Francine Prose - My New American Life

My New American Life

Francine Prose

To Howie

Contents

T he day after Lulas lawyer called to tell her she was legal, three Albanian guys showed up in a brand-new black Lexus SUV. She had been staring out her window at the drizzly afternoon and thinking that the mulberry tree on Mister Stanleys front lawn had waited to drop its last few leaves until it knew she was watching. Obviously, this was paranoid and also egocentric, but in the journal that her immigration lawyer and her boss had suggested that she keep, she wrote: October, 2005. Does a leaf fall in New Jersey if no one is there to see?

Don Settebello and Mister Stanley would go nuts for a line like that. They were always telling Lula she should write a memoir about her old Albanian life and now her new one in the United States. Don even had a title, My New American Life . Lula had a better title, Stranger in a Strange Land , but shed already seen it in the public library. Maybe she could still use it. Maybe no one would notice.

Raindrops beaded the SUV as it trawled past the house where Lula lived and worked, taking care of Mister Stanleys son Zeke, a high school senior who only needed minimal caretaking. In fact Zeke could do many things that Lula couldnt, such as drive a car. But since Mister Stanley believed that teenagers shouldnt be left on their own, and since he went off to Wall Street at dawn and didnt return until late, he had hired Lula to make sure that Zeke ate and slept and did his homework. Mister Stanley was very safety-conscious, which Lula found very admirable but also dangerously American. No Albanian father would do that to his son and risk turning him gay.

Lulas duties included making sure there was food in the house. Most afternoons, Zeke drove Lula to the supermarket in his vintage 1970 Oldsmobile. Considering how little they bought and how much of it was frozen, they could have shopped once a month, but they enjoyed the ritual. On the way, Zeke gave Lula driving tips: who went first at an intersection, how to speak the silent language that kept drivers from killing each other like they did constantly in Tirana. Zeke might have been explaining the principles of astrophysics, but Lula appreciated the gesture, just as Zeke liked feeling superior to Lula and better about having a nanny only nine years older than he was. The word nanny was never mentioned. Lula explained to Zeke that in her native country only party bigwigs were allowed to own the black deathmobiles that sped through Tirana in packs, and then the economy tanked and no one could afford a car, so now Albanians drove their hot or secondhand Mercedes like kids whod had their licenses for about five minutes.

As had Zeke, who still wasnt legal to drive at night. But hed grown up in a car culture, driving was his birthright. Every country had problems, but when Lula saw how Americans drove, how American children drove, she couldnt help feeling cheated for not having been born here. Her dad used to borrow her uncles car, and then he sort of stole it and smuggled it over the border from Albania into Kosovo, where both her parents were killed in a car wreck. Lula had never mentioned this sad fact to Mister Stanley or Zeke. It would only have upset Mister Stanley and made Zeke suspect that his driving lessons might not be enough to put Lula on the road.

Mister Stanley said Zeke could have the gas-guzzling-pig Olds if he hardly ever drove it. If he had to drive at all, his dad preferred him in a tank. Zeke was so in love with the Olds that he kept it in the garage and rode the bus back and forth to school, and Mister Stanley parked his seven-year-old Acura minivan at the end of the driveway. Officially, Zeke was only allowed to drive to The Good Earth Market, which his father liked, because it was close and had organic choices, and which Zeke also liked (it was practically the only thing he and his father agreed on) because he believed in staying small and locally owned and off the corporate grid, though his actual food tastes ran to mesquite-flavored corn chips and microwavable ramen. Zeke didnt notice the other shoppers looking down their rich straight suburban noses at what he and Lula bought. Probably theirs was the only household in which the Albanian girl let the American teen decide. Lula had cooked vegetables, many times, but Zeke refused to eat them. Let his wife worry some day.

After she and Zeke got back from the market, Lula mixed them each a mojito, a splash of alcohol in Zekes, a healthy splash in her own, heavy on the sugar and mint. Zeke sat on a kitchen stool and watched Lula make dinner. Most nights they ate pizza with frozen crust, tomato sauce from a jar, and mozzarella that, refrigerated, would outlive them both. Sometimes Lula unpeeled tiny ice-dusted hamburgers, which, steamed in the microwave, were surprisingly delicious, surprisingly like a street snack you could buy in Tirana. Bad food made Zeke feel rebellious, which every teenager needed. The better Zeke felt about himself, the more secure Lulas job was, and the likelier her chances of staying in this country, though Mister Stanley and Don Settebello had made it clear that their helping Lula was not about her working for Mister Stanley and being good for Zeke.

And now, hooray, she was legal! Lula inhaled and shuddered, half at the shiny black Lexus still patrolling the block, the other half at her daily life. The life of an elderly person!

Last night, like every weeknight, Lula and Zeke had eaten dinner in front of the TV. Lula made them watch the evening news, educational for them both. The president had come on the air to warn the American people about the threat of bird flu. The word avian was hard for him. His forehead stitched each time he said it, and his eyelids fluttered, as if hed been instructed to think of birds as a memory prompt.

At home, Lula marveled, that man is a god.

You say that every night, Zeke said.

Im reminding myself, shed said. Her countrys love affair with America had begun with Woodrow Wilson, and Clinton and Bush had sealed the deal by bombing the Serbs and rescuing the Kosovar Albanians from Milosevics death squads. Even at home shed had her doubts about the streets paved with gold, but when she finally got to New York and started working at La Changita, the waitstaff had quickly straightened her out about the so-called land of opportunity. And yet for all the mixed feelings shared by waiters and busboys alike, the strongest emotion everyone felt was the desire to stay here. Well, fine. In Lulas opinion, ambivalence was a sign of maturity.

Yesterday night, as always, shed felt sorry for the president, so like a dim little boy whod told a lie that had set off a war, and then hed let all those innocent people die in New Orleans, and now he was anxiously waiting to see what worse trouble he was about to get into. He seemed especially scared of the vice president, who scared Lula, too, with his cold little eyes not blinking when he lied, like an Eastern Bloc dictator minus the poufy hair.

There is no bird flu, Lula had told Zeke. A war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, sure. Maybe one chicken in China with a sore throat and a fever.

But by then the city police chief had appeared on the screen to announce that the alert level had been raised to code orange because of a credible terrorist threat against the New York subway system.

Lula said, There is no threat.

How do you know everything? Zeke asked. Not that I dont agree its all bullshit.

Shed been about to tell Zekeagain!about having grown up in the most extreme and crazy Communist society in Europe, ruled for decades by the psycho dictator Enver Hoxha, who died when Lula was a child, but not without leaving his mark. The nation was a monument to him, as were the seventy thousand mushroomlike concrete bunkers hed had built in a country smaller than New Jersey. But before she even had a chance to repeat herself, shed been distracted by an advertisement for the new season of ER .