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At first Baba said no, sports were for boys. Girls should help their mothers, not run around panting and yelling and kicking balls at each other.
"You said yourself, Hashim, that this is America. It is a place of new beginnings. Things are different here. Why don't we let our Meli try ... see if she likes soccer ... see if she is good enough to play on a team just for girls."
"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.
FOURTEEN A New Year
MELI 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.
FIFTEEN 9/11
AT 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 h
ad 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.'"
