Take What You Can Carry by Gian Sardar (superbooks4u .TXT) 📕

in fear of shotgun marriages and diapers. This was a woman whose mind was on a million things but who just needed to get her shoe on. A woman who’d come a long way and was tired.

“I don’t know how you knew to take that,” Delan said. “That look on her face. Even the kettle. It’s tragic. And beautiful. Whatever you do, though, don’t show it to her.”

She’d not thought of that, that Rebecca wouldn’t approve. “Should I not have taken it?”

He looked upset, disturbed that the photo’s existence could be called into question. “Of course you should have. Always get the shot. Always. Art makes a difference. And if someone’s story, their pain or sadness, if that can impact someone else, it’s worth the invasion.”

Soon he was riffling through her other photos but stopped when he found three taken right after Christmas. Each of a house in black and white, taken at night. The houses are bright, filled with light and activity—one with a family at the dining room table, another with a woman on the phone in a cheery kitchen, the last with children in the top window, jumping on a bed. In the foreground of all three images are the Christmas trees that just days prior had been lit up and loved within the houses but now are dried and discarded on the curbs, left in a haze of street light. Duty done. Life goes on.

“I was calling them Kicked to the Curb,” she said.

“Fickle Love, I’d call them. This is a triptych. I want them on our wall when you walk in.”

The next morning, the chemical smell still hung in the air, but when Mason complained, Delan held up his hand. “You have your own bathroom in your studio—use that one.”

“The shower’s shit—”

“No one yells at you about the brushes you leave in our sink,” he said. “Even though you have your own sink. You are an artist and so is she. You of all people should support, not make it harder. In fact, frames. We need frames. For three photos. I want them in the entryway.”

Mason looked at her differently after seeing the photos, as if having felt a hard shell beneath the silk of her shirt. All three images went on the wall, and the rest of the day, Olivia burned with the blaze of someone who for a moment had been truly seen.

When she wakes again, it’s to the sound of Soran’s car parking outside. “You slept,” he announces when she walks downstairs to the kitchen.

“Did you find anything?”

He shakes his head. “I only went out quickly for bread.”

With his answer, she checks her watch, and there is a falter in her step, because it’s been hours that he’s been gone. But then she sees the counter, a new bag of naan bread by the sink. Though there, in the far corner, is another bag. My cousin wanted to know if Soran has a new business, she remembers Delan saying at the picnic, something that has him leaving town. Now she watches Soran, the way he seems distracted. Distracted enough to not notice they already had bread, perhaps. Or maybe he just wanted to be alone.

Day three. The third day of them asking questions. The third day of Delan not answering. Or worse.

“Is this normal?” she finally asks Soran. “Him gone this long?”

“Nothing is normal. But I am not worried. Most likely they have forgotten about him because someone else came in whose answers they need more.”

And then there’s a knock on the door. A rush of hope. Olivia’s standing in an instant. But it continues—the knock Lailan has established: tap-tap, tap-tap-TAP. When the door swings open, there is Lailan with a pot and pan to pretend to cook.

“Lailan cook perde plau,” Lailan says. “Rice with goodness. Many goodness.”

Later, after much invisible chopping, the girl leads her through the garden, through the streets, anywhere, pointing out items and saying their Kurdish names so Olivia can provide the English. Rose, stone, fig, roof, branch. Already Lailan’s English has improved by leaps, whereas Olivia’s Kurdish is meager at best.

“Walla,” Olivia said earlier to Soran. “I keep hearing walla and ser chow.”

“Walla means I swear, I promise. And ser chow means on my eye. Like with all my heart.”

She smiled. “On my eye?”

“All my heart is better? Translations don’t always translate. If you want to tell someone they’re not very bright, we say something that translates to, Donkey, don’t die. It’s spring and your saddle is coming from the city.”

They both laughed, till circumstance caught up to them and the sound rang too loud.

On her walk with Lailan now, they pass a sheep that’s tied to a rope by someone’s side gate. Olivia stops to scratch behind its ears. Chewing, it looks at her, unimpressed, its coat dirtied and matted. “Sheep,” Olivia says, and Lailan makes a motion as if eating.

“Food,” she says plainly, because it is a fact.

Making the girl lemonade reminds Olivia of making lemonade with her father. Piles of spent fruit. The sticky counter. The sound of the spoon against the glass. Now she both misses Delan and her father, and watching Lailan drink from a cup that practically obscures her whole face only adds to the equation a sadness that this girl never had a father to miss. So Olivia holds Lailan extra tight, trying to forget it all by breathing in the crisp bite of lemons on her skin.

Dinner is silent. When finally the plates are cleared, Olivia lets Lailan show her how to feed the chukar birds the leftover tomatoes and fruit, their beaks stabbing into the white flesh of a melon that smells faintly like pineapple. The windows of Miriam’s house stay dark, so Olivia gets the girl ready for bed at Delan’s house, trying to scrub her face with a washcloth as Lailan ducks and weaves.

“Story,” Lailan says when they’re done. With her finger, she traces each copper bough of Olivia’s pendant. “Story for trees.”

And so Olivia tells