Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora

Portland, Oregon 1979

Portland, Oregon 1979 H TARA BAHRAMPOUR After the revolution we stopped our car in a cul-de-sac. Our neighbors were the Davisons, the Pattinsons, and the Magnusons. I babysat Lindsay and Courtney, and Debbie and Dave’s baby Daniel, blond, blond, blond babies came in twos and fours each with a hand to hold. Even the dogs lived the good life, taking off in a pack across the sloping park stealing a chicken off Mrs. Lee’s counter sleeping on asphalt. When I crested the hill after school their heads rose— black Hedwig, long ears perked unable to believe it leaped up each day to embrace me. My father had no job My father had too many jobs draftsman, carpenter, draftsman again. But often he was home all day the paper spread open, a pen in his hand. The Magnusons’ father went every morning to Magnuson’s, the Men’s Shop. PORTLAND, OREGON  53 The Davisons’ father was gone all day too. The mothers made pies and casseroles while we, watched over by the dogs, played kick-the-can and hide-and-seek until dark. That was how it was raspberries in the yard, blackberries in the park. Hedwig came home once with her nails painted pink, the little girls up the street giggling. One winter an ice storm froze us in the trees crystalline the dads tried to get their cars up the hill, starting all the way back, revving their engines only to slide back down to us zipped into our coats shaking diamonds off the branches. Back in our old neighborhood, uncles were being arrested. Cousins dressed as sheep escaped on hands and knees over the Pakistan border to avoid the war. Here in America, in states that started with I or O, students were beaten, insulted, put on planes back to Iran. But I worried most about my father not going to work and my mother not making pies or cleaning house much. Years after Hedwig died (fenced up in a California backyard) I went back to Portland for a reading. 54 TARA BAHRAMPOUR People at the bookstore lined up I heard giggles—and then, “She looks the same!” It was the Magnusons, or half of them— Lindsay and her mom still blond and shining grinning like conspirators. I asked about Courtney (who was in college) and Mr. Magnuson—they rolled their eyes— he’d left years ago. “You know I always envied you guys,” Lindsay said. “I loved to go to your house. It was so bohemian and interesting and free.” She’d envied us, who’d moved out of the cul-de-sac after only three years. We’d run out of money and none of my sobbing or vows to stay could stop us. Lindsay said,“Oh, you know we moved soon after you did.” The Magnusons had gone a few streets over and then, soon after, left the neighborhood forever. Blue house Ghost of a briefcase Raspberry pies PORTLAND, OREGON  55 ...