Dream Country

by Shannon Gibney

  “Congratulations, my sister,” the man said, hugging her warmly, and Kollie used the moment to slip past them, fighting through the crowded living room toward the kitchen where he knew the food would be.

  “—A man’s achievements are never just his own. His whole family, his whole community are what make everything he has, everything he enjoys in his life, possible. So, I need to thank my wife for making sure I had the space and time to complete my lessons, and the food to give me the energy to do it. I also need to thank my children, for listening to their mother when she told them to leave me alone-oh.” The room laughed appreciatively. Tetee’s father was standing in the middle of the living room, giving the formal speech that was always expected on such occasions.

  When he was younger, the content and length of the speeches had seemed normal to him, but as he got older, Kollie found them over-the-top, too long, and self-important. They evoked a sense of Africanness that he found embarrassing now.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Kollie saw his own father standing to the right of Tetee’s. Ujay looked proud of his friend from his university days, and Kollie was aware that he wished his father would look at him that same way someday. His breath caught when he saw his mother seated on a couch partition beside his father, her hand reaching up to touch his elbow. He couldn’t remember the last time they had been out in public together, much less touched. Kollie frowned. He wondered where Vivian was, and how his father had persuaded her not to come. As concerned as his father was with how people in the community saw him, he rarely if ever came out for any events besides weekly outings to church, where he was the last one in and the first one out of services, where he barely spoke to anyone. Liberians here hardly knew Ujay Flomo at all. And if he was honest, Kollie was beginning to see that he probably didn’t either.

  Kollie made himself turn away from the spectacle of his parents and carefully pushed between sweaty, overdressed bodies toward the kitchen table. He stuffed a plastic fork and knife in his pocket. Then he grabbed two paper plates and tried to balance them flat between his fingers on his left hand. It would be tricky, but he would try to fill them both high with the spicy Liberian meatballs and sweet bread his ma had made; the torbogee and rice, fried tilapia, Liberian potato salad and rice, ribs, and gravy the other women had brought. His mouth watered.

  At the far end of the table, he saw a sheet cake, already halfway eaten, with the remnants of the words, CONGRATULATIONS, JOSIAH! written across it. He would see how many pieces of that one he could fit on the plates, as well. He made himself focus on serving up the most food he could, quickly and efficiently, ignoring everything around him. If he could get out of here without anyone recognizing him, it would be a miracle.

  When he was done, he turned around and tried to carefully walk back across the packed living room the same way he came—but now with two overflowing plates of food. Someone jostled his elbow and almost made him drop everything. He sucked his teeth. “Sorry-oh!” said an older man in a blue-and-white country shirt, and Kollie nodded at him absently to let him know it was okay.

  A group of four men in their twenties stood right in front of the door. “The Old Ma wan eat da money even more than the wicked Papi,” one young man said, the spit flying out of his mouth and punctuating each syllable. Kollie knew they were arguing about Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

  One of the others shook his head and laughed. “Hey-menh! Give Ellen shot-oh. You can’t say her name in same breath as Taylor.”

  The first man sucked his teeth. “She appointing her one son to the ministry of health, and the other to the ministry of finance, I hear? Or something like dat. What she think, we just her pekins, don’t know what happening?”

  A third young man, who couldn’t have been much older than Kollie, laughed bitterly. “We live through the war for this? Just more corruption? This is why we can’t ever develop-menh. Why I glad I on this continent and not the other one. Man, that place still going nowhere!”

  The fourth man’s eyes lit up suddenly, and he came alive. “It still too early to judge, Comrades. Ellen may still be great-oh. Liberia may still be great, if we finally challenge the West and their neocolonial economic and political slavery.” Two of his friends rolled their eyes, and the other looked like he was stifling a laugh. “You mock me, but mark my words: Africa will rise again!” Two of his friends patted him on the shoulder, looking like they had heard this Pan-African fervor all before.

  Kollie felt a grin leaking out the side of his mouth, despite his best attempts to contain it. It wouldn’t be a Liberian party without fiery political debate about the state, fate, and future of the homeland. But then came the inevitable next wave—the shame that came with knowing this was an old and useless debate.

  He was three steps from the door when he sensed someone at his left trying to get his attention. He told himself to ignore it, but his curiosity got the best of him, and when he looked he saw Angel, seated in the corner alone. Her eyes were lit up, and she actually looked pleased to see him. He had no desire to see what all that was about, so he took a huge step through the middle of the would-be political reformers who he knew were really just future home health care aides, and then Kollie was out, free of the party, free of his family, free of Liberia, walking briskly away from the laughter and the noise. When he was a block beyond the last of the cars parked for the party, he sat on the curb under a streetlamp to eat the food, which had grown cold and flavorless.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A WEEK LATER, the fake flowers in the center of the modest dining room table looked even more pathetic than usual. Their waxy stems were peeling in the cheap plastic vase his mother had bought from Target years ago. Kollie sat sullenly in his halfway-broken chair, staring at the vase and flowers in a kind of rage meditation. His mother and father sat directly across from him, for once appearing unified—if only in opposition to their son, whom they regarded with equal parts disdain and disappointment. Kollie knew that Angel had stationed herself on the other side of the wall and was anxiously absorbing every word.

  “You will go to Aunt Garmai’s, in Atlanta,” Kollie’s father said quietly. “You will stay there for the next term, completing a business class at her college.” Aunt Garmai was his mother’s older sister and was doing the best of all the family, having earned an MBA at the University of Georgia, and then securing an instructor’s position at a local community college in the city.

  Kollie’s hands balled up on his lap, and he looked down at the scarred tabletop, so his parents could not see the hot tears pooling in his eyes. He had known this talk was coming for weeks, had anticipated everything that would be said, but somehow hearing what had been felt for so long, but never spoken, brought about a surprising turn in him.

  “Now that your cousin is away at college, she has room for you there,” said his mother. Gone was the vibrant and energetic face he had seen at the party last weekend. She looked more exhausted than he had ever seen her. Each word seemed to drain her of more life. “This is a kind offer, one we will not get again.” She sighed. “We must take it up-oh.”

  “Yes, a kind offer to ship off your only son and be rid of the problem you created.” The words spilled out of him before he had time to think. He was almost whispering, but bitterness punctuated every utterance.

  His mother promptly burst into tears. He was pleased to see that his words had had the desired effect, that he still had the power to hurt them. That he still meant something to them.

  His father stood up, anger pulsating through his biceps and shoulders, streaming from his eyes. He was not a big man, but he had an intimidating kind of presence when he stood to his full, commanding stature. “Don’t,” he said, pointing at Kollie. “You don’t talk to the Old Ma that way.”

  Kollie tried not to cower, but it was impossible.

  “You have disgraced this family. You have blemished the Flomo name in the community. I never thought
I would have a child so wicked-oh.” He was yelling now. Kollie could not remember the last time he had heard him yell. His father was never around when discipline was to be doled out to the children, leaving his mother the unenviable task. But circumstances were different now.

  “Papi, I didn’t—”

  “Silence!” his father boomed.

  Kollie sunk into his chair further. He wanted to break the plastic vase into a million, sharp little pieces, and then tear the sad flowers to shreds. Instead, he began his ritual: eala, faylay, sawah, nanni, dolu, dozita, dafala . . .

  “You can no longer take decision to speak for yourself-oh. You cannot handle it-menh.” His father was shaking with anger. Angel must be beside herself with happiness on the other side of the wall, he thought. Soon he would be as irrelevant to the Papi as she was.

  “Look what you have done to the Old Ma! Look!”

  Kollie lifted his head slowly and felt a few warm tears run down his face. His mother was bent over, her face in her hands, weeping openly. He wanted to rush over to her, to embrace her and tell her he would change. That he would not cause her any more pain, that he would make her suffering mercifully stop. But he knew he couldn’t do that.

  “We brought you here for a better life, and you just chaclar the whole thing! This is not why we fought those government officials to let us come to this side-oh. This is not why we work from dawn to dusk to care for you pekins.”

  Kollie smiled. “The thing already broken, naw,” he said quietly. “The white people already made it so we can’t get nothing on either side. You not working for nothing good anyway. It was just a stupid dream.” This was something William often told him, something that made more sense the more he heard it. It felt good to say the truth, even if he could only whisper it.

  His father whipped around and slapped him on the cheek, hard. The sting of it woke Kollie up, made him sit up straighter.

  “Ujay!” his mother yelled, standing suddenly. The sound of his father’s name in her mouth was as foreign to Kollie as the idea of them trying to run a household together, to raise children together. He had not heard his father’s Loma name spoken aloud in years. At work, he told the white bosses and coworkers to “just call me James,” because it was “easier.”

  Kollie looked on his father now with a new kind of hatred and shame, a deeper understanding of what he could do.

  His father took a step back from him, as if he didn’t trust himself so close to his son. “You think you a Big Man now, hunh? You think you going to run things now?” His tone was icy, pulsating with anger.

  Kollie looked away, out the window. There was nothing to see, had never been anything to see in their quiet, boring neighborhood. A woman walking her dog. A car driving by. He wiped his face clean of tears.

  “But you just like them. In the end you come here to be another nigger, hunh? You want to junk the whole thing.” His father put his face inches from Kollie’s, then sneered. He shook his head woefully. “No. No. I can’t watch you do it-menh. You must go.”

  His mother had sat back down in her chair again and was drying her face with a tissue. Kollie could see she was trying to pull herself together.

  “Papi, I beg. I can take better decision-oh.” He didn’t know where things would end with his father like this and needed to find a way to diffuse the situation. His cheek still rang from the impact of his father’s palm. He leaned forward and clapped his hands in the familiar West African gesture. “I can work with you on the club. That one could make a positive difference in the community, like we talked about.” He was pleading now, but he couldn’t stop himself. Saving face was everything in his father’s culture, and he knew that finding a way to do so would be the surest path to changing his father’s mind. He could not go to Atlanta, or anywhere else, for that matter. Half of him wondered if Angel was not right and if the real plan was to send him back to Liberia. He wasn’t stupid; he’d heard plenty of stories of parents who told their “problem” kids they were going on a family vacation or to visit a relative in another state or something, only to find themselves halfway around the world on a one-way trip to Monrovia. It had happened to a distant family friend some years ago, when their youngest son fell in with the wrong crowd. He had never heard anything else about the boy, once he was gone.

  Kollie snapped back to the present abruptly. The shock of his father’s deep baritone laughter brought him to.

  “Do you really think I would ever trust you with that kind of project now, the rebel you’ve become-menh?”

  Kollie squinted at his father, trying to grasp the true meaning in his words.

  His father laughed again. “Yes, well, now you start to see that we are maybe not as stupid as you think,” he said. “That maybe we old, useless people know a thing or two-oh. Especially about your recent evening activities.”

  Kollie’s chest contracted. How could they know? He and William had been very careful, had taken every precaution. And besides, he had only made twelve, maybe fifteen sales so far—nothing at all in the grand scheme of things. There was no way they could have . . . Kollie turned his attention to the other side of the wall and could almost see Angel crouched there, gleefully taking in every word.

  “Oh yes, we know all about that. Your new commitment to criminal activities,” he said. He sucked his teeth. “You are truly no longer my son, Kollie Flomo. No more. That is why you must go-ya.”

  With this, his mother stood up and walked quickly to him, embracing him in a wide, full-bodied hug. “God will be with you, my son. And so will I. This journey will not be in vain-oh.”

  Just as he lifted his hand to embrace her back, she released him and walked out the door without another word. Kollie watched her leave, confused. What was happening here? Another minute later, he heard the car start.

  “Get packing,” his father said evenly. “You leave tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TWELVE HOURS LATER, they pulled into Departures at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport. Kollie had been here many times, dropping off this or that relative or friend who was flying to Liberia or to Rhode Island or Philly, places where other Liberians had relocated. But he hadn’t been on a plane since he was nine and they flew as a family from Accra to Brussels, to Chicago, to Minneapolis. He hadn’t liked all the planes, all the transit and sitting then, and he wasn’t looking forward to it now. Plus, in the rush of everything, he hadn’t had time to even say good-bye to anyone. His father had taken his phone right after their “discussion” the night before, so he couldn’t text Gabe or Abraham or Tetee and ask them to tell everyone else that he was being condemned to Atlanta for the spring, on order of his despotic parents. Still, he knew they would hear about it before the day was out, one way or another.

  “Here is your ticket,” his father said, handing him a slim envelope, with the Delta Air Lines logo across the front. “Safe journey-menh.”

  Kollie felt the heat of anger rising in him again. Liberians loved meaningless platitudes like that, especially when they were doing things that were distasteful, and his family was no different. He flung the door of the Jeep open and jumped out, his carry-on slung over his shoulder. He opened the back and grabbed his large suitcase, which contained everything he had been able to fit in during his frenzied packing session only hours earlier. On the other side of the car, Angel jumped out and was beside him now, her hand on his suitcase.

  “I got it,” he said, shaking her off.

  “It’s too heavy. I can help,” she said.

  “Hey, ma! I got it,” he said again, and successfully flung her hand away. He had no idea why she had insisted on coming to drop him off. They had not spoken since his parents informed him of his fate.

  “Let me help!”

  He used all his strength to pull the suitcase down to him. It must have weighed at least fifty pounds. He had no idea if the airline would let him check it.
In fact, he’d been so exhausted by rage and fear when he packed it, he had no idea what was in it. Even now, the possibility that this could be a dream—a nightmare—tugged at the edges of Kollie’s mind.

  His sister continued to pull on the handle. “Let me, please!”

  “You’ve helped enough,” he said evenly. He would not look at her.

  She burst into tears then, something he had not seen in years. She was always careful around him, not wanting to reveal any weakness and give him any chance to get one-up on her. She tried to grab his arm, but he shrugged it off.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was worried about you! I had to tell them, K!”

  The hardness he always cultivated around her cracked a little, with the mention of the nickname she had called him when they were little, when they were closer. But he was determined not to let her see this.

  “You not sorry at all.” He mustered all his strength and pulled the suitcase to the curb. Inside the car, his father looked straight ahead, as if the sight of the two white men saying good-bye to each other with a hug and a kiss was the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. Kollie sucked his teeth. It would be good to be rid of them, all of them.

  Angel took two steps toward him. “Look,” she whispered in his ear. “You flying to Atlanta, but not to Aunt Garmai’s. You flying through Atlanta, K.”

  Her words stopped him, brought the feeling of the cold November nights he had been spending walking, and waiting, back to his body. He shivered. “What now?”

  She took both his hands, looked into his eyes deeply for the first time in years. “They sending you to Liberia, K. You going to Aunt Mawu’s, to the Riggs School. You not be back here for long time-oh.”

  It was the first time he had heard her speak Liberian English in a long time. She was crying openly now. “They not telling you ’cause they scared you won’t go. Aunt Garmai gonna meet you at the airport in Atlanta. She going to tell you the whole plan then.”