Sometimes It Snows In America

by Marisa Labozzetta

  Mrs. Dolan taught her students how to purchase gum and little packages of Kleenex, and how to order a Big Mac and Coke at McDonald’s. Now on her walks Fatma went to a convenience store and bought a pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum every day. She asked the Indian man at the register questions Mrs. Dolan had taught them: How much is this gum? Do you have sugar free? The Indian man would always mumble that he didn’t understand. Daniel said he had a heavy accent of his own and shouldn’t have criticized Fatma’s English. “Fuck you!” she told him one day, fed up with his complaining. “Fuck you too,” he said. It was the best English conversation she’d ever had.

  When she spoke, some salespeople thought she was drunk and looked disgusted. Others looked at her with pity, and she knew they thought she was retarded. So she went back to saying nothing: she pointed to what she wanted, and gave the cashier a large enough bill that she wouldn’t have to figure out the change. Then she discovered something easier. When no one was watching, she picked up the gum and hid it in her fist or up her sleeve. Sometimes she dropped it into her purse. It was gratifying, knowing she had pulled something over on the clerks. She chewed gum in English class, which infuriated Mrs. Dolan.

  Daniel told Fatma that she was just being stubborn, that she had a flair for languages. But while she had grown up speaking Arabic, Somali, and Swahili, English was the language of the devil, Lisha had said.

  It wasn’t until she met Miss Greene, however, a woman about Beverly’s age who lived in an apartment next door and worked in the X-ray department of a hospital in Rockfield, that speaking English began to matter. Beverly could never mention her without saying, “Miss Greene, the nice heavyset black Baptist lady next door.” Fatma never knew whether the description was a warning for Fatma to lose weight, because she too was short with a generous bosom and a thick waist, or to remember that she was also black, or to convert. One day, when Fatma was returning from her walk and Miss Greene from work, Miss Greene invited her up to her apartment. They sat at a kitchen table covered with a big orange and cobalt floral-print cloth that reminded Fatma of Kenya. Enormous green vines erupted from large planters, and walls were painted yellow, orange, and red. Miss Greene was big, with a fanny that spilled way over the seat of her chair and breasts that could have nursed all the starving babies of Somalia. Fatma wanted to climb onto her lap, pull one out of her sweater, and start sucking. She wanted to get lost on Miss Greene’s lap. She wanted to smother her face in those two giant pillows until she suffocated from joy.

  Sometimes Miss Greene worked through the night, sometimes on weekends. “I’ll leave a light on in the kitchen and, when you see it, morning or night, you’ll know I’m up having my coffee, and you come by,” she told Fatma, who began to work harder at school so she’d be able to understand her new friend.

  Sitting at Miss Greene’s table, Fatma took in the sweet scented oils the older woman used in her hair, which she pulled back into a small knot, and listened to the stories Miss Greene told about herself. Miss Greene would say things several different ways, until Fatma grasped the meaning, whereupon Miss Greene celebrated by opening her big mouth so wide with pleasure that her gold tooth caught the light and sparkled like a star in the night. Then Miss Greene would clap her hands to encourage Fatma, as though she were a baby learning to say Mama.

  She’d come north from Virginia a long time ago, but her parents had died at an early age from some disease or other and left Miss Greene pretty much on her own. She talked about places like foster homes that Fatma couldn’t really imagine but that, in her mind, connected them like an umbilical cord of abandonment. She had never married, either. Fatma didn’t know any women except her ugly sister Kamilah who had never married. But Miss Greene wasn’t like Kamilah; Miss Greene was beautiful. “Don’t want no man in my life, child. Don’t want to raise no man. Don’t want to answer to no man. Ain’t got time for no man.” She didn’t have to convince Fatma about living without a man; marriage had never been her choice. She wanted to be free like Miss Greene, and she wondered what it could possibly be like to live alone. But she was incapable of doing this in America, and

  she would never be allowed to do it in Mombasa.

  “Why I just sit all day? I see everybody go work,” she told Miss

  Greene after they had begun to meet regularly. “You have a business.”

  “I cannot be there.”

  “Then we’ll go down to the Skills Center and sign you up to learn how to do something,” she said. “I see you need your own career.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, I don’t know, child. Something with your hands. Something where you don’t need to talk none.”

  When Miss Greene wasn’t looking, Fatma helped herself to things she didn’t even need – a bar of soap from a stack under the bathroom sink, loose change on the kitchen counter, one of the many tubes of lipstick in the medicine cabinet. Fatma liked having things that were Miss Greene’s, anything that had touched her warm smooth skin.

  After a few months of classes, Fatma did learn something useful – circuit boarding, probably because it was mathematical and, as Miss Greene had said, she didn’t have to talk none. Miss Greene helped her fill out an application from an electronics company in the industrial park. “No one is going to hire you,” Daniel said. “Not until you can speak English better. And you could, if you put your mind to it.

  You already speak three languages.”

  Daniel was always so doubtful. So cautious. Fatma was careful to dress nicely on the day of the interview: a navy skirt that came down to her calves and a sweet-potato-colored blouse. She oiled her hair so that it shone and pinned the sides of it back with two rhinestone barrettes that Daniel’s mother had given her for her eighteenth birthday. Her earrings were the gold oval loops Daniel had bought in Nairobi on their first anniversary. She wore high quilted nylon boots even though there was no snow. She wore boots every day in winter to keep her toes from freezing. She put on Miss Greene’s lipstick. She was getting used to wearing makeup like American ladies, like the ladies of Kenya who worked in expensive shops, like the whores of Somalia.

  “Mrs. Kornmeyer?” the woman in personnel at Gemtek called out.

  When Fatma approached her, the woman’s jaw dropped, and Fatma knew it wasn’t her outfit that impressed the woman. She was getting used to many things in America.

  “We must have made a mistake,” the woman said. “We must have called the wrong person.”

  “You make mistake – about color of skin.” Fatma pointed to her own face.

  She was understanding English but she was hating America. Gemtek paid Fatma thirteen dollars an hour to sit on an assembly line and put circuit boards together. They had made another mistake, too: they had no r ule about workers wearing safety goggles. Five months later, Elsa Martinez, a young Puerto Rican who sat next to her, had a fan going on a hot summer day. The fan blew the molten solder she was working with into Fatma’s right eye. Someone should have taken Fatma straight to the emergency room where Miss Greene worked, but instead they had her finish her shift. By the time she got home she couldn’t see out of that eye. Beverly took her to a doctor who performed laser surger y; however, the solder had spent too much time in her eye and had gone in too deep. The scarring would come back again and again, like a recurring nightmare.

  She gradually regained her sight after putting drops in her eye, and she was given glasses for close work and reading, but her eye was red and teary all the time. She called it her Mombasa eye – the eye that wept for home.

  Miss Greene thought Fatma’s accident was all her fault, because she had helped her get the job at Gemtek. She felt so bad she did something nobody had ever done for Fatma: she apologized. Though Fatma loved having Miss Greene’s things, she never stole from her again.

  The Penny House

  The week Miss Greene was working until four, she and Fatma had their coffee late in the day. Fatma talked to her about Daniel, about how she might like him better if they had m
ore space instead of being on top of each another.

  “I saw an advertisement for a penny house,” she told Fatma and began rummaging through a thick stack of newspapers on one of her kitchen chairs. She was still feeling bad about Fatma’s eye and seemed to want to go out of her way to help her more than ever.

  “A what?”

  “It’s a government house. You put down a penny and get a really low interest rate. But you got to meet their qualifications. Talk to your Daniel, but don’t take too long. They go faster than ice cubes on a summer day.”

  “This can be problem with Daniel,” Fatma said. “See what I mean about men, child?”

  *

  “No way! We don’t have a prayer,” Daniel said that night as he and Fatma lay in bed. The open newspaper in front of his face prevented her from seeing his expression. “Here’s an article on Somalia,” the voice behind the newspaper said, changing the subject. He tried to keep her up to date on what was happening in Africa, sharing news whenever he came across something in the paper or heard a story on the radio. While they were still in Katundu, Somalia had declared a state of emergency after its defeat in the Ogaden war. It had broken its alliance with the Soviets, who had supported Ethiopia. This and the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan had led to a strengthening of Somalia’s ties with the United States. Daniel insisted on reading the article to her.

  “The U.S. is supplying monetary aid in return for the use of air and naval facilities at Berbera, but remains hesitant to provide military help while Somali forces maintain operations in Ethiopia. Added to this is the growing concern that Somalia will renew friendship with Libya. Opposition movements continue to spring up in Somalia along the border, threatening the government of General Ahmad Siad Adan – ”

  “You’re talking too fast for me to understand,” she interrupted in Swahili.

  “Try to talk in English, Fatma. You need the practice. You’ll be applying for citizenship soon.”

  “Daniel, I hear nothing from my brothers and sisters. Nothing from Ayasha. Nothing. So we talk, Daniel – in English – about house.” She couldn’t worry about her family right now. They didn’t want her home, and she hadn’t visited for some time. She couldn’t help but feel selfish and worried about her unhappy existence. “All we need is five hundred for application and fifteen hundred in bank,” she said in English. “That we have got.”

  “Forget it, Fatma. Do not waste your time.” He pronounced each word distinctly to make sure she got the message.

  She had expected as much. Kilimanjaro had yet to produce a cent of profit. Oh, people wandered in and out of the store on their lunch hour and admired the five-foot-tall hand-carved giraffes, the intricate designs woven into baskets. They pawed over the jewelry, the brightly colored outfits, and the lustrous ebony masks. “It’s lovely, but where would I put it?” they’d say, or “It doesn’t fit with my color scheme,” or “I couldn’t walk the streets in that.” Those searching for Halloween costumes or something to display in schools during Multicultural Week found the wares far too expensive. Aside from purchasing the occasional necklace or miniature zebra or leopard, customers left empty-handed. Sometimes they roared with laughter at the absurdity of an article. You can’t force your culture on others: some things – some people, she was learning – were meant to blend in with the landscape of their own countries, or else they stand out like a sore thumb – objects of ridicule, always out of place.

  She stopped tr ying to convince him about the penny house and began to play with his uume instead. He stopped laughing at her.

  While her mother had done her best to rid herself of Fatma, she could never dilute the blood that also flowed through her daughter and that carried her trait of determination, of survival. Fatma was descended from a long line of tycoons, and she understood that production was nothing without a market. There didn’t seem to be a market in Rockfield for the African artifacts, and she tried to tell Daniel this, but he wouldn’t listen. Daniel was a sweet man, but he could never see beyond his short nose. The business was going to fail, and part of Fatma was going to be happy to watch it go down. She was here, in a place she hated, where no one was going to rescue her. And why would she expect them to?

  She sent in the application and, in the spring of 1984, Daniel read her the letter saying that they qualified for a government loan at a three percent interest rate. They moved out of the Kornmeyer triple-decker and into a two-bedroom house on Poplar Street in Rockfield, just over the city line, in a neighborhood called Forest Acres. Fatma’s only regret in going was that she had to leave her lovely Miss Greene, who had suggested the penny house in the first place.

  “Where is forest?” Fatma asked Daniel.

  “There was a forest once. That’s what happens in America. Things get swallowed up little by little. People get swallowed up.” Some of the forest remained, but now it was only a small park that Daniel said wasn’t safe at night, and hardly in the daytime, since it was filled with drug addicts and pushers. “You might say the forest became a jungle,” he said.

  She thought they used that term a lot in America. Everything bad was a jungle. What did they know about jungles? Her father was a hunter: he covered the walls of her mother’s home in Mogadishu with stuffed heads of tigers and lions and other animals that roamed the high plains of Kenya. The first thing he had taught Fatma to kill was a deer. She remembered that it was her tenth birthday, and he had come, as he always did for her birthday, to Mogadishu. From there they had gone on safari to Kilimanjaro: they often went there or to Serengeti, but first they passed through the jungle, where you could kill all the deer you wanted. In Kenya, people killed with a purpose: for food, for clothing, for decoration; but deer, nobody cared why or how you killed them, her father told her.

  The .22 double barrel was heavy, and it hurt as it kicked back into her shoulder the way a frightened child jumps into its mother’s arms. It had taken only three attempts. Her father said she was a natural. She had a good eye, the other men in the group, including father’s oldest brother, Abdullah, agreed. They ran to cut out the deer’s liver and collect its blood in a cup. Handing them to Fatma, they made her bite into the raw meat, then sip the blood. It’s something every hunter does after his first kill, they explained; if he doesn’t, he will bring bad luck on the rest of his hunting days. They laughed as she gagged on the soft, warm meat. They cheered when she threw up the blood as the heat rose from her bowels to her skin and her stomach convulsed. Her head pounded. She had liked the killing part, though, halting a quick animal in its tracks. But it had been a doe, and she had felt bad about leaving its baby without a mother. The men only clapped their hands with glee and toasted her success – their success.

  Later that night, as she lay awake and the others slept, her Uncle Abdullah, who had always appeared ancient to her, crouched beside her mat. As the eldest member of the family, he was the most respected. He was also the kindest and fairest of the brothers – fairer than the ruthless General Ahmad, gentler even than her father, Muhammad. Perhaps his benevolence had come with age, for he was much older than his brothers, or because his military days were far behind him.

  “You are all right?” he whispered, his face so close to hers that his moustache tickled her.

  She nodded, though her stomach was still queasy.

  “You are brave, little Fatma,” he said. “You are the good General Muhammad’s daughter. And remember that your name comes from Fatimah, the Prophet Muhammad’s favorite daughter.” He patted her cheeks until the knots in her stomach dissolved and she fell asleep. Simple words. But words too heavy with meaning for her little ears to take in at the time.

  Fatma’s father never took her on a lion hunt. “It’s too risky to mind a child and hunt for a lion at the same time,” he claimed. He would go with only three other men. While it is cowardly to shoot a lion for sport, to battle it with your hands, as her father did, was acceptable. A knife may be used to counter the lion’s claws and thus level the odds a bit.
Her father sought only king lions. Not all lions are kings, not even all males, but the king lion truly rules the jungle. Fatma had seen animals quake and panic when the king roared. “You know it when you see a king: he looks you straight in the eye, and his look says, ‘Don’t come near me or you’ll die.’ He can hear the drop of a needle, smell you from miles away,” her father said.

  Not many men can outsmart a king lion, which likes to trap the hunter, going past him for thirty or forty miles, then returning and surprising him when he is tired and least expects it. People spent months searching for lions. Fatma’s father did kill a female lion one time in self-defense and then took her cubs to Fatma’s mother’s ranch to raise as pets. Fatma used to ride them when she was two or three years old, the way toddlers ride big dogs. But her father had to shoot one of them after it ripped off the arm of a neighbor’s boy. “Once a lion has tasted human blood, he becomes addicted,” her father explained. “And he cannot stop from killing humans again.”

  *

  Besides a store that sold used auto parts on one corner and a fish-and-chips take-out on the other, empty lots filled with broken beer bottles and greasy bags surrounded Poplar Street. The park had no trees, just a rusty swing set and a broken slide. Some Poplar Street owners were making an attempt to fix up and maintain their homes, most of which were similar: an open front porch (two narrow windows on the second floor above it); either clapboard or shingled; painted a pale color like sky blue or pistachio green. Daniel and Fatma’s house – like they themselves – was two-toned and different from the rest: white clapboards on the bottom half and brown shingles on the top. Fatma liked it. She had Daniel paint all the rooms a bright yellow, because she wanted her house to seem sunny during the dreary winters. She went to a discount store and bought brocade drapes for all the windows – gold and red and royal blue – that went down to the floor and could be tied back with braided ropes. Beverly was horrified by their ornateness; Daniel thought them a bit gaudy, but they made Fatma feel like a princess.