Xhenet Aliu - Brass

“Who’s ‘she’?” Mamie asked again.

“Agnes,” I said. “Aggie.”

“Who’s Aggie?” Greta asked.

Yllka and Gjonni looked at each other and then at me and then back to Bashkim, not sure who to worry about the most. “Someone from back home,” Gjonni said, shaking his head.

“Family from the old country,” Yllka added.

“Like his sister? Who? What happened?” Greta asked.

Gjonni bent down and tapped his thumb against Bashkim’s cheek. “Ikim, ikim. Come, let’s go upstairs. Let’s go to your bed.” Gjonni nodded at Yllka and they both prodded and pulled at Bashkim until he sat upright.

“There is tea made in the kitchen. Help yourselves,” Yllka said, still playing host even with a monkey on her back, almost literally. “We will take care of him. You stay and talk.”

Bashkim lifted his head as Yllka and Gjonni dragged him past us. “They will take care of me. You cannot take care of me,” he said.

“Yllka, let me help,” I said. I didn’t know how I could help when I couldn’t even look at him, but this was my mess to clean up after. All they should have had to worry about was tossing out the streamers and empty Solo cups.

“No!” Bashkim yelled. “You cannot help. You do not understand. Nuk jeni një prej nesh. Nuk jeni!”

“What’s he saying?” I asked.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s not talking sense,” Gjonni said.

“I want to know,” I said.

“I want to know who Aggie is and what the hell is going on,” Mamie said.

“There is just trouble back home and Bashkim is upset and had too much to drink and that is it,” Yllka said.

“Nuk kuptoni,” Bashkim said to me.

“I don’t understand,” I answered.

“Yes, you don’t understand!” he yelled, and he repeated it over and over as Yllka and Gjonni dragged him through the door. I heard his voice carry on over the shuffle of their feet on the stairs, until it was muffled halfway up the flight, and silenced altogether by the time they reached the top. I heard the door open and the screen door slap hard against the frame, more footsteps on the floor, and then a dull thud, followed by mumbled voices.

“What the hell is happening?” Mamie said. “Jesus, that was a goddamned show.”

“Not now,” I said. “Please.”

“Is Aggie his sister?” Greta asked, almost pleading. “Why is he so upset? What happened?”

“Aggie is in Albania. The government has fallen, everybody’s lost everything, there’s chaos in the streets. It’s dangerous, and she has to get out,” I said. It sounded so simple, really. Too simple for everybody, including me, to be so confused.

“And she’s his sister?” Greta asked again.

“No,” I said. “His wife.”

It was as if the silence had been written into this part of the script: it was, for a moment, absolute. No cars outside, no birds, no breeze, no more muffled voices from upstairs, no breathing. It wasn’t peaceful, exactly, but it was reassuring. It seemed to say: You can always come back to this, to nothing.

“Holy great goddamned fucking shit,” Mamie said, shattering that beautiful calm moment.

“No, Elsie, really?” Greta said.

“Really,” I said. I was too tired to come up with a lie, and even an explanation seemed pointless by then. What was I supposed to say, that when I met Bashkim, his wife was a trinket in a life he’d left behind, like a high school trophy sitting in an attic? She was a ghost, a phantom limb, a bridge soon to be burned? How was I supposed to know that Bashkim’s past wasn’t a cold he could shake but a terminal condition? How was I supposed to know that everybody’s was?

“You’ve really screwed things up, girly,” Mamie said. Her voice was as rough as ever but she said it through tears. It was almost impossible to disappoint her, as low as her expectations were, but I was a prodigy at screwing things up. Not only had I let things fall apart, I’d demolished the raw materials before construction even began. Greta’s hands were crawling all over her head, and Mamie wasn’t even stopping her, because even if Greta pulled every last hair from her head there’d still be a good solid base to rebuild on. There were actual brains under there; everyone said it, even Mamie, and sometimes they said brains like it was a dirty word, but really it was because we were full of wonder at such a thing. Me, I was the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion rolled into one. I looked outside and wished for a twister to take me away, but it was just plain old afternoon sun out there.

“Could you leave me alone now?” I said, but I didn’t need to ask. Mamie had already started gathering her things, including the presents she’d brought for the baby, but then she cussed under her breath and dropped them back on the table.

“That poor child,” she said. “It never even had a chance.” Then she walked outside, where Greta was already waiting for her, and they were probably halfway home by the time I thought of an answer to that.

“There is a chance,” I said. It was just that the chance wasn’t in that apartment, even with the new crib bumper and the pallets of adorable shitless diapers and the spiked punch, and it wasn’t back at Mamie’s house, with the cable TV and drips of burgundy over every carpeted and upholstered surface like the aftermath of a crime scene. I had to get us out of there, me and that kid, out to one of the mysterious highway mile markers that chance had to hide behind, out to where we had a shot at something we needed more desperately than plush rattles and microwaved breast milk. I promise you, kid, I promise you. There is a chance.

Ahmet is a magician, a straight-up David Copperfield, whom he doesn’t actually look unlike. You didn’t sleep all night—not one second, not even long enough to daydream—and still he managed to slip unnoticed out of bed and get himself showered and dressed and looking like a brand-new man. He even looks a little taller than the one you got into the car with the day before, his head perhaps screwed on a little straighter, with one Nike firmly planted on the thin beige motel carpet and one foot literally out the door.

He sees you watching him and says, “I’m getting the car ready.”

You think so long about how to say good morning that the moment passes altogether. He closes the motel door behind him and oddly it’s then that the cold air from outside makes its way to the bed. An engine turns over outside and in five seconds flat screeches out of the parking lot, and you know instantly that it’s Ahmet’s Honda, and that you are now truly alone in this shitty motel in whatever godforsaken red state you’re in—you honestly can’t remember. You wait for the panic to set in, but all you feel is the glorious warmth of the horrendous, scratchy floral coverlet, along with something that might actually be relief. What choice do you have now but to scrape together all of your remaining cash and book yourself a Greyhound as far north as two hundred dollars will take you? It’s the only practical thing left to do, the only decision between you and a life lived at the seesaws of Tuscaloosa, Alabama’s equivalent of Hamilton Park.

That’s right, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. That’s where you are, in a southern college town where people drive SUVs just to maximize the surface area for their crimson A car magnets.

The motel room door opens again, and Ahmet steps inside. “Car’s warming up,” he says. David Copperfield at it again: he was gone and now he’s back, the phantom version of him already on the on-ramp to I-20, the nice guy version of him back in the motel room, unable to meet your eye. Really it was only wishful thinking that he had driven away, because you didn’t want to have to stumble through this next part with him.