Extract: Female Life on Planet Earth by Laleh Khadivi
Read an exclusive extract from Laleh Khadivi's new novel Female Life on Planet Earth, in which a woman named Heti's life is upended after her mother's death and an unexpected delivery: a package containing photos of Heti's mother as a veiled young woman in Iran. She is inexplicably shown pointing a machine gun at a group of crying young women. In this excerpted chapter, titled ERUPTIONS, Heti is a silent companion to her cousin Mina's monologue about marriage, immigrant identity, and the comfort of large discount supermarkets.
ERUPTIONS
Mina offered her apologies in excess. There was no other time, her schedule was crazy and they were running out of food. I know you hate this place, she offered, but you were so upset in your message and we are out of milk and pistachios and lunch meat, so I thought, why not? We can work it out and I get some shopping done and it’s air-conditioned and – Mina smiled and pointed to a man in front of them placing Dixie cups on a tiny table – there are the samples.
The warehouse was busy. Men and women pushed carts down aisles of wholesale goods on pallets stacked to cathedral heights. At ground level, products offered themselves to passersby as extra-large and value-packed and shoppers slowed their pace but their faces stayed flat, seemingly unconvinced that the good life was on the other side of a purchase of car floor mats or industrial-sized jars of mayonnaise or ten-pound bags of pomelos. They moved with satisfaction but no pleasure and correspondingly Mina apologised again. I mean we could have gone for coffee but then I would have been late to pick up the kids, and we’d have nothing to eat for dinner. That looks promising. She pointed over Heti’s shoulder at a sample vendor. They gave him a stage.
The man stood on a riser two feet above the warehouse floor, behind a table that held a large blender. His sparse white hair was combed neatly to one side, and he wore a red tie over a pressed striped shirt. Extra-wide carts drew to him like magnets and he smiled and checked his watch and smiled again. I like to start on the hour and half hour. Just a few more minutes, he announced, and people checked their phones and watches and then put them away to wait.
I don’t love it here either, Mina said. The parking is a zoo and who likes to spend their time in a cold warehouse? But Avery refuses to do it, so someone has to. We used to joke about it, when we were dating and it was still cute, that we were so different. I was the one always searching out sales, discounts, a good deal and he just woke up every morning and bought whatever he wanted at full price. After we were married he told me he would never set foot in this store and then it wasn’t so funny anymore. At first, I thought it was because he hates grocery shopping, but then I realised he didn’t mind going to buy food, it just had to be somewhere with good lighting and gourmet olives, where everything is totally overpriced. I tried to explain to him that he was getting robbed. He didn’t care, he said, he’d pay extra not to have to roam around an ugly grey hellhole. While here I am, driving the extra hour to save on toilet paper, to be as efficient as possible by buying bulk, keeping a budget, constantly thinking about the future, while he pays whatever, wherever, so he can spend his time however he likes. His whole family’s like that, for them money just shows up and they spend it and sometimes more shows up and they spend that. I got resentful.
Heti’s cousin leaned her forearms on the handle of the cart and looked up. The man onstage walked calmly back and forth with his hands in his pockets and gazed down like someone about to offer a sermon. And yet, Mina continued, here I am all these years later. The one who saves. But I’m cool with it now – she smiled at Heti – I mean, look around, look who shops here. Heti glanced at those around her, exhausted men and women, faces in an indistinguishable steady state of calculation of this and then this and then this. Immigrants! Mina whispered joyfully. Not a single Avery or Philip or Brock or Spencer. I mean I don’t know any of these people’s actual names, and maybe they have American passports, but I know their family names are not Houghton or Douglas. They’re all savers and this kind of place makes sense to them, to us. We deal with the traffic, the parking, just to get the best price on three packs of chicken thigh so that tomorrow or next year we have a little bit more and then a little bit more put away so that when something happens – which is a sentence I bet every single one of these people thinks at least once a day: when something happens – there will be reserves, options, we’ll have something to run with.
The man onstage cleared his throat and faced the crowd and Mina went on, still whispering, And now it feels like my community, the place I come to get away from Avery when we fight. I actually find it very soothing. She squeezed Heti’s arm. I’m so glad you came today! And turned her attention to the stage where the man said solemnly, Let us begin. He arranged a head of broccoli, a box of chicken stock, an electric kettle with steam rising from its spout, salt and pepper, heavy cream in a line behind the enormous blender. We all know how busy life gets and how hard it can be to get a nutritious dinner on the table in time, he recited from memory. This little doodad is going to help you with all that. He put the head of broccoli in the blender, emptied the box of stock over it, shook in some salt and pepper, added the cream and then the kettle full of water and pressed one of two buttons on the blender and waited. The machine gave off a strong hum and the audience stilled and watched, bound by the vibration. Once the substance was liquefied the man turned off the blender and poured the heavy steaming green liquid into the line of tiny paper cups. The audience stepped forward to accept them.
And that is the miracle, the man announced, broccoli soup, no cooking, no cutting, no messy eruption in your kitchen. A nice loaf of bread and you’re set. Seventy-five-dollar rebate today only. The soup was warm, creamy and salty, and Heti looked to the expressions around her and saw them register a sudden nourishment before tossing their cups into the waiting trash can and pushing their extra-wide shopping carts to another aisle. Today only, he said again. Today only. Her cousin reached up and took a coupon and then turned to Heti. In some ways it saved our marriage, she said, pushing the cart past a head-high pallet of black beans. Before that I thought Avery had to be like me, but then I realised that I married him because he’s not an immigrant, because he doesn’t wake up every day and think what if something happens, he just wakes up and waits for the world to give him what he wants.
*
The cousins walked through the maze of open freezers filled with thirty-pound turkeys and racks of pork ribs as long as piano keyboards, past the bakery where two dozen croissants cost three dollars and the liquor aisles with cases of wine at half price and gallons of tequila and vodka with stickers that boasted Family size! Her cousin turned into the section of toys, clothes and books. Sometimes you can find good things here. A nice plaid shirt might cheer you up. Mina held a white T-shirt against her own shoulders where a T-shirt would go and posed in front of a narrow mirror. See, cute, right? Mina looked at Heti and in an instant her face became purely gentle.
Oh Heti, I’m so sorry my mom’s being so pushy about the anniversary party. She misses her sister and when she’s sad, she gets bitchy. You know how she is. Stern. Your mom was the same. They get so over-serious about everything. My mom’s probably just freaked out about her own death, of what Lola and I will do when she dies. She thinks if it’s not done just the exact right way her soul will get stuck forever in some purgatory filled with, I don’t know, football, or macaroni and cheese from a box. Mina folded the T-shirt and put it back on the messy mound of T-shirts, cargo pants and hoodies. Anyway, what does my mom know about what happens to the dead? Mina asked Heti. Just as much as you and me, which is nothing. So, Heti, relax. You’re doing all the right things. Most people just throw their parents in the ground, say a few words and cover them with dirt. But you showed up. Think about it. First your mom dies, totally natural, totally respectably, a stroke in her sleep. You didn’t kill her, so points there. Then we all show up and cry, even though she wasn’t the nicest woman in the world and ratted me out to my mom about smoking more than once and really loved her rules: she’s your mom and my aunt and it would be weird if we didn’t cry. So I cried, you cried, your kids cried – my kids did not cry because they are mostly machines now – but Avery cried and your mother’s work friends cried and she was mourned. Then my mom said she had to be washed, in the ceremonial manner, but when was the last time any of us were in a mosque? Never? And yet who found one with a special washing room you could rent by the hour just for cleaning bodies before burial? You did and if that’s not a good daughter, I don’t know what is. And did my mom, queen of all things from the ancient world, know how to wash a corpse in the proper way? No she did not. The sight of your dead, naked mother made her ill and she left us while you looked it up online and read the steps to us from your phone while me and Mary and Lola each held down a limb of our naked aunt and awaited your instruction.
Heti turned toward the mirror and in the reflection her cousin’s face broke into a wide smile.
Female Life on Planet Earth by Laleh Khadivi is published by Oneworld on 24 September, hardback £16.99.
Laleh will be in conversation with Sanam Mahloudji, author of The Persians, at Waterstone's Islington on Tuesday 13 October.
