My New American Life

My New American Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: My New American Life Read Online Free PDF
Author: Francine Prose
travel.
    Eventually, Lula buckled down and wrote a story in English, with the help of a dictionary and a thesaurus she found in Zeke’s room. In the flyleaf was an inscription. “To Zeke, Happy Birthday from Mom, may words give you wings!” What heartless witch gives a teenage boy a thesaurus for his birthday?
    Trying not to think too hard, Lula wrote a story about the blood feud in her great-great-grandfather’s time. She pretended that her Cousin George was the bridegroom’s brother and added a long poetic passage about the bride walled in, stone by stone. There was also a lot about muskets, information that came easily, her dad having been a gun nut, and finally lots of folkloric stuff, curses and proverbs she found on Albanian online forums. She put in everything but the sound track of Albanian folk songs.
    Mister Stanley liked her story so much that it became part of the package they gave Don Settebello, who now listed writer among her skills, along with translation and childhood education. Independently, or maybe not so independently, Mister Stanley and Don suggested she write a book. Lula couldn’t imagine why a country would want a citizen from a long line of blood feuders. So to tip the scales in her favor, she wrote a sad story about the day she heard that her parents had been killed in the NATO bombing.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” Mister Stanley said.
    â€œI’m okay,” Lula assured him.
    It was true, they’d died in the war. So what if they hadn’t really got stuck in Kosovo when the war broke out, but had sneaked across the border when it was almost over? Thousands of refugees had been fleeing from Kosovo into Albania, from the Serbs and from NATO. Only her crazy father had stolen his brother’s car and, fueled by drink and misguided patriotism, driven himself and her mother in the wrong direction. His Kosovar brothers needed him! Her dad had gotten it into his head that the Kosovo Liberation Army could use his collection of tribal muskets. So what if it wasn’t the NATO bombing that got them, but an auto crash, and her dad was driving drunk? They’d hit a NATO tank. Lula’s private opinion was that he’d been on a suicide mission. The six years since her parents died sometimes seemed like an eye-blink and sometimes like forever. Some days Lula could hardly remember them, some days she couldn’t stop seeing their faces. She still cried whenever she thought about her dad’s funny porkpie hat, a style increasingly popular with hipster boys in Brooklyn.
    â€œYou should write a memoir,” Mister Stanley had said, that first conversation.
    â€œMaybe short stories,” said Lula.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Mister Stanley. “Don says nonfiction sells better. A memoir of immigrant life. Coming from the most backward Communist country and moving here—”
    â€œNot the most backward,” said Lula. “You’re forgetting the stans. Turkmenistan. Uzbekistan.”
    â€œSorry,” said Mister Stanley. “That was thoughtless.”
    â€œDon’t mention it,” said Lula.
    B y the time the Lexus had passed the house four times, Lula had progressed from being sure it had nothing to do with her to thinking it was no wonder that the car had come to punish her for lying.
    The Lexus stopped. Three guys got out and ambled toward Mister Stanley’s. No double-checking the address. They acted like they lived here. All three wore black jeans streaked with white dust. Maybe they were in construction. Had Mister Stanley hired someone to fix the house and not told her?
    One of the men wore a red hoodie appliquéd with the black double-headed Albanian eagle. Not exactly regulation INS business wear. So it made sense, of a kind. How many Albanians were there in the metropolitan area? The odds were against this being a random home invasion. Which wasn’t to say that her fellow countrymen wouldn’t rape
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