Watch the stone skip
Touch the lake
and run away
Skips
Kiss the surface
Hover a while
until it falls
Sink
Watch the moon climb
Evil star
but only light
Climbs
Hold the hollow shine
In your eyes
there's life for light
Blink
Was it ever there?
“When it comes to basketball, Jimmy is the best,” Joe would say, referring to my trash-talking. The reality is I couldn’t hope to compete with the likes of him or Vineet; they were the best players to hit the court on Chambers Street, but there were other ways to stand out.
I would “oink” when Vineet had the ball, since he was a ball hog. I described various sexual (and sometimes romantic) positions I’ve engaged in with Joe’s mother. I would also mime stamping Larry’s passport, since he took so many steps before letting go of the ball. It was these gestures and a seeming fearlessness from being punched in the face that kept me in the games. Sure, I was the last one picked, but I was picked unlike poor schlubs such as Michael.
Every play of high school ball went the same: Someone passes you the rock, you dribble it on the gray asphalt, and then you decide to egotistically take a shot or pass the ball to someone who can make it. Oftentimes, bad players like me can grab a drink from the water fountains without affecting the game or chat it up with the person they’re guarding or who's guarding them. Besides that, we gelled excellently as a team. We beat local college students in half-court games to 21 on a regular basis. We knew our capabilities very well. Joe was great with the layups; Vineet made outside shots; Larry was good for getting rebounds; and I caught every opportunity to mock my opponent's physical appearances. Again, not a good player, but even pawns have their uses in chess.
Our school team name — the Peg Legs, implying a handicap — was one of the most common elements of my insults.
“If you fall on your face one more time, they might recruit you to the Peg Legs,“ I started, adding the politically incorrect "you fucking Chinese version of Corky from Life Goes On."
Aside from my racism, the malice toward our school mascot could have been jealousy. I was convinced my friends and I were better than the school team but would never be recognized for it. The basketball court was right at the entranceway to our school, but none of the members of the team ever joined us in a game. We weren’t even sure who was on the team; we just knew it had to be from the same group of white kids who ran the student government and our school newspaper. They were probably the same players in our football team, too. It was the kids whose parents could afford to buy them uniforms. They can stand to be told what to do because that was what life was going to bring them. They got to put “basketball team” on their college applications for extracurricular activities, and even if we played every day, we didn’t. We were stray dogs enjoying an unrewarding freedom, and we didn’t identify with anyone who trained and played in that air-conditioned gymnasium. This is why it was surprising when I barked to some passersby one night.
“They can stand to be told what to do because that was what life was going to bring them.”
There was a cold winter darkness in New York, but we were warmed by our hours of playing. The street light illuminated the court, as some kids were grabbing their jackets to go home. I had my usual obnoxious grin, shouting “ In your face!” to Larry as I took a shot. Of course, it missed. I wanted to pick new teams among the people staying. A group of black kids came out of the school wearing varying combinations of pinks and grays, holding gym bags and a couple of basketballs. They weren’t familiar to me, as our school was mostly white and Asian, with the majority of the nonwhites being in our group itself, so I inferred they were a visiting team.
“Stuyvesant sucks!” yelled the shorter one in the group. His followers laughed.
“Why don’t you come in here and say that?” I shouted back, reminding my friends of my fearlessness.
We were immediately surrounded by them. Even those of our friends who were not planning on leaving initially had grabbed their stuff and headed in, leaving Joe, Larry, Michael, and me. I couldn’t tell what their immediate reactions were as I was busy staring up at some pretty tough faces while grinning stupidly, saying,“In a game of basketball, I mean. Why don’t you tell us by beating us in a game of basketball?”
And like a Daffy Duck cartoon, I managed to avoid yet another well-deserved beating, as our now-opponents started picking out their five players, jumping, raising their hands, as the short guy who made the remark initially confirmed who’d be sitting on their sidelines from their group of 12. Meanwhile, on our side, we were trying to figure out how to make our team of four work in a full-court game. Relief came when one of the rejected players from our opposing team put himself in our group.
“Y'all need a fifth? I’m Eric. I got the best layup.”
Who were we to argue? The game started, and it was quite a spectacle. Michael and I played guards, while Larry and Joe were under the basket. Joe was a small guy, but he had a great jump, which is why he could play a position normally reserved for taller players. He was everyone’s first pick, and he was a funny guy, too.
I stepped up to the short guy, their leader. He extended the ball out, dribbling it in front of me, daring me to try to take it. I didn’t know my opponent, but he shouldn’t know me either. Maybe I was skilled enough to take the ball from him. Besides, his team just lost to our school. People shouted in the sidelines about my “broken ankles” as the ball bounced between my open legs. They scored with cheers, and Joe passed it to our new teammate, who just as quickly got the layup in, taunting his friends with some inside jokes.
Coming back up from their side of the court, my nemesis smiled, pointing out how "I haven’t learned.” He hit the ball off my hand, and before I could retrieve it, had taken steps toward a layup. It didn’t matter that he missed the shot; he still embarrassed me by getting past my outreached arms. I still looked bad to onlookers. Joe retrieved the ball, passing it back down to Eric, who scored again.
“My turn! My turn!” Someone else wanting to get past me. He had his fun, too, as he spun around me, breaking through my already-worn-down defense.
“Oh, there he goes, there he goes. Oh!” The onlookers who clearly supported their friends were laughing while expressing empathy for the pain I must have been feeling.
But I wasn’t embarrassed. I had my mouth uncharacteristically shut, and I was determined to help my team get the advantage. Our opponents liked to switch it up, going after all our players. Eric though, like our opponents, showed no interest in playing defense, choosing to expend his efforts taking shots and driving the ball into the hoop instead. Vineet played like that. I wondered how the game would have turned out if he were with us.
The player shouting the score from the opposing team stopped when he started practicing his jump shot on me. I was a little angry, but I couldn’t deny how much fun everyone was having. My friends played a fierce game too, with even Mike getting a three-point shot in. Shorty stepped up to me again with his usual smile, then suddenly stopped and turned to a girl in the sidelines.
“Yo, is that them? Yooooo!”
I couldn’t see who they were referring to, but I knew. Everyone, including Eric, immediately evacuated the court, with the girls and some of the guys picking up their stuff and walking toward them. I asked that same girl as she collected someone else’s jacket what just happened.
“That was the basketball team. They went to go fuck them up.”
Joe came up to me asking the same thing, as a smile sneaked onto my face. I realized I had more school pride than I thought — just enough to defend her honor to some strangers, but not enough to care for other schoolmates. I also dragged my friends in what could have been a hostile situation, and they didn’t run. In turn, I tried my best to play defense, even as I became the butt of other people’s jokes. All those points gave me a reason to smile to Joe and say, “I don’t think they're coming back to finish the game, and we’re winning 16 to 14.”
We are not in love.
We are standing, two feet apart, and I keep saying the same thing over and over.
I am in love with you.
She keeps shaking her head, her hot pink hair swaying with each turn. No, you aren't, she is whispering. We are both crying and neither of us love the other and I wonder what exactly it is that we are mourning.
We have been in fake love for 2 years. Our fake love was at least not real hatred. Our fake love was comfortable. Our fake love was more than I expected from a relationship.
We are standing in the hall of our apartment building. Her torn backpack is on her shoulders, her black hoodie is hanging out from the unzipped opening. She has not zipped it, she never zips it, and this bothers me again as we stand here, and I deeply wish to fix it, but I wonder Who am I to fix someone I am not in love with?
I don't say this. Instead, I say Maybe we can fix this and she is shaking her head again.
I imagine the two of us together. I imagine us kissing, laughing, holding hands. We have said I love you one thousand times and not meant it once. We have picked furniture and watched one another sit on it like props. We have existed in one another's space and imagined what love might feel like.
This is not what I expected, I say.
She looks down at the ground. She has a gold nose piercing in the shape of a ribbon and she is wearing too much eyeliner. Her nails are expertly painted silver, but her jeans are ragged and ripped. I suddenly remember that when she is happy, she has a sleepy half-smile. I remember liking this about her when I first met her. I had witnessed that smile and I immediately imagined what it would be like to wake up beside her, to see that smile against the blue of my pillowcase. I imagined us listening to Sufjan Stevens and smoking weed. This was how I had fallen in love with her, this fake memory I had constructed.
“I suddenly remember that when she is happy, she has a sleepy half-smile. I remember liking this about her when I first met her. I had witnessed that smile and I immediately imagined what it would be like to wake up beside her, to see that smile against the blue of my pillowcase.”
I later realized she loathed Sufjan Stevens and got paranoid when she smoked weed. She didn't like drugs. I did not fall in love with this version of her. I didn't fall out of love with my fantasy, either, and perhaps this was what went wrong. Perhaps my heart was already taken when I met her by somebody she never was.
In the apartment hallway, people are passing, neighbors we never spoke to. I clear my throat.
I want to love you, I say to her. I really do.
She exhales loudly, runs a hand over her forehead. Her hair sticks up and I remember placing it back when we were first dating, before she told me that she hated when I did that. She looks at me, but it is hard to take her seriously with her hair propped up from her head.
The problem is you want everything, she says. And none of it works.
I am unsure what she means by this. Before I can ask, she says she has to go and walks past me, her shoulder brushing against mine. I stare after her and watch her steal the life I had created, the life we were meant to live. I watch her steal our cute date at Ikea, our MDMA roll at Electric Zoo festival. I watch her steal our Pitbull mix, our shared closet. I watch her rob me of the girl I had fallen in love with and never had.
We are not in love.
Parisa stood by Navid’s old bedroom, holding tight to the hyacinth flower, and wondering if her brother’s soul had found a home yet. She had changed into her yellow polka dot dress along with the white stockings even though they made her knees all itchy. On her feet she wore her new shoes--with insoles that were decorated in lemony polka dots.
Parisa had been standing there a while daring herself to take a peek into her dead brother’s room that had been left undisturbed since the car accident.
It had been a quick death.
Navid hadn’t felt any pain-and her family had told her all the things that adults say when they are not sure how to speak to children. Mina, her mother, cried for weeks as she straightened up the house. Sami, her father who was an accountant, had lost himself in his work and treated Parisa like she was the one who had died.
When Parisa asked her parents about her little brother they always said the same thing: Navid was in a better place.
None of that explained what had happened to Navid and why his bedroom was tended to every few days- as if he would run upstairs with a slice of pizza to play his video games or read one of his comics.
Her mother had been in Navid’s room that morning straightening things up. When Mina caught her daughter’s confused eyes she cleared her throat and said:
“Spring cleaning is part of Nowruz...it’s our tradition. Parisa-borro bache get the flowers I bought and bring them downstairs. Stay out of your brother’s room.”
Then her mother went to work on placing the items that represented the coming of spring on the haft seen: coins, goldfish, sabzi, mirror, colored eggs and the poetry of Hafiz instead of the Qu'ran since her family didn’t practice Islam or any other religion.
Nor did anyone ever enter Navid’s room-except for her mother. Parisa was caught once but her aunt Haleh pulled on her arm:
Boro-boro bache...boro ye jaye digge...hichi ke inja nist barre shoma. Go child...go somewhere else….there is nothing here for you…
Parisa had gotten angry and remembered how everyone always fussed over Navid even though he was such a little brat: always tugging at her hair and stealing her peanut butter cups: her favorite Halloween candy. Still, Parisa missed her brother’s scent: a mixture of peppermint sticks, cinnamon and maple. It was a sweet scent and thinking about it almost made her cry.
“Parisa missed her brother’s scent: a mixture of peppermint sticks, cinnamon and maple. It was a sweet scent and thinking about it almost made her cry.”
“If his body is buried and his room is still the same-what happened to his rooh-his soul?” Parisa asked her uncle because she thought that maybe Navid could appear for the Pars festival. It was a silly thought by a silly little girl-but it wasn’t impossible. No one could see her lemony polka dot insoles that matched her dress for it was hidden. It was sort of like Navid. She thought she had seen her brother on Shabe Yalda-the winter solstice when they had stuck out their tongues at each other like it had been any old day.
“If he came to see me during the Winter Solstice why wouldn’t he come for the spring?”
Her uncle sighed heavily and turned the page of his newspaper. His forehead was crinkled and he lifted his eyes slightly.
“Ey babba...veleshkon. Leave your brother’s soul alone. Navid is happy. That’s all that matters,” Uncle Behrooz said.
Her uncle had been immersed in the news about the recent lifting of sanctions in Iran. Since the summer it had been the one thing that had been on his mind more than anything else...because it meant that things might get better for his kin back home.
She heard him speaking on the phone with Mr. Saman, his friend, and advisor, who had been helping Behrooz with his dissertation. Her uncle had been working on a long project but had taken some time off to help the family.
Parisa poked his shoulders.
“Hmmmm?” Her uncle said.
“I think I saw him...on Shabe Yalda…dooroog nimigam ke!”
“Parisa, joonam...maybe you saw him in a dream. Your baradar is gone...but we still have you...”
Uncle Behrooz smiled thinly and cleared his throat. His mustache seemed to wiggle. She knew that it meant that the conversation was over. Parisa found herself sitting in her room and resting her chin on her Snoopy doll.
She heard her uncle and mother screaming at each other downstairs while her father tried to keep the peace between the two:
“Both of you need to calm down…”
“That room…it’s sick and it is confusing her.”
“Behrooz now you care? Where have you been this past year? In your own little world getting a useless degree in theology…”
“My studies are separate from Parisa. Babba...the girl thinks she still sees her brother. She needs help...”
“My daughter is fine. If you want to help you can get your head out of books and help us with the bills. We took you in when that gende...that whore left you.”
“I work at the university.”
“Azizam, we are fine. Let Behrooz finish his studies. I can adjunct again if needed.”
“No. Your daughter needs you and you ignore her. No wonder she speaks to ghosts.”
Parisa thought about her brother.
On the winter solstice, Shabe-Yalda, where her family celebrated the long winter night eating watermelon, sharing pomegranate seeds, the poems of Hafez and keeping warm by the fireplace, she had heard something outside. When she looked out the window she thought she had seen her brother. Then he stuck his tongue at her and she did the same-feeling horrible afterwards and wondered if his soul was cold.
Parisa dropped the hyacinths on the floor. She placed her hands on the bedroom door and opened it slowly. She entered quietly, and stood in the middle of Navid’s bedroom hoping that he didn’t mind; her brother hated it when she went into his room without his permission.
Her eyes spotted David Beckham on the closet kicking up a soccer ball that splattered dirt beyond the edge of the poster. Parisa felt the big red eyes and wide grins from the video game characters standing guard with their swords for they were still pinned to the wall as well. Navid’s bed was also still there, with the dark blue Justice League bedsheets and his Akira manga all stacked neatly on the table next to his bed.
Parisa walked towards his desk and pulled open the drawers. She found envelopes that held foreign coins from countries that uncle Behrooz had visited. On the windowsill a few mason jars held a collection of preserved insects. Parisa picked one up and stared at the shriveled grasshopper, wondering about its soul, wondering if it too was keeping her brother safe.
There was an awful scream.
Parisa dropped the mason jar as she flinched and turned around. The jar rolled over to her mother who was standing there in her long green dress and her apron. She was speaking fast in Farsi and Parisa just looked down at the blue carpet that had been freshly vacuumed.
“Biya biroon as inja...chi behet goftam? Bare chi be man hitchvaght goosh nimikoni! Get out! What did I tell you? Why don’t you ever listen to me!”
Parisa closed her eyes and thought about Shabe-Yalda, the winter solstice, where her family celebrated the long winter night eating watermelon, sharing pomegranate seeds, the poems of Hafez and keeping warm by the fireplace.
Navid had still been alive and she remembered that they had stuck their tongue out at each other-just like when his ghost had visited her.
All of a sudden, Parisa realized that she wasn’t sure if she had seen her brother’s ghost or if she had simply mixed everything up in her head. The little girl sat down on her brother’s bed, confused by the string of memories that all of a sudden didn’t make much any sense anymore and she began to cry.
“Chi shode...what happened? Why is my Parisa crying?” Her father was standing at the threshold with Uncle Behrooz. Both men looked at Parisa and then at Mina.
“She was supposed to help me with the haft-seen and I find her in here messing up her brother’s room…” Her mother was whispering as she held the hyacinth and the mason jar close to her heart. Parisa saw the dead grasshopper and imagined it blinking its eyes as if to say the little girl was next since she was ruining the Spring Equinox for everyone.
“Yes…we need to set up the haft-seen for Aide Nowruz…” her father said.
“Nowruz...it literally means a new day Mina,” Uncle Behrooz said. He looked at his sister and then the walls. Then her uncle began to take down the posters carefully.
Mina nodded her head gingerly.
Sami held Parisa and gently rocked his daughter in his arms.
It had a while since Parisa had hugged her father.
