The Space Between Us Read online

  I don’t know how I managed to get myself across the street. The door to our courtyard was open. I kicked my school bag out of the way, ran across the courtyard, and leaped up the wooden stairs two steps at a time. Through the open window I saw Mother and Grandmother sitting in the kitchen, but before either of them could say anything, I made it to my room.

  I opened the lid of the matchbox. Then I put my head in my hands and felt the tears running down my face.

  The door to my room opened, startling me. If it was my father, he would taunt me. Real men don’t cry!

  It was my mother. Mother never made fun of me for crying. She cried, too, sometimes, when the house was quiet and nobody else was around. If I put my hand on her shoulder and asked, “Why are you crying?” she would force a smile and say, “Sometimes I just feel sad.”

  Now she put a hand on my shoulder. “Why are you crying?”

  I showed her the ladybug and she took the matchbox from my hand. “Poor thing.”

  This only made me cry harder. “It’s my fault! If I hadn’t taken it out of the garden, or if I hadn’t put it in the matchbox, or if I had remembered to leave a hole in the box…”

  Mother stroked my head gently. “There’s no use crying over spilled milk. Everything and everyone dies eventually. Get up now, get up and go say hello to your grandmother. If you don’t, we’ll really have a disaster.”

  My grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table. As always, she sat up straight on the edge of the chair, as if she was ready to get up and go right then. A white handkerchief bordered with embroidery was tucked into the sleeve of her black dress. My sadness over the ladybug faded. I thought what a shame it was that I hadn’t been here when my grandmother arrived to watch her wipe off the chair before she sat down.

  Whenever my grandmother came to our house, she pulled the white handkerchief out of the sleeve of her dress, which was always black, and dusted off whatever chair she wanted to sit on. It made me think of the Indian magician I had seen a few years ago during the end-of-school-year party, who pulled colored handkerchiefs out of the sleeve of his black coat.

  My father found it funny. “My mother has OCD,” he’d joke. It made my mother mad, though. “So why doesn’t she do it at her daughter’s house then?” she’d ask.

  After I greeted her, my grandmother gave her usual sigh and put a hand on my cheek. “Why does this child get thinner each time I see him?”

  She eyed me as if my imminent death had just been announced. Then she cast the same mournful look over the grape leaves that were spread out on the kitchen table. “Aren’t these leaves wonderful? Soft as velvet. Yesterday I took some for Shakeh, too, and she made such delicious dolma* with them. Fine and even as a strand of pearls. I don’t know if you have the patience for making dolma, though. If you don’t want them…”

  Grandmother stroked the grape leaves regretfully. My mother’s lips tightened into a thin line, then she looked at me and snapped. “Don’t you have any homework to do?”

  In my room I closed my Persian notebook and thought about the composition I was supposed to write in Armenian. The prompt was, What are our responsibilities to our homeland? Each year, ever since we had started writing compositions, we had to write this essay. At first, the responsibilities were simple: we must learn our mother tongue well, we must never forget our homeland, and we must pray to God for the freedom of our homeland. But now that I was in the sixth grade, I thought that perhaps I should try to explain our responsibilities in a more complex fashion.

  Like the other Armenians in our small coastal town, I had only seen Armenia on a map; old maps in textbooks or in the bulky tomes that older people kept in their homes. In Grandmother’s sitting room, there was an enormous antique map of Armenia on the wall: a gift from Mrs. Grigorian.

  Mrs. Grigorian was the only Armenian in our town who had seen Armenia, and what respect she derived from this distinction! She was invited to every engagement party and wedding and baptism, and a place was always set for her at the best table. When dinner was over, the guests would praise the hosts for their generosity, the young couple or the newborn was wished good luck and good health, and then Mrs. Grigorian was asked to talk about her memories of Armenia. Mrs. Grigorian, tiny and thin and blue-eyed, wearing a milky-white dress with a lace collar, would cough a few times, and wait for silence in the room. Then she’d fix her eyes on a salt shaker or a fork or a piece of bread on the table, and begin.

  I knew all of Mrs. Grigorian’s reminiscences by heart, and as soon as she started, I knew immediately which one she was about to tell: the story of her pilgrimage to Ejmiatsin* Cathedral that had lasted forty days, or the ritual of grape-picking in the vineyards, or the tale of her own eventful emigration from Armenia to Iran. The main features of these recollections were the same, but the details changed a little bit each time.

  One night before bed, Grandmother was reading me the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She got to the part where the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. This scene made me cry, and I begged, “This time, let’s pretend the wolf didn’t eat the grandmother.”

  My grandmother laughed. “But we cannot change the story.”

  I looked at the wolf on the cover of the book and said, “So why does Mrs. Grigorian change her stories then?”

  Grandmother’s little eyes grew wide. “‘Therefore why does Mrs. Grigorian change her stories,’ not ‘so why.’ Furthermore, Mrs. Grigorian’s memories are not stories! When you grow up you’ll understand! And let this be the last time I hear you call your elders liars!” She threw the book onto the bed and left the room.

  This wasn’t the first time Grandmother had corrected my Armenian, but I’d never seen her this angry before. I picked the book up gingerly to avoid touching the picture of the wolf, climbed off the mattress, and put the book face down under the bed. If the picture of the wolf was face up at night, I would be afraid and wouldn’t sleep. I got back under the covers and wondered when I had ever called Mrs. Grigorian a liar.

  I thought I might begin my composition with one of Mrs. Grigorian’s stories that had a patriotic slant. However, I wanted to embellish it with a little extra sparkle. If Mrs. Grigorian could add a little something every time she told her stories, why couldn’t I? Then I would finish up with a couple of long and difficult words and patriotic slogans. The Armenian literature teacher loved complicated words.

  I started a few opening sentences and crossed them out. The opening sentence was always the hardest for me. I wished Tahereh were here to help me. Tahereh’s Armenian composition, like the rest of her subjects, was better than everyone else’s, including mine. There wasn’t a child in the school that hadn’t been compared unfavorably to Tahereh at some point: “Aren’t you ashamed? The daughter of the Muslim janitor speaks your mother tongue better than you do!” I wondered what Tahereh would write for her composition. Our motherland wasn’t her motherland, after all.

  I went to the window and stood there trying to think of an opening sentence. From where I stood, I could see the trees in the graveyard, the movement of the tall weeds, and a few gravestones.

  The gravestones behind the church were mostly oblong and small, with stone crosses on them, but there were some bigger graves too with elaborately carved gravestones and memorial statues. One that stood out was a rectangular cube resembling a stone bench which lay in the front courtyard under one of the church windows. There was nothing written on this stone. Not even Grandmother and Mrs. Grigorian knew why it was called the priest’s grave. But on All Saints’ Day, they burned incense on this nameless and unknown grave as they did on all the others.

  I rarely went to the graveyard behind the church. Once I had gone with Grandmother after I had scarlet fever, because Grandmother had made a vow that if I recovered, I would circumambulate the church seven times. And I had gone a few other times after school because Tahereh insisted that playing among the graves was fun.

  Playing among the graves was no fun for me. The p
rincipal’s admonitions not to go there scared me, and the fetid smell and sight of all the mossy crosses made me feel a little sick. The only temptation that induced me to go along with Tahereh, after some pressure, was the statue of the merchant’s wife.

  This was the biggest gravestone: a lifelike statue of a woman sitting on a bench, head bowed over a book held in her hand. Grandmother said that it had been made for the headstone of an Armenian merchant’s grave many years ago. The merchant had traded between Iran and Russia. When he died, his wife commissioned a stonemason to come from Russia to carve a memorial statue. On the first anniversary of the merchant’s death, the statue was placed on the grave, and everyone was surprised to see that it closely resembled the merchant’s wife. And a few days later, she left for Russia, in the company of the stonemason.

  Time and humidity and rain had worn away most of the gravestones, but the marble statue of the merchant’s wife was intact. Tahereh and I had often run our hands over the stone shawl that covered a portion of her stone hair and shoulders. The statue looked so lifelike to me that sometimes I thought I could pull up the shawl to cover the rest of her hair and bare shoulder.

  I drew the heavy curtain over the window and went back to my desk. By the time I had finished copying out my composition in clean handwriting, it was late afternoon. Tahereh would be waiting for me.

  My mother was rolling dolma in the kitchen. “I’m going to see Tahereh,” I said.

  When she didn’t raise her head, I knew she wasn’t in a good mood.

  I made up an excuse. “I need to ask her something.”

  Now she raised her head. “What?”

  I looked at the pile of lumpy, uneven dolma piled in the pot. “Um…I want her to correct my Armenian composition.”

  Mother straightened up so fast that the gold chain with the jeweled cross around her neck swung up and caught on the button of her collar. “You need the daughter of the Muslim janitor to correct your Armenian composition? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  I was used to the fact that Mother went into a bad temper after Grandmother’s visits, but not to this extent. She never called Tahereh “the Muslim janitor’s daughter.” Maybe this time Grandmother had gone too far, or maybe it was because, on top of Grandmother’s visit, Father had said he would be home late.

  I ran a hand over my head. Because of my crew cut, the closely shaved skin on my head tingled and the fine little cut hairs irritated the back of my neck. I looked out of the window at the balcony and tried to come up with a better excuse. The white paint on the balcony rail was peeling off and on the windowsill the leaves of the flowers in the geranium pots were turning yellow. Mother had probably forgotten to water them again.

  I remembered last winter when we had been invited to Auntie Shakeh’s house.

  My aunt had brought out a plate of herbs that she had grown herself in the greenhouse and set it on the table. When guests praised her skills my father had added, “But no one is as skillful as my wife. In a town where even the stones flower, my wife can dry out a tree in two days flat!”

  Grandmother and Auntie, who were the slowest to smile most of the time, laughed the loudest.

  There were still a lot of grape leaves and dolma filling on the table. Sensing that pushing the point wouldn’t help, and just to say something, I asked, “Are we having dolma for dinner?”

  Mother didn’t answer. I was thinking of calling out to Tahereh from the window to say that I wasn’t coming when one of the grape leaves burst in Mother’s hand and the stuffing spilled onto the table. My mother clenched her fist, pounded on the table, and said, “Dammit!”

  Suddenly I had an idea. “Your dolma are much better than Auntie Shakeh’s.”

  Mother remained silent for a few moments. Then she unclenched her fists slowly. “Go,” she said. “But come back soon.”

  As I closed the door to the house, I took a deep breath. A raindrop fell on my head. The smell of fresh bread drifted over from the bakery near our house. I thought of going to buy sweet buns. Tahereh loved sweet buns. Then I realized that if it started to rain, we wouldn’t be able to play. On the other side of the street, the lights of the sherbet shop were on. Mrs. Grigorian was standing behind the counter and talking with a man and woman, each of whom had a glass of sherbet in their hands.

  I didn’t like any of Mrs. Grigorian’s sherbets – not the sour cherry nor the orange, and not the lemon either – but I loved the sherbet machine that had three tall, thin glass urns with fine etchings of flowers and leaves. On the two outer vessels, two eagles stood with open wings, looking at one another. Above the sherbet machine, on the wall of the shop, was a large oil painting of the two peaks of Mount Ararat:* Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat. Mrs. Grigorian had brought the painting with her from Armenia. My father, who was a member of the church and school council, said that Mrs. Grigorian had willed that the painting be left to the school when she died. Tahereh had asked me a few times, “But what about the sherbet machine?” and I had asked my father, “But what about the sherbet machine?” but all he did was shrug.

  The couple left the shop. Mrs. Grigorian’s hand was moving in a circle over the counter. I knew she was wiping it with her white flowered tea towel.

  Mrs. Grigorian’s tea towels were all white and flowered. Large flowers or small, red or yellow or blue. Knowing the names of the flowers on the tea towel was one of the special games that Tahereh and I had made up. When I was in first grade, on the afternoon that I learned the letter “L” in Persian and I could write “tulip,” I went with my father to Mrs. Grigorian’s sherbet shop. My father and Mrs. Grigorian talked and I examined the colored flowers on the crumpled tea towel on the counter.

  My father said, “He has been the school janitor for many years. Now that his daughter has reached school age, it would not be pleasing to the Lord to send her far away to another school because she is not Armenian. The council has agreed that the little girl can attend our school, may it please God.” He was talking in the same stilted and self-important tone that he did at home whenever he practiced his speeches for the church and school meetings.

  Mrs. Grigorian put a glass of sour-cherry sherbet in front of me.

  “I don’t like sherbet,” I said. “Are the flowers on your tea towel tulips?” I said “tulip” in Persian and Mrs. Grigorian laughed. “‘Tulip’ in Armenian is kakach.”* Then she turned to my father and said more seriously, “You are right. The Lord would not be pleased.”

  I walked through the open school gate into the courtyard. Nobody was there. I ran until I reached the priest’s grave. I hoisted myself up and sat down on it. My feet didn’t reach the ground but swung in the air. The wind murmured against my scalp. I ran a hand over my head and prayed that Tahereh wouldn’t laugh at my ridiculously short haircut. My back was to the church. The classroom lights on the top floor of the school were all turned out, apart from in the first room on the right where an open window emitted yellow light. The principal of the school lived here. Among the row of classrooms on the lower floor, again only one light was on. This was the room where Tahereh lived with her mother and father. I focused for so long at the school building with its dark exterior and the two lit windows that it started to look like a face with a large gaping mouth and two loose teeth. At first this made me laugh, but then my head turned involuntarily and I glanced at the church behind me and became afraid. A chill crept over me from the gravestone. Why hadn’t Tahereh come? I looked at the door to the janitor’s room, then towards our own house. There was no one at the windows. I jumped off the gravestone and ran.

  Tahereh’s mother opened the wooden door. Her chador had fallen around her shoulders. She looked at me and smiled, then reached up a hand slowly to push back her long, straight hair. Of all the women I had seen, Tahereh’s mother was the thinnest and tallest. She didn’t say much, and I had never heard her laugh out loud. She walked as though she were gliding. Each time I saw her I thought of small waves in the sea that came softly, washing
over the seashells and retreating slowly. To my twelve-year-old eyes, Tahereh’s mother was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  As though she had suddenly become cold, she drew her chador up and said, “Are you here to see Tahereh? Come in. She is saying her prayers.”

  She leaned on the door. The gems on her pendant earrings were like pomegranate seeds.

  There was an acrid smell inside. Tahereh was standing in the middle of the room. She was wearing a flowered chador that went to the floor. I could only see the round of her face, which was looking intently at the ceiling. There were no chairs in the room. I sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. Now Tahereh was looking at her feet.

  I was so preoccupied with her prayers that I didn’t notice her father at first. Thin and swarthy, knees drawn up to his chest, he was sitting in the other corner of the room smoking. I started to say hello, but then I saw that his eyes were closed.

  Tahereh’s mother remained in the doorway with her back to the room.

  I tilted my head to see if the windows of our house were visible or not. They weren’t. I busied myself watching Tahereh and thinking that if Grandmother knew that Tahereh recited her daily prayers, what would she say?

  Tahereh was the only non-Armenian in our town who didn’t make Grandmother’s brows furrow. In the presence of Grandmother, no one was permitted to speak sloppy Armenian or to introduce a word of Persian. Tahereh spoke with Grandmother and the principal and the teachers as though she were reading from an Armenian textbook. She came with us to church on Sundays, and, just like Grandmother, closed her eyes firmly, knelt to pray, and crossed herself. She knew all the prayers and hymns by heart.

  I could never concentrate in church. I played with the candle wax that dripped onto my hand, or stared at the light from the stained-glass windows illuminating the painting of Jesus and Mary that hung over the altar. The smell of incense made me sleepy and when I was startled out of my daze, my gaze immediately would be drawn to Tahereh, earnestly praying or listening intently to the priest. I used to feel ashamed and tell myself, Edmond, you’re not a real Christian! The same thing that Grandmother said of everyone, either to their face or behind their backs. Then I’d take a deep breath and try to pull myself together to become a real Christian, but in that very moment, no matter where she was sitting in that little church, Tahereh would turn in my direction and wink or pull a face. I’d laugh aloud, forgetting the priest and church and faith completely. I was always being nudged by Mother or Grandmother for laughing inappropriately in church. And when I looked at Tahereh again, it was as though nothing had happened; she was staring at the altar, or her eyes were closed in prayer.