The Gifty Part of the Year

They arrived in the middle of the night.  Arlene wasn’t asleep.  She might have been, but then again, maybe not.  Sleep’s been like Burlington’s weather these days – erratic and cold.  Inescapably cold. 

Anyway, cold and late as it was, she wasn’t asleep. She was knitting.

What with the price of heat shooting up like a…a…a…well, you know, something that shoots up like the dickens, Arlene had taken the art of layering to a whole new level.

She doesn’t mind the bulk, but the act of putting on undershirt after undershirt after shirt after shirt after sweater after sweater after fleece after a final wrap in Tyvek was just getting to be a little bit much.

So she’s spent most of the last few weeks going to Goodwill, picking ratty old sweaters out of the dollar bin, unraveling them, and re-knitting them into a garment of Biblical proportions.  Joseph’s coat of many colors transformed into a multi-hued, triple-thick union suit.  That much wool weighs a lot, so the whole thing is a little baggy.  The crotch tends to slide down around her knees.  But she just holds it up with Owen’s old tool belt.  The contractor kind with a buckle and suspenders, and multiple compartments dangling around the equator of her waist.  Makes her feel like freakin’ Batman.

She’s got compartments for snacks, pills, the phone (not too many folks calling these days, but at least she doesn’t have to go searching for it).  Even her dumb little yellow cat Twinkie rides around in the big nail pouch sometimes.  She’s got the hammer sling rigged for her knitting needles and a special pocket for yarn.  The day it dropped below zero, she knit herself fingerless mittens and attached them to the sleeves of the union suit without even taking it off.

She doesn’t wear this thing in public, mind you.  She’s got a little pride left.  And plus, Owen, even if he was watching her from the farthest reaches of Hell, would laugh himself silly.  But it’s just the thing for lounging around at home.  If you could call wondering what the heck she’s going to do with her worn-down, gimpy old self “lounging.”

The night they arrived, she was in the middle of making a new cap with extra-large earflaps when she ran out of yarn.  So she unraveled the giant red decorative A attached to her chest (Arlene might be lonely and knee-deep in broke, but at least she’s still got a sense of humor) and finished off her flaming headgear.

She’d just plopped it on her frizzy, graying head when she heard a commotion at the front door.  Peeking out the window, she saw a crowd of people – looks like even a few kids – scootching their way into the building.  Hard to tell, exactly, given the dark and the fact that they’re all bundled up like a family of Goodyear tire people.

Arlene’s pretty sure none of her neighbors would be having a party in the dead hollow of of a Tuesday night, so she limps out to the landing to see what’s what and who’s who.  “Hey there!” she calls out.  Seven or eight faces look up, and to her great surprise, a bunch of them are as dark as the night they came in from.  Darker than she’s ever seen in her life.

“Hello!” responds a…a…oh, how do you say it these days?  She’s a not-dark woman.  Ok, ok, she’s white.  Young.  With big blue eyes.  “I’m Jill.  We’re here helping with this… This is a family from Somalia.  Some of the family, at least.  Do you know about Somalia?  It’s a country in…  Oh, well, we don’t have time for that right now.  But anyway, they just got off the plane, and now they’re going to be living here!  They’re your new neighbors!”

“Oh,”  says Arlene.  “Hey there.”

Seven or eight pairs of eyes stare back at her.  The lowest-lying eyes, giant, dark, and set deep in the head of a kid about 5 or so, get very, very wide.  The mouth below the eyes lets out a little, “Eeeep!”  An adult hand moves quickly over the kid’s mouth.  There is a long pause.

“Ok then,” says Arlene.  And she hobbles back into her apartment, a little confused by the family’s response.

That is, she’s confused until she turns around a catches and a glimpse of herself in the mirror by the front door.  There she is, a bulbous, baggy, multicolored monster with dangling pouches, long needles, and wide red suspenders. 

Arlene grunts.  “Hm.  Welcome to freakin’ America!” 

Rahma got off the plane in a daze.  She’d never been on a plane before.  None of them had.  They’d never left the ground before.  Never left the earth they’d been born on.  Until the chaos came, they’d never left the daily ritual of their lives, of the lives of their parents, the lives of their ancestors.  Until the chaos came, they were firmly rooted in a matrix of time and space.  Of landscape and story.  Of history and belonging.

Of course they had dreams of growth, of improvement, of better health and more money.  Education for the kids.  But they’d never imagined their reality smashing to pieces on the ground like an old clay pot.  They’d never imagined coins scattered in the street – coins with far more weight than worth.  They’d never imagined endless hunger, machetes and bandits, and no safe place to hide - not even in their dreams.  They thought they’d have to hunker down, wait it out, get tougher, get more clever, more resourceful.  They never thought they’d have to leave.  Escape.  Flee.

But flee they did, shedding garments and possessions all along the miles of foot and truck and bus and plane.  They shed weight. They shed identity.  Loved ones.  Dignity.  Language.  Hope. 

By the time they got to Burlington, everything they owned, within and without, fit in a single dented, scuffed brown suitcase.

Four of them made it out together: Rahma, her twin daughters Fatuma and Amina, and little wide-eyed Mustaf.  Rahma’s husband, Malik, was alive – so far as she knew.  He’d wanted to stay behind in the refugee camp – just for a while, he said.  He’d been assisting the elders, organizing the gardening, helping reunite families, and she could see in him a sense of purpose he’d never had before as a day laborer.  He’d stopped caring about the danger.  Or, she felt, in the darkest of her dark moments, her.  Malik said he would join them soon, but somehow, she didn’t think so.

They staggered off the plane at midnight after almost 40 hours of travel – Nairobi to Amsterdam to Washington to Burlington.  Fatuma had made a little rhythm game of the names for Mustaf: Nai-ro-bi/Am-ster-dam/Wash-ing-ton/Bur-ling-ton.  Nai-ro-BI/Am-ster-DAM/Wash-ing-TON/Bur-ling-TON.  Amina, more serious than her sister, kept staring out the window at the lights far below, whispering, “Who lives down there?  Can they see us?  Do they know we can fly?”

“When we get there, how will we know our helpers?” Rahma had asked the relief worker in the refugee camp.  “How will they know who we are?”  “Don’t worry,” said the man.  “They’ll find you.  Vermont isn’t a big vacation spot for Somalis.”

Coming into the terminal, Mustaf squeaked in surprise at the sight of a Somali flag.  It was held up by two white women and a tall, thin black man with a blazing smile who called out in Swahili, “Welcome!  Welcome!  My name is Dalib.”  He greeted each of them by name, and introduced them to the two other volunteers from the refugee assistance group.

“We’re going to take you to your apartment,” he said, “but first, we’ve got to get you dressed!”  A long pause.  The family looked nervous.  Finally Rahma said, “Please forgive us for our soiled clothes, Dalib, but this is all we could—”  Dalib cut her off gently.  “There’s nothing wrong with how your clothes look, Rahma. But it’s colder than you can possibly imagine out there!”  “So cold my nose will fall off?” asked Mustaf.  Dalib thought for a moment and said, “If you are very, very careful Mustaf, you just might keep your nose.”

And so they were bundled up and herded out the door, lumbering through a cold so powerful it made their nose hairs freeze.  Forget about losing your nose, thought Rahma, how can a whole body survive such cold?  She had no idea.  But they must survive.  So they will. 

They got into a van, which took them down the road, through twists and turns, and finally stopped in front of a big rectangular building.  They went in the door, and were startled by a voice from above.  At the top of the stairs, backlit by a ceiling light, was a giant, wormy monster with a green and red head.  Rahma couldn’t see its face because of the light  She froze.  And stared.  The monster stared back.  One of the volunteer women said something.  The monster growled, and went away.  So this is America.

They got into the apartment.   It had three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bath.  Rahma looked around, concerned, and finally said to Dalib, “Pardon me.  But how much of this is for us?”  “What?” said Dalib.  “Oh.  Oh!  All of it, Rahma.  All of it.  The whole blessed thing.”

Several weeks later.  Still cold.  Still no word from Malik.

The family was settling in as best they could, bracing themselves for walking out the door, learning everything anew.  They’d met other people in the refugee community.  Rahma hadn’t realized there would be Somalis in Vermont, and it was a huge relief to know they weren’t alone; an even bigger relief to know, when they sat together, drinking tea against the all-pervasive chill, that everyone understood where they’d been, what it meant to just be alive.

The girls started school and Fatuma, it seemed, had a knack for languages.  She’d learned some English at school in Somalia, picked up more from aid workers in the refugee camp, and now, immersed in the language, she soaked it up like a sponge and was dripping English in puddles all over the floor.  She translated for the family whenever they went out, translated when the American volunteers visited them – if Dalib wasn’t available.  Though she always hopes he was.  Fatuma had an enormous adolescent crush on Dalib.

Fatuma was also the one who solved the mystery of the strange clothes – the thick, multi-hued, hand-knit socks and hats and mittens and scarves which showed up on their doorstep one late December day.  They came in a worn paper grocery bag with a big smiley face drawn on the front. 

Arlene had figured right off that a bunch of Africans plopped into the middle of a Vermont winter were probably the most unprepared people on earth.  So she took it upon herself to be their Guardian Angel of Wool.  Guessing they wouldn’t want to wear anything too itchy, she picked up some old flannel sheets at Goodwill – along with a few more dollar sweaters – and cut them up to make an inside layer for her quirky new line of knitwear.

Thing was, though, concerned as she was for their well-being (and hankering as she was for a little company), she actually felt kind of shy – scared, almost – about knocking on their door.  What could she have in common with a bunch of Africans who don’t even speak any English?  Regular Africans would be hard enough, but one of the refugee volunteer ladies told her these folks had been through hell.  Hell?  That, she knew.  Owen alone had been a fresh pile of hell almost every day.

Arlene had questions she didn’t dare ask.  What kind of hell had they come from?  And were they mad that that they had to come here, to an icy place full of white people?  Maybe they didn’t even want her help.  Owen probably would have said, “Nobody wants your charity, Arlene!”  Especially not her sorry-assed, could-use-a-little-charity-herself charity.

She didn’t want to bother them.  Still, she had to admit, it’d give her a kick just to see them wearing the stuff.  She missed giving presents.  But maybe they didn’t even know this was the gifty part of the year.   After endless back-and-forthing, she settled on the anonymous smiley-face bag.  It was friendly, they’d never know it was her, and she’d still get to be a kind of Secret Santa.

She didn’t expect they’d like it much. 

She certainly didn’t expect a knock on her door.  She didn’t expect, when she opened it, to see a brown paper bag with a smiley face staring right back at her.  And she absolutely didn’t expect the bag to say “Hello, Hat Lady!”

Fatuma whipped the paper bag off her head, and said again, “Hello!  Thank you!  Your gifts are nicely welcome!”  Fatuma’s English, while enthusiastic, could also be a little creative.

Arlene stared in surprise.  Fatuma pressed on.  “I guess good, yes?  You are…you are for us –“ she paused for a moment to get the name she’d learned from her school friends right “Stanta Clauss!”  Arlene chuckled.  “Hello, Hat Lady Stanta Clauss!  I am Fatuma!”

And with that, Fatuma grabbed Arlene by the hand and dragged her downstairs to meet the family.

They were all sitting around the kitchen table, wearing Arlene’s handiwork, and waving for her to come sit with them, to have a cup of tea.

Settled in, and introduced around by Fatuma, Arlene nodded her thanks.

Rahma spoke first.  “Please, your name?”

“Arlene.”

“Arlene.  Thank you.  But why…why you do not…say hello?”

Arlene didn’t even know where to begin, what to say, how to say it simply enough.  She also didn’t want to seem…what?  Sad?  Pathetic?  Compared to these people, she didn’t have any problems at all.  She shook her head.  “Didn’t want to bother you.”

“Bother?”  Rahma wasn’t sure what she meant. 

Fatuma giggled, and started poking her sister on the arm repeatedly.  “Like this!  Bother bother bother bother bother!”  Mustaf picked up the chant – and the arm poking – until Rahma shushed them both and smiled.

“No, Arlene.  You give us.  Give is…”  She turned to get a word from Fatuma.  “Love.  Give is love.  No bother.  No, no bother.”

Rahma had so much more she wished she could say.  She could that see this woman was alone and that her life had been, in its own way, very, very hard.  Maybe she hadn’t been chased from her home by men with guns.  Maybe her world hadn’t been torn apart by civil war and anarchy.  But something, surely, had stripped her of most of what she’d had.  You don’t have to be 6000 miles from home to be a refugee. 

The look in Arlene’s eyes was painfully familiar.  So many people she’d seen in the camps had that look.  They’d given up hope, lost the ability to reach out, to trust, to care.

But here was Arlene, such a hard life, so obviously alone, and yet sparked with enough compassion to try and keep this unknown family from the cold – to give them one less thing to be afraid of.  It made her think of Malik – the way he could ease a fear-stricken soul.  For all that had been taken away from them, maybe…maybe leaving him behind was a kind of parting gift.  For everyone.

Rahma wished she could tell Arlene all these things.  In fact, that would be a good reason to work hard on her English.  But for now, she just said, “Family, Arlene?”

“No,” Arlene said quietly.  “No family.”

Rahma took her hand.  “Yes.  Yes, now.  Now.  Family.”

“Yes!” said Fatuma, hugging Arlene from behind.  “A gift to you!  You are nicely welcome!”