Dream Country

by Shannon Gibney

  This was the threat parents always lobbed against Liberian and Somali boys in Minnesota: Shape up, or we will send you home. And there, they don’t love their children too much to teach them respect. There, you will learn the value of everything you just junk away here.

  His mother, who worked nights as an LPN at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and was finishing up her coursework to be an RN at St. Mary’s during the day, often told him the very same thing, late at night, when she’d stumble in after her shift to find him on the couch playing games on her iPad, another suspension warning letter in her hand. But he knew she would never actually do it. He was her only son, and she had hid him from Small Boy rebel soldiers, fed him her own rations, and taught him to read and write throughout the war and its aftermath. All her hopes were with him.

  Angel put a hand on her hip and wagged her finger at him. “Hear me? You’re gonna be on a plane to sad little Africa this summer.”

  Kollie sneered but decided not to give her the satisfaction of acknowledgment. She wasn’t worth his time.

  She sighed, then turned around. “Don’t know why I bother anyway.”

  Kollie didn’t know why either. He had no idea who she hung around with or what she did in school, and he didn’t want to. He knew she was an academic superstar, because she dangled it in his face every chance she got. The brilliant younger daughter who everyone liked, and the disappointing older son who just wouldn’t try. Those had been their identities and their relationship to each other as long as he could remember. He didn’t hate her; he just found her irrelevant.

  Angel threw herself down on the opposite end of the couch and began to scribble something on a page in one of her many notebooks. She was two years younger than him, in the ninth grade, but sometimes it felt like two decades. Everything was easier for her, and he didn’t know why. Maybe it was because she was a girl. Maybe it was because she didn’t care what the black guys—or maybe any guys—thought of her. Or maybe because she had left Liberia before it had begun to mean something to her.

  She stood up and shoved the notebook in his face. “DAD CANNOT SAVE YOU FROM EVERYTHING. ESPECIALLY YOURSELF” was scrawled across the page.

  He turned off his music finally and then slowly, deliberately, tore out the page and ripped the paper into long shreds.

  Right hand on her hip again, she stuck out her tongue and then ran from the room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  VIVIAN PLACED A HOT bowl of fufu in front of Kollie and his father. She took the steamed, pounded yam delicately from the plastic platter, which also held two cold waters and a bowl of okra soup. After everything had been carefully laid before them, his father’s girlfriend left her apartment’s small dining room and retreated back to the kitchen. His father lifted the lid from the bowl of fufu, scooped out a piece, dipped it in the okra, and then sucked it down in one gulp. The years at Buduburam had sweetened his father’s palate to Ghanaian dishes like fufu and kenkey—fermented, pounded, and steamed white corn.

  In Liberia, Ujay Flomo had been a sociology professor at the university. Here, however, he was just another home health aide, making sure crazy white people didn’t harm themselves or others in the special houses where they were forced to live. He worked an average of sixty-five hours a week, splitting the hours between two jobs.

  Kollie and his father did not speak while they ate. They simply scooped, dipped, and swallowed until the fufu was all gone. Then, each gulped his bottle of water and dried his hands on a towel. Kollie’s father burped, excused himself, and then snapped his fingers. Vivian appeared and carefully cleared the table so that it was spotless.

  “I believe I have found a suitable space for the club-oh,” his father said quietly. “In the basement of Brother Johnson’s establishment.” Brother Johnson ran a small travel agency in Crystal, specializing in buying large numbers of seats on flights from Minnesota to Monrovia from airlines that could not sell them at full price, and then selling these bundled seats to Liberians locally. “He said that you and your friends could use it on the weekends, as long as you make sure to leave it better than you found it each night. I am sure that Angel and Lovie can help you-ya.”

  Kollie winced at his sister’s name—a brief sour note in the otherwise good news. He wasn’t sure if his father didn’t see the tension between him and his sister, or wouldn’t see it. Whatever the reason, Kollie’s father still believed that he and his sister were friends. Kollie did not plan to disabuse him of this idea anytime soon though, especially since he was finally getting everything together for the club.

  Kollie nodded. Inside he was jumping up and down, but outwardly he tried to show no emotion.

  His father looked him straight in the eyes. “Do not embarrass me-oh,” he said evenly. “Or the ma.” The last part was said under his breath.

  Kollie sat up straight in his seat and folded his hands in front of him on the table. “I will make you proud, Papi.”

  His father studied him up and down, like he was inspecting a car to see if it was drivable. “I expect nothing less-menh,” he said. “I don’t want to hear nothing about no liquor there, or nothing else bad-oh. I am trusting you to have control over the people who will come on that side and don’t have good ma and pa. You pekins don’t have no good place in the community to be. I hoping this spot can be positive, with your guidance-ya.”

  Kollie nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

  His father took a small envelope from his bag and slid it toward him.

  Kollie eyed him incredulously. “What this-menh?”

  His father shrugged impatiently.

  Kollie grabbed it before he could stop himself. He felt wide-awake in a way he hadn’t in weeks. Inside the envelope he found five crisp hundred dollar bills. “Sir?” he whispered. He couldn’t quite believe it. Loma men were known to be particularly tight-fisted with their money, so he knew how hard it must be for his father to part with it.

  His father surprised him with a muted smile— something no one saw regularly. “Show me you got good pa,” he said. “You are my son. Make me proud-oh.”

  Kollie was startled by the tears he felt gathering at the corners of his eyes.

  “I will do it, Papi,” he said. “I will do it-oh.” He meant it too.

  His father sat back in his seat and crossed his arms across his chest. “Good.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  KOLLIE WALKED INTO THE locker room, his soccer duffel slung over his shoulder. It was finally Friday, but he had practice before he could go home and relax. He sat down on the metal bench and held his head in his hands. He had arrived early so he could be alone for a moment. He just needed some fucking peace and quiet. His eyelids felt heavy, like he could close them now and never have the strength to open them again. Like he could sleep forever and not have to worry about anything again: school, the club, Sonja, his mother. He could finally let it all go. Everything could become whatever it was meant to be, and he wouldn’t be required to exert any energy on its development or dissolution. Everything he had done, everything he had failed to do, everything he might or might not do, would fade into one, comforting blackness behind his eyes. And he could rest.

  “Man, I told you! It ain’t me who you’re looking for!”

  Kollie jerked his head up, awakened, at the unexpected sound of someone’s voice—it sounded like Clark’s. Kollie was pretty sure he played football or ran cross-country.

  “I just got here, man,” the voice continued, almost pleadingly. It was definitely Clark.

  Kollie followed the sound of Clark’s voice, careful not to make any noise. It sounded like he was around the corner, toward the east side of the locker room.

  “Then who the hell wrote it?”

  The other voice was Eddie’s. The old white dude was one of Brooklyn Center High School’s three security guards. Eddie was universally hated for his love of the very little power he could wield against stude
nts in the hallways.

  Kollie peered around the corner and saw that Eddie had Clark backed against a row of lockers. Clark looked angry, but Kollie could see the fear in his posture too.

  “Man, how the fuck would I know?” Clark answered. “Isn’t that what they got you pussy pigs for, to figure out these little mysteries?” Clark snarled back and then spit at Eddie’s feet.

  Perhaps Eddie thought he would beat the bravado out of him, because the next thing he did was punch Clark in the stomach. Hard.

  Kollie gasped before he could stop himself. He clasped his hand over his mouth and yanked his head back around the corner, praying that they hadn’t heard him.

  Clark’s coughing masked the sound.

  Eddie laughed. “Who’s the fucking pussy now, you little nigger?”

  Kollie didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want the additional weight of witness on his shoulders.

  Clark gasped. “Wha-what did you call me?”

  Eddie laughed again. “You heard me. Think you’re something special ’cause you can talk back to a man in a uniform?”

  “A fat white man in a rent-a-cop uniform,” Clark corrected him.

  Kollie heard the sound of metal connecting with flesh, and he closed his eyes and willed himself to find some courage. Then he peered around the corner once more and saw that Eddie had lifted Clark’s wiry frame from the ground, pinned him against a locker.

  “You don’t seem to understand how this works, Clark,” Eddie was saying, his pudgy white finger stabbing at Clark’s face. “I’m the one in charge here, the one who you can either talk to respectfully or beg for your goddamn life. You’re the tiresome little degenerate who will flunk out of here with all your little hood friends and who I’ll see on the corner smoking and selling weed in a year or two, with no prospects, no money, no self-respect, while I’ll still be patrolling these halls collecting a paycheck.” Eddie leaned into him, the spit from his words hitting Clark’s face.

  Clark was coughing and wheezing. It looked like he was panicking, as Eddie slowly twisted his collar so that it began to cut off his windpipe. Violence didn’t seem to explode from Eddie like it did from Kollie. The beating was almost orderly. It seemed to Kollie that, for Eddie, hitting Clark restored some kind of balance to his universe.

  Kollie wiped a drop of sweat from his eye. He knew he had to do something, but it was like his body could no longer process commands from his brain—nothing was moving, even though every part of him was screaming.

  “Clean up the goddamn wall. The sooner you do it, the better things will be for you and your bitch-ass friends, trust me.”

  Kollie saw the rebels running through the streets of Congo Town with AKs, shooting them randomly at passersby. He felt his right hand seize up, and his legs begin to buckle the same way they did during what Liberians called World War II, the second siege on Monrovia, all those years ago. His mother had grabbed him then and carried him to safety, but right now, he only had himself. He felt his left hand grab the rough concrete wall, steadied his balance before he fell down and revealed his position.

  Eddie let go of Clark, and he sank to the floor and collapsed.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not so tough now, are you?”

  Clark wheezed on the floor, clutching his throat. Kollie wanted to go to him, but didn’t dare.

  Eddie scowled and began to walk away toward the locker room entryway that led back into the school. When he was a few feet away, he turned back to Clark and said, “You know, when I first started here I couldn’t figure out why they wanted us to spend so much time, so many resources on policing you all. I mean, you have big nigger mouths, but at the end of the day, you’re kids, you know? That’s what I thought, anyway. But now I see they were right: You are some destructive little assholes. It’s like there’s something in you that absolutely has to destroy order and everything good around you. I don’t understand it. Really, I don’t. When you have so much handed to you, so much at your fingertips. You have to spray-paint ‘fuck you pigs!’ across the hall walls. You could be learning geometry, splicing cells, writing computer code. But no. You really think we’re the enemy.”

  Kollie was surprised to see that Eddie’s face actually looked pained throughout this whole speech.

  Eddie pointed at Clark, who had pulled himself up to sitting position against the locker, breathing normally again. “You’re the fucking enemy, bro. To yourself, to the rest of us. You remember that.” Then he turned around and walked out.

  Kollie closed his eyes, wishing again that he was someplace—any place—else. Gabe’s basement. His own living room. Vivian’s dining room. His fingers involuntarily found a crack in the concrete wall, and he was forced to confront the fact that he was still here, had witnessed one of his schoolmates being beaten by a security guard. Even if he didn’t like Clark, there was no denying that he didn’t deserve that. Then all at once, the silence was punctuated by the sound of weeping. Clear, unabashed sobs ricocheted through the locker room. Kollie stepped from around the corner and saw Clark holding his head in his hands, crying. He obviously had no idea he was not alone, as he made no attempt to conceal it, and just let it take over. It wasn’t until Kollie was basically standing over him that he realized with a start that he had a witness. Kollie reached out to him, but Clark recoiled in disgust.

  “Man, what the fuck you looking at?” Clark yelled at him. He pulled himself up, so that he was inches from Kollie’s face.

  Kollie could still smell the fear of the encounter all over him, saw a long pink welt spreading across his right cheek.

  Clark cocked his head to the side. “What? You think you’re better than me now? You think you something other than the same kind of nigger we be?” He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, I know how you African niggers think. You probably think you coulda stopped him with one of your spears or something, right?”

  Kollie was surprised to discover that he felt no anger about anything Clark was saying. What he felt most was sadness and regret, and he wanted to tell him that.

  “No, I just—”

  “You shut the fuck up! Shut up, already, everyone!” Clark’s spit was flying into Kollie’s face as he yelled, and his eyes flashed with intense anger. He stepped away from Kollie, then put his hands over his ears. “Why can’t everybody just shut the fuck up, already? I need some fucking peace and quiet.” His voice broke on this last sentence, and he turned away from him.

  Kollie wondered if he was about to cry again.

  “Look. I wasn’t trying to—”

  Clark whipped around and pinned Kollie against the wall in a choke hold. “You tell anyone what happened here, I will personally break your ass off in so many disparate parts, it will fucking crumble into dirt. You hear? Into fucking dirt. Comrade.”

  Kollie wheezed under the weight of Clark’s strong arm. He could still breathe, but not easily. “Please,” he choked. Looking into Clark’s eyes, he saw the anguish in their depths, and the tears he wasn’t even trying to conceal.

  With a yelp that sounded like the cry of an animal caught in a trap, Clark backed away from him and let him go. Kollie crumpled to the floor, exactly where Clark had been only moments before.

  “You ain’t shit, you hear? Motherfucker, you ain’t shit!” Words exploded from Clark until finally his voice broke. “Not shit!” Then he turned and slowly walked away.

  When he heard the thick metal door slam, Kollie knew he was alone. The concrete floor felt good against his face, and he lay there for some time, curled in the fetal position. He didn’t blame Clark for what had transpired; he had his pride. How else would a man react to the witness of his brokenness? Kollie rubbed his throat and tried to breathe normally. He was relieved to see that this was easy; he was fine.

  Kollie sat up. He had to get himself together. He had to get ready for practice; the guys would be pouring into the locker room in the next f
ive minutes. He sighed, and began counting to twenty slowly in Loma in his mind. It was something he did while hiding out in various homes and even the bush once during the war, to try to calm his mind. Eala, faylay, sawah, nanni, dolu, dozita, dafala, dosawa, pu, ou-kao-eala, pu-kai-faylay, pu-kai-sawah, pu-kai-nanni, pu-kai-lolu, pu-kai-lozita, pukai-lofala, pukai-llosawa, pukai-tawu, pufay-laygboh. He stood up.

  * * *

  —

  The boys gathered in the center of the field to discuss the last drill, which had ended in a perfectly executed goal, assisted by Kollie.

  Coach Morris, a white guy in his early thirties who also taught PE, had been called to a mandatory all-staff meeting—about “emerging discipline issues,” rumor had it—so X, the team’s goalkeeper and captain, was running the practice.

  “Listen, we can’t let our defense go down like that.” X lit into his fullbacks. He was out of breath, but he still had their attention. “I know it’s hard, but we have to stay in formation. You gotta stick to your man. That’s how these teams be killing our defense in games.”

  X broke the huddle, and as they headed back to their positions, he slapped Kollie’s shoulder and said, “Great pass, man. Great pass.”

  Like most boys his age, Kollie had grown up playing soccer in the dirt with whatever balls could be found. He had always been mediocre until those three years at the refugee camp, when there was absolutely nothing else to occupy his time, unless he wanted to sit with the men on the stoops of the shacks the UNHCR had the gall to call “houses,” playing draughts and talking about the exploits they would achieve once they finally made it to the West. In America, Kollie, Gabe, Tetee, and a few others had played pickup games in the park by their house on weekends. Kollie had always been the most swift and agile of his peers, but it had never occurred to him to join the high school team until X had begged him to at the end of last year. “We need you, man,” X had said, after leaving his black friends in the middle of lunch late last spring and sitting down with a table of Liberian freshmen and sophomores. This definitely raised a few eyebrows, but X was like that: He was a senior now and his family had moved to Minnesota from Chicago two years earlier. He really didn’t give two fucks what other people thought about him, but was too good-natured about it for this fact to get to anyone. People accepted that he had everyone’s best interests at heart and didn’t ride him for things they would crucify anyone else for.