Veil of Roses

by Laura Fitzgerald

  “My parents told me. I suppose I should congratulate you.”

  We sigh at the same time.

  “Oh, Tami, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She sounds desperate in a way I have not heard from her before. My heart breaks for her.

  “What’s wrong, Minu Joon?”

  “Oh, Tami,” she weeps. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  She repeats herself and it alarms me. Her mother committed suicide when Minu was a baby, and each time we hear of a girl who has ended her life, Minu presses for details. She finds the idea of suicide admirable, for it is a way for a woman to seize control of her life, if only for the briefest of moments.

  “What do you mean, Minu?”

  “His parents are so awful. His father is very rough, very demanding.”

  “Of you?”

  “Of his wife. Of Seyed. He treats them so badly, I wonder sometimes if he is on drugs. And his mother, oy! No woman would be good enough for her son, least of all silly old me.”

  Here is a joke Minu and I have laughed at over the years: A young Persian man excitedly tells his mother he’s fallen in love and is going to get married. He says, “Just for fun, Maman, I’m going to bring over three women and you try to guess which one I’m going to marry.” The mother agrees. The next day, he brings three beautiful women into the house and sits them down on the couch and they chat for a while. He then says, “Okay, Maman, guess which one I’m going to marry.” She immediately replies, “The one on the right.” The son claps. “That’s amazing,” he says. “You’re right. How did you know?” The Persian mother replies, “Because I don’t like her.”

  This joke is really not very funny. I don’t know why we ever thought it was.

  “Oh, Minu,” I commiserate. “Does Seyed know of your concerns? Perhaps he might agree to live apart from them.”

  “They’ve got an apartment for us above theirs,” she informs me glumly. “And now I fear that Seyed will be like his father in marriage. It is what he learned. It is all he knows.”

  Oh, my poor Minu. My sweet, dear Minu. She is as deserving of happiness as anyone. And yet it will be denied her. She knows it; I know it.

  “You just tell them the bride has gone to pick flowers,” I tell her. “And then run out of there, down the street in your wedding dress, as fast as you can!”

  She laughs. During Iranian weddings, the man performing the ceremony asks the bride if she agrees to marry the groom. When the bride does not reply, the guests cry out, “The bride has gone to pick flowers.” The woman is asked again, “Do you agree to marry this man?” Again, she stays silent. Again, the guests cry out, “The bride has gone to pick flowers.” It is only after the third time she is asked that the bride says yes.

  “That would be a sight, wouldn’t it?” Minu asks, her voice breaking.

  “I’m sorry, Minu,” I whisper.

  “Me, too,” she whispers back.

  We both know it will not happen. Our bride will not get to pick flowers. And I no longer have the heart to share my concerns about marrying Haroun. Next to what she faces, I should consider myself lucky.

  When I arrive at class the next day, everyone else is already there. Conversation stops. All eyes turn toward me. Even Danny, who usually keeps himself out of the conversations until class begins, looks at me with a worried look.

  “Well?” Eva demands.

  “Well what?” I do not like being put on the spot in front of everyone like this.

  “How was dinner?” Eva asks. “Any interesting news for us?”

  She has told them all. This bothers me, for I would have preferred for my situation to be private. I would have preferred to arrive at class one day already married, and simply share my news then. But now they all know of my dilemma, my quest. I look at each of my classmates in turn. Edgard raises his eyebrows at me. Nadia looks scared. Agata looks mildly curious, and Josef looks ready to pounce.

  I sigh. I may as well get this over with now. “I expect that I shall get engaged very soon, perhaps as early as this weekend. And this is good, I am happy, because I will get to stay in America. My fiancé is a very nice man.”

  “Hooray!” yells Agata, raising both fists in the air in a victory cheer. “Hooray for Tami!”

  Josef comes up to me and pats my hand. “Good girl, good girl. I am sure you have made your parents very happy.”

  “I hope so.” I smile at him.

  “When’s the date?” Edgard asks.

  “I don’t know exactly, but sometime in the next few weeks.”

  Nadia smiles bravely at me, but I can tell my news makes her want to cry.

  “We need to have Nadia’s baby shower soon, then, so we can have your wedding shower the weekend after that,” Eva pronounces.

  “You don’t need to have a party for me,” I protest.

  “Girlfriend, if you’re getting married, you need some serious lingerie and, a-hem, bedroom toys.”

  Bedroom toys!

  Even after all these weeks, Eva still shocks me speechless on a regular basis. I give her the wide-eyed look of disapproval that she has come to know so well.

  “Eva! These are not matters to discuss in front of everyone!”

  Edgard and Josef snigger like teenage boys. “Please, discuss away. Pretend we are not even here,” Edgard says with a wave of his hands. “Right, Josef?”

  “Absolutely. We are not even flies on the wall.”

  “We could combine parties,” Nadia suggests.

  “Oh, no,” I disagree. “Having a baby is such a special thing. You must have your own party.”

  She makes a face. “I do not think I will be able to go to your party if it is not held at the same time as mine.”

  “That man is such a—” Eva starts in on her like she always does.

  Agata quickly interrupts. “He vill let you a-go to your own a-party, though, von’t he?”

  Nadia nods. “He knows we need things for the baby. Especially with his hours cut, every little bit will help. So if we could combine my party and Tami’s, it would be for the best.”

  Her eyes have dark circles under them, and her hair looks stringy, as if she has not shampooed it in several days. I am so worried for her. I reach out and squeeze her hand. “It’ll be fun to have it together.”

  Danny has let us converse well into the start of the class, but he finally calls us to order. We work for over an hour on practicing proper use of participles and how to avoid dangling them. I pay careful attention and participate fully, as always, and soon enough, class is dismissed.

  “Come on,” says Eva, pulling me up from my chair. “Let’s go tell your boyfriend that you’re going to marry the fruitcake.”

  My eyes sink shut. I am tired of her lack of sensitivity.

  “Haroun is not a fruitcake,” I say. “He is going to be my husband.”

  “Not if Ike has anything to say about it.”

  I grab Eva’s arm and dig in with my nails. “He must never know.”

  She shrugs. “You know he’s going to find out.”

  She tries to pull back, but I keep my grip on her. “He’s not. You need to promise me—promise me—you will never breathe a word of it.”

  “Is that what you really want, Tami?”

  She yanks her arm away.

  “Yes.”

  “Then fine. I won’t say a word about it.”

  “I don’t want to go to Starbucks anymore,” I tell her. “I don’t think it’s right, now that I’m almost engaged.”

  “Good. I’m sick of coffee.”

  We decide to go to Park Place Mall and shop for baby gifts for Nadia. While waiting for the bus, we sit on a bench and close our eyes and lift our faces upward to bask in the beautiful March sun. I have peeled off my sweater and sit there in my Levi’s and turquoise camisole and I feel like my soul is healing somehow with each ray of sun that pierces my skin. Feeling the sun on one’s body should be a basic human right afforded to all. Chadors. Death out for a walk is how G
uy de Maupassant way back in the nineteenth century described women in chadors. Never again, I resolve. Never again will I veil myself from the sun.

  “You know what?” I tell Eva. “Marrying Haroun is good.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.”

  “Did he do anything goofy last night?”

  I chuckle. I tell Eva how he took out an antiseptic wipe after touching my hand across the table and methodically wiped all evidence of me from his body.

  We share a laugh.

  I tell her how he slammed on his brakes on the way home, claiming a dog had run out in front of the car, which was completely his craziness talking.

  We share another laugh.

  I tell her how he asked me to open all the doors—to the restaurant, to my house, to the passenger side of the car where I sat, so he would not have to absorb their germs.

  I sigh. “But other than that, we had a really nice time.”

  She kicks my shin with the side of her leg.

  “I bet you’ll die a virgin,” she says.

  I laugh and I feel the sunshine even on my teeth. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

  “Sex isn’t exactly a sterile endeavor, you know.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have a marriage without sex.”

  Eva reaches over and slaps her hand over my mouth. “Blasphemy!”

  I bite her hand, and she pulls it back. “Seriously, Eva, if it means I get to stay in America, that’s just fine with me.”

  “You’ve never had sex, right?” She asks this scornfully.

  “Of course not!”

  “Ever had an orgasm?”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Oh, girlfriend! We are going right to Borders when we get to the mall. I’m going to buy you a book about sex. A very graphic book about sex.”

  I feel my cheeks redden. I am so very grateful we are alone at the bus stop.

  “And then you can hide it in the grass next to your shoes!” she jokes.

  I laugh. “I won’t have to hide it! I am getting married now. Maryam won’t mind if I have a book about sex. She might even buy me one herself.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Jesus, you people are nuts. Porno books are okay, but walking shoes are not.”

  Then she gets an idea. Her mouth opens very big and she clutches my arm. “I know! I think before you’re willing to give it up forever, you should at least have sex, so you know what you’ll be missing! So you can make an informed decision!”

  She nods at me like this is a brilliant idea.

  “Right. And how am I supposed to do that?”

  She raises her eyebrows at me a few times and grins. “I’m sure Ike would be willing to help out in that regard.”

  “Are you crazy?” At the very mention of Ike’s name and the word sex, my body feels all squishy and warm.

  “You’re the crazy one,” she insists. “Ike’s totally hot.”

  “Haroun won’t marry me if I’m not a virgin.”

  “He’ll never know.”

  “He wants me to see his doctor for a full physical to make sure I’m completely healthy before we get married. So trust me, he’d know.”

  Eva looks disgusted. “What is this?” she demands. “Why are you letting yourself be treated this way? Aren’t you humiliated that he’d even suggest such a thing?”

  Aaargh. Eva only sees the world from her happy, sex-filled, gender-equal, German perspective. Telling her things about my life is really pointless. I don’t know why I bother.

  “This sun feels wonderful, doesn’t it?” I say, turning my face back up to it and closing my eyes once again. “In Tehran, there is so much smog it feels as if the sun never gets through like it does here.”

  “Living under the clouds of smog,” Eva drawls sarcastically. “That’s so symbolic.”

  I elbow her and open my eyes because I hear a bus roaring down Broadway Boulevard toward us. I stand and grab her hand to pull her up. She swishes her hair from side to side, then grabs hold of her breasts and repositions them so they are as perky as can be, and tugs the waist of her skirt so it rides as low on her hips as possible. Her flat, tanned stomach is on display for all to see.

  My friend Eva, I think with sudden affection. She wouldn’t last an hour on the streets of Tehran.

  This is my first bus ride in America, so I let Eva lead the way. We board at the front of the bus. She pays the driver by slipping change into the dispenser, then grabs the first available row she can find, which is just a few rows from the front. I sit next to her and look around, at the advertisements, the male passengers in front and behind us, and marvel at the modernity of the bus. Back home, the buses are pre-revolution.

  I turn to Eva with indignant glee. “I can’t even tell you how much I enjoy doing these sorts of things. Back home, women have to board the bus in the back and stay in the back so the men do not even see us. This is so crazy—I am not being corrupted just from riding a bus!”

  Here’s an example of how topsy-turvy things are in Iran—we have these restrictions on buses, yet men and women cram into taxis together. As a joke, we call dating “going for a taxi ride.”

  Eva leans her head against the window and looks at me. “What would happen in Iran if you moved to the front of the bus and sat down?”

  I snort with incredulity. “I never would.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’d be dragged off the bus and arrested.”

  “What if every woman moved to the front of the bus?”

  “They wouldn’t!”

  “But if they did?”

  I raise my hands and speculate. “We’d all be taken to jail. Beaten, maybe.”

  “And if you kept on doing it?”

  “What, do you think we’re insane?”

  “I’m just saying, there’s power in numbers.”

  “There’s power in guns,” I tell my naïve friend.

  I can tell Eva is frustrated with me. “Do you know who Rosa Parks was?”

  I shake my head.

  “Danny told us all about her last semester. It used to kind of be the same way here, only not with men and women but with blacks and whites. Blacks had to ride in the back of the bus and had to give up their seats to white people if all the seats were taken. And after doing this for years and years, one day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.”

  Terror strikes my heart. “What happened?”

  “She got arrested. Then she got bailed out and the whole city of Montgomery, Alabama, exploded. Blacks started striking and refused to ride the bus until they could sit where they wanted and didn’t have to give up their seats to anyone. And the whole town more or less ground to a standstill. Economically, the town couldn’t survive without the black workers.”

  “Did they ever get the law changed?”

  “You bet.” Eva nods proudly, as if she took part herself. As if we could all just do the same thing in Iran and things would get better for us.

  “Well, America is all about the money. That’s why it worked. In Iran, the government runs most businesses. It wouldn’t matter if we stopped riding the buses. They wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t care if we stayed in our homes forever and never came outside. In fact, they would probably prefer it. They’d give all the jobs to the men.”

  “You’re such a defeatist. You think like a total victim.”

  I am a total victim. I feel a sudden rage toward her.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I tell her in a voice that is not very friendly.

  “It really bothers me how you let people walk all over you! You’re marrying this weirdo who’s going to hold you back. Once you’re married, he’s not going to let you out of the house, just you wait. Too many germs. He’s going to keep you a prisoner, in some germ-free little bubble. And if you ever do have kids, it’ll be through artificial insemination so he doesn’t have to touch you and dirty himself. But he won’t have kids, you mark my words, because they’
re so germy with their snotty noses and they’d have to go to school and breathe in germs from all those other kids.”

  “Eva, enough!” I say this loudly, firmly.

  “No, it’s not enough.” She is equally loud, equally firm. “This conversation is long overdue. You deserve better. You need to learn how to stand up for yourself, Tami.”

  “And you need to learn to shut up. How dare you say I deserve better? My girlfriends in Tehran deserve better. So does my mother. So does every Persian living in Iran and longing for the chance to live in a free society. I’m not any more deserving than they are.”

  The bus pulls up to the mall entrance. I rush off the bus. She follows. I keep walking, and when she calls out to me, I turn around.

  “Come on,” she coaxes. “I’ll drop it. Let’s find some things for Nadia.”

  “No.” I yell this at her louder than I’ve ever spoken to anyone before. “You’re just going to judge poor Nadia and mock her the same way you do me. And I’m sick of it, Eva. I’m sick of having you, simple little you with your simple little life, tell us how all our lives would be so much better if we would just stop being victims.”

  “If the shoe fits…” She has this stupid, pleasant look on her face like she hasn’t heard a word of what I’ve said. And I want to slap it right off, I really do.

  “I don’t even know what that means!” I scream. “For the first time in my life, I get to make a choice about my future. It’s my choice! Mine, nobody’s but mine!”

  It occurs to me that I have totally lost control of myself, but I am too far gone to care.

  Eva raises her hands in defeat. “What-ever, Tami. I didn’t mean to set you off. I’m sorry. Let’s just get on with our shopping. I’ll buy you that book about sex, and—”

  She hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.

  “Fine, Eva. You go buy me a book about sex. I’ll wait right here.”

  She looks at me quizzically. “Are you sure? Why don’t you come in with me?”

  I wave her off. “No, no. I’m too shy. You know that. You go buy it and I’ll wait here and calm myself down.”

  “Okay,” she agrees. “And then we’ll shop for Nadia. Right?”