“No, idiot.”
He stuck the prongs in again. They made a zap sound.
“It could fry up a bird, easy,” he said.
When I had a dad, in Iran, we had a house and it was so beautiful. I dream about it sometimes. There’s a smell I smell in those dreams. It could be a fake memory, because one of the pictures we still have—a baby picture—was me in the backyard standing in front of a wall of white jasmine flowers and red roses. I’m smelling one in the picture—my sister says, like a sissy. Like a sensitive boy, my mom would say.
I dream about that sunny jasmine smell.
And we had a pool.
And between my room and my sister’s, the wall was one giant sheet of glass. Between us was a room with trees in it—inside the house—for doves to perch on. The ceiling of that room was glass too. Light shined down all day on the potted trees and the birds sang to each other. You could see it all from both rooms. I would watch my sister through the glass room playing. She wouldn’t let me go around to play with her. But the memory is that flower smell, the glare of the glass, squinting to see my sister on her side with her dolls, and the birds in between sitting safe in their orchard. When I was a kid I thought everybody had a glass bird room in their houses. I only ever remember birds being nice to me. I thought, Why would Tanner want to kill them?
With Tanner I ask, “How strong is it?” The battery. He’s got a pile of dead roaches already.
He shrugs.
I wonder if we’ll go to the hospital today and tell them my mom hurt herself. And Ray will buy us dinner at a restaurant.
An idea worms its way into Tanner’s brain. He looks at the two prongs attached to the car battery. Like a bird, he cocks his head sideways.
I say, “Don’t.”
He slowly raises the prongs to his face.
I don’t have anyone to shout for, because all the other kids in my class live in houses across town and the apartment families won’t talk to us because they say they may be poor, but they ain’t dune coons that make foul-smelling food and yell at each other in gobbledygook.
Tanner opens his mouth and looks at me, big-eyed. He stands up to brace himself. But I don’t dare him to do it.
“That’s gonna hurt—”
I don’t finish, because he jabs the two prongs onto his tongue and the zap sound is a juicy water balloon sound. Tanner’s mouth is suddenly full—like he’s blowing out his cheeks.
He drops the cables and falls to his knees.
I hear a scream from an apartment window.
Tanner opens his mouth and a water balloon worth of blood pours out.
More screams.
Tanner’s still coughing, like moms do when they get punched in the stomach. A chunk of his tongue is in the pool of blood.
I run to get help and hear an ambulance coming.
It could be for Tanner or my mom.
Anyway.
Sometimes people get married just so he’ll buy them a house—not one with a bird room—a little one with cockroaches. Maybe it’s love most of the time. But that’s a reason too. And it doesn’t have to be because they want a father figure for their sons. That would be a terrible reason.
You shouldn’t put that kind of blood on a kid’s head. Cause he would have said he didn’t even want a house or a stepdad, if it was all for him like my sister said.
Sisters can be evil like that.
They tell you all the nightmares you ever had were your fault, and you were the reason somebody broke your mother’s jaw.
Anyway, Tanner came back three months later with a forked tongue. He’d stick it out like a snake—two nubs wiggling around.
And anyway maybe Ma and Pa in Charlotte’s Web do love each other.
Maybe I could have just read that and had a father figure to teach me how to treat mothers. Anyway, the only reason I said anything was that sometimes marriages give people houses and sometimes they take them away.
Like for Aziz. She lost hers.
* * *
HERE’S A VERSION OF the rest of the story that is mostly true.
By the time Aziz turned fourteen, she had stopped glancing across the orchard every time she passed by, hoping to see the khan riding up the road.
She had buried him in her heart.
The saffron fields—under her uncles’ control—were just a great big red river of blood. Every day, she would wake the rooster who slept by the fountain in the courtyard. She would lean into the open grate of the reservoir and pull out five stones the size of cantaloupes that stopped it up. The water would flow into the paved channels in the courtyard to feed the apple trees and the grape vines.
The truth is that she was lost after that. She wandered.
One evening her uncles appeared as she sat on a blanket pitting cherries and spreading them out to dry in the sun. Uncle Bird liked to stand when others sat. Uncle Onion sat and began eating the pitted cherries.
Aziz was polite, but she was also a thousand worlds away.
“We have news,” said Bird.
“Mmm,” said Onion, and then, shlorp shlorp shlorp, which was the sound of cherries mushing in his mouth.
“News that will make you happy,” said Bird. “Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes, Uncle. You must both be hungry. We have dinner.”
But Onion was content devouring her day’s work.
“We should tell you now,” said Bird. “It’s a family matter.”
In that moment Aziz dared hope.
Was he alive?
Had he returned?
“You are a married woman now,” said Bird.
“Congratu—shlorp shlorp!” said Onion.
“He lives in Karaj. His name is Hassan.”
Aziz had never been as far as Karaj in her life. It was as far away as Edmond from the Gulf of Mexico. She said, “Dear Uncles, am I not helpful?”
“Of course,” said Onion.
“And as owners of this house, couldn’t you let me stay?”
She referred softly to the fact that her uncles had long ago stolen the deed to the estate. There was no need to send her away. She would never inherit.
“Yes,” said Bird, “but we have reputations to think about. You’re a woman now, Aziz.”
Aziz opened her mouth.
Then closed her mouth.
Then closed her eyes.
* * *
WHEN SHE OPENED THEM AGAIN, she was on a horse cart to Karaj with a small trunk of clothes, and nothing to help her remember her mother or father.
She never returned.
* * *
OF COURSE, SCHEHERAZADE WOULD never let the morning come at the end of a story—or else the king would have no reason to keep her alive.
Reader, you are the king, so let me tell you, when Aziz married Hassan, the two were already in love and one of them was already destined to die.
* * *
IN MRS. MILLER’S CLASS WE make goody bags for American soldiers in the war and it is very important that I help as much as I can to prove whose side I’m on.
“Class,” she says, looking at me, “be sure to sign your name at the top of the card.”
Jared S. draws a bunch of fighter jets shooting arrows at monkeys on camels. Mrs. Miller comes by and makes her lips a straight line but doesn’t say anything.
Brianna is the best at bubble letters, so she writes, “We support the troops,” and Kelly J. helps her color the American flag with hearts where the stars should go.