Didn't I tell you? Maryam said.
She was an optimist, Maryam was. Or on second thought, not an optimist: a pessimist. But her life had been rocky enough that she faced possible disasters more philosophically than most. She had had to forsake her family before she was twenty; she'd been widowed before she was forty; she had raised her son by herself in a country where she would never feel like anything but a foreigner. Basically, though, she believed that she was a happy person. She was confident that if things went wrong as they very well might she could manage.
Now she saw the same quality in Susan. Call her fanciful, but she had felt a deep connection to Susan the moment they met in the airport. Sometimes she imagined that Susan resembled her physically, even, but then she had to laugh at herself. Still, something around the eyes, some way of looking at things, some onlooker's look: that was what they shared. Neither one of them quite belonged.
Her son belonged. Her son didn't even have an accent; he had refused to speak Farsi from the time he was four years old, although he could understand it. Her daughter-in-law had a noticeable accent, having immigrated with her whole family when she was already in high school, but she had so immediately and enthusiastically adapted listening nonstop to 98 Rock, hanging out at the mall, draping her small, bony, un-American frame in blue jeans and baggy T-shirts with writing printed across them that now she seemed native-born, almost.
Ziba left for work when it suited her; she was an interior decorator and arranged her own appointments. Often she'd be loitering around the house a full hour after Maryam's arrival. She was already dressed for the office, not that you would guess it (she still wore jeans, although she'd graduated to blazers and high heels), but it seemed she couldn't quite tear herself away from Susan. What do you think? she would ask Maryam. Is another tooth coming in, or is it not? A thin white line is on her gum; do you see? Or she would collect her pocketbook, unplug her cell phone from its charger, but then: Oh! Maryam! I nearly forgot! Watch how she's learned to play peekaboo!
Maryam would inwardly chafe, longing to have this child to herself. Go! Go! she wanted to say. But she smiled and kept quiet. Then at last Ziba would be on her way, and Maryam could sweep Susan into her arms and carry her off to the playroom. All mine! she crowed, and Susan giggled as if she understood. Left in charge, Maryam was more sure of herself. Child-rearing had changed so since her day the endless new lists of forbidden foods (peanuts a toxic substance, you'd think); the regulation car seats; the ban on talcum powder and baby oil and pillows and crib bumper pads that Maryam often felt incompetent in Ziba's presence. With Ziba there, she walked on tiptoe the way her own mother had tiptoed, she realized, the one time she had come to visit. Her mother had arrived with a holy medal to hang around Sami's neck, a little gold dime-sized Allah that a two-year-old would have swallowed in a blink, if Maryam had not insisted in putting it aside for later; and her mother had plied Sami with gummy white rosewater candies that would have ruined his teeth and stuck in his throat if Maryam had not clamped the box firmly shut and carried it off to the pantry. By the end of the visit, her mother had retreated to the television set, even though she couldn't understand a word of what was said. Now Maryam recalled with a pang her mother's stoical posture, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed steadily upon a commercial for Kent cigarettes. She batted the image away. She said, Bunny rabbit, Susie — june! Look! and held up a little stuffed animal that jingled when she wagged it.
Susan wore blue jeans also. (Who knew they made jeans so tiny?) She wore a red-and-white-striped long-sleeved T-shirt that could just as well have been a boy's, and little red socks with nonskid soles. The socks were a new addition till the weather turned cold she'd gone barefoot and she didn't like them. She kept tugging them off her feet with a triumphant squawk, and then Maryam hoisted her into her lap and put them on again. Wicked girl! she scolded. Susan laughed. As soon as she was set back down on the rug she would fling herself on her favorite toy, a xylophone that she banged energetically with any object at hand. She didn't crawl yet she was a bit behind in her physical skills, which Maryam blamed on life in the foster home but clearly she was working on it.
If it were up to her, Maryam would have dressed this child differently. She'd have chosen more feminine clothes, little white tights and A-line jumpers and blouses with ruffles. Wasn't that part of the fun of having a girl? (Oh, how she used to hope for a girl after Sami was born!) She herself dressed with the utmost care even just to babysit. She wore trousers, yes, but slim, tailored trousers, with a fitted sweater in some jewel color and good shoes. She regularly had the gray tinted from her hair, although she preferred that this not be known, and she secured her chignon with tortoiseshell combs or brightly patterned scarves. It was important to keep up appearances. She believed that. Let the Americans lounge about in their sweatsuits! She was not American.
Not American! Check your passport, Sami always told her. She said, You understand what I mean.
She was a guest, was what she meant. Still and forever a guest, on her very best behavior.
Perhaps if she lived in Iran, she would have been more casual. Oh, not that she would have let herself go, nothing so extreme as all that, but she might have worn a housecoat at home the way her mother and aunts used to do. Or would she? She couldn't even imagine now what her life would be like if she had not moved to Baltimore.
Susan was in the process of giving up her morning nap. She might fall asleep when she was put down or she might not; so while Maryam was waiting to find out which, she read the paper or flipped through a magazine, something that didn't require an uninterrupted block of time. If so much as half an hour passed and Susan was still chirping, Maryam would get her up again. Once more they would go through their reunion scene Susan's Ah! and Maryam's Su-Su-Su! Maryam would change her diaper and put her in a sweater and take her out in the stroller.
There were no sidewalks here. Maryam found that amazing. How could they have constructed an entire neighborhood long curving roads of gigantic, raw new houses with two-story arched windows and double-wide front doors and three-car garages and failed to realize that people might want to walk around it? There weren't any trees either, unless you counted the twiglike saplings staked in all the front yards. (Tiny yards. The houses had devoured most of the available space.) In weeks past, when it was still hot, Maryam had often kept Susan inside, knowing they'd find not a chip of shade anywhere and the pavements would be radiating heat. But now that fall had arrived the sun felt good. She would stretch their walk till lunchtime, covering every smooth, blank, uncannily deserted street in Foxfoot Acres and commenting as she went. Car, Susan! See the car? Mailbox! See the mailbox?
In her own neighborhood there were squirrels, and dogs on leashes, and other children in carriages and strollers. She would have had many more sights to point out.
Lunch was strained baby foods for Susan and a salad for Maryam. Then Susan had a little playpen time in the family room extending from the kitchen while Maryam did the dishes, and after that a bottle and another nap this one long enough that Maryam was free to fix something for Sami and Ziba's supper. Not that they expected it, but she had always enjoyed cooking and Ziba, it turned out, did not. Left to their own devices, they tended to eat Lean Cuisines.
While the rice was boiling, she straightened the house. She put Susan's toys in the toy chest and carried a bagful of wet diapers out to the garbage can. She stacked and aligned various reading materials but did not throw away so much as a scrap of paper, not a subscription card or a pizza flyer, for fear of overstepping.