"Would it make you happy, Meli?" he asked.
"Yes, Baba. I'd like to try."
"Your mama says you should try." He shrugged his shoulders. "So I will agree."
She went to the practice the very next day. Mrs. Rogers gave her a practice uniform. "I can't pay," Meli said.
"It's an old one. Don't worry."
Her legs were strong, and she could run as fast as any of the others. Mrs. Rogers kept her afterward every day to help her with dribbling and passing, and to make sure she had all the rules clear in her head. Soon she was playing forward. She had never felt quite so free as she did racing down the field, her hair flying behind her.
This is how the wild horses feel,
she thought.
M
ELI WAS EAGER FOR SCHOOL TO BEGIN. MRS. ROGERS HAD
assured her that she would be on the junior varsity soccer team and most likely make it to the varsity by the following year. She didn't mind being on the junior squad. It meant she got to play every day in practice, and she was making friends—well, maybe just a friend. Rachel, who played sweeper, was shy, but she always smiled at Meli, and once she even congratulated her when Meli put a goal past Brittany, the varsity goalkeeper.
When classes began, none were easy, but they were much easier than they had been in the spring and summer. Meli nearly always understood the assignments, and she worked hard on them. The ESL teacher was quite willing to go over her papers and point out grammatical errors, and even though English was a crazy language, refusing to obey its own rules and often making no sense at all, Meli just gritted her teeth and made the corrections.
Mehmet had little difficulty with his schoolwork. He was whizzing through advanced algebra, and he seemed to glide through even the courses that demanded lots of English knowledge. He was already on the boys' varsity soccer squad. But Meli couldn't help noticing, on the days when the junior varsity girls went over to watch the boys' games, that he still walked alone, like a cat in the night. There was something bristly about her brother that the other boys sensed. They played soccer with him. They won games because of him, but they never carried Mehmet from the field on their shoulders. She didn't dare say anything about it to him, but surely he was aware of it. Couldn't he relax, just a little? Couldn't he try to smile when someone else on the team made a goal?
As much as she worried about Mehmet, she worried more about their father. Yes, he'd been given a tiny raise at his dishwashing job, but the welcomers were still helping with the rent. The family had a government card for food, and when Vlora got an ear infection that winter, Mrs. Craven from the church went with Mama and Adona to the doctor's, and the welcomer made sure Mama didn't have to pay anything over and above the government help.
Mama had been humiliated. The card for food was bad enough, but not being able to go alone to the doctor with her child? Not being able to pay? She talked to Adona, and by January Mama was working during the day at a motel, cleaning rooms and making up beds for travelers. You didn't have to know English to clean rooms. Baba hated it, but what could he say? They needed more money.
Meli came home from school every afternoon to take care of the younger ones and cook dinner. Mehmet was playing basketball. He hadn't made varsity, which was his dream, but he got a place on the junior squad by sheer determination. Next year he would be varsity, he vowed, and in the spring he would go out for the track team so he would be in good shape for soccer.
Why doesn't Baba ask him to get a job after school and help with all the expenses? He is old enough.
But no, Baba didn't suggest it, and Meli didn't dare.
***
The Vermont winter was cold, but all Meli had to do was remember how cold they had been at the camp in the hills, where there had been no place to come into to get warm. And then, finally, after the snows and the mud, it was spring again—the Vermont hillsides so green they dazzled her eyes. It was just two years ago that they had left the farm and fled across the hills of eastern Kosovo to the refugee camp in Macedonia. She was suddenly aware of a homesickness that in the excitement and craziness of the time in Vermont she had been able to push deep below the surface. She looked at the mountains and thought of the mountains of home. All of a sudden, English sounded harsh and discordant compared to the melody of her native tongue. She missed Auntie Burbuqe's bread and soup and the giggles of the twins. And, oh, how she missed Zana. She had written a letter to Zana, but there had been no reply. Meli and Rachel often ate lunch together and sometimes helped each other with homework, but she couldn't tell Rachel about the things that mattered most to her—the things she loved or feared, the things she hated.
She didn't even tell Rachel when it was her birthday. She turned fifteen two days before the end of the semester. Back home Mehmet had thought that when he turned fifteen he would truly be a man, and she did feel more adult somehow, though Mehmet himself still treated her like a child. Mama made a cake and Vlora taught them all to sing an American birthday song. The younger Leshis could hardly keep from giggling when Mama and Baba kept singing "Happy burrs-day" to dear Meli.
There was no need to go to summer school this year. She and Mehmet were performing as well as most of their classmates—often, in Mehmet's case, surpassing them.
Now, maybe, Mehmet will get a job—at least until soccer practice begins.
But no, there were always pickup games of basketball or soccer. He left the house right after breakfast. Some days he didn't bother to come home for lunch.
Meli was fully in charge of the apartment. Mama cooked breakfast, but both she and Baba left for work as soon as they had eaten. Meli coaxed the boys and Vlora to help her clean up, and then they all went outdoors. If it wasn't too hot, they went to the playground near the elementary school. It was a long walk, and often Meli packed sandwiches and a big bottle of water so they could picnic in the shade of a tree. She took a book for herself. There were no books in Albanian, of course, but now she could read English well enough to enjoy almost any book she chose from the free library.
It was wonderful to be able to borrow books. She always got some for the young ones, too. The boys were good readers now and Vlora, at seven, was quickly improving, but Meli loved picking out books to read aloud to her sister. Vlora drank in every word and often stroked the beautiful pictures as though they were living things. On very hot days they would spend whole hours in the cool stone library building, reading. No one ever asked them to leave.
In August, when soccer practice began, Meli took the children with her and made them sit on the sidelines and watch. Sometimes the boys would wander over to the other field, where Mehmet's team was practicing. They were very proud of their big brother. He was so obviously the star. Meli wasn't a star, but Mrs. Rogers told her that she had improved enough to make varsity. Despite everything, this was going to be the best year of her life.
If only the news from Kosovo were better. Uncle Fadil had written that Granny was too weak now to sit up in bed. She was refusing to eat even the healing broths that Auntie Burbuqe made just for her. The last week of August, the dreaded letter arrived. Granny had simply turned her face to the wall and died. Uncle Fadil had borrowed a truck so that they could take her home and bury her in a field near the ruins of the farmhouse.
Baba dropped the letter to the floor and began to sob. The family stood watching helplessly. They had never seen their father shed more than a few tears. He was the strong one. But there he sat, bent over, his face in his hands, his whole body shaking. "I should have been there," he said. "A son should be with his mother when she dies." Yes, they all should have been there.
Damn those Serbs.
The next day Baba and Mama went to work as usual, Mehmet and Meli went to soccer practice, and the children played with the neighbors.
How can life just go on as though nothing has happened?
But it did—at least the motions of life went on, even when the heart felt hollow.
A
T FIRST IT WAS ONLY A RUMOR. THEN THE MATH TEACHER
announced it in class. Airplanes full of passengers had crashed into the two tallest buildings in New York City, and another had smashed the huge military headquarters in Washington, DC. America was under attack.
"But who did it?" a boy blurted out.
"We don't know yet," the teacher said. Her voice was quiet, but Meli could hear the quaver in it. "The radio said 'terrorists.'"
"What terrorists?"
"We don't know any details. But we mustn't panic. If we are at war, we will all have to be brave and clear-headed. I've been asked to announce that we will complete the school day but that there will be no after-school activities. No sports practices or clubs. Everyone is to go straight home after the last bell."
Meli could hardly breathe. She could see in the eyes of her classmates a mixture of excitement and fear. She felt only dread. She knew what war was like. Had they fled Kosovo only to be plunged into the midst of its horrors in America?
***
At home they watched on television as the plane hit the second tower, over and over again, and as both towers crumbled to giant piles of debris, over and over again. Their throats were dry. They could not speak or look at each other. "Turn it off," Baba commanded. He had been sent home from work early. No one had come to the restaurant. Everyone in America was at home watching the planes crash and the towers fall. Did they eat that night? They must have, but afterward Meli couldn't remember eating, just the replay of the planes crashing and the towers falling. Even with the screen black, the image of the disaster played on in her mind.
After Vlora and the younger boys were put to bed, Mehmet turned the TV on again. That was when they heard the news that the whole world now knew: The terrorists who had crashed the planes into the Twin Towers and blown open the Pentagon were all Muslims. Baba shook his head in disbelief. "This is not the way of the Prophet," he said. "This is sickness, madness."
The next day, going to her locker, Meli realized that people were staring at her, and that after she passed knots of students in the halls there was silence and then a whispered exchange. She was used to people not speaking to her, but this was different.
Everyone is upset. We're all afraid.
A number of people had stayed home, fearing somehow that the terrorists would find their way to Vermont and bomb the largest building in their town, which was the high school.
The principal announced over the PA system that classes and activities would go on as usual. But nothing felt usual. During soccer practice no one passed her the ball. She tried to pretend that she didn't notice the strange looks sent her way. Once, she found herself sprawling on the field. No one had meant to trip her, had they? But later, as she showered, she could hear one of the seniors talking. It was Brittany, the varsity goalkeeper. She seemed to be talking loudly on purpose, so that Meli couldn't help but hear her over the noise of the water.
"That's what her family is," Brittany was saying. "She's one of
them.
Her and that weird brother of hers."
"No," someone protested. "She's okay."
"Just ask her," Brittany said. "You'll see."
Should she just stay in the shower, pretend she'd heard nothing? But that seemed cowardly. Meli turned off the water, wrapped her towel around herself, and stepped out into the locker room. It was as if someone had pushed the mute button. No noise. Just stares.
Brittany, the only fully dressed girl in the room, gave Rachel a shove. "Go ahead, ask her." Rachel, who had been trying to pull on her jeans, nearly fell on her face. She caught her balance and then glanced back at Brittany before turning, red-faced, toward Meli. "Someone said you were one of them, Meli," she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. "That's not true, is it?"
"What do you mean, 'them'?" Meli asked. "I don't understand." She looked from one team member to another. "If you mean what nationality, I am Kosovar."
"But what's that?" Brittany asked. "It's not
Christian,
is it?"
"No." Her throat was so tight that she could hardly speak. "No. Serbs are Christian. I am not a Serb. I—my family—is Albanian."
"I thought you just said 'Kosovar.'" Brittany's eyes narrowed to a slit.
"Yeah, Meli." It was Chrystal, the junior whose place Meli had taken on the varsity squad. "What are you
really
?"
"I told you. I am Albanian Kosovar."
"Come on, Meli." Brittany stepped around Rachel and glared at Meli. "You
are
one of them. You know you are."
"Explain what you mean, 'them.'" Of course, by now Meli knew full well what Brittany and the others meant by "them," but she wanted to make Brittany say it out loud, to her face. "How am I one of
them?
" She leaned so close to Brittany that she could see the pimples on the girl's cheeks set to explode.
Brittany straightened. "Like the terrorists." She stepped back slightly. "You know, like their religion."
"I'm not a religious person." Meli walked over toward her locker and opened it.
"I told you she wasn't a Christian."
"I am not a religious person," Meli continued, keeping her eyes on her locker and her voice as steady as she could. "But if I have to choose Christian or Muslim, then, okay, I am Muslim." She turned around. "But that doesn't make me one of
them.
I am not a terrorist."
Brittany shoved Rachel forward once more. Meli wrapped her towel more tightly around herself and looked into the face of the girl she had thought of as a friend. Rachel looked everywhere except at Meli.
"Ask her about her brother, Rachel," Brittany demanded. "Ask if he's a terrorist."
"It is not terrorist to want to fight for your homeland!" As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Meli knew she should never have said them. Rachel backed away, her eyes wide.