Daughter
I’m in the back of the car with my hands over my ears and a hum in my throat, because when I do this, I almost can’t hear the yelling. And if I close my eyes too, I’m nearly dulled to the movement of the tires veering right, then left, where we should be heading straight. When I open my eyes it’s only to try and meet the gaze of one of them in the rear-view mirror, a look that says something like: I’m on your side. But in those moments, I’m always invisible, and my hand can reach for the phone between them without being seen. It’s a trick of the light, and something more, because the phone rings and rings without my brother picking up so I guess I must be some sort of ghost for real.
At the front door I’m the barricade, the shield, the weapon. My body between them, my head at their chests. I can’t cover my ears or hum or close my eyes so instead I let myself be invisible, being pressed right, then left. Inside, I only shower once the yelling has dulled. But still I listen, over the water, for the sounds of hatred and love and, something more.
By nightfall there’s quiet and at last I can look out at the stars from my window and in their twinkling, mistake them for planes I fear are destined to collide. The sky is tinged pink through my curtains. My feet are so far from the end of the bed. I think one day I will be an astronomer.
I’m so young and I don’t know it. I look out at the hills and think home is just past them, and because I think it, it’s true, and because it’s true I’m-
Here, where every man I meet is grandpa, or cousin, or aunty who hasn’t seen me since I was as small as the size of the palm of her hand. Have I ever been so loved? Has my own face ever been so familiar?
I meet a man who is blind, and he tells me though he cannot see, he can tell I’m beautiful. He says he’s my uncle, or someone, and the thought that we could share the same look in our eyes makes me weep.
On the walk home from the shops my hand slips out of my maman’s. I turn and turn but every face is too familiar, and I’m overcome with a feeling that I was not lost but left, and I don’t know yet that I will still feel it, years on, this fear that she is always in the process of leaving me, some long goodbye. But her hand slips back into mine and she was just at the stall behind me and don’t I want to go get some cake?
My brother is blowing out the candles: 16! His cheeks are red with joy because someone has bought him a kitten, and though he doesn’t like cats, the gift of a thing alive makes him feel loved. I guess this later through the photos, in hindsight, and also by what he does next: calling to me, koochik! Placing the cat in my arms, letting me love it instead.
I name it Honey because it’s golden and I’m 6, and in a few weeks my dad will return it to the gifter, telling me it ran away.
But then at 10, I have a dog. I name him Max because I couldn’t love a thing more, a small shivering thing on my lap, hooking his claws into my jumper on the drive home like he’d chosen me too; moving his body against mine in my baba’s van that smells of house-paint and turpentine and burnt tires from driving in question marks again and again. I am red all over with the joy, and I wish, 14 years later when he dies in my arms too, that I’d had more pictures of us on that very first day.
After his death I spend every therapy appointment sobbing. And in the sobbing, I’m heard: will everyone I love leave? Will I only have myself left?
I celebrate 21 at a vineyard though I don’t drink. My mum knows my birth-time and my dad guesses my birthday but they both love me so much it turns the whole sky red. I take pictures of the sunset from the car window, but now I’m in the passenger seat next to my boyfriend, who with his free hand holds mine, never veering right or left. He buys me a necklace. He buys me perfume. He buys me time, sitting at the foot of my bed with the look of love, nothing more.
When he talks to my maman I have to translate. And soon I’m stuttering over my own words too. My mum and brother share a look when I add an e where there isn’t one, taking away an r where there should be. I know the look is distance and I vow to be the one to close it. But when my maman recommends Farsi school I yawn at the thought of class on a Sunday. At regular school, English is my best subject.
It already is when I’m 9, scrawling words so quickly on a piece of paper it’s like I’d never known my hands to do anything different. For now, it comes without curses. Only blessings like responding to emails addressed to my parents and calling up the council and arranging for us to meet with someone from carsales.com who remarks, that was you on the phone? When he sees me.
It’s cool until it isn’t, and the school counsellor says its rude to speak to my mum in Farsi in front of her because she doesn’t understand, and I tell her that’s the only way my mum can communicate but the counsellor doesn’t understand that either and what is she a fucking idiot?
We walk to the pools because Mum can’t drive. We walk to the shops. We walk to school. We walk everywhere until we can’t and I have to call someone’s parents up to ask if they could please drive me to the birthday party (again) along with Crystal/ Ashley/ Rochelle (again), and even then I can tell the delay in their reply isn’t just an issue with connection (again, again, again).
When I sign up for gymnastics, my brother agrees to take me. But now he’s 19 and he’s got better places to be and by the time we reach class they’re cooling down, so I watch them stretch through the glass and take my name off the signup sheet. To make up for it he takes me out for breakfast on the weekend. It is as rare as being seen in the rear-view mirror and I eat my Nutella toast while imitating my friend Rachel’s rabbit to make it last.
I love the whitest woman in the world Delta Goodrem. I tell everyone I’m going to dye my hair blonde and wear blue contacts and learn to ride horses and maybe be a check-out-chick. Wearing a crop top to the gym is equally important in my mind, but I don’t dare share that out loud with anyone but myself when I lift my shirt in the mirror, fold it over, and tuck it in, to see how I’d look standing like that with a hand on my hip.
I sing Innocent Eyes over and over at my piano, and still that song today makes me feel like if I just learn how to ride a horse, I’ll be alright. But now more often I sing Taylor Swift, and maybe she’s the whitest woman in the world, but it’s all the same when I melodise with her about loving someone being re-e-e-e-d, and I don’t add any e’s where there isn’t one, and when I sing an r it’s because there is one, and these aren’t the words my mother taught me but they are the ones I know best.
Our heater breaks, and our neighbours move, and the sunlight gets obscured by the new units built behind us. Mum gets cancer and the whole sky crumbles, but when she’s better it’s easier to pretend it never did. And my dog dies, and no matter how much I write about him I realise it’s not enough because he can’t read my words, and maybe the best way of loving him now is not burdening him with my grief anyway. I change rooms so his ghost doesn’t go looking for me there, and my curtains aren’t pink anymore but still the stars shimmer like they just might collide. I write my name from left to right. I never dream of home. My brother texts me, I feel like we don’t know each other on a core level, and I forget to reply. But his contact on my phone is Koochik, and my mother’s is Maman, and my dad’s Father. When I try to speak all their voices exit, and I love them so much, the way their names are all red on my tongue.
My favourite <3
this is fantastic. THIS IS IT!!!!!