The Orphan Sky (18 page)

I came home.

Mama stood by the window, the silhouette of her small, wrapped-in-black body against the darkening sky. A snake of smoke crawled out of her mouth. I had never seen Mama with a cigarette before. Papa hated when women smoked. He used to say that he would rather kiss a donkey than a woman smoker.

“Farhad phoned,” Mama said without turning her head to me. “He promised me he would do anything to save you from the disaster you've gotten yourself into.”

“I have done nothing wrong, Mama.”

“Nothing wrong? Befriending that pervert…a criminal with a dangerous past. Degrading yourself, sneaking around town wearing a chador. Spending day in and day out alone with him in his filthy nest. And you have done nothing wrong?” Mama shook her head. “Oh, how you have changed, Leila. How you have changed.”

“He is a gifted artist, Mama,” I said, trying to sound calm, looking for the most persuasive words to explain, to make her understand how unjustly she and everyone else had condemned Tahir and me. “He introduced me to the beauty of music that helped me to open up. I have never played piano better in my life. Please trust me. He and his grandmother—they are very special people.”

“They are enemies of the people, Leila. They are outcasts of our society who prey on fools like you to lure into their decadence, their drugs, their pornography.”

“That's not true. There was no pornography there. And nobody preyed on me. It was my own choice. It was my destiny.”

Mama turned to face me—livid, sarcastic. “Destiny? What
destiny
are you talking about? You—the clever girl I thought I had raised.
Destiny
. Yours was to go to Budapest and win the piano competition. So you would rise to a position of power. So you wouldn't have to get down on all fours and kiss asses and act as if you're enjoying it.”

She laughed, or wheezed, rather, almost in a deranged way. Then, surrounded by swarming shadows, she staggered across the room and plunged onto the couch, disappearing inside the thickening darkness, trailing the smell of alcohol. My mama was drunk.

I heard hushed sniffles. Was she crying? I tiptoed to the couch and perched next to her.

“You used to be so different,” Mama said in a somber voice. “A serious and responsible girl with everything going for you—career, success, excellent marriage prospects. Now look at you. Cast off by your friends. A step away from being expelled from Komsomol, ejected from the piano competition. And what about your reputation?
Our
reputation as a family? What shame you've brought upon all of us.”

The volume of Mama's whisper began to rise, and so did its fury. “All because of your catastrophic choices. You've brought shame and a curse on our family. If you hadn't snuck around, hiding, going to places you shouldn't have gone near, our life would have been the way it used to be. We would have been just fine.”

So that's what it was all about. Mama blamed me for exposing the rot. The rot that had been concealed inside fine wrapping until I accidentally tore open the cover. The suppressed pain of the last few weeks exploded out of me.

“Just fine? Living with lies?” I cried out. “Just fine while Papa was sleeping with Almaz?”

“Don't you ever…”

“What? Don't I ever what? Speak the truth? Then why, Mama, did you teach me to be honest, to keep my integrity no matter what? Why did you tell me that bad truths were better than good lies? Why? The lies we've been living with weren't just bad. They were vicious. They hurt people. People I loved.”

Mama didn't respond, just kept nervously rubbing the arm of the couch with the skirt of her dress, wiping away invisible dust.

A devastating thought crossed my mind.

“You knew, didn't you, Mama? Everything. About the bribes and Almaz and everything. You just chose to keep your eyes closed so we could continue with our ‘
just
fine
life
the
way
it
used
to
be
.'”

“How could you?” Mama's hand flew across my face. Hard. Hurting me. Cutting my lip with the lock of her watch. I could feel the salty taste of blood. Tears burst out of my eyes.

“I hate you,” I shouted. “I hate you. You are just like all of them.”

I ran to my room and slammed the door behind me, shielding myself from the eerie ghosts prowling the hallways. I curled up on my bed. Alone. More alone than I had ever been in my entire life.

Who could I go to? I had no one.

Tahir? I had no idea what had happened to him. Was he in danger? Or were his
krysha
—his powerful clientele of Communist oligarchs—able to protect him?

Almaz? She was gone, taking our childhood away with her.

I opened my baby Bösendorfer. Its shiny silhouette felt foreign, almost hostile. The sound of its keys only added to the grief devouring me from inside. Mozart's
Piano
Concerto
no. 20
rested against the music stand as the gravestone to my career. I had spent months and months polishing this passage…this trill…getting just the right pianissimo here…stretching my hands for this octave arpeggio…practicing and practicing and practicing every day.

All for nothing. The end of what was supposed to be the beginning of my
brilliant
music
career
. How many times had I imagined myself in a sparkling dress on the stage at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest? Giving a slight bow to the jurors and the audience, gliding to the piano, waiting for the sweep of the conductor's baton—a signal for the restless strings to invade the silence of the concert hall and begin their dramatic rise to a full forte.

My fingers reached for the keyboard, drawing out the first melody of my doomed
Concerto
. One line at a time. In the dark tonic key of D minor. Challenging Mozart, pushing my performance to new heights of passion. Spinning a pinwheel of imagination.

White as far as the eye can see. Shrubs and midget birch trees all buried beneath a blizzard. A gust of arctic wind sweeps across, swirling into a snow blur. Dogs howl in the distance. Dogs or wolves? A large owl lands on barbwire, its yellow eyes like two frozen moons. A cluster of barracks. A watchtower with armed guards.

Snow Princess.
She
is
slim
in
a
black
lace
gown
and
mantilla, her red heels boldly dancing across the icy desert.
Luring and teasing, seducing and daring, she sings the “Habanera.” Her deep, almost visceral mezzo silences the owl and the wolves and the drunken guards. The crystals of her upper register slide effortlessly into the notes of her purring low range.

I knew right away that my voice had reached that prime I had strived for…and that it was too
late.

Miriam's face, aged and worn. Sitting at a table, she cleans the prisoners' striped coats, hunting lice with a shard of glass. In a stinking barrack of the gulag. In the middle of the Siberian tundra. Singing the “Habanera.” Knowing she had arrived at the pinnacle of her artistry.

And
that
it
was
too
late.

The same with me. Now, when I had finally reached my own island of creative freedom where I could reflect my inmost emotions through my music, it was too late.

I cried out in frustration, hurling the book with Mozart's
Concerto
across the room, its pages flying in every direction. I slammed my fist all over the keyboard, a cacophony spreading through the room.

I stopped. Guilty. Listening to the dissonant assault hanging in the air.

Quietly, I closed the piano lid and laid my head on its polished surface.

Wishing to die.

• • •

It was still dark when I opened my eyes. But morning was in the air, flooding my room with the chirping of sparrows and the polyphony of an awakening city.

Where
is
Mama? What if she's done something to hersel
f
? What if I've lost her
too?

I sprinted to the door and threw it open.

Mama sat on the edge of the couch. Frail. Tiny.
Alive!
Her bare feet hung helplessly above the floor. She was shrouded in that awful smell so much like the chamber in the Museum of History with the Egyptian sarcophagi and embalmed mummies. Was she asleep? I carefully came closer so as not to wake her up, but seeing her face etched by the first gleam of light, drained and ethereal, I knew she hadn't slept at all.

My fault. It was all my fault—my reckless actions and my hurtful words—that had reduced my mama to this pitiable state. How could I have left her like this, alone, surrounded by the ghosts of death? What if she never comes back to me? To her own normal self?

I crouched on the floor next to Mama and put my head on her lap. At first she didn't respond. Then—hesitantly, slowly—she combed her fingers through my hair just the way she used to a long time ago when I was little and couldn't fall asleep. She would sit next to me, stroking my hair, singing her bedtime song:

Long night—little island of peace,

Long night—endless ride in the moonlight,

Long night—magic party for two,

Bring us closer—me and you.

“I didn't have a happy childhood, Leila,” Mama said in a shaky, thin voice and brought her hand to her throat as if to help get the words out. “I grew up the only girl among a dozen boys in an orphanage. Outside Baku in Suraxanı, a small village. We were
un
supervised by a childless couple: a monster named Mohammed and his wife, sweet Aunty Habiba. He beat her mercilessly for not giving him a son. He beat her, and she cried her eyes out. Just like the old saying: ‘Man's power is in his fists; woman's defense is in her tears.'”

Mama paused as if contemplating the harsh absurdity of the aphorism.

“The boys in the orphanage took after him, torturing me endlessly, exercising their unrestricted, emerging powers on me no matter how much Aunty Habiba tried to protect me from their disgusting tricks. They wanted to see my tears, but I never gave them the pleasure.”

A lump rose inside my throat. Mama had never told me that before, about the boys and about being ridiculed and harassed. The stories from her childhood always had been happy ones, about the summer sports camps and campfires, with the photographs showing her as a tomboy, a red Pioneer tie around her neck, always smiling, always cheerful. Another lie? Another false facade? Heart pounding in my temples, I pressed and rubbed them, trying to put off the fire.

“Mohammed ran a business,” Mama continued. “He bought the catches from village fishermen for close to nothing and then sold them at Taza Bazaar at his regular stand in the fish sellers' row. When I turned seven, he began taking me with him to the Bazaar. All day long, I would sit on top of a freezing barrel filled with fish, learning the craft of cheating and haggling.”

What? Mama—my refined, my sophisticated Mama—sold fish at Taza Bazaar?

“Yes, at the spot where the Rose Garden Fairy now sells her pastries. Of course the smell was quite different then, nothing like a rose garden. It continued until one autumn morning, a particularly nasty morning with a wind gushing through empty stalls and scattering hailstones the size of quail eggs. I sat in my usual place wrapped in Aunty Habiba's aged woolen scarf. Freezing. Scared. I had been left by Mohammed to keep an eye on his goods while he lingered in a nearby
chaikhana
, drinking hot tea with other men. And that's when I saw him—the prince of my dreams. A boy with long, curly hair in a fancy coat, gloves, and shiny boots. Running toward me.

“‘What is your name?' he asked. I couldn't answer. I just kept looking at him helplessly as if I was utterly deaf. My tongue, usually quite loose, now felt stiff as lead and the size of an apple. ‘Are you a girl or an icicle?' the boy asked playfully, taking my frozen hands in his, rubbing them between his soft, furry gloves and blowing on them with his warm breath. Then he said something to a well-dressed woman in black who accompanied him. She looked at me with revulsion, turned, and pulled the boy with her.

“After they left, I saw his gloves lying on the ground. I picked them up and ran after the boy. I waited for his mother to enter the building, then I held out his gloves. ‘I left them for you,' he whispered. That day, I escaped from Mohammed and the orphanage and swore in my mind to the boy that I would turn my life around. Ever since that day I have had a strong drive to become successful and important and worthy of him.”

“Did you meet him again, that boy?” I asked, captivated.

Mama's eyes wandered around. Getting that far down the road of confession, it seemed as if she suddenly felt hesitant—scared?—to go on.

“Did you?” I pressed for an answer.

“That boy, Leila…” Mama buried her face in her hands, sobbing quietly. “It was your papa, Leila. That little prince was your papa.”

A taut string inside me snapped. I cried. Cried hysterically, besieged by grief. Mama put her arm around me, stroking my hair, bringing the palm of my hand to her lips and kissing it softly as if thanking me for understanding.

“I thought you and Papa met at the hospital when he had his accident,” I wailed through tears.

“No, that was our second time. But I never told him.”

“You never told him? Why not?”

“His mother—that
Black
Widow
. She would never have allowed her boy to marry me if she'd known I once sold fish at the Bazaar. Even without knowing, she rarely acknowledged me. With all my achievements, I still wasn't of her class.