The Authentics

by Abdi Nazemian

  “Well, yeah. I get it. I mean . . . you were two when your mom gave me away. I guess she couldn’t handle another kid.”

  “Oh, she’s not my mom. I didn’t even meet her till I was seven.”

  “Wait, what?” A wave of relief coursed through me. If she wasn’t his mother, then he wasn’t my brother. I kicked myself inside a little for making such a huge assumption, and I wondered how many of my other assumptions were wrong.

  “She’s my stepmother. She met my dad when I was seven. I mean, she feels like my mom, though. I call her Mom.” He was rambling now, as nervous as I was only moments ago.

  “Okay, I just need to say this out loud now,” I said. “You are not my brother.”

  “Right,” he said, putting it all together. “I’m not your brother at all. Not even your half brother. I am not in any way a brother to you.”

  “Whew,” I said. “This has been a really bad week, but this is good news. You and I are not related.”

  A big smile came across his face. “So I guess that means I can do this,” he said as he leaned over to kiss me.

  His lips had almost reached mine when I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him away. “Whoa.”

  “What?” he said.

  “First of all, you might not be my blood brother, but you’re like my second stepbrother twice removed, so there’s still some residual weirdness. And . . .” I stopped myself. I was about to say that I had never been kissed, and that my first kiss wasn’t going to be in the middle of a bazaar in downtown LA. It was going to be perfect. But instead I just said, “And I had an everything bagel for breakfast. My breath stinks.”

  “I had pad thai,” he said. “Mine’s worse.”

  “Who has pad thai for breakfast?” I asked, laughing.

  “Someone whose parents are out of town.”

  As his face leaned in toward mine again, I heard the sound of my name—“Daria!”—screeched out by a familiar voice. I turned my head just before Iglesias’s lips met mine, and saw Heidi and her mother, standing side by side, both in designer outfits, their matching noses pointed straight at me accusatorily.

  “Heidi. Um, Mrs. Javadi,” I stammered. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “Oh my God, you actually have a boyfriend,” Heidi said, under her breath, but just loud enough for me to hear.

  “Oh, I’m not her boyfriend,” Iglesias said. “I’m her—”

  I quickly cut Iglesias off. “He’s my tutor. In Spanish. I found him online.”

  Iglesias laughed. “Craigslist,” he said. “I offer immersion tutoring. I take my students to authentic Mexican locations to practice. Tomorrow, we’re driving to the border.”

  Mrs. Javadi looked horrified. Heidi shook her head. “Mommy, they’re just joking. Obviously, they’re together and Daria doesn’t want us to tell her parents.”

  “Daria djoon,” Mrs. Javadi said in Farsi. “Don’t worry about anything. I won’t tell your parents what I saw.” She paused and then added softly, “You won’t tell them you saw us here either?”

  And that’s when it hit me. Heidi and her mother were supposed to be yachting and shopping with the king and queen of Jordan. Instead, they were in downtown LA, standing in front of a booth that sells fake purses. “Holy F, you’re broke,” I said under my breath, but just loud enough for them to hear.

  “We’re not broke,” Mrs. Javadi said, again in Farsi. “We just took it a little too far with Heidi’s party.”

  I wanted to relish Heidi’s demise, but instead I found myself genuinely sad for her. She’d concocted a fake vacation to impress us. That was just so depressing.

  “I’m sure you’re gonna tell the whole school that I’m not in Jordan,” Heidi said. “I guess I deserve it.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Heidi rolled her eyes. “Right. Because you don’t want us to tell your parents about your BF. Fine, it’s a deal.” Then Heidi looked at me with real curiosity. “You didn’t really meet on Craigslist, did you?” she asked me with the genuine concern of an old friend. “Please be careful, Daria. There are creeps on there.”

  “Heidi,” Mrs. Javadi said in Farsi. “We don’t pry into our friends’ personal lives.”

  “Of course not,” Heidi said with a laugh. “But we do pry into our enemies’ personal lives.”

  I laughed along with Heidi, first out of nervousness, and then because of the absurdity of the situation. The humor of the situation was lost on Mrs. Javadi.

  “Okay, enough,” Mrs. Javadi said in Farsi. “Let’s go, Heidi.” And then, switching to English, she turned to Iglesias and added, “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Wait, aren’t you ladies interested in buying a bag?” he asked.

  “You sell fake bags. How cute,” Heidi said snidely, back to being herself.

  I immediately came to Iglesias’s defense. “He doesn’t just sell them. He designs them. He’s an artist. You’ll know his name someday.”

  “Whoa,” Heidi said. “Chill.”

  Mrs. Javadi was checking out a fake Chanel that Iglesias had on display. She opened it up, inspecting it. Iglesias had quickly and meticulously fixed his mistakes. The stitching was perfect. The hardware matched. He had even forged a certificate of authenticity. Mrs. Javadi was clearly impressed, and so was I. She pulled out her wallet and paid for the purse in cash. “Why not?” she said to Iglesias. “I like to support my daughter’s friends . . . and enemies.”

  In Farsi, I asked, “Mrs. Javadi? If you’re scaling back, why buy a fake bag? Why not just buy nothing?”

  She placed her hand on mine and said, “Because, Daria djoon, as you and my daughter obviously know all too well, being Persian means you must always keep up appearances.”

  Chapter Eight

  HERE’S THE THING ABOUT IRANIAN Americans and New Year’s Eve. We totally celebrate it twice. First, we must celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and then we celebrate New Year’s Eve eight months later. I guess the order could be reversed, depending on which calendar you subscribe to.

  This year, we began New Year’s Eve with dinner at our apartment, and then my entire family was escorting the Authentics to see She-Reen in concert. That was, obviously, not the way I had planned it. It wasn’t like I wanted my parents next to me when I was at a concert, especially when I was so pissed at them, but my mother had insisted that we all go together. I tried to scare her off by reminding her that She-Reen was a militant, feminist, lesbian Muslim, but that somehow made my mom more excited, since she loved being cutting-edge.

  For our New Year’s Eve menu, Sheila, Lida, and Lala came together to create a spread that was decadent and eclectic: bruschetta, rice, eggplant stew, chiles rellenos, beet salad, and Lala’s tres leches cake. Kurt monopolized the meal by doing my entire family’s astrological charts. My mother’s and father’s charts especially fascinated him.

  “You guys totally complete each other,” he said.

  “We do?” Sheila said with a laugh, as if it wasn’t obvious that even after all these years, Baba was totally crazy about her.

  “Totally,” Kurt said. He found a pen and pad of paper and began to draw their charts. “Look, Mrs. Esfandyar, you’re an Aries and all your planets are in the west. And Mr. Esfandyar, you’re a Libra and all your planets are east. You guys are polar opposites.”

  “I don’t think we’re so different,” Baba said.

  “Oh no, you are,” Kurt continued. “And you’re practically born on each other’s exact half birthday.”

  “Do you really believe in all this?” Amir asked.

  “Oh, he really believes in all this,” I muttered with a roll of my eyes.

  “It’s incredible that you found each other,” Kurt said.

  “I suppose it is,” Sheila said. “It was either him or Abu Khorami.”

  “Wait, who is Abu Khorami?” I asked.

  “Oh, just some Scorpio that your mother had a crush on when she was young,” Auntie Lida said. That got a laugh from t
he whole table, but it still didn’t stop Kurt, who couldn’t tell that Auntie Lida was desperately trying to close the door on this topic.

  “Oh, you’re so lucky you didn’t end up with a Scorpio,” Kurt said. “That would’ve been all wrong for you. Good for a fling, but wrong for a marriage.”

  “You know that the only way to get him to shut up is to tell him to shut up,” Caroline said before turning to Kurt and adding, “You know I love you. Now shut your mouth.”

  Thankfully, this conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Lala’s tres leches cake, which was so insanely delicious that all anybody could talk about was how a cake could taste so good. As the whole table devoured the cake, I noticed how my mother took just one discreet bite from her piece and left the rest. That was so her. Every time we went to lunch or dinner, she would insist on ordering dessert, and then she would take one tiny bite and leave the rest of it sitting on the table. I mean, why bother?

  “The cake is delicious, Amanda,” Sheila said. It always jarred me when I heard someone use her real name. I had been calling her Lala since I was a kid because she always used to sing me this song that basically went La-la-la-la-la forever, endlessly, and so that’s what I called her, and it just stuck. Sheila and Baba said that when I was a baby, they were so sick of hearing that La-la-la-la-la song that they sometimes wore earplugs around the house.

  “So, what are you gonna name your daughter?” Joy asked Amir and Andrew.

  “We don’t know,” Andrew said, though the look he gave Amir indicated perhaps a choice had been made that wasn’t meant to be shared yet.

  “We want to see her before we pick a name,” Amir added.

  “Did you paint her nursery all pink?” Caroline asked in a tone that made it clear she found that idea offensive.

  “Yellow,” Amir said.

  “Aaaaaw,” Joy said. “I’m so obsessed with babies. She’s gonna have the tiniest little hands and feet. And baby knees. Oh my God, I’m obsessed with baby knees. We will totally babysit any time you need it.”

  “Who’s we?” Caroline asked. “I’m no babysitter.”

  “I was referring to me and Daria,” Joy said. “That’s we, right, Daria?”

  I would’ve agreed, but my mouth was full again. I had already scarfed down my own piece of cake and couldn’t resist finishing the rest of Sheila’s cake.

  I could tell my family was scared as we approached the She-Reen concert. Outside the venue was the concert poster, which depicted She-Reen on a motorcycle, wearing a hijab, and giving the finger. “You know her name means sweet in Farsi,” Sheila said. “But she doesn’t look sweet at all. She looks very angry.”

  “She has a lot to be angry about,” I said. “She had to leave Iran because she wasn’t allowed to sing there. Persians just love to repress each other.” I glared at my mother.

  “Wait, women can’t sing in Iran?” Joy asked.

  “We can sing at private parties,” Lida said. “Just not in public.”

  “How authentic is that?” I asked, this being our favorite rhetorical question.

  “That’s Iran,” Lida explained. “Everything happens, but behind closed doors.”

  “Isn’t that hard?” Caroline asked.

  “Well, I’m not a singer,” Lida said. Then she added, more seriously, “It can be hard. But there are so many positive things about life in Iran. The food. The community. The culture. We all feel like one people there. Here, I don’t know, it feels different.”

  “Yeah, but isn’t that a good thing?” I asked. “I mean, America is a melting pot. Everyone is welcome here.”

  “That’s true,” Lida said. “But still. Everyone feels disconnected from each other here.”

  “Don’t listen to Lida,” Sheila said. “She defends that horrible place. Of course people all feel like one there. They feel like one because they look like one, all the women in chadors, all the men with beards.”

  “It is just like you, Sheila, to focus on people’s external appearance.”

  “Clothing is an expression of one’s individuality,” Sheila said, sounding very academic.

  “True that,” Joy said. Her outfit on this night—bright yellow leggings, a black-and-white geometric skirt, and a horizontal-striped top—was clearly an expression of something. Joy’s parents were superstrict about what she wore. Joy called them her personal fashion police, and any time she wasn’t with them, she used fashion as her own personal rebellion.

  Outside the concert, the adults got special wristbands so they could drink. Sheila took in the crowd. These weren’t the Persians she was familiar with from dinner parties and dorehs. These were self-identified Iranians, a different breed altogether. They were not all of the privileged class. They did not all leave Iran during the revolution in 1979. Many of them were fresh off the boat or, more accurately, fresh off Emirates Airlines. They wore black. They had tattoos. They were pissed off.

  In this hotbed of young, angry energy, my family felt completely out of place. I couldn’t decide who looked the strangest in this scene: Baba, his sweat stains turning his blue button-down into a swamp; Sheila, the gold on her bag catching the spotlights; or Amir and Andrew, in their matching Polo shirts and wedding rings.

  “I need a glass of champagne to handle this,” Sheila said.

  By the time She-Reen took the stage, my mother was mercifully tipsy. She-Reen emerged onstage wearing a chador, a tank top, short shorts, and biker boots. She looked totally badass. She immediately began one of her most popular songs, an awesome rap about the thirteenth imam. The audience sang along to the lyrics, including Joy, Caroline, and Kurt. I could see Sheila’s expression of surprise as she saw my friends sing along.

  “I think I’m going to incorporate some kind of Farsi into my next performance art piece,” Caroline said.

  “I hope you invite me. I love performance art,” Sheila said.

  I wondered if my mother would appreciate Caroline’s kind of performance art. There was the time she wrapped her entire body (including her face) in masking tape and rolled across the basketball court in the middle of a game. And the time she stole a dead frog from biology class and serenaded it with “Someday My Prince Will Come” during a school meeting. And the time she dressed as a drag queen for Halloween. When people asked who she was, she said she was a lesbian woman pretending to be a gay man pretending to be a straight woman.

  “Really?” Caroline said to my mom. “You know what it is?”

  “Of course I do,” Sheila said. “I once saw a wonderful performance artist in Paris. She force-fed herself until she vomited. It was very disturbing, but strangely compelling as well. I was sitting next to Catherine Deneuve, who said she thought it was a statement about foie gras.”

  Caroline whispered in my ear, “Your mother is so cool.”

  I nodded, because for all her flaws, I couldn’t deny that Sheila was indeed cool. I had to admit that as mad as I was at my parents, there was something really great about having them there. I guess part of it was that it was really insane to watch them in this environment. There were so many crazy stories that we would laugh about forever. Like the moment when Baba grabbed Sheila’s hand and they started doing the tango, and a whole circle of people formed around them. Seriously, they did the tango. At a rap concert. Or when She-Reen saw Amir and Andrew holding hands in the audience and started screaming that they would be executed in Iran, and got the crowd to sing, “Gays rule!” in Farsi. And the best part was that Sheila, Baba, and Auntie Lida were screaming it along with the rest of the crowd. I hadn’t expected my parents to make the night more fun, but then I remembered how cool they could be. None of my friends’ parents would’ve come to the show or danced the tango. But best of all, the reason my parents were there was that they refused to spend the night without me. No matter how many secrets they had kept from me, that was pretty awesome.

  As we got closer to midnight, I asked my parents if I could sleep over at Joy’s. Whenever we had a sleepover, it had to be a
t Joy’s, since her parents wouldn’t let her spend the night anywhere but home. My father turned his gaze toward Kurt.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t be there,” Kurt said. “Joy’s parents are anti–coed sleepover.”

  “They don’t trust me to have a boy in my room,” Joy said.

  “As if you would even do anything with a boy in your room,” Caroline added.

  Joy glared at Caroline as Sheila and Baba agreed to the sleepover. Unlike Joy’s parents, they did trust me. One more cool thing about them.

  A minute before midnight, She-Reen began a chant of “Iran. Number one. Iran. Number one.” The whole audience chanted along with her, losing themselves in their communal rhythm. I watched them all bouncing up and down, chanting, carefree and lost. I should have been chanting too, but something stopped me. It hit me that I might no longer be Iranian, at least not fully.

  Before I could think too hard about this, She-Reen stopped the chant and led a countdown to midnight in Farsi. When the clock struck midnight, cheers erupted, and everywhere there were hugs and kisses.

  Amir kissed Andrew.

  Sheila kissed Baba.

  Caroline grabbed Joy and pulled her close, screaming, “Come here, you lesbian.” Joy pushed her away playfully and said, “You’re insane.”

  There was a moment when everyone was occupied with each other, except for me and Kurt. We stood in front of each other for a few long seconds, both swaying awkwardly to the music. I got lost in his intelligent eyes, and the comfort of his familiar fedora. Everything about Iglesias felt scary and new, and everything about Kurt felt relaxed and easy. I thought maybe Kurt would try to kiss me, but he didn’t. He just gave me a friendly hug and said, “Happy New Year, Daria. I have a feeling this is going to be your year.”

  “Is it in the stars?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s just a feeling I have.”

  I hugged him tight. He was so comfortable. And when I let go, I realized there was no such thing as comfort anymore.

  And then my parents pulled me into a hug. I had hugged them every New Year’s Eve before that, and every Persian New Year’s as well. As they held me close, I was reminded of how much I still loved them, and how terrified I was of having to tell them that what they had done had changed me forever.