Zabelle

by Nancy Kricorian

  “Lord almighty, Zabelle, I’m going to shoot you and put you out of your misery.”

  That Sunday he called. Jack, Joy, and I crowded around the telephone table in the hall as Toros shouted into the receiver.

  “Are you learning things?” he demanded. “Are they our kind of Christians?”

  When it was my turn, I felt shy talking to my own son.

  “Moses,” I said.

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Are you wearing the sweater I made you?”

  He laughed. “It’s buttoned to my neck.”

  “Are you eating okay? Do they give you enough to eat?”

  “There’s plenty of food, Ma. Don’t worry.”

  “What about your roommate? Is he a nice boy?”

  “Bobby, uh, Robert, Lyle. He’s a good guy. We get along. They’re all healthy Americans here. I’m the only Armenian for miles around.”

  “I’m praying for you,” I said.

  Hearing his familiar voice gave me hope that he hadn’t become a different person in two weeks’ time. He was still my Moses.

  Some weeks later, while Toros was at work and the kids were at school, I was in the kitchen chopping onions when the phone rang. Moses, I thought. He had called collect. He sounded so close, like he was at a pay phone down the block. His voice was strained, and I could just see him jiggling his leg up and down, the way he did when he was nervous.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” I asked.

  “Nothing, Ma. I just wanted to ask your advice about something.”

  “Your roommate? How is your roommate?”

  “Bobby’s fine.”

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m not sick. There’s just this thing …”

  “I can hear it in your voice. What is it?”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly.…”

  When he paused, all sorts of things ran through my head. Topics a mother didn’t really want to hear about, but what could I do? “Tell me, Moses.”

  “I heard a voice.”

  “A voice?”

  “It woke me up, Ma. I heard someone calling my name. ‘Moses. Moses.’ I sat up in bed, and turned on the light. Bobby was sound asleep. I looked under the bed, even. So I shut out the light, and I heard it again.”

  Was this what happened to boys who went so far from home? They started hearing voices? Was Moses getting crazy?

  “What did the voice say, honey?” I asked him.

  “Ma, I swear, it was just like Samuel in the Bible. Remember Samuel when God spoke to him?”

  “Maybe you were dreaming. What did you eat for supper? Did you eat that basterma I sent you? If you eat that on an empty stomach, it can give you nightmares.”

  “Ma, I didn’t eat the meat. It makes me stink like a camel. And it wasn’t a nightmare, it was God. He spoke to me and he said, ‘Moses, I am calling you to be a fisher of men. You are going to be a powerful man in the Lord’s work. As a tool in My Hand, you are going to evangelize the world.’”

  “Moses, what makes you think it was God?” I asked him. “What did the voice sound like?”

  “He sounded like a radio announcer. A radio announcer with no microphone, no transmitter, and no radio. He was speaking to me from heaven, but it sounded like he was in the room. Then he said, ‘Moses, in order to do My work, you must be true and devout. You must not succumb to the temptations of the flesh. You must study hard.’”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t your father talking?” I asked dryly.

  “Ma. I’m telling you, it was God. Like in the Bible. But what He said next was kind of weird.”

  I held my breath.

  Moses went on, “He said, ‘Moses, you must change your name from Chahasbanian to Charles.’” He paused for a moment. “Then God told me to have my nose fixed.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Plastic surgery, you know. Like Paul Barsamian.”

  “God told you to have a nose job like Paul Barsamian?”

  “Not in exactly those words, but yes, that was the idea.”

  “That’s crazy!” I shouted into the phone. “Why would God tell you to change your nose? It’s a perfectly beautiful Armenian nose. It’s your father’s nose, and his father’s nose, and his father’s nose before him. Who are you going to be, Moses? What kind of person are you going to be without your name and your nose? Do you think if you try to be an odar, it will work? Your eyes are Armenian. Your soul is Armenian.”

  “Ma!” the boy pleaded. “Please stop yelling. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. I don’t know who to talk to. If I tell anyone here, I’m afraid they’ll think I’m crazy. I couldn’t believe it, either, and I asked God, ‘Lord, are you sure about this?’ and he said, ‘Trust Me, My son. You are chosen to do a great work.’”

  I wasn’t sure what was going on. Either the boy had completely lost his mind or God was speaking to him—a blond-haired, small-nosed God who spoke the perfect American of a radio announcer. Moses and the burning bush. Samuel in the temple. Jesus in a pear tree. Maybe visions ran in the family, although they didn’t come from my side. The poor boy sounded lonely and confused. He wanted some comfort, some reassurance. What was there to say?

  He kept talking. “I’ve been reading the biography of Dwight Moody, Ma, the man this school is named for. He was a great evangelist, who started as a traveling salesman. But God made him a great preacher. Maybe that’s what God wants for me.”

  “Honey,” I interrupted, “is there somebody there you can talk to? Isn’t there somebody who’s supposed to look after the new boys?”

  “Well,” he said, “there’s Dr. Pruitt, my adviser.”

  “Why don’t you go talk with him?”

  “Should I tell him about the nose?”

  “No, don’t bring that up. That can be between you and the Lord.” I knew he didn’t have the money to afford a plastic surgeon anyway.

  So he gave me the number of a pay phone near his dorm room, and we chose a time for me to call the next day. I sat at the telephone desk after I hung up, mulling over the conversation. I wanted to talk to Arsinee, but I could already hear her wisecrack. I decided not to say anything to anybody.

  That night I dreamed about my boy again. I was standing on a corner, watching him approach at the head of a Salvation Army band. He came closer and closer. I saw that his face was different. His beautiful nose was gone, and in its place was the sorriest excuse for a nose I had ever seen—a little button of a thing that turned up at the end. It made me want to cry. But his eyes hadn’t changed—those dark, deep eyes that were the same as mine. I looked into them and felt myself tumbling down a silent, drafty tunnel that went on and on. I woke up with my blood thumping wildly in my neck.

  The next day, when I dialed, he picked up on the first ring. His voice was firm, but he sounded far away.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He said that it was unusual in these times for God to speak directly to a person, so I shouldn’t talk about it with the other students. But that I should keep my ears and my heart open for other revelations.”

  “That’s all?” I couldn’t tell from Moses’s report if the man believed him or not.

  “That’s it.”

  I sighed. Moses, who the day before had been open-mouthed and trembling, had shut tighter than a mussel. That’s the way it was with children. Every step toward independence was followed by a moment of panic when they tumbled into your lap like a toddler. Two minutes later they were angry at you for holding them too tightly. The same Moses who had sought my advice the day before decided he didn’t need me. He would transform himself into a small-nosed, blank-named, big-deal American evangelist. What could you do but love your children?

  “Ma, I’ve got to go. Bobby’s waiting for me in the library.”

  As soon as I hung up, I dialed Arsinee’s number. It was busy, so I went out for a walk around the block to calm my nerves. When I passed the Italian’s yard, I half expected the plaster Madonna to offer me
some consoling words, but the white face remained still.

  Later in the week we received another postcard written in Moses’s perfect penmanship. I still have it, tied up in a faded yellow ribbon with the few cards and letters he wrote over the years.

  October 1948

  Dear Ma and Pa,

  I finally heard the call. God spoke to me a few nights ago, and he is going to make me a great preacher like the Reverend Moody, the man who founded this school. Pray for me.

  The food here is pretty bad, but the guys are nice. Say hello to Jack and Joy. Do you think you could send me some more money? My first paycheck from the library won’t come through for a month.

  In Christ’s love,

  Your son

  Toros read it out loud at dinner, his chest puffed out like a great bird. He didn’t even seem to mind the request for money. I imagined Moses was starting to save for his plastic surgery. How could I argue with God?

  Arsinee came over the next afternoon, and I showed the card to her.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Arsinee looked at me skeptically. “God spoke to him.”

  I shrugged. “He’s his father’s son. Jesus spoke to Toros, why shouldn’t God speak to Moses?”

  “I’m surprised the burning bush didn’t set his bed on fire.”

  “You should be on the radio.”

  “Did you write back?”

  I handed Arsinee the note I had written in response.

  Dear Moses

  The day you were born I said you would be a great leader. God gave you your nose. Why would He take it away? The weather here is fine. We miss you.

  Love,

  Ma

  “What’s this thing about the nose?” she asked, handing it back to me.

  “God told him to have plastic surgery on his nose,” I said. “Don’t repeat that, or I’ll never speak to you again.”

  Arsinee laughed and slapped her thigh. “God works in mysterious ways.”

  “Oh, hush up,” I grumbled.

  “He doesn’t realize, honey, that his nose will come back to haunt him on the face of his children.”

  That thought made me feel a little better.

  “I’m sending him some food,” I said, putting the note into an envelope and sliding a five-dollar bill in after it. “He’s starving to death.”

  “Won’t it be spoiled by the time it gets there? Why don’t you send some basterma? It keeps for years.”

  “He won’t eat it. I’m sending him cheoregs and ghurabia, plus some dried fruit.”

  “Maybe God will drop some manna in his room during the night.”

  She could make all the jokes she wanted, but somehow I knew that God’s predictions for my son would come true.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Chahasbanian and Son

  (WATERTOWN, 1953)

  When Moses came home the first summer after he started Moody, he looked at me with the eyes of a stranger, judging every gesture I made. I had the impression that even the way I drank water was somehow distasteful to him. After he returned to Chicago in the fall, he never lived with us again. When we spoke on the phone, he and I were polite, as if we were neighbors chatting with each other over a fence. On good days I felt like a chrysalis from which a butterfly had emerged, and on bad days I felt like a chewing-gum wrapper someone had thrown in the hedges.

  When Moses finished Bible college, he took an assistant pastor job in Pasadena, California, which was as far away from Watertown as you could get without changing continents. His fiancée was the pastor’s daughter, and her name was Sarah Aiken; this much we learned from a letter. He enclosed a studio portrait of himself with an arm around a pretty, smiling brown-haired girl. I studied the photo and grudgingly had to admit that Moses’s new nose suited his face well enough.

  As time wore on, missing Moses faded into a mild case of rheumatism—it pained me early in the morning or if the rain fell a few days in a row. I could live with it. Then the trouble with Jack began. He had never been a talkative boy, but after he entered high school, getting words out of him at all was an effort. His replies were brief and full of gaps, like a telegraph.

  When Jack turned sixteen, Toros began pestering him to quit school. As far as my husband could see, it was a waste for Jack to spend one more day at Watertown High School than the law required. With some persuading from me, Toros agreed that Jack could earn his diploma, as long as the boy showed up at the market within thirty minutes of school’s close and worked on Saturdays.

  Jack enjoyed careening around town in the delivery truck, but I think he missed playing on the baseball team with his friends. His easy smile and polite manner earned him good tips from the housewives up the hill. He was the handsomest of my children and the most lighthearted, which was maybe why Toros rode him so hard. The two of them charged the air with the electricity you feel before a summer storm. I was always waiting for the downpour.

  As Jack’s eighteenth birthday and high school graduation approached, the tension between father and son increased. Toros constantly referred to Jack as the onion head or that lazy bum. Jack paid less attention to Toros’s instructions and delivered boxes to the wrong house or forgot half of somebody’s order. I heard about all of this at the end of the day from Toros, who ranted at the dinner table about his good-for-nothing son as though Jack weren’t sitting right there with a fork and knife in hand.

  “The boy is mentally bankrupt,” Toros shouted.

  Joy quietly drummed her fingers on the table.

  “Stop that,” ordered Toros.

  She flattened her palms on the tablecloth and looked at me.

  “Why don’t you put your feet up and read the paper, Toros. You’re giving yourself indigestion,” I said.

  “I gotta get out of here,” Jack muttered, and he was gone.

  “I’ll be in my room,” said Joy.

  “Where does he think he’s going?” called Toros from his armchair.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “and I don’t care.” I stomped into the kitchen to wash the dishes.

  Toros was a sheepdog keeping after a wayward sheep. He circled around and around, nipping at the boy’s heels and barking, which only made Jack straggle more. One morning, when Jack was late coming to the breakfast table before school, Toros shouted up the stairs.

  “I’ll be right down, Pa,” Jack bellowed. “Tell Ma no eggs. Just toast and coffee.”

  “Did you hear that?” Toros asked me.

  “The neighbors heard the both of you,” I said.

  Jack breezed into the room and straddled his chair.

  Toros glared at Jack over the top of the newspaper. “A girl telephoned you last night. She said not to bother to call back because she’d see you in school.”

  Jack munched on his toast with his eyes down.

  “So, Mr. Romance, you aren’t even going to ask me the girl’s name?”

  Joy and I exchanged glances.

  “Of course, you must know who it is, right, Jack?”

  “Right,” said Jack.

  I poured my husband another cup of coffee, checking an impulse to dump it over his head. “Drink your juice, Jack,” I said, patting my son’s back.

  Toros was a dog with his teeth clamped on the mailman’s pant leg. “Do you know why Miss Marie Doucette was calling?”

  “Help with homework,” Jack mumbled.

  “She would call a know-nothing for homework? You listen to me: when it’s time for a wife, we’ll find you a nice Armenian girl from a good family.” He went back behind his newspaper.

  Jack jumped up from the table. “Bye, Ma. See you later, sis,” he said, and then thundered down the back stairs.

  “I’m inviting the Kalajians to come for coffee after prayer meeting tonight,” Toros said.

  “Pa,” complained Joy, “I can’t go to church tonight. I have a paper due tomorrow.”

  “God comes first,” was the reply.

  I raised my eyebrows at Joy, who shrugged and shook h
er head. I mouthed the words “Leave it to me.” She gathered up her things and left for school.

  I knew the turns of Toros’s mind like I knew my linen closet. “Jack’s not interested in Maral Kalajian.”

  “What does he know? Healthy tree, unspoiled fruit.”

  I wasn’t going to waste my breath. “Joy’s staying home tonight. I believe God approves of her doing her homework. I invited Arsinee to dinner.”

  Arsinee set forks and knives beside the plates on the dining-room table. She was complaining about Dahlia’s husband, Chet, who worked for the Prudential Insurance Company.

  “His name sounds like something you’d spit from your mouth,” she called to me in the kitchen.

  “You always say that,” I commented. “And Henry’s wife serves dirty dishwater for coffee.”

  Arsinee joined me beside the stove. “All we get are odars. Moses, Henry, Dahlia. Do you think Jack would look at an Armenian girl?”

  Joy walked into the kitchen, laden with books.

  “You’d go for a nice Armenian boy, wouldn’t you, honey?” asked Arsinee.

  Joy blushed. “Oh, Auntie, leave me alone.”

  “She’s too young for a boyfriend,” I said.

  “Too young? You were married when you were her age,” Arsinee said.

  “Don’t remind me,” I replied. “Toros is dragging the Kalajians over here tonight. He’s trying to fix up Jack with Maral.”

  “Maral?” snorted Arsinee.

  “The poor thing has a mustache,” I said.

  “She’s shaped like a pear,” Arsinee added.

  “How can you two be so mean?” asked Joy.

  “We’re not mean,” protested Arsinee. “She’s a sweet girl.”

  “Just not Jack’s type,” I said.

  “Jack’s type,” Joy repeated sarcastically.

  “What can you tell us, Joy?” Arsinee laughed.

  Just then Toros and Jack came in, and it was time to eat. When dinner was over, Jack excused himself from the table and raced up the stairs to his bedroom.

  “We’re leaving in ten minutes,” Toros called after him.

  Joy volunteered to clear and wash the dishes, so Arsinee and I went to the living room, where Toros was reading his Bible. We sat on the couch, and I offered Arsinee a mint from the glass bowl. Through the window I saw something moving on the front porch. Or, more precisely, over the front porch. Arsinee saw it, too, and elbowed me. We both checked Toros, who was engrossed in his reading. Jack climbed down the second-story porch, disappearing onto the porch below.