21. COMING HOME

SOON AFTER Sadia left, Mana came home to stay. She had quit her marriage after only a few months.

You could feel her sense of relief and joy.

“I’m back in my old room with my two brothers,” she said as a younger sister brought her a small plate with a cut-up sandwich.

Ibrahim, her 6-year-old brother, fed her a piece, while Abdiwle, the 4-year-old, climbed along the sofa’s bolster and hugged her from behind.

“I brought them up,” she said about her brothers. “This one was my tail,” she said, indicating the older one. “This one was my eyes,” she said about the younger. “He would follow me everywhere. When I would clean, he would be on my back.”

There were a dozen kids that afternoon in her mother’s living room—siblings and a few cousins. Most of Zahara’s children have different fathers, so there is a vast range of body types, complexions, and personalities.

Mana has a big presence, though she is so thin she can seem to disappear. The younger kids like to bask nearby.

Halima, a quiet, thoughtful girl, in an apricot-colored hijab, and her younger sister, Zamzam, in a sparkly white one, pored over an electronics catalog.

“I like the Ninja Pro Blender,” Halima said. She pointed to a Fitbit. “This tells you your heart rate, your distance, how fast you go.”

“I like the trampoline,” Zamzam said, flipping through the pages.

Zahara came over and became absorbed in the catalog.

“I’m looking for a new TV for the living room,” she said. “Sixty-five inches.” She read aloud from the catalog: “$899.”

“Think about the quality,” Mana told her mother. “Don’t think about the money. I bought a laptop, a Dell—it seemed cheap. But it fell on the ground—and never came up again. I buy HP now.”

Mana does not second-guess her decisions: “If something happens, I see it. Come to a conclusion. Talk about it. Then after that, I’m good. I’m on my way.”

She had decided she did not want to be married. “For me, love is my family,” she said. “With a stranger, not so much. I’d never experienced a man before. And you know what? I’m OK with that.”

There were issues in the marriage: She was perplexed by her husband’s emotion. “He said he loved me all the time. I said, ‘I love you, too.’ But I had no feeling inside my heart about that.”

Maybe, it was because she never knew her father, she said: “I never even saw his face.”

It bothered her husband that Mana put her mother first. Her response was: “Of course, I do!”

There was another problem in her marriage: “He’s old!”

Mana knows she has an exalted position in her family. “I’m the oldest of my mom’s children,” she said. “Manipulating!” she said, swinging her youngest brother around. “Controlling!” she said, as he laughed, his legs splaying out. “It works!”

She knew her mother would welcome her back.

Zahara did not ask a lot of questions when her daughter came home. Mana—along with Ralya—had done the lion’s share of helping with the younger kids. She cooked and cleaned, and rarely complained. Zahara trusted her.

If Mana left her husband, she had her reasons.

On the other hand, she felt Mana was young, hot-tempered—and without the experience to handle a partner. But Zahara did not feel she could say anything.

“Teenagers now are ‘Leave me alone—get out of my face,’ ” Zahara told me, though Mana was 23. “We have to be patient.”

“When we were young, we were like that, too.”

It was 6 p.m. Her brother-in-law was coming in a few minutes to pick up his kids. Mana, who worked the night shift at Walmart, was leaving for work in a few hours. Zahara went into the kitchen to get herself something to eat. She came back with a piece of fried fish.

“That looks good,” Mana said. “Can you make me some?”

“I’m not the maid,” Zahara said. “You sleep all day. You wake up now.”

“But you make it so good,” Mana said, laughing. “I like the way you make it. Fry the fish!”

“You fry the fish,” Zahara said, raising her voice. “I’m not your slave!”

Mana loves the night shift—10 p.m. to 6 a.m.—when the enormous store is quiet.

She is as authoritative at Walmart as she is at home. But she is more relaxed—walking the aisles in her long traditional dress and bright yellow manager’s vest—overseeing the clerks, a couple of whom are disabled, and helping customers.

She enjoys coming home at dawn and sleeping till midafternoon: She sleeps lightly, listening in case there are any problems with the kids. If they get too loud, she screams at them.

Mana sees herself as a protector of “the old ways.”

She feels Somali Bantus know best how to discipline their children. “In my country, if a child does something bad, everybody’s together about it,” she said, her narrow frame tucked into a corner of the straw-colored couch. It is considered OK for children to be disciplined at home, in school, or by a neighbor.

“But over here, if a kid does something wrong, one parent says, ‘Yes, she should be disciplined.’ Another says, ‘No, don’t do this to my child!’ A neighbor says, ‘What kind of parent would punish a child?’ ”

Sadia was breaking rules—and Mana was angry with her.

She did not like Sadia living with their grandmother. “My grandma doesn’t approve, but she looks the other way.”

Sadia now goes to the mall with male and female friends. “Women are supposed to stay in,” Mana said. “She could get hurt,” she added, her face drawn. “Men can hurt you, rape you.”

“Sometimes, when we have money, or are in a good mood, my sisters will go out,” she added. “To a restaurant or movie. But we go together.”

Mana pushed away a footstool.

“Sadia’s Americanized. I can’t tolerate it. Not a bit.”

“But she’s my sister,” she added. “I love her.”

Mana knows her own world is narrow: “I go to work, come back,” she said, laughing. “I love Utica. It makes me feel safe. I could never move out of Utica.”

Her clan feels the same way. Especially her mother.

Recently, Zahara drove to Columbus, Ohio, where she has relatives. She was appalled by the city. “Columbus is dangerous—a very bad place,” she said. “There are diapers in the street. You can’t walk with your phone, without hiding it.”

Nearing home, she was euphoric: She rolled down her car window: “Oh, my God—air! New York is my state!”

In Somalia—and in the refugee camps—Zahara was often afraid. Since then, she has never worried: “Utica is my safety.”

Yet, Utica has the same crime issues as other small cities. On a spring night in 2019, Oneida County police responded to 911 calls regarding domestic violence, sexual assaults, burglaries, larceny, property damage, assaults, hit and runs, weapon possession, fighting, and drug overdoses.

Utica’s police department—of about 165 officers—struggles to keep up with the city’s opioid crisis. Residents overdose in public places like McDonald’s, in parking lots, and homes. It is not unusual for a police officer to see the same person overdose twice in one week. In 2018, there were 37 opioid-related deaths in Oneida County. While the crisis affects families of every socioeconomic group, the refugee population has not been significantly involved.

Mana wants to keep the larger world at bay.

Sometimes, she thinks about Mohawk Valley Community College, where she took some classes. But “I’m afraid of school,” she said. “If I learn something I shouldn’t learn, it’s going to affect my life, change it. I would see things differently.”

She already has a wild imagination: “I like to think, ‘What if this happens, that happens?’ It’s already blowing me apart.”

She hugged a zebra-striped pillow. “You start to think about what’s beyond—that’s dangerous. You become obsessed. You want to learn and learn. You stop thinking about what’s around you.”

“Right now, I only have time for my family.”

Yet, Mana left open the possibility of returning to school: “I loved my psychology teacher at MVCC. She taught us about the three stages of sleep.”

But even this new information was disturbing.

She smiled. “At night, going to sleep I’d think, ‘What stage am I in now?’ ”