As I watch her now, three hundred and ninety-three pounds and gaining by the day, her frame so vast she has not been able to pull it upright in more than two months or to fit through any doorway without first having to take the door off its hinges, her breath so stormy it makes the dogs bark allt he way up and down the street where she now lives with her sister in Los Angeles, and sets the piano in their neighbor's house playing mad tunes at odd hours of the night, it is impossible to believe that my mother Roxanne the Angel, was once a young woman with watercolor eyes and translucent skin, that she oculd stop the world with her laughter and compel men, my father among them, to follow her across an entire city without knowing why the chased her or what they would do if ever she stopped and answered their calls, that she had been so light and delicate, so undisturbed by the rules of gravity and the drudgery of human existence, she had grown wings, one night when the darkenss was the color of her dreams, and flown into the star-studded night of Iran that claimed her.