I Knew It Would Be Home
Amina’s story- part 2. A wealthy immigrant explains herself — and tries again.
“You’re not African and you’re not American, so what are you?”
How I answer this question of identity depends on who’s asking — and my mood at the time. The simplest reply is “I’m Somali.” Anyone with functioning eyes who’s read a newspaper can figure this out — my skin, my hair, my features, no hiding here! But it’s not correct. I haven’t stepped foot in that nation since early childhood, and I have as much of a kinship with Mogadishu as Chelsea Clinton has with Little Rock, Arkansas.
Then I usually curse the fact that this conversation is taking place in the 21st century.The first words that come to mind today when people hear “Somalia” are pirates and terrorists and the phrase “failed state.” I would prefer them to associate the nation of my birth with Iman, supermodel and wife of David Bowie. But world events have conspired against me.
When I’m tired or in a hurry, or if I sense I’m speaking with a bigot and want to make him or her feel badly, I tell them I’m a citizen of the world, which conjures up images of war and displacement and refugee camps.
If I feel like I’m talking to someone reasonably educated, however, I tell them the truth. I’m a student at Macalester College, where I’m studying to learn more about this world around me. I also answer that I’m a resident of South St Paul, where I currently live in a snug but comfortable temporary apartment. Or I simply tell them that I’m a Minnesotan because, after careful consideration, my plan is to stay here.
If I’m feeling particularly open and friendly, if I sense that there’s time in the conversation to wander into the details with a receptive audience— or if they ask, as Melissa and Niko did— I tell them the longer story. My father held a variety of positions with World Bank and we lived throughout the world. Twelve nations before my 12th birthday. I attended schools with children of every creed and color, wealth and privilege our only common denominator.
These schools and malls and hotel lobbies and discos, because yes, I went through that phase like any girl, were interchangeable — in Dakar, in Singapore, in Jakarta and London. What was life was like in these places? I do not know. For me, each one was an air conditioned car with a driver, an air conditioned house or apartment, an interchangeable array of boutiques followed by tea and gossip with an interchangeable array of acquaintances.
In my early adulthood, I arrived at my decision to break free. Father had passed and I had landed in Dubai by default, spending far too much time in manufactured settings, arranging plans, exchanging news that wasn’t really new, purchasing things. Spending too little time exploring, learning, wondering.
What am I doing here?
I was waiting in a hotel lobby when I received my grandfather’s call. It was a new glass atrium constructed by hundreds of Bangladeshi laborers to resemble a sail catching the breeze. Because such a thing is certainly needed in a desert. Our family had 14 grandchildren total, and he had a vast fortune to disperse among us while he was still alive. Most of the boys requested cars or businesses, most of the girls beach properties and high fashion.
What do you want, Amina? I requested education. Experiences. Plus the freedom to quietly pursue the life I desired. “I can only give you the money, Amina,” Grandfather told me. “And the connections to make the paperwork easier. The rest you will need to figure out yourself.”
I could do that.
My search ended in Minnesota. When I arrived, my aunt encouraged me to visit the apartment towers near the middle of the city, referred to by some, mainly white people, as “Little Mogadishu.” This wasn’t a compliment, I soon realized.
Impressive, I also realized as I walked through. Destroy a nation and its citizens will recreate it elsewhere in the world, even on a sub-Arctic tundra.
But it was not home.
It was a world and a way of life I did not recognize.
The distant cousins and soon their neighbors questioned me incessantly about religious practice, marriage and children. When they found me lacking in all three, they strove to rectify the situation. Every one of my visits brought with it a proposal by suitors rich in jewelry and cellular phone equipment and poor in documentation that would keep them within the United States. Surely someone of my wealth could procure them citizenship.
Needless to say, I limited my time in this Little Mogadishu and spent more of my hours on campus. Yet I didn’t feel fully at home there either.
An African, moving to Minnesota? Aren’t you cold? People always asked me this. Like most newcomers from warm climates, I had feared the weather. Do I really want to do this? And the winters certainly shocked my system. I did not realize it was possible for air to be so cold.
But slowly I acclimated. Assisted by my friends at school, I equipped my apartment with space heaters. I purchased long underwear and fleece from REI. And I lived for the summers— walking along the stone arch bridges of old St. Paul, the sky still blue at 9 o’clock, enjoying lazy afternoons at outdoor festivals and street fairs teeming with pale skin and terrible folk music. And the food! Heaping casseroles on picnic tables. Jello and marshmallow oozing from salad molds onto the cheery plastic tablecloths. Deviled eggs.
I marveled at the friendliness. My classmates, of course, educated me on perils “Minnesota nice” — the nosiness, the gossip. But I found the nods and waves and cheery greetings to be heartening, surface-oriented or no. Because who can control what’s being said behind one’s back?
I welcomed their reserve as well. Even though Midwesterners sometimes stared and asked obvious questions and wondered “not from around here, are you?” in a not so subtle way, they also gave you space. They left you to your business to just exist.
As someone referred to as “interesting,” and not as a compliment, all my life—I appreciated this.
How does a person go about purchasing a farm?
When I was ready to settle down, I typed this question into Google, a device that still never ceases to amaze me. From my fingers and keyboard to a satellite above Kazakhstan to a server farm in Iowa and back to my screen — amazing! — the electronic particles bounded off and brought back the information I was looking for.
When I saw Brandon and Shelly’s farmhouse, first on the Internet, beautifully photographed and marked “price negotiable” and then in person, I knew it would be home.
The porch was expansive, covered in white paint that was now a comfortable ecru and sagging in the middle. Its owners used it as a place for furniture, activity and human gatherings instead of mere decoration. I liked that. Wax candles hung from the eaves to ward off the mosquitoes that by now had either perished in a cold frost or migrated south. The furniture was of a sturdy plastic I recognized from the houses of my professors and mentors in the city. Wooden crates cradled firewood and potatoes. A wooden broom propped against a wall held a summer of cobwebs, seed pods, leaves and pollen.
In a past life, I had swept that porch, looked out onto that sunset.
I couldn’t shake that vision from my mind, even with my rude and racist dismissal by Brandon and especially after Melissa and Niko’s story.
I returned to plead my case.
To my good fortune, I found only Shelly’s car in the large gravel driveway when I arrived. I could tell the vehicle was hers because of the bumper sticker: Need something done? Ask a woman.
“May I see the house?” I asked.
“Can’t hurt,” she shrugged and motioned for me to follow her.
We walked through the back yard past an unused clothesline, a well-loved fire pit and a wooden bench placed curiously in the middle of it all. Patchy grass tickled my ankles as I followed.
“Back here is a shed. You’ll find a few of these across the property. This one’s a smaller one. Melissa used it for painting and building these modern art collages when she was growing up. We use it for storage now. A good place for gardening supplies, hunting gear, whatever you might need.”
Sheds were good, I agreed. I would certainly have many things to store in my new prairie life.
“Out there,” she pointed to a barn in the distance, “is where we kept the cows and beyond that the equipment and the fields. That’s more of Brandon’s territory.”
I gazed upon the fields. What would I be planting? What kind of animals would I be keeping?
“So” — we turned around — “back to the house. Niko’s gone into town to get his car looked at. Melissa and Lucas are sleeping. They’re not morning people, although Lucas is sometimes when he’s hungry or fussy, of course — so we’ll have to be quiet.”
She eased the back door open, and we tiptoed in. The entryway was crowded with coats and work shirts, the walls old calendars from feed suppliers. This was a room that meant business. We stumbled over a heap of shoes that were mostly work boots with an odd pair of flimsy red ballet slippers I took to be Melissa’s.
“Down there is the basement.” Shelly flicked on a light as we descended narrow concrete stairs. “A fully finished TV room, which you can use as a tornado shelter in the summer, plus a half bath and shower. And an industrial-size washer and dryer. We replaced the water heater just five years ago. One of the best in the market, got a good deal from the family next door.”
“Will I have the opportunity to meet your neighbors?”
Get to know the people. Get to know their community. My grandfather had reminded me of this many times.
“No, not really,” Shelly replied.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Clayton doesn’t really come around here much anymore. And here’s the kitchen.”
Very spacious and well laid out, I remarked. I had noticed during my previous visit.
Shelly winced in the dramatic apology of Midwestern Americans. “God I am so sorry we kept you waiting. Brandon my husband,” she shrugged and held her hands out wide in lieu of explanation. “I hope that Melissa and Niko kept you entertained at least.”
They certainly had, I replied.
“She’s Brandon’s sister and he’s her husband, although you probably guessed that already. They live in the city but are here helping us out with the packing and prep for the sale. She can work from anywhere, running her own business and all. And he’s taking vacation time from the oil company, I think, which is really nice of him considering how badly Brandon treats him.”
Why does Brandon treat him badly? I wanted to ask.
Shelly hoisted the kitchen windows open to let in the fresh air. “I think they also want Lucas to be exposed to the outdoors and nature. It did our two kids a world of good when they were growing up.”
“You mentioned that they go to school in the city,” I asked. “Do they attend boarding school?”
This elicited a hearty laugh. “Oh Christ no — we don’t have the money for that. We got them into a public school in the western suburbs. It’s a rich area, one of the best school districts in the city. The country school just wasn’t cutting it any more.”
She pulled out a chair for me at the kitchen table. A square pan of apple crumb cake rested before me, taunting me, as my waistband cinched me in. Since moving to this state, I had gained a full 20 pounds. Only my roomiest pants and skirts still fit, and I was too proud and optimistic to purchase replacements.
“Please, help yourself to as much as you like,” Shelly insisted. As I ate—it would have been rude to refuse, of course — and she poured me coffee, she explained about the absence of her teenage son and daughter. To attend this exceptional school in the city, the children boarded in a small apartment nearby, coming home on weekends to help with the farm.
This surprised me. I didn’t think Americans did such things, the Americans of today who coddled their children for years beyond adulthood. Maybe in trailer parks or on shows like the program with the young girl Honey Boo Boo were youth left unsupervised. But not in respectable families, in respectable places like this farm.
Shelly merely shrugged. “Teenagers have been taking care of themselves since the beginning of time.” As she explained, she kneaded bread for the kitchen’s next baked delight. “And ours have known how to do laundry, cook, clean, buy groceries and all that since they were old enough to walk. I believe we raised them well. I believe they’ll be just fine.”
Brandon never appeared that day.
Neither of us expected him to. Yet I left satisfied with the afternoon’s visit to the farm, and energized by Shelly’s independent, hardy spirit. I would need to have her over for dinner after I purchased the farm. Her and Melissa and Niko and the baby. Yes, that would be an entertaining evening.
My pioneering dreams were coming true. They had begun long before my move to Minnesota. They had originated in London, “On the Banks of Plum Creek” in fact. The book beckoned from the shelves of a bookseller. Build a house out of mud? Carved out of the side of a gentle prairie hill? As a child and to this day, the thought of it fascinated me. I yearned for a back yard in which to try such constructions out. The cobblestone garden at school presented a sad substitute. My activities in the flowerbeds resulted in a wet frock and a stern reprimand.
The bookseller directed me first to the volume with an illustration of a log cabin on its cover, then the book with a covered wagon. “Little House in the Big Woods.” Then “Little House on the Prairie.” The first two stories. I imagined all of my possessions crammed into such a contraption, traveling across the country without even a road to guide the way. What an adventure!
The third book in the series — the one about her future husband as a boy — I skipped over because you can read stories about boys anywhere. The girls growing up — this is what fascinated me. They started school, helped with chores, began dressing as adults. I imagined petticoats swishing across grassy fields, a bonnet shielding my face, as I walked to the general store. Back at home, this family of sisters learned from their mother, took on more responsibilities. They learned to deal with hardships.
And hardships there were. A hoard of locusts devoured the family’s crops. An endless snowstorm forced them to twist hay into knots for kindling, then scrape the bottom of their flour tin for their last meals. One girl even went blind. “The scarlet fever,” they described it. Of course she bore her affliction stoically. As pioneers do.
I dreamed of becoming stoic like this someday. Even as I graduated into more adult, sophisticated reading, these books took hold of my imagination. They took me through fields of tall, wildflower-scented grass with a sunbonnet and flowing skirts, even as my physical self traveled from nation to nation, graduated from one international school to the next, took holidays in London and Hong Kong, summered in Singapore, loitered in Dubai.
So it was no surprise that when my grandfather asked me what I wanted from my life I drew one of these books from my leather satchel and pointed at its cover: “On the Shores of Silver Lake.” I presented this book just as other girls might have presented a copy of Vogue and asked for the entire fall season from Balenciaga.
“A farm?” he repeated, just to make sure that he had heard correctly.
Yes, I confirmed. A farm, on the prairie, underneath the big blue sky.
Grandfather finally relented. “If that’s what you truly desire.”
And to his credit, he never referred to this wish or to me as “interesting.” He merely accepted it and me as we were.
Read part 1, part 3, part 4 and part 5 of Amina’s story.
See what happened before and the events Amina’s actions set into motion.
© 2016 People and Places. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Views of the characters do not necessarily reflect the views of the author.
