Hana waits for Shtjefën to come pick her up on the sidewalk, leaning on a streetlight. It’s a cold evening. It has suddenly become winter. She focuses on the sneakers she’s wearing for the first time today. They’re white and blue and go well with her dark-blue suit and white shirt. The shirt has a left breast-pocket with a pink border. Hana strokes the stitching as she waits.
Shtjefën pulls up in front of her. Hana could easily get a bus home. It was only a few stops, but Lila and Shtjefën insisted.
‘Hop in,’ he calls out to her. ‘Have you been waiting long?’
She climbs in, a bit distracted.
‘Is everything ok?’ Shtjefën asks her. ‘Why didn’t you wait at the bar instead of standing here getting cold? You had money with you, right?’
‘Everything’s fine. It was easy.’
‘I told you so.’
Shtjefën pulls away from the curb, his tires squealing. He needs a haircut and some rest, she thinks, so she decides to keep quiet.
He doesn’t stop at home, but carries on driving without any explanation. In Gaithersburg he announces that they’re on their way to buy her a used Honda.
‘The son of one of my workers owns a small garage, and he’s giving us a great price on a car that was headed for the junkyard.’
‘Does Lila know about this?’
‘She’d tie you to the bed rather than see you go. We need to present her with a fait accompli. I’ll pay, for now. You can pay me back when you have the money.’
‘Lila’s not going to like it.’
‘Your cousin is very understanding. You just have to know how to handle her,’ Shtjefën says with a sly smile. ‘And I know how to handle her.’
Hana is so happy she’s ashamed of it. Her left breast is itching. This is too much all in one day.
‘Shtjefën, I’m …’
‘Relax,’ he says, interrupting her. ‘And stop thanking me. I can’t take it anymore, all day it’s thank you this and thank you that. Have pity on me!’
Less than an hour later, Hana is the proud owner of a white Honda, which she drives home extremely cautiously, tailing Shtjefën. When they get home, Jonida lets out a shrill ‘Wow!’ Lila looks sad but content. Hana says she’s going to buy four steaks from Whole Foods and there’s no way the family can stop her, though they never shop there. It’s a place for rich people who only eat organic, and the prices are way too high.
Hana pats the Maryland drivers’ license in her pocket, leaps into the twelve-year-old Honda, and takes off. She comes back with meat and salad, wine from another store, and two packs of cigarettes. She spends nearly 100 dollars.
That evening she eats, drinks, and smokes, and even Jonida seems to have very little to say about it. At around eleven, her niece falls asleep and Lila has to take her to bed. Hana has knocked back so much that she feels as drunk as a lord. When she ends up in the bathroom with her head in the toilet bowl, her cousin doesn’t dare go and help her.
‘I’m sorry, Lila. It won’t happen again,’ Hana says the next morning, before leaving for work.
She parks in her reserved spot. For the rest of the day she feels foolishly proud of herself.
When she gets back home, she still has a headache. She decides to devote her evening to a map of Maryland. One day she’d like to drive as far as Annapolis, the state capital, and see a bit of Chesapeake Bay.
Shtjefën and Lila are at the movies in Rockville.
‘They’re like honeymooners,’ Jonida comments. ‘God save us from these old romantics!’ But she’s secretly happy for them, and kissed them both on the forehead as they left.
Auntie and niece spend no more than an hour together. Hana asks Jonida to explain a few things about the computer to her. Just the basics, she insists. But she is slow to pick it up and things need repeating. Jonida grumbles. Perhaps it’s for the best, Hana thinks. I’ll learn in my own time. She’s happier on her own. Since she left the mountains, she misses her solitude. In the old days she would have done anything to have a bit of company. Now she feels her life is over-crowded.
June 2002
It’s Thursday. Summer has come with a vengeance, asphyxiating in its humidity. Hana has not touched alcohol in six months, since she got drunk on her first day of work. Tonight, however, she decides to buy a bottle of wine. She hurriedly steps out of the studio apartment she rented three weeks ago. It’s noisy and cramped, overlooking the chaotic traffic of the Rockville Pike, and fifteen minutes from Lila and Shtjefën’s place. It’s 600 dollars a month, two months’ deposit hands down. She signed a contract, which made her anxious. Pages and pages of quibbling articles full of legal terms that sent her running for her dictionary to look them up with meticulous diffidence.
In the neighborhood store, the young salesperson short-changes her by five dollars. She demands her correct change and he apologizes. Hana smiles.
Equally hurriedly, she returns to her apartment. When she opens the door she stops on the threshold. She is satisfied with what she sees. After a day’s cleaning the apartment is as spotless and tidy as a hospital.
Everything is under control, she thinks. Just carry on as you are doing, calmly. First, drink a glass of wine. Then take your clothes off slowly and observe your naked body. Then make love to yourself and see how you do.
She carries out the first part of the plan — a glass of wine, a toast to herself, a slight tipsiness to coax her on — but the wine fails to do its job. She applies herself to the second part, but when she tries to make love to herself she feels nothing but embarrassment.
‘You’re pathetic,’ she sneers. And goes to bed.
Before falling asleep, though, she swears to herself that the following Thursday, her day off, she will have a serious day of reckoning with her body. It’s not enough just to touch yourself until you feel sore. She reaches the conclusion that she must study herself in the mirror. Deal with the sight of her flesh. Look at herself. She has a whole week to work on it. Otherwise why spend all that money on the mirror she hung in the corridor? She bought it in Ikea for thirty dollars. The hum of the air conditioning unit rubs her nerves raw. She tunes into it for a while and slides into sleep.
Seven days later she has an appointment with the mirror.
Let’s take these rags off, she says to herself.
The hum of the air conditioning is still there, accompanied this time by the low rumble of the fridge. She turns the air conditioning unit off and closes the blinds. The building opposite is very close and there are no curtains on the windows.
She takes off her light-blue cotton t-shirt, but leaves her bra on. She takes her slippers off and places them carefully in a corner of the corridor, near the table with the phone on it. She takes her jeans off. The sky-blue panties she bought are a bit too big; at the next sales she’ll buy some that fit better. Now she knows she needs extra small. She positions herself in front of the mirror.
She looks the other way and unclasps her bra. The air in the room is getting close. She closes her eyes and works her thumbs under the blue elastic. Her fingers meet over her flat stomach — every woman’s dream, Lila says. She can feel a vein pulsing somewhere under her skin, to the left of her belly button. She keeps her eyes shut and shifts her hands downwards.
She slowly pulls down her panties, to her knees, to her ankles, folds them and puts them on the table. They are her last barrier of defense. She goes back to her original position and opens her eyes, being careful not to meet her own gaze.
She has no idea whether what she sees is beautiful or not. She’s seen so few naked bodies in her life: Aunt Katrina when she was already old, and Uncle Gjergj when he was dead and they had to prepare him for the wake. She can’t remember ever seeing her mother in the nude.