Digging to America Read Online Free PDF Page A

nearly the same time, Bitsy's parents first and Brad's close on their heels. Bitsy's parents were big and gray and friendly, Dave in coveralls like some ordinary yardman and Connie in sweatpants and the same bandanna-print cap she'd had on at the airport. Brad's parents, with their glittery blond hair and matching velour warm-up suits, seemed a little more formal. Pat and Lou, their names were. The man was Pat and the woman was Lou, or was it the other way around? Maryam knew she was going to have trouble with that.
    For a few minutes the four of them performed their grandparent dance around the babies. They exclaimed at Jin-Ho's quilted top, which Connie called by a foreign name, and made a nice to-do over Susan. Isn't she just like a miniature! Brad's mother caroled, and Dave scooped her right up. Luckily, Susan took this in stride. She reached for one of his curly gray sideburns and gave it a tug, dead serious, knitting her brow when he chuckled.
    See how Jin-Ho looks so tan-skinned next to Susan, Ziba pointed out. We think Susan's father maybe was white.
    Yes, you're just a little white tooth of a thing, Dave told Susan, but Bitsy jumped in with, Oh! Well! But actually that's not something we would notice, really!
    There was a silence. Ziba rounded her eyes at Maryam Why not? and Maryam gave the tiniest shrug. Then Brad said, So any-ways. You guys ready to tackle those leaves?
    Judging by the number of rakes propped out on the porch, Maryam guessed the Donaldsons had held these gatherings before. She would never have done that herself (she kept after her own leaves singlehandedly from the day they began to fall), but that wa s Americans for you. And it did turn out to be a real social event. For one thing, they were all put to work on the same section of yard, so that conversation could flow. And then there was no sense of pressure. Brad's mother didn't even make a pretense of raking, but appointed herself the baby-watcher and stood over Jin-Ho and Susan where they sat among the leaves. Bitsy's mother sank immediately into a canvas chair that her husband brought down from the porch, and she tipped her face up to the sunlight and closed her eyes. That cap made sense, all at once. She was ill, Maryam realized; she must have lost her hair. Even though Dave raked with the others, he stopped frequently to go over to her and ask if she was all right. Yes, fine, Connie said each time, and she would smile and pat his hand. Clearly it was from her that Bitsy got her no-nonsense looks, although Connie seemed softer than Bitsy and more retiring.
    Maryam herself worked diligently. She took a position between Bitsy and Lou (it was Lou who was the man of the couple; she believed she had that straight now) and raked in long, steady sweeps toward the pile that had started rising next to the driveway. She and Bitsy got a sort of rhythm going, like a chorus line. Lou was too busy talking to keep up with them. First he talked to Sami, on his other side boring man-talk about jobs, followed by the high price of housing once he learned that Sami sold real estate. Then it was Maryam's turn: how long had she been in this country? and did she like it?
    Maryam hated being asked such questions, partly because she had answered them so many times before but also because she preferred to imagine (unreasonable though it was) that maybe she didn't always, instantly, come across as a foreigner. Where are you from? someone might ask just when she was priding herself on having navigated some particularly intricate and illogical piece of English. She longed to say, From Baltimore. Why? but lacked the nerve. Now she spoke so courteously that Lou could have had n o inkling how she felt. I've been here thirty-nine years, she said, and, Yes, of course. I love it.
    Lou gave a satisfied nod and turned back to his raking. Then Bitsy poked Maryam in the ribs with her elbow. Lou thinks the universe ends just east of Ocean City, she said with a roll of her eyes.