Pilgrim

Here on Route 25, there is a ravine between the road and the barbed-wire fence, a fence with tires filling in gaps at the bottom, a fence that is all local tradition and pragmatism. The dirt is a full red, and the weather is almost summer. Three cows have escaped and walk easily, gracefully even, outside the fence along the sharp incline. They are tagged, the jewelry dangling from their left ears. They are functional, nothing-more-than. Three cows walk outside the fence: one red, one black, one blond. This is not a joke.

When I was young, love was a short story, the shortest. I never knew how long it could be. I never knew how old I could get. This year the school term ended, and I was forty years old and laid off. I spend my June days now driving around the area where I grew up and sitting at bars with my laptop. I spend my evenings with my mother.

At the bars, I fill out job applications for teaching positions and sip at the cheapest light beer they have. In the evenings, I go to my mother’s house for dinner and her 6:30 p.m. world news. She makes me dinner every night. Persian mothers are like that, she says. They can’t help it, she says. I used to remind her that I was a Persian mother too, but I can’t say that anymore. My son isn’t here. He is 8 × 10, framed like my father on the top of a bookcase, a shrine to the dead in a lonely house.

We talk a little. My mother wants me to come over earlier, when she is more alert, but I tell her that’s when I need to write applications. She sighs, but the house swallows the gentle noise. Her house is carpeted and so full of knickknacks that there is no echo, all sound waves absorbed by something.

Then, after my evening visits, I go home to the condo she has paid for so I can have my own place while I get back on my feet. She is a generous mother.

My ex-husband and I met in a hatha-yoga class. I had just read an article about balancing on one leg for at least twenty seconds, how it’s critical to health, that those who can’t do it suffer strokes and heart attacks more often. I was healthy, twenty-three, and there was no real need for me to worry, but that didn’t matter. I would stand on one leg. I would be a flamingo.

Two weeks into classes with me, my then-future husband said of one-legged balances, “You have to use your core.” And he touched his abdomen. I looked at him and walked away without a word.

After five weeks of submitting applications I get a phone interview with a private high school, an Episcopal one in Texas. Because of my Persian name, perhaps, I get more of a diversity spiel than in other interviews. Or maybe this is just how it is now.

The school is inclusive, says Sherry, the English Department chair. The school welcomes students and faculty from all races and faiths, she says. The school has about 450 students, boards about 40 students from other states or countries. The school is not only Episcopal but also military, but there is no divide between military and faith. There are chapel talks, sometimes led by students, on special topics. She asks me what I view as my purpose as a teacher and what I think is the most problematic type of student.

When I am supposed to ask my questions, I ask about the parents and academic freedom. Of course, there is academic freedom. The parents are a little conservative, though. I laugh and say I know how that goes. Sherry asks me how I feel about moving away from the South. I tell her I would be okay with that. Sherry quickly adds that in Texas they have many Southern traditions and influences.

I have never been far away from home. A few hours, at most. The distance between my mother’s house and her hometown in Iran is 7,243 miles. My mother hasn’t been home since 1972.

Sherry will never call back.

Here is a city named Eureka in South Carolina. I wonder if it’s a sister city of California’s Eureka. I keep driving. There are so many closed shops and businesses in these small towns. Faded paint and rust. Warped wood. Marquees and signs that don’t make sense anymore—or did they ever? You can’t tell what anything used to be. All these dead things. I cannot blur them away from my sight because of the slow speed limit. Eureka means a happy exclamation at having figured something out, usually a sudden and quick realization.

My mother says that I should get my license to teach public school. I tell her it costs a lot of money, and she says she’ll pay. She is a generous mother. She tells me to buy my clothes at Chico’s for the job interviews. I tell her that I’m only getting preliminary phone interviews right now.

My mother asks me if I’ve seen her thyroid pills. I look around a little. She says they were right here, on the table beside her couch. I swear I don’t see them. I tell her I’m exhausted. She tells me to go home. She loves me. She’ll pray for me.

My aunts pray for me. One aunt on my father’s side, Catholic, prays to Saint Jude. There is a saint for everything, this aunt says, laughing. I wonder if there is a saint for humidity and rain and endless summers and loneliness and fear. I tell her thank you. I tell all of them who pray for me thank you.

My then-future husband left me a note on my car after the next yoga class: I’m sorry. I like you, and I was nervous. I look back on that note as the sweetest thing he ever gave me. Hatha means sun and moon in balance, unity.

When my father died, my mother promised she would tell me if his ghost ever came to her, if there was another side. She hasn’t—or he hasn’t—or there isn’t. Twenty years, and not even a tendril of a ghost. In her house you never hear any spooky sounds. There isn’t enough room for hauntings. And the carpeting—well, it’s double. There’s standard beige and then Persian rugs on top. The house is weighted down, like an anxiety blanket.

Here is a house in our neighborhood with an old swing set in the front yard. Weeds and vines have grown up its posts, and a decorative windmill with red blades stands next to it. A “for sale” sign is attached to the swing set’s bench seat. Whoever bought it would have to wrestle it from the green. I should buy it. A memory of swinging makes me shudder, however.

I’m just driving to keep moving, to keep time. All the particles of this new single life feel still or frozen. But that’s just a feeling. Even at absolute zero, molecules are moving.

In South Carolina you don’t hear much about Native Americans after elementary school. The Catawba lived in the Upstate. Historically, they fought alongside the colonizers. They had their reasons. You don’t hear much about them, not even in elementary school. Mostly, it’s the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears. My ex-husband is half Catawba. He always joked that we were halfies. He always joked that he was sure we were both one-sixteenth the same.

A couple of weeks later I get another phone interview, with a private school in South Carolina just two hours away. They ask me about teaching autoethnographies. I tell them I’ve never written one before, though I imagine the genre to be challenging. I give them four books I would use to teach these kinds of essays. They ask me how quickly I adapt to curriculum changes. I tell them that every day in a classroom, there is a curriculum change. They laugh. They also make jokes about how I won’t have to adjust to Southern culture, adding a careful “if you were to get the job.”

When it’s my turn to ask questions, I ask them about how their curriculum is changing. They answer awkwardly, and one of them promises to send me a pdf of their “strategic plan.” I don’t ask them about their student-body demographics.

Allen, their department chair, will email a month later to say they’ve moved on with other applicants.

My father used to get my mother thank-you cards almost monthly. They both worked, though she always did the cooking and cleaning too. My parents met in a snowstorm outside a library in North Carolina.

The shrine for my father and my son on top of the living-room bookcase isn’t really a shrine. No one prays to it. My mother talks about how remembrance works in Persian culture. She says they don’t like to hide things. We don’t like to hide things. Thus, there are these shrines, single pictures or groupings of pictures. Grief must stare us in the face so that we live our pain. Some Native Americans used to believe that pictures captured the souls of the photographed, but the way we Persians use them in our shrines, the photographed take our souls instead, pulling us into a still life of loss.

At family gatherings here, people will sometimes tell me how much I look like my father. It’s like my son’s picture isn’t even there.

Today, as we eat pizza for the Fourth of July, my uncle Ahmad says, “Your father was such, such good man. I remember when he help me file my paperwork. I wish he see me become a citizen now.” You don’t correct your family about anything, not ever.

Here in an old and abandoned mechanic’s shop is a broken tow truck overgrown with weeds. An unused thing. Like the swing set: I don’t know if anyone could tug it free or pull the weeds from it. Or find the courage to see it at all through the haze of disrepair. The mirage of heat on humid days makes the tow truck undulate like a snake.

My mother is upset that I haven’t heard anything more about the in-state job. My mother asks if the other one, Sherry, has called, and I tell her no. My mother sighs. She asks me if I’ll spend the night. I feel bad, so I agree.

If I don’t get a job, my mother will keep paying for my condo. She doesn’t want me to worry. She tells me that we have each other and that she will watch over me, and her God will watch over her. I look around the Red Lobster and remember all the times a student told me a book I assigned was boring. I think about my mother taking care of me, about how I will never have to take care of anyone else ever again. I think about loneliness and eat a cheddar biscuit.

After she goes to bed I stay up and watch a movie. As I walk down the hallway to go to bed, I walk wide legged, like I’m riding a bull, to keep from stepping on creaking floorboards. My mother is a light sleeper and in bed by eight o’clock.

My ex-husband had to beg me to have children. I didn’t want any because I had seen such impatience and anger in my parents. I had those tendencies in me too. I didn’t want to pass on the feeling of being a burden, of being locked in a clock’s certain movement toward adulthood instead of being something more, something luminous and ecstatic and love filled. No child of mine could ever be more than another problem, another worn-out thing.

A sound like a sharp knock, a baseball or softball against the wall behind my head, wakes me up. In darkness, I sit up and turn to stare at the south-facing bedroom wall behind the headboard.

I rush to the kitchen to look out the back door, and though the back motion-sensor light is on, I see nothing. Then I peek into my mother’s bedroom, where she is asleep on her side.

I try to fall back asleep. Impossible. Everything is silent.

I look into my mother’s bedroom again.

In the living room I can see through the blinds that the front motion sensor is on. I take a deep breath and look out the slats, onto the narrow porch.

Here is a farmers market on Thursday. No one is here. There are three small booths left standing, empty. Across the street, there is Bacon Chapel F. B. H. I wonder how many jokes are made. I wonder if Reverend Calloway has to tell them that this is not a joke. Knock, knock.

My ex-husband lost his parents when he was in high school. He was adopted and then raised by his great-aunt. She died a month after he graduated college. When I met him that day at yoga, he was still grieving. He told me his grief was like the wind, coming in gusts and never quite settling easy onto him. I told him about my father.

The next day my mother calls me over to her house earlier than usual. When I get there, my mother’s neighbor Wendy is on the couch. Wendy is shorter than me, the same height as my mother, though she weighs a bit more. My mother tells me that Wendy heard the thud last night too. My mother describes the sound like she heard it instead of me. She’s always stealing my stories.

Wendy says it might have been some “ne’er-do-wells.” She’s wearing a T-shirt for a local seafood restaurant and khaki shorts. Her hair is neat and professional, though, a short sandy-blond bob.

Wendy says her motion-sensor light was on too, so it must have been something bigger. Her small dogs don’t set it off. We talk about what kind of largish stray animal could have made that kind of noise. Wendy is convinced that it was a human, though. The Wendy in stories is the one of not ne’er but never, Neverland, a place where children are safe. Do you know that story?

A week later I have a Skype interview with a college in Rhode Island. I am excited about the idea of teaching postsecondary. My mother wonders if I’m ready. I tell her that it’s got to be easier than high school. I remind her that I have a master’s degree.

Karen tells me about introductory-level classes for first-year students and the multigenre creative writing one. She tells me about the small class sizes and inclusivity. Mark jumps in to tell me about what they call “internal internships.” Becky talks about how important it is to “meet students where they are” and to “push them” at the same time. They ask me about my writing and how I would manage the multigenre class. I ask them about class sizes and about their city.

Just as we are about to hang up, Karen asks me about my name. She asks me what it means. I tell her it means fire or red. The moment is almost too much to take. I mean, I get this question from Karen? Karen means pure.

In three weeks Karen will email to tell me the position has been canceled.

The next night, I go home to my condo. My mother calls me at two in the morning. She says, “I heard it!”

I rush over, and when I get there, I leave my car’s headlights on, shining into the backyard. I walk the perimeter of the backyard. I am not afraid, but I find nothing. I go back to my car and turn off the headlights.

Inside, my mother is talking fast, saying we should call the police. I tell her there is nothing here. What will we tell them?

In Catawba myth there are tricksters called Yehasuri or Little People. Yehasuri are only about two feet tall and are beautiful, like little dolls. They can be good or bad, are childlike in that way. Yehasuri live in tree stumps and caves, like animals. Since you never know what mood they’ll be in, you should be careful. You can protect yourself from them by cleaning up messes, erasing all trace of children, and using a tobacco smudging and an ancient prayer: Dugare ini para’ti na yehasuri deme hana te we stere yanamusi sere.

Once the Yehasuri helped a child who wanted to stay young forever. They told him it was okay, that he could stay young forever with them, that they would put a spell on his parents to let them know he was okay. This is the story of Forever Boy.

My husband used to joke he was a Forever Boy. When our son was born, I told him to grow up. He said no. He said we could all be children together—forever.

Nothing is forever. Not childhood. Not diamonds, not love. There are just long stories.

My ex-husband texts me the next morning: Checking in! You missed our “date.” You never stood me up in fourteen years. Don’t start now!

In our mediation, we agreed to do a text-message check-in once a month for the first year after the divorce. My ex said that he was worried about me, that I was lost in my grief. I suppose I believed him. I was too tired to fight him on it. One of my former colleagues said this was his power play.

My mother tells me that Wendy didn’t hear anything last night. This time, it was just my mother’s house. She says that she’s being targeted. She tells me about phone calls she’s been getting for three months. She says that she picks up the phone and they say bad words. I laugh and tell her she doesn’t know any bad words in English. My mother says f****t and looks me in the eye. She says it just like they do, and I feel it just like she does—confused, scared, out of place.

After more talk about calling the police, I convince my mother not to.

I get up to leave and notice a marble on her dining-room table. I start to ask her about it, but then I stop. I don’t say anything. I have to go now, work on another application due tomorrow. I can’t stay.

The marble is blue and red, one large bold red swoop, no little rivulets. The marble sits still in the middle of the table, on display almost.

I text my ex back: Doing fine. Mom’s house might be haunted. We’re losing our marbles.

I smile. I know he won’t get it.

My mother begs me to spend the weekend at her house.

“Do you want to catch your ghost?” I ask her.

“Catch?” she asks. “Like a cat?” I laugh, and she says, “It’s not a ghost. It’s sicky humans. When they do it again, we’ll call the police.”

At the Goodwill I buy a tape recorder, an actual tape recorder, and cassettes. I’ve seen how it’s done on TV.

Here is a canopy of trees, like in a movie, and then a stoplight where Route 25 branches off. It goes northwest, and Highway 121 goes northeast. Devil at the crossroads. I turn around and drive back through, under the canopy. The sunlight comes through. Not all of it.

Night #1:

I dream of redbirds carrying my mother’s house away. And of fire ants falling out from it, leaking onto the ground below.

When I asked my ex what the prayer—Dugare ini para’ti na yehasuri deme hana te we stere yanamusi sere—means, he said he didn’t know.

In the morning my mother asks me if I heard anything. I tell her no, thinking I’ll have to listen to the recording later, but she says that she did. My mother says she heard rumbling, like thunder. I tell her again I didn’t hear anything. She calls Wendy, who heard nothing either. My mother starts to call Mr. Smith across the street, but I stop her. I explain to her that men just don’t get these things. I tell her not to say anything about a ghost. She says, “Why do you keep talking about your ghost?” I tell her it’s not my ghost, but she just purses her lips.

She calls and asks to talk to Mr. Smith’s wife, Patti.

My ex texts back: Who you gonna call? Seriously, don’t call any of those ghost hunters. They’ll just rob you.

I am angry that he didn’t take me seriously—though ghost hunters, that intrigues me.

My mother says Patti didn’t hear anything but would check with the neighborhood watch and call her back.

I was in labor for twelve hours with my son. When the nurse felt my stomach, she said the baby hadn’t turned. She kept checking, but he wouldn’t turn. They cut me open to get him out because he wouldn’t turn. They gave me anesthesia. I remember a spinning baby, centered on an axis and turning in all directions.

Night #2:

I dream of a single tree, an oak, in the middle of a desert. A hawk flies above it, and ambient music plays while a deep voice says, Show the glory of our art.

I wake up suddenly with a feeling of vibration in my head. At first, I think I hear a sitar, but then it feels like the air is slowly getting sucked out of my childhood bedroom. I sit in my bed and listen for fifteen minutes. Nothing, except what feels like silent suffocation, my head getting pulled inside out, a Persian cartoon. This is not Persepolis.

The next morning my mother says she didn’t hear anything. She asks me if Sherry or Allen or Karen called back. I say no. She tells me we’re going out to lunch. She tells me I’m still staying with her the next night. She is a generous mother.

Ghost hunters from Augusta, called Paranormal 64, call me back while I’m driving my mother home from lunch. I put my phone on speaker and try to tell Ryan of Paranormal 64 about our haunting, but my mother talks too, denying that it’s a ghost. She says ghosts don’t exist. Ryan laughs. I apologize.

My mother says she isn’t Christian, but she believes in God. And ghosts aren’t of God, any god.

Ryan tells her a beautiful ghost story. There’s love—lost and found again—praying, a ghost that found God.

My mother is convinced by this story that takes Ryan all of two minutes to tell.

I ask how soon they can come. Ryan says, “How about tomorrow morning?” I agree and ask him if ghosts ever feel old. He laughs.

My ex-husband was a good father. He smiled and laughed when he was supposed to. He taught our son yoga. He passed along his family’s tribal stories. He never chose his job over his son. He could pitch a ball so that any Little Leaguer could hit it. He always knew what childhood scribbles were supposed to be. He always knew the answer to homework questions.

He always knew the answer.

When we get home, I notice that the marble is still there. My mother calls Wendy to tell her about Paranormal 64. I take a picture of the marble, which is in the same place as yesterday. Evidence. Who you gonna call?

I text my ex-husband: What if my mother’s house is built on a Native American burial ground?

He doesn’t text back.

I ask my mother about the marble. She says, “What marble?” I tell her the one on the dining-room table. She can’t see well but looks over anyway. She asks, “What does this means?” I explain a marble to her. She laughs hard. I say, “Don’t laugh. It’s an old-fashioned toy.”

My mother wants me to bring the marble to her. I explain that we should leave it where it is in case it has something to do with the ghost. I do not ask my mother if she believes in ghosts now. I do not ask if she thinks the ghost is my father. I do not call her house haunted.

Haunt means to visit frequently. My son isn’t here.

Here is a fruit stand where an old man named George sells fruits and vegetables from his garden. I usually drive by it.

Today he has boiled peanuts too. My mother buys five cucumbers, two tomatoes, a watermelon, and a bag of boiled peanuts for me. She is a generous mother.

When we get back home, while I am unlocking the door, we both hear a loud bang. I put our bag down on the porch, clutch my peanuts. I take my mother back to the car, where she gets on her cell phone and calls Wendy to come outside. My mother tells me not to go in the house, but I do anyway.

I look everywhere, starting with doors and windows. I look in closets, even the laundry closet. I pull back shower curtains.

Wendy yells to me from the front door. I yell back that no one is here.

I walk into the living room. Wendy says, “Are you sure it wasn’t the TV?”

I look at the TV, which is a black screen. I tell Wendy that it was off when I came in.

“Doesn’t your momma always leave it on?” she asks.

I say yes, remember the TV blaring when we left for George’s stand, then see that my father’s shrine picture is turned over, flat. I walk over and lift it up carefully, like there’s a bug underneath. Wendy goes “Oh my god. Oh my god” and hops a little.

I put the picture upright. There is no broken glass. I turn and look at Wendy. I say, “Was this the noise?” I smack the picture down again, and it makes a low, hollow sound. And it feels good. I put the picture upright, noticing a small crack in the glass now. And Wendy says, “Oh my god” and comes over to me, takes both of my arms, and pulls me outside to where my mother is calling me.

What I know about ghosts:

They attach to places that were important to them.

They draw energy from the air around them, causing cold spots.

They can be aware or unaware, active or stuck in a loop.

Ghosts may appear as orbs, mists, vortices—and may leave behind ectoplasm.

Demons can take the form of human ghosts.

Ghosts can be purged with sage or prayer or ritual.

Night #3:

I dream about being inside a glass house. Birds, butterflies, and moths fly at the window-wall. I turn to look behind me, and the oak tree is inside the glass house with me, a hawk perched on its highest branch. There is no music. The house echoes with one death followed quickly by another. One wall is almost entirely covered in blood and feathers. I try to look at the wall behind the tree, but I cannot quite see it. The tree’s trunk keeps getting wider and wider.

I wake up to a sharp knock on the south-facing wall behind my head. I am ready this time. I check front and back doors, both motion-sensor lights already on. I check my mother’s room. I stop as I turn away. I look back.

My mother isn’t in bed.

I call out her name.

I check her bathroom. I look everywhere in the house, the other two bedrooms first. The other bathroom.

I turn on all the lights and leave them on.

I remember that my mother is small. Maybe she heard the noise and is hiding.

I look in closets, even the laundry closet. I pull back shower curtains.

My mother’s closet smells like her perfume, like gardenias. She is a Southern kind of Persian. Her scent is still here.

I look under beds.

I call out her name. I call her Mother. I call her by her first name then, like I’m looking for a child. I keep switching, but I keep calling her name, a name.

I look everywhere in the house: rooms, bathrooms, closets, corners, under, over. I check the front and back doors again, both motion-sensor lights still on. The doors are both locked from the inside.

All the lights are on. I left them on.

I go into my mother’s bedroom and pull the covers all the way off her bed. I shake her covers sharply, like my mother will fall out.

In the living room my father’s picture is there, upright, as it should be, a small crack in its glass.

All the lights.

I look everywhere in the house. Again.

A small crack in the glass.

I call Wendy.

I see the marble on the table.

When my ex and I were young, we were young. Do young people feel young? I can’t remember. He told me all his Catawba stories. I listened with the curiosity and love and foreverness of a child. Sometimes my ex would act out the stories. Sometimes he pretended to be animals, warriors, and celestial bodies. His face was story. His voice was many. I loved him. Don’t laugh.

Here is a rainy day and a Rottweiler sitting on the side of the highway. He stands up for each speeding car, and the drivers slow down. But they don’t stop, and the dog doesn’t move from his spot. There is no blood. The dog is lost, waiting for its owner to return. I wonder how long he’ll sit there.

Wendy is holding my hand when the police knock on the door. As I tell the two of them that my mother is missing, that she’s old, one of them, tall and skinny, gets on his radio and calls for backup. He says he’ll go walk up and down the street. He asks what my mother’s name is. He asks me to spell it three times, pronounce it twice.

I don’t understand why he’s going to look outside until Wendy tells me that they think my mother got confused and wandered.

The other officer, much shorter, looks around and asks me why all the lights are on. I tell him I was looking for her, to make sure she hadn’t gotten up and fallen somewhere. I tell him she doesn’t have dementia. He nods. He asks if he can look through the house, and I say yes.

Another knock.

My ex sticks his head in the front door and says my name. I squint at him. All the lights. He introduces himself to Wendy. She smiles and talks differently. She lets him sit next to me.

The tall officer comes back and asks who my ex is. My ex introduces himself as my husband.

The tall officer asks me more questions, and my ex holds my hand tightly. I answer yes and no and seventy-six. I tell them again that she doesn’t have dementia.

The other officer comes back, says they’ve put in an alert for ——, mispronouncing my mother’s name. Why can’t they remember?

He says they’ll come back in the morning. The morning sounds like a story.

Here’s the answer: It’s my fault my son isn’t here. You are the last to know.

I wake up on the couch alone. There’s a loud knock on the door. I open it, and my ex is there with coffee. He says he forgot his key. All the lights are still on, and sunlight is coming in the windows too. My ex puts the coffees down on the dining-room table. The red-and-blue marble is still there. I look at my ex to see if he notices it. He doesn’t. He asks me if I feel okay. I sit back down on the couch and stare at the blank TV screen. I look to the left of it, at the shrine pictures. Both are turned over, flat. Too tired to be scared, I just think about how coming home should be different. Coming home shouldn’t feel like this. If I leave and come back—or if I just leave—maybe I can be something free and holy. Not the one left looking at and looking for.

We don’t talk about it.

There’s another knock. The police are back. They have more questions about my mother, the mystery of my mother. There are three officers this time. Well, one is a detective, actually. He wants to ask me all the questions from last night again while forensics dusts for prints. I nod to the detective to indicate I can answer more questions. “She is a generous mother,” I whisper to him as he gets out his pen.

My ex puts something warm in my hands and sits next to me. “Aza, are you okay?” my ex asks again. He puts his hand on my left cheek, trying to turn my head to face his. I keep staring ahead at the blank TV screen. All the lights are still on. I whisper, Dugare ini para’ti na yehasuri deme hana te we stere yanamusi sere.

The door. A sharp knocking again. I checked everywhere.

Here is Paranormal 64. Two men. I hear their deep voices. Then they are in front of me. They are both tall and wide. One has a shaved head, and the other has curly hair. One holds out his hand to me. “I’m Ryan Love,” Ryan says, “and this is Brandon Spell.” “Lovespell?” I ask, and think of the generosity. Oh, the generosity! I laugh softly, with breath only, no sound. Lights are on inside this shrine. Pressure. My husband’s hand, hot and wet, is on my left cheek still, trying to turn my head, trying to turn me to him, to turn me all the way around, and I let him as I laugh with breath only, no sound. I don’t think he gets it.

Read more from Issue 18.2.