We’d get post cards from Iran with pictures of Bedouin weavers sitting in front of wooden looms. I miss you, he’d write on the back in his swirly cursive script. My brother and I would fight over them. We’d tear the cards in half and tuck the sides under our pillows at night. He returned a year later with a new wife, a Persian woman who spoke five languages, including French and Italian, and hated Berkeley because it was dirty and vulgar. She gave my brother a ceramic Aladdin’s lamp made especially for him in the Shah’s private kiln, and she gave me a set of hand carved sandalwood animals.
Once we stayed at their house and my stepmother made chicken cooked in cinnamon spiced tomatoes. We liked the chicken, but her, not so much. She scared me. She pulled hard at my hair when she combed it, and told my dad he needed to take me shopping for clothes, because, “My god, the poor thing is dressed in rags.”
The next day my mother put a sketchpad in front of me and asked me to draw a picture of my new stepmother’s legs. I stared blankly at the paper trying to remember what they looked like. “Go on, go on!” she urged. “What do they look like?”
I didn’t want to disappoint her so I began making light pencil strokes on the paper.
“Are they really that hairy?” she said with a laugh.
Author Bio:
Mira Martin-Parker is completing an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Mythium, and Zyzzyva.
Once we stayed at their house and my stepmother made chicken cooked in cinnamon spiced tomatoes. We liked the chicken, but her, not so much. She scared me. She pulled hard at my hair when she combed it, and told my dad he needed to take me shopping for clothes, because, “My god, the poor thing is dressed in rags.”
The next day my mother put a sketchpad in front of me and asked me to draw a picture of my new stepmother’s legs. I stared blankly at the paper trying to remember what they looked like. “Go on, go on!” she urged. “What do they look like?”
I didn’t want to disappoint her so I began making light pencil strokes on the paper.
“Are they really that hairy?” she said with a laugh.
Author Bio:
Mira Martin-Parker is completing an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Mythium, and Zyzzyva.
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