Butterball Estrelia radiated sweetness but hadn’t learned much English, probably because she spent her days in empty houses. Had she talked to Ginger? Lula had no language in which to ask. She liked Estrelia but preferred to be out of the house while she worked. It was awkward, standing around, watching Estrelia shake her head at the stacks of newspapers and magazines Mister Stanley didn’t have time to read, the papers and books Zeke lost track of, the wadded up T-shirts and single sneakers kicked into corners. Estrelia neatened the stacks and herded the shirts and shoes, glancing guiltily at Lula, whose shrug meant, I don’t blame you.
Estrelia’s vacuum purred, and Estrelia purred along with it. Let the crime scene detectives come now! Any skin flaked off Hoodie’s ankle was just more dust to Estrelia.
After a brief conversation about Estrelia’s son Sebastian (fine) and her husband (also fine, gracias), Lula and Estrelia played a translation game, exchanging basic vocabulary in English, Spanish, and Albanian. Estrelia knew all the furniture words, and they had moved on to colors. Estrelia picked up a cushion and pantomimed what green it was—trees no, birds no, river yes, dive in the river. Lula said Nile green, then in Albanian, river green, and Estrelia said something verde. Then on to the crocheted blanket, but there were no words in any language for the shades of acrylic in this item of hand-made Ginger decor.
Estrelia was finishing up in the dining area, and Lula was about to go to her room, because it was even more awkward loitering outside the bathroom and comparing the Spanish, Albanian, and English words for toilet brush. But just then, Estrelia poked the vacuum hose into the chair in which Alvo had sat yesterday. The vacuum coughed, and Estrelia extracted a scrap of paper she handed to Lula.
Lula smoothed it out on the table. In faint purple type was the address of a supermarket in Manhattan. One quart orange juice, 2.59. Cigarettes, 7.95. Unless Mister Stanley had started smoking (impossible) or Zeke had gone into Manhattan to buy cigarettes (unlikely) or the receipt had been here since Ginger Time (Estrelia was way more thorough than that), the only logical conclusion was that it had fallen from Alvo’s pocket.
“Oh, thanks, it’s mine,” Lula said. What would she do with a sales receipt? Treasure it as a memento? Use it to stalk Alvo to his neighborhood market? “Thank you. I lost this. I need it. Taxes.” Taxes? She put the receipt in her pocket, and motioned for Estrelia to follow her into the kitchen.
Estrelia froze. Did she think some subtle status shift had raised Lula from coworker to boss, no longer a friendly young person but a harsh taskmaster about to point out some neglected duty? Lula cradled Estrelia’s elbow with a pressure meant to seem affectionate but which probably felt like the grip of a cop collaring a suspect.
Estrelia sat at the kitchen table while Lula made her a sandwich of red pepper paste and cream cheese on a sesame roll.
She said, “Zeke and Mister Stanley won’t taste it. There’s only so much I can eat.” Estrelia nibbled at the bread and, nodding vigorously, smiled. Then she furrowed her penciled-on brows in a friendly question directed at the sandwich.
Lula would have liked to tell Estrelia about her granny. She would have liked to ask if Estrelia had a granny, if she was alive or dead. Lula didn’t even know the Spanish word for granny. She pointed at the sandwich, then hunched over, pretended to walk with a cane, and rocked an invisible baby.
Estrelia got it, or got something.
“Sabroso,” Estrelia said.
Every time Lula went into Manhattan, she could hear Dunia saying, “Ten miles if you swam.” On dry land, you had to take the George Washington Bridge, the tunnel, or the train. The least miserable route involved two small buses and then a big bus that took you to midtown, from where you could take the subway to anywhere you might actually want to go. Lula would be lucky if she could find something pretty to wear and get back in time for Zeke’s return from school. Zeke could take care of himself and would never tell his father if she wasn’t there when he arrived. In fact he’d probably like a break from Albanian watchdog Lula. But being present so that Zeke wouldn’t walk into an empty house had been one of the few promises that Mister Stanley had extracted from her, and Lula was determined to keep it.
New York had been fun with Dunia, shopping for items they couldn’t afford, egging each other on to ask the price of luxury items they wanted and were scared to touch. Of course they’d gone shopping in Tirana, at street markets when they were teenagers and then at the boutiques that had started springing up in Blloku, the understocked, overpriced shops, still smelling of fresh paint, that Mafia guys were opening so their bored childless mistresses could buy stolen designer shoes from each other. New York had confirmed what Lula and Dunia had long suspected, that the nicest store in Tirana was a sandbox in the nursery school of real-world consumer culture. At first Lula had felt almost angry at the gorgeous variety and obscene profusion of stuff for sale. But being with Dunia had alchemized her anger into humor. Together, they were twice as strong and could pretend to be superior to all that unattainable splendor. They’d been each other’s armor, protective gear against the serenity of the American girls letting strangers paint their faces, against the trancelike calm of the women pawing through swaying garments.
Oh, Dunia, Dunia, where was she? Every week the TV ran a story about sex-trafficked girls, and though Lula was certain, or pretty certain, that Dunia was too smart to let herself get caught up in anything like that, Albania was Albania. Anything could happen. People fell down potholes in the sidewalk and were never heard from again.
Today, Lula missed Dunia with a particular pang as she performed the humbling yoga of trying on a sweater and skirt in the communal dressing room of the store whose designer bargains were legend even in Tirana. Like the women around her, Lula faked indifference to the range of female bodies in the mirrors. At home no one thought about weight so much. Poverty and fear kept you thin, though strangely, in this country, they had the opposite effect.
But no matter how hard Lula tried not to notice, she couldn’t help surreptitiously watching the girl beside her stuff a blouse into her backpack while, as a distraction, her friend argued with the woman guarding the dressing-room door. Would the clerk get fired when someone found out the blouse was stolen? Probably not. She shrugged when another customer gave her a handful of antitheft devices she’d found in a jacket pocket. Lula could probably steal the sweater and skirt and keep Mister Stanley’s money. But she’d just gotten her visa. How embarrassing to get deported for shoplifting an outfit to wear to a party to celebrate being legal.
Lula studied her reflection. She still looked okay in the street-bin underwear, a miracle considering her sedentary life, the nightly mojitos, the frozen burgers and prepackaged pizza. Granny would die all over again if she knew how Lula ate. She shifted from hip to hip, appraising the short black pleated skirt, the white V-necked sweater, schoolgirlish, cheerleaderish, just sexy enough to turn heads without going all-the-way slutty. Lula also decided on a deep Goth-purple sweater. Maybe Zeke would imagine she’d dressed in funeral colors for him, while Don and Mister Stanley would think her look was exotic Albanian.
The skirt and sweaters came to a hundred and thirty dollars, which left her with change and a pleasant feeling of sensibly saving for the future, plumping up the safety cushion in the secret compartment of the desk that, Zeke said, had belonged to Ginger’s mother. The swing of the shopping bag on her arm filled her with optimism. Not only did she have new clothes, she had a future in which to wear them.
She knew how to live in New York, how to take the subway to the first of the buses that would take her home to New Jersey. One Sunday morning, she and Dunia had drunk a bottle of wine and memorized the subway map. The web of colored lines materialized before her eyes, like the chart of the veins and arteries on the poster of the skinless body that Zeke had tacked to his bedroom wall.
Every seat on the train was taken. Lula’s heart ached for the souls damned to ride both ways, mashed together in rush hour. At least she
had been spared that. Thank you, Mister Stanley.
Finally someone got up from one of the two-seaters at the end of the car. A little kid made a run for it, but Lula stopped him with a look. A woman whose skin seemed to have been baked from some rich flaky pastry shut her book, sighed theatrically, and slid over to make room for Lula, then sighed again and went back to reading Daily Affirmations for Women Who Do Too Much.
Across the aisle was a young Hispanic couple, a skinny hypervigilant guy in jeans and a light sweater pushed up to reveal a muscular arm bulging with Maori tattoos. His heavily made-up transvestite girlfriend had nodded off on his shoulder, so the ends of her long glossy curls swung against his chest. You only had to look at them to know they were in love. It wasn’t what they planned or wanted, but love was love, what could they do? Lula knew she shouldn’t stare, but she couldn’t help it. No one could, including the woman beside Lula, who glanced up from her book and shifted in her seat, sighing her critique of the sinner perverts doomed to burn forever in hell. Lula stared at her neighbor until the woman had to look back. Her eyelashes curled like a moth’s antennae. What did she see in Lula’s face that made her own face clench so tight?
Lula said, “We’re all God’s children, don’t you think?”
Why had she said that? She didn’t believe in God or Jesus or Allah or Buddha. Some new American language was erupting through her, the same language that had her cradling and rocking her arms as she tried to tell Estrelia about Granny’s red pepper paste.
The woman regarded Lula coolly, then almost smiled, then decided not to. She said, “Maybe you’re right. Jesus wouldn’t have made them unless He had His reasons.” With which she returned to her book.
The boyfriend gazed at Lula over the head of his sleeping beloved, and a flicker passed between them, almost as if he’d heard her above the roaring train. Maybe this was Lula’s new role in her new American life, opening blocked channels of communication, bringing these strangers a gift from a country where tolerance was the best result of everyone forced to be the same.
Who cared if the three Albanian guys never showed up again? Here she was, in New York! How much friendlier the city looked when she had money and a mission. What she’d just witnessed would never happen at home. For one thing, there were no subways. For another, no Puerto Ricans. Or cross-dressers, for that matter, except for one club in Tirana where they still changed in the back room. No doubt about it, there was more freedom here. You just had to watch your back and not shoot off your mouth or do anything stupid that would get you locked up or kicked out.
How appealing her fellow passengers looked in those ingenious vessels—their bodies!—so brilliantly designed to contain all their hopes and fears, their dreams and experiences, bodies designed to change as their souls were changed by every minute on earth. She wanted to stay in this city with them, she wanted to have what they had. She wanted it all, the green card, the citizenship, the vote. The income taxes! The Constitutional rights. The two cars in the garage. The garage. The driver’s license. The good sense to appreciate what Don and Mister Stanley were doing to help Lula belong to this crowded, overwhelmed, endlessly welcoming city, where sooner or later, like on the subway, someone would scoot over and make room.
Chapter Three
At the very last minute, dressing for Don Settebello’s dinner, Lula vetoed the knee socks that would have nudged her outfit over the line from college girl to role-playing escort-service college girl. She took the filmy black scarf she’d gotten last Christmas from Zeke, draped it around her neck, and tied it in a sort of noose, accentuating her pallor and giving her look a subtle vampire edge that Mister Stanley and Don might appreciate, if only on a subliminal level. Zeke would like it a lot.
Lula dreaded coming downstairs and finding Mister Stanley and Zeke waiting for her and feeling obliged to say how nice she looked. So she was preemptively ready, on the couch with her coat on, when Mister Stanley appeared in a suit and, twenty agonizing minutes later, Zeke clomped downstairs in a black shirt, black jeans, and a black bomber jacket.
Lula said, “You look good, Zeke.”
“Doesn’t he?” Mister Stanley said wistfully.
Zeke held his phony smile for so long that no one could mistake it for the real thing. Then he said, “Awesome! Lula’s finally wearing the scarf!”
“Your Christmas present from Zeke,” said Mister Stanley. “I remember! How sweet!”
The dead tree Mister Stanley lugged home last Christmas Eve bumped across Lula’s visual field. By Christmas morning it had dropped its needles on the scarf, an envelope containing a hundred-dollar bill from Mister Stanley to Lula, an iPhone for Zeke, and two Banana Republic shirts Zeke would never wear. Lula had given Zeke the Coumadin Rat Bleed-Out Live CD he wanted, and for Mister Stanley, she wrapped up the stubby ceramic pitcher she’d tossed into her suitcase in Tirana. When she left, she would ask for it back. Zeke gave his father a card promising to be nicer in the coming year, a promise he broke (silently, for Lula’s benefit) even as Mister Stanley read the card aloud to Lula.
All Christmas Day, Mister Stanley kept saying how nontraditional it was to have holiday dinner at Applebee’s and catch a movie at the mall. They’d watched gladiator blood spurt across a giant screen and waited for the day to end. No one mentioned that it was the anniversary of Ginger’s departure. When they got home the answering machine was blinking. “Merry Christmas, honey, it’s Mom. Love from Ubud. Bali. I think. I meant to send you a present, but the post office was so . . . and these—” The machine buzzed, and Ginger’s voice sank beneath the ocean between them. Mister Stanley had said, “Mom sounds better, don’t you think?” and Zeke ran up to his room.
Now Zeke said, “I knew that scarf would look awesome. Let’s go. We’re late. Don will be waiting.”
“That’s my line,” said Mister Stanley. But Zeke was already out the door.
In the months that Lula had lived here, the three of them had been in the car together so rarely that their seating arrangement hadn’t been worked out.
Zeke said, “It’s your party, Lula,” and dove into the back seat.
Mister Stanley pulled onto the street, headed toward the highway, and merged into the onrushing traffic. How unlikely, that every driver should choose to observe the rules of the road over suicide and murder. Lights parted to let them through. Why should driving seem harder than escaping from a coffin underwater? Everybody drove. Everybody was born and ate and slept and had sex and died. And drove. It wasn’t Lula’s fault that she couldn’t. Where she came from, driving was more of an extreme sport than an everyday method of transportation.
Eventually her father had aimed his brother’s ancient Zastava at the armored personnel carrier, and that was the end of that. A cousin of a cousin had arranged to have her parents’ bodies shipped back to Tirana along with the corpses of Albanian boys who’d gone to fight with the KLA. Lula and her uncle and aunt waited at the airport, together with the families of the dead freedom fighters. Lula knew better than to ask to see what remained of her parents. The image she wanted to remember was her father’s stubborn potato face when Aunt Mirela yelled at him for heading into a war zone for no good reason. A very good reason, her father had said. I’m helping where help is needed. It was lucky that Aunt Mirela and Uncle Adnan didn’t blame Lula when her father stole their car for her parents’ final trip across the border to Kosovo.
The lunar glare of security lights in an office park strobed past, shocking Lula out of her melancholy reverie just in time to note the tipsy invitation of a tilting neon martini. Twice, they passed a black Lexus, and Lula turned around so sharply that Mister Stanley asked what was wrong.
“Lexuses are cool,” said Zeke. “The company should make hearses.”
If Lula had been alone with Zeke, she would have told him to knock on wood and shut up about hearses.
Mister Stanley said, “Zeke, these wet dead leaves are almost as bad as black ice. Not almost. As bad. Be careful.”
Zeke made a snoring sound.
Mister Stanley said, “Your mom called. She telephoned me at work.”
The fake snoring stopped.
This was when Mister Stanley informed Zeke that his mother had called? On the way to Lula’s party? But really, it made sense. He didn’t want to be alone with his son, or even looking at him, when he told him.
“So . . . what did she say?”
“She said she’s doing better. She sounded less upset, or anyway, less angry.”
Zeke said, “What’s she got to be angry about?”
“I wish I knew, son,” said Mister Stanley.
After a silence, Zeke asked, “Where is she?”
“Sedona, Arizona.”
“What’s there?”
“Red rocks. Indian spirits.”
Zeke said, “Mom’s kind of town.”
“She said she wants to see you. She wants you to come visit.” Mister Stanley tried and failed to keep the worry and begging out of his voice.
“That’s not going to happen,” Zeke said.
“Right on,” said Mister Stanley. “I like your thinking on this. So okay, let’s forget it, for now. This is Lula’s night. Poor Ginger! I wish there were some way we could help. But she doesn’t want our help.”
“Let’s have fun!” said Lula weakly.
“Definitely,” said Mister Stanley.
The fleet of hired cars double-parked in front of the restaurant promised that the wine would be good. The wine and the steak. There were places like this in Tirana, where Party bigwigs went and later gangsters. Guns in every armpit. A guy in a tuxedo and a black bow tie sprinted toward the car. Mister Stanley shrank back, and the parking valet had to pry the keys loose from his fist.
“Dad,” said Zeke. “Take it easy, okay? Valet parking is awesome.”
Inside, a group of beauties flitted like moths around the glowing lectern that held the reservation book, a shimmering tableau shattered by the arrival of Mister Stanley’s party. One girl split off from the rest to guide them toward Don Settebello, who had risen from a banquette and was waving as if to beloved passengers sailing into port.
My New American Life Page 5