"There, Pasha, good boy." Zeliha fed him chunks of feta cheese, his favorite. She then put on an apron and toiled through a hill of pots and pans and plates. When she had finished the dishes and calmed herself, she shuffled back to the dinner table, where she found the word bastard still hanging in the air, and her mother still frowning.
They all sat there motionless until someone remembered the dessert. A sweet, soothing smell filled the room as Cevriye poured rice pudding from a huge cauldron into tiny bowls. While Cevriye kept doling with practiced ease, Feride followed her, sprinkling shredded coconut on top of each bowl.
"It would have been much better with cinnamon," whined Banu. "You shouldn't have forgotten to buy cinnamon…."
Leaning back in her chair, Zeliha lifted her nose and inhaled as if taking a drag on an invisible cigarette. As she breathed out her fatigue bit by bit, she felt the yo-yo indifference slacken off again. Her spirits sank under the weight of all that had and had not happened on this prolonged and hellish day. She scanned the dinner table, feeling more and more guilt-ridden at the sight of each bowl of rice pudding now canopied by coconut flakes. Then, without turning her gaze, she murmured in a voice so gracefully soft, it didn't sound like her at all.
"I am sorry…. " she said. "I am so sorry."
TWO
Garbanzo Beans
Supermarkets are perilous places filled with traps for the despondent and the dazzled, or so thought Rose as she headed to the aisle of diaper refills, this time determined not to purchase anything other than what she really needed. Besides, this was not the right moment to putter around. Having left her little girl inside the car in the parking lot, she now felt ill at ease. Sometimes she did things she instantly regretted but could not possibly take back, and if truth be told, such incidents had multiplied alarmingly over the last few months-three and a half months to be exact. Three and a half months of hell on earth as she resisted, fought over, cried about, refused to accept, begged not to, and finally yielded to her marriage coming to an end. Matrimony might be a fleeting folly that tricked you into believing that it would be forever, but it was harder to appreciate the humor when you were not the one who ended it. The fact that marriage had to tarry before it irretrievably lapsed gave the false impression that there was still hope until you understood it was not hope for the better that you were living for, but hope that the suffering finally would end for both so that each could go his or her own way. And go her own way was precisely what Rose had decided to do from now on. If all this was tantamount to some sort of a tunnel of anguish God was compelling her to crawl through, she would emerge from it no longer recognizable as that weak woman she once had been.
As a sign of her resoluteness Rose tried to force a chuckle but it didn't make it past her throat. Instead she sighed, a sigh that sounded more troubled than intended only because she had reached an aisle she'd rather not visit: Sweets and Chocolate Bars. As she scuttled by the Carb Watchers Gourmet Sugar-Free Vanilla Creme Flavor Dark Chocolate, she halted abruptly. She got herself one, two… five bars. Not that she was carb-watching, but she liked the sound of it, or more precisely, she liked the possibility of being watchful of something, anything. After being repeatedly accused of being a slipshod housewife and a terrible mother, Rose was eager to prove the contrary in any way she could.
In a flash she swerved the cart, but found herself in another aisle of junk food. Where the hell were the diapers? Her eyes caught sight of a pile of toasted coconut marshmallows and the next thing she knew there were one, two… six packages in the cart. Don't Rose, don't…. Just this afternoon you gobbled a whole quart of Cherry Garcia ice cream…. You've already gained so much weight…. If this was an inner warning, it didn't come through loud enough. Nevertheless, it activated a guilt button somewhere in Rose's subconscious and a picture of herself popped up in her mind. For a fleeting second, she stood staring at her reflection in an imaginary mirror, although she had so deftly avoided the real mirror behind the organic baby lettuces. With a sinking heart she eyed her widened hips and buttocks but still managed to smile at her high cheekbones, gold blond hair, misty blue eyes, and those perfect ears of hers! The ear was such a trustworthy part of the human body. No matter how much weight you gained, your ears remained exactly the same, always loyal.
Unfortunately, that was not the case with the rest of the human body. Rose's physical form was anything but loyal. So volatile was her body she could not even classify it, the way Healthy Living Magazine categorized the body types of their female readers. If she belonged to the "pear-shaped" group, for instance, she would have wider hips than shoulders. If "apple shaped," she would be prone to gain weight in the stomach and chest. Having the qualities of both pears and apples, Rose didn't quite know what category to fit in, unless there was another group left unmentioned, the "mango shaped," thick all over and thicker in the bottom. What the hell, she thought to herself. She would shed the extra pounds. Now that this hell-of-a-divorce season was over, she was going to become a new woman. Definitely, she thought. "Definitely" was the word Rose used in lieu of "yes." Instead of "no" she used "definitely not."Buoyed at the thought of surprising her ex-husband and his large extended family with the new woman she would soon become, Rose scanned the aisle. Her hands reached out to sweets and toffees-Sweet 'N Low Sugar Free Butter Toffee, Starburst Fruit Chews, black licorice twists-and as soon as she had tossed these into the cart, she hurried as if running from someone chasing her. But surrendering to her sweet tooth must have had a triggering effect on her guilty conscience because in next to no time she was struggling with a deeper sense of remorse. How could she have left her baby girl inside the car all alone? Every day you heard on KVOA about a toddler abducted in front of her home or a mother charged with reckless endangerment…. Last week a Tucson woman had set her house on fire and almost killed her two kids sleeping inside. If anything close to that ever happened to her, thought Rose, her motherin-law would be thrilled. Shushan-the-Omnipotent-Matriarch would instantly file suit for the custody of her granddaughter.
Immersed in these grim scenarios, Rose couldn't help shuddering. It was true she had been slightly off recently, forgetting things that were second nature, but nobody, not a single soul in his right mind, could justly accuse her of being a bad mother! Definitely not! She was going to prove that both to her ex-husband and to that mammoth Armenian family of his. Her ex-husband's family was from another country where people bore a surname she couldn't spell and secrets she couldn't decipher. Rose had always felt like an outsider there, always aware of being an odar[2] - this gluey word that had stuck on her from the very first day.
How terrible it was to still be mentally and emotionally attached to someone from whom you have been physically separated. When the dust had settled, out of that one year and eight months of marriage, all that was left for Rose was pure resentment and a baby.
"This is all I am left with. . " Rose muttered to herself. That, indeed, was the most common side effect of postmarital chronic bitterness: It made you talk to yourself. No matter how much dialogue you imagined, you were never out of words. Over the past weeks Rose had repeatedly argued in her imagination with each and every member of the Tchakhmakhchian family, defending herself with determination, winning every time, fluently articulating all the things she had failed to voice during the divorce and had been lamenting ever since.
2
The word odar is roughly translated as “stranger”, “non-Armenian” or “other”, similar to the use of the word goy or goyim, a word of Yiddish and Hebrew origin which is used to describe non-Jews.