“Cojah?”
“In Corona. You remember that beach village we have before driven through on Sundays?”
My son of fourteen years looked at me then with Nadi’s beautiful face that becomes so ugly so easily with bad feeling, and he walked past me and said in our language: “I don’t wantto move.”
It is my practice halfway through this nightwork to purchase a Coca-Cola and drink it while I eat a package of peanut butter crackers. By nine-thirty or ten o’clock, the majority of my customers come only for gasoline or cigarettes, though many times a young husband or wife will arrive to buy milk and bread, ice cream perhaps. I sit upon the stool behind the counter and have my snack, and I am thankful of the long cigarettes display rack over me for keeping the bright fluorescent light from my eyes. Today has been a day of many decisions. After my son left the bathroom I stood quickly and felt the hot blood fill my hands and fingers, and I kicked my bare foot through Nadi’s clothes hamper basket, then rushed into Esmail’s room where he had turned on his television and I switched it off and stood over the bed where my son lay. I pointed at him, yelling in full voice, and I do not remember all I said except I know Esmail became hurt, perhaps frightened; I saw it in his eyes—though he lay there very relaxed-looking, his hands loose at his sides, and he would not show any of this to his father. I told to him he would do as I said without question, and then I heard the music stop in Nadereh’s room, the bedsprings squeak as though she were sitting up to listen, and I pushed her door open and I went directly for the cassette player and pulled it free of the wall and threw it to the other side of the room where it knocked over the bureau lamp and the lightbulb shattered and Nadi began screaming, but I shouted back and soon she became quiet, but I did not lower my voice; I yelled in our language that, yes, perhaps she did not come to America to live like a gypsy, but I did not come here to work like an Arab! To be treated like an Arab! And then I did lower my voice because even my son does not know the manner of jobs I have been working here. He has seen me leave dressed in a suit and he knows I work at two jobs, but that is all he knows, and many nights at this convenience store, even though it is situated two towns to the north of us, I have worried about his older schoolmates with driver’s licenses making this discovery. So I lowered my voice to almost a whisper, and I told to my wife that beginning tomorrow she will begin packing and there is no more to discuss, Mrs. Behrani. Do not open your lips.
Once, before dinner at our home in the capital city, while Nadereh and Pourat’s wife were in another room and after I had just raised my voice at our daughter of seven years for something I do not now recall, Pourat said to me softly: “Behrani, every night you must leave your work behind you.”
Pourat and I were of the same rank then, both captains, genob sarvans, and I did not at first understand him until he nodded at Soraya, at her brown eyes wet from my yelling, from my orders. My face became warm with embarrassment, and after that moment I have worked hard to discipline myself from viewing my wife only as a junior officer, my children as soldiers.
But I am prepared now to give all the orders necessary until we are out of that pooldar apartment. The rent is paid through the month, two more weeks, but the Behrani family will be discharged this weekend, I promise that. I have a security deposit of three thousand dollars to claim. This leaves a total of six thousand dollars for us after I pay the remaining thirty-five on our new property. Tomorrow, Friday, I will receive my checks from this store and from the Highway Department, and I will leave these jobs with no notice. Torez and Mendez, and even Tran, can watch my backside as I go, as Genob Sarhang Behrani prepares for a new life, a life in the buying and selling of American real estate.
M Y HUSBAND GOT TO MISS ALL THIS, THAT’S WHAT I KEPT THINKING,that he didn’t have to be around for any of this, and I was stuck at the El Rancho Motel in San Bruno. It was a shitty little one-story L of rooms wedged between an electrical parts warehouse and a truck-stop bar near the 101 freeway ramp. The TV in my room got sound but nothing on the screen, and it was only a Wednesday night but there was a live country band playing at the truck stop and the management must have had all the windows open, so I turned the TV up and listened to an old movie with Humphrey Bogart and in the end he gets shot and his girlfriend weeps and says he’s free now, he’s free.
But I was still so mad it had backed up on me and now I felt weak and a little sick. I was dying for a cigarette, which made me even madder because I hadn’t smoked one since a month after Nick left, and I hadn’t really craved one in five. So I chewed gum.
I was getting out of my morning shower when they knocked on the front door of my house: a man in a suit, two cops, and a locksmith with a huge gut that hung over the tool belt at his waist. I answered in my robe, my hair wet and scraggly around my face. Parked out front was a van, a big LTD, and two police cruisers. The man in the suit did the talking. He handed me some kind of document and said he was from the civil division of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department. He had a crewcut and a double chin, the rest of him slim. The policemen had star badges on their light blue shirts, sheriff’s deputies. One was tall and skinny with black hair and a mustache he’d trimmed too much on one end, and he kept staring at me. I read over the court order, then handed it back to the man in the suit, my fingers shaking, and I told him the truth, that my husband and I had never operated any damn business out of our home and did not owe a business tax. I went to the county tax office myself and told them so, even signed a statement and had it notarized, and I thought that was the end of it. The man in the suit asked to be let in and when I stepped back, all four of them walked into my small living room while I stood there in my robe, still naked and damp underneath. The fat locksmith squatted at my door and started unscrewing the knob and lock.
“What is he doing?”
The man in the suit handed me back the court order. “The county has petitioned the court in its behalf, Mrs. Lazaro. This should come as no surprise to you. I’m sure you had ample warning; your house is up for auction starting tomorrow morning.”
“Auction?”
The pager on his belt went off. He asked if he could use my phone on the kitchen counter, then went to it without waiting for an answer. I stared at the court order, but didn’t see any of the words; I was picturing all the county tax mail I’d been throwing away unopened since last winter, sure I’d done my part and they were now after the wrong person.
“Is your husband home?” It was the tall deputy with the crooked mustache.
“That’s none of your business.”
The deputy looked like he was about to say more, but then just looked at me.
“What?Why do you need to know that?”
“We need to notify all residents of the house, Mrs. Lazaro.”
“Well, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
The tall deputy nodded at me, then folded his hands in front of him and looked down at my bare feet. I walked away from him, but I didn’t know where to go.
The other deputy was short, chewing gum, watching the locksmith like he wanted to remember how to do that himself. The man in the suit finished his call and waved the tall deputy over, whispered something to him, then came back into the living room and said he had to leave but Deputy Sheriff Burdon will assist you in vacating the property. That was his exact word, vacating,and he said it in a low tone, like it was a skill not many people had. Then he was gone, and the tall deputy with the crooked mustache asked where I kept my coffee. He suggested I get dressed and he’d make up a pot. I hesitated a second, but I felt like all three of them could see through my robe. I went and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and when I came back out, the short deputy was using my phone, the locksmith was already going at the back-door knob, and Deputy Burdon was setting four of my cups on the counter. He glanced at me and said I might want to put on something cooler, there’s no fog today and it’s going to get hotter.