Sometimes It Snows In America

by Marisa Labozzetta

  Nick invoked what Kosakowski called marital privilege and refused to testify against her, much to the district attorney’s disappointment.

  “Don’t think this is because he loves you,” Kosakowski said. “He knows this business. He knows I’ll make drugs a case and in turn make him look unreliable and guilty to boot. Of course, you won’t look squeaky clean in any scenario.”

  Fatma had told Kosakowski how Nick must have made Elsa hide the coke and paraphernalia in a drainpipe and then stuff some socks and briefs up it to keep the junk from falling out. That had always been their plan should the police show up at their home for any reason.

  “Unfortunately, you aren’t married to Elsa. The DA will certainly call her, and she can’t be too pleased with the burn on her behind. I’ll get the jury to see her as an unreliable witness – slip that lousy record of hers in there by accident.”

  The jury selection and trial were over in two days. The eight women and four men seemed to regard everyone concerned, including Kosakowski, as unreliable, and were eager to have the whole thing done with. The judge sentenced Fatma to two years for shooting Nick, one for carrying a firearm without a license, and five years’ probation for attempting to shoot Elsa. She was upgraded to a green jumpsuit, which meant she wouldn’t be leaving Shelby anytime soon.

  *

  Shelby was a coed facility, with men and women housed in separate buildings that were right next to each other. There were more men than women, and the men had the run of the place. The women could hear the men marching on the grounds as though they were in boot camp – a drill instructor shouting, the men chanting back. When the women arrived or when they were being taken to and from court, the women could see them shooting hoops in their air y recreation deck. And the women knew that the men thought they were better than the women.

  The women’s recreation deck was a fifty-by-fifty-foot room between the first and third floors with only one screened wall to remind women that there was an outside. “Can’t even see a bird fly overhead, sugars,” Miss Sarah, the deputy superintendent, said with her southern twang, angr y that the men had so many more privileges.

  When Fatma stood in the corner of the deck, Lauinger never failed to show up. His stocky body was too big for his legs, which looked as though they must have been cut off at the knees. Fatma never played basketball or volleyball or kickball as the other women did. Women didn’t do such things where she grew up. Instead, she’d lean against the wall and pretend she had better things to do than run around like a brainless hen in a coop.

  “Cunt,” Lauinger would whisper in her ear. “Stupid fucking African cunt. Can’t even kick a little ball. Can’t even speak English. Stupid African cunt.”

  The showers were ranged along the wall of the common room, and male COs like Lauinger, stationed up on the catwalks or on the floor, eyed the women as they walked to and fro and waited for a breast or pubic hair to peek out of their loosely drawn robes. That’s why Fatma didn’t like to take showers, even though they were allowed three a week. One day, though, she had gotten to the point where she couldn’t stand the smell of her body, so she scooped up her soap and towel and marched through the common room. She was about to open the shower curtain when Lauinger stopped her and pushed her against the wall, acting as if he were checking out her assigned time. He moved his thigh between her legs for a second; he was famous for doing this, but the women would be sent to segregation if they made a fuss. Miss Sarah tried to keep her eye on COs like him, but she couldn’t be everywhere at once, and she couldn’t risk losing COs.

  “I can get you whatever you want,” he whispered. “Crack, heroin, privileges. See you in your cell at lights-out?”

  “Fuck you.” The thought of Lauinger’s body on her was disgusting. His nostrils flared, and little orange hairs stuck out like needles on a porcupine. “Stupid fucking African cunt.”

  She kicked him with the same force she had used to punch Nick, but she didn’t stop there. While he was bent over cupping his balls and writhing in pain, she boxed his ears. Before she knew it she was off to the “hole,” because they said she was out of control.

  *

  They wore blue in the disciplinary segregation unit. Fatma assumed blue was supposed to have a soothing effect. Here there were no privileges: no TV, no radio, no hardcover books. You got one hour of recreation a day, but only in shackles. A five-month-pregnant hooker was brought into the cell next to Fatma’s, where she wailed morning and night because she could not be taken off methadone on account of her pregnancy. She imagined that the methadone was killing her baby. Perhaps that would be better, Fatma thought, since they were going to take the baby away from her anyway, just as Hussein had been taken away from Fatma in another world long ago. Still, the hooker kept wailing, and the memory that Fatma had tried so hard to bury worked its way up like rising dough until it perched on the tip of her brain and dove all the way down to her heart.

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” Fatma screamed over and over again at the top of her lungs.

  “Bitch!” Lauinger said, and took her up to Mental Health, where they wore purple. Valium was their first choice to calm her, but it took too long to kick in. So did Ativan. The injections kept coming until she became deaf to the world.

  “This is a goddamn shame,” Fatma heard Miss Sarah mutter under her breath. “You can’t work with a person on benzos.” Miss Sarah thought no one could hear her, but Fatma did. Fatma wanted to tell Miss Sarah so, but she was so drugged up she couldn’t even form a word. I hear you, Miss Sarah, she wanted to say. I hear you, Auntie.

  *

  When Fatma was let out of Mental Health, Miss Sarah tried to persuade her to take some of the courses offered at Shelby, such as Channeling Your Anger or Surviving Trauma. Fatma enrolled in art class and made postcards. She drew palm trees next to a toilet, or orange groves behind an electric chair, or a noose dangling from a tree. Her artwork was juvenile, like that of a first grader, but the messages she wrote on them for Nick were clear: “Miss(ed) you, but I won’t next time.” She sent her postcards to the house of the five-headed monster and waited for a response that never came. Then she quit the class.

  Fatma finally agreed to sit in on a class called Breaking the Silence, but she wouldn’t open her mouth. She listened to other women’s stories – their fear, their feelings of helplessness and loss of control. She always found ways to differentiate herself from them and Nick from their brutal husbands and boyfriends. Her teacher suggested that she take an addiction education class instead. “You’ll never win one until you deal with the other,” Miss Sarah agreed. She sat through a few classes, missed most, and learned nothing. When the course was over, she went to graduation not because she was graduating but because Miss Sarah had asked her to go.

  The ceremony was held in the chapel, which was decorated with two pots of white lilies on a table in front of the crucifix. Miss Sarah wore her tangerine colored suit. She usually wore bright colors to lift their spirits, Fatma supposed, but on occasions like graduation she favored lime green or raspberry pink or lemon yellow, because she said those days were as special as a bowl of sherbet on a sweltering summer day. The county sheriff spoke about his commitment to the women of Shelby. “There is a lot of good in me. I do have strengths,” he told them to repeat to themselves every morning and every time they felt on the verge of relapsing. He was tall and trim, with thick white hair parted on the side, and he seemed anxious to get the graduation over with so that he could go back to more important things like his job, or maybe out to lunch so he could have a drink. The graduates nodded and clapped, a sea of green uniforms in the wooden pews.

  The guest speaker was a former addict. They always were. Kendra had wiry orange hair and freckles that matched Miss Sarah’s outfit, and she told the story of her life with drugs, which started at age six. By eight she was out of the house, stealing to support her habit and to get away from her alcoholic father. Twenty-five now, she looked forty, her thin white skin prematurel
y wrinkled from drugs and alcohol. She had found God, who had helped with her rehab and her three kids. “Recovery is so hard, especially for those of you with children. Only God loves your kids more than you do. Get down on your knees and rely on God to take care of them while you’re in recovery.” She had a good job now: people trusted her. Fatma thought no one would ever trust her again like that.

  “None of you are just statistics,” Miss Sarah said. “Like Kendra, you’ve all come from someplace. You all have stories. You all have reasons.”

  One of the graduates belted out a black gospel song that filled everyone’s eyes with tears and brought the house down. Miss Sarah presented the awards: Inmate of the Month to the woman who had made significant improvement, Woman of Distinction to a tearful Manuela Aguilar, who had made the most. When the graduates had received their certificates, it was all over. The women went back to their cells. “Still angry at the world? Still fighting yourself?” Miss Sarah sat down alongside Fatma in the common room afterward. “Life’s hard, sugar. But we can learn how to make it easier.”

  Fatma trusted Miss Sarah, although she knew nothing about her except that she watched over her – over all of them.

  “What does your name mean?” Fatma asked, to Miss Sarah’s surprise.

  “Sarah? I think it means princess,” she said, giving a little laugh as though she was embarrassed to have such a regal name. “My daddy was a farmer down south. Where does you name come from?” she asked in turn.

  “Fatimah, daughter of Muhammad.”

  *

  It was a dreary late autumn day when they told Fatma she had a visitor. She had awoken to the sound of rain several times during the night, which was unusual because she was sleeping soundly these days. She was back on drugs, compliments of a new CO who asked for nothing but money in return. The rain that woke her was heavy and pounded against the narrow strip of windowpane in her cell. In the morning she could see that the trees on the edge of the prison grounds were bare. The rain had taken the leaves down and blanketed the sidewalk and parking lot with what looked like a soggy orange, red, and gold quilt.

  She didn’t know whom to expect as she walked into the reception room. No one ever came to see her. There was only one person she could think of who would always be able to find her, but she was too far gone to primp even for him. She had taken a look at her reflection in the metal mirror of her cell: her eyes were puffy from too much sleep and greasy strands of hair fell around her face while the rest was loosely tied back with an elastic band. She hadn’t showered for days. Without makeup, her complexion seemed as green as her uniform, and her visitor’s exquisite appearance only made Fatma feel uglier. The visitor wore a white trench coat with a belt cinched tightly around her almost nonexistent waist. Her long body bent in a graceful arc as she reached down toward her extended foot to remove some leaves stuck to the heel of her high black leather boot. She looked as if she were assuming one of the yoga postures Fatma had learned in exercise class. Slender fingers with red-painted tips peeled the dripping hood off her head. Her highlighted hair was pulled back into an elegant knot, making her black eyes seem even bigger, her small nose rounder, her lips fuller. Perfectly applied makeup gave her skin a flawless, airbrushed appearance. She had been well named, for Jamila meant “beautiful.” She looked at Fatma and blinked: two black spiders gently swept over her eyes.

  “Jamila?” Fatma didn’t think she was real.

  She stiffly put her arms around Fatma, as though this was what she should do in front of the CO. She pretended she didn’t want to get Fatma wet, but Fatma knew Jamila didn’t want to touch her. She might have been an actress, but she couldn’t hide her repulsion at seeing Fatma in such shabby condition. She loosened her belt and unfastened the coat’s buttons but she didn’t take it off, making it clear that she wasn’t staying long.

  Fatma hadn’t seen her half sister since Jamila was eight, long before Jamila had been discovered by the English photographer, but she recognized her immediately. She’d watched her mature on the covers of teen magazines and in films. The only child of Fatma’s father’s relationship with Jamila’s mother, Jamila had inherited her mother’s dusky copper-colored skin and long neck, and their father’s height. A little younger than Fatma, she had never had much to do with the rest of Fatma’s family. When she was eighteen she was cast in a James Bond film and became every man’s fantasy. Despite her lack of talent, her beauty captivated audiences. It was her marriage to a famous British actor that really made her famous.

  “What you’re doing here?” Fatma asked.

  “What are you doing here?” She spoke English perfectly, with a British accent.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Brother Hamal gave our sister Rihana your phone number and address – I used to see Rihana on occasion when I was on modeling assignments in Milan, and Hamal guessed she’d be able to get in touch with me. He knows I travel to America.”

  She paused. Her eyes darted around the room as though she was searching for a cue card or anything to stare at other than Fatma, but the entire place made her uncomfortable. Settling on a spot, she continued.

  “There was no one with your name at that phone number, so I went to the address on Main Street, but the people in the store below said that you had remarried and moved. They gave me your husband’s name to look up. When I called, he said I would find you here.” Her voice trailed off.

  “He said anything else?”

  “No. Just to send you his best.”

  “How you get to Rockfield?” Fatma tried not to slur her words. She forced open her eyelids, but they were too heavy to stay that way for long.

  “I’m on location in New York. I took a limo.”

  “That must shake up Luccheses, you coming for me in limo! How come you never look for me before?”

  Jamila stared at the floor, somewhat embarrassed. “I was young, trying to make a name for myself. I couldn’t take the time. In the beginning you have to do what everyone else wants you to do. You can’t imagine what that’s like.”

  “I can.”

  “Besides, I didn’t come to America that often. I was lucky to get small parts. I still don’t come that often. Let’s be honest, Fatma, we were never really close.”

  “You go back?”

  “To Somalia?” She looked at Fatma as if she were insane. “Do you know what’s going on there? They hate all of us.”

  “A lot of family – my family – is left there?” “I guess.”

  “You help them?”

  “It was just a fluke how I left. I couldn’t even get my mother out in time. She only permitted me to go with the photographer because she knew it would be my last opportunity to leave.” Her expression saddened. “Money can’t buy ever ything, you know. They said my mother died of pneumonia soon after I left. I think she star ved to death. I assume those who left early enough are scattered now all over Europe, Morocco, Kenya, Nigeria.”

  “I’m only one here? In America?” “Yes, according to Rihana.”

  “You know how my auntie is?”

  She took a breath, as though they had finally gotten to the meat of this reunion. “Hamal wrote to Rihana and told her that your auntie had a stroke. He and Rihana were hoping I could find you on one of my visits here and tell you. Your auntie asks for you. It’s her one wish – to see you. You are her daughter, you know.” Jamila’s voice carried a tone of reprimand.

  “They know about me?” “No. And I won’t tell them if you don’t want me to. As I said, I don’t really keep in touch. I can tell Rihana I didn’t find you.”

  “I saw one time you get married to Michael Randall,” Fatma said.

  “We’re divorced. I’m engaged to François Paquette, the French skier.” She held out her left hand for Fatma to admire the large oval diamond held high on white gold prongs. Fatma was sorry she couldn’t show Jamila her ring, but it was being held for her at the jail, along with the few belongings she had come in with. Fatma had never heard of F
rançois Paquette.

  They talked some more, mostly about the time they had gone on safari with their father. Of all Fatma’s father’s children, Jamila was the closest in age to Fatma, and their father had once brought Jamila along on Fatma’s annual birthday outing with him. Fatma had been jealous of her then: it was supposed to have been her time alone with her father. She also hated the way their father catered to Jamila, the way he lifted her delicate body and dreamily brought her extraordinary face close to his, as though he were taking in the scent of a fragrant flower. Jamila changed the subject and told Fatma what living in England was like.

  She got up as though she had heard the whistle for a train she was about to board. She seemed glad to have this ordeal almost behind her.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, knotting her belt. For a moment she appeared sincere.

  “No, I don’t think so. Thank you.” Maybe if you had found me sooner, Fatma wanted to say.

  She fished in her black alligator purse for a pen; she wrote her number on a folded tissue, and handed it to Fatma as though to say: Whatever it’s worth.

  “Your pictures are popular in here.” “Great,” Jamila said, rolling her big eyes. She got up and hugged Fatma, this time more warmly. “I have to go now.”

  “Your limo waiting?” “Yes.”

  “What color?” “White.”

  “Like your raincoat.”

  “You still have them!” Jamila eyed the tattoos on Fatma’s arms. Fatma hadn’t thought about them in years; they had faded so much she had forgotten they were there. Even Nick had mistaken

  them for black and blue marks. “And you?” Fatma asked.

  “I had them removed years ago.”

  *

  “Goodbye.” That was all Jamila said. What else could she say? Gee, I’m sorry your life is in shambles. Thank God our father isn’t alive to see you. They hadn’t promised to keep in touch – they knew better than to promise anything. For Jamila, the visit had probably alleviated some of the guilt for not having tried to find Fatma earlier and perhaps for not helping the rest of the family. But for Fatma, not since the visit with her father in Washington had Africa seemed so close: she could touch it; she could smell it; she could hear it. A longing for it gnawed at her stomach. She was star ving.