The platter with the tea trembled in my hands. The teaware was glass, our finest, translucent rosebuds rising out of the sloping sides, rounded and gentle under cupped hands. If I dropped it, my skin would bear the cuts. Aromatic chaii kissed the rims of the delicate glass as I breathed in deeply. The heat rising from the burning liquid stroked over my knuckles and caressed the backs of my hands. I had carried the platter before. The weight of it held me down. I was holding my future in my hands.
I walked in. I didn’t look at him. I set the tea down. My mother beckoned me to sit beside her. We lived in the city, so it was common for suitors to visit themselves instead of sending their mothers. I learned his name, and that he was twenty-one. I was fifteen. I learned that his smile was attractive. I learned that the shape his mouth made when he placed a sugar cube between his teeth and poured chaii down his throat was not. I learned that his voice was soft, and he had a habit of anxiously fluffing the frizzy curls of his hair as he spoke. He told my mother he liked the way I walked.
“Do you have any questions for me?” he said.
He hadn’t spoken to me since I entered the room, which I took to mean we weren’t allowed to address each other at all. My mother shot me a look. Answer the man.
“I’m sorry?”
He smiled again. I nervously rubbed the fabric of my chador between my finger and thumb. He had a nice smile. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me before we get married?”
Every morning for as long as I could remember, I would walk into the kitchen sleepy-eyed and frizzy-haired, and have the same breakfast my family always had. Nan-e barbari, flatbread, fresh and warm from the market or hardened and day-old from the cupboards, with butter. My father took half of the morning’s share of butter. My mother, my two brothers and I shared the rest. I swallowed injustice with my breakfast.
My mouth felt ashy, like the floury underbelly of unbuttered bread, as I began to speak.
“In the morning, we will eat bread and butter,” I started. He nodded. I glanced at my mother. Her mouth was pinched and white like undercooked tah deeg, like she’d give, not crunch, if someone bit into her one more time. Her gaze was fixed at the wall.
“Some butter will be for you,” I continued. He nodded again, eyebrows slowly coming together. His eyes were brown and sincere, gold settling into the crevices of his irises, clarity in the blackness of his pupil. “How much butter will be for me?”
His were the kind of eyes you can always forgive. I would come to learn that. He told me, “You can have as much butter as you’d like. I’ll take whatever you leave behind.”
Annabelle Taghinia is an Iranian-American writer from New England. She is a junior in high school and spends her free time writing fiction, including a collection of stories about Persian women. Her work has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, South Florida Poetry Journal, BULL, Yellow Arrow Journal and others.
Lost Balloon 