Veil of Roses Read Free Page B

I’ve spoken to at any length. I know I will remember her forever. She was friendly, and she was crazy.
    And I can’t even begin to imagine what her Persian boyfriend did with his tongue that made her so happy.
             
    A lthough it has been fifteen years since I have last seen Maryam, my terror at seeing her again causes me to linger, so that I am the last one off the airplane. And when I do depart the plane, I hear her high, happy voice before I see her.
    “Tami! Tami!” she shrieks. “Oh, oh! Over here,
Tami Joon
!”
    I turn my head toward the voice, and my heart melts as a blur I understand to be Maryam grabs me and kisses me on both cheeks before enfolding me in her arms. Pressed against me, Maryam curls my hair around her fingers. I’d forgotten how she used to do that when we were children in the bedroom we shared for many years. That’s how she used to wake me up in the mornings, by weaving her fingers through my hair and singing to me. I laugh with relief and start to cry and hug her back very tightly.
    “Shhh,” she says softly, smoothing my hair. “Don’t cry. We don’t want your eyes all puffy and red.”
    When she steps back and takes my face within her hands, when she gives me another kiss upon both cheeks, I gasp. “You are so beautiful! How did this happen?!”
    Her black eyes sparkle, delighted. “Everyone is beautiful in America,
Tami Joon.
”
    It is all I can do not to gape at her. Maryam has always had appealing features, but she has a beauty I have not seen before. She has lost her baby fat and toned her muscles and grown her hair long. It falls halfway down her back in perfect, shiny waves. She wears gold, gold, and more gold—earrings, a necklace, two bracelets. In Iran, gold jewelry is how women show off, revealed at parties after coming inside and shedding the headscarf—
hejab
—and manteau we must wear when outdoors to keep the low-class
bassidji
goons from harassing us.
    Here, Maryam openly wears her gold. Her face has laugh lines where before was only smoothness. She wears bright pink lipstick, gold eye shadow. Copied from a magazine model, most likely. That’s how she practiced back home. Most different is her chest—this is not the same chest she had when she left Iran.
    “Oy, Maryam! What is this? Did you take some special vitamins to make yourself grow in all the right places?” She is my sister; I can ask her.
    She laughs, delighted by my naïveté. “They’re not
real,
Tami. I enhanced them last year. They call it a boob job.” She giggles at the words. A
boob job,
this is unheard of where I am from. It would serve no purpose. Nose jobs, sure. They are all the rage, for noses are the one operable, changeable,
fixable
feature of ours that men actually see. The rest of us remains cloaked anytime we are in public.
    I question whether Ardishir approved of Maryam’s boob job.
    “Approved?” She laughs harder. “Who do you think paid for it?”
    I realize now, while looking at her new boobs, that while I may have come halfway around the world, what I have truly done is enter a whole new universe.
    “Did it hurt?”
    “Not so much.” She shrugs. “It’s what women do here, especially if their husbands have some money. If they are married to doctors or rich men who own businesses, for instance.”
    She puts her arm around my shoulder and turns me away from the gate. Toward the exit, toward my future. “Don’t worry, if we have a hard time finding you a husband, we’ll get you one, too. I’m sure Ardishir will pay for it.”
    This idea horrifies me.
    “I do not want Ardishir buying me new boobs!” This is not something my parents told me about, the need for new boobs.
    “You’ll do whatever it takes, Tami,” she laughs. But when she sees that I am near tears, Maryam pulls me toward her and reassures me with a hug. Then she stands back and strokes my cheek. She adds, quietly, “I don’t ever want my sister to be so far away again. So we’ll do