*
They’re refinishing the floors and painting the walls of her new apartment. She can move in after the New Year, they say. She’s bought drapes, leopard throw pillows, a zebra patterned area rug, and a carved wooden elephant – all made in China and purchased from a local discount store. The saleswoman there says that African-looking pieces have become big sellers and she can’t keep them in stock. Fatma wonders if Uncle Oliver is behind any of this.
Miss Wilma gave her a set of clear glass dishes. She likes being able to see the food on her plate and only that. She wants a nice place – not fancy but nice, with good things that she’s chosen. And she wants a bed – a real bed, not just the mattress and box spring that came with the efficiency. A big bed like the one the healer in Lamu had. A bed with a canopy that will protect her, a bed that will give her good dreams, because the nighttime is becoming less frightening, and because this time, unlike the day she left Mrs. Lucchese’s apartment to live with Nick, she is really starting out new and leaving the nightmares behind her.
There’s a balcony in her new apartment where she’ll be able to eat breakfast on summer mornings and watch the stars at night. She’s buying a sleeper sofa for when her sons come to live with her. She’ll teach them that it is not in dominating others that one becomes a man, that pride is an overcoat for insecurity, that it is self-control and consideration for others that makes people strong. She’ll show them how to love without holding on too tightly, how to keep it all from slipping through their fingers.
Telephone lines have been restored in Somalia for the time being, and Kareem phones when he can. They speak in Somali; the minutes are too precious for misunderstood conversations.
“Stay away from terrorists. Stay away from pirates, Kareem.” “There are days, Mama, I wake up believing it is the only way
for my country to exist.”
“Somewhere the violence must stop. Please,” she begs him, but she does not ask him to promise.
There is still no way to send money. Stay safe, she wants to tell him. Stay alive. Study English and master the language of your future homeland. Do not be like your mother; prepare for your trip to America. There is so much she needs to tell him. But the time between each call grows longer and longer, and the fear for his life and the actions he may take becomes greater. She knows the consequences of desperation.
And when Hussein is old enough to travel away from his place of birth and face the lions on his own, she prays that he too will also come to know, and learn, and understand. On that day, they will all three sit beneath the shade of some great leafy American tree or, on a cool summer evening in the moonlight, on Fatma’s balcony, and they will talk and laugh and cry about what has gone before and what is yet to pass. And they will remember that once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a nation and a family. There was a princess.
Publisher Information
Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
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Copyright © 2012, Marisa Labozzetta and Guernica Editions Inc.
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012938469
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Labozzetta, Marisa
Sometimes it snows in America / Marisa Labozzetta.
(Essential prose series ; 96) Issued also in electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55071-609-2
9781550716108 Epub
9781550716115 Mobi
I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 96
PS3562.A2356S64 2012 813’.54 C2012-902885-1
Acknowledgements
I am deeply thankful to the following: My agent, Laura Gross, who believed in this book from the beginning and wouldn’t give up on it. Everyone at Guernica Editions, especially Michael Mirolla, Connie McParland, and Antonio D’Alfonso. My editors, Chris Jerome and Lindsay Brown. Hazel Robinson and Kate Decou, for taking me into the world of women’s incarceration and recovery. Sarah Craig for sharing her research on jinns, as well as details about Mombasa and Lamu. Julie Rose, Joann Kobin, Betsy Hartmann, Mordicai Gerstein, Roger King, Anthony Giardina, Zane Kotker, and Tracy Kidder for listening, reading, and offering excellent feedback. Many thanks to Marilyn Levinson, friend and research companion; to Eileen Giardina, David Hoose, Charlotte Watts, Rich McCarthy, Shivohn Garcia, Barbara McCarthy, Marci Yoss and Peter Bigwood, whose specifics were most helpful; and to my wonderful parents, Michael and Viola Labozzetta, who gave me my first appreciation for literature and the importance of family. I’m especially grateful to my husband, Martin Wohl, who put up with my having this book on my mind for a very long time. And most of all, to A., without whom this book could not exist.
About The Author
Marisa Labozzetta is the author of the novel, Stay With Me, Lella (Guernica 1999), and a collection of linked stories, Thieves Never Steal in the Rain. She was a finalist for the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee for her collection of short stories, At the Copa (Guernica
2006). Her work has appeared in The American Voice, Beliefnet.com, The Florida Review, The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, Show Me a Hero: Great Contemporary Stories About Sports, and the bestselling When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, among other publications. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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