Digging to America

Digging to America Read Free

Book: Digging to America Read Free
Author: Anne Tyler
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was a Tuesday and Maryam was due to come over very shortly; and she phoned her mother in Washington and later her sisters-in-law in L . A . It seemed that some switch had clicked in Susan's head, for she smiled at Maryam as well when she arrived her smile already that charming, pursed V that made you feel the two of you shared some merry little secret. And within the week she was chortling at Sami's antics, and sleeping through the night, and showing a fondness for Cheerios, which she pursued single-mindedly around her high-chair tray with her dainty, pincer fingers.
    Didn't I tell you? Maryam said.
    She was an optimist, Maryam was. Or on second thought, not an optimist: a pessimist. But her life had been rocky enough that she faced possible disasters more philosophically than most. She had had to forsake her family before she was twenty; she'd been widowed before she was forty; she had raised her son by herself in a country where she would never feel like anything but a foreigner. Basically, though, she believed that she was a happy person. Sh e was confident that if things went wrong as they very well might she could manage.
    Now she saw the same quality in Susan. Call her fanciful, but she had felt a deep connection to Susan the moment they met in the airport. Sometimes she imagined that Susan resembled her physically, even, but then she had to laugh at herself. Still, something around the eyes, some way of looking at things, some onlooker's look: that was what they shared. Neither one of them quite belonged.
    Her son belonged. Her son didn't even have an accent; he had refused to speak Farsi from the time he was four years old, although he could understand it. Her daughter-in-law had a noticeable accent, having immigrated with her whole family when she was already in high school, but she had so immediately and enthusiastically adapted listening nonstop to 98 Rock, hanging out at the mall, draping her small, bony, un-American frame in blue jeans and baggy T-shirts with writing printed across them that now she seemed native-born, almost.
    Ziba left for work when it suited her; she was an interior decorator and arranged her own appointments. Often she'd be loitering around the house a full hour after Maryam's arrival. She was already dressed for the office, not that you would guess it (she still wore jeans, although she'd graduated to blazers and high heels), but it seemed she couldn't quite tear herself away from Susan. What do you think? she would ask Maryam. Is another tooth coming in, or is it not? A thin white line is on her gum; do you see? Or she would collect her pocketbook, unplug her cell phone from its charger, but then: Oh! Maryam! I nearly forgot! Watch how she's learned to play peekaboo!
    Maryam would inwardly chafe, longing to have this child to herself. Go! Go! she wanted to say. But she smiled and kept quiet. Then at last Ziba would be on her way, and Maryam could swee p Susan into her arms and carry her off to the playroom. All mine! she crowed, and Susan giggled as if she understood. Left in charge, Maryam was more sure of herself. Child-rearing had changed so since her day the endless new lists of forbidden foods (peanuts a toxic substance, you'd think); the regulation car seats; the ban on talcum powder and baby oil and pillows and crib bumper pads that Maryam often felt incompetent in Ziba's presence. With Ziba there, she walked on tiptoe the way her own mother had tiptoed, she realized, the one time she had come to visit. Her mother had arrived with a holy medal to hang around Sami's neck, a little gold dime-sized Allah that a two-year-old would have swallowed in a blink, if Maryam had not insisted in putting it aside for later; and her mother had plied Sami with gummy white rosewater candies that would have ruined his teeth and stuck in his throat if Maryam had not clamped the box firmly shut and carried it off to the pantry. By the end of the visit, her mother had retreated to the television set, even

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