Seda clicks her tongue and waves him and his silver-headed cane away. Can’t hold his stool but still thinks he can command his pecker.
“Come on. The kids from St. Nishan are reenacting the great battle of Sardarabad,” he says, eyes shining.
Seda lifts both her eyebrows and clicks her tongue, before turning her wheelchair around in refusal.
“Suit yourself,” he says.
There’s no dignity in this place, thinks Seda. No privacy either. Some fool is always poking his or her head into your doorway. And as if the residents and nurses aren’t bad enough, lately all kinds of people keep showing up, waving their tape recorders in her face, asking her questions about the past. Everyone is an amateur historian. They use words like witness and genocide, trying to bridge the gap between her past and their own present with words.
She wants nothing to do with it. But the other residents have fallen under a confessional spell. They’re like ancient tea bags steeping in the murky waters of the past, repeating their stories over and over again to anyone who will listen. Who can blame them? Driven from their homes not by soldiers this time, but by their own loved ones, to this place so cleverly labeled “home,” a second exile. In some ways, Seda thinks it’s worse than the first: to the lexicon of horrific memories is added the immense shame of surviving, of living when so many others did not. Yet they all bask in their rediscovered relevance. But all the words in every human language on earth would not be enough to describe what happened.
When the past wells up inside her, Seda knows not to let it out. “I can’t remember,” she tells those who ask. When the river of words comes billowing out, it poisons everything. It taints the present with the blood and tears of the past. She wouldn’t mind the forgetting that comes with age, but whatever is eating at her brain is only wiping out the freshest of memories. It leaves the undigested past alone, lets it fester, decomposing in her mind. Despite her best efforts, the scents and visions of her girlhood come bubbling up to the surface. Yesterday, she thought she smelled pistachios and almost threw up her lunch.
Seda rolls her chair to the window and opens the blinds. She places a palm above her brow to block the sun. She can see three rows of plastic chairs facing the great fountain. A splattering of costumed boys and girls in varying heights are scattered between the fountain and the audience. One fat boy wears an Armenian priest’s robe complete with pointy black hat. She spots Kalustian limping toward the back row and leans forward to hear a few phrases.
“Let the bells of every Armenian church ring,” bellows the boy priest.
“To battle!” A girl dressed as a soldier waves a plastic rifle.
A stout woman kneels in front of the children, mouthing every word. She waves her arms, encouraging the remaining soldiers to take center stage. The audience is eating it up, Seda can tell. There may even be a few veterans of that battle in the audience. There’ll be claims of that sort by Kalustian for sure. All this incessant probing and recording of the past has made celebrities of them all. Outside these walls, these old people may be overlooked, their past a narrative the world insists upon forgetting. But here among the residents of the Ararat Home, they are esteemed as survivors of the genocide, bearers of unspeakable horrors, guardians of their people’s past.
“Morning Ms. Seda.” Betty Shields, Seda’s favorite orderly, enters the room, her shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor. “Not gonna leave the building today, are we? Well, it’s a damn shame, that’s for sure. It’s a mighty fine day out.”
Seda likes it when Betty speaks this way, adapting a comfortable vernacular that exaggerates her southern black roots. Being the only non-Armenian in all of Ararat Home, let alone the only black person, can’t be easy. It’s always amusing when in the presence of others, especially doctors, Betty Shields alters her speech, stripping it of all its color. Is it conscious? Seda wonders.
“You hear about the genocide exhibit? It’s next week, you know,” Betty says.
“I heard,” Seda says. She folds the letter in half then twice more and tucks it back inside her sleeve.
“They say the governor may come. Imagine that. The governor coming here.”
Seda shrugs her shoulders. It’s not all that hard to imagine. California’s governor, George Deukmejian, is Armenian American. The art exhibit is the brainchild of Seda’s niece, Ani.
Betty kneels before Seda’s wheelchair. She reaches over to stroke Seda’s silver bob.
“I’m not an invalid you know,” Seda says, waving her hand away.
“I know,” says Betty, “but you’ve been awfully quiet lately. You all right?”
“I’m ninety,” Seda answers. “How all right can I be?”