is full of excitement. It carries above the soldiers and smog and noise.

I trot back to the parking lot, where Nick is leaning against the Explorer with arms folded, waiting impatiently. But not the bad kind of impatient. A smirk is curling up one cheek. He can’t wait to brag about something.

Like the blue-and-white trifold he thrusts at me. My “tourist card”, even though it’s actually a sheet of paper. Typed on an honest-to-god typewriter, with carbon marks and everything. He explains that he fast-talked some official into granting me one without the usual requirements — a birth certificate or current passport.

I tilt my head quizzically to the right. So what?

“Your paperwork is good for 180 days,” he says brightly. “Without it you couldn’t have stayed with me. Not legally, anyway.”

“180 days?” I tuck the paper into my purse, confused.

“Yeah. That’s the maximum. If for some reason you need to stay with me longer, we’ll just renew it for another 180 days.”

Nick’s breezy explanation leaves me stunned. He’s not thinking of me as a temporary houseguest, someone to resentfully urge out the door, like my mother-in-law on her interminable visits from Iran. Nick is open to me staying with him for the next 180 days — and even the next 180 days after that! I can be part of his Mexican year.

He’s rocking forward and back on his hiking boots, heel to toe and repeat, the eagerness devouring him from the inside. The fading sunlight reaches beneath his hatbrim and chisels his face. He smiles brilliantly in the direction of the smells drifting over the border fence — sweet bakery scents, rotting garbage, diesel smoke. “This is it, Nooshin.”

That last word makes it spectacular. He says my name as if I’m a partner in some grand adventure. Not just a wife dragged along like luggage, the way I felt with Saman.

“You ready?” Nick is squinting at me.

“Yeah,” I say, wanting to be ready for Mexico, trying to convince myself of it, but deep down knowing I’m not really. Not even close.

It’s Christmas Eve — Noche Buena in Mexico. Tijuana is sloshing with amped-up religiosity, Catholicism stoned on pagan throwbacks. Nativity displays that would spawn ACLU lawsuits north of the border are everywhere — on government building lawns, in bus stations, at schools — and all with empty mangers, waiting for the Baby Jeebus to be added today. Partygoers break pinatas with 7 streamers, one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins or the seven tribes of the Nahua, depending on who you believe. Mobs of people ebb and flow through the streets, snarling traffic as they follow a costumed donkey-riding Mary led by a dude dressed as Joseph. Churches bulge with parishioners supplicating themselves into a frenzy at the feet of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus’ mom with an ethnic makeover. Native nochebuena flowers — called poinsettias in America after 19th-century U.S. Ambassador Joel Poinsett — are crowding horizontal spaces in every lobby and home, adding Christmas cheer and reminding the world that the Aztecs’ favorite color was blood red.

But none of that shit is keeping me awake. Another Noche Buena ritual is — the mass crossing of the border. A couple hours before dawn and I’m watching through the barred front window as ghostly figures drift down the street toward la frontera. They eddy against the rusting steel panels that cover the vulnerable chainlink fence underneath, a teeming mass of shadow-people bursting toward the day-bright hills on the other side. Their mass crossing is fueled by two idiotic beliefs — that the Border Patrol only fields a skeleton force on Christmas Eve, and anybody making it to America today will receive a Christmas gift of citizenship tomorrow. In reality the Border Patrol fields more agents during the holidays, and anybody caught today will wind up right back in Tijuana tomorrow. Pressed against the glass I can feel the vibrations of a helicopter, thropping the night air overhead, probing the darkness on this side of the border fence with a beam of glaring light. But the real noise comes from the Humvees crashing up and down the hills, a mad orchestra of revving engines and grinding gearboxes and the occasional honking horn.

Headlights creep down the street, washing over small clots of would-be Americans. A flashlight is aimed out the driver’s window, jumping from one house to the next. I figure it’s a cop or cabbie trying to find their way, since there are never streetlights on a gravel road like this. I take a step back from the window and prepare to settle myself into the sleeping bag again — until the flashlight hovers on my house and the vehicle pulls onto the front lawn, mistaking the pavers for a driveway. With no drapes I’m forced to squint into the headlights, raising my arm into a bar of shade across my eyes. I glimpse a shadow moving through the glare to the front door.

The knocking starts urgent and just gets worse. “Nid? Nid?!? Id’s me, Noodin!”

What the hell? I grab the long weight of my D-cell Maglite, half-flashlight half-club, and open the door prepared to use it both ways.

“Nid…” The gangly silhouette sags in relief.

I play the beam over Nooshin in shock. She looks like she was in a fight — and got her ass kicked. Her hair is a wild tangle spilling out of her sweatshirt hood. Through it I can see a broken nose, fat and purplish across the bridge. The discolored swelling reaches across her cheeks and up to her eyes, puffing them into exhausted slits. Her upper lip and chin are angry red skin, irritated with wiping, and her sweatshirt is caked with dried snot and blood on the sleeves. My business card with the address on the back is clutched in her bony hands, the left one adorned with a too-tight wedding band. The leg of her jeans is ripped open from the knee down, flapping like a singular bell-bottom, and that sock is stained pink on the outside.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I finally manage to say.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I lood preddy bad, huh?”

“Like you fell down the stairs a couple times. Come on in.” I pivot on a bare heel, flashing the Maglite around the living room, and guide her over to the papasan chair. “Here. Let me help you with that.”

Nooshin untangles from her purse with difficulty and collapses into the padded wicker shell of the chair. Watching my flashlight beam dash into the bathroom and then the kitchen, she makes a sympathetic noise. “I’m soddy you don’d have elecdricidy yed.”

“Me too. Remind me never to move to Mexico during Christmas again.” I’m back with a towel dampened in bottled water, bending over her and gently blotting at her broken nose. Her eyelids flicker and close in my Maglite’s frizzy wide-angle light. She could pass for dead if it wasn’t for the little bubble of blood in one nostril, pulsing with every breath. Something feral and murderous uncoils inside me. “Who did this to you? Saman?”

The name makes her flinch.

“You need to call 911 and sic the cops on that motherfucker — ”

“No,” she interrupts. Then with more force, “No!”

I become aware of a sharp ache in my left hand. I’m holding the flashlight tightly enough to hurt. “Nooshin, listen to me. Your husband could go to jail for what he did to you. He should go to jail. If you file a police report — ”

“Nooooo…” It’s a trapped moan. “I’m nod cauding any more embarradment. I’m jud going to didappear!”

I touch the plain gold band that pinches her ring finger. “Is this from him too?”

She thrashes miserably, trying to yank the ring off.

“Whoa. Just relax, okay? We can get it off later.” I shift down to her calf, inspecting the crusty zig-zag laceration. I can’t tell if she needs stitches or not. Maybe her jeans dissipated the force of whatever shredded them. “I’ll take you to a clinic later. Broken noses usually heal on their own, but better safe than sorry, right?” Then I play the Maglite over her purse, partially unzipped and spilling things like an antique Polaroid camera onto the cement floor. “Why didn’t you go back to Nasrin’s place?”

A single disconsolate sob pierces the darkness, and me with it. “I can’d, Nid. He’s waiding for me. My famidy is on hid side.”

“I suppose all your stuff is still at your sister’s.” I put the beam on Nooshin. “Including the laptop and scanner and documents.”

“Yeah, in the gued bedroom. And the red of my money. The money I had wid me, I dent it all on the cab, oh god…”

“You took one of the cabs right at the border, huh? They’re expensive as hell.” I prop the Maglite on the floor, aiming it toward the tiny bedroom. Then I unroll the spare mattress pad and sleeping bag.

“Whad am I supposed to do, Nid?” Her voice is going high and stricken. “I don’d even have a dingle dollar!”

“Can you tone it down a little? You’re freaking me out.” And it’s true. The white-hot urge to hurt Saman the way he hurt her has been eclipsed by emotional shards, cutting through me so fast I can’t even tell what they are. I take a deep breath and scoop up the flashlight and start digging through a Hefty bag of clothes. “You take the bedroom. And here’s some of my clothes to sleep in.” I toss her sweatpants and a retro-style Atari t-shirt.

In the circle of fuzzy light she’s standing up and hugging the clothes to her chest. Tear-tracks are glistening on her left cheek but not her right, where the lazy eye veers toward the Pacific. “Do you mean…I can sday?”

“For fuck’s sake. Of course you can stay! You can stay with me as long as you need.” All the emotional shards within me are collapsing into something foreign and tender. I war with myself, trying to regain my icy distance. “And as far as money goes, I’ve got some. So don’t worry about it right now, okay?”

Her bruised and puffy face is arriving at a new conclusion about me, and desire — a tentative, awkward desire — is part of that conclusion. Then Nooshin rushes past the flashlight’s glow, wrapping me in a pathetically grateful hug. Matted hair brushes my face. Her scent is sweat and grime. At first I vacillate, still pointing the Maglite at the empty papasan chair. Then I hug her back. She feels breakable in my grasp, barely held together and trembling like a palsied calf.

Sunday is dwindling into the final revolutions of the wall clock, a delicate metal starburst with an electric cord trailing down. The taupe walls are dominated by framed panoramas of Iran that say TEHRAN and ESFAHAN and YAZD at the bottom. Above the gas fireplace is a portrait of Grandfather. My pedar bozorg stares down in perpetual kindness, his eyes like warm stones. I’m thankful he wasn’t dragged into the final negotiations. Dad and my uncle-in-law Gamal spent the weekend trying to salvage a compromise that never existed in the first place. I insist on a divorce, Saman refuses to grant one. Even the families have to accept it now.

Headlights bounce and steady on the curtains, then go dark. I turn down the sound on the television, just in time to hear a car door slam out in the driveway. There’s a pause filled with nothing much except my anxious breathing. The doorbell chimes.

I glance into the townhome’s interior. “Dad? Nasrin? Can one of you get that?” But they’re probably asleep.

The doorbell escalates to knocking.

“Coming!” I sigh. I unfold myself from the couch and pad over to the door. Through the peephole is a bulbous nose with a mustache beneath it. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me. Let me in,” a male voice demands. The knocking is impatient now. Becoming angry at me. “Nooshin, let me in!”

I surrender with practiced obedience, fumbling at the lock and ushering Saman into the foyer. I haven’t seen my husband in a month, not since I pawned my wedding ring and fled to San Diego for the second time. Everything about him is familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He slouches with a resentment that borders on hostility. His flat inkspot eyes are unreadable and his pockmarked cheeks are stretched wide by a grimace. The seams of his Adidas track suit can barely contain his straining bulk. “Hello my wife,” he says in cold Farsi.

“Hello my husband.” I’m retreating from him as if repelled.

“I fly back to Kansas City tomorrow with Gamal and Afshar.”

“I know.”

“I had to see you first. We need to work this out. I’ve been trying to call, but…” He drags a hand down his face, trying to hide his frustration. “How can we work this out when you’re blocking my calls?”

“I don’t think there’s anything to work out. But it’s okay if you come in. We can talk in the living room.” I retreat even further, backing into the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink? Do you want some tea?”

“I don’t want to talk around your family. Or back at the hotel with my family. Let’s go somewhere we can work this out, just the two of us.”

“Um, go — where?” I ask uncertainly.

“We’ll decide in the car.” Saman’s back is already turned to me. He pauses to issue a summons over his beefy shoulder. “Nooshin, come on!” Then he steps into the milky night, a silhouette hazy with streetlights.

I hesitate in miserable indecision. So much for never talking to him again, never seeing him again. And what is there to work out between us, anyway? The marriage is over. I’m filing for divorce as soon as I can afford it. I should just lock the door behind him. Good night and good riddance. But then he’d make a scene. God, would he ever. My family would be humiliated in front of the neighbors. Someone might even call 911. And instead of blaming him, Dad and Nasrin would just rage at me, like it’s somehow all my fault. I can already hear their voices, angry barbs of Farsi so the neighbors and cops don’t understand — Why are you shaming us like this? and Saman is still your husband, go talk to him!.

I grab my purse off the kitchen counter and chase after him. He waits behind the wheel of his uncle’s rental car. Barely glancing my direction, he backs out of the driveway and steers randomly through the shadowy maze of townhomes. When the same park appears in our headlights, he turns right instead of left. We enter a subdivision with homes fringed in colored lights, illuminated Nativity scenes on lawns, an inflatable polar bear in a Santa hat.

“Look at all the pretty decorations,” I finally say, eager to break the tension thickening in the car. “It’s almost Christmas.”

“You know where I went wrong? I didn’t take you to Iran. We should’ve gone back.” Saman says it with deceptive blandness. I can see that his hands are tightening on the wheel. “If you returned to the motherland, you would’ve understood the traditions you’re forsaking. You would’ve understood me, and my family, and yours too. We’re Persians, Nooshin. You as well.”

“No I’m not. I’m an American.”

That makes him chortle. “There’s no such thing as an American. There are people who live in America. This country is 200 years old. Our civilization is 4,000 years old.”

“Sometimes I think that’s the best thing about America. There aren’t 4,000 years of stuff getting in the way. People can be anything they want here. Everyone has that freedom. And if you don’t like what you are, you just change.”

“I thought you wanted to be my wife.” The statement is poignant with betrayal. “I came to America knowing you chose me. That was a great comfort when I was homesick, or discouraged, or…”

“Scared?” I volunteer.

“When I was homesick or discouraged.” Saman turns onto a wide boulevard, then onto an entrance ramp to I-5. We merge into deserted lanes heading south, toward the brightly-lit skyscrapers of downtown. “Why did you want to be my wife?”

“It’s just what happened next. As I was graduating from high school, my family, they wanted to marry me off. Because I’m, um…” I look down at my lap, where my hands are writhing like snakes. “I’m not much of a catch.”

“That’s true. Your eye, your body — I was repulsed at first.” He shrugs lackadaisically, as if excusing an unavoidable first impression. “But I was told you had a heart of gold. You would be a faithful and godly wife. And for five years you were.”

The godly part makes me wince. “I’m not much of a Muslim, either.”

‘I could be a better Muslim myself. I don’t like going to mosque, may God forgive me. Not even when I lived in Iran.”

Saman glides down an exit ramp. We’re past downtown and even National City, angling in the general direction of Imperial Beach. I know what compelled his change of direction — the green reflective sign proclaiming MEXICO 5. We’re running out of highway.

I watch the darkness clog with neon signs in English and Spanish, stoplights soaring above intersections, halogen security lighting. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know.” Abruptly he pulls over, parking against the curb. Past the sidewalk is a field of new condos, some buildings almost finished, others mere skeletons. Further to the north is a military base of some kind, demarcated by a brightly-lit cyclone fence that marches up a hill. The Pacific is mere blocks away, tinging the air with salt. But Saman isn’t taking in the view. He’s staring down at the belly I don’t feed anymore. “If you divorce me, your family will disown you. Don’t you understand that? They’ll kick you out. You’ll have nothing left. Nothing.”

“I’ll have my job,” I say defiantly.

He flashes with anger. “The job that guy gave to you!”

“I always wanted a job. I finally got one.”

“You had a job. A lot of jobs. Keeping the house. Cooking. Doing the laundry. Packing and unpacking for moves.” A recitation of my worth to Saman. I’m a maid who puts out. “Why won’t you come back to Kansas City and live with Aunt Euda? You like her. And that way we can work things out. I know we can, Nooshin. Nooshin?”

“There’s nothing to work out. I’m divorcing you.”

“I won’t give you a divorce. I refuse.”

“You can’t stop me. California has, um…” I don’t know the Farsi translation for no-fault divorce, so I switch to English. “California lets either spouse get a divorce, no matter what.”

“That is the law of America. We are married by the law of God.”

“Yeah, but the law of America is all that really counts.”

He stiffens in outrage. “You put the law of America above the law of God?”

“No! Of course not.” I can’t look at Saman anymore. My gaze wanders to a condo skeleton and its weird stretching shadows. “But even God allows a wife to divorce her husband.”

“If I fail to provide for you, or abuse you, or cheat. Have I done any of those things? No!” His voice is back to a harsh and grating Farsi. “If I give you a divorce, people will think I’m guilty of those things. For the rest of my life.” The car rocks as he leans closer. “I won’t let people think I’m guilty of those things. I’m not guilty!”

I shrink into the passenger door, still not looking at him. “Then tell people I’m guilty. Tell people it’s my fault. I don’t care.”

“Then people will say I let my wife wander like a wild camel!”

“I want to go back to Nasrin’s. Take me back.”

“Look at me!” His breath is sour on my cheek. “I said look at me, wife!” He wraps his hand around my jaw and twists my head.

This close Saman seems barely in control of himself. His sneer is twitching spasmodically. The matted V of his exposed chest is heaving. He concentrates on me with uneven effort, eyebrows pulling together into a single hairy line and relaxing again. For the first time in my life I’m afraid of him.

He fumbles inside his track suit top, yanking out the thick braid of his gold necklace. Something dangles from it, flashing in the streetlight. The wedding ring that originally belonged to his grandmother. “This isn’t yours anymore,” he says, tucking it back into his tracksuit. “You have to earn it back. This is your ring now.” He digs a plain gold band out of his pocket.

“What? I’m not wearing any ring. I’m divorcing you — ”

He drops his gaze, taking in my posture. I’m pinning my arms against my chest like a protective shield, my fists tucked under my chin. Then he lunges at me. We tug-of-war over my left hand.

“No! Stop it! Stop it, Saman! Stop it or I’m yelling for help!” The threat only makes him furious, baring teeth as he snarls with effort. I try to yank free, screaming “HELPPPPP!” until he punches me in the stomach. The scream dies into a gurgle as all the air goes out of me. I fold over, choking harshly, desperate for breath.

“You must never disobey me again, wife. Never!” He gropes me roughly, sliding hands into my long hair, grabbing fistfuls. I croak with pain as he jerks me toward him. We crush mouths in a brutal kiss.

“HELPPPPP!” I immediately begin to yell again, as soon as I break away.

One hand tightens its grip on my hair, twisting me toward him. The other draws back in a fist…only to come at me again, plowing at my face in excruciatingly slow motion, closer and closer and closer, and it takes forever just to close my eyes –

An explosion goes off in my skull. Blazing shocks of light and pain. Darkness rushing. Nothing.

Out the half-drawn blinds is a floodlit view of a Catholic church. Our Lady of Something-or-Other, I can’t remember now. The church is almost lost amidst the other relics on Pearcy Avenue, a street lined with old fruit warehouses and the kind of apartment buildings that were stylish 50 years ago. Wide circular steps rise from the sidewalk to its massive oak doors, and overhead are bas-relief saints — at least I assume they’re saints — making the sign of the cross. Boulevard palms sway past the walls and brush their fronds over the burnt orange rooftiles.

But what caught my eye was the signboard out front advertising midnight mass — at 11 PM. Isn’t that the silliest thing ever? Or maybe midnight mass always starts early..

———————

When my eyelids flutter open again, I’m drowning in underwater shadows. I gasp in panic — and just like that, I can breathe again, hyperventilating through my mouth. I blink a few times, squeezing tears out of my eyes. The car’s interior hovers back into focus, contoured with the dull glow of dashboard lights. I’m slumped in the passenger seat, but tilting sideways. Saman is working the plain gold band onto my ring finger. His shoulders are hunched with the effort. Its circumference is barely larger than my knuckle.

Something salty and metallic is trickling into the back of my throat. “You broke my nose,” I say in English. It comes out sounding like you brode my node.

“I’ll do worse if you were with another man!” he threatens in Farsi. Suddenly all I can see are the hairy knuckles of his fist. “Were you with that guy? Did you spend the night with him?”

“No! I haven’t been with him! I swear to you on my grandfather’s grave!” I plead desperately, flinching away. “Oh god, please Saman. Please don’t hit me again. Please…”

The fist goes away. “There,” he says in a defiant tone, and holds up my left hand for me to see. The band is over my knuckle and pinching tight.

I stare dully at the ring, and my husband’s not attractive, not unattractive face behind it. Snot and blood are leaking down my lip and into my mouth. I cough and fleck everything with dark spittle.

Saman recoils, all the way back into his seat. He digs in his pocket cursing. “This isn’t easy for me to say, but I forgive you. I forgive you for all the humiliation you’ve caused me.” He finds a tissue and wipes at his face. “We’ll put this behind us and live as husband and wife again.” The used tissue lands in my lap. “Now clean yourself up. We’re leaving.”

“Where are we going?” I make dabbing motions with the tissue, my face numb beneath it. “Are you taking me to the emergency room?”

“We’re going back to Kansas City.”

Back to Kansas City. I gasp at the insanity of it.

“And back to Iran, soon.” He pats my knee affectionately. “I already made arrangements to visit my paternal grandparents. They live outside of Qa’en, in the mountains by Afghanistan. There’s a picture of the village hanging in our hallway. It’s our ancestral home — ”

Hot wires of panic are flaring inside me, trying to break through my skin, propelling me into motion. Everything is speeded up and herky-jerky, as if I’m piloting someone else’s body. I make the girl grab her purse off the floor and throw open the car door and flee.

“Come back here!” Saman bellows.

I rush into the chilly blackness of the night, heading for the nearest condo. The ground is bare dirt and littered with construction leftovers — wood scraps, pieces of wire, even an entire sheet of plywood. I reach the skeleton of a building, my feet slapping across its concrete foundation. I’m through the metal frame and into the adjoining cul-de-sac before I know it.

Chaos is happening in my peripheral vision, headlights flashing and tires squealing. A car hood suddenly juts in front of me, screeching to a halt. The windshield is a reflective glare until the moon catches it just right — then the glass becomes transparent for a moment, revealing Saman behind the wheel. His face is a mask of rage. If I was afraid of him before, I’m terrified of him now.

I’m forced to double back through the skeletal condo and toward the avenue. When I hit the sidewalk, I follow its puddling glow of streetlights. “Help! Ayudame! Call the cops!” I yell when I encounter some Hispanic kids relaxed on a stoop, smoking cigarettes and drinking from paper bags. They just crane their necks, curious to see my pursuer.

My pounding strides are drowned out by a car roaring close. Headlights craze up and down me as Saman bounces over the curb, honking loudly. I abandon the sidewalk, leaping over a bedraggled hedge and into the gravel lot of a used car dealership. Plastic pennants ripple overhead as I zigzag through a maze of vehicles, slamming into sideview mirrors. “Nooshin!” Saman calls out behind me, his voice ragged and faltering.

I’m halted by the tall chainlink fence that separates the used car dealership from the other side of the block, a strip mall of some kind. Its rear is a floodlit wall of loading docks and security doors. No place to run, no place to hide. But I can’t go back either. I take a precious moment to dig in my purse, searching for my cellphone. I need to call 911 — but I can’t. Stupid me. The cellphone is right where I left it, recharging in the guest bedroom.

“Nooshin.” The word is close behind me.

I sling my purse over a shoulder, settling it firmly in my armpit, and scramble over the fence. Try to scramble over the fence. Straddling it I lose my balance and topple the rest of the way, slashing open the leg of my jeans with a loud riiippppp and thudding into the asphalt.

The fence keeps rattling even after I fall off it. Saman is yanking furiously, his fingers knit around the links. “I’ll never grant you a divorce,” he pants. The harsh floodlights of the strip mall are blanching him into a pale monster. “Not in this world, not in the afterlife.”

I look up at him from a crumple of pain. “There’s nothing you can do about it.” My anger helps me stand up, an unsteady process, until I’m taller than him. “I’m divorcing you, Saman. This marriage is over.”

He closes off into hostility and self-pity. All I’ve done is estrange him even further. Not like I care anymore. We’re both startled by a muffled jangle in his sweatpants pocket. He answers his cellphone, never peeling his eyes from me. “Nasrin? Yes. I’m with her. It’s not going well.”

I start edging backwards, into the alley that runs behind the strip mall. “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll call the cops on you. You’ll lose your green card and get deported back to Iran.” I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I feel better saying it.

Saman hesitates, cellphone still pinned to his ear. “What are you going to do, live like an unkept woman?” The euphemism Persian males use instead of prostitute. “Your family won’t take you back. You’re an embarrassment to them.”

I take another step backwards. “Do you want to get sent back to Iran?” And another. “Do you?”

He mutters into the cellphone some more. “I’ll be waiting for you at your sister’s house.” Then he crunches across the gravel, receding into the used car lot.

Maybe Saman is really going back to Nasrin’s townhome. Or maybe this is as much of a head start as I’m going to get. I turn and resume running — more of a fast limping, really. Pain is radiating from my left leg. My Nikes crunch on broken glass fanning out from a dumpster. I turn the corner, reaching the asphalt lake of the strip mall’s parking lot. I’m hoping to spot a police car or mall security SUV, but there isn’t a vehicle in sight. All I glimpse is a derelict pushing two lashed-together shopping carts, moving slowly through cones of light.

I spot salvation on the far side of the parking lot and across the street — a Metro Transit System stop. I head toward it, slowing even further. My leg is hurting more with every step. It’s a victory to reach the corner and its flashing DON’T WALK sign. I limp through the deserted intersection while a stoplight clicks overhead.

The transit stop occupies most of the corner, a slanted metal roof and three wide plexiglass panels, almost opaque with gang graffiti. Cement garbage cans and recycling bins are placed at regular intervals, alternating with benches. I collapse onto the nearest one, barely smelling the ocean because I can’t breathe through my nose. A gigantic bus schedule rises from a glassy pedestal. At first I only see my depressing reflection — the ripped jeans dangling from my leg, blood leaking into my mouth and down my chin, my right eye trying to tear itself out of the socket. Then I refocus on the numbers and times underneath. The next bus arrives at 4:17 AM, the beginning of the Monday morning commute. I wipe my face with a sweatshirt sleeve and pull the hood up for warmth, then gingerly lie down on the bench to wait, using my purse for a pillow.

This is the corner of Bus and Truck. Streaming from the east is a line of buses packed with hapless worker drones. Their faces have the blank stares that announce CULTURE SHOCKED and BORED TO FUCKING DEATH. They used to scratch dirt for a living in the central highlands or the Yucatan. Now they inhabit a rapacious border city that eats them up and shits them out. Their existence is a treadmill between repetitive line jobs in the maquiladora zone and the cardboard-and-plywood shacks they call home. Soon the buses will return with another load of hapless worker drones. First shift is over, second shift is starting. After that comes third shift, and there’s a fourth shift too. The maquiladoras never stop producing, not on the weekend before Christmas, not even on Christmas Day.

Streaming from the south is a line of trucks carrying Mexican manufactured goods into America. It’s the year-end rush, as distributors move inventory across the border to evade the annual warehousing tax. Every December 31st the state of Baja California assesses a tax on finished goods awaiting export. The tradition dates back to 1900, when Tijuana was Mexico’s northern entrepot to the Pacific and the border was just a pile of whitewashed rocks on the coastal road. Every year the state legislature promises to abolish the tax, and every year it doesn’t. So the semis stream north, then stream south again. I watch their trailers pass with idle curiosity, wondering how many carry contraband — drugs, firearms, human beings.

Mixed in with the bus and truck traffic is an old Crown Victoria, blotchy from years in the Mexican sun. The car weaves through the intersection with admirable disrespect for traffic laws, provoking a chorus of horn-honking. It shudders to a halt against the curb and an elderly American emerges. He looks like a defrocked Catholic priest. Hornrims ride his beaky nose and his hair is brylcreamed into a creepy helmet. He pauses to tamp and light a brier pipe.

“Mr. Sedesco,” I say, extending a hand.

His grasp is brittle and papery. “Good to see you again, kid.”

Last time the leasing agent was only gnawing his pipe, not smoking it. I motion at his wattled bicep. “What happened to your patch? I thought you were trying to quit.”

“I gave it up already.” Sedesco waves at the diesel exhaust engulfing us. “This is Tijuana. Why the hell bother?”

The truth of it cracks me up. This is a cityscape of belching smokestacks, garbage piles burning, tailpipes with no catalytic converters. Slice open my lungs after a year here and you’ll probably discover twin lumps of coal.

We sit down at the corner “restaurant” — actually just a bunch of plastic chairs arrayed around a taco cart. It’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so we pacify the street vendor by buying cans of Budweiser out of her ice chest. Then we kick back, resting our feet on a overturned wooden box. We’re worth a few curious glances. Gringos don’t visit this part of Tijuana if they can avoid it.

“How you like the house so far?” Sedesco asks, switching between his pipe and beer.

“I’d like it a helluva lot better if it had electricity.”

“I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Never move in during the holidays. Everybody checks out at the utility companies. You can’t even find somebody to bribe.”

“Are you telling me I’m screwed until 2008?”

The leasing agent flashes his dentures. “Of course not. You’re with me, kid. I put you in that house, right? I’ll get you electricity too.”

“You said you know people who know people. That sounds like you’re setting me up for an expensive solution.” I sip my Bud, watching him across the upturned can. “I’m just a starving grad student trying to stretch my pesos. Maybe it’s cheaper for me to wait.”

“Sure it’s cheaper. If you don’t mind living in the dark with no stove or refrigerator.” He pauses, enjoying the leverage. “Or you could pay me $300 and get juice tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is only two days before Christmas.”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m not kidding. I know people who know people. I make a call to start things rolling, you got a meterman at your house in an hour. He unlocks your meter and presto, you got juice. How’s that for a Christmas present?”

The beer is making my stomach ball up. I shift uncomfortably, knocking one of Sedesco’s orthopedic shoes with a hiking boot. “$300 is a lot of money. Especially since I’ll have to pay the meterman too. That could be another $50 right there.”

“Not for you, kid. You can negotiate him down to $20. Maybe even less.” He pauses to relight his pipe.

“Same as I can negotiate you down?”

Sedesco laughs. “Same as that.”

I pretend to consider his offer, scowling into a moving wall of semi-trailers. In reality I’m fitting together the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle. No electricity in the first place. The electric company’s unresponsiveness. Sedesco’s fortuitous call to check in. His offer to help while refusing to discuss specifics on the phone. Meeting on the busiest street corner in Tijuana. The fact I bribed him for cheaper rent on my house.

The skin across my shoulders is going tight. This is a shakedown. No fucking doubt about it.

Sedesco is conspiring with the local office of the Comision Federal de Electricidad — the national electric company. His accomplice is somebody who can sit on a customer service complaint during the holidays, when the office is mostly deserted. Together they’re preying on a fresh American transplant, assuming I’m just another gringo who doesn’t know how Tijuana works and can’t live without his electricity. What will I pay for light, a stove that works, cold beer in the fridge?

Sedesco isn’t stupid. The elderly dude senses my suspicion, all the untidy details, a payday receding fast. He drains his can of Bud and tosses it into the gutter. “I’m trying to help you, that’s all. A meterman might not make it out until second week in January. That’s three weeks from now. 21 days. You really want to wait that long?”

“We have a saying where I come from — ” I cut myself off with a shit-eating grin. “Do you even know where I come from?”

“What?” Sedesco’s blink is magnified by his thick lenses. “Where do you come from?”

“I come from Iowa. Rural Iowa, up by the Minnesota border. I’m straight off a family farm. And we have a saying that applies to this situation.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

But I don’t go for the big finish, verbally stabbing him with an old insult of my father’s. An insult I heard so many times growing up that I memorized it. An insult usually directed at me. Instead I put away my grin. I’m already having second thoughts, even third thoughts, about being an asshole toward the leasing agent. Sure, he’s trying to shake me down. But the dude doesn’t have much choice. He’s a retiree stretching his Social Security checks south of the border, condemned to straight commission, with a mexicana at home. The sunset of his life, and he’s forced to hustle harder than a corner drug dealer in East LA.

More importantly, he knows at least one more person in Tijuana than I do — that accomplice in the electric company. Before this year is over, I’ll need to know people who know people. Sedesco isn’t the most promising start to my network, but he’ll have to do.

“What are you thinking about?” He fumbles to relight his pipe, an awkward ballet of liver-spotted fingers. “Dammit, kid. Are you gonna say something or not?”

“I changed my mind, gramps.” The nickname sorta fits, if grandfathers were Sedesco creepy. “I’m keeping my mouth shut for now. Maybe I’ll call you if I get fed up waiting for electricity. Or maybe I’ll call you if something else comes up. You could probably teach me a thing or two about Tijuana, huh?”

“You know what they say about knowledge — it don’t come cheap.”

The elderly leasing agent struggles out of his plastic chair, feigning disinterest behind a gust of pipe smoke. He shambles past the taco cart lady, ignoring her attempts to sell him another Bud, and settles into his sun-bleached Crown Vic. The car roars off in increments, a slow motion departure into the honking forest of buses and trucks. I keep staring after Sedesco, letting him feel the weight of my gaze. My reward is a flaccid wave through a rolled-down window. Our negotiation for whatever comes next has already begun.