"Dad, has something happened?"
Barsam Tchakhmakhchian paused, stricken with sorrow from the weight of a childhood memory that had appeared out of nowhere.
When he was a boy, every year a man with a dark pointed hood and black cape would visit their neighborhood, going door to door with the deacon of the local church. He was a priest from the old country looking for young, bright boys to take back to Armenia to train them to be priests.
"Dad, are you all right? What is going on?"
"I'm all right sweetheart. I missed you," was all he could say.
Barsam was fascinated by religion at a young age, the best student in Sunday school. Consequently, the man with the black hood visited their house often, talking to Shushan about the boy's future. One day, as Barsam, his mother, and the priest were sitting in the kitchen sipping hot tea, the priest had said if a decision was to be made, this was the time to do it.
Barsam Tchakhmakhchian would never forget the flash of fear in his mother's eyes. As much as she respected the holy priest, as much as she'd have been delighted to see her son as a grown-up man in pastoral garb, as much as she wanted her only son to serve the Lord, Shushan could not help but recoil withh fright, as if faced with a kidnapper who wanted to take her son away from her. She had flinched with such force and fear that the cup in her hand had shaken, spilling some tea on her dress. The priest had softly, amiably nodded, detecting the shadow of a dark story secreted in her past. He had patted her hand and blessed her. Then he had left the house, never to come back with the same request again.
That day Barsam Tchakhmakhchian had sensed something he hadn't felt before and wasn't going to feel ever again. A spiky, creepy premonition. Only a mother who had already lost a child would react with such profound fear in the face of the danger of losing another one. Shushan might have had another son at some point who had become separated from her.
Now as he mourned his mother's death, he couldn't find the heart to tell his daughter.
"Dad, talk to me," Armanoush said urgently.
Just like his mother, his father came from a family deported from Turkey in 1915. Sarkis Tchakhmakhchian and Shushan Stamboulian shared something in common, something their children could only sense but never fully grasp. So many silences were scattered among their words. When coming to America they had left another life in another country, and they knew that no matter how often and how truthfully you evoked the past, some things could never be told.
Barsam remembered his father dancing around his mother to a Hale, drawing circles within circles with his arms raised like a soaring bird; the music starting out slow, becoming faster and faster, this Middle Eastern swirl that the children could only watch with admiration from the side. Music was the most vivid trace left from his upbringing. For years Barsam had played the clarinet in an Armenian band and danced in traditional costume, black bloomers and a yellow shirt. He remembered leaving his house in those costumes while all the other kids in their non-Armenian neighborhood watched him with mocking eyes. Each time he would hope the kids would forget what they had seen or simply wouldn't bother to poke fun at him. Each time he was wrong.
While being enrolled in one Armenian activity after another, all he really wanted was to be like them, nothing more, nothing less, to be American and to get rid of this Armenian dark skin. Even years later, his mother would reproach him every now and then, explaining how as a little boy he had asked the Dutch American tenants upstairs what particular soap they used to wash themselves, because he wanted to be just as white as them. Now as the memories of his childhood gushed back to him with the loss of his mother, Barsam Tchakhmakhchian couldn't help but feel guilty for rapidly unlearning what little Armenian he had learned as a child. He now feltt sorry for not having learned more from his mother, and not having taught more to his daughter.
"Dad, why are you silent?" Armanoush asked, her voice filled with fright.
"Do you remember the youth camp you went to as a teenager?" "Yes, of course," Armanoush answered.
"Were you ever angry at me for not sending you there
anymore?"
"Dad, it was me who didn't want to go there anymore, did you forget? It was fun at the beginning but then I decided I was too mature for it. I'm the one who asked you not to send me there the next year…."
"Right," Barsam said tentatively. "But still I could have looked for a different camp for Armenian teenagers yourr age."
"Dad, why are you questioning this now?" Armanoush felt on the verge of tears.
He did not have the heart to tell her. Not like this, not over the phone. He did not want her to learn about her grandmother's death while all alone and thousands of miles away. As he tried to mutter a few words of distraction, his voice rose softly over a hum that broke out in the background. The droning hum of a gathering. It sounded like the entire family was there, relatives and friends and neighbors under the same roof, which, as Armanoush was wise enough to know, could be the sign of only two things: either someone had gotten married or someone had died.
"What's wrong? Where is Grandma Shushan?" Armanoush said softly. "I want to talk to Grandma."
That is when Barsam Tchakhmakhchian brought himself to tell her.
Since late evening Auntie Zeliha had been pacing her room with a brisk energy she didn't know how to contain. She couldn't confide in anyone at home how bad she felt, and the more she buried her feelings, the worse she felt. First she thought of brewing herself some soothing herbal tea in the kitchen, but the heavy smell of all the cooking almost made her throw up. Then she went into the living room to watch TV, but finding two of her sisters in there frantically engaged in cleaning while chatting excitedly about the next day, she instantly changed her mind.
Once back in her room again, Auntie Zeliha closed her door, lit a cigarette, and took out the companion she kept under her mattress for such trying days: a bottle of vodka. She hurriedly, but then with increasing sluggishness, imbibed one third of the bottle. Now, after four cigarettes and six shots, she didn't feel anxious anymore; actually, she didn't feel anything, except hunger. All she had to snack on in her room was a package of golden raisins she had bought from a rake-thin street vendor yelling in front of the house earlier in the evening.
Halfway through the bottle and with only a handful of raisins left, her cell phone rang. It was Aram.
"I don't want you to stay in that house tonight," was the first thing he uttered. "Or tomorrow, or the day after that. As a matter of fact, I don't want you to spend a day away from me for the rest of my life."
In response, Auntie Zeliha snickered.
"Please my love, come and stay with me. Leave that house right now. I got you a toothbrush. I even have a clean towel!" Aram attempted to make a joke but stopped halfway. "Stay with me until he's gone."
"How are we going to explain my sudden absence to my dear family, then?" Auntie Zeliha grumbled.
"You don't need to explain anything," Aram said imploringly. "Look, this must be the one benefit of being the maverick in a traditional family. Whatever you do, I'm sure nobody will be shocked. Come. Please stay with me."
"What am I going to tell Asya?"
"Nothing, you don't have to say anything…. You know that."
Holding the phone tightly, Auntie Zeliha curled up in a fetal position. She shut her eyes, ready to sleep, but then mustered the energy to ask: "Aram, when is it going to end? This compulsory amnesia. This perpetual forgetfulness. Say nothing, remember nothing, reveal nothing, not to them, not to yourself…. Is it ever going to come to an end?"
"Don't think about that now," Aram tried to soothe her. "Give yourself a break. You're being too hard on yourself: Come here first thing tomorrow morning."