The Radical Element by Jessica Spotswood (12)

I used to have a life, until a war ripped me away from it.

My little cousin Amir and I sat on the steps of our apartment building as we ate ice-cream cones and watched people walk their dogs. I still found that strange. We had stray dogs in Tehran, but hardly anyone ever claimed ownership and no one picked up their feces.

I was not used to the humid August heat, either. Tehran could get blistering hot, but it was never wet the way Boston was. I had only been here a month, and I missed walking to school with my girlfriends. I missed the fruit trees at my grandfather’s house. I missed Friday nights when the family would get together and go to a restaurant for dinner.

I had just started to get used to the new rules in Iran — not that I was enthusiastic about them — but in America, all those rules went out the window. Things I was trying to get used to now: not having to wear a head scarf when I left the house, my aunt and uncle fighting about money, and the homesickness that I couldn’t escape, even in my dreams.

Amir and I watched the cars drive by, blasting music from their radios. I recognized a song from one of my favorite shows, Solid Gold. Most of my days in America had consisted of watching copious amounts of television and trying to expand my English vocabulary while looking after Amir. I loved Solid Gold. The men and women dancing to the sounds of the latest hits felt so . . . outlandish. I mean, who wore leotards like that in real life? Back home, pop music was a very private experience. After the Islamic Revolution, I was only able to get bootleg recordings, and it was even more difficult to find new music from the West. If you wanted to dance to a new record, you had to stay inside and hope the police would not break up a private party. I wore out my contraband ABBA tape back in Iran.

Now I couldn’t listen to “Waterloo” without feeling a pang of homesickness. I told myself that was okay, because ABBA was passé and for children anyway. The singers featured on Solid Gold, like Irene Cara, were the sound of now. ABBA was no Irene Cara. Irene Cara could sing!

As the car drove away, I began to sing, continuing even after it was out of earshot. I didn’t know all the words to “Time After Time,” but I remembered the chorus and made up some noises to fill in for the words I didn’t know.

“Hey!” A young Asian woman with short hair stuck her head out of her apartment window. “You’ve got a decent set of pipes!” I didn’t understand what she meant, exactly, but she was smiling, so I took that as a sign that I wasn’t disturbing her.

“She doesn’t speak English so good,” Amir shouted back, and I flushed. “And we’re not supposed to talk to strangers! Are you a stranger?”

The young woman shouted again, and then disappeared from the window.

“What did she say?” I asked Amir in Farsi. His face was splashed with chocolate from his cone, and he was looking more and more like a Monchhichi doll the longer his hair grew out.

“She told us to hang tight. That means she wants us to wait here.” His Farsi was tinged with a slightly American accent.

“Why?” I asked him. He shrugged. He was more concerned with licking dribbling chocolate from the side of his hand. How stupid was I to have to rely on a He-Man enthusiast to be my translator?

The woman met us on the steps wearing neon-yellow shorts, a blue tank top with a picture of a blond woman singing on it, and a guitar strapped to her back. Her cropped black hair had a purple streak in it, and the toenails on her bare feet were painted black. I thought I was looking at someone from outer space.

She blinked at me a few times and said something in English. I looked at Amir desperately to help translate.

“She says you look like Apple Own Ya,” Amir said, wiping his hands on his shorts. I was going to have to wash those, the little devil. But he was my little devil and I loved him. How humiliating was it that my only friend in the United States was my six-year-old cousin?

The way the young woman looked at me, I wondered if I had some ice cream on my face too. What was an “Apple Own Ya”?

“Sorry! Where are my manners? I shouldn’t stare at you like that. My name’s Mai! I live upstairs on the fourth floor.” The young woman stuck out her hand in that very confident American way I’d seen on TV.

“I am Soheila. Hello. It is very to be nice meeting you,” I said, self-conscious of my accent. Amir laughed at me a little. But Mai beamed, so I guess I introduced myself well enough.

“Do you go to college around here?”

“No . . . I am not a student.” I didn’t know how to explain my situation.

“She’s here because of the war,” Amir interjected. That I understood well enough. “War’s bad. Except in the movies. Then it’s fun.”

“Oh. Where’s um . . . sorry . . . where’s the war?” Mai asked.

My uncle had warned me not to advertise where I was from. Back when he was a college student during the U.S. embassy hostage crisis in the late ’70s, he was beat up by some American students.

But I wasn’t ever going to be ashamed of where I came from, no matter who was in charge of the government. “I’m from Iran,” I said with pride.

“Oh, bitchin’! Right on. You must have seen some crazy shit, huh?” Mai asked.

“‘Shit’? What is ‘shit’?” I asked in English, which made both Amir and Mai laugh.

“It’s a bad word that means poop! Poop!” Amir shouted joyously in Farsi. Now I knew a new word in English. This was progress.

“Listen, do you guys live here? Do you want to come visit my apartment? I’m not a weirdo or anything — I promise.” Mai crossed her heart with her index finger. I didn’t know what that gesture meant — or what “weirdo” meant.

“Do you have ice cream?” Amir asked.

“Lots of ice cream. Brigham’s ice cream, too. The best kind,” Mai said.

“You play the guitar?” I asked.

“Oh! Yeah. I go to Berklee College of Music.” Mai swung the guitar around to her front and began to play a familiar tune.

Since I had come to Boston, I had been having the same nightmare: my mother and father were alone in their basement, hiding from Saddam’s missile strikes. My mother yelled for me. I tried to run to her, but I couldn’t move. Then I woke up sweating, my heart thumping so loudly, I hoped it wouldn’t wake Amir in the bed next to mine.

The only thing that calmed me down was the acoustic guitar music coming from the apartment above my uncle’s. I didn’t know who played such gorgeous music, but I had vowed that if I ever met him, I would thank him. Now I had met the mysterious musician — Mai! I felt stupid for assuming the guitar player was a man. I just didn’t know many women guitar players. There had been women pop singers before the Revolution, but I hadn’t seen a woman play the guitar before in person.

I absolutely loved it.

Amir always jumped up whenever he heard his father sing from down the hallway, alerting us (and perhaps the whole building) that he had returned from his garage space. Mostly Uncle Khosro would sing a lot of off-key disco like the Bee Gees. He forgot many of the words and made up his own lyrics depending on his mood.

He was still singing loudly as I opened the apartment door for him. He held our dinner in his greasy hands: a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a two-liter bottle of Pepsi.

“Hello, my beautiful family! Tonight we feast because of a great military man named Colonel Sanders,” Uncle Khosro exclaimed in Farsi. I took the soda and chicken from him so he could scoop up Amir and hang him upside down.

“Khosro, don’t do that! All the blood will rush to his head!” Aunt Fariba hissed. She never greeted her husband with the enthusiasm Amir did. I got the impression that when Aunt Fariba came here in 1975, she thought she was marrying a man who would give her a fancy American lifestyle: expensive cars, large homes — the way the people on Dallas lived. Khosro was a good man, but he was not Bobby Ewing (portrayed by the incredibly handsome Patrick Duffy). To be fair, Fariba was no Pamela Ewing. I think it had dawned on her that she never would be.

My family back home came from means, but my uncle had a much different life than he would have had if he had stayed in Tehran. He hadn’t exactly been truthful about the life he was living when he spoke to my mother on the phone. Uncle Khosro had told my mother that he lived in a “luxurious condo” and had “an incredible job.” The condo was actually an apartment on Gainsborough Street in a run-down building full of low-income tenants, including many college students. His incredible job was as a mechanic at a BMW car dealership instead of working for my grandfather in the import-export business. But I didn’t tell my mom the reality of my uncle’s situation during our weekly phone conversations. I felt it wasn’t my truth to tell.

“But he’s enjoying it so much!” Uncle Khosro was hanging Amir upside down, swinging him from side to side. The little Monchhichi screamed with glee. I had a pang of longing for my own father. The way Uncle Khosro looked at his son reminded me of how my father and I used to play when I was little.

God, I missed him.

“Keep it down or you’ll disturb her,” Aunt Fariba warned in Farsi.

Like clockwork, Mrs. Abney, the across-the-hall neighbor, opened her door to see what all the fuss was about. Whenever she decided to make eye contact, she looked at us as though we were insects who had infested her home.

“Hello, Mrs. Abney! It is so nice to see you!” Uncle Khosro called through the open door to the stone-faced widow. She was wearing her house shoes and an oversize floral print dress, and I thought she looked very much like the woman in the Wendy’s commercials who complained that there was not enough meat in the hamburger. Uncle Khosro was too nice to her. I was all for respecting one’s elders, but not when they were prejudiced assholes.

Mrs. Abney had pinned a yellow ribbon on her apartment door. My uncle told me it had been a symbol of hopeful return for the American hostages during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. The hostages had been returned in 1981, but Mrs. Abney’s yellow ribbon went up in 1982 when Uncle Khosro and his family moved in. The gesture was not lost on him, but he still felt that with kindness, he could win over Mrs. Abney. I was pretty sure he could reach Mister Rogers’s level of kindness and still not make much progress with her.

“You’re too loud,” Mrs. Abney said. “Some people are trying to live in peace. You people might not know anything about that, but Sunday is the Lord’s day. It’s a time of respite and prayer.”

I didn’t know what “respite” meant, but I knew she wanted us to shut up.

“You are so right, Mrs. Abney! Would you like to have dinner with us? We can enjoy this nice day together?” Uncle Khosro said, one hand clutching Amir’s legs and the other hand over his heart, bowing slightly to the elderly woman. “We are having the Original Recipe! They do chicken right! Please, you would make us so happy if you joined us.”

“I’ve got my own food. Just keep it down,” Mrs. Abney said before she slammed the door.

Uncle Khosro flipped Amir in his arms so he could kiss his cheeks. “Always remember to be nice to lonely people, okay?” Khosro told his son as he carried him into the kitchen.

I had noticed that Mrs. Abney never had any visitors, too. Was there no one to check on her, no one who cared for her? Didn’t everyone have someone to care about them, even if it was strictly out of guilt and obligation? That was the Persian way. Guilt always made the heart grow fonder.

We sat down at the table to eat our fried feast, but I didn’t have much appetite. Colonel Sanders’s cheerful face was a poor substitute for my mother’s cooking. I missed her loobiya polo, long-grain basmati rice with tomato, lamb, and string beans that smelled of turmeric and cinnamon. She always told me I should learn how to cook my favorite dishes, but I never took her up on it. Now I wished I had paid attention.

The TV was on during dinner. There was a commercial for Ronald Reagan’s reelection. It seemed like everything could be sold over the television here, even politicians.

“How was everyone’s day?” Uncle Khosro asked us cheerfully.

“Soheila and I made a friend today,” Amir said.

“Oh?” Aunt Fariba said in a disapproving tone.

“Yeah! She had purple hair!” Amir bit into a chicken leg while Fariba shot her husband an alarmed look.

“Um, how did you meet this person?” Uncle Khosro asked me diplomatically. I explained that Mai lived upstairs and was very nice. My aunt and uncle looked at each other for a moment before Uncle Khosro addressed me again. “Soheila, while you are here, your aunt and I are responsible for you, and while we are sure your friend is nice . . .”

“American girls are trouble,” Aunt Fariba said. “They’re into sex and drugs. We want you to be careful.” I wondered how she knew, since I didn’t see her with any Americans. Most of her friends were Iranian immigrants like her.

“I . . . She seemed very kind. And she can play the guitar so beautifully!” I tried to defend my potential friend. I was desperate to talk about something other than Orko and She-Ra. Amir and I had exhausted the topic of Orko, the hooded wizard with the tinny voice, and how he was the absolute worst.

“Maybe you could have her meet us?” Uncle Khosro asked. He was asking his wife more than he was asking me. From her sour expression, Aunt Fariba wasn’t sold on the idea.

So, on the days when Aunt Fariba went to work, Amir and I snuck upstairs to Mai’s apartment and listened to music. All the music I didn’t know I had been missing. Mai had magazines filled with photographs of musicians, young and old. There used to be magazines like this in Iran when I was younger, but that had all changed after the Revolution — and then before we had time to adjust to all the changes, the war began.

I spent hours poring over all the cover art on Mai’s albums. The three of us danced to beats so good, they couldn’t have been created by humans. It was a huge change of pace from studying all the time for my college entrance exams. I was worried that I would be behind when I went back to Tehran, but for the time being it was nice to take a break.

My bedroom back home was tidy, pristine. Mai’s was messy: sheet music was strewn on the floor, her bed was never made, and her closet was full of raggedy shirts that she had cut up. Her walls were plastered with posters of rock stars that I didn’t recognize. I learned their names like they were holy leaders: Pat Benatar, Men at Work, the Clash, Talking Heads, and someone with huge eyes who I only knew was a man from his mustache.

“It’s so funny you keep looking at that photo of Prince.” Mai was lying on her bed while Amir and I sat on the floor. “Since you look just like Apollonia, and she falls in love with him in the movie and all.”

“What?” I understood what Mai had said. I just didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

“You know, in Purple Rain,” Mai said.

“What is ‘Purple Rain’?”

“WHAT?” Mai screamed. Amir jumped up and began crying. “Shhh. I’m sorry, little man. I didn’t mean to scare you. You want a Jell-O pudding pop?”

Amir wiped his eyes and nodded, and Mai went to the kitchen. She had stocked her freezer with all of Amir’s favorites. She seemed to be able to buy anything she wanted, and she had a big television and a state-of-the-art record player, so I assumed she came from a wealthy family. She lived alone, which I couldn’t understand. I wondered if she ever got lonely. I would probably live with my parents until I married.

I thought it would be gauche to tell Mai that I came from money, too, which is how I was able to come to the U.S. My mom had offered to send money to my aunt and uncle for taking me in, but Uncle Khosro wouldn’t hear of it. That was another point of contention between him and his wife. I knew Aunt Fariba didn’t want me there. She never said it outright, but I was a burden to them. She was polite to me, but I felt like she assessed every piece of food I put on my plate and how much time I spent in the shower. I was draining their resources — or at least that’s how she made me feel.

“Here you go, He-Man.” Mai passed Amir the pudding pop before turning to me and pulling an album from her record collection. “We’re going to listen to this all afternoon, and then I’m taking you to the movies. As soon as possible.” Mai carefully slid the vinyl album out of its shiny cardboard sheath. She gently handed the album cover to me and then flitted to the record player.

Every song was a masterpiece, a story, and a world unto its own. I didn’t even understand all the lyrics and I still felt that way! The energy of “When Doves Cry” floored me. The drama of “Let’s Go Crazy” made my whole body tingle. My favorite song, “The Beautiful Ones,” made me ache for someone I hadn’t met yet. I didn’t know exactly what Prince was saying in that song, but I felt the pain and anguish just the same. It was an album chock-full of the emotion and expression that I needed. This man from a place called Minnesota, his music made me feel alive instead of just existing.

I was nervous that my aunt and uncle wouldn’t let me go see Purple Rain with Mai. I had to see this movie after listening to the album all week. But Aunt Fariba, as hip as she thought she was, wouldn’t be pleased with Mai’s look. My aunt and uncle weren’t a religious or conservative household — my parents were far more traditional — but Fariba was very quick to make snap judgments based on people’s appearance. When she came home from the hair salon, she would tell story after story about all the women who came in and what they looked like before and after. “She came in looking like a walking dead person and left the salon looking like a walking dead person,” or “She looked like she was on drugs. You know, one of those party girls,” or “I’m sure she was a prostitute. I mean, the way she moved and her skirt was so short,” and so on.

Initially, it made me self-conscious about my own appearance, until I thought about Fariba’s own look. She wore far too much makeup. Her hair was crispy from Aqua Net hairspray. Her bangs were teased to the point where it looked like a giant claw was protruding from her forehead, doing its best to clutch you, welcoming you into her realm of misery.

I checked myself in my room’s mirror while Amir watched me. I wore a simple black shirt, nothing too revealing, and blue jeans with black ballet flats. My hair was up in a high ponytail. I had a little pink blush on my cheeks, but not enough to give Fariba or Khosro the idea that I was up to something. Fariba wore lots of makeup, but she was married, so that made it okay for some reason, which I thought was ridiculous. I never understood why adults always thought girls with too much makeup on were up to something. No one ever asked boys with too much bulge in their jeans if they were up to something. Double standards for men and women seemed to be international.

“How do I look?” I asked Amir in Farsi. “Am I bitchin’?” I asked in English. I was picking up words like “bitchin’” very quickly from spending so much time with Mai.

“Bitchin’!” Amir said, sticking his thumb up.

I heard a knock on the apartment door and gasped. Amir and I rushed out of our room to see Aunt Fariba open the door for a totally transformed Mai.

“Hello! I’m Mai Asano. You must be Soheila’s aunt! I’ve heard such wonderful things,” Mai lied. But she did it oh so well!

“Hello,” Fariba said, taking in Mai’s long yellow summer dress and the black cardigan that I knew was covering the tattoos on her shoulder. Mai’s hair was under a fashionable summer hat that hid her purple streak. There wasn’t a hint of makeup on her gorgeous face.

“Please, come in!” Uncle Khosro said as he stood up from the couch. “It is so nice to meet one of Soheila’s friends!” He was being kind. Everyone knew Mai was currently my only friend. “Please, please, come in and have something to eat!”

“No, we’ll be late for the movie!” I told my uncle. Why couldn’t they just let me leave?

“What is this movie our little Soheila is so excited about?” my uncle asked Mai with genuine interest. It was the first time since my arrival that I had been excited about anything.

“We’re going to see The Muppets Take Manhattan. You know, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy,” Mai said cheerily. I bit back a laugh. I was sure I would enjoy watching the Muppets (I liked Sesame Street, which I watched with Amir), but I appreciated Mai’s lie.

“We don’t want to be late,” I pleaded with my uncle.

“Okay, but be home before ten. Call us if you need anything.” My uncle may have said more than that, but I wouldn’t know because we ran out after the first word.

“How did I do?” Mai asked me when we were outside.

“You were good,” I replied.

“Yeah. I’ve got grandparents from Japan. I get it. Kind of.”

Mai led us to a blue AMC Gremlin parked down the street. A young white woman sat in the driver’s seat, her window down to release the smoke from her cigarette. Her hair was dyed black and white. She reminded me of the skunk from Looney Tunes if that skunk from Looney Tunes never smiled.

“What the hell happened to you?” the skunk lady asked Mai.

“I’m trying out a new look. For one night only, thanks,” Mai said, leaning in to kiss the skunk lady on the mouth. I tensed. I wasn’t used to public displays of affection between boys and girls, never mind between girls and girls.

“I like the new look! All you’re missing is a Members Only jacket!” A young white girl with a red bandanna across her forehead waved at me from the backseat.

“Wow! You weren’t kidding, Mai! Your friend looks exactly like her,” a black girl in preppy clothes added.

“Girls, this is Soheila. Soheila, that’s Cecilia,” Mai said, pointing to the youngest member of the group. “Janine.” The blonde with the red bandanna saluted. “And my girlfriend, Genevieve.”

“Gen,” the skunk lady with the salty expression said. “Let’s hit the road before we miss the show.”

As soon as I saw Prince’s silhouette bathed in purple light, holding a guitar onstage, I felt a rush of adrenaline that didn’t leave me until the end of the film. When Apollonia appeared in the backseat of the taxi, worried about paying her cab fare, Mai and her friends all yelled and clapped and pointed to me, letting the rest of the packed movie theater know that they were sitting with the star of the movie.

I didn’t see it. Apollonia was glamorous. She was sexy. She was a risk taker. I wasn’t any of those things. And I definitely wasn’t ever going to get naked and jump in a lake for a man. Even if that man was Prince.

I laughed during the scene when Apollonia got on Prince’s motorcycle as one of my favorite songs, “Take Me with U,” played. I didn’t laugh because it was a funny scene but because I realized I hadn’t thought of anyone back home since the movie started. Then I began to cry. I didn’t care if any of my companions noticed.

After the movie, as we all piled into the car, Mai asked me if I wanted to audition for their band. “It’d be awesome! We do a little bit of everything. Funk, R&B, punk. Right now we do mostly covers and put a feminist spin on them,” she said.

“Though I do hope we start doing more original songs,” Cecilia hinted.

“Are you kidding? With Apollonia’s doppelgänger, we’d get booked at parties and events so fast.” Janine snapped her fingers.

“Let’s see if she can sing first,” Genevieve warned as she looked at me in her rearview mirror.

“What do you think? Would you like to try out?” Mai asked.

I didn’t think about whether or not it was a good idea, if it was even possible for me to join a band since I didn’t know when I would be going home, or whether I might be bad at singing their songs even though Mai said I had a good voice. I just thought of how music made me feel better. So I agreed.

“Soheila! Your mother is on the telephone!” Aunt Fariba shouted from the kitchen a few weeks later. She dangled the phone cord in her hand as though she couldn’t be bothered to hold the actual receiver. I gently took the phone from her and nodded in appreciation, which I resented. Aunt Fariba’s initial polite smiles had morphed into grimaces as the weeks wore on. I hated having to feel apologetic for taking up space. I hated having to make up excuses for coming home late with Amir when I took him to band practices. (I was now a full-fledged member of the Ovarian Cysters. I had asked Amir to translate what our band’s name meant, but he had no idea.)

“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly into the phone.

“Hello, my love.”

I always took a deep breath after hearing my mother’s voice. Everything would be okay as long as I could hear my mother breathing. “Your father says hello.” We both knew that if my dad got on the phone, he would just weep with abandon and the phone call would last longer than it needed to. We were always mindful of my uncle’s phone bill. International phone calls between the U.S. and Iran could get pricey.

“How are you?” she asked.

I wanted to tell her I had gone to see Purple Rain six times. I wanted to tell her that I was homesick but I had made some new friends who called me Apollonia and they were making things better. I wanted to tell her that I was in a band, but I knew she wouldn’t approve. Good girls weren’t performers. Only compromised women got onstage to dance for people, unless they became famous and rich; then it was okay. My mother might not feel that way herself, but her friends back home did, and she wouldn’t want them to gossip or think badly of me when I returned.

“I’m fine.” It seemed like the responsible and grown-up answer. “How are you? How is everyone?”

I heard her sigh.

“We are okay, but I have some bad news.” I braced myself for something awful. Did someone die? “Kayvon,” she began. Our housekeeper, Akram, had helped raise me, and her son, Kayvon, was like a younger brother to me. “He . . . he enlisted.”

I gasped and sat down on the kitchen floor. I felt my eyes brimming with tears.

“But he’s . . . he’s only fourteen,” I said, though my mother and I both knew boys as young as twelve were sacrificing themselves for the country. “Poor Akram.” I began to cry.

“Don’t start that! You have to be strong!” She wasn’t going to tolerate any tears from me. I had to be a grown-up. I controlled my breathing and composed myself. “We tried to persuade him not to go, but there is all this pressure. We’re losing so many young men . . . He didn’t even tell his mother. He left a note.”

“Give Akram my love.” I didn’t know what else I could say that would be of any comfort. “Mom? When am I coming home?”

“Can you tell your uncle to call me later tonight? Tell him he can call anytime — we will be awake.”

She hadn’t answered my question.

“I will tell Uncle Khosro to call you, but —”

“Don’t forget. It’s important. We have to say good-bye now.”

“Okay. I love you. Tell everyone I am thinking of them.”

“We know you are. But try not to think about us so much. Focus on your life over there.”

She was commanding me to focus on my life here. I didn’t know what that meant. I could feel Aunt Fariba’s gaze on me when I hung up the phone. I turned around and offered a small smile, as though she were a prison warden that I needed to maintain a decent relationship with. I wanted her to ask me how everyone was back home. I wanted her to offer me some sort of affection. But she didn’t smile back. She just nodded and asked me to help her with the laundry. There were chores that needed to be done here. I guess she thought there was no reason to worry about a place a world away.

“Okay, He-Man, can you hit the cowbell like this?” Mai asked, crouching down to Amir’s eye level in the college practice room. She hit the bell with a drumstick in a quick one-two beat, and Amir copied the rhythm, excited to be able to bang something to his heart’s delight. “Bitchin’! Watch me for when I want you to do that, okay?”

Gen, our bassist, had arranged for us to perform at an all-ages club in South Boston that night. I was nervous to sing in front of people, but Mai said we had to let the city know how good we were. I was planning to tell my uncle that there was a double feature of Ghostbusters and Gremlins, but first we had to practice our set. And as usual, I’d brought Amir with me.

“You better watch out, Janine. He-Man is going to replace you on percussion in no time,” Gen threatened.

“Yeah, yeah, drummers aren’t real musicians. Ha-ha already, Gen. He is missing something, though.” Janine took off her red bandanna and tossed it to Mai, who tied it around Amir’s head.

“Now, that’s better! You’re the coolest guy in the band. Don’t grow up to be a misogynist and you’ll be all right, kiddo,” Janine said, twirling a drumstick in her right hand. I didn’t know what a misogynist was, but I would remember to ask her after rehearsal.

Mai pointed her finger at Gen to start our cover of ESG’s “My Love for You” with a kicking bass line.

“Now, He-Man!” Mai commanded.

Amir banged the bell in time, head-banging along. Next to me, Mai began to sing and I joined her, both of us dancing to the sick beat. Cecilia, who played the keyboard, had been helping me learn the lyrics.

When the song ended, I was out of breath.

“Awesome!” Mai said as we high-fived.

Amir kept hitting the bell, roaring intermittently at each of the girls.

“How much sugar has he had today?” Cecilia asked in genuine concern from behind the keyboard.

“Okay, let’s take it from the top,” Mai said. Gen started the bass line again.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I looked up to see Fariba rush into the music room. She had asked me the question in Farsi. I froze, horrified. The band was the only thing that kept me going. She was going to ruin everything.

“Uh, can we help you?” Cecilia asked, not knowing who Fariba was.

My aunt must have followed Amir and me instead of going to work. How else would she know we were here?

“You can help me by telling me what my son is doing here,” Fariba said in English, glaring at me.

“We’re taking names and kicking ass!” Amir responded. He had heard Janine say it a number of times during our rehearsals.

Aunt Fariba’s clawlike bangs couldn’t hide how red her face was. “Amir! Soheila! Let’s go! Now!”

Amir complied and walked to his mother. She ripped the bandanna off of his head and dropped it to the floor.

I hated that she felt it was okay to embarrass me.

I hated that she looked at my friends in the same way Mrs. Abney looked at us.

I hated that she didn’t give me any of the affection my mother did but still expected me to treat her with the same respect I would give my mother.

“I’m not going,” I said, gripping the microphone stand.

It became eerily quiet in a room that was always full of sound.

“What did you say?” Fariba asked in Farsi, slowly marching toward me. “Who do you think you are? You are a refugee. We have given you a life here, and you disrespect me by hanging out with these loose girls? You disrespect your uncle, who sweats and struggles to house you and feed you?”

She grabbed me by my hair. I screamed out in pain. Amir began to cry, and the rest of the girls yelled for Fariba to stop.

My aunt let go of me, her face crumbling. She looked like she didn’t know where she was or how she got there. Her hands trembled and she looked at me in remorse. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she said, turning around to pick up Amir. Her cheeks were red as she left.

The room became quiet again.

“Are you okay?” Mai asked me.

I wiped away my tears and took a deep breath.

“Let’s take it from the top,” I said.

“It’s a chick band? No way. I bet they can’t play for shit,” a young man with a Kajagoogoo haircut said a little too loudly backstage. Gen had failed to mention the show tonight was a contest. The winner of the battle of the bands would take home the grand prize of five hundred dollars. None of the other bands had women in them.

“A little warning would have been nice, Gen!” Cecilia said, peering out at the crowd of two hundred and fifty people.

“What? I didn’t want you to feel pressured! Besides, we’re going to go out there and show them we can play. Right, Apollonia?” Gen asked me. My hair was teased out and curly just like Apollonia’s, and I was wearing heavy purple eye shadow. I wasn’t going out there in lingerie though. I wasn’t insane! I was wearing a black tank top and jeans with holes in them. Mai told me the holes had been deliberate, which I didn’t understand. Why would someone put holes in a pair of perfectly good pants?

“Please put your hands together for the . . . You’re joking with this band name, right?” the host onstage asked us.

“Just read the damn card,” Janine yelled.

“Okay. The Ovarian Cysters, ladies and germs!” the host said to lukewarm applause. As soon as we took the stage, we were catcalled and whistled at.

“You ready?” Mai said, putting her guitar strap on her shoulder.

I was ready to kick ass and take names. I had a lot of shit I needed to let out.

Mai started to play the beginning of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Happy House.” The audience began to bob their heads, though some of the whistles persisted. Then I grabbed the mic and wailed.

I jumped up and down in between verses. My hair whipped side to side, and the more I poured all my rage, all my hurt, all my heartsick, into the void, the more the audience responded. The roar of the audience quieted the footage of the tanks, silenced my aunt’s words, and briefly killed my worry about my parents and friends back home.

During that set, I was free to be whoever I wanted to be. Not Apollonia, not Amir’s babysitter, not a self-conscious girl.

I was bitchin’ and so was my band.