My New American Life (5 page)

She said, “I'm hiding your gun because—?”

Alvo rose out of his chair.

“What good would it do for you to know? Would it be better for you? Or me? The less you know about us, the better.”

“Suppose I need to get in touch with you?”

“You won't,” said Leather Jacket. “We'll be in touch.”

“Okay,” Lula said. “I'll keep it. But I don't know how long I'll be living in this house.”

“No offense,” said Alvo. “But I don't get the feeling you're going anywhere soon.” He twitched one shoulder at Leather Jacket, who produced a brown paper lunch bag and set it on the table. They all stared at the bag. Alvo nodded, and Hoodie took out an evil-looking snub-nosed revolver. Then they all stared at the gun. For Lula, it was as if her father's spirit had entered the room and given his ghostly approval to her new American life.

“When will you come get it?” Lula said and promptly burst into tears.

The men couldn't have looked more shocked if she'd picked up the gun and shot herself. Lula hadn't planned on crying, no more than she'd planned on not being able to stop. Maybe it was the eagle on Hoodie's shirt, or the taste of raki, or some magnetic force that dragged her back to her granny's house, when Granny was alive, telling that story about the woman who went around collecting women's tears and selling them in vials, the ultimate high-end cosmetics, until a neighbor denounced her and she was about to be sent away, but a party official's wife asked for a sample, and the dealer in tears was pardoned in return for a steady supply. Most likely the gun made her cry.

All this time Lula was sobbing. How she missed her mother and father, and especially her grandmother! She would never see her again. There was no one here who knew these stories, who knew Lula or her granny. Lula cried for her granny and her parents and her childhood, for her home, all lost, for Communism, good riddance, for the lawlessness, the riots, the violence, the problems grinding on. For her once-beautiful homeland now in the hands of toxic dumpers and sex traffickers and money launderers. She cried for missing her country, for not missing it, for having nothing to miss. She cried for the loneliness and uncertainty of her life among strangers who could still change their minds and make her go home.

She blinked. The three guys were staring at her, as if through a rainy windshield.

“Get over it!” Guri yelled. Lula stopped crying, instantly cured, as if from a case of the hiccups.

“We'll come check on you,” Alvo said.

Squeegeeing her tears with her hand, Lula couldn't help asking, “When?”

“Don't worry,” said Leather Jacket. “You'll see us when you see us.”

Chapter Two

L
ula watched her three new brothers ease themselves, like fragile cargo, into the SUV. Leather Jacket in the driver's seat, Hoodie beside him. Alvo in back.

“See you soon,” she bleated.

The house swam into focus. In two hours Zeke would be home, and the site of a tough-guy sit-down would have to be restored to the suburban haven where a responsible dad was raising his son in the wreckage of his marriage.

Lula took the gun upstairs. She paused in her bathroom doorway. One advantage of living here was having her own bathroom. How quickly she'd switched from making do with a filthy communal apartment-block latrine to needing her middle-class personal space. She was glad not to have to use the same toilet as Mister Stanley, nor to have to wait while Zeke did whatever he did, locked in for an hour every morning. Lula liked being able to keep her bathroom clean and modestly stocked with the beauty products she'd bought in the East Village with Dunia, and which she grudgingly replenished after hoarding every precious squirt of shampoo.

She thought of that scene in
The Godfather
: the gun taped inside the toilet tank. No need for such contortions to hide something at Mister Stanley's. Her impulse was to put it in the same drawer with her money. But not even sensible Lula was that unsuperstitious. “Don't keep your gun with your money” was probably, or should be, an Albanian saying.

Finally she slipped the gun in her underwear drawer. In a normal house with normal men, that would have been the last place. But neither Mister Stanley nor Zeke would look there. It was very American, following the rules of privacy and respect designed to help men and women have happy, healthy relationships. At home, there were different rules: You pretended to be fascinated by everything your boyfriend said until you got the ring, and he pretended to listen to you until you agreed to have sex. After marriage, you could go back to ignoring or putting up with each other and leading separate lives. For now, it was exciting to keep Alvo's gun in her underwear drawer. Almost as if it were Alvo.

Given the state of her underwear, she was glad the gun
wasn't
Alvo. Mostly she wore cheap synthetics from outdoor bins on Fourteenth Street, except for one fancy bra and silk panties, lavender laced with dark pink ribbon. The bra alone had cost her a week of tips at La Changita. She'd read in a magazine that one of the top ten secrets of successful women was wearing expensive underwear under their business suits. I wear it for myself, explained one female CEO. It's my secret message from myself to myself. Lula bought the costly underwear, but had never worn it or gotten the secret message, which might have been: Who do you think you're kidding? She hadn't bought the underwear for corporate success, but for the future boyfriend. Buy it, and the boyfriend will appear. But the boyfriend had never appeared. Maybe it would work magic if she wrapped the Cute One's gun in her good lingerie. It was nice to have a reason to wish she believed in magic.

Downstairs, Lula dragged the dining room chairs back to their usual places. But furniture wasn't the problem. How could three little cigarettes have left so much of themselves behind? Hoodie and Leather Jacket smoked black cigarettes that reminded her of her grandpa, who'd grown his own tobacco. Alvo smoked Camels. The basement furnace wheezed and complained as Lula pumped the front door until the chilly house smelled like the Tirana train station in the dead of winter.

At four, when Zeke got home from school, Lula was in the kitchen.

“You're cooking?” he said. “What's with that?”

Lula watched the bubbles of steam leave ragged craters in the thick red paste. Every fall, her granny used to simmer bushels of red peppers down to a sort of ketchup from which she made delicious sandwiches with cream cheese. It was destiny that, on Lula's walk home from the library yesterday, she'd spotted a box of red peppers outside the corner grocery that ordinarily never sold anything fresh, except a few shriveled lemons and cucumbers halfway to being pickles. Maybe Granny, wherever she was, had sent Lula the peppers with their witchy power to trump tobacco.

Zeke said, “How come it smells like cigarettes in here?”

Lula said, “Gas, not smoke. Matches. I had to light the burners. The pilot light went out.”

“Did you start smoking? I wouldn't blame you for needing something to cut the boredom.”

The boredom? If Zeke only knew! She'd spent her day with guys whom Zeke would pay money to meet. She said, “You think I'm crazy enough to start smoking when cigarettes are fifteen dollars a pack?”

“Seven dollars. Oops. Was that a trick question?”

“Please don't smoke,” said Lula.

“I don't,” Zeke said. “One cigarette a week.”

“That's too much.”

“Okay. One cigarette a month.” Zeke picked up the newspaper. “Awesome old lady.”

This morning, Lula had walked into the kitchen to find the newspaper left open to a feature story about Albanian sworn virgins dressing and living like men to support their widowed mothers. The pretext for the article was that the custom was dying out, but really it was an excuse to run a photo of a butch Albanian lady in cowboy drag, her knees apart and a rifle slung across her lap.

Lula said. “Every time the paper has something on Albania, your dad leaves it out for me to read.”

“Do you think my dad has a crush on you?”

“No,” Lula said. “I think he misses your mom.”

Zeke said, “I don't know. Mom calls every so often and asks for money, and he sends a fat check wherever she is. So he must still care or feel guilty. Or something. Did you know any old ladies who dressed up like that?”

“No,” said Lula. “But I had this great-aunt . . . once someone stole some of our firewood, and she shot the guy.”

“Did she kill him?”

“No. But she popped the guy in his kneecap from ten meters away.” The firewood had been a good touch. So had the shattered kneecap. If Zeke asked if her story was true, she'd confess she made it up.

Zeke said, “How long is a meter?”

“Look it up. You're a senior. Don't you study math?”

Zeke said, “Do you think you got her DNA?”

“She never married. Nobody got her DNA.”

“Don't you know anything about DNA? You could both have Genghis Khan's DNA. Didn't you study science?”

Was it Hoodie or Leather Jacket who'd said all Albanians had the same DNA? Would sex with Alvo be incest?

“What's the matter?” Zeke said.

“Why?” Lula said.

“You looked weird for a minute.”

Lula said, “It's hostile to tell people they look weird. Or tired. This waitress at La Changita was always telling people they looked tired and ruining their whole evening. Every time she said it, they had to run look in the mirror.”

“Does weird always have to mean bad? Couldn't someone look weird good?”

Lula said, “Do you want a sandwich? Red pepper paste and cream cheese.”

“No thanks,” said Zeke. “I don't eat anything the color of blood.”

“Pizza is the color of blood. Ketchup is the color of blood.”

“They're the color of tomatoes.”

“What kind of vampire are you?” Lula said. “Okay, I'm making pizza.”

Stewed peppers and microwaved tomato sauce canceled out three cigarettes. All the same, Lula kept sniffing the air. When Mister Stanley got home, his nostrils didn't so much as flutter. Lula leaned against the counter while Mister Stanley sipped a glass of cold water into which he had squeezed the juice of a lemon he cut into wedges and kept, plastic-wrapped, in the fridge. Lula liked Mister Stanley, who was kindhearted and decent, who only wanted the best for his son, and who always treated Lula with perfect consideration. So the fact that she was sometimes revolted by the sight of him drinking his nightly glass of water filled her with guilt, and also with anger at herself that spilled over onto Mister Stanley, like the droplets that sometimes dripped down his chin.

“How was work?” asked Lula.

“Uneventful,” said Mister Stanley. “Another day of wishing I'd never quit teaching.”

“You could go back,” said Lula.

Mister Stanley said. “My life is very expensive, as my wife was quick to point out before she made it more expensive. One only hopes she's getting the help she needs, though she never seems to stay in one place long enough to . . . Well, on a brighter note, how's Zeke?”

“Fine.”

“Homework?”

“Done.”

“Did you read that article?” Mister Stanley said. “About those Albanian women dressing like men? Imagine wanting to—or being forced to—live like that.”

“People do what they have to.” It was the kind of gloomy statement Lula counted on to silence Mister Stanley when she was tired of talking. But why was she feeling sullen? She'd had an interesting day! She briefly considered mentioning the sworn virgin in Shkodër who was a Party official responsible for the deaths of many innocent people. But it was a long ugly story she didn't feel like telling. She said, “My granny was a ball buster. Except that she got married and had kids and wore a dress.”

A smile wobbled on Mister Stanley's face. “Where did you learn an expression like . . .
ball buster
?”

Lula knew some English expressions that Mister Stanley probably didn't. It was touching that he'd found it hard to say. But how could he work on Wall Street and be so clean? She'd learned the phrase at La Changita, from young guys who were probably angling for Mister Stanley's job. You learn a word the first time you're told not to
be
that word, implying you already are.

“I don't remember,” said Lula.

Mister Stanley said, “You were saying about your grandmother?”

“She loved pro wrestling. She made my grandpa get an illegal TV antenna so she could watch the matches from Bavaria. He could have gotten sent away for that.” That part at least was true.

“Write it down,” said Mister Stanley. “Another terrific story. I'll pass it along to Don. Speaking of which, I almost forgot the most important thing. You and I and Zeke are having dinner with Don on Saturday night to celebrate your work visa coming through.”

Lula said, “Don't you think that's bad luck? Can I get you a snack? I made this delicious red pepper paste my granny used to cook.”

“No thanks,” said Mister Stanley. “I'd love to, but red peppers give me heartburn. What's bad luck?”

“Celebrating,” said Lula. “Celebrating anything.”

Mister Stanley said, “Lula, when you apply for citizenship and you go for your interview, do me a favor. Don't say you think it's bad luck to go out to a pricey restaurant in Manhattan and raise a glass to a positive change in your immigration status. And have someone else pick up the tab. It's deeply un-American.”

Lula said, “Sorry. I know. I'm grateful. I can't believe that you and Mr. Settebello would do this. I mean, in addition to—”

“Please,” said Mister Stanley. “We're happy for you. In fact, what about a little bonus in case you want to buy something to wear to the dinner? Only if you want to . . . only if . . . I wouldn't—”

“Thank you,” Lula said. “That's so nice of you. I'll go into the city this week.”

“Be careful,” said Mister Stanley. “Watch out.”

Had Mister Stanley gotten a secret tip from Don? Was there some kind of crime wave? Had the code level been kicked up to red in honor of Halloween? Lula and Zeke had watched the terror threat level rise before each holiday, as if suicide bombers thought that blowing themselves up on Presidents Day would put them on the fast track to the Garden of the Martyrs. Lula often told Zeke how governments loved keeping people scared, how Enver Hoxha had built all those bunkers for people to defend themselves against an attack by . . . whom, exactly? The Greeks? The Serbs? The United States? No one ever said. It didn't matter. All that mattered was fear. The bunkers had turned out to be indestructible, just as the dictator promised, which meant that seventy thousand cement cow pies remained, plopped along the roadsides and on people's lawns.

Lula had been in Tirana on 9/11, which she'd watched on blurry TV with tears streaming down her face. She and Dunia had wept again as they stood on the platform above Ground Zero. Dunia said that at home the hole in the city floor would already have become a picnic site. Picnic site, toxic dump site. Shit happens, Dunia said. Lula and Dunia used to compete in acquiring American slang.

At the site Dunia had tried to pick up a good-looking cop, but it stopped being fun when he told them that leaving his shift early would dishonor the memory of the dead. When Lula asked Mister Stanley where he was on 9/11, he'd said, “Well, as you know, I work downtown. At first one talked about it a lot, but then I stopped, and I find I no longer want to.”

“Be careful of what?” Lula asked now.

“I don't know,” said Mister Stanley. “Just be careful is all.”

E
ven though neither Mister Stanley nor Zeke suspected that the three Albanians had paid Lula a visit, she was glad when, the next morning, Estrelia came to clean.

Lula had been relieved at the beginning when Mister Stanley said cleaning wasn't part of her job. Estrelia had been with them forever; she came every Tuesday. Don Settebello had been very helpful to Estrelia and her husband and son.

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.