Afterward, we marched in neat rows to the classroom. “I’d show you my new drawing, but I have to find crayons first.”
“I love it already.” Shiler sat in the back with the other tall girls, where it was easier to giggle and whisper.
The religion teacher, whose endless lectures on sin and the afterlife terrified me, walked around the fifteen rows of seats where three girls in navy coveralls and white headscarves sat on each bench. I pushed my notebook closer to the edge of the desk so she could see that I’d done my homework.
“Tell your mother to wash and iron your headscarf for you every now and then, okay?” she said in a softer tone than her teaching voice. She smelled of rose water, and I thought about all the flowers that had to die to make that perfume for her. “Tell her to sew the hem too.” Students swiveled in their seats to look at me. I swallowed, feeling the heat creeping up my neck.
As she moved toward the blackboard, the teacher’s massive buttocks jiggled under her dark brown manteau. Everyone continued to steal glances at me through the lesson until Shiler left her seat in the back row and approached the teacher to whisper something.
“Can’t you wait?” The teacher was back to her sharp lecturing voice. Shiler looked around nervously and then whispered again. Her forehead was slick, her face drained of blood. The class did not breathe, trying to figure out what was going on. The teacher turned to survey the class and finally said, “All right, go.”
Shiler left, and murmurs about blood rose until she reappeared at the door a few minutes later, head bent. An uproar started in the class; not since the end of the eight-year war, when air-raid sirens sounded from the city’s loudspeakers and we rushed to the underground shelters, sometimes trampling each other in the chaos, had there been such a commotion. We almost fell out of our seats as we leaned forward to hear the hushed exchange at the front of the room.
“They can help you in the office,” the teacher told a flushed Shiler, who then burst into tears and ran out of the classroom. I grabbed her schoolbag and followed.
“I didn’t believe Joanna when she tried to tell me,” Shiler stuttered, crossing her arms and bending at the waist.
“What did you do?” I asked, and immediately regretted my stupid question.
She looked up at my face with fury. “I didn’t do anything. I hate the teachers. I hate this place. I’m never coming back to this dump. I am sick of hearing about the afterlife. Who needs it when this is hell in full flesh?” Shiler snatched her bag from me and threw her textbooks at the hallway wall, one after another. Her religion book hit the large painting of Ayatollah Khomeini. I was flabbergasted.
Shiler spat at the books scattered on the floor, wiped her mouth, and ran down the stairs. I looked out the window of the hallway and saw the shriveled janitor trying to stop her from going out the gate. It was part of his job to prevent girls from leaving and men from entering, unless they were parents or from the government. Shiler argued with him, waving her hands in the air. He grabbed at her wrist, but she pushed him away, sprinted through the gate, and disappeared around the curve of the street. Her black gum boots left traces on the slushy road.
“Saman, get back inside.” The teacher was peeking out of the door of the classroom. I made my way back to my seat, trying to recover from the shock of seeing sacred textbooks hit Khomeini’s face. Insulting the supreme leader was a crime punishable by imprisonment, at the very least.
A girl sitting next to me elbowed me. “Did you see the bloodstains on Shiler’s manteau?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
I was trembling the rest of the school day and all the way home, sitting in the last row of the bus and looking outside. All afternoon the school had been full of hushed conversations about bleeding. Trying to solve the mystery of girls and blood, I figured some girls threw up blood sometimes. That couldn’t happen to all girls, though, could it?
People in hats and jackets were making snowmen and playing dodgeball. Some mingled under the weak winter sun on their flat rooftops, cracking sunflower seeds and bantering.
“God, I promise to be a good girl.” I held my pinkie up toward the sky as I made my pledge, much to the amusement of the bored commuters.
At home, I shared the leftover bread from my backpack with Chia. After eating it all, he confessed that Baba, proud of his son for standing up for what was right in class, had bought him a sandwich before taking him to school.
I pinched his arm. “You spoiled brat. You thief. You ate everything I had. You deserve to vomit blood, not me.” He was big enough now to get away from me easily, and he only laughed. It was so unfair that he took advantage of the good looks he’d inherited from Mama. That he fooled me and charmed everyone, even Baba.
But then I remembered my pact with God not to allow the Satan of anger and laziness deceive me in return for keeping me safe from the bleeding that had started in school. “I pardon you for eating my food and forgive Baba for liking you more than he likes me,” I announced, and sat down to do homework.
Chia sat by my side with his notebook and started filling the pages. He hadn’t had Joanna to teach him his alphabet like I had, but he was still an able speller. We were snoozing on our books when Mama got home. I jumped up, eager to prove I was a helpful, obedient daughter, and gathered the laundry, including my school coverall and headscarf, and figured out how to turn on the washing machine. Proud and victorious, I announced to Chia that we would have clean clothes soon. If only I’d known that I would be beaten later for having poured bleach instead of detergent on the dirty laundry, leaving some with orange streaks that looked like flames.
The stench of rotting fruit made me go to the kitchen to haul out the trash bags. A watery discharge of garbage sludge dripped out of one bag, leaving a filthy trail on the tiled floor that ants would love. Disgusted, I left the bag in the middle of the kitchen, snatched an apple and a cucumber out of the grocery bags on the counter, and hid them under my shirt. But before I could stash the produce in my schoolbag, Mama caught me. “Only one per day,” she directed as she came out of her room, now in her ankle-length loose navy dress, and scolded me for having left the garbage in the middle of the kitchen.
The three of us were eating feta cheese on thin slices of lavash bread when Baba came downstairs from the attic. “Sign a check for the shelves you ordered,” he commanded.
“No money.” Mama spoke with food in her mouth, opening wider for the next bite.
I held Chia’s hand and thought of taking him upstairs to the attic, where we would be somewhat removed from the fight I sensed was brewing. Chia munched his snack quietly, oblivious to the hurricane that was about to make landfall.
“You owe the guy.”
“I have no money,” Mama shouted. “Zero money. Nothing.”
I led Chia to our bedroom and shut the door. He did not protest that I’d interrupted his meal.
“Why did you order them, then? They’ll grab my neck for payment, not a woman’s.”
“Why don’t you pay for once, faggot?” Mama fired back. She’d been throwing that insult around ever since Baba had taken to sleeping alone in the attic.
I felt panic rising in my gut and held my palms over Chia’s ears.
“Where the hell do you go every evening, leaving these kids alone? You think I don’t know? You think I’m stupid?” Baba raised his voice.