Everything Sad Is Untrue

by Daniel Nayeri

  Ellie fell in love.

  Her lover had no name.

  “They tried to kill her husband,” my sister once whispered to me. She was talking about our grandpa.

  On Tuesday nights, when international Bible studies of the University of Central Oklahoma could meet, my sister and I sat in the corners of dark church buildings. Ray was the pastor and everyone else was Korean. We were the only kids and could find crackers or candy no matter how well-hidden in the cupboards. The TVs never worked. The ping-pong tables never had balls. We wandered the halls quietly, or my mom would come out and shush us with eyes gigantic like, “Don’t make him angry.”

  “Ellie and her lover tried to kill her husband,” my sister said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “They did.”

  “I mean, call him boyfriend or something.”

  “Ellie got him to sneak into their house to shoot him.”

  “Why didn’t she just shoot him herself?” I said.

  “Because that’s a boyfriend’s job.”

  “I wouldn’t shoot anybody for a girl,” I said, even though if Kelly J. asked me to, I would step on a spider.

  My Baba Haji killed a bull for me, so maybe love is always measured by what you’re willing to kill.

  Ellie’s boyfriend must have loved her a ton.

  For Kelly J., I would also put out traps for mice, and catch fish for food.

  “So what happened,” I said.

  “Grandpa Arman was a governor, so he had men to protect him.”

  “Goons.”

  Ellie was waiting at the train station with one suitcase. Everything she wanted was in it—not any of her kids, just stuff. The train station smelled like roasting pistachios from the old Turkish merchant outside, and burnt rubber from the train braking.

  She must have imagined her boyfriend would come running just as the train was about to leave, and they would jump aboard and go somewhere. Maybe all she packed was books and fruit leather.

  Where did they think they were going? I used to wonder.

  Probably it didn’t matter.

  A castle in the clouds of the Caspian Sea.

  A village above a lake, suspended on giant Persian rugs.

  A house beside a river of rot.

  They didn’t care.

  Escape was all that mattered. Ellie clutched her bag and refused a newspaper from a kid and watched the main entrance by the ticket counter.

  She hoped Kaveh would find Arman alone. And she hoped whoever found Arman’s body would be one of his goons and not one of the children.

  It was almost dinnertime and people would be wondering where she was. She sat on a long wooden bench and couldn’t think of any word that described her anymore.

  When she looked up again from her watch, a man with a button-up shirt stretched over his belly stood in front of her. His armpits were soaked with sweat. He had a waxy bag of roasted pistachios from the old Turk outside.

  “Are you Mrs. Piroozkhah?” he said. He snapped open a pistachio shell and popped the nut into his mouth.

  “Yes,” said Ellie.

  “Arman’s wife?” he said. He asked as if he already didn’t believe her.

  “Yes.”

  “I was sent to tell you he’s dead,” said the goony man.

  “Arman?”

  “No. Your other one.”

  Her librarian.

  Ellie’s mind might have broken right then. No one knows. But she was never again completely sane. She half heard the steam whistle blow, and half watched the train pull out of the station.

  The man waited for her to see the last car pull away from the platform, the last hope that the story would end happily. He let the pistachio shells fall to the ground.

  When it was quiet again, he said, “The boy is dead.” Maybe they even burned his library, but he was definitely dead. “You’ll never see his face again.”

  Ellie had nowhere in the entire world—at that moment—to be, and not be alone.

  Even the nook of a tree can make you feel safe if you hide yourself in it.

  Somewhere in some dark gully in a back corner of a village, her beloved Kaveh lay slaughtered, blood flowing from his neck for stray dogs to lick at, until it turned brown.

  The goony man put his wet paw on her shoulder and she realized she had been vibrating. She jerked away from him. If he touched her again, she’d scream.

  He said, “Arman Khan”—her husband—“says he won’t hurt you. But you can’t live here anymore.”

  My sister explained that what he meant was that Ellie would be exiled to England. She would have to take Sanaz, her youngest daughter, because she was eleven and Arman didn’t want to be responsible for her.

  “She was already packed,” I pointed out to my sister.

  What did Arman say when she went back to get Sanaz? What did they tell Sanaz, or the others?

  No one ever told us. It was just exile. Stop talking about it.

  Probably a million trains have gone back and forth on that platform since then.

  “Why did she keep his name?” I asked. “If they got divorced, and if she tried to kill him, and if he banished her from Iran, why did she keep his name?”

  “I dunno,” said my sister. “Maybe they never got divorced.”

  We drank the grape juice that they used for communion from the church fridge. We could barely stay awake, it was so late. The next day was a school day and we’d tell people we watched all the shows they were watching while we were at church.

  Then my sister said, “Divorce is a sin, you know.”

  And I spit my juice out laughing.

  * * *

  AT SCHOOL I DON’T tell anyone about church.

  At church I don’t tell anyone about home.

  The neighborhood kids don’t know anything about anything else.

  The trick is to keep your stories to yourself, so they can’t use them against you.

  My best friend is really good because all he talks about are the Dolphins and video games, so we talk all the time but he doesn’t even know what refugees are. I’ll tell you about him later, because I think you and me are friends now.

  You know every memory I have of all my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. You’ve got them all.

  You can probably count them yourself. And they’re as fuzzy to you as they are to me. You won’t clench them like I do, that’s for sure. To you, they might even be junk.

  In the movies, kids get fishing trips with their grandpas, and grandmothers give them hugs.

  Maybe my memories are only worth a couple peach pits to you.

  But you’ve got them now. All the pieces are in place for you to understand what happened and how we ended up in Oklahoma.

  If you’ve been listening this far, then maybe you won’t laugh or call me a liar. When I tell you what happens next, you’ll see how everyone played their part. It’s not so hard to believe if you’ve got the memories I’ve got. And only a few moments would be something you might have to call mythical.

  You don’t even have to believe those parts if you don’t want to.

  But they’re all true.

  So I think you should.

  * * *

  BECAUSE YOU AND I are friends, I will tell you a full day of my life in wondrous Edmond, Oklahoma, the jewel of the I-35 roadway.

  It’s always the same story but it happens a thousand different ways.

  I wake up—most of the time super late, because I secretly stay up till 4 a.m., and because bus 209 has Brandon Goff in it.

  So far I’ve missed more days of my first hour class than I’ve attended.

  My mom works different jobs. Sometimes she won’t even tell us what she’s doing. For a while she was in a factory that printed business cards for people. She says a lot of people just make up degrees to put by their names. But she has a real MD and PhD and she’s still stuck by a conveyor belt, cutting big stacks of cardboard.

  I don’t eat breakfast because I w
ake up so late.

  My mom runs in. “Daniel. Khosrou. Wake up.”

  “Ugh,” I say, cause my mouth is as dry as a cardboard factory from eating bread all night. Bread is the only food I can take from the kitchen at 4 a.m. because the fridge door makes a loud noise when you open it, and our pantry is full of ingredients like dried lemons, rice, and onions. The only snacks are the potato rolls my mom bakes and leaves on the counter. She puts sugar and cinnamon inside half of them for me, and those are always on top, so when I sneak into the kitchen, I don’t even turn the light on.

  Anyway, she says, “Akh! Daniel, pasho pasho!” which means, “Akh! Daniel, get up get up!”

  I don’t get up.

  “You missed the bus.”

  I get up.

  “Get up!” she says.

  “Wha? Oh no. Did I miss the bus?” I say, which is a tae kwon do move called deflection.

  My room has six books in it. And it has no beautiful rugs or pictures of fields, so I am no khan of flowers. The carpet is shaggy, beige, and covers everything in the apartment like dead grass. There are a couple shelves where I keep porcelain animals, and Micro Machines cars, and a La-Z-Boy chair we got when the people in the apartment next door left it outside.

  In my closet are balls for sports I still don’t know the rules to. A baseball glove that is hard shiny leather. I’ve never used it because people tell me I should spit in it and grind dirt in there to break it in. I just play soccer instead.

  I get up and get my coat.

  I came up with a trick in America. You can shower at night, and sleep in a set of those sweats from Sam’s Club. I have five. If I wear the green sweatshirt, then I wear the green pants, so it’s a fashion match, and not weird. I used to have all the same color, and Ashley said I was wearing the same thing every day, so the different colors are for Ashley’s mental accounts. Then you wake up, you just need socks, and you can go to school.

  My mom drives me.

  I know she’s worried every day. I come home sometimes with a bruise on my face from Brandon Goff, or mad cause they said my egg sandwiches smell like swamp-crotch and Ashley or Kelly or Stacey made a show of holding their noses as I walked by.

  And my mom doesn’t know any of the rules. She doesn’t know any of these people, or what they want from us. She’s just dropping her kid into some building full of strangers, hoping he doesn’t come back bloody.

  The office ladies don’t treat her like the other parents. They look at her straight in the face and speak slow and loud, like she’s a busted drive-thru.

  “Yes. We understand Ms.…” They never say her name. They just look at a paper and cut it off. “Ms.”

  “… Ms. We understand he’s late. That’s an absence.”

  “Okay. Can I …” She doesn’t know the terms they use. “Can I clear him?”

  “You mean clear him from the absence?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can clear excused absences.”

  “Okay. I’d like to.”

  “This isn’t an excused absence.”

  “What is it?”

  “An unexcused absence.”

  See what they’re doing? Presenting the information in little bits so they can beat her with it. My mom tries to hold it in. Because otherwise she’d scream at the ladies in three different languages and they’d treat her like even more of an animal.

  “Okay,” says my mom, “how do I clear an unexcused absence?”

  “You can’t.”

  She waits. Finally, the lady sighs super loud, like it’s not her job to do any of this; it’s just her job to eat cookies. She rolls her eyes, “He. Needs. A. Note. From. A. Doctor.”

  “Yes,” says my mom. “I’m his doctor.”

  “I’m sure you are,” says the lady. “We’ll need the note on official stationary.”

  My mom will get the note. But she’ll have to beg a doctor in our Bible study for a notepad. This is ridiculous because she’s a doctor, and because she works in a notepad factory. She says, “Okay. Thank you,” and walks out, and the office ladies make that snort noise to each other that means, “What a pain, right?”

  You should know, Mr. Knatvold doesn’t care that I missed his class with unexcused absences because I have a 112 in his class, because Tanner the tongue exploder takes up most of the class hour asking if the Hulk could beat up Superman.

  “No.”

  “But he’s green.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, but Superman hates green.”

  “He hates kryptonite.”

  “That’s what I said. Hulk wins.”

  “No.”

  “Hey, yo, Mr. Knatvold, what’s the periodic table of kryptonite?”

  And then he farts at a Jennifer, and that’s class. So I show up and take the tests on Fridays and on the rest of the days Tanner’s got one less person to mess with. He grabs me when I’m not looking and rubs a sheet of paper on my forehead like he’s giving me a noogie. And when it gets a spot on it, he waves it over his head and screams, “I struck oil! Grease in the Middle East!”

  Everybody’s face has oil on it.

  In my other classes I make sure to answer all the questions. This is a good trick for friend-making. Don’t laugh. I’m not wrong about this. It’s not that I think people will admire me and be my friend.

  But the trick is that in America, nobody wants to answer questions. When Mrs. Martz has a math issue, even if they know the answer, it’s bad to answer. That’s a nerd thing to do. Also, it’s “try-hard,” which is a thing that you are when you race to finish tests before everyone else. I’m not a try-hard anymore, but I answer all the questions and then smile at a Jared or a Jennifer, who is slumping in their seat like, “Don’t worry, Pal, I got this one.”

  That’s how to be “in on it.” Perform a service and say it’s no big deal. Then people can see how chill you are. You can even answer to get the teacher to move on, and then look around and wink, like it’s an inside joke.

  At lunch I stand at the back of the cafeteria line. Always in the very back. This is a different trick that has three benefits.

  First, all the rich Matts, Kelly J., and Daniel W. (the Daniel who was born a Daniel and whose mother is a teacher) bring their lunches, so they start eating and they’re finished by the time the line is done.

  Second, if you’re the last person in line, sometimes the cafeteria lady who goes to our church will give you more of the food the other kids don’t want, like extra green beans, or two scoops of mashed peas.

  But the third trick is that if you stand at the back of the line and realize you don’t have any money, you don’t have to tell anyone. You can wait. Nearby, the packed lunches trade their pudding cups for string cheese. The cafeteria trays start to come out to find seats with their friends. The steam is still rising from the gravy—it’s not brown Jell-O yet.

  Some kids get their tray and then realize their card is out of money when they hand it to the lady who puts it in the punch machine. And that’s the worst thing to do.

  They have to stop the line. The punch card lady is always the most angry. She snaps her fingers if you don’t have your card ready when you’re up. Her eyes are always squinting behind her glasses. And if the card is empty, she groans and then looks around and shouts, “I need an AP!” which is an assistant principal, to come and take the kid out of line.

  Everybody hears it and stops to watch.

  Once, it happened to Nick, who is the dirtiest kid in school, not very big, red hair. He lives in the same apartment complex as us, but his mom smokes. The assistant principal said, “Come with me, Nick. We’ll get you sorted out.”

  And Nick followed her, but he brought the tray, so she turned and said, “Oh, you can leave that.”

  But Nick didn’t want to.

  The punch card lady glared at him. “Leave it.”

  Everybody in the whole cafeteria could see him. He couldn’t have the food. Nick put the tray on the counter, but he snat
ched the bread roll. The card lady said, “Hey!”

  But Nick shoved it in his mouth. He looked like a hamster. The AP took him by the elbow and all the kids watched them leave. Daniel W. knows all the teachers and grown-ups, so he was the one to say, “Thief,” as Nick walked by.

  I only ever got caught without money twice.

  They take you to the office where the ladies give you three saltine cracker sandwiches with peanut butter in the middle. They call your mother and say, “His account is empty. You’ll have to request the assistance program through the office. No. The district office. No. They only accept requests from our AP. It stands for ‘assistant principal.’ Just send it to us and we’ll take care of it. You’re welcome.” And they sigh again.

  The way they toss the bag of crackers at you makes you feel like the lowest thing in the world. It’s against policy to make a kid go hungry, but you can tell, you’re not their guest. If you were a guest you would be treated with kindness and tea and all the best food they could offer. Being generous to a guest is one of the most different things about these countries.

  In Iran, when a guest comes, you tell them they may be angels, they are welcome and the whole house is filled with the joy of their presence. And the person always apologizing is the host, that they might have more to offer.

  But here, it seems guests are supposed to apologize all the time that they’re taking anything. It’s like they think the host is burdened. I don’t understand it. But I know I never want to go to the house of any of these grown-ups, who make you beg for so little. I don’t want the cracker sandwiches they made with all the groaning in their hearts. I don’t want to be poor.

  But if I can’t have that, then I don’t want them to know how hungry I am.

  Anyway, if you stand at the back of the lunch line and you don’t have any money in your account, you can wait and wait for the whole lunch period and then just as you’re about to grab a tray, ask to go to the drinking fountain.

  At the fountain, you drink a ton of water until you have to pee. Then you go to the bathroom. You have to stay there for fifteen more minutes. You can wash oil off your face and fold paper towels into triangles. You can breathe on the mirrors and draw something in the mist really quickly before it fades.