2 - Chapter Two "The Thirty Percent Solution"

 

"The Thirty Percent Solution" 

Chapter  Two 

     Ermira was worried. She didn’t know why she gave her phone number to that young man at the reception. Sure, he was younger than most of the men from Winshire Associates. But he also seemed nice, maybe even decent, just something about him. Then she remembered what made her fearful: She realized she didn’t even think about what could happen, what could happen next. What if he called her? What if he told one of his bosses that she gave him a slip of paper with her telephone number? 

     Budalla! she thought. How could I? 

     It was already after two in the morning, and Ermira was the last one of the roommates to arrive back at their apartment in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn. In total, there were four of them, and she could hear the other girls giggling and running between the living room and the kitchen and the bathroom. She realized it could be three in the morning before she’d be able to take a shower. 

     Oh Zoti im! She knew it was silly, but she needed to wash it all away, all of the filth from the evening, just get rid of it. Just try to forget about it. 

     She knew she wouldn’t be able to forget the evening, and everything else that happened over the last year or so. And she knew sleep would come only after hours of tossing and turning, and replaying every decision and every mistake she made, and listening to the breathing of the other girls. 

    And now, she knew, she had one more thing, one more rash instant, one more instant of bad judgment or whatever it was, hanging over her. If only I hadn’t . . . If only, but there were so many of them, so many “if only’s,” she told herself. 

     There were four beds in the room. One of the beds was hers, and that was where she was sitting. Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet. She could still hear the other women joking and laughing, and she wondered how they could be so light-hearted at a time like this.

      Ermira was alone in the room. Stepping over the scattered clothing and shoes and magazines left on the floor, she walked to the one wall where there was a full-length mirror, and she examined herself. The light was dim in the bedroom, but Ermira could see that she appeared exactly as she did during the reception at the Huntington Residences, except that her deep fatigue showed in her face. She wore the same simple black dress, the same necklace with one small pearl that hung on her chest just above the crease between her breasts.  

     It’s always the same thing, she told herself. Beauty, yes beauty! Beauty, the double-edged sword! The men, they buzz around you, just like the song says. Oh, how sweet! They all want to help you. And then they all want is to get their hands, their dirty hands on you. If only I hadn’t been born like this. Like this, like me, with blond hair and green eyes. Yes, that’s it again, if only.

     She thought of the past, what she remembered of her early years. In Tirana, she was the daughter of the respected high-school philosophy professor, Professor Bajrami, and students and other teachers would come to her home, and she was the beautiful blonde child, and the visitors would admire her, and praise her blond hair with the soft, delicate curls, even when she was very young, and they would pat her on the top of her head, and touch her cheek, and compliment her and her parents. And as she grew into adolescence, and the number of visitors increased, but it was understandable, because these were her father’s colleagues and students, and he was so knowledgeable, and they wanted his opinions and assistance with their assignments, and they wanted to tap his deep knowledge about the world’s great philosophers.  

     But when her uncle, her dirty uncle, her mother’s brother, started patting her on the shoulder, and then – more and more with each visit - touching her arm and letting his hand slip to her back and then her bottom, she wanted her revenge. She asked him one day if he wanted to play hide and go seek, and he laughed and said yes, and she tricked him into hiding in her clothes closet, and she could hear him in there sniffing, and she asked herself what could he be doing, until she realized he was smelling her skirts and dresses, and she locked him in, and he whined and pleaded, until he finally broke the door and ran from her family home, and the scent that trailed him made clear that the had soiled himself from his fear, and he never came back again.

     But Ermira kept asking herself, Why? Why does this keep happening?

     Ermira was a good student in high school, even without applying herself. Except for her art classes. She loved the works of the French Impressionists, they talked to her, they evoked her emotions, and she wanted to understand why, how could images of paint on canvas, simple forms and bright colors, sometimes almost childish, how could these images bring pleasure, a warmth to her heart? She visited the National Gallery of Arts, and then the National Museum of Fine Arts in Tirana, but the paintings were different, they didn’t speak to her. So, she saved her allowance and she bought books about art and painting, and she bought oil paints, because that’s what the great artists used, and canvases, and she worked and experimented. And built a collection of her works, and she studied harder. 

     After she graduated, she told her parents she wanted to apply to study at the University of the Arts. Her mother was against it. How does that make you a better wife? How do you earn a living from “art”? The artists are the ones who are starving. But her father, the professor, said he was proud of her, and she saw tears in his eyes when he said she had to follow her heart. 

     She was frozen by fear the day she presented her portfolio to the entrance panel. In a bare room, she was alone, facing eight professors, the leading professors of the university. One woman on the panel said her work was childish, but the other members asked her questions about her work, what she wanted her work to do, and how she would deal with failure. And she told them she wanted to evoke people’s emotions, and there’s no such thing as failure for a true artist, there is only discovering more and more of yourself.  The woman who called her work childish told her to leave the room. In the hallway outside, Ermira suffered with every passing minute. But the door finally opened, and one of the professors smiled at her and asked her to return before the panel. 

     Both her mother and father were thrilled by her acceptance. Both of them told their friends how proud they were that Ermira completed every step of the entrance process on her own. 

     Over the summer, Ermira couldn’t wait for classes to begin. She visited the university several times, and she finally got permission to inspect the painting studios and the university’s museum. On her first day of class, as she entered the studio for oil painting, she was greeted by the professor. He was a relatively young man in a painter’s smock splattered with paint. He was the professor on the entrance panel who smiled at her. His name was Krojan Hamati. 

     Little by little, during her first semester, while she tried so hard to learn and open her mind and understand more and improve her painting style, it happened. One evening after class, Prof. Hamati asked if she would do him a favor. How could she refuse? He possessed so much knowledge about art and the techniques of painting, she had been learning so much from him. Of course, she would. Prof. Hamati explained that he had promised to complete a painting, but the model called with some silly excuse, and now, would she pose? It would be short, maybe just an hour. Of course, it would be a nude pose. Of course, Ermira admired him, trusted him. 

      Prof. Hamati began to paint. As he painted, his conversation sounded wrong to Ermira. He started to say, “Ermira, you’re so beautiful.” And he kept repeating, “You’re so beautiful.” And then he said, “Ermira, you’re so beautiful, I can’t help myself.” And then it happened.  

      The words, her own words were locked in her mind, and they came back to her now: I struggled, and I screamed, “No, no, no!” No one could hear me. The studios were empty. We were alone. He was so strong. He held me tight. I was naked. He touched me. He took me. He shouted in his pleasure. Then he stopped, he smiled, and said: “You’re mine now. I will help you always.” I escaped. He didn’t stop me. I escaped into the night. I wandered. It was my fault. My fault! I was naïve and stupid.    

      Was it over? No! Never! Ermira knew she would relive her pain over and over again. And she knew she was now a different person. Forever. And Prof Hamati? Ermira told herself, and she repeated one phrase so many times to herself: I thought he was sensitive and an artist, but I learned he’s a brute and a rapist. And finally, as she returned home that night, alone in the darkness, she realized she was doomed, it was her beauty, Prof. Hamati said it. She realized she had to escape. 

      Often, Ermira criticized young people for spending too much time on their computers, for putting happy stories on websites to impress their friends. But one day, she saw it, on a website: “Discover America, Admin Personnel Needed in Business Centers.” Why not? Just find out. She started a process that she couldn’t stop. She told her parents. It’s America. It’s culture. What do I have here in Albania? They were devastated. This is your home, your people. She did it. She didn’t understand. They took her money, her passport. She was trapped. 

     And now, here in the Bed-Stuy apartment, Ermira realized she was mistaken. She thought she could escape but in reality she knew nothing changed. And she made her biggest mistake, a mistake that would change her life forever. At least she had her friends. 

     In the bedroom with scattered clothes and shoes and magazines on the floor, Ermira turned away from the mirror and returned to her bed. She searched through her affairs and found a black notebook with a spiral spine. She laid it on the bed and opened it. She turned one page after another and examined her pen-and-ink sketches of young women standing or sitting or chatting with each other. The young women were Ermira’s three roommates. 

     Ermira asked herself this early morning, as she had asked herself many times before, why she kept sketching and why she kept her works in this sketchbook in this cluttered bedroom. And she answered what she had answered many times before: She wanted to have something of her own, something only she had, something that kept her in touch with her real identity, her soul, and something she wanted to regain.