The Space Between Us

  “Like what?” I asked.

  She flipped her braids over her shoulder, stared straight ahead for a few moments, then said, “Like a black stone with a blue streak.”

  I tried so hard to find a stone like that! Then one day at school, Tahereh put her hand in the pocket of her uniform and said, “Look! I found it. I don’t want to play anymore.” And she gave me the stone.

  A few days later when I was playing with my stones and seashells, I ran my hand over the stone and the blue streak came off. When I said to Tahereh, “You cheated, that’s not fair,” she widened her eyes and started to giggle.

  I spread out my seashells and stones with a branch. Then one by one I threw them into the sea. Mother was walking back towards me. I threw the branch out as far as I could.

  Mother put her hand on my shoulder. “Shall we go back?”

  I put the black stone without a blue streak in my pocket.

  On the way back to the hotel, Alenush and I passed by Mrs. Grigorian’s sherbet shop. For the umpteenth time, I was astonished to find her still alive. Pasted on the dusty window of the shop was a cardboard sign and printed on it in Armenian and Persian was: Turkish coffee – Hot chocolate – Tea.

  Alenush said, “Shall we have a coffee?”

  Mrs. Grigorian was sitting behind a table in the shop, breaking up bits of bread.

  After I had gone through all of my explanation about who we were and how we used to live here, she said, “I don’t remember. Since my dear brother died, I haven’t been able to remember much.”

  Alenush asked, “Why are you tearing up that bread?”

  Mrs. Grigorian answered, “For the pigeons. My dear brother was the first person here to open a sherbet shop. Did you say you wanted coffee?”

  She stood up and went to the kitchen in the back of the shop.

  Alenush sat at the table.

  I looked around the shop. It hadn’t changed much. The same wooden counter, the same rickety wooden chairs, the same wall hangings. It was just that it seemed smaller now…and where was the sherbet machine? I poked my head behind the counter. My guess was correct. Dusty and faded, it had fallen in the middle of a nest of newspapers and magazines and junk. One of its glass urns was broken. When I was a child I had dreamed again and again of the two-headed eagles etched on its sides. Alenush said, “What are you looking at?”

  I showed her the machine. “It would make three kinds of sherbet: orange, lemon, and sour cherry. I never liked the taste of any of them.”

  Mrs. Grigorian brought a little tray with two mismatched demitasse cups on it and set it on the table. “Alvart was my best friend. Such a pure soul! There’s no one else like her.”

  Alenush poked me. “Tell her she was your grandmother!”

  I tried.

  Mrs. Grigorian nodded. “Every day in the morning they call out from the roof, waiting for their crumbs. Only the pigeons are left for me now. My little friends.”

  Alenush broke up bread quietly for a few minutes. When it was time to go, she leaned down to kiss the old woman.

  As we left the shop, she said, “Her face felt like stone.”

  She took a Kleenex out of her backpack and wiped her eyes.

  We rang the bell, knocked on the door and shouted until someone finally opened the door. The church watchman was a small man wearing a hearing aid. A couple of the buttons on his checkered coat were missing.

  When I introduced myself, he said, “Of course I remember you. I was in the same class as your cousin. Our classroom was over there.”

  I looked at the school. In front of the classrooms on the ground floor, there were large spindles one after another.

  The watchman fiddled with his hearing aid. “A few years ago the school became a Tricot workshop. Mrs. Grigorian wouldn’t allow them to use the church courtyard to come and go. So they opened a door from the street. Do you want me to open up the church? Ever since the church was robbed, I’ve been keeping it locked. I only open it on All Saints’ Day. The missus burns incense over all the graves every year. Last year…”

  I looked at the middle room on the ground floor where in those days the school janitor and his family had lived. Its door was wide open. A young man in an undershirt was pushing the handle of a machine right and left.

  Alenush walked among the tall trees and the weeds and read out the inscriptions on the gravestones. “These people aren’t related to us at all. Why did Mother burn incense for them?”

  I stood next to the statue of the merchant’s wife.

  Alenush put her hand on the statue’s bare shoulder. She picked a piece of moss out of her hair. “Poor thing.”

  “Poor thing?” I repeated.

  She walked around the statue. “Auntie Shakeh told me her story.”

  She ran a hand over the stone shawl. Then all of a sudden she turned and stared at me. “She figured a way to sort out her problem, right?”

  My heart sank. I had never contemplated being separated from my daughter.

  I remembered lying in my bed and listening to the shouting from the living room next door.

  “I don’t want to! I didn’t want to get married to begin with. My father forced me into it. If it wasn’t for the child, I would have left already. It’s for his sake that I endure this. If you bring up my room again, I swear to God I’m leaving!”

  My father’s voice shook. “Are you threatening me? No one is keeping you here. The door is open – you can walk right through it.”

  Grandmother shouted, “Stop it! There have never been such things in our family. You must compromise.”

  “God Almighty! Have mercy on us,” Auntie Shakeh repeated a few times.

  I put my head under my pillow and cried. My heart sank. I had never imagined I could be separated from my mother.

  All the way back, Alenush talked. She talked about her classes and her professors and the university. About the Turkmen dances she had seen a few weeks ago. She said she was thinking about sewing herself a Turkmen costume. Outside the little printing shop she helped me load the textbooks into the trunk of the car. They were Armenian-language books for first-to-third graders.

  When we got back on the road, she picked up one of the first-grade books and began to read. “Do you remember how hard it was for me to write the letter ‘F’?” she asked. I remembered.

  “Do you remember how I would blacken in the center of all the ‘O’s?”

  I remembered.

  “Do you remember when I memorized the poem, ‘The Green Plains of My Homeland’? You bought me a pencil holder as a reward.”

  I remembered.

  She closed the book. She looked at the road and said, “The first poem I ever memorized was ‘The Golden Fish.’ I wasn’t even in school yet. Mamali taught it to me.”

  She began to recite the poem. I recited it along with her.

  We drank tea in the same coffee house, next to the same pool with its angel statue. The owner once again insisted that we be his guests.

  When we got back into the car, Alenush laughed. “What do you think he would do if we took him seriously and didn’t pay?” She began to sing an old Armenian song.

  I looked at the river. The water seemed green.

  Part III

  white violets

  ‌

  TOMORROW IT WILL BE EASTER.

  I arrange the white wool bedspread, knitted by my grandmother, on the double bed. It’s made up of small squares of different patterns sewn together. I can’t remember when Grandmother made this bedspread, or for which birthday or anniversary she had given it as a gift to Martha.

  Though there were many brides who came to our family over the years, Grandmother and Auntie Shakeh would only give gifts of their knitting and embroidery to Martha. Grandmother and Auntie used to say, “Only Martha understands their true value.”

  I come out of the bedroom. My slippers make a muffled sound on the stairs. I look at them. The buckle on the left one is coming loose and the gray leather on their tops is tu
rning white.

  A few days ago Danique came to see me, and when she looked at my slippers, she said, “These guys are through with you. Why aren’t you through with them?”

  I’ve known for quite a while now that I should throw them away, but somehow I just can’t. It was Martha who always bought my slippers, like all my other personal things: my shaving cream, my Eau Sauvage cologne and, after Mother died, the green ink for my fountain pen.

  It was my mother who bought me green ink for the first time, along with the fountain pen she gave me as a gift to mark my graduation from high school.

  When I asked, “Why green?” she laughed and shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe just because it’s different from black and blue.”

  My father smirked. “‘It’s different from black and blue!’ Madam insists that all of her things be different from those of other people.”

  My mother looked at him for a few moments and then turned to me. Nowadays, she had to look up at me to meet my eyes, and I had to lean down to kiss her. She said, “Write something, see if you like it.”

  On the corner of the Alik* newspaper that was delivered to our house in the afternoons for my father, I wrote, “Green ink is different from all other inks. I like people and things that are different.”

  Mother laughed. Father looked at us for a minute, then snatched the newspaper off the table and left the room.

  Mother shook her head calmly. “He never understands.”

  From that day until the day she died, it was Mother’s job to buy green ink for my pen.

  One afternoon soon after we were married, Martha and I were sitting with my mother in the courtyard of our house drinking tea. I said to my mother, “I’m out of ink.”

  “Why are you bothering your mother?” Martha asked. “I’ll buy it.”

  My mother put a hand on Martha’s arm. “Will you allow me?” Then she laughed awkwardly and ran her hand over her skirt again and again as though she were trying to wipe something off it. “I never did anything for Edmond when he was a child. From the time he was little, he took care of himself. In the mornings he would get himself up, make his own breakfast, and see himself off to school. He’d put breakfast on the table for me, too.”

  Martha turned and looked at me uncomfortably, then stood up. “More tea?” she asked, and I remembered the breakfasts that I used to make.

  Those early mornings were the best part of my day. The house was quiet and you could hear the incessant chirping of the sparrows that flitted about in the branches of the orange trees in the garden. I left my room, opened Mother’s door quietly and poked my head in. I liked to watch her sleep. She always slept on her stomach, hugging the pillow. Sometimes she smiled in her sleep. I thought she must be having a good dream. In the afternoon when I’d ask, “What did you dream about last night?” she would narrow her eyes and say, “I dreamed of a little boy who poked his head into my room.” “Oh come on!” I’d say. “Really, what did you dream about?” and Mother would describe her dreams to me. It seemed as though she was always running in a huge desert or flying above a jungle. When I got older, I thought she must have had bad dreams, too. But she never told me about those.

  In the early morning the kitchen was all mine. I made tea, laid out the breakfast things, and all the time I talked to myself. Sometimes I was myself, sometimes someone else. My father, my mother, my teachers, my aunt, my grandmother. My morning people were the way I liked them to be. Father was polite and kind, Mother laughed more, my teachers weren’t so strict, Auntie Shakeh and Grandmother liked my mother, and I always had the right answers to give people, which I could never manage in real life. Breakfast finished, I’d gather up the breadcrumbs on my plate and scatter them on the kitchen windowsill. In a minute, the pigeons would arrive. I knew each of them and had names for them all: “Grumpy,” “Dotty,” Fatty,” and “Grand Dame.” When they had finished eating the crumbs, they would cock their heads and look at me, as though waiting for more. Some days, Mother woke up early and came into the kitchen, and we played tea party. I would pour her tea and put it in front of her and say, “Here you are, madam.” She would bow her head and say, “Thank you, sir, forgive me for attending your table without having brushed my hair.” Or when she was still sleepy, she would stare at the sugar bowl or at the cup of tea, and I liked to watch her. If it took too long for her to snap out of it, I would pass my hand in front of her face and say, “Hellloooo…hellooooo,” and she would laugh. I could never decide which I liked better: my mornings with my mother or with my pigeons.

  I go to the kitchen. The coffee pot is in its usual place, hanging from a hook above the sink. I pull a teaspoon out of a drawer on the right, and sugar and Turkish coffee from the cupboard above. I measure out what’s needed: one spoonful of sugar, one spoonful of coffee, one not-quite-full cup of water.

  After four years I still can’t get myself together. Sometimes when I sink into the silence of the house, or glance at a photograph that brings back distant memories, I fall back into my old habits of twenty-odd years and make two cups of coffee. It’s always painful to empty the second cup out into the sink.

  A few days ago when I poured a cup of coffee for myself and saw that there was still coffee left in the pot, I took down the pink coffee cup with its broken handle and filled it. Martha always drank her coffee from that cup. I took the cups to the sitting room and put them on the little side table between the two armchairs. Martha and I sat here every morning and drank our coffee. I sat down in my usual place in front of the window and drank my coffee. I looked out at the garden and talked in a loud voice with the full, handle-less cup of coffee.

  I had bought the set of pink coffee cups in one of the shops near the Qavam al-Saltaneh* intersection, and brought them home along with the news that I’d been promoted to school principal. Alenush wasn’t even born yet.

  The years passed and the cups broke one by one until the only one left was this handle-less, saucer-less cup. Martha would laugh and say, “This last one is my cup of life! If it breaks, that’s the end of me!” And now…

  I sit in my usual place in the sitting room and look out at the garden. A few sparrows are disporting themselves in the dry and cracked earth of the flower bed, flitting about here and there. If they are the same sparrows of years past, do they ask each other why no one has planted violets these past few years? Maybe they aren’t even the same sparrows, though; or maybe they are and they’ve gotten used to a garden without violets. So why can’t I?

  I drink my coffee, light a cigarette, and try to remember all the different kinds of violets that Martha planted for Easter in the garden over twenty-odd years. How many violets had she planted? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? A small mountain of violets. The phone rings.

  As always, Danique’s voice is cheerful and concerned. “What are you up to?”

  “I’m having coffee. What are you doing?”

  “Making kuku sabzi.” She laughs.

  Danique’s clumsiness in the kitchen is an old story.

  Martha always teased her. “They should put your name in the history books. The first Armenian woman who doesn’t know how to cook!”

  Alenush hugged Danique and kissed her. “Don’t be sad, Auntie Danique. I’ve decided never to learn how to cook so that you won’t be lonely.”

  Martha rolled her eyes and said, “God help us!” and all three laughed.

  Danique says, “Please don’t be late, because if you are, I’ll blame the burnt kuku and the mushy rice on you! I’m already blaming the saltiness of the smoked fish on the fish merchant. Eight o’clock sharp.”

  “Eight o’clock sharp,” I promise.

  I return to the sitting room. For the second year I’ll be Danique’s guest for Easter dinner.

  My cousin Arsham, along with the rest of my extended family, moved abroad years ago. Auntie has been one of the “eternal sleepers” for some years now, and it’s been four years since Martha…

  Now I understand why Grandmother didn’t li
ke to talk directly about death.

  Every Sunday I take a bouquet of flowers to the cemetery. On each grave, I place a flower: Grandmother, Father, Mother, Auntie Shakeh. The rest of the flowers are for Martha. Sometimes Danique comes with me. When we get to Martha’s grave, she stands next to me for a few moments. Sometimes she helps me clean the grave, or sits next to me for a while, then gets up. I see her walking among the graves and reading the stones, or disappearing behind the church. Sometimes she goes into the church; I can’t see that well from where I’m sitting. How alone she is, I think. Why doesn’t she take care of herself? Haven’t all these years of penance been enough? I light a little piece of frankincense in a vase and say to myself, That episode was so many years ago. Why can’t I talk to her about it now? I must do something to set her free from her solitude. It’s still not too late. Then I remember what Martha used to say. “Be patient, she’ll tell you herself.”

  Danique returns just as I am finishing my inner dialogue with Martha and have arranged and rearranged the flowers on her grave several times. Her eyes are red. I think, I wish she would talk about it.

  The whole thing began when the school board decided to retire Adamian. Breaking the news to him fell to me. I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Martha said, “He’ll think this is Danique’s doing.”

  Danique had been working in the school for a few months by then, but right from the beginning, Adamian hadn’t got along with her. This wasn’t surprising. Adamian didn’t get along with anyone. Not with the teachers, not with the children’s parents, and not with the students. He only tolerated me, and that was because I tolerated him.

  Martha was right. Adamian didn’t accept that at the age of sixty-five, after forty years of service, it was time to retire, nor that this wasn’t the consequence of scheming and subterfuge. He saw it all as Danique’s doing and when he started to complain about Danique and, as always, I stopped him, he got up, stood facing me, put his hands on my desk and said, “Sir, I am sorry that you prefer an immodest, disreputable woman to an honest employee.”