Anne Tyler - Digging to America

Doogh! he said. I adore doogh, he told the two women, and he said it with some pride, evidently knowing that most Americans were disgusted by the very notion of a carbonated yogurt drink. He pronounced the gh sound with a conscious, laughable effort, practically gargling in his attempt to speak far enough back in his throat; and in fact the women did laugh or tittered, at least, each raising a hand to her mouth and exchanging a glance with the other. He laughed too. He must have thought he was connecting with them beautifully. And Maryam may have thought the same, for she went on smiling from the other side of the table. It was Ziba who moved forward, at last, and took him by the elbow. Wait till you see the baklava, she told him. My mother brought it over this morning.

But this only caused the women to exchange another glance. (See how Maryam's daughter-in-law treats him so familiarly!) Dave said, Your mother brought her baklava? I crave her baklava. He told the women, She makes her filo dough from scratch. You wouldn't believe how good it is.

They pursed their lips, as if assessing something. They looked thoughtfully toward Maryam.

The baklava was serving as the Arrival Cake, in fact. Ziba had spiked it all over with tiny American flags and set it on the sideboard at the end of the meal. She omitted the candles, and she didn't bother sending the girls out of the room. Instead she plunged straight into She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain, and the others joined her even the girls themselves. If Bitsy was disappointed, she didn't show it. She might have been too tired to care. Xiu-Mei was asleep on her shoulder, head lolling and pacifier halfway out of her parted lips, and Bitsy swayed with her in time to the song. Toot, toot! the girls were shouting. Hi, babe! They sang louder than anyone else, as if they'd been waiting all these years just for the opportunity.

And later the videotape ran almost unobserved; most people knew it so well. Jin-Ho went off in a corner to play Old Maid with two cousins. Linwood and his girlfriend grew all whispery and nuzzly. Several of the women started cleaning up while the other guests stood about in small groups, merely glancing toward the screen from time to time and remarking on how small the girls used to be, or how much more hair Brad used to have, before returning to their conversations. When Ziba crossed in front of the TV with a stack of dishes, she had to say Excuse me only to Susan and Bitsy. Susan was watching the video from her seat on the rug. Bitsy, in the rocker with Xiu-Mei, seemed on the verge of sleep. But then Bitsy asked, out of the blue, Remember how we used to tell each other we wouldn't want to go back to that day for anything on earth?

I remember, Ziba said.

But now I think that in some ways, I would want to go back. I hadn't made any mistakes yet. I was still the perfect mother and Jin-Ho was still the perfect daughter. Oh, not that I'm saying… I don't mean to say I know what you're saying, Ziba told her, and she would have given Bitsy a hug if she hadn't had her hands full of cake plates.

What do you suppose their lives were like before they came to us? Bitsy asked, not for the first time. They've had all those months of experiences that we will never know about. I'm sure they must have been treated well, but, oh, it kills me, it just kills me that I wasn't there to hold Jin-Ho when she first opened her eyes on the day that she was born.

On the day that Susan was born, Ziba was on the other side of the world wondering if she'd be able to love a total stranger's baby. And she had cried for half of one night some weeks after Susan's arrival, not knowing what she was crying about till all at once she had thought, What happened to my own baby?

Two things she would never say aloud to anyone not Bitsy, not even Sami.

She told Bitsy, Oh, well, just look at her. She turned out fine anyhow, didn't she? For Jin-Ho was chortling gleefully while Deirdre, studying the card she'd just picked, was pantomiming despair.

In the kitchen, Ziba found her mother scraping plates. Roya and Zuzu were spooning leftovers into refrigerator containers, and Maryam was knotting the drawstring on a plastic bag of garbage.

Dave said, Oh, Maryam — june! Don't lift that! Let me! and he stepped forward to wrest the bag from her. Maryam straightened, brushing a strand of hair off her face. Roya set down a salad bowl and sent a long look toward Zuzu.

Susan started kindergarten that September. She'd been accepted at a private school out in Baltimore County. Every morning Sami drove her there, since he worked in that area anyway, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Ziba picked her up. But the kindergarten program ended at noon, which meant that on Tuesdays and Thursdays Maryam had to be the one who fetched her. Maryam brought Susan back home with her, gave her lunch, and kept her until Ziba arrived several hours later. Ziba told Maryam that she worried this was an imposition now that Maryam was leading such a busy social life; but Maryam said, What do you mean, busy? Ziba didn't answer that.

Often when Ziba got to Maryam's she would find Dave there before her. He would be sitting in the kitchen while Maryam prepared supper and Susan played with the cat. (Later, Ziba would ask Susan, Did Dave eat lunch with you? and most days Susan said, Mmhmm. No telling if he'd been around even longer. All morning? All the previous night?)

Touchingly, Dave made a point of rising when Ziba walked in. Well, hello! Good to see you, he'd say, running a hand through his pelt of gray curls. A mug of coffee would be sitting on the table in front of him he drank coffee around the clock and a jumbled pile of newspapers. He liked to read aloud from the papers and make comments to Maryam. As soon as Ziba turned to greet Susan, he would sit back down and resume where he had left off. Listen to this, he told Maryam. Here's a man arrested for road rage as a jogger, for mercy's sake. Maryam smiled and topped off his coffee with the pot that she kept going for him. Oh, thank you! he said. He never failed to show his gratitude another touching quality. Although Ziba thought the newspaper-reading could get a little tiresome. 'Area residents complained that the club's exotic dancers performed with denuded breasts,' he read from another page. 'Denuded'! Don't you love it? Maryam laughed gently as she rinsed out her Thousand Faces teapot. Where was her new electric contraption? Ah: shoved toward the back of a counter, half hidden by a package of pita.

Susan said a boy named Henry had called her a poop-faced poop-head. Oh, that's just boys, Maryam told her, and Dave announced, with some urgency, Now, here is a bunch of parents protesting the multiplication tables. Ziba was reminded of how a child will tug at his mother's sleeve when she is on the phone, requiring cookies, milk, juice, complaining of a stomachache, desperate to reclaim her attention. They feel that rote memorization dampens the students' love of learning, Dave said. And they don't see why anyone should have to diagram sentences. That's old-fashioned, they say. He lowered the paper to frown at Susan over his reading glasses. You need to diagram sentences, young lady. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Susan said, Okay.

If a certain TV anchorman could diagram a sentence, he would not have reported on the national news that as the father of two young children, chicken pox was sweeping the country.

Huh?

Maryam lit the flame beneath her kettle. Was today your day with the leopard-skin lady? she asked Ziba.

Yes, and you'll never guess now what. Now she wants tiger-striped curtains in the master bedroom. I said, 'But the wallpaper there is zebra-striped!' She said, 'Of course. It's a theme room.'

Maryam leaned back against the counter and folded her arms. She was wearing a long white apron over her black slacks; she looked crisp and almost too thin. Last night I had the most upsetting dream, she said. You've just reminded me. The zebra stripes reminded me. I was driving in a strange city, trying to get to the zoo, and I couldn't find a parking space. So finally I parked on a side street. And then I told the ticket lady, 'Oh! I forgot where I parked!' I said, 'Wait a minute; I just need to make sure I can get back to my car.' So I turned and I went down this street, went down that street… but I couldn't find my car again. All the streets looked the same.