Sons and Other Flammable Objects

by Porochista Khakpour

  The police officer nodded at it, just barely reading the address. “Okay, so you need your ID, you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, so where’s your ID?”

  He was burning up, sure that the place was heated on top of the actual unprecedented heat of the day. He tapped his pockets absently, as if looking for his wallet, knowing well that he never carried a wallet.

  “I don’t know,” he said to the police officer. “I didn’t think we. …”

  The police officer shook his head at him, as if exasperated. “No ID, no way!” he said again, in his louder lesson-for-the-masses voice. “I suggest you get out of line and come back when you have your ID.”

  He nodded and slowly stepped out of line. The police officer opened the door for him, as if to make sure he went out.

  The next day, he tried again. Same hooded sweatshirt, same cap, same sunglasses. And same situation in the post office: same line, same clerks, same gloves and face masks, same cops, same signs. Even the stamp machines were still “OUT OF ORDER.”

  He was prepared. This time he had his facility ID in his hand, the envelope in the other. He felt better that day. Abnormalities always looked a bit more normal the second day around, he thought. It was back to cold, not yet seasonably cold, but colder and that was good. There were only twelve people ahead of him in line, and one extra clerk was working. The line barely moved but it moved and that was enough. A few still stared but that had to be expected. Soon it would be over.

  When another police officer scanned the line, he flashed the contents of both hands at him. Envelope, ID. The police officer simply nodded.

  When he made it up to a clerk, luckily one without a mask on her face, he presented the two objects silently.

  “How are we today,” the older woman stated absently, not looking up from whatever previous item of business she was wrapping up.

  He shrugged silently.

  She finally looked up at him and, although he suspected he could be imagining it, she squinted at him strangely. “Hello,” she said emphatically, as if she was repeating it.

  He cleared his throat. He had not been prepared to speak on that day. “Hello,” he echoed back, and pushed the envelope and ID closer her way.

  “Just this, regular mail?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She looked at his ID first. She looked up at him, looked back at the ID, looked at him again, and back to the ID. She paused as if she were reading fine print on the ID. Perhaps she could not tell it was he, since he was covered with his hood and glasses and all, he wondered. Perhaps it was the fact that he was from a mental health facility that disturbed her. Perhaps his ID was somehow not valid. He was full of worries and doubts.

  “Bow-back Nez-aim-y?” she stumbled, her finger pointing along what she read.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Am I pronouncing that right?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “How do you say it then?” she said, even smiling in a way he doubted was sincere.

  He cleared his throat again. “Bobak,” he said softly. “Nezami.”

  “Bobak Nezami,” she echoed.

  He nodded. “Bob,” he muttered.

  “Well, Mr. Nezami,” she said, handing back the ID. “I just need you to fill out the return address. …”

  He froze.

  “The return address, please, we cannot have mail go out without a return address,” she said, picking up on the fact that he was not about to move. “New rules.”

  He nodded. It had to be new. He couldn’t believe it. He picked up her pen to fill it out, but then paused. He wasn’t sure what to write, he hadn’t given it much thought.

  “Problem, sir?” the clerk asked, with a small smile still.

  He shook his head. “I mean, yes,” he corrected. “I mean, I hadn’t thought about it. …”

  She nodded as if she understood. “Well, Mr. Nitzoani,” she said, slowly, thoroughly mucking up the name she had worked on in the process, “why don’t you step aside and fill it out over by the form counter and when you’re done you can come right up to the front to me and we’ll take care of this, okay?”

  He stood there frozen.

  “Okay?” she smiled almost maniacally. She looked over his head to the rest of the line and called, “NEXT!”

  He slowly made his way over to the form counter and thought about it. He was just not prepared. He decided to leave. Once outside, he realized he had forgotten to ask for a stamp—he could have just asked for a stamp before he left, surely that wouldn’t have violated new rules? A stamp would have solved everything, he thought. After all, there were still mailboxes on the street, weren’t there? He couldn’t see one, suddenly. He was worried about just what it was that was so wrong these days.

  He thought about going back and asking for a stamp but his time was almost up and he had been late the day before. He could not mess things up at the facility as well.

  Upon returning to his room at the facility, he proceeded to hurl his fists into the wall behind his bed. No one heard, luckily, and he recovered well enough to carry the phone book from the lobby to his room. He closed his eyes and counted to thirteen as he carefully flipped through the white pages. When he stopped, he was on the page headed VACCARO–VARIETY. With eyes still closed, he slid his bruised fingers down a column and when he opened them up, he had it. Someone named “C Vane” with an address. He slowly copied the address onto his envelope, changing the name to his rightful one, “B. Nezami.”

  The next day when he returned—same getup, same lines, same signs, same law enforcement—he was really ready.

  “Is everything okay, then?” he asked the postal clerk, a young man this time who had his face mask around his neck casually. His ID was checked, the sender address was there, it was weighed, he had paid, it was all done, he hoped.

  The young clerk tossed his letter behind him into a giant bin and said, “You’re all taken care of!”

  He was happy; he had been waiting for those words for days. He bowed his head and smiled, and because he wasn’t forced to speak anymore, he simply mouthed the words Thank you. He gave the post office one final glance, relieved that he would not have to return.

  That night, he went home and sighed to himself, There, my part of the deal is up, I have done what I can.

  He knew he owed something to the original sender as well, the man who called himself M. Dill, A Friend of Your Sister’s, who had reminded him that he had a sister, who had explained her life to him in brief, who had sent her address, who had pleaded in his letter that he do it. He owed him a letter, too—it was part of the deal—to tell him he did it, to thank him and to tell him he was welcome both at the same time, but the idea of sending out another letter exhausted him. He didn’t want to go there again. Plus, he had betrayed his sister in the end anyway—he had not attached his real address. He did not want M. Dill ratting him out, remedying the fake-address situation too quickly. By the time M. went around to bring the correct address to his sister, he would be gone from the place. There would be no Bobak Nezami of Kennedy Mental Health Center; he would be out of there and who knows where. It was a comforting thought. The possibilities were endless once they let you go. He dreamed of the island across the bridge just minutes away, he dreamed of the old continents he had once visited thousands of miles away, he dreamed of Tehran specifically and the smell of the year-round summer season in a city built over a desert, he dreamed of the quiet normalcy he was sure existed wherever it was you went when you were done doing what they insisted was living.

  Gigi always loved December—one of her many reasons was because it was the season of good mail. Sure, there were the awkwardly bound packages of sugar cookies and fried cakes from the female relatives in the motherland, the recent photos from her children and husband tucked into simple gifts like scarves and coasters, the odd Feliz Navidad card from an almost forgotten friend from that other home … but the real deal for a promiscu
ously freelance housekeeper and nanny was the cash-stuffed cards of the season. This was the season when it all became worth it—when the Pasadena patrons remembered who exactly it was who was refraining from shuffling around their unguarded jewelry boxes, opting not to dip into their liquor cabinets, deciding against harming their million-dollar china, leaving their private school brats unmolested and unabused. “Housekeeper/nanny” was a lethal combination—everyone owed a woman like that. A woman who had your house and household in her hands, who was hired and rehired to keep her impoverished self out of the dirty dealings expected from housekeepers. Gigi took pride in being honorable because it was a trap—when you’re good, they owe you extra—her being good only reminded them of how bad her type could be.

  So when Gigi rushed to her mailbox compartment and did her usual nothing-can-hurt-me, ignoring the many bills and austere all-capped collection agency letters, she inevitably found what she was looking for. There it was: an oversize red-enveloped Christmas card.

  Oh yes, baby, who owes me?! She looked at the sticker in the upper left-hand corner for the sender and it said: Darius Adam, 7561 Arcadia Dr. #19, Pasadena, CA 91101. It only took her a second of who-the-hell-ing, when suddenly that awkward name rang a bell. Oh no. She ripped open the envelope. … Oh yes, yes it was—the nerve…Gigi was furious … the bitch!

  On the face of the card was a generic green triangle of a tree and inside, Happy Holidays in the usual gold script. It was a cheap card, too—Gigi knew cheap cards well. But the kicker was what else the sender had filled the inside with: no, not money but that horrible overly-formal hodgepodge script that foreigners always had—hell, it takes one to know one—big dumb loops and overdone crosses and inappropriate caps and illegible intermediate lettering. And the weird English, well, that was her all right:

  Hello Gigi!

  Hope you are Happy and all things are Good!

  Sorry to not see you!

  But I’m thinking of You!

  Your old Friend, Lala.

  She thought about ripping the card up but decided instead to call Marvin over for a dinner meeting and let the monstrosity be seen by at least one other person, one who was, incidentally, equally invested, she wagered.

  “See, I told you,” Gigi declared that evening, after he had taken a long disturbed look, over his one single untouched slice of frozen pizza. “Girlfriend ended up a bitch!”

  Marvin nodded slowly, although he wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. By the card’s insult, at least—in real life, he got it. One could argue that in real life Lala Adam was a bitch, all right. The reason was simple: Lala had slipped out of their trio in recent months, but she seemed to add insult to injury by making it seem as if she had never been there in the first place.

  He tried to remember when the hell she got like that and remembered that there was an exact date. How could he forget?—Just three months ago they were slated for their usual Tuesday dinner night together but on that Tuesday, September 11, 2001, they got a call from her saying it would be impossible.

  Why? Family should be together! Gigi had said.

  According to Gigi, she had snapped Exactly and that was why she had to be with her husband.

  But since when did he become your family, sister?! Gigi had argued, adding another more emphatic, SISTER!

  When Gigi had even gone as far as asking her to invite her stupid husband over, too, she had apparently said she could discuss it no further. Marvin and Gigi had spent that evening together with a rented movie that he couldn’t remember. Gigi had insisted there was no point in watching the news, they wouldn’t know anything for another long while anyway and why get miserable over something that didn’t affect them, that was happening across the country—what would be considered a whole other country or two if America was a normal country size! she pointed out. It wasn’t for them to worry about. Did he know anyone there? Marvin said he didn’t. She didn’t either. The people she knew lived in countries where far worse things happened. Mexico! she had cried. Don’t get me started. And, Marv, what about Africa?! He didn’t correct her; he let it go. Later, when they were saying their goodbyes, Gigi had added, It’s just unlucky for her that her son lives there. Or so she says! He hadn’t thought about that. But he had let that one go, too. It wasn’t in Marvin to hold anything against Lala anyway.

  But then just a few weeks after that, he wasn’t so sure. He had rolled into the Eden Gardens garage, waiting to pick up Gigi for their salsa class, and at that same moment, down through the garage, there she was: Lala with her usual outdated feathered and highlighted hair, her heavily made-up skin with its orange bronzes and bitter browns, her hard-heeled walk, her almost militarylike swinging arms, her clenching and unclenching hands with their always polished and always off-color nails, her squinting eyes and moving lips as if in dialogue and in dissent with some idiot apparition in her brain … but no longer in the jeans and plaid, no longer in the New American style they had seen her evolve to. She was in professional-looking clothes: a sweater set—pink knit cardigan over pink knit tank—a gray pleated skirt that came down to her ankles, and the comfort pumps of the workingwomen of commercials. Oddest of all were a backpack on her back and a pile of construction paper. Was she working? Arts? Crafts? College? Kids? What could that woman even do, he wondered?

  He had honked, eager to tell her some news, that he’d had a lead on her what’s-his-name brother—who, while his name had finally appeared right on the money eventually, was always doomed in his own head to the unutterable nonsense-nickname Barback Noussaoui—that it had been easier than he had thought, that private investigations weren’t even necessary if you had a computer and a search engine (and were looking for a loony-tunes bro who had once made the news trying to off himself with hair spray and a lighter in the middle of a Kmart, for God’s sake! but he wasn’t sure if he was going to tell her the full story there). He had honked again. You want to know this, Lala-lady! Girl, this is big! I’m telling you … girl?

  By the fifth or sixth honk, he knew it wasn’t necessary. She had to have seen him—at least had to have spotted the SUV, the SUV with the booming bass she had always tsk-ed at and the “MDILLZ” plate that had always made her laugh! But she just kept on walking, walking off and up the stairs, out of the garage and into her world, whatever the hell it was like in there. He was shocked. It had been a while, but really who was mad at who? What the hell gave her the right to suddenly be so cold, after all he had done for her, after all she didn’t even know he had done for her. …

  When Marvin thought about that—that aggressive disregard, that steely cold shoulder—he tuned back in to Gigi, and threw her a few strong nods as she continued to go on about the card. Suddenly Marvin felt the need to add, “Yeah, well maybe girlfriend had some bitch in her from the get-go.”

  “‘Your old friend,’ it says! Damn right, your old friend!” Gigi was hollering through bites of her third slice. “As if I couldn’t tell you that. And does her towelhead ass even celebrate Christmas? What, is she trying to look normal or something? C’mon, Marv, you know, they’re sketchy. …”

  Marvin had to admit he understood that they. “Well, I mean, it’s odd that we’ve never seen that husband of hers.”

  “I see all sorts of weird dark-haired guys in this building and I think it’s him each time! But, hell, I don’t know. Their type can disguise themselves—look Jew, look Hispanic, you know. That’s how all those Jews get killed by the Palestinians—they disguise, I tell you, they look like whoever they want. But I’m telling you, they’re sketchy and her man is sketchy. She’d tell me things, I mean, I know he was abusive. That’s how they are with their wives—beat them and shit, put them in veils, they don’t care, they’ll get the virgins when they’re dead!”

  Marvin nodded. “She’d always have to sneak out, it’s true.”

  “Yeah, her husband, her son! What the hell kind of woman has these hidden men that she has to run from?! And I tell you, her son being in New York, hmmm, makes yo
u wonder. I mean, obviously he’s okay or else she’d need us then—you can bet she’d be in here needing her old family if he wasn’t. But he’s okay, in New York. Wonder what he does? Piloting maybe?” She cackled wildly. “But you know what I mean … I’m saying, who are these people? Where’s she from again, Iraq?! One of those countries, that’s all I know!” She replaced her empty plate and his still full one with a box of supermarket-brand doughnuts for dessert. “I’ll be honest, Marvy, I barely remember girlfriend—I mean, Bitch. Who cares anyway? I’m not caring about those places, those people, that’s the lesson here—I’m just glad we’re out in the west where we don’t have to bother with caring about it. They don’t want us. And you know what? We don’t want them.”

  “I’d have to agree with you. …” he said, slowly, remembering something, a bit of evidence that could be the final nail in the coffin for ol’ Lala, a now ancient insult that he had let flake off him like dandruff—oh, it had been nothing at the time but when he thought of it now, in the context of everything, oh, he could feel his ancestors shuddering. “I mean, do you know what bullshit she told me once. …” He was getting furious just thinking about it, how did he just take it, why did he just let her take him on that ride, was he even remembering right, could it really be …“that Santa in her country was black!”

  “Bullshit!” Gigi hooted through lips and chin coated white with doughnut sugar, shaking her head, sending sugar gunpowder out her nose and mouth with every angry groan and moan, as if she were some incensed candyland dragon. “What bullshit she would send our way! What insults! Girlfriend Bitch was head-to-toe bullshit.”

  Marvin took half a doughnut, mesmerized by the memory of his acquiescence and her outright, unashamed, downright racist, yes, bullshit. “Big black Osama bin Santa!” he chuckled bitterly, in a voice and manner he found a bit unlike himself—but so what, he was angry. Anger could do that. After all he had done, he felt entitled. He was in the good and it felt good to be in the good. Let her have her nutballs brother, they deserve each other.