“Can you tell me about your dad, Bashkim?”
“My baba? What? Is Baba okay?”
I notice that he sounds worried, which seems to me a good sign.
“He’s fine, Bashkim. I met with him a few days ago. He misses you and Tirana.”
Bashkim is quiet.
“He’s very upset. That’s why you and Tirana aren’t with him.”
“I know.”
We walk a little farther, but I see that Bashkim isn’t paying attention to where he is.
“My baba was in prison. That’s why he’s like that. He had to go to prison because he saw a policeman hurt someone.”
I think that Bashkim meant to go on, but at these words, he freezes. I wait, to see what he will do, but he doesn’t look at me. He starts walking, a little bit faster.
“Your father was in prison in Albania, right?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been very hard.”
Bashkim says nothing.
We stay on the trail in the park, and it circles around so that we’re headed back toward Jeannette’s house again. Bashkim’s whole body has changed. I can feel his tension. Just before we turn right to cross the street into her subdivision, Bashkim asks:
“Are we going back to Baba? Tirana and me?”
I can’t tell from his question whether he thinks this is a good or a bad idea.
“I don’t know,” I say.
He doesn’t answer, and we walk the rest of the way in silence.
ON MY WAY ACROSS TOWN,
I phone Marty.
“I met that kid, the one who was with his mom when she was killed. Bashkim Ahmeti.”
“Yeah. How was he?”
“He’s great, Marty. He looks like Jake. He acts like Jake. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Come on, Roberta. Take it easy. You have to keep some distance, you know that.”
“But Marty, he really looks like Jake, and he acts like him too. There was a moment, I thought, maybe I should just put him in my car. Take him home.”
“Jesus, Roberta. We’re not taking in a kid.”
“Marty, come on. I know that. I’m just saying I felt like that. It wasn’t a rational thought. It was a feeling.”
“Roberta, we’ve gone a long way over some of your feelings. Tell me that you understand this one is not possible.”
“It’s not possible, Marty. You’re too old. No court’d give that kid to us.”
“Very funny. But you’re right, Roberta. I am too old. Even for a temporary stay, even if he were Jake. I’m an old guy.”
“Geez, Marty. Could you stop? I’m not taking him home.”
“Okay, Roberta. I’m sorry. You know, I just, I worry about you. You can’t fix everything, Roberta. You know that. You gotta be careful.”
“I’m careful, Marty. I’m careful. But, you know, there’s a world out here. We’re in it.”
“I know, Roberta. Listen, I gotta go. I got a meeting in ten minutes, and I’ve got to make another call. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll make dinner.”
After Marty hangs up, I pull off the road and think awhile. I have Bashkim Ahmeti in my mind, the way he dragged the toe of his shoe in the dirt of the kickball field, the way his voice wobbled when he said “policeman,” his choice of a rice bowl fish. I wasn’t kidding about wanting to throw him in the car. Even with a CASA, even with a dad, even with a caseworker as good as Lacey Miller, he’s in for a tough ride. And my whole body is screaming with the desire to get him off it.
JEANNETTE DELAIN TOLD ME THAT
the principal of Orson Hulet school, a Dr. Moore, had taken an interest in Bashkim before this happened. She suggested that I talk to her. So I called and made an appointment to see her that week.
When I enter the school, I see that they have carried the marine lab theme throughout. There’s a wall painted with a large fish dressed in school clothes and a backpack, and there are fish-themed pictures and colors everywhere I look. But there are no windows. The walls are cinder block, and the hallways dark with a strip of fluorescent light down the middle.
The school has an elaborate system for visitors. I have to show my driver’s license, which is sent through a machine, so that a photo of my license appears on a computer monitor. I sign my name on the screen, and then the school secretary pushes a button that unlocks the gate leading to the office suite itself.
My meeting with Dr. Moore is surprising, because she has a surprising story to tell about Bashkim. We start with basic information, who I am, what my role is, and she tells me that Bashkim is quite talented academically. She also tells me that the school had a difficult interaction with Bashkim’s parents in October, and she fills me in on what happened with the pen pal letter to Iraq. I comment that some kids just seem to be born under an unlucky star, and she says she doesn’t think that’s quite right in this situation.
“You see, the soldier who wrote to Bashkim wrote him again. In fact, they’ve been exchanging letters for a few months now.”
I must look a bit uneasy, because she quickly assures me that she monitors the communication.
“The letters come to me, and I read them before I send them either way. The soldier, Specialist Rodriguez, is also in a vulnerable position. I don’t want anyone hurt.”
“You said that the parents were quite upset about Bashkim communicating with a soldier. Why would they allow this?”
Dr. Moore hesitates before she speaks.
“It’s a big risk, I know. One that many would argue I don’t have the right to take. But the parents don’t know about Bashkim’s letters to the soldier. I offered Bashkim the chance to tell them, I offered to speak to them for him, but I left it to him to decide: whether he would read the soldier’s letters, whether he would write him, whether he would tell his parents.
“I did it, at first, because I thought it would help Bashkim to know that the soldier was sorry for what he had written. And I continued to do it because it seemed to me that the letters and the relationship were good for Bashkim. He’s a shy child, and really shut down after his parents came to school that day. The letters pleased him, and they gave me a way to interact with him.
“Of course, I never imagined what would happen to Bashkim. I was trying to keep tabs on a child that might be in a risky situation at home.”
I’m not sure how to respond to Dr. Moore. It’s my job to find everyone in the Ahmeti children’s lives, to come up with a plan for children who seem healthy but who have been suddenly left quite alone. This pen pal is a complication, and it seems like it could get Dr. Moore in a lot of trouble. I appreciate that she has told me, because it would have been easier for her to keep this quiet.
I tell her this, and she says, “I’ve been in administration for fourteen years, and I was a teacher for twenty before that. I could have retired three years ago. I don’t do this job for my career. I don’t even do it for the salary.”
I nod. She has still taken a risk, but not without knowing what she was risking.
THERE ARE CASES THAT I
just can’t forget, that stick. Marty always wants to know why. What it is. I don’t know, I think it’s the ones where something small changes everything. Where the tiniest act, the smallest space of time, the most inconsequential of decisions, changes a life. A split second separates the long-lost friends who either see or miss each other at an airport. And from that, a relationship does or does not develop, perhaps a lifetime partnership, perhaps even children. Human beings who might or might not have existed. Whole lives born out of the most fragile of happenstance.
And maybe that’s why our lives are beautiful; why they’re tragic. One perfect child can be born of an accidental encounter, and another lost to a split-second lapse in attention. If a motorist leans over to change a radio station at the same moment that it first occurs to a four-year-old that he can let go of his mother’s hand as easily as hang onto it, and that if he lets go he will be across the road first, before his mother, and that she will certainly laugh and say, “How fast you are, Johnny!” If the child does this, and the motorist does that, and if the world then changes forever and unbearably for everyone involved, then is that not life in its simplest form?
That so little matters so much, and so much matters so little.
What if Nate Gisselberg had been in some other patrol car?
What if Sadik’s brake light hadn’t burned out?
26
Bashkim
I RIDE TO THE
Islamic Center with Mrs. Delain, and I suppose that Tirana’s foster mother will be bringing her. The van seems really big with just me in it, but I sit in the far backseat anyway. When I buckle my seat belt, I think about Baba and Nene not buckling theirs, and my eyes start crying again. My eyes cry a lot, but I don’t feel like I am crying. I feel like there’s a big blanket over my head, and nobody seems to see it.
Mrs. Delain doesn’t try to talk to me too much, but when I got in the van, she touched my back. Maybe that’s why my eyes are crying. Mrs. Delain is nice. She has a lot of foster kids, but most of them are older than me, except Daniel, who goes to my school. That’s why they put me in Mrs. Delain’s house, so I could keep going to Orson Hulet. They couldn’t put Tirana there, because I am already too many, and Mrs. Delain doesn’t have little children. I would rather be with Tirana than at Orson Hulet, but Mrs. Miller said it was just temporary.
I hope that’s true, because there’s a teenager at Mrs. Delain’s who has never gotten to live with his brothers, and he has been in foster care for years. When Jeff said that, I just left the living room and sat in the closet upstairs for a while. Mrs. Delain has a closet with pillows for sitting. She says sometimes there’s not enough space to get a room by yourself, but you can always get a closet.
I have only been to the mosque once before, when Tirana was a baby, but I still remember the orange domes and the tower. The mosque is the biggest building on the road; across from it, all the houses are turned backward, and I can just see their roofs over the long block wall that stretches down the street. Nene said the mosque looked lonely, but I don’t tell Mrs. Delain that. I wonder if Mrs. Delain has ever been here. I don’t know what religion she is. I also don’t know what I am supposed to do today. I have never been to a funeral. My eyes keep crying, even though the blanket feels heavier around me, so I squeeze my arms together and try to imagine that I am still in my bed.
Mrs. Delain takes her time getting ready to get out of the car, and I see that there are a lot of news trucks in the parking lot. There aren’t very many other cars, but there are a lot of people with cameras. I wonder if they are going to try to take pictures of me, and I wonder where Baba and Tirana are, and I can’t think of any way to make Mrs. Delain go back to her house. I don’t think I can go in the mosque, but I won’t have a choice I know.
“Bashkim, I brought you this scarf. I thought you might want to wear it when we walk in. I’m sorry that I don’t have anything else.”
It’s a big black scarf. It sort of looks like the blanket that nobody can see around me, so I think I will wear it. I walk up to Mrs. Delain’s seat—I don’t have to crouch very much—and then she wraps it all around my head. Now it looks like the scarves women wear in pictures in Albania, and this makes me think of Nene, even though she never wore one, and I almost break down.
“Bashkim, this is one of the toughest days of your life. I can’t fix that for you. But I am going to be right here, and you are going to be all right. I promise.”
I make a sort of shuddery sound, and I nod my head.
“I’ll get out first, and when I open the side door, you just get out, and we will walk straight to that door there. Do you see? We will just walk quickly and not talk to anyone, okay?”
I nod, and she gets out.
People start walking toward us fast when they see me get out of the van, but nobody yells or anything, and everybody stays a few feet away. I think Mrs. Delain is keeping them away somehow, but I don’t look at her or anyone else, and we just get inside the building.
Baba is already there.
I have not seen him since the bad day, and I am so relieved to see him that I start crying for real when I get to him. He is crying too, and taking my scarf off, and I never thought holding Baba could feel so good, but it is the first time that I have felt safe since Nene.
“Bashkim,
zemer
. My son.”
Baba is crying too much to talk, and I know that Tirana and I are in foster care because he has not been able to get calm, so I don’t expect him to say anything. I just want to keep holding him. He is so bony, and I don’t know if I got bigger or he got smaller, but I am more than half as big as him now.
“Baba,” I cry. “Please, Baba, don’t leave me. I want to be with you and Tirana.”
Baba starts crying harder, and the lady from Catholic Refugee Services, the one who used to come to our house sometimes, puts her hand on his shoulder. Mrs. Delain has her hand on my arm, so the four of us are a big clump of people there in the mosque. Mrs. Delain is brown and small, just a little taller than me, and the Catholic lady is big and blonde, so just for a second, I think that Nene would laugh if she could see us. Thinking of Nene feels really bad, so I bury my head in Baba’s stomach.
I don’t see Tirana. I am sure she is coming. They wouldn’t keep her away today, would they? Even though she is so little. I haven’t seen Tirana either, not since the ambulance took Nene, and the fireman took us to Child Haven. They didn’t put us together, and when they took me to Mrs. Delain, I didn’t know I was not coming back. I never said good-bye to Tirana, and I don’t know where she is living. She’s in foster care too, but Mrs. Delain doesn’t know where, and I am afraid to ask Baba now.
The Catholic Refugee lady says that we should move inside, and so I take Baba’s hand, and we walk to a room next to the main mosque. There are some people already there. I see Dr. Moore and Mrs. Monaghan on the side, but I don’t want to talk to them, so I pretend that I don’t see them. I also see the man we buy ice cream from, and I see another man who looks sort of like Baba, but I have never seen him before. The imam is there too. I met him when we came to the mosque three years ago. I think he won’t remember me, but he crouches down and talks to me right away.
“Bashkim, hello. I am Imam Hadiz. I am so glad to see you.”
He has nice eyes, and I don’t mind that he puts his hand on my arm, but I don’t have anything to say. He touches my cheek before he stands up again.
He shows my baba where we should stand, and then he shows Mrs. Delain and the other woman where they should stand. I don’t want Mrs. Delain to leave me, but I know that my baba and I are supposed to stand with the men. What about Tirana?
“Baba, where’s Tirana? I want to see Tirana.”
The Catholic lady hears me, and she turns back to say, “She’s coming, Bashkim. She will be here.”
And just then, I hear her.
“Baba! Bashkim!”
Her baby voice is just the same. She sounds scared, and too loud, so I run straight to her. It feels so good to have Tirana’s tiny arms around me. She is squeezing me as tight as she can, which is pretty tight, and I sort of can’t breathe. Then Baba is there, and he is holding both of us, and for a second, I think it is going to be okay. I think if we can just stay in that room, on the floor squished together, and never leave, that it will be okay.
Then I hear a funny sound, and when I look, it is the casket coming in the room. There are two men in black suits that I don’t know wheeling it. It is a pink casket, which doesn’t even look like Nene, and there are flowers all over it. A third man is carrying a big photo of Nene, and I know that it is not going to be okay at all. It is never going to be okay. And there’s nothing I can do. I can’t seem to get away from this.
Tirana gets real quiet when she sees the casket. I don’t know if she even knows Nene is in it. I don’t know what Tirana knows. Baba picks her up, and I take his hand, and we walk to the front and stand behind the imam. I can’t see Mrs. Delain or the woman from Catholic Refugee Services, but the other woman, the one that brought Tirana, comes with us. Nobody says anything to her.
Somebody with a camera comes in the side door, but right away one of the men that brought the coffin in makes him leave, and that man stays by the door so no one else can come in. The imam talks to everyone for a minute, and then he turns around, kneels on his rug, and starts to pray. I don’t know any of the prayers, and I can’t understand them. I see Baba chanting sometimes, but I don’t think he knows the prayers either, so a lot of times it is just the imam and the one man who looks a little bit like Baba who are praying.
I look around once, but I don’t see anyone there who knew my nene. I can’t really think of anyone my nene knew. She talked to the lady who lived in the apartment near ours sometimes, but she is not there. And there were some moms from the baseball field that my nene talked to in the ice-cream truck, but I don’t see any of them either. My nene’s parents are in Albania, and they are old. Baba must have told them, but I don’t even remember them, and they are not here.
Nene had brothers and a sister too. I wonder if they loved her like I love Tirana. Under Nene’s bed, there is a box of photos. They’re square photos, and the faces are hard to see because they’re kind of green. But I can tell Nene was pretty. She had curly hair, like Tirana does, and dark eyes. Baba’s eyes are blue, but Tirana and I have dark eyes like Nene. And Nene had a big family, with lots of cousins too. Some of the pictures were at a festival, and when I asked who all the people were, she said, “They are all our family, Bashkim. Everyone in this picture is your family. We’re all Lekas. You’re Ahmeti, but you’re Leka too.” Nene always tells the truth, so this must be true, but I can’t imagine my family in Albania. In America, there is nobody but us.
At the festival, people were dancing, and playing guitars, and all along the wall, there were big vats of wine, which Nene calls
raki
. Nene showed me where she was in the picture. She was seven then. She had a white dress, and flowers all through her hair. And she had a basket, with more flowers in it. She and her sister wore dresses that looked just alike, but Nene was prettier. Her sister stares at the camera like she is mad, but Nene smiles. She looks as if she is almost ready to laugh. Nene said that’s because the photographer was funny, and he called her sister “walnut cheeks,” which is why her sister is mad and she is about to laugh.
In Albania, there are mountains and lots of trees with fruit. Nene missed those trees. When I was little, before Tirana was born, she took me to a place that sold plants, and we bought a pear tree. We put it in the back of the ice-cream truck, and Baba was surprised when we drove up with it. “Why you buy that?” he said. “We rent only.”
But Nene didn’t care. She showed me how to dig a big hole, and how to put orange peels and apple cores and coffee grounds in it, and then how to make a moat around the tree, like a castle, and how to fill the moat with water every day. Then she measured me against the tree. She said that every year we would measure me and the tree, and watch us grow up together. The trunk of the tree was as big as my arm, which wasn’t really very big then, but it was taller than me. Now it’s way taller than me, and much fatter than my leg, but that tree didn’t make Nene happy. It grows lots of pears, but they don’t taste nice. They don’t taste like anything. They just fall on the ground and make a bump sound outside my window some mornings.
I wonder where Nene’s box of photos is. I heard the CASA lady telling Mrs. Delain that Mr. Cummings took our apartment back. When she first said that, I started to think about everything in my room, and to feel really bad, but then I remembered about Nene, and I realized that the worst thing had already happened, and my room didn’t really matter. The imam is still praying, and Baba is moving his head back and forth beside me. I don’t look to my right, where the coffin is, because I don’t like that pink box, and I don’t want to think of Nene in it. I just want to go home. And then I remember I don’t have any home, and I think that I just don’t want anything.
Tirana is on my prayer rug, and her shoulder touches mine. After a while, she snugs in next to me, and I put my arm over her back, and we just lie down, while everyone else prays. We lie there, as close as we can be together, and I hear some of what is happening, and I see some of it, but mostly I smell Tirana’s bath smell, and taste her hair sticking into my mouth, and feel her chest moving in and out against my arm. Tirana and I just stay like that until it is over.