Read Digging to America for Free Online

again.
    But then how is it that Susan is able to pick up her blocks? Maryam asked Bitsy.
    Her blocks?
    Her pink and blue blocks on a yellow playpen pad. I say, 'Pick up your blocks, Susan,' and she reaches right over for them.
    She does? Bitsy asked. She looked at Susan. She picks up her blocks when you tell her to?
    From a yellow background, Maryam said. She dished herself some rice and turned to Connie. May I serve you? she asked.
    Oh, no, thank you, not just yet, Connie said, although her plate was empty except for a slice of bread.
    Bitsy was still studying Susan. For a moment it seemed sh e couldn't think of anything more to say, but then she turned to Ziba. You put your daughter in a playpen? she asked.
    Ziba's uncertain expression returned. Before she could answer, though, Maryam said, And the beans and rice? How about those? Excuse me? Bitsy said.
    The black beans and the white rice. Are they for the sake of the babies' eyesight also?
    Bitsy looked startled, but when her father-in-law laughed she did manage to smile, a little.
    After that the two families got together fairly often, although Maryam politely declined whenever she was invited along. Why would she want to share a young couple's social life? She had friends of her own, mostly women, mostly her own age and nearly always foreigners, although no Iranians, as it happened. They would eat together at restaurants or at one another's houses. They would go to movies or concerts. And then there was her job, of course. Three days a week she worked in the office of Sami's old preschool. No one could say that time hung heavy on her hands.
    She did hear about the Donaldsons almost daily, through Ziba. She heard how Bitsy believed in cloth diapers, how Brad worried vaccinations were dangerous, how both of them read Korean folk-tales to Jin-Ho. Ziba switched to cloth diapers too (though in a week or so she switched back). She telephoned her pediatrician about the vaccinations. She plowed dutifully through The Wormwood Rice Cake while Susan, who had not yet got the hang of books, tried her best to crumple the pages. And after the Donald-sons' Christmas party, Ziba bought a forty-cup percolator so that she too could brew hot cider. You put cinnamon sticks and clove s in the basket where the coffee grounds go. Isn't that clever? she asked Maryam.
    Ziba had a little crush on the Donaldsons, it seemed to Maryam.
    Maryam herself didn't see them again till January, when they came to Susan's first birthday party. They brought Jin-Ho in full Korean costume a brilliant kimono-like affair and a pointed hat with a chin strap and little embroidered cloth shoes and they stood around looking interested but slightly lost in the sea of Iranian relatives. Maryam stepped forward to take them under her wing. She complimented Jin-Ho's hat and she showed them where to put their coats and she explained just who was who. Those are Ziba's parents; they live in Washington. And there is her brother Hassan from Los Angeles; her brother Ali, also from Los Angeles ... Ziba has seven brothers, can you imagine? Four of them are here today.
    And which are from your side, Maryam? Bitsy asked.
    Oh, well, none. Most of my family is still in Tehran. They don't visit very often.
    She poured them each a cup of hot cider and then led them through the crowd, pausing here and there to introduce them. Whenever possible she singled out non-Iranians a next-door neighbor and a woman from Sami's office because Brad was carrying Jin-Ho on one arm and you never knew what Ziba's relations might take it into their heads to say. (In L . A . we have plastic surgeons who make Chinese people's eyes look just as good as Western, she'd heard Ali's wife tell Ziba that morning. I can get you some names, if you like.)
    To be honest, the Hakimis were only one generation removed from the bazaar. Maryam's family would never even have met them, if they were back home.
    It was the food that put the Donaldsons at ease, finally. The y