Jessica Delfino
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Emily Epstein
EMILY EPSTEIN'S PIECE, "A Camel For Your Wife"
Samet had stopped talking to the group and simply stared at the boys. He said something to them sharply in Arabic, but the boys only looked back at him reproachfully and continued to record us with their video camera. Tamara, my traveling partner and fellow American, who was standing in front of Samet in the middle of the group pretending to be a pyramid in order to illustrate Samet’s explanation, held her pose with her arms up in the air and her fingers touching, a comical look on her face.
We were in Egypt, a stone’s throw from the Sphinx, her noseless blank face hovering behind us, and Samet was our own personal and literal Egyptologist. The sun was hot on our backs, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which might partly explain the 107 degree April temperatures. Our tour group started to wonder if there was going to be a fight. And then, just like that, a policeman appeared, oversized gun swinging casually at his hip, and the boys were led out of our sight without another word.
“Sorry for the interruption, SamSemians,” Samet said, using the name that he had given our group, after his own nickname. Retaking his position behind Tamara, “now, as we were saying, the Sphinx—”
“Wait, what was that all about,” I asked. I imagined the boys being thrown into a dark and grimy prison similar to that in the movie Brokedown Palace, where if they ever got out of prison their own job opportunity was to become a drug mule.
“It’s nothing. Happens all the time,” he said. And then, as if reading my mind he continued, “Don’t worry. I know all the police around here. They’re not going to get in trouble, just be strongly reminded to not lurk like that.”
“But what happened? Were they making fun of us?” I implored.
“Come on, Samet,” Tamara asked. “You know we won’t let you go on until you explain.” Tamara was always full of energy and her sparkling brown eyes usually conveyed when she was up to something.
Samet sighed. He knew it was a losing battle. “Those kids weren’t Egyptian, but they were Arab. They were trying to record us. When I told them to stop, they asked me to move.”
“Why would they ask that,” Tamara said.
Samet continued reluctantly with a smile. “They thought that Tamara was ‘hot’ and just wanted to record her.”
****
“Hello beautiful ladies. Your husband is lucky man. How many camels to trade for you to become my wife?”
“Where you from? American? Welcome to Alaska, ha ha!”
“I love you!”
The storekeepers were relentless with their commentary as Tamara and I walked through the bazaar. Despite wrapping our heads in scarves and keeping our knees coverd to try and be respectful of the culture, it was no use. The men would yell just about anything to get our attention, and then beckon us into their stores filled with colorful scarves, small wood Egyptian sculptures of everything from pharaohs to hieroglyphics, or huge containers filled with saffron, indigo, or lotus flower. If they didn’t say something to us, they’d stand right in our path and drape their wares over our passing shoulders, as if our contact with the goods was the missing link to change our minds. It was as if they were expelling all the things at us they had wanted to say to the women they knew, but couldn’t because of religion and respect. But foreigners? We were fair game. While it was fun to look, the comments became tiresome.
One of our first days on our trip Tamara and I went in to a small store to get water. The shopkeeper was very friendly but respectful. As we handed him our items he asked if he could take a picture of us. “I guess so,” I said, looking uneasily at Tamara. She shrugged in agreement. The shopkeeper, a portly, older, balding Egyptian man gathered me in close first and took a picture on what seemed to be the first camera phone ever invented. He then kissed me rather aggressively on the top of my head. Tamara followed suit, trying to keep a little space between her and the man, but wanting to honor her promise. After the pictures, he gave us lollipops.
“I feel like we’ve been lured into some man’s unmarked white van,” I said.
“I just hope we don’t end up on the internet with a caption under our pictures that we’re his ‘wives,’” Tamara said in agreement. When we got back to our hotel we told Samet and the rest of the group about our encounter. Tamara and I googled “American whores” for a while just to make sure our pictures didn’t come up.
The next night, just as we were about to explore the night markets in Aswan, Samet pulled Tamara and me aside.
“I know how independent you girls are,” he started, “but…it might it be better if you walk with one of the boys.”
“Why? We can take care of ourselves,” I said.
“Oh, I know that,” Samet said, “but I think you’ll make things easier for yourselves. You’ll get less unwanted attention that way.”
“You know what—”
“Sure, Samet,” Tamara said, cutting me off, as she escorted me away.
“I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. We’re grownups! I’m 30 for crying out loud! We’re covered up! I don’t need some MAN to take care of me. I can walk without an escort.”
“Em, why are you getting all wound up? Samet’s just being protective. We’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t sure why I was so outraged. My boyfriend jokingly likes to call these my “Independent Woman” moments, complete with Destiny’s Child accompaniment, where I assert righteous indignation, not unlike Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, at something feminist-oriented. I wasn’t sure if I was upset that women in Egypt couldn’t just go about their business if they weren’t covered up. Or maybe I was mad because these men didn’t know me, and yet they assumed that women from outside their country were all cut from the same whore-y cloth. Maybe I was just becoming delirious from the heat.
“Maybe I’ll catcall them.”
“Good idea,” Tamara said. “Maybe you can get us kidnapped.” Before coming to Egypt, we had both been forwarded lots of information from our parents about Jewish tourists being kidnapped in Egypt.
“You think Bill Clinton will come and rescue us, like he did those journalists in North Korea? That could totally be worth it.”
Tamara just ignored me.
As we wandered through the market, I tried to calm down. We looked at knickknacks, and took pictures, and marveled at the number of feral cats wandering through the city.
And then it happened. I noticed a man staring at Tamara as we walked past his stall of spices. Without breaking his gaze he screamed at her as she passed in fast succession: “You are in my dreams! I love you! You have nice shape!”
That was the final straw.
“Seriously, dude? I like your shape? What is she a cantaloupe? Maybe more of a pear?”
He sputtered and looked at me with confusion. “What is a cantaloop?”
“It…it doesn’t matter. Would you talk to your mother that way? Your sister?”
“My mother is dead. And it is a compliment.”
“No, it’s not. So quit it, you creep.” And with that I turned on my heel and pulled Tamara with me. We walked for a while in silence.
“Do you feel better now?” Tamara asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “I feel great. Let’s go look at some more head scarves. After all, I wouldn’t want to offend anyone’s culture.”
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MY PIECE, "In Utero"
A couple of weeks ago, I started having some dizzy spells. I was walking into walls, people, and realizing it might not be wise to get too close to the edge of the subway platform if I valued my life. I also noticed that I was feeling a little nauseous. So, I called my primary care physician. The one I could call day and night, whenever I had the dumbest medical questions, or even if my friend’s friends had questions: my dad.
My dad is a fertility specialist and gynecologist. The problem is, he tends to have a one-track mind when it comes to diagnosing problems. Say you have a gash in your leg: He probably can find a way to relate it to your being pregnant.
My dad and I are very close so I don’t hesitate asking him my most burning gynecological questions like, can you get pregnant if you forget to take the pill three days in a row? Can you really die from HPV like they say in the commercials? How can you tell if you have a yeast infection? You know…Normal father-daughter stuff.
I was about to leave for a vacation with my husband Jesse that would involve a lot of dirty martini drinking, so I called my dad and explained my symptoms, adding that I hadn’t had my period in about four months. I know. Four months is a long time to wait to freak out about not getting your period. But I was on the pill, and figured that it was just messing with my system.
“Get to my office immediately,” he said, when I called him from the conference room at work. “We’ll do some blood work.” Yes, I could have just peed on a stick and called it a day, but my dad had insisted that method wasn’t the most accurate.
I decided to get the appointment over with first, and call Jesse afterward. No point in worrying him for nothing.
Usually when I go to my dad’s office, it’s for a friendly lunch. I chat with the nurses, wait for Dad to finish up with his patients, and then look at the pictures on his desk to see if he’s updated them since I was four. Then we always head around the corner to the same cute French restaurant for moules frites.
That day I was actually in the office as a patient. This was a little weird. I walked up to the front desk and tried to look all business. It didn’t work.
“Lexi!” one of the nurses said, calling me by the nickname my dad calls me. “You and your father could be twins! Here, put on this lab coat, we want to see the comparison!”
This is a fun game I indulge the nurses in during my visits with Dad. I usually am quite agreeable, donning the white lab coat, posing with a clipboard, and then smiling awkwardly while they have their chuckle. Sometimes a camera phone is whipped out.
But that day I didn’t really feel like going through the father-daughter look-alike contest. I just wanted to get my damn blood work done as soon as possible. I could have been pregnant for god’s sakes and I really wanted to know.
Dad hadn’t come out to say hi yet, but one of the newer nurses, a Russian lady wearing two layers of makeup, said we could start without him.
“Alright,” I said, when Nurse Eltsin, put a piece of gauze over the wound left from the needle. “So I’ll just wait around for the results now, right?”
“Nyet!” she said, pursing her thickly painted lips. “Your daddy want you to do ultrasound.”
Ultrasound? This was a surprise.
She brought me to an examining room, and ordered me to strip from the waist down.
“Leave your dress on,” Nurse Eltsin instructed with a frown. Did I look like the kind of girl eager to take her dress off in her dad’s office?
“Just remove the tights, and panties, and cover your lap with this, OK?” She pointed to a thin, blue material that looked like what they make hospital gowns with. The standard nonexistent coverage between you and the world.
“I be right back,” she said, her patent leather heels clacking away on the hardwood floors.
I undressed as I was instructed, sat on the table, and waited. I was a little puzzled. In my recollections of ultrasounds from television and movies, the nurse squirted some weird jelly-like substance on the mom-to-be’s stomach, and then moved the ultrasound thingy over it. Why did my ultrasound require the removal of “panties?” Maybe this new nurse was misinformed? And why did my dad think I needed one of these tests? He must really think this is serious.
I looked around the room and noticed some odd-looking condom type things in a box. Gauze strips. Long Qtips. Things I hoped wouldn’t be having anything to do with me that day. But a knock on the door disrupted my thoughts.
“Lexi?” said Nurse Eltsin gruffly from the other side of the door. As comfortable as everyone was with calling me by my nickname, it was a little strange to have someone say it when my pants were off. I pulled the gauzy covering down tighter around my lap.
“Come in,” I said.
I tried to get comfortable on the narrow examining table its crinkly sounding tissue paper covering. But then the door opened and behind Nurse Eltsin, was someone I did not expect to see at all in my room. My one and only…. Padre.
“Um, Dad? What are you doing in here?”
I was suddenly painfully aware that my pitchach was unclothed and separated from the world and my kin by flimsy hospital gown material.
Dad walked over to my examining table and patted my head.
“I’m just going to monitor the ultrasound, honey. Nurse Eltsin is just learning how to do ultrasounds, so I’m here to supervise.”
The nurse wielded a menacing looking dildo-like contraption, and started polishing it with something wet and sticky looking. “Scoot your tush down to end of the table,” she barked.
“So…The ultrasound—that thing, that’s not going on top of my stomach, huh?”
Nurse Eltsin laughed, arching her painted on eyebrows with pleasure. “Oh, no, honey. This intra-vaginal ultrasound!”
I clamped my legs shut.
My dad started taking my pulse. “Your heart is beating very fast,” he observed in his doctor voice.
“That’s because my dad is in the room with me and my vagina,” I said under my breath.
“Hm?” he said, doing some doctor thing.
“Nothing.”
“You’ll be fine honey.
This was the moment when I really should have said something to my dad. He truly didn’t know I was uncomfortable. This is what he does like, twenty times a day. To him it is akin to looking at someone’s arm or elbow. But I was so afraid of making him uncomfortable, I didn’t want to complain.
The nurse stuck the contraption into me, and I wasn’t quite sure what the appropriate reaction should be when something is rammed into your vagina, and your father is watching. Luckily, the situation was both emotionally and physically uncomfortable, so I was able to achieve the proper look of a “virgin being penetrated for the first time”.
And so we began the wondrous process of looking on the computer screen at my womb. At this point I prayed that we would see a tiny little fetus, to at least make this embarrassing situation worth it. So that when I explained the circumstances of my first intra-vaginal ultrasound experience, the end result would be, “And that is how we found out I was pregnant, and my dad got to find out he would be a grandfather!”
“Docteurrr,” said Nurse Eltsin. “I go left, yes?”
Now, the last thing you want when someone has a foreign object roaming around your lady parts is for that person to be unsure of what he or she is doing. Well, I mean, this not so different from many women’s first sexual experiences, but with medical equipment that is possibly electrified and hooked up to computers, I prefer someone with a skilled hand.
My dad, bless him, kept his eye trained on the monitor the whole time. No checking under the gauze covering to see if she had things in the right place, thank God.
“A little to the right please, Nurse,” he said patiently. “No, your other right.”
“Here?” she asked, stabbing me somewhere near my lung.
For crying out loud I was ready to take control of the damn thing.
“Doctuerrr, eh, you should do it,” she said, less confident now, but still holding the wand. “I’m not very good with this thing.”
“Dad, um. Is there anyone else who can take over?” I pleaded, as she continued her crash course lesson with my body.
“Unfortunately, no,” my dad said. “Dr. Gleitcher isn’t here today and neither are the other nurses who do ultrasounds. You were last minute,” he shrugged by way of apology.
I sighed. Perhaps what I was about to propose was illegal in some states. But at this point I was so close to knowing if I was pink or blue, plus or minus, I didn’t see the point in just leaving the room and stopping the whole operation.
I took a deep breath.
“Just take it dad,” I said, through clenched teeth.
And just like I was any other one of his patients, he took his place in front of my legs, and held the wand. So, there was my dad. Searching around my uterus, and there was me, pretending this had nothing to do with my crotch and everything to do with the image on the computer screen.
“Look! There’s a follicle!” he pointed out as we took the grand tour.
“Oh, wow!” I said obligingly, as if he were pointing out The Big Dipper like when I was a little girl.
“And there’s another follicle!”
Nurse Eltsin nodded approvingly, like she was assessing good livestock.
“Doesn’t look like you’re pregnant honey, but if did want to get pregnant, you have a healthy environment.”
A “healthy environment”. I thought about the irony of that statement. After this experience, I might have to rethink my psychological environment, but it was good to know my body could play party host to a baby.
When we were done, I got dressed, and came out of the room. A bunch of the nurses had crowded into the kitchen, to ask me what the outcome was. I guess my dad wanted to let me to share the news—since we were such an intimate family here and all.
I settled into one of the stools by the counter.
“Negative.”
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LAURA'S PIECE, "Phone Home. Again."
Part 1. More than one
My dad has trouble with plurals. It's a translation thing. Some words that are singular in Sicilian are plural in English and vice versa.
“Laura,” he says. “I have to go change my pant before we go out.”
He's not a designer. He just thinks that when it comes to pants, you’re dealing with one object, and therefore, no S.
“Laura,” he says. “Hand me a scissor.”
Again, he's wrong. But the logic is there.
Part 2. To catch me
My dad calls on Tuesday at 8:00 am. I don't pick up. My dad calls on Tuesday at 6:00, 7:30, and 8:15 pm. He gives up at bed time. He calls Thursday at 5:00 pm and I pick up, mostly because with each missed call that tallies on the screen of my phone, I can sense his anxiety mounting from 200 miles away.
“Hello.”
“Laura. Jesus. To catch you is like trying to catch the Prince of Wales.”
Until this moment, I have never pondered what it would be like to try and catch the Prince of Wales. To me, he seems pretty stable and scheduled. This is where I get a particularly intense mental image of myself chasing Prince Charles across a Walmart parking lot. Maybe he’s even wearing a Burger King crown.
My dad calls again after another week of missed calls. Sometimes I don’t pick up because I can’t manage to answer the same three questions over and over again: Did you eat? (Yes, Papa. At some point today, I ate something.) Are you getting enough rest? (Yes. I hope 4 hours a night counts.) Are you writing? (Yes. About you. And then reading it to several dozen of my not-very-close friends. In a bar.)
This time, he's really upset.
“Laura. Jesus. Trying to catch you is like trying to catch a wild boar.”
I have never been compared to a wild boar until this moment. I have no frame of reference, but my dad, because he was raised in a rural village in Sicily, actually might. Knowing my dad, he's even chased wild boars. And then eaten them. Because what else would be the point?
3. Excuses
My sister goes to Spain on a trip. My father calls.
“Laura. Listen. I keep trying to call your sister and she doesn't pick up.”
“I know, Papa. She's busy. She's traveling.”
What I don't tell him is that I spoke to my sister less than an hour before, that I've been updated on a more-or-less moment-to-moment basis in regards to her whereabouts since she left.
“If you talk to her,” he says, “Can you ask her to get me a Spanish dictionary?”
“Sure,” I say to him. “I'll ask her about it.”
At first, I wonder if he's just making excuses to call her, because he's calling her a lot, and he's trying to find reasons to pick up the phone again and again. But then it dawns on me. He thinks the only place you can get a Spanish dictionary is Spain.
4. In the computer
The phone rings.
“Lauruzza.”
That's what he calls me. Putting “uzza” at the end of a name turns it into a pet name or a term of endearment. He's called me this since I was 2. I don't know the etymology, except that the Sicilian word for “squash” ends in “uzza” too. Maybe he's been calling me Laura Squash for 30 years and I’ve only just realized it.
“Lauruzza. Listen. Can you order me a book through the computer?”
“Yes, Papa. What book do you want?”
He wants an out-of-print, two-volume biography of Joseph Conrad. He's right. The only place you can get this thing is... through the computer.
My dad does not understand the internet, or what it does and does not do. Anything that happened, any technological advancement, that happened after his last hospitalization is a gray area, a thing that can't quite be mastered without help.
4. The Christmas present
“Listen. That thing you bought me doesn't work.”
My sister and I are visiting, sitting on his nubby couch. Stefanie goes upstairs to investigate.
“Papa, what's wrong with it? Is it broken?”
“It's broken. It doesn't go on.”
“OK, well Stef will look at it. If it's broken, we'll get you a new one.”
“I don't understand how to rewind it,” he says.
He's talking about a DVD player. He's saying that he doesn't know how to rewind the DVD.
"You don't rewind it, Papa. It's a DVD."
"Yeah, but it doesn't go on."
My sister comes down the stairs.
"You know exactly what I'm going to tell you," she says. "He didn't turn it on."
We teach him how to work the machine, a detailed lesson. When I speak to him two weeks later, I ask him if he’s watched the DVDs we got him.
“The what?” he asks.
4. Bad things happen in trees.
My dad can't pronounce the "th" sound. I mean, there's a lot of things he can't pronounce, but the "th" sound is a doozie, because while you might sit in the third row, my dad sits in the turd, and while you did lots of things this weekend, my dad did lots of tings.
5. Leave a message.
Some people's voicemail messages begin with a perky "Hi!" or a grave, "Hello, you've reached..." My dad's begins with a weirdly urgent, "Uuuhhh..."
Then, he tells you exactly what's happening, as though he's still trying to sort it out himself.
"Uuuuhhh... This is Carmelo answering, uh, the cellular phone. I can't answer, so leave a message and I'll call you back. Bye."
I like how he says, "I can't answer," like he really just can't. Like he's busy reading 8,000 pages of Conrad or chasing a wild boar.
My dad had a celular phone for three years before he figured out how to set that up, and then it suddenly appeared one day. Sometimes when he doesn't pickup, I call back twice, just to listen to the message.
6. Neutrality
My dad calls.
"Laura," he says. "After your grandmother dies, I'm thinking of moving to Switzerland."
"OK," I say, hoping that my grandmother isn't sitting right there, but knowing that she probably is. She doesn't speak English, but she understands it.
"Your sister says it's nice there. They have a nice standard of living."
My dad has forgotten that he's given up his Italian citizenship, that he lost it when he became an American citizen in the 70s. There were a few years when the Italian government let people who'd forfeited their citizenship re-apply, but he was hospitalized for most of them.
I don't want to be a downer, so I ignore this fact. He keeps talking about Switzerland.
Then he says, "Laura, do you trust your friends?"
"Yes, Papa, I trust my friends."
"It's just that you live in New York. How do you trust anybody? I don't know. I get lonely."
I tell him that he can call me any time he wants, which we obviously knows, because he does. And I mean, like, any time he wants. And I tell him that I love my friends, that they're great friends. Somehow, this comforts him.
"Alright," he says finally. "As long as you trust your friends."
7. Just making sure.
My father leaves me the exact same voice message every single day. It goes like this.
"Laura, this is your Papa. I was just calling to say hi. I hope you're having a good week at work. If you get a chance, call me back. Bye."
On weekends, it goes like this.
"Laura, this is your Papa. I was just calling to say hi. I hope you're having a restful weekend. If you get a chance, call me back. Bye."
So of course, whenever my sister calls me now, she says, "Laura, this is your sister Stefanie. I was just calling to say and to tell you who I was, in case it wasn’t totally obvious. If you get a chance, because you’re so busy ignoring my phone calls, call me back. Bye."
8. A tree falls in Manhattan
My dad calls.
"Laura. Are you all right? What happened?"
"Um, nothing happened, Papa."
"I saw on the news that there was a storm in Manhattan and there were some trees that fell. Did you get hurt?"
"No, Papa. I live 80 blocks from there."
"Good. Jesus, I was worried. I see these things, and I worry."
Part 9: Enough already
I am going away on vacation and I tell my father not to call me while I'm gone. I explain things slowly, as though he were 2 years old, or a beagle puppy:
“When you call me,” I say, “It's really expensive, even when I don't pick up the phone.”
This is a much easier way of explaining the following: When you call my American phone when my American phone is in France, it costs a fortune. Because even if I don't pick up, I get charged for the connection, and for the one-minute voicemail message.
Needless to say, my father does not listen. While I'm away, he calls no fewer than four times a day, and at hours that clearly imply that he's not paying particularly careful attention to the time difference.
I'm being charged for all of the calls, and I ignore most of them, but one time, I pick up. I'm furious.
“Well,” says my dad. “I'll pay for it. Why don't you just ask the phone company to reverse the charges.”
Here are the potential things I could say:
1. What?
2. Given that our calls are not connected by a lady named Shirley plugging in wires at a desk in Minneapolis, that could be difficult.
3. The whole thing about cell phones is that everybody pays. All the time. I can imagine ATT&T customer service listening to this story, to me trying to justify why... they should make someone else pay my phone bill.
When I ask my dad why he kept calling, he said, “Well, I worry. You're halfway around the world.”
When I insinuate that maybe they need to adjust his anxiety meds, and that now I'm worrying too, he just says, “Well, as long as you safe.”
Contractions. That's another thing he has trouble with.
This is when I realize that my Dad's concerns are more or less totally ordinary. But my Dad being my Dad, they don't come out in ordinary ways. Unless the ways are ordinary. Unless everyone's mom is always calling, always trying to bridge the distance. Maybe everyone's dad is more or less the same – the same worry and the same anxiety meds. Maybe with my dad, the only thing that's different is the accent.
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