Read Online All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian - Free Book Online

So we might not be here when you get home from school.”
    “Manti?”
I could almost smell the meat dumplings swimming in broth. “She can get lamb?”
    “Chicken, but you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference,” my mother said. “In times like these, you make do. In the Old Country, no one ever made
manti
alone. The whole neighborhood gathered, and we each brought a rolling pin. You didn’t have to sit alone in your kitchen and do it all by yourself. You should have seen the times when they made phyllo dough for
paklava.
My mother could roll it out so it was thinner than a sheet of paper.”
     
    Saturday was my sixteenth birthday, but there was no cake that evening at supper. My gifts were the dress from my mother, a pair of leather-soled black pumps from my father, and a hand-knit summer sweater from Auntie Shakeh.
    “Babig
,
where did you get the leather?” I asked my father.
    “From Vahan. No wooden soles on my daughter’s birthday shoes.”
    The last and best gift was a bar of lavender soap that Missak gave me.
    I held the smooth bar cupped in my hands and put it to my nose, breathing in. “It smells beautiful. Where did you manage to find it?”
    My brother just smiled.
    On Sunday morning after the breakfast dishes were done, I barricaded myself in the kitchen and boiled water for a bath in the large zinc tub we kept under the sink. Using the soap, I lathered my hair and then, with a rough washcloth, scrubbed my skin until it was pink. Wrapped in a towel, I rinsed my hair under the cold tap so that it would shine.
    I spent the rest of the morning sequestered in the bedroom. First I filed my fingernails, and then, using a pair of tweezers, I carefully shaped my eyebrows, making them narrow and sleek. I studied my face in the mirror, smiling and pouting and frowning, then sticking out my tongue at my vanity.
    When I finally emerged from the bedroom wearing my new red dress, my family were all sitting in the front room, except for Auntie Shakeh, who had gone to church right after breakfast.
    “Are we ready to go?” I asked.
    “Meghah!”
my mother said. “What did you do to your eyebrows?”
    “What about her eyebrows?” My father peered over the top of his newspaper.
    “Do they look bad?” I put my hand to my face.
    “Ridiculous,” Missak said.
    This was not at all the reaction I had been hoping for. We were going to the Kacherians’ for Sunday dinner. I hadn’t seen Zaven in weeks, and I wanted him to think I looked elegant and mature.
    My mother clucked her tongue. “I don’t know why you’d do something like that. They are hardly wider than a thread.”
    Missak said, “Jacqueline did the same thing. It looks silly.”
    I retorted, “I don’t care what you think. You don’t know anything about fashion.”
    “If it were the fashion to shave your head, would you do that as well?” my father asked.
    I turned on my heel and headed to the door.
    When we reached the Kacherians’, we found that Auntie Shakeh had arrived ahead of us and was already seated on the parlor couch with Virginie and Vahan Kacherian.
    Missak asked, “Where are the guys?”
    Vahan said, “Any minute they’ll be here.”
    Zaven and Barkev arrived just then, and we all took seats around the dinner table. I ended up with my mother on my right and Virginie on my left, far from Zaven’s place between his mother and my brother. Auntie Shushan ladled out the
manti
soup, and the bowls were passed around. The steam rising from my bowl smelled so wonderfully of chicken and onions that I said before I even tasted it, “Auntie, this is heavenly.”
    My father said, “In lean times, heaven is a full belly.”
    Missak imitated my father with fake solemnity. “Heaven, my friends, is a bowl of chicken dumplings.”
    Vahan laughed. “Enough proverbs, my friends. Time to eat.”
    With such a crowd, there was no chance for anything interesting to pass between Zaven and me: no meaningful glances, no words whispered on the