Hypertext Magazine asked Mahyar A. Amouzegar, author of The Hubris of an Empty Hand, “The last chapter is about several characters’ grievances and their demand to have a more prominent voice in the stories. It felt like a Union Hall with laborers getting together and starting a small revolt. By the end of the chapter, each had made their demand clear except for Tess, an “uninvited” guest from your previous book, “Dinner at 10:32”, who refused to tell her story. Why write this chapter, and what was Tess’s story?”
By Mahyar A. Amouzegar
I generally spend about a year living with the characters who stay shapeless, faceless, and nameless. They, however, behave and speak like a thinking human being with all the human angst. And as they develop, they gain their own identity and physicality. And that’s when the fun begins, and the characters come to life and the story organically flows. I tend to write until my protagonists, who become close friends, stop talking, and that’s when I know the story is finished. But sometimes, they come back, even after I thought we were done with each other, and they want to be heard or are angry for not having their story told adequately. Tess’s untold tale has been with me for a long time, so when she appeared “unexpectedly,” I thought it was time to tell her story and the pain she had carried with her throughout her life, but, in the end, after talking to Death, she saw no point in it and didn’t want to reveal her secret. However, if asked again, and in a better setting, perhaps Tess might have revealed the following:
I don’t have many secrets, really, just two. But I only want to share one of them. They are simple, I know. And though they all happened a long time ago, they’re so vivid in my mind that I always feel no time has passed since the events. It’s sad that you never had a chance to meet my younger sister, Emma, because I think you would have liked her.
Even though she was two years younger than me, Emma was the one everybody followed. Even in elementary school, she was like the older sister, and I was like the younger one, despite being taller and bigger than her. So, it was kind of embarrassing when adults confused us with each other and would say, “Tess is rushing to catch up with Emma so much so that she has grown bigger than her.”
Emma was like a bulldog when she was angry or when she was trying to defend someone. But she was sweet too. She was kind and gentle, and loved everyone, as long as they didn’t cross her.
One day, I overheard some boys planning to teach Emma a lesson. She had fought one of them a day earlier over his bullying of another little kid. She had won their little fistfight and had embarrassed the boy in front of his buddies. The boy was trying to get his friends to help him get even. I heard all their plans and their reasons why it was fair for the three of them to fight only one. I heard everything, and I wanted to warn Emma, but I didn’t. Even after school, as we were walking back and I knew what was about to happen, I didn’t say anything. Instead, I feigned forgetting my book in school and ran back before she could stop me, only to turn around to sneak behind a fence and watch her from a distance.
We always took a shortcut home and went through the back of a parking lot of a neighborhood market. It was there where the boys were waiting for her. The lot had a short concrete wall, broken in some places, allowing us to climb over it easily. There were two large trash bins set against the wall, and a door going to the back of the store. It was a perfect place for an ambush as most people would park in the front, and there were no windows in the back of the store. I ran to the wall as soon as I saw Emma jump to the other side. I stooped next to one of the loopholes and waited for the showdown.
As soon as Emma stood up, the boys appeared from behind the bins. I could see them, and I could see Emma’s reaction to their presence. She knew what was coming, and she had a chance to run to the store or run back toward me. She did neither. Instead, she put her books down and waited. I told myself that I’d run and help her as soon it started. I was by then several inches taller than any of them and could take them on with Emma’s help. But I didn’t move.
It wasn’t a fair fight. I watched her getting what, at the time, I thought she deserved. Deserved for what? That was her reward for being so disgustingly kind to others and always protective of me, her older sister. But then, I hated being the weaker one, and at the very moment she was being hurt, I felt happy (can you believe it?). I felt vindictive satisfaction. It felt as if I were beating her.
I didn’t move when the boys were done and gone. Emma sat where she was crying quietly and steadily into her hands. I was so horrified at what I had done and yet I couldn’t move, as if I were the one who had received the severe beating. I was terrified. I could hardly breathe, feeling the evil in me choking me from the inside.
The owner of the market came out to put some garbage in one of the bins and saw Emma sobbing. He bent over and spoke to her for a moment but didn’t touch her nor try to get her to move. He spoke patiently for a long time before Emma looked up. He collected her books and helped her get up from the ground. I couldn’t see if she was bleeding, but her clothes were filthy and torn in some parts. He took her in and must have called my father as he showed up a few minutes later and took Emma home.
Emma told me every detail later that evening, and I listened to it with a look of horror as if I were learning about it for the first time. And part of me pretended that everything she said was new to me—the same part that was horrified to see her bruised and hurt.
It was March 7, 1965, and later that night, as we watched the beating of 600 civil rights marchers, my father turned to Emma and told her, “You, in your way, are like the marchers today. You stood your ground for what you believed in, like them. And I couldn’t be prouder of you, darling.”
My father’s words made me ashamed even more, and yet, oddly, more resentful of Emma for getting a beating on the same day as 600 others. I know siblings do these types of things to each other, and perhaps I would have even confessed to her years later, and we both would have had a good laugh. I know she would have forgiven me (but I was not given that opportunity—she died of Leukemia a year later.)
Emma always wanted to go to France. She saw a French movie called Journal d’un Curé de Campagne and fell in love with France and the French. It was a horrible movie about some priest, but Emma loved it, and France became her life. It was a day after her funeral that I decided I wanted to go to Paris for college. I told my father what I wanted, and he nodded and said, “Emma would have liked that.”
It made a great difference in my life to have this goal, to learn French and to work harder to get to Sorbonne. I was very focused on this task, and when I was finally accepted, I was so excited that I allowed myself a moment of contentment. And then little by little, I felt as if I were free of my debt to Emma. I had forgiven myself, and I was ready for my new life.
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Mahyar A. Amouzegar is the author of the previous novels, Dinner at 10:32, A Dark Sunny Afternoon, and Pisgah Road. His short story, Tell Me More, appeared in the Anthology of Short Stories as part of the Reading Corner Series. Mahyar has been in love with literature since he was a child in Tehran, and continued this passion when he moved to San Francisco as a teenager. He has lived and worked on four different continents and currently resides in New Orleans with his wife and two daughters.