Cockroach (6 page)

Can you elaborate? the therapist asked.

Can you be more specific? I asked in return.

Yes. Did you like her? Was she nice to you?

Yes, I said, she was wonderful, even when I was hanging on to her apron
begging her not to leave us, even when I was hiding behind the dresser, watching her
jeer in my father's face, betting with my sister which of her eyes would get the
first punch (I always bet on the left side), even when I was chasing a
few flying dollar bills as she screamed, What am I supposed to buy with this? I am
leaving you, Joseph. You feed the kids. Let your mother come and cook for them if you do
not like my food, let her cook for you and your dumb, square-headed, filthy, retard
kids. Or better yet, let the midget jockey of your losing horse come and feed them.

I told you not to mention the horses in front of the kids, Manduza, I
continued, mimicking my father this time. I told you, my father huffed as I was losing
my bet, watching my mother's kinky hair flying like the hair of a pony on the
run.

So, do you love your mother? the therapist asked, pasting on her usual
compassionate face.

Yes, I do, I said, thinking that if I told her anything more, I
wouldn't leave this place for two hours. The shrinks are all big on mothers in
this land.

The therapist nodded, leaned her chin on her fingers, cracked a spooky
smile, and asked, Can you tell me about a happy incident with your mother?

Well, I cannot think of any now, professor. Excuse me. Maybe I should call
you doctor?

Genevieve. Genevieve is fine.

Genevieve, I said. Well, if you give me some time for a long walk, maybe
in the park across the street, among the trees, I will light a cigarillo somewhere
around the war-hero statue, and consult with the pigeons and the begging squirrels. I
might be inspired and be able to get back to you next time with wonderful stories.

Was your mother nourishing? Genevieve asked.

With food, you mean?

Well, okay, food. Let's talk about food.

I like food, I said. Though I worry about food shortages lately.

Did you have enough food in your youth? For now I am interested in your
past.

Yes.

A lot of food? she asked.

Yes.

Hmmm. No shortage of food?

No.

You were always skinny like that?

Yes, yes, always.

Listen, she said and leaned my way, I am here to help you. You have to
trust me. I am here because you need help. You have to tell me more about your
childhood. Who did you play with? Did you have a dog? Did you climb trees?

Yes, I said. I climbed everything, trees, stairs, into windows and cars,
whatever it took to . . .

To what?

To get things.

Like what things?

Like silverware, wallets, lipstick, whatever would sell, you know. I
winked at Genevieve, but I must have aimed a little to the left because my wink bounced
off a cheap reproduction of a Matisse painting of a vase and flowers.

You stole things.

Well yes, I did, I guess. But what kid does not steal?

Do you steal now?

I looked around, left my chair, opened the door, peered outside the room,
waited for an African family with a feverish
crying baby to pass
down the corridor and shake hands with a pediatrician, and then I returned to my seat
and said: Yes, sometimes. I said this in a low voice.

That's okay, Genevieve said. She cracked yet another big smile.
That's okay. This is all confidential.

Confidential, I repeated.

She nodded, and reached out to take my hand, and squeezed. You can, and
should, tell me anything and everything. I am here to help.

I held on to her fingers, and as our hands began to get warm, she pulled
hers away slowly, fixed her glasses, straightened her skirt, shifted her legs, and
sighed with what I hoped was triumph and relief. For no apparent reason, this made me
curious about her past, her childhood of snow and yellow schoolbuses, quiet green grass
and Christmas lights, her Catholic school that forbade flames, cigarettes, and orgasms.
Had she waited for the bus like those girls I saw walking in short plaid skirts in
forty-degree-below temperatures? Had she giggled when she saw cute boys? Had she, like
my sister, played with herself under her bedclothes, had she bitten her lower lip as she
ejaculated rivers of sweaty men?

But really, how naive and innocent this woman is, I thought. If she only
knew what I am capable of.

AFTER MY THERAPY SESSION
, I passed by the Artista Café
and looked for the professor. He was just getting out of the bathroom, shaking his wet
hands. I pulled a few napkins from a container on the counter and went over to him.
There is never
any paper to dry the hands, I said, and that blower
is worse than a dying desert wind. I smiled in his face. He took the paper and dried his
hands, not grateful but proud.
Vingt-cinq sous, mon professeur
, I said, and
laughed and extended my hand towards him.

The professor paused and looked at me, not sure whether I was the joker,
the beggar, or the bogeyman. Then I laid my hand on his pile of wet napkins and pulled
one of them slowly, taking it back, gently but intensely, and I laid my other hand below
his moist knuckles and put my mouth against his ear and whispered, Twenty-five cents or
I shall make these napkins sweep up blood and tears from under our feet, professor.

The professor slowly reached inside his pocket and looked around and
pretended to laugh, as if he had just heard a joke made while standing on luxurious
carpet between opera acts, below large chandeliers, between the whites of two tuxedos.
When he handed me what I had asked for, I became giddy and full of love, and I ran out
into the cold looking for a city phone that was not too far away and not too noisy from
which to call my beloved.

Shohreh answered the phone and agreed to meet me in a café for a
coffee that afternoon.

In the café I made Shohreh laugh by imitating Reza's nasal
voice and wobbly walk. I told her that the conservative coke-head had refused to give me
her phone number because, as he put it: She is not that kind of girl. She is Iranian,
she is like a sister to me.

Sister! Sister! That hypocrite! Shohreh exclaimed. He was
so desperate to sleep with me he even offered to marry me. I refused his offer, of
course. No, no Iranian men for me anymore. I am sick of them, they are all mama's
boys; they want their houses to be cleaned and their meals on the table. She lit a
cigarette and slammed the package onto the table next to her coffee cup.

I can live in filth and hunger, I assured her. My mother lives far away,
and if we ever get married, no one has to clean because I can tolerate filth,
cockroaches, and mountains of dishes that would tower above our heads like monumental
statues, like trophies, testifying that we value lovemaking and a hedonistic existence,
and that all else can wait! And even if you were my sister, I wouldn't mind
hearing your most intimate fantasies.

Shohreh laughed and called me crazy. You are so dirty, she said softly,
and suddenly her long, black hair fell away from her face, her thick, arched eyebrows
smiled at me and pierced my chest, her laugh escaped her and slapped me in the face,
kicked me in the gut, mopped the floor with my hairy chest, dipped me in sweat and
squeezed my heart with unbearable happiness. I will sleep with you, said Shohreh, but
you have to tell Reza all about it. Reza and his like need to understand, once and for
all, that I am not their virgin on hold, not their smothering mother, not their obedient
sister. I am not a testament to their male, nationalistic honour.

I will! I will! I shouted, and I mimed Reza's reaction upon hearing
all about it. I stood up and did his baffled eyebrows, his itching armpits, and his
squeaky voice like a mouse in a trap. Shohreh laughed again.

I took her home, showed her my tiny place, and we both
removed our shoes and hunted cockroaches down the sink, swimming and sliding in mildew,
and slapping them with the heels of our shoes, and I told her how, when Jesus comes and
kills all us sinners and beams up the faithful towards his immaculate kingdom, only
those insects will survive. They shall inherit the earth, I said. The two ladies with
the hats assured me of it. This made Shohreh enraged by the unfairness of it all. It
reminded her of how her country had also been left to the cockroaches, and this inspired
her to pound and kill more of those eternal minuscule beasts as if they were the cause
of her lost life, her imprisonment, her executed uncle, her tortured friends, her own
exile. These are the filth of the land, she shouted as she pounded away. They should be
eradicated!

Then we rolled in dirt and made love in dirt until dirt became our emblem,
our flag to pledge allegiance to, and we got drunk and composed new anthems with groans
and the heavy exhaling and inhaling of breath. Yes, baby, yes, slap away! escaped our
throats, and between every scream Shohreh reminded me to take notes and tell Reza how
she welcomed me in her mouth, how she closed her eyes and glutted herself on me with the
appetite of a clergyman, how naked we were as we danced. My underwear! I almost forgot!
she shouted. Make sure you describe it to that musician: its colours, the sturdy thong
that stretches like one of his strings and vibrates with sublime acoustics that resonate
inside my chamber. Tell him how I undressed you, and how I sucked on your nipples like
grapes, and how warm, gummy drips crept
down my thighs like lava.
Here, lie down so I can take hold of you and print it all in your psyche so you will
remember it for the rest of your life. Let's rush and do it before those crawling
creatures surface again and forbid me from showing my hair, from holding my
lover's arm in public, from singing on the roof a lullaby to my sleeping nephew,
from dipping my naked youth in clear rivers, from savouring with my lips my
grand-mother's Shiraz. Do not forget anything, tell him all about it. Maybe I
should leave you with a scar. Hand me that knife so I can cut your arm, so I can suck
some of your burgundy blood and mix it with wine, so I can stomp on the heart of that
melody to the rhythm of villagers stomping in forgotten pools of grapes and tears.

A WEEK LATER
, I found Reza at last. He was walking down the
street, sniffing left and right for a filling tune or an inspiring meal. I ran towards
him and grabbed his hand and pulled on one of his fingers, and before he had a chance to
pull it away I said, I am hungry as well, you drooling beast. And one day I will snap
your finger and let you pluck those strings with your yellow teeth.

Reza shouted at this, warning me never to touch his fingers again. He
lifted them up against the cold and stuck his thumb towards the sky and pointed and
shouted at me, If you touch them again, I will take you back to your goat dunes!

Then we walked along the street together and ended up at my place. I made
some tea and asked him for my money. He promised and whined and puffed cigarettes and
had the gall to
ask me for food. And so, filled with revenge and
spite, I told him about my tryst with Shohreh.

That made him furious. He accused me of going behind his back. He said
that I was not his friend. Then he smiled and charged me with fabricating lies. If you
talk like that, he said, you will ruin the girl's reputation. A good Iranian woman
like Shohreh would never do that kind of thing.

I ran to my closet and pulled out her underwear. Smell it, I said. Smell!
It is still warm, sizzling. Hot! I added. It smells like her. Here, bring your fat nose
closer.

Disgusting liar, Reza shouted, and tossed the underwear out of my
hand.

I threw myself onto my bed and flipped the pillow over. Here, I shouted
back. That long, black, straight hair could only have come from a Persian princess. Reza
turned red with rage and stood up and left, calling me a liar and a looooney.

I STILL HAD NO MONEY
, and therefore I had no food. When one
is hungry, one should steal. That's what Abou-Roro the thief, our neighbour back
home, used to tell me. He taught me the trade. I am not sure how he became so good at
it. He was the son of a shoemaker and his father had a tiny place between two old
buildings, just big enough for the metal last, a hammer, a few leather pieces, glue, and
the tiny nails he stored in his mouth. As a kid, I looked up to Abou-Roro. I watched him
filling his fists with pistachios when the grocer was grinding the coffee. I watched him
slip lettuce inside his jacket and cheat little kids on the street out of their marble
balls and
allowances. I admired him even though I knew he was a
coward. He always avoided direct confrontation. During the war, he befriended a few
militiamen for protection. He did them favours, washed their cars, cleaned their rifles,
fetched them food. The bastard had a square head, flat feet, and googly eyes. He looked
like a mini-Frankenstein, but he could detect power and kneel to the powerful. When the
port went ablaze during the war, he took me down to the burning warehouses. We crossed
under the snipers' bullets, through the fire. We entered the warehouses and
reached for the merchandise, the mountains of boxes and goods waiting to be transported
to the Saudis. We shredded through them with our claws and knives. There were boxes of
soap, flashlights, perfumes, cloth, boxes of lighters, but we took only the cameras and
ran back through whizzing bullets. We sold everything, and Abou-Roro always stiffed me
out of my share. He took the biggest piece and threw me the crumbs.

Talking about crumbs, a nice sandwich would do me fine, I thought. Perhaps
I could go to a restaurant nearby, enter it, and sweep up the little pieces of bread and
other leftovers on the tablecloth, and then follow the trail of crumbs to the counter
next to the kitchen and help myself to some of the warmth released from the toaster. But
I know how hard it is to steal food in restaurants. Restaurants have many barriers you
must cross before reaching the fridge or the salad counter. There is the manager and the
maître d', and then the waiter and the cook and his helpers. And let's
not forget the variety of knives that can be pulled out and waved around to protect the
food from the looting of man, to protect the chicken legs
and
sizzling, juicy stuffed ducks. Just imagine, I laughed, a stuffed duck à
l'orange! And I laughed again as I went downstairs and out onto the street and
entered the closest available food source.