My Fingers
Long, skinny. My brother once tried to inject them with fat. In preschool, my cousin Farsad warned me to stick them together when I washed my hands. He feared the stream of water might knock off a pinky. The mittens in K-mart's kid section were too short for me. So I stuffed my hands into socks instead. When Danny heard this story, he kissed me and said I have princess hands.
The Mole on Farsad's Forehead
It lay in the center, shamelessly. At family parties, my aunts and grandmother covered it in lipstick marks, until I would pull him into his room so we could measure it. He always sighed with disappointment when I told him it was still only three centimeters wide. His sister sometimes threatened him by saying, "If you don't let me play with the X-men, your mole will fall off." After he had it removed, I gave him a Chiquita banana sticker to stick on top of the empty space.
My Two Rings
Danny gave me the first one for Christmas. He smiled sheepishly when the cheap silver bent into a square around the curve of my finger. The second one he placed on my wedding finger the night before I left for college. "You and no other" is engraved with daisies around the outside. I have never taken them off, even after we broke up and he stopped calling me. When he came by my house for an hour over the holidays, I slipped them into my pocket before he could see them. My roommate says I should have kept them off. When I'm sick of hearing her make out with her own boyfriend, I go outside. At each street intersection, I close my eyes, spread my arms out, and spin until I'm about to fall. Whichever way I'm facing when I open my eyes is the direction I take. One night, I ended up in a field, so I lay down in the grass and made up my own constellations.
The Candle My Best Friend Gave Me
When I left home, I didn't pack it in my suitcase. I feared the glass might crack. It took my mom three weeks to find enough bubble wrap and tissue paper to ship it to me. Its glass case is filled with sweet-smelling orange cubes suspended in gel. Contrary to popular opinion, those are not hunks of cheese. They are cantaloupe pieces. After I blow out the wick, I dip my index fingers into the liquid wax. When it hardens, I peel it off and drop it into the case Danny gave me for my rings. By now the velvet inside is coated with wax fingerprints.
Letters from My Aunt in Iran
My grandmother kept them in her purse. Before she slept, she gave them to me to read out loud. Sometimes when I looked up, she would be smiling and mouthing the words along with me. It was the only contact she had with her daughter, because as my aunt had written, most of the houses in Iran didn't have a phone line. Years later, after my grandmother died, my mom told me that she was the one who wrote those letters. My aunt had died four years before my grandmother did. The last time I saw my grandmother in the hospital, she told me when I visit Iran, to thank my aunt for writing.