Just a Hat, page 19
Charges of common nuisance, possession of drug paraphernalia, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor were dropped. Both defendants were in violation of parole on previous convictions. Charges are pending in federal district court on charges of transporting a controlled substance with intent to distribute across state lines and transporting stolen firearms across state lines. Sentencing in the case is set for late May.
“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Was Brian’s dad making him sell the drugs? But Larry was a year older. He was fifteen. Why not him?
It dawned on Joseph. Grimy Boy. Dirty Bird. That’s how he thought of Larry. Brian wasn’t a shining example of personal hygiene, but Larry’s grimy fingernails, hat, and sneakers . . . the mounds of fresh earth . . . Could Larry have been forced to help dig the hidden drug room? He was much stronger than Brian. Larry was always clean in school, so he wasn’t just a dirty kid. And he’d disappeared. Maybe he was afraid of going to juvy.
Joseph could see Baba’s relief. There was almost a smile when he sipped his tea. By pleading guilty, the Edmondsons made it unnecessary for Joseph and Roberto to testify in court. The less contact with police, the better for Baba. He’d faced his worst fear, but Baba would probably never want to go to the courthouse again for anything except to renew his driver’s license.
There was more to the Iranian escape story than Baba and Maman were telling. Why not just ask Baba outright? He was certainly in a good mood.
“Baba?”
“What is it, Aziz-am?”
“Why are you so afraid of the police? What really happened in Iran?”
Maman turned sharply from the kitchen sink. She stared at them both in some sort of fiery horror. He’d seen her fire, yes, willing to fight the night boo on their porch with a poker. This was different. It was a helpless fury, like a red needle spinning around a thermometer.
A cold, dark seriousness settled upon Baba.
“Nah, Kamran,” Maman pled softly. Her whole body was taut. Rage. Control. Baba glanced at her, but Joseph knew Baba would do whatever he wanted no matter how many times she said no. Baba turned his head and looked out the kitchen window for a long time. “Nah, Kamran,” Maman begged again.
“He should know,” replied Baba.
Maman abruptly threw a saucepan into the sink. Suds flew up. The bubbles stuck to the cabinets and landed on the countertop. “Miriam . . .” said Baba. She ignored him and flung the wet dishrag across the room at him. When she yanked open the back door and went outside, she slammed it so hard the windows rattled. Maybe Baba was right about the temper coming from her side of the family. The Piggly Wiggly cashier better watch her apples.
A silent minute passed. Through the window, Joseph saw Maman back the car out of the driveway. She did it much faster than she normally did. When she drove off, it was with purpose.
“Youssef,” Baba said, “you must never repeat this to anyone. Do you promise?”
“Baleh, Baba,” said Joseph.
“I killed two police officers in Tehran.”
Joseph’s heart skipped a beat.
“If anyone comes for me, you must hide Maman. Take her to her relatives in Israel, not Los Angeles. If they find me here, they’d find her in LA. Israel is dangerous, but it will be safer for you both in her family’s neighborhood. Take her to one of those airport cities I showed you. She can withdraw our money to live on. Do you promise me?”
Joseph had to swallow several times to make his throat work right. Finally, he managed, “Baleh, Baba.”
“Thank you, Aziz-am. It was self-defense. I’d have never done it otherwise, but they wanted to kill me and imprison Maman. Maybe they’d kill her, too, but only after they violated and tortured her for information about her brother. No one would be able to help her. I know you think I’m a coward, but I hate killing. I hate even striking someone. Spanking you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I knew it would hurt you so deeply that you’d always think twice about fighting.”
“But, Baba, it looked so easy when you knocked down that man in our front yard . . .”
“Yes, Youssef, but none of those men wanted to face me alone. They brought nine men,” said Baba.
“It’s because you’re so big.”
“That’s only part of the reason. So many came because no matter how much I despise hurting someone, I will do it if it’s the last option. I spanked you, Youssef, because you thought fighting was a first option. When you are willing to harm someone, they sense it. You fought two boys at the store, not one. Many boys attacked you at school, not one. You understand?” asked Baba.
“Not exactly,” said Joseph.
“I took you to boxing class so that you had the training to be willing. So people would hesitate to harm you. When you are willing, it makes people less eager to test whether you will. But you must control your temper. You are too willing.”
Joseph understood. Kind of.
Baba continued, “Maybe the Shah’s government people who wanted to take revenge on us are out of power. Maybe they are running for their own lives now. We might fade from their memories.”
“I don’t think you’re a coward, Baba. I understand now.”
Baba gave him a glance. It was sad, disbelieving. It must have been a heavy burden to bear.
44
HANG UP YOUR HAT
Joseph stared at Maman’s copy of Persian poetry that lay open before him. He and Baba had argued that morning. Bad. The chair rental company dropped off the chairs for Miss Eleanor’s piano recital late. They stacked them at the bottom of her porch and drove off. Joseph walked over to move them inside her parlor, but Baba called him back. It was Shabbat. Joseph had no business carrying chairs on Shabbat. The students could set them up. She could call the rental place to come finish the job.
No, Joseph had argued. Miss Eleanor would never allow a recital to start without every chair, program, cookie tray, and lemonade pitcher in place. It was beneath her dignity to ask the students and parents to set up folding chairs. It was too hard on her knees to go up and down the porch steps that many times. Instead of giving up, Joseph had said things. Baba had said things. Maman looked as if she were watching a fatal car wreck. Joseph went to his room and slammed the door. Maman’s side of the family.
Joseph flipped through the book, looking bitterly at the lines he’d translated and copied for Vonda.
Your love should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger,
Only to someone who has the courage and bravery
To cut pieces of his soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket to protect you.
Vonda had shrugged off the blanket of his soul and left it in a tree house. She hadn’t looked back when she walked away in the park. Sure, she’d said she was sorry. That’s what you say when you want to get rid of someone kindly.
Joseph read another line of the poet Hafiz:
People say that when the soul heard the song of creation, it entered the body,
but actually, the soul itself was the song.
Hafiz’s nickname was the Tongue of the Invisible. That summed up Joseph’s time with Vonda. Invisible. Joseph would never know what she really thought of him. Was he a curiosity, a real Jew just like she read about in Sunday school? Was it his nice clothes? Whatever it was, she’d never intended to disappoint her father with a brown Jewish boy. She was happiest with Joseph when they were pen pals.
The image of Fereshteh came to him, the beautiful girl who sat with Shahla. Copper eyes smiled at him. Then the image of the sad Fereshteh replaced it, the one he pushed away and humiliated. He hadn’t gotten rid of her kindly. She’d be stuck in his soul forever. A mistake he’d never be able to correct. Would she always share the humiliation of that moment with him, like the faded chalk of Yom Kippur, or would it completely erase? Sometimes in a nightmare, Joseph did something horrible, and it was a relief to wake up and know he didn’t really do it, that he wouldn’t go to jail. The nightmare soon faded unless he dreamed it again. What he said to Fereshteh was real, though. It just wouldn’t fade.
If there were songs in Joseph’s soul, he’d never play them on LaLa’s piano. No matter what he’d said to Baba, in the end, he was a Jew and a Persian. The distance between Iran and Texas proved you never really fit in either place. Each side thought you were theirs. Farsi and English never quite translated except in road signs that didn’t need translating. Joseph would always be in the middle. Today, though, his soul would sing one last song. To Texas ladies, one soft kiss, and foolish, hopeful notes. To accepting things stuck in a bottle. To suffering and silence.
Baba looked up from his recliner when Joseph walked through the living room. Joseph dropped his tie over his upturned collar. “Where are you going, Youssef?” Baba asked, his words aflame. Baba was still angry. Joseph knew more about Baba than ever before, but they were farther apart.
“Miss Eleanor’s.”
“Youssef-jun, do not defy your father,” pled Maman. “Miss Eleanor understands you can’t come over to play piano.”
“I’ll be back in thirty minutes,” said Joseph.
“Youssef, go to your room,” Baba said, rising from the recliner.
“Nah, Baba.”
Baba’s face turned red. Joseph turned down his collar over the tie and gave it a final tug. “I’m going to Miss Eleanor’s to play in the recital.”
“No, you’re not,” said Baba, moving to block the front door. “You’ve never played on a Shabbat, and you won’t start now.”
“You can’t stop me,” said Joseph.
Joseph tried to shoulder past Baba, but his father grabbed his right arm. Maman desperately grabbed his left hand. With a quick, violent twist, Joseph broke free and backed toward the door. “You can’t stop me,” he repeated. “So let me go.”
Baba advanced, but Joseph flashed him a look. Baba hesitated. Maman’s side of the family.
“Thirty minutes,” Joseph repeated. He plucked a yellow rose from the vase of Shabbat flowers, went out the front door, and down the front walk.
A Schumann piece drifted from Miss Eleanor’s open parlor window. Joseph knew Miss Eleanor was sitting in the front row of rented folding chairs, and he knew what she was thinking. He’d heard her say different versions of it over the past eight years: “Dear, this is a piano, not a typewriter. A pianist is a translator for a composer, giving meaning to what the composer intended. Music doesn’t require a secretary to type its obituary; it begs a pianist to give it articulation, dynamics, rubato, tempi!”
Joseph grasped the cut Shabbat rose in his hand so hard that the thorns pricked his fingers. He used the kitchen entrance and waited until the ripple of polite applause excused the last terrified student from the piano bench.
Joseph adjusted his kippah, flexed his fingers, and strode into the parlor. His dress shoes struck the wooden floor boldly. “Miss Eleanor,” he said, and bowed slightly, offering the rose. She took it, and he walked to the bench. Joseph leveled a long, fearless look at Reverend Baer. Vonda squirmed in her seat.
Joseph wasn’t on the program, but Miss Eleanor hid her surprise. Always a Texas lady. “Joseph Nissan,” she said, “will be playing . . .”
“Brahms’s Intermezzo in A major,” Joseph inserted.
“. . . to finish our recital today.” Miss Eleanor’s uplifted eyebrow betrayed her. It was a most difficult piece, rarely selected, but her favorite. It moved the strings of her soul.
It was Joseph’s first and last recital. Through the open window, Joseph could see Maman and Baba standing on their front porch looking toward Miss Eleanor’s house. He pulled out the bench, sat, and played. He played like he’d never played before. He imitated no one. Joseph translated the Brahms chromatic harmony into his own apology, gratefulness, sorrow, love, and kind farewell. The keys yielded to his brown fingers like the soft flesh of Vonda’s white hands once had.
The slow, defiant notes filled the parlor, spilled out the window, rolled over the hydrangeas, and marched up the steps to his own front porch. Tiny crimson smudges from the thorns pressed onto the ivory keys. Joseph glanced through the window again. Baba and Maman sat together on the porch swing.
When the last note echoed through the acoustic wooden wonder of the old house, Joseph ran a finger noiselessly one last time across the keys, wiping away a few smudges of blood. Tiny drops of a soul. He looked up at the old fiddle on the wall, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered. He looked over at Miss Eleanor. No one clapped, coughed, or moved. Softly, she rapped one time on the chair beside her. Joseph pressed his hand over his heart: “A beautiful song for a beautiful lady, Miss Eleanor.”
Youssef Nissan stood and slid the bench under the piano. He bent to kiss Miss Eleanor’s wrinkled, wet cheeks twice, Persian style. It was a short walk home. No need to check. His kippah was clipped on straight.
45
RECAP
Joseph hummed the notes to the Torah page open before him Friday afternoon. School was out. They were staying at the Dallas apartment overnight for Shabbat. Sunday morning, Joseph, Shahla, and Maman would fly to Israel to visit relatives. Thankfully, Baba dropped the threat of sending Joseph to attend a religious school in Israel. Joseph no longer worried about it being a one-way ticket. Shahla and Maman had finished preparing the evening meal and showered, and now they took turns braiding one another’s hair. Their little world free of his and Baba’s intrusion.
Pulling open his gym bag, Joseph pulled a slip of paper from the inside pocket. Roberto had found the paper in his riding jacket in early spring. He gave it to Joseph without comment. Joseph put the paper beside the open Torah.
“Canon in Me”
Youssef
I play the piano
The piano plays me
I play the daughter
The daughter plays me.
I play life
Life plays me
And I play dead
Joseph
You couldn’t hum it to the tune of “Yellow Rose of Texas.” Like Vonda, the words were a mystery. Was it her apology? Despair? Words written thousands of years ago were easier to understand.
The Hebrew words on the page were ancient. Joseph resented the rabbi’s latest comment about Baba’s pronunciation of the text. Baba’s way was truer to ancient Hebrew. Baba would do it his way, and the rabbi would deal with it. That’s just the way it was. The poem and a crumpled receipt for six dollars and two cents went back into the gym bag. Maybe someday Joseph would understand them. A kid couldn’t be expected to translate everything in life.
Like Miss Eleanor said about Baba, Vonda and Larry had hard burdens. Everyone has a cat in the hat. A bicycle, peach ice cream, and a kippah tossed Joseph’s life into the air, and he’d landed in a new place. People change. Some for better, some for worse. When people change, things change. That’s the shining sun and the star-blue sky. That’s the danger and the night boos. And that’s the burden.
Joseph reached again into his gym bag. He removed an Out of Order sign and two packages of stink bait. There were advantages to living in a rural Texas town. Bait-and-tackle shops were one of them. Joseph slid the sign and packages into a plastic bag and sealed it. It fit nicely into his tallit bag for the walk to the synagogue for evening prayers.
Rabbi Rothstein wouldn’t be enjoying his private restroom on Shabbat. His latest snide comment to Baba was one comment too many. By the time the rabbi figured out nothing was wrong with the toilet, the stink bait would do its work in the tiny space. Joseph would be on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Even if the rabbi figured out who did it, Joseph didn’t think Baba would mind.
Fly high. Family stick together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my agent Steven, who found the best place to hang The Hat for readers of all ages. Thanks to his diligence, the world can hear about more than just the recipes of the Mizrachi Jews, who remain second-class citizens in communities where one should least expect it. Although it’s been nearly a lifetime since we parted, thanks also to my LaLa, may her memory be for blessing, who welcomed a dark-skinned Persian girl into the community. I still have that photo of you holding me, standing next to my birthday cake. To my cousin, thank you for being a big brother and protector when we were young outsiders. I only ever remember being the recipient of your kindness.
About the Author
S. Khubiar is a retired federal law enforcement officer, and she is now self-employed as a subject matter specialist. She holds a BS and MEd in education from East Texas State University and a PhD in philosophy. A student of her Persian ancestry, she incorporates (Mizrachi) Middle Eastern Jewry into her fiction, examining the historical challenges and triumphs of a different culture and narrative than what usually appears in literature. Also an avid student of archaeology, she travels to volunteer for digs. Khubiar is a sometime resident and always fan of most things Texas.
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S. Khubiar, Just a Hat
