The House on Carnaval Street

by Deborah Rodriguez

  “Uh, that’s just not doable. Our orders in this type of circumstance are to A, provide a business card, and B, remove ourselves from the situation.” The young man turned to his partner for confirmation.

  “C’mon, guys! If you do that all hell will break loose. You have no idea how sensitive this situation is.” I couldn’t help but think what would happen to my business if anything went down here. For sure a security alert would go out, and the beauty school, salon, and coffeehouse would all be off-limits to half the people in town. And the other half would be too afraid to come anywhere near us.

  The blonde was on her phone, dialing for backup. Reza was staring at me anxiously, waiting for an answer. I rushed across the street.

  “Don’t worry,” I assured the taxi driver in loud, slow Dari. “The foreigners will make good. Don’t worry.” Reza echoed my words at the top of his lungs, his voice bouncing off the shabby storefronts.

  Just as I finished, a trio of black Hummers screeched to a halt beside us, spitting out six huge men with weapons drawn and ready for a fight.

  “Are you guys stupid or what?” I yelled as I ran back across the street. “Is this your first fucking rodeo? I’m telling you, we will have a riot on our hands if you keep this up.” Again I walked from gun to gun, pushing the noses of the rifles down toward the ground. I was sick of our neighborhood being overrun by tanks that would practically demolish a car in a blink. For those of us who lived there, Afghans and foreigners alike, just trying to lead a normal life was getting near to impos­sible. Too much stupid shit was happening. And now the place was crawling with private security companies who seemed to be making up the rules as they went along. They had their guns, and they’d do whatever they wanted to do to whomever they wanted to do it to. And if there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s bullies.

  By this time the Afghans weren’t sure which was more entertaining—the taxi driver ranting over his broken car, or the crazy woman fighting with the mercenaries.

  “Back up! Back up!” the mercenaries screamed at me.

  “You need to clean up your mess!” I screamed right back.

  “We’re not cleaning up anything! Back up!”

  By now we were nose to nose, or rather nose to noses, me right in the face of this chorus line of idiots, their guns once again poised for action.

  “Lady,” the biggest one of the group shouted, “this isn’t your concern. You need to back up! Now! Let’s roll, guys!”

  “Roll? You were fucking rolling, man! Your guy was rolling so fucking fast that his tire didn’t just fall off, it flew off and nearly took off my head! The cabbie just wants a hundred bucks to fix his car. Just do it, man!”

  “I said, let’s roll!” he shouted again, louder.

  As he raised his arm to signal for the rest to follow, I swiftly grabbed his wrist. “You are not going fucking anywhere until this guy gets his money!” I hissed.

  By now the crowd had grown silent. You could almost see them placing mental bets on who was going to win this fight.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he yelled in my face.

  “Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck am I? I’m Debbie, the fucking hairdresser, asshole, and I am telling you to hand over the money now!”

  Behind him, the team of mercenaries started rummaging through their pockets. One handed me a twenty, another a ten. Before long I had the hundred dollars and started to head over to the cab. I turned to the mercenary leader. “Now get out, and get out fast.”

  They loaded up, rogue tire and all, and were gone in a flash. I cautiously scanned the silent crowd as I handed the driver his money, knowing things could still go either way, and fast. All of a sudden I heard a single clap, then another, until the crowd erupted into a cheering, whistling serenade that followed Reza and me as we ran, laughing, all the way to the coffeehouse.

  Where had that woman gone? I desperately needed her back to talk some sense into the other one who had panicked at the sound of falling leaves the night before. I deepened my breaths and closed my eyes. When I awoke with a start thirty minutes later, I was surprised to find myself still alone in the truck. Ten minutes more passed, and still no Mike, no Shelly. Must be one long line for that toilet, I thought. After ten more minutes I checked my phone for messages. No reception. All of a sudden it felt as though a switch had been flicked on inside my head, and I began to panic. What if something had happened? What if they fell off a cliff ? What if they ran into a bear? And the weirdest thing is, all I could think of was how would I ever get myself home. Who would I contact? Was there anyone who would help me? I could have sworn my heart was going to beat its way right out of my chest.

  After a few more minutes I was circling the truck, gasping for air, tears streaming down my cheeks. Too scared to wander even twenty feet away, for fear I couldn’t find my way back again, I must have looked like an escapee from a mental hospital to the park ranger patrolling the area.

  “Is everything okay, ma’am?” he asked as he approached with caution.

  “It’s . . . I’m . . . my friends . . .” I sobbed, the snot dribbling down my lip.

  “Deb! What’s going on?” I turned to see Mike coming toward me, with a dripping chocolate ice-cream cone in each hand. “Are you all right?”

  And that’s when it began to hit home that I really wasn’t.

  Back on top of Bell Mountain, my bizarro self continued to reign.

  On top of that, the passivity that had seeped into my veins somehow convinced me that allowing myself to become more than just friends with Mike would be okay.

  I was already sort of notorious for my questionable choices in men. Though they weren’t always to blame for the failures in our relationships, I had by now gone through a boatload of bad matches, including my polygamous wannabe Afghan warlord, to whom I was still married, who could now have me stoned to death for adultery, and who was the reason I couldn’t go back home to Kabul in the first place.

  But this one, at that time, seemed different. Mike and his mother, who lived next door, were like a big hug and a soothing Band-Aid rolled into one, particularly after what I had been through. It seemed to just be part of their way to take others under their wing—they liked to save and fix people. So I did my best to settle into my new role as the needy person in the group. Who knew? Maybe I just might find my happy ending after all.

  Despite my attempts at fitting in, things quickly started to go from bad to worse. I was still often too paralyzed to leave the house, and inside the house I wasn’t faring much better. The bare white walls seemed to be closing in on me. Of course, there was no way I was going to make new friends if I didn’t get my ass off that futon, so I had nobody to talk to. And for once in my life, I had nothing to say. The only thing I felt like talking about was Afghanistan, and the only people I really wanted to be with were people who had been through the same sort of things I had. I didn’t figure there were many of those in the Napa Valley.

  To complicate things even further, a mini media backlash to the success of The Kabul Beauty School arrived at my door with an unexpected slap in the face. I felt I had been doing everything in my long-distance power to make sure my girls in Kabul would be okay. I was hardly prepared to deal with the accusations to the contrary that were being made, accusations that I now suspect might have been instigated by a certain someone over there who, how shall I say, did not have my best interest at heart. She went there only to make money, some said. She endangered those girls, claimed others. But regardless of how the stone throwing began, it hurt me deeply.

  I was an emotional basket case. Opening a can of beans, taking out the trash, or even getting dressed in the morning would suddenly make me burst into tears. I would be fine one minute, then depressed and lifeless the next.

  One morning, after a particularly rough night, I decided to swallow my pride and go for some advice. And for that, who better than a fellow hairdress
er?

  Mike had introduced me to Deena shortly after I arrived in Napa. I figured she already knew a bit about my situation, so I summoned my courage and slowly made my way down Bell Mountain Road to her salon and plopped myself down for a shampoo, diving right into how depressed I had been. “It’s devastating, you know, not being able to go back. I miss my girls, and I worry about them.” She nodded as she wrapped my head in a towel and motioned toward the chair. I continued to blather on and on. In the mirror, I could see her eyes glazing over. “My whole life was there. Do you know how it feels to leave everything, and I mean everything, behind? My clothes, my photos . . . I feel like I even left my soul in Kabul.”

  Deena deftly twisted a hunk of my hair up into a clip. “I don’t get it, Debbie. Why can’t you go back to Cabo?”

  “Cabo? I said Kabul. As in Afghanistan?” So much for my hairdresser theory. Apparently this girl didn’t know Baja from Bagram. So, quickly and efficiently switching gears, I filled her in on my night in Yosemite. As I was paying, she wrote something down on the back of one of her cards and handed it to me. Steve Logan, Therapist.

  I called right away for an appointment, only to learn that Steve Logan, Therapist, was going to cost me $130 an hour.

  “An hour?” I was barely able to conceal my shock. “That’s over two dollars a minute!” I gasped, quickly doing the math in my head.

  “Uh-huh,” the uninterested receptionist replied. “That’s the fee with the discount for the uninsured. Cash only. You want it or not?” Clearly she was not trained to recognize a woman on the edge.

  “That’s a discount?” I must have been completely out of touch with prices in the States because to me, that sounded like a lot of money. Most families in Afghanistan don’t make that much in a month. For days I kept doing the math, calculating how many people I could have fed back in Kabul, how much rice I could have bought. The hefty price tag didn’t even come with a money-back guarantee if I didn’t manage to ­salvage my sanity.

  I called my friend Karen back in Michigan, who assured me that I wasn’t being self-indulgent and ordered me to stop being so stupid. “Debbie, you’re not in Afghanistan anymore.”

  To me that seemed to be my biggest problem: I wasn’t in Afghanistan anymore. I didn’t want to be in California. I just wanted to go home. And the only place that felt like home, the first place where I’d ever experienced the feeling that I was liv­ing where I was meant to live and doing exactly what I was meant to do, was lethally off-limits. Now I wasn’t sure where home was, and it was slowly killing me. I sat in the house for the next two days, counting the hours until my appointment.

  I eagerly pushed open the door to the office to a barrage of tinkling bells and twinkling lights. Dozens of wind chimes and tiny mirrors were suspended throughout the reception area. With no magazines in sight, I sat and concentrated on how I was going to tell my story without using up the entire hour. All I was looking for was a little direction and encouragement that, whatever this was, it was fixable. And I was determined to do it in one session. Who could afford to take more time than that?

  “You see,” I said once I was seated inside on a leather love seat, “my story is rather long, and a bit complicated. I spent the last five years in Afghanistan.”

  Steve Logan nodded his sandy-haired, balding head, clearly unimpressed, as if I’d just told him something he’d heard a million times before—like that I felt underappreciated by my spouse, or that I couldn’t sleep at night. That’s when I decided to amp it up and try to get my money’s worth. “I moved to Afghanistan after 9/11, started a beauty school, married an Afghan a few months after we’d met, learned he already had a wife and seven or eight kids living in Saudi Arabia. I wrote a book, opened up a coffee shop, went back to the States for a book tour, and somewhere in the middle of that my husband turned on me. I went back to Kabul, discovered there was a plot to kidnap my son, then fled the country in fear for my life. I’ve lost everything, miss my girls from Kabul, feel homeless in my new home, and am rapidly starting to lose my mind. Am I crazy? Is there a cure? You guys don’t use electric shock anymore, do you?”

  Dr. Steve was expressionless, not amused in the slightest by my attempt at levity. The guy should have been a poker player. He started to jot something down. I was sure there was total nut job scribbled somewhere in his notes.

  I waited for some sort of wisdom to come out of his mouth. Silence. Did he want me to say something else? Should I have added that my Afghan husband worked for a big warlord in Kabul? Perhaps the fifteen-minute abridged version hadn’t been the best approach. I wiped a rogue tear from my cheek. Then I remembered how much I was paying him. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Would I get credit for the nontalking time? Talk, damn it! The hour was going to be done before he stopped with his stupid notes. Stop writing and just fix me!!! I screamed in my head.

  Finally he looked up and said, without an ounce of inflection in his voice, “You have really gone through a lot.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “I have, Doc, and frankly I’m not doing so well. Do you know what’s wrong with me? Can you fix it?”

  “Well”—he paused, drawing out his words—“it’s likely.”

  It was likely he knew what was wrong, or likely that he could fix me? I looked down at my watch. Ten minutes to go. He returned to his notes. Clearly he was not in a hurry. Then he looked up and asked, “Do you live in the area?”

  “Yes,” I replied. Really? Focus on me, man, not where I live. I need to know what to do. I’m on the edge of a cliff, buddy, and I need you to help me.

  He took out his calendar. “Let’s make an appointment for next week.”

  What, next week? You’re kidding me. He’s got to be kidding me. I barely made it through the past two days and you want me to wait until next week? Please, please, don’t do this to me!

  “In the meantime, I have some homework for you that should really help your healing.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief. Homework, thank God. Maybe some sort of writing or drawing exercises. I had heard about those. I rummaged in my purse for a pen and paper.

  “The area you live in has lots of glowworms,” he began, clasping his hands. “I want you to go into the fields at night and sit with the glowworms.”

  I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I waited for him to start laughing at his own joke. But his expression remained unchanged as he continued: “I also want you to mow the lawn in your bare feet and get in touch with Mother Nature.”

  And that’s when his little timer went off. Ding! My hour was up!

  I just sat there as he wrote up his bill and motioned me toward the door. I could barely utter a thank you. No meds, no workbook, no “things I need to be grateful for” list. Nothing. It would have felt better to burn my money than to give it to this quack.

  I left his office in stunned silence, and $130 lighter. At that point, I had lost all hope. There seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel, unless, of course, it was just a bunch of glowworms.

  In the meantime, I was becoming increasingly disturbed over my inability to appreciate the life I had. I may have been living a lot of people’s dreams out in sunny California, but it didn’t seem to be mine. I was that square peg hopelessly hoping to suddenly fit into that round hole. But it wasn’t happening, and I hated myself for that.

  It was doubly tough, because despite my reputation as the life of the party, there is a part of me, deep down inside, that’s really a homebody. There is nothing I love more than snuggling up in my own space, surrounded by my own stuff. But this wasn’t my own space, and this wasn’t my own stuff.

  I’m a treasure keeper, just like my mom. We both need to have familiar things around us. She kept everything—all my teeth, my drawings, my crummy report cards. She would have kept my fingernail clippings if my dad had let her. Me, I’m more of the souvenir type, filling home after home with memories o
f the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. So when an electrical fire destroyed her house in Michigan during my stay in Afghanistan, my mother and I were both devastated. Thank goodness she and Noah, who was living with her at the time, got out unharmed. But she had everything in that house—my first rocking chair, my dad’s pipe, my old prom dresses, our family photos, my kids’ baby books—most of it gone. And my stuff ? My home was going to be in Kabul, so being who I was, I had found a way to have a bunch of my things thrown into a shipping container, and nine months later it arrived at my door. Every trip to Michigan involved lugging back at least one extra suitcase crammed with more of my little treasures. I can only guess where all that stuff is now. I’m sure Sam has given away or sold most of it. I did see a photo on Facebook of the wife of one of his friends, a woman in Kabul, wearing my pashmina scarf and the blue dress made from fabric I bought in Turkey. I remember that woman complimenting me on that outfit once. In the photo, I could see she was even wearing the gold filigree earrings Sam had once given me.

  Now, after having everything ripped out from under me in Kabul, an obsession with homelessness was beginning to gnaw at me. The nightmare of my mom’s fire, memories of not being able to get my hands on the last photos ever taken of my dad, it seemed to be all crashing down on me. But it was clear that it was about more than just losing my possessions; it was about losing control of my life. I was no longer in charge of my own fate. My home had become a symbol of that. And trying too hard to make somebody else’s home my own was turning into a disaster.

  On top of that, as strange as it sounds, even though I still longed for the craziness of Kabul, here in peaceful, safe Napa my fears just kept getting worse. A beautiful display of fireworks at a family graduation ceremony left me shaking uncontrollably. A trip across the Bay Bridge became a nightmare when I found myself driving the off-ramps in circles, unable to find my way out. So when I was invited to tag along with Mike on a trip to Oregon to pay a visit to a sick relative, I jumped at the chance for a diversion. Maybe a change of scenery after a couple of months on top of that hill would be just what I needed to yank me out of my dark place.