KOKOGUL WAS A PLEASANT-LOOKING WOMAN, BUT SOMEONE YOU wouldn’t notice in a crowded room. She was nearly as tall as my father, with thick black hair that just grazed her shoulders. It was the kind of hair that would fall limp just minutes after the curlers came out. She was too buxom to look dainty and too thin to appear commanding. KokoGul had been painted with a palette of average colors.
Two years after she married my father, KokoGul delivered her first child, a daughter, a disappointment she promptly blamed on my mother’s ghost. My half sister was named Najiba, after my deceased grandmother. Najiba had KokoGul’s round face, and dark eyes framed by thick, arched brows. KokoGul, following tradition, lined her daughter’s lids with kohl so she would have healthy eyesight and striking eyes. For the first two months, KokoGul spent hours trying to make some concoction of fennel seeds and herbs that would soothe Najiba’s colic and stop her howling. Until her temperament calmed, mother and daughter were a sleep-deprived, ornery duo.
KokoGul’s patience with her stepchildren wore even thinner once her own daughter was born. Even more aware than before that we were not her own, she was quickly exasperated and lashed out at us with the swift strike of a viper. We were disciplined by the back of her hand. Meals were laid out with disinterest and inconsistency when my father was away. We ate as a family only when he came home at the day’s end.
With Najiba’s birth, KokoGul’s womb warmed to the idea of carrying children, and over the next four years she delivered three more girls. With each pregnancy, her patience shortened and my father, preferring peaceful days but unable to demand them, grew more distant. Sultana was born a year after Najiba. KokoGul did not make any effort to hide the fact that she had been hoping for a son, unlike my curiously disinterested father. With her third pregnancy almost two years later, she prayed, reluctantly gave alms to the poor, and ate all the foods that she heard would guarantee her a male child. Mauriya’s birth disappointed her and she believed that my mother’s spirit had placed a powerful curse on her womb. When Mariam, my fourth sister was born, KokoGul was not in the least disappointed or surprised. Feeling thwarted by my dead mother, she bitterly resolved not to have any more children. Asad would be my father’s only son.
MY EARLIEST MEMORY SHOULD HAVE HAD SOMETHING TO DO with school or a favorite doll, but that was not the childhood I had. KokoGul lay on a cushion in the living room, a newly born Mauriya nestled beside her, tightly swaddled in a prayer shawl. I was five years old.
“Fereiba!” KokoGul bellowed. Mauriya’s tiny face grimaced. She was too tightly bound to react in any other way.
“Yes, Madar-jan.” I was only steps away. KokoGul, still recovering from childbirth, was to do nothing but nurse the baby. I knew this because she’d reminded me of it often.
“Fereiba, your aunt left some chicken stew still simmering on the fire. There’s hardly enough for all of us. Why don’t you get some potatoes from outside so we’ll have enough to feed everyone.”
This meant two things. One, that my father and brother would be the only ones eating chicken tonight and the rest of us would have to settle for stewed potatoes. And two, that I would have to go out into the frosted backyard to dig out some spuds. Earlier in the season, we had buried a stash of potatoes, radishes, carrots, and turnips behind the house where they were refrigerated in the earth.
“Madar-jan, can’t you tell Asad to get them?” It was cold out, and I could already imagine myself struggling with the shovel.
“He’s not here and we need the potatoes now or they won’t be ready in time for dinner. Put on the coat and mittens your father bought you. It’ll only take you a few minutes.”
I didn’t want to go.
“Go on, sweetheart. Help your mother, will you?”