Chapter 8

Back in school again, I had my eye on three or four different girls as possible future girl friends. I started giving Dorothy rides to school every morning, and sometimes after school let out, depending on whether she had one of her clubs meeting after school or not. Dorothy was a joiner, and belonged to several school clubs and student body committee's. She was in the chess club, the glee club, and the young something or other club. I could never remember their name, but they went out and did civic improvement projects, like going downtown and picking up trash that had accumulated at various parks and things. I wasn't a joiner, and didn't want to wait around for an hour or so just so I could give her a ride home, after she finally finished with her meetings.

Dorothy had come over to my house, a few times, to "study" in my room, when no one was at home besides me. We usually spent half an hour or so, "studying" anatomy, before we took a break and actually did some real studying. Dorothy knew I was looking for a girlfriend, and didn't seem at all put off by the fact that I wasn't considering her to fill that role in my life. She told me herself that having her as my public girlfriend would cause both of us problems, and that her family would be horrified if they ever found out she had ever had a non Persian boyfriend.

I had found out, early on, that Dorothy wasn't big on making out. She told me herself she didn't like French kissing or too much foreplay. She loved fucking though, and didn't seem to mind sucking me, but only to speed up the time it took me to get ready again. I licked her a few times, but she said she liked regular fucking a lot better. I think she thought men fucking her was them displaying their dominance and power, but that eating her was a definite sign of weakness and inferiority.

I learned that it bothered her having to defer to people who were themselves powerless, like her parents, and her older brothers and sisters. She said she knew that her uncle was taking advantage of her family, under the guise of helping them, but then she also said it was right for him to be doing that, because they needed someone stronger, to keep them out of trouble.

Dorothy had this strange idea that I was someone very powerful, because of how I'd handled Danny and his friends, and because she believed I pretty much lived an independent life from the rest of my family. In her house, there was a definite pecking order, and she was ninth on a list of ten people. The uncle was first, since it was his house, although he didn't live with them. Next was her father, then her three brothers, ranked according to their age. After that came the five women, again ranked by age, with Dorothy, second from the youngest, in ninth place.

Since I had my own car, and could seemingly come and go as I pleased, as well as always seeming to have money, Dorothy assumed I was only second to my father in my family. As the oldest son, I was favorably placed for when my father died. On days when I did take her home after school, we usually stopped off at one of the drive in burger places to get something. I'd get a burger and fries, and we'd both order root beer floats. Dorothy always ate most of the fries, with gobs of catsup, and would sometimes let me order her a burger too, but only after mine had already come, and she'd smelled how good it was.

We were at the drive in, eating, one day in early January of '56, when Dorothy said something that shocked me.

"My uncle is sending both my older sisters back to Iran. He wants to send me too, but I already said I'm not going."

"Why Iran? I thought you told me you were from Persia? Do you still know how to speak Persian?"

"Iran is the country. The language is called Farsi, not Persian. Many people from Iran still refer to themselves as Persians, especially so, if they happen to be Hebrews."

"Why is your uncle wanting to send you back there?"

"He is selling us to men who will marry us over there, and then send us back here to live. Later, they will use the fact that they are married to an American woman to help them get visas to come live here in America. My uncle has convinced my father and brothers that they need to allow this, to help my uncle get back some of the money we owe him. He said he is receiving one thousand dollars for the three of us. I believe it is more than that, because of the way he usually cheats everyone in his business dealings. It will cost him that much just for the airplane fare, back and forth."

"They can't force you to go. This is America, and we're free from being forced to do things like that. I'm surprised your own father would agree to it."

"What choice does he have? My uncle is the eldest. We all have to obey him in all he decrees, that is the way of things."

"Maybe in Persia, or Iran, whatever you call it, but not here in America. Here, we do what we want, not what somebody who claims he's our boss tells us to do. Tell your uncle you'll go to the police if he tries to make you do this. I'm sure what he's doing must be against the law."

"I could never tell him such a thing. You don't understand how thing work inside our families. There is only one boss, and that is my uncle. He decides, and we do whatever he says."

"You told me you already told him you won't go."

"I didn't actually tell him. I never speak to him directly. I decided I won't go. I'll run away before I let them send me back there. Being a woman back there is not a good thing. If I think I'm powerless here, back there it is many times worse. Women just don't count, except for cooking, cleaning, and making babies. We are treated like slaves. Only males count, and most of the males don't even count for that much, unless they were lucky enough to be the firstborn son of a rich or powerful man."

After I dropped her off, just outside our housing tract, (Dorothy didn't want anyone in her family to know that she got rides from me) I went home and was going to speak to my mother about Dorothy's situation. She might have some ideas about what could be done to help Dorothy and her sisters. My mother was out somewhere, so I forgot about it and watched some television instead. I didn't remember it again until we were all in the living room eating our supper in front of the tv.

"Hey Ma, relatives can't force people to leave the country, not if they don't want to go, can they?"

"I think it depends on how old the people are, and the reason why they're leaving. Minor children would have to go, I think. That's what you're talking about, right, not adults?"

"My friend, Dorothy, she has three sisters. One is twenty one, and another one is nineteen, I think. They both work and aren't in school. Her uncle is sending Dorothy and her sisters back to their old country, to marry some men who want to come live here in America. They're paying the uncle to send the women over there, just so they can marry them and get a preferential slot to come live here. Dorothy says she and her sisters are all US citizens, her brothers too, but not her parents, or her uncle. Dorothy told me that no one in her family has ever met any of these men, and she says she isn't going to go. She said she'd have to run away, because her uncle is the big boss in her family, and everyone has to do whatever he says."

"You don't want to get involved in people's family business, Jim. It sounds wrong to us, what they're planning, but maybe that's how they do things back where they come from. It might be something religious. Does your friend live around here, or is it just a girl you know from school?"

"She lives near here, in this tract. She's a nice girl, and, from what she told me, that seems like it should be illegal. Her uncle is selling his nieces, for money. The women don't have any say so in her family. Isn't that wrong?"

"Listen to your mother, Jimbo. Nothing good will come from you involving yourself in someone else's family business. It wasn't that long ago, in this country, when women couldn't vote, and couldn't own certain kinds of property. Things ran well enough back then too. Its only since the War that women have been making waves and telling us they need to be more nearly equal to how men are. The bible tells us that a women's place is in the home, taking care of her family. That's how it should be too."

My father liked to talk like that every so often. My mother allowed him to, but all us children knew who really ruled the roost. My mother had never wanted to work outside the home, but if she had wanted to, she would have. Instead, she sewed new clothes on her sewing machine, put up her own preserves, when fruit was in season and very inexpensive to buy, and found ways to stretch every dollar my father managed to bring home. She was our family doctor too. Only operations, like tonsils or appendix, or setting broken bones, could make her take one of us to a real doctor. My mother pulled her own weight, and more. If we were poor, it certainly wasn't because she hadn't tried her hardest to get by with what she had available to her to work with.

Her weakness was with spending whatever wasn't really needed to get by on. If we'd needed money for something, she'd have been the first to suggest selling off all the luxuries we'd so recently acquired, including the house, if that was what it took to solve a problem we were having.