Chapter 63 2015
The answer came unexpectedly a year after Profe’s death.
His name was Joseph. He was the son of a doctor who had come to Somalia with Operation Smile to help children with cleft lips and palates. I had gone with an eight-year-old student from the school, Hodan, and her mother to the hospital in Mogadishu so I could help translate what the doctor said.
I loved Hodan, perhaps because she reminded me a little of myself. She was a beautiful little girl with large expressive eyes, and she had been born with a cleft palate, the middle of her upper lip tacked unnaturally to the skin beneath her nose.
The three-hour bus ride was exhausting, and we arrived at the hospital to a great throng of other desperate, hopeful, worn-out parents and children. Joseph was in charge of taking down the names of each prospective patient.
When he reached us, he asked Hodan’s mom in halting Somali for her daughter’s name and birth date. I responded in English, and he lifted his face to mine. He was around my age, with neatly trimmed brown hair, round wire-rimmed glasses, and pimply skin.
“Wow, English,” he said a moment before his eyes widened and he said, “Whoa! No way! You’re Patch. The skater.” Then his expression changed from surprise to mischievousness as he said, “You know, people are looking for you?”
Hodan looked from him to me and back to him.
“Why? Why you look for her?” She was one of the better English speakers.
“Not me, in particular. But everyone.” Joseph spread his arms wide, indicating the entire world. Then he bent to Hodan’s level. “Your friend here is a hero.”
My skin flushed. It was certainly not how I viewed myself. I considered correcting him, but Hodan looked at me with such wonder I didn’t want to disillusion her.
“She is the greatest figure skater in the world,” Joseph said. “And she stands up for what she believes in.”
“What is ficker keeter?” Hodan asked.
“I’ll show you.” Joseph pulled out his phone, and his thumbs flew over the screen.
He turned it toward Hodan to show her a video of me skating the short program at the Olympics. Watching it, my heart pounded strangely. It felt like watching a stranger from another life. Yet it was me, and my muscles twitched with the memory.
Since Profe’s death, I hadn’t thought about skating. I hadn’t thought much about anything, my mind dominated by sadness and guilt. Yet, seeing that video, an electric tingle ran down my spine.
Hodan looked at me, her top lip straining with her awestruck smile. “You do that?”
I did. I did that.
And that’s when I saw it, the slight change in her expression as she looked from my face—a face as distinctive as her own—back to the screen.
The image was frozen on my finishing pose, my nevus on full display.
The colorful blur of the audience was behind me, and for the briefest flicker, I did, indeed, feel like a hero.
“You win?” Hodan asked.
“No,” Joseph said before I could answer. “The judges were jerks and scored her totally unfairly.”
Before I could give my standard humble response of complimenting Tina, Joseph said, “But you’re going to show them in the next Olympics, right?”
Hodan looked at me expectantly.
“There’s no way I’d be chosen for the US team again. I finished sixth.”
“But you live here,” Hodan said, “in Soomaaliya,” which is what Somalis call their country. “Soomaaliya choose you.”
“Wouldn’t that be something,” Joseph said, “you skating for a country where it never snows and where you are an immigrant who was given a second chance? Full circle. And you show those stupid judges just how good you are.”
After Hodan’s exam, Joseph asked me to dinner.
My first date.
I had traveled to the city in my tracksuit, so I went into the city to shop. I sent photos of the outfits I was considering to both Astur and Esma. Both had very different opinions. Astur was all about playing up my sass. While Esma thought I should go for alluring. Both were very excited.
I acted like it was no big deal, but it was silly pretending. They both knew me too well.
Make him work for it. Astur texted.
Let loose and have fun. Esma said.
I was tending toward the latter. I was eighteen and had never been kissed.
My body buzzed with so much anticipation I was practically jumping by the time I returned to the hospital to meet Joseph.
I had settled on a simple blue cotton dress with a wide white belt that showed off my tiny waist. On most girls it would have been tea length, landing just below the knees.
On me, the hem nearly reached my ankles.
“Wow,” Joseph said when he saw me. “I feel underdressed.”
He wore the same khaki shorts and Operation Smile T-shirt he’d been wearing that morning. I was a little disappointed he hadn’t thought to change but didn’t show it.
“Where should we go?” he asked. “There’s a barbecue place not too far from here.”
I knew the place he was talking about. It served wraps and barbecue chicken on paper plates from a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in a strip mall.
“I’m vegetarian,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, a slight twitch in his cheek. “Well then, let’s find someplace else.”
I was hugely relieved, then even more relieved when, after a few steps of strolling down the street, he took my hand. He had long fingers, and his palm was slightly clammy from the warm night, but I didn’t mind. My fingers curled around his.
Dylan crossed my mind, but only briefly.
I hadn’t heard from him since the email he’d sent after Profe’s death, and Joseph was there and holding my hand.
Hodan and her mother were staying at the hospital, in a dorm set up by Operation Smile.
I was staying at a hotel. By myself. Electricity buzzed down my spine.
As if reading my thoughts, Joseph glanced over, a sly smile on his face.
I tried not to notice that his eyes continually flicked to my nevus.
It was a beautiful night, still and warm, a three-quarter moon grinning down on us that bathed the city in a soft yellow glow. Very romantic.
We walked by a park with rap music blaring from a concrete courtyard.
A group of breakdancers were putting on a show, and we stopped to watch.
Their moves were outrageous, their bodies liquefying a moment before turning robotic, as if their skeletons were malleable.
I watched as their joints bent in ways that seemed impossible, limbs popping and heads and hips morphing and rolling.
Each dancer had their own unique style, and for the second time that day, my muscles twitched as I wondered if I could replicate some of the moves on skates, the ember of the athlete within me igniting like an old friend.
“Let’s go,” Joseph said. “I’m starving.”
We continued on and, a few minutes later, found a café with a view of the ocean.
He stepped to the counter and ordered baasto iyo suugo, pasta with meat sauce.
I waited for him to step aside so I could order as well, but he didn’t.
Instead he pulled out his wallet and paid for his meal, making it clear he had no intention of treating.
I didn’t mind. It was 2015; Hillary Clinton had just been endorsed by Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate for president of the United States.
A girl shouldn’t assume a boy should pay for her.
I ordered cagaar, spinach stew, and we took a seat at one of the outdoor tables.
“So what made you decide to hide out in Somalia?” Joseph asked.
“I wasn’t hiding,” I said. “This is where my family is.”
He tilted his head. “Are they missionaries?”
“No,” I said and, not wanting to explain, turned the conversation to him. “It’s an amazing thing you and your dad are doing, helping children like Hodan?”
“Not me. My dad’s the one with the hero complex. I’m just here because he threatened to cut off my allowance if I didn’t join him. Trust me, hanging out in an African desert with a bunch of messed-up kids is not how I would choose to spend a day, let alone two weeks of my summer break.”
He chuckled.
I didn’t chuckle with him, heat rising in my cheeks.
Our food arrived. “Adaa mudan,” I said, as Joseph snapped, “I said I wanted my steak well done. Does this look well done?” He shoved the tray back at the woman who had delivered it.
“Idiot,” he muttered as she walked away.
I slid from the booth.
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer.
Seeming to realize his mistake, he said, “Aw, come on. I just want my steak the way I like it. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I attempted to walk past him, but he blocked my way. Then, before I realized what was happening, he had his phone out. He spun and squatted so his face was beside mine and snapped a photo. I whirled and fled as mascara-streaked tears ran from my eyes.
The image of my stunned face beside his grinning one with the tagline “Patch spotted in Somalia!” appeared the next day on Joseph’s Facebook and Instagram. It got over a hundred thousand likes and was reposted hundreds of times. No one won the bet in Las Vegas.