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  “One man? How can one person eat all of that meat?”

  Bashkim and I looked at each other, each of us shocked by how confused the other was. “One person could not. That was not the point. The point was that nothing was for you, everything was for him.”

  “But that’s it? Really it? Just cows?”

  “That’s it? You do not understand at all. That was a big, dangerous thing. That was not just it.”

  “So it was like Russia? It was that bad?”

  “Russia. I would have liked to escape to Russia.”

  “My grandparents escaped the Russians in Lithuania. They talk about it like it was the worst thing in the world, like half their schoolteachers got sent to Siberia,” I said.

  “The worst thing is when your own people are the ones torturing you. No Russian knows how to hurt you the way your own people do.”

  “God,” I said. “Really?”

  “And this is what she wants, to stay there and remember,” he said, kind of quiet, like he was talking to himself.

  “That’s stupid,” I said, and it was supposed to sound encouraging, but he wasn’t listening to me anyway, or at least he wasn’t looking at me. He was still reading those walls, a little more intently even. Maybe they were starting to make sense after all.

  “The problem with Albanians now, it’s Albania this, Albania that. Albania has most beautiful mountains, Albania has most beautiful seas. But what do they know about mountains or seas? They lived in a prison. Even the ones not in the camps, they lived in a prison. Then Hoxha dies and the Party falls and they go to Austria or U.K. and work in kitchens all day and night. They don’t know nothing about any world outside of Albania. They just close their eyes so they don’t have to find out. Me, no, I know better. I come here and I won’t go back. Never.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, like an idiot.

  “When I get my money back, I will divorce her, and then the last of me is gone from there.”

  “Money?” I asked.

  He smiled a little, and I could almost see that yellow canary feather stuck between his teeth. “Yes, money. Good money. An investment I made. One good thing about Albania, it’s, what do you say, the ground floor now. You put a little money in now, it comes back soon four and five times more. This money I made at the Ross this month, already it’s twice as much.” He shook his head. “I will be paid back. It’s too late for my father, but I will be paid back.”

  Investment, he said. A year in America and he already understood better than I did what this country was built on. As far as I was concerned, an investment was some kind of cheap ploy to make you give someone your money in exchange for promises that are impossible to fulfill, the way the billboard for Western Connecticut State University on I-84 said INVEST IN YOUR FUTURE, and showed a smiling nurse-to-be checking the pulse of an old lady who’d soon not even be alive. It was a scam, the billboard. I went to an information session and they told me there was a two-year waiting list to even be accepted to the nursing program, but in the meantime I could take core classes like English and Sociology, which would give me the kind of solid foundation it takes to be unhirable for life. When Bashkim said the word investment, though, it didn’t sound quite so hopeless. He had a light in his eyes that the recruiters for WCSU most certainly did not. And he was also talking divorce, which was the whipped cream and cherry on top of it all. Never mind that I’d seen enough prime-time TV to know never to believe it when your boyfriend talks about leaving his wife. But Bashkim wasn’t a soap opera villain, some conniving 90210 hunk, he was for real, and I knew it because he was talking about leaving Aggie not for my sake but for his. The way he said it, all bitter and disgusted. And the opposite way he said investment, all hopeful and smug, he obviously understood something about it that I did not, even though the word was in my native tongue.

  So I asked him what he meant, and he just laughed.

  “It’s not something to explain to a woman. All you have to know is I won’t be flipping hamburgers forever. Soon I buy my own place, you know? Gjonni can be my cook.”

  “And what will I do?”

  “You will do nothing. You will just enjoy. You will drive your own sports car that I buy for you.”

  “A Jetta,” I said. “Not a sports car. A new Jetta.”

  “What else?”

  “An apartment in Manhattan.”

  “What else?”

  “Um, a fancy dog. A poodle or something.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Whatever you want.” He wasn’t even smiling like it was part of a joke. He was for real, this plan he had was for real, and I was lucky enough to be invited along. Maybe everything he was talking about was just a hypnotist’s pocket watch swinging before my eyes, but even if there was a little piece of me that thought I should know better, there was no way I’d refuse the offer. An impossible dream was better than no dream at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Luljeta

  Some people won’t be surprised at the fuckery of which you’re about to prove yourself capable. These would be the people who see you as a case file: latest in a line of fatherless daughters, lifelong recipient of free school lunches, attractor of stares since puberty came on fast and hard six years before, when you were more interested in Saturday morning cartoons than Saturday evening rec room parties. But those that look deeper into the file will also see a lifetime of honor roll recognition, an IQ well above average but safely shy of genius, not a single behavioral demerit from K all the way through twelve. And those that know you outside of the file will recall how you quit playing flute in the marching band because you were afraid others might catch you taking a wrong step, how you were once so shy that you were tested several times for autism, and they’ll say: No way, not Luljeta, Luljeta would never screw up that way.

  But Luljeta will.

  To them, to the people who know you, this fuckery will come out of nowhere, but you recognize that it’s been in your DNA from your very conception. In a recent visit to WebMD, which you consult when seeking explanations for why you often feel so tense and queasy, you learned of a theory that certain autoimmune diseases can lie dormant in the body until triggered by an unrelated illness or injury, meaning a patient can recover from the flu only to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. You were exposed to your first antigen moments before the end of last period’s study hall, when you received the email you now understand as the universe’s final hint that you are not what you have been promised by aspirational posters in the public library you could someday be:

  The admissions committee at New York University has carefully considered your application and supporting credentials, and it is with regret that I must inform you that we are unable to offer you admission to one of our NYU campuses this year.

  There were a record number of applicants, they explained. Over sixty thousand, they explained, more than half the population of your entire city, though very few Waterburians were actually among those numbers. Not even the students in your honors classes would have considered applying there, since for the most part, honors classes at Crosby High are simply code for “not remedial.” To apply to NYU, one should be exceptional. To be exceptional, one must obtain perfect grades in challenging AP classes and a stellar score on the SAT, for which one has been prepared since third grade. One must perform charitable work at Guatemalan orphanages over Christmas break instead of logging in double the hours at the IGA, have a father to insert in the slot about Expected Family Contribution, and have a mother who could navigate you through the world of higher education instead of simply saying, “I don’t know, you just better go somewhere if you don’t want to end up like the rest of us.”

  In short, one should be not you.

  You’re ranked fourth in your class, behind the twin sibling valedictorian-salutatorian duo and their cousin, all children of Crosby High teachers, who can’t afford on their public servant salaries to send their children to Sacred Heart or Holy Cross. It has been made clear to these
students by their parents that they will attend a Jesuit university and break the cycle of public teaching to which they themselves have been condemned. It’s been made clear to you by your mother that you should aim for at least B’s and look into the health sciences, since your mother thought once upon a time that she might want to be a dental technician, and there’s always work in that kind of field. Your aspirations were always higher than tartar scraper, yet you walked into the SAT testing session with no preparation other than a large extra-light-and-sweet tumbler of Dunkin’ Donuts and twelve years of public schooling in a district in which the per capita income is less than half the cost of NYU’s annual tuition, idiotically believing that simply paying attention in twelve years of math and English classes was sufficient groundwork for the standardized test that would dictate the course of your future.

  And still, you thought not only would you get into NYU but you’d get in with early decision so that you could spend Christmas break feeling less bad about having nothing to do, knowing it would be the last Christmas break in which you would be so bored and lonely that you thought you might actually throw up.

  This all seems so terribly and obviously naïve to you now that it feels even worse than Christmastime nausea. It feels like a literal punch to the face.

  But of course it’s not. The literal punch to the face is something altogether separate, bad-news lightning striking twice in one day. The literal punch to the face comes from a girl named after the Señor Pancho’s Tuesday night special she was undoubtedly conceived under the influence of.

  Margarita never liked you. In third grade she stole the math work sheet you’d been working on, and though you were not a tattle, you were also not a failure, as evidenced by the straight A’s in your aforementioned case file. You’d had no choice but to tell on Margarita, because otherwise you would have been the one who ended up with a zero for the day, which, up until a few hours ago, you believed actually mattered. Your case against Margarita wasn’t difficult to prove: though hastily erased, your name had clearly been visible on the work sheet under Margarita’s, and the handwriting on the rest of the paper was obviously not that of the emerging sociopath who claimed to have done the long division problem that would likely still be impossible for her to this day. Margarita vowed then that vengeance would be hers, and for years she doled it out in little morsels, stealing your regular bra from the locker room while you were in gym clothes for the badminton unit, somehow orchestrating an elaborate musical chairs number that ensured you would never find a lunch seat for the rest of your time in the Waterbury public school system.

  But those were children’s games. Margarita was now a woman, with a body that had skipped over adolescence and landed straight on forty-four-year-old mother of three. She hadn’t actually borne any children, but there were rumors she’d recently undergone her third abortion, the first having been chemically induced and completed in the bathroom off of the food court in the mall, the second brought on by a kick to the gut near that same food court, and the third the old-fashioned surgical kind paid for by her mother’s boyfriend, who it turned out had been staying over on nights even when Margarita’s mother was working third shift at the twenty-four-hour CVS. Accompanying Margarita’s saggy, enormous breasts was the toxic indignation of someone chronically shat upon, whose rage was directed not at her perpetrators but at those who dared to be unburdened with the same traumas as she was. Her targets were those whose mothers weren’t on a first-name basis with all the street cops and methadone clinicians in the city, those who remained in school for more than the Head Start breakfasts. Even without the Great Third-Grade Math Work Sheet Caper, even if she could read all the big words in your NYU rejection letter, you would have been the bull’s-eye in Margarita’s crosshairs.

  The punch from Margarita is thus both out of nowhere and as predetermined as the revolution of the planets around the sun. This shittiest of days had been decided galactically, and while, in retrospect, the NYU application seems to have been a practical joke you walked straight into, Margarita was something you had always had the good sense to avoid. Normally it was easy enough, as most of her school days are spent in the modular office trailers where they send troubled students for remedial education. If not for the weekly bomb threats called in by the same barely literate sophomore from the same school pay phone every single Monday, you might have been able to avoid her through graduation day, to which surely she would not be receiving an invitation. However, that day’s bomb threat comes during AP History, held in a classroom whose evacuation path empties straight into the lot containing the remedial education outbuildings. This is, you think, somewhat akin to placing the baby zebras just beyond the lion enclosure at the zoo.

  Outside, you hear, “Bitch, what you looking at?” and while you shudder at Margarita’s voice, the one iota of gratitude you’re able to muster at that moment results from your relief that Margarita isn’t talking to you. You’re not even facing her, in fact, and though you feel pity for her target, you don’t dare look for it.

  “Bitch, don’t ignore me,” Margarita says, this time closer. Still, you don’t turn. You keep staring straight ahead at the water tower past the football field, wondering if you could slip through the fence separating you from Pierpont Road unnoticed, and if you’ll ever have the guts to just walk away, or if there will ever be anything within walking distance worth taking the risk for.

  The next Bitch, however, is accompanied by a push on your shoulder, hard enough to knock you into the chest of Antony, a six-foot-five freshman who frequently takes on half a dozen guys at a time on the basketball court but who obviously doesn’t want to be seen by Margarita as a collaborator with you. He pushes you back upright and walks away, his spot quickly filled in by a group of a dozen rubberneckers eager to take in the carnage that’s sure to ensue.

  You still can’t get yourself to turn around, so Margarita does it for you, spinning your shoulders until you’re forced to look at her straight on.

  “I saw you looking at me, bitch. You a dyke?” she says.

  “I wasn’t looking at anything,” you say, trying hard to keep your voice from falling apart, knowing your fear will only make you more appetizing prey.

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “I literally didn’t even see you until just now. I literally was looking the totally opposite way.”

  “I’m a fucking liar, is what you’re saying?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “So I’m fucking stupid, is what you’re saying?”

  “I never said that,” you manage to answer.

  “So you call in this bomb threat, you fucking towelhead?” Margarita says.

  “No,” you say.

  “Bullshit, you fucking terrorist. Yeah, Lady Taliban. How they let you in this school? This school is for fucking Americans, you fucking camel jockey,” Margarita says, stepping closer.

  “My name is Albanian. Albania’s in Europe,” you say.

  “What?” Margarita asks, momentarily more confused than enraged.

  “Camels don’t live in Europe.”

  And just to ensure that you’re doing what you think you’re doing, challenging Margarita instead of fleeing from her, you add, softly but clearly, “Stupid.”

  You realize, as the word leaves your lips, that you are able to do this because you’re feeling something even stronger than fear: rage. Rage is not a new feeling to you, but it’s a new word for the feeling, which before you’d always thought of as confusion. But confusion is chaos, and in the second it takes to look Margarita in her hateful, beady eyes, you realize that your rage can have the precision of a freshly sharpened fillet knife. You decide that just as she has done for you all these years, you will make Margarita the surrogate for the world’s rejections and injustices and the stain on your favorite Target sweatshirt. You will face her, you will steal her superpower shittiness, and you will destroy her and the random unjust life forces she represents. By simply invoking a tw
o-syllable word, stupid, you are attempting to cease being a victim and reclaim your sense of agency, a term that you’d only ever heard in the context of an AP lit class.

  Only Margarita’s rage is bigger and more experienced than yours, and her practiced fist lands hard on your face.

  In movies, the sound of fist on flesh is created in sound labs by men slapping their hands against hanging slabs of beef, and even after Margarita’s fist recoils, you expect to hear this same familiar effect. In reality, a well-landed punch makes very little sound. In fact, for half a minute, you hear nothing at all except for the receding waters of Long Island Sound at low tide, which is remarkable, since Waterbury, despite its name, is nearly forty miles from the ocean. And what you see when you look ahead of you doesn’t look like an ocean, except for maybe the Red Sea, if that’s a name to be taken literally.

  The sequence of events after that gets a bit hazy. There are flashes of light, which turn into people, which turn into a single person, namely a physical education teacher who hadn’t run a mile in under fifteen minutes since the first Reagan administration. He remains behind in the nurse’s office to bring down his blood pressure after you’ve been ice-packed, ibuprofened, and shuffled along to the assistant principal, where you sit alone for twenty minutes, hallucinating you’re sitting behind one-way glass, waiting to point out Margarita to Jerry Orbach, who’ll send her along to Sam Waterston, who’ll get her to break down on the stand and confess to her theft of your math work sheet and her multiple abortions and her hate crimes against European camel jockeys, yelling that she would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for you meddling kids. By the time you realize you’re conflating Law & Order with Scooby-Doo, two syndicated shows you watch in succession every time you stay home sick from school, you’re joined not by any members of New York’s finest but by the assistant principal and your own mother. It’s then that the warm opiate blanket covering your body’s pain receptors is snatched off, and the fact of Margarita’s practiced fist on your eye socket is fully realized.