Igneous Range

Cindy Adroushan was a neighbor of mine in Slough City when I was a boy.

She wasn’t born in Slough City. The Adroushans adopted her when I was too young to remember. They were an Armenian-American couple with one son who were hoping to adopt an Armenian orphan from Turkey.

The Armenians of Turkey had been the victims of genocide at the hands of the Turkish government, and the very identity of Armenian Americans had been altered in the crucible of that genocide, such that that dark event became a permanent part of their consciousness. So it was that Armenian Americans sought to help the Armenians of Turkey in any way that they could.

But Cindy wasn’t Armenian. When the Adroushans heard about her, Cindy was a toddler, living in an orphanage in Istanbul. They were told that she was born on the nearby Island called Tenedos. They were told that she and her brother were the last Greeks born on that storied Greek isle. Now all the Greeks were gone, and it would be a Turkish isle from now on.

No one knew what had become of Cindy’s twin brother, except that he had been adopted. Their mother had not survived childbirth, as was once so often the case. The Adroushans could only presume that the father did not possess the means to care for his own children.

Greek turned out to be close enough for the Adroushans. Cindy’s story would not be easy to forget. It reminded Mr. and Mrs. Adroushan that the Greeks had also been the victims of genocide in Turkey. They knew the sufferings of their own people more intimately, but they knew they shared their misery with the Greeks. It occurred to Mr. and Mrs. Adroushan that this little child, though not Armenian in blood, knew firsthand the nightmare that they had only known through their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Would they dare reject a child for her failure to be born an Armenian?

The white cones of Mount Ararat and Little Ararat cut into a blue Armenian sky, suspended on the wall above Cindy Adroushan’s bed. There she lay silent and warm under her grandmother’s coverlet of Armenian lace. Her mother’s shadow lay across her, with the ambient light from the hallway drawn out in a folded and warped rectangle that spilled across the woven throw and climbed up her bed and the wall in steps. Siranush Adroushan stood in the doorway, awash in adoration. “Siran?” her husband Garegin called her in a voice intended to slip through the house, more to let his wife know he was coming than to call her to him. He noticed her just as he turned into the hall, and stepped silently behind her to join in her reverie.

Garegin kissed Siran and bade her a good day as he left for work. He was a history teacher at Slough City High School. He’d been teaching there over the several years since receiving his history degree and credential from Fresno State. Being Armenian, history was something he’d been immersed in since childhood. It was understood among his elders that a career in teaching history, though not lucrative, would be a means to communicating the truth about the Genocide. Young Garegin enjoyed history, and he was as natural a teacher as most, so he received the role of teacher with the consent of his nature as well as the blessings of his elders.

Garegin and Siran had met at Fresno State, and quickly became close. Siran had not been terribly put off by the fact that Garegin had not set out to be a prime breadwinner, so long as he didn’t mind her seeking to win some bread on her own. She had been studying to be an architect, though she would too soon find herself putting family life before her career.

Cindy was generally regarded as something of a tomboy, but I think that was more by virtue than by inclination. I don’t think she could help being seen as a tomboy given the strength in her arms and her hawk-like eye. It is true enough that she didn’t seem to yearn to be included by girls or chased by boys, but that, I think, was due to a sense of personal autonomy on her part. It wasn’t as though she wouldn’t join in a tea party or a slumber party if invited, but she did not hunger for whatever social status was conferred by such rituals.

I remember first noticing that she seemed to have strong arms and great hand-eye coordination. It was during an impromptu baseball game on the back lot. We needed players, so we invited her to join us. Everyone was surprised at her native talent for throwing the ball and swinging the bat. Cindy seemed just as surprised as any of us, and make no mistake, she enjoyed her sudden success, but I think in Cindy’s case “success” was just as much between her and her body as between her and the boys. She had learned a lesson about herself that she would continue to build upon.

I remember the time I let her try my new slingshot. She took it and knocked a nut out of our walnut tree. Her arm never seemed too shy to pull hard. Her eyes always seemed steady and undistracted. They seemed to take hold of whatever they focused upon. It was a little spooky, but it wasn’t like they were shifty or scheming eyes. They were just very strong and certain.

Cindy always carried an air of confidence, even when she was uncertain about something. She could be aloof or engaging from moment to moment, but she wasn’t flighty. She just didn’t seem to care to belabor one moment at the cost of the next. She never seemed to crave anyone’s attention, but she was no solitary daydreamer. She would draw you in with her practical charm, but she never made an effort to keep anyone close. She was far from incurious, but she sometimes seemed aloof toward social events. It seemed that the society of her peers, though of passing interest to her, held no special place in her heart.

There was one thing that got under Cindy’s skin: fire. This was really peculiar given that she was raised in that pyrophyllic Armenian culture. Though her family and relatives never passed up an opportunity to adore a fire, Cindy would stubbornly reject the very thought, and if one pressed her they would have to contend with a violent anger or mad fear, or even a combination of both.

Cindy was rarely preoccupied or inaccessible, but she always seemed to be occupied with something. Because of this practical inclination, she did well in school, though she didn’t appear to derive much pleasure from the approval of her teachers. Like anyone she had her days, and there were those days that fire ruined completely.

Some—if not all—fears appear to be acquired tastes. Oftentimes a child will first appear to be blissfully aloof to a danger, only to slowly mature into one paralyzed by irrational fear. Not to imply that the hazard is as a rule unreal, but that the fear itself is out of proportion with the risk. It has seemed to me for some time now that this was the case with Cindy Adroushan’s fear of fire.

The whole thing started so very innocently, with a minor burn. At first, her parents were amused at how well she learned the lesson. Her brother Armen, they’d recalled, had forgotten the lesson by suppertime. Cindy didn’t forget. She thought about it. She internalized the lesson, a lesson that might have been better forgotten.

She watched fires attentively, but always from a safe distance (which grew and grew over time). She watched the gas burners on the kitchen stove, and she followed the gas line from the back of the stove to the wall. Later, she discovered that a similar line fed the clothes drier. She dropped down to the utility room floor and saw the reflected blue light of the burners. When she later discovered the water heater and the furnace, she began to envision streams of fire flowing throughout the walls of the house, and she wondered what stopped the fire from escaping and burning up her home. She would watch the hot drier exhaust blow out of the house, or when she would feel the hot air blow out of the furnace registers, it seemed to Cindy that the blue fire was exhaling. She began to have bad dreams about the blue fire. She would wear warm clothes around the house so that she could better avoid the breath of the fire, and she spent more and more time outdoors. Then came the day that she considered the exhaust blowing out of the back of the family car, and she realized the fire must be burning in the engine of the car. She saw footage of cars exploding and burning, seemingly spontaneously, on TV. She heard warnings about gas leaks after earthquakes.

This attitude on Cindy’s part toward fire may seem quite neurotic, even psychotic, and perhaps there was some neurosis or psychosis as well, but I think it’s important to recognize that Cindy wasn’t imagining a non-existent hazard. What she feared was—and is—a real threat. The problem for Cindy and her family what that she was too aware of that threat to function normally. And this phobia was no mere inconvenience; it was a source of embarrassment for the Adroushans, particularly when among their fire-infatuated Armenian relatives.

When the word got round that the California aqueduct had been completed and would soon be carrying water from the Sacramento Delta to Los Angeles, the Adroushans drove out to see this great feat of engineering. They took a picnic basket along, and ate lunch from the tailgate of their family wagon. Armen and Cindy listened to their father hold forth on the wonders of this great canal that carried life-giving water from Northern California down into the sink, over the Range, and into the desert beyond.

One hot night in July, the Adroushans were sitting watching TV before bed. The windows of the house were open to prevent the house from cooking its inhabitants. The Adroushans heard shouting outside, competing with the audio of the TV. Armen ran out to see what was going on, then burst in a moment later to report that the Hacienda was on fire. The Hacienda was a Mexican restaurant down the street. Armen grabbed a drink out of the fridge and ran back outside. Mother and father followed. The crying of sirens soon followed them. Cindy waited inside, then thought better of it, and walked out to the street to keep a watchful eye on the fire down the way. Her pyrophyllic family was down at the corner, admiring the flames up close.

Cindy did not approach the ruins of the fire for days, but spent hours in front of her own house keeping an eye on the wreckage, as if on a fire watch. Cindy got precious little sleep. Finally, Armen talked her into getting a closer look so that she’d know that the fire was truly dead.

Once Cindy gained the courage to approach the corner, she would walk by it often, over and over again, looking into the black, saturated ruins. Neighbors, kids at school, and people at the supermarket checkout line all wondered aloud about the cause: Arson? A casually discarded cigarette? A gas leak? A grease fire? Cindy listened, and she silently inquired into each suspect and brooded.

How could grease start a fire?, she asked herself. Nobody in her family gave her a very good explanation, so she tried asking a librarian. She was given a book that gave an explanation, but she needed help understanding the explanation. It occurred to her that a firefighter might know, so she dropped by the fire station that was a block out of her way on her way home from school. A friendly firefighter took the time to explain to her how water can expand quickly when heated, and how steam could blast out of pan like steam from a kettle, or even an old locomotive. Then the firefighter showed her some superheated grease. The firefighter then explained to Cindy how the steam could carry the grease very far very fast, and Cindy began to understand. She understood that even water and cooking oil could conspire to burn a building down. She could see it quite clearly. But this enlightenment only deepened Cindy’s fear.

On odd Sundays the Adroushans would drive up to Fresno, attend church services, and visit Grandma and Grandpa Adroushan.

One day after church in Autumn, Cindy and Armen were helping their grandfather harvest pomegranates in his backyard. Armen observed that the fruit resembled red Christmas tree ornaments. Grandpa agreed and tossed one down to Cindy, who stopped the fruit with her grandfather’s glove, which was a short, old-style finger glove, but still too large for her. The fruit fell from the dangling glove into Cindy’s other hand.

pomegranate arils

Grandpa Adroushan would impart upon Armen and Cindy whatever stories or facts came to mind at times like these. Inspired by the pomegranates, this time the Magi occurred to him. He told his grandkids how the Magi had traveled all the way from Armenia, which he said was a Magian country at the time of Christ, that the Magians were known for their knowledge of prophecy and astronomy. He continued, having established that these alleged Armenians were the first Christians, he could not allow himself to neglect to mention that Armenia had been the first Christian country. Cindy and Armen’s parents did not speak so proudly or quite so often of their Armenian heritage, but they did not seem to mind if Grandpa did if it made the kids proud of their deep Christian heritage. They did not seem so alien among their peers when they thought of that heritage.

Grandpa Adroushan imparted pomegranates and heritage down upon the two children, his foot ladder his pulpit, and when he determined that enough had been said, he determined that enough fruit had been plucked from the tree.

Grandpa Adroushan took his gardening shears out of his overalls and cut the stem and cap off the fruit, and said, “anyone up for a friendly game of pomeball?”

Armen hurried off to fetch the baseball bat.

The Adoration of the Magi — Leonaert Bramer, ca. 1634.

Armen thought about what his grandfather had said about Armenians having once been something his grandfather called “Magians.” Grandpa-A tossed him the pomegranate and he foul-tipped the fruit-ball down at the ground.

Armen let out a question. “Grandpa, was our family Magian before they were Christian?”

Grandpa-A replied that he didn’t know for sure and he reminded Armen that Armenians have been Christian for a very long time, and tossed the next pitch.

Armen missed it completely. Strike two. Cindy waited at Grandpa-A’s side, hoping to field anything that Armen might manage to hit. She turned to Grandpa-A and asked, “what’s a Magian?”

Her grandfather answered that he didn’t really know, except for what he’d said about prophecy and astronomy, and also that they kept fire temples—that they had a high regard for fire, just as Armenians still do.

Armen hit the pitch, cracked the game ball open. “You get the next one, Cindy,” promised Grandpa-A, and they sat together in the shade of an apricot tree, picking the red arils out of their respective shards.

Armen got a toy bow for Christmas. He never quite got the hang of the bow, so he just let Cindy play with it. Mr. and Mrs. Adroushan soon realized that Cindy would make good use of a proper bow. She spent hours upon hours with that bow, and before long she was a feature at civic events, like the fair.

Soundtrack: R.E.M., King of Birds

After several years, Cindy took to crafting bows and arrows herself. I would sometimes watch her as she listened to the twang of a bowstring. She might adjust it, try it with an arrow, or replace it, depending on what the music of the bowstring told her.

She was always on the hunt for feathers. She wanted real feathers, “for my birds,” she would say.

She tried different arrow materials. “Different stuff for different birds,” I remember her explaining. She tried copper and steel tube, or just about any material she could craft into an arrow.

Then she would take her birds out and fly them, with two quivers, each stocked with arrows no two alike, each with a name. There was one particularly strange bird that caught my attention. It was a steel bird. It had a metallic streamer coiled at its tail that would unravel at speed. I never guessed what the point to that bird might be until much later.

She could let them fly at a stunning frequency. Her motion to the quiver and her perching of the bird seemed a fluid part of her release. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

She didn’t always use a target. I once asked her why. She told me she was more interested in their flight. It was their flight that would see them to the target. If you watch the flight, you don’t need a target. “But a target board serves a practical purpose,” she said.

Armen watched the second hand complete its final revolution. With a ring of the bell, the schoolroom was filled with a muffled chorus of chairs shifting on indoor-outdoor carpet. Armen watched the sunlight flare through the exit, and watched his classmates stream out into the light. He felt the sweat collect between his fingers and the edge of his books, and reached for his violin case.

His teacher glanced at him from her desk, and he uncoiled from his. He watched the carpet sweep rhythmically beneath him as the doorway approached him. He didn’t need to look toward the door; he could track its approach from the light that poured from it. He turned into the covered walkway, and once clear of the door, stalled beneath the overhead vent windows. When he heard his teacher grab her things, he resumed walking out to Monroe Drive.

Oregon Holocaust Memorial by P. Medved

“I don’t like it when you make me wait,” lashed Stewart. “what have you got for m—what’s in there?” Stewart ripped the violin case out of Armen’s grip. He opened it, pulled out the violin, and began strumming it like a guitar. The bridge collapsed under Stewart’s pounding. He complained, “this thing is cheap!”, and shoved it into Armen’s arms, forcing Armen to drop his books.