“Welcome to America!” screeched Kate, my older sister of 16 months, hugging me so tightly it hurt.
I still remember my first 24 hours in America.
It was late one weeknight when my plane finally landed, and it was my sister who met me at SFO, with a bunch of daisies dyed blue that had stained her palms. She was grinning with glee. That stolen happiness we so rarely want to show in case it turns out to be some cruel trick and is promptly taken from us. We squeezed and shoved my two over-sized suitcases into the boot of her little faded cherry Honda and set off for the lights of the city. I remember she took the long way home, cutting across the glittering buildings of downtown and I arched up to see the tops of the skyscrapers. It felt quite magical. And far from Africa.
She pulled into a parking space, and we each took a case on wobbly wheels, while she led us down a dark back walkway of a building, through a frosted glass door hidden behind massive rubbish bins, and into the warmth of her little studio. In my former life, a studio was something belonging only to artists – an airy, dust mote-filled room above the garage where they painted for hours. I soon learnt it is a one-roomed living space. Kate’s was a maze of rooms leading off one from the other, without doors or privacy. In true Leinberger style, she’d vacuumed every corner that afternoon, and left atmospheric lights and a classical CD on before she’d left. It was perfect, and Kate-esque. I was overwhelmed by the genuine welcome, and grateful for a home away from home.
The dial tone of our calling card sounded tinny and distorted as it made it’s convoluted way under the concrete giants of San Francisco city and the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Town. It is customary to call home the minute we arrive so my mom can breathe again, and unglue herself from CNN, where she’s been dutifully watching for plane crashes or storms. Already, I felt so removed, and wavering in my choice to leave everything I knew for this strange place that smells of freshly brewed coffee.
America has always smelt like coffee to me, possibly because Starbucks is the first stop in JFK airport after such a gruelling, long haul flight. In South Africa, we make a cup of instant when we wake, or need a pick-me-up, but coffee as an accessory while shopping, or in the cup-holder of the car is as foreign as a Starbucks to South Africans. Something we’ve heard of, and believe exists, but would never enter our minds to try to emulate. To brew a pot of filter coffee for oneself is unheard of, as is an afternoon office coffee-run.
We walked down to a neighbourhood cafe next morning, where Kate continued to beam at me over the sugar. I was “fresh off the boat”, and expats would crowd around me for weeks hoping some of home would rub off on them. They wanted my newness. My very unAmericaness. And also the endless opportunity to recreate oneself.
