Things We Left Unsaid Read Online Free PDF Page A

twelve years old. Alice wanted to play with the stones I had been collecting for the game of jacks, and I wouldn’t let her. She was screaming and crying. Mother shouted at
me, ‘The poor child’s nearly fainted from crying. Give her the stupid stones. You are older and have to cooperate.’ But I wouldn’t cooperate, so Mother shouted at Father,
‘Say something, for once! I have had it with these two and their fighting.’ Father looked at me for a moment, then at Mother, then at Alice. Then he calmly folded the newspaper, got up,
took the stones that I had spent months hunting and collecting, gave them all to Alice and told me I had to go to bed without dinner. He sat back down and picked up his paper. Alice made taunting
faces at me, Mother resumed knitting the shawl she was working on, and I cried myself to sleep that night.
    A few days later, when I asked Alice for the stones, she just shrugged, by way of saying, ‘I lost them.’ It was a month later, maybe, that Mother found the stones Alice had scattered
here and there around the house, and put them on the nightstand next to my bed. And maybe a few days after that, early one morning before leaving for work, Father dipped his hand into the pocket of
his raincoat, took out five smooth stones of the same size and shape, and quietly put them in my hand.
    I set my old stones in front of Alice. ‘You can have these. Father has collected some new stones for me.’
    Alice shot me a dirty look. ‘Only babies play with jacks. I’m collecting movie star photos.’
    ‘On the soul of your father...’
    I picked up the pink bougainvillea blossom and jiggled it around in my hand. Why did Mother swear on the soul of my father? How did she know?
    I remembered the anniversary of Father’s death, in Abadan. We had just come home from the church. Mother and Alice were sitting at the kitchen table arguing, and I was passing through on
my way to the backyard to collect the clothes off the line. I was still dizzy from the smell of frankincense and candles, and numb from crying. Mother told Alice, ‘It wasn’t
anybody’s fault. Don’t go accusing people for no reason. It was probably not meant to be.’
    Alice shouted angrily, ‘It wasn’t anybody’s fault!? What about his slutty little sister, who appeared like the Grim Reaper out of nowhere – rushing all the way down from
Tehran to get her brother to change his mind!’ Standing with the empty clothes basket in my hands, I remembered the red rose bush I had planted at the head of Father’s grave in Tehran
the year before. Had the cemetery attendants remembered to water it?
    Still thinking of the red roses on Father’s grave, it just slipped out of my mouth: ‘It wouldn’t hurt to consider our own faults and shortcomings, too. Expecting a three-carat
diamond ring...’
    Alice did not let me finish. ‘And just what faults and shortcomings do I have that I should not have a diamond ring? I don’t come from a good family? I do! I’m not educated? I
am! Just because I’m not all skin and bones like you, but have a little meat on me, should I settle for whatever grouchy loser happens along, like his Excellency the Professor? Should I sell
myself short, like you, and wind up with a crummy little gold wedding band not worth a red cent instead of an engagement ring?! No way, sister! I’m worth quite a bit more than that. The thing
is, you’ve been jealous of me ever since we were kids. You still are. Well, you know what? If I had wanted to settle for a husband like yours, I could have been married twenty times by
now.’
    I set the basket down and wheeled round to face my sister. I don’t know whether I turned pale or flushed, or there was something in my expression. But it made Alice look first at me, then
at the basket, and then turn to Mother and say, ‘What is it? I didn’t say anything wrong.’ I left Mother and Alice in the kitchen and went to the backyard with the empty
basket.
    Every time we