Ferayinskela’s father lay dying on a canvas stretcher in a small tent in a makeshift hospital in a makeshift nation. She stood by the opening of the camouflaged tent, holding an unruly bouquet of wild roses, anemones, clover, and blades of wild grass that were already starting to wither in her hand from the summer heat. Looking past wounded soldiers and unlucky civilians tended by their loved ones, she watched her mother sit by her father’s side, leaning over to wipe his forehead.

In peacetime, he could have received proper medicines to reduce his fever, stifle the dry cough, alleviate his chest pain. He could have been cared for by private doctors in the hospital overlooking the river. But that hospital had recently been bombed. The few surviving doctors were too busy sewing soldiers back together to pay attention to him, so he was alone here, fighting a losing battle against an invisible enemy, amid the wounded who had fought a visible one. No one apologized for the lack of antibiotics.

Ferayinskela singled out a doctor treating another patient and yelled at him, pointing to her father with the hand that held the flowers. “This man loves word puzzles! Give him oxygen!”

The doctor looked at her with the disinterest of someone reading an advertisement for something he doesn’t need; then he continued probing and suturing the patient lying before him. Nurses moved around her.

Ferayinskela lowered her hand, approached her father, and handed him the flowers. He clutched them to his heaving chest.

“Papa, you’re recovering your strength! The man who isn’t afraid of fighting wasps and snakes. You’re a champion!”

“Let’s not overdo it,” said her mother.

Her father fell into a coughing fit.

A young goat that Ferayinskela had raised since its mother died—a half-black, half-beige kid with budding horns—snuck into the tent and knocked over a tray of bandages as he trotted to her side, tilting his head back for a chin rub. She stroked his neck.

The kid had belonged to a neighbor who had owned several nanny goats. When his mother and protector unexpectedly died, of multiple kidney stones, Ferayinskela had witnessed the other nanny goats headbutting him mercilessly in the head and stomach. She had crawled into the pen and scooped up his little body, holding it above them, away from their powerful horns, and kissed the white curl on the top of his head. The neighbor had said she could keep it—that was how it was with goats, nannies rejecting the offspring of others.

When she brought him home, her mother said he would need milk and left for the kitchen. Ferayinskela sat on a chair with the kid in her arms and stared at it. She unbuttoned her blouse and exposed her breast, as she’d seen women do to feed their babies. The goat, no larger than her forearm, stared at the naked breast and butted it with its head, as he had often done to his mother’s udder to get the milk flowing. Ferayinskela cried out in both pain and surprise. Her mother returned with a bottle of condensed milk mixed with mead, shoved it into her hand, and said, “Try this.”

Now the young billy sidled up to her father and licked the top of his head where hair used to grow.

“My darling,” her father said.

“It’s the goat, not me,” her mother snickered.

A nurse shouted, “We cannot have that goat in here!”

“Oh, so now you’re paying attention to us,” exclaimed Ferayinskela. “Give my father medicine.”

“There is none.”

“Take him out,” her mother said quietly, gesturing toward the tent opening.

Ferayinskela raised her hands in surrender and led the goat outside. At the edge of the woods that shielded the “hospital,” she glanced at the panorama of thatched houses, small shops, and winding roads that constituted her village. Smoke from bombs hitting their targets rose above the densely packed houses, marring an otherwise cloudless sky. Apple orchards, vineyards, and grazing meadows hugged the village’s perimeter, and beyond them was more forest—old beech, hornbeam, evergreen oak, and pine—stretching like a shag carpet over rolling hills, connected in a semicircle with the woods where she now stood. The trees cast their shade over wild ferns, wild garlic, milk thistle, wild pansies, and bluebells, all suffering bravely through the heat of the summer. August was a brutal foe, bringing both an escalation in the fighting and a stifling blanket of moisture in which only the flora seemed to thrive.

The goat wandered off to eat fallen leaves.

Ferayinskela was on the cusp of adulthood. She should have been hanging out in the village’s movie theater—its marquee now chipped and pocked with bullet holes, still advertising the last outdated American movie shown—or relaxing on a bench in the cobblestone plaza, complaining with others about the heat. Or attending Sunday services at the grey-stone church on the main road. Or buying ice cream at the parlor once nestled between a grocery store and a butcher shop, now just a blackened hole where a mortar had fallen.

She stuck out her tongue to taste the dampness in the air and perceived a hint of citrus.

A woman standing by the tent entrance, spraying her long hair and chest with lemon juice, noticed the young woman glancing at her. “Hides the smell of death,” she said.

“My father always says, ‘When life gives you an orange, take it,’” said Ferayinskela.

“My father used to say that too.”

“He also says, ‘For every negatively charged place, there’s an equally positively charged place.’”

The woman shook her head. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

“He’s a social scientist. Wants me to be hopeful.”

“Good luck with that.”

“War’s like clutter, don’t you think? Easy to add one more broken thing to.” Ferayinskela gazed at their ravaged village. “Hard to clean it all away.”

The woman shrugged.

Ferayinskela’s own mop of espresso curls, drenched in sweat, stuck to her skin. The dirt path surrounding the tent was muddy from the previous night’s rainfall, and her sandals did little to protect her from the splatter. She washed her feet at a spigot outside the tent before re-entering. Nurses in thin white jackets ran past her for supplies hidden among the nearby pines; they picked up boxes of cotton swabs and antiseptic lotion and brought them back inside the tent. Several relatives of the dying also passed her, taking their own break outside.

In the tent she rejoined her mother, who wiped her father’s face with a wet washcloth and offered him a brew made from roasted milk-thistle seeds and a plate of rice, boiled egg, raw anise, and feathery yarrow leaves.

He shook his head. “You eat it. Food is scarce.”

Her mother set the plate on a box by his bed. “He sang to me to marry him. Baritone voice,” she told Ferayinskela, and clenched her fists, white knuckles surfacing beneath thinned skin.

Her father peered down at the knuckles and mumbled, “Snow-capped mountains.”

A ruffled ball of brown and gold feathers with bulging, shell-shocked eyes clucked and strutted its way into the tent toward her father’s bed. Ferayinskela fished out a sugar cookie from her trouser pocket and crumbled it in her hand. “Here you go. Escaped, did you?”

The chicken nibbled delicately at the crumbs in her hand, while a dog with snagging cheeks snuck into the tent and sat by Ferayinskela.

The same nurse approached again. “You’ve brought the farm.”

“I don’t know whose dog this is—it has no collar. His eyes tell me he hasn’t received enough love in life,” said Ferayinskela. “Same with the chicken.”

“Any more animals?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

A gray sparrow swept into the tent and settled himself on Ferayinskela’s shoulder.

“My daughter attracts animals like pollen attracts bees,” said her mother. “She gives off a scent. The animals smell it and come running.”

“Five minutes, then they go.” The nurse tapped her watch.

Ferayinskela addressed her parents in English: “Mama, Papa, this is poor timing…but I have news. I’m going to America.” She smiled with a boldness she did not feel.

Her parents looked at her. “You’re speaking a foreign tongue,” her father said. “Lie down.”

“You taught me English, and now I’m using it!” she said to her mother.

“You taught her English?” her father said, looking up at her mother.

“When we were hiding in the forest. I had a World War Two survival manual that an American soldier once gave my mother. Some of the idioms may be out of date.”

“Of all the things you could have taken from the house, you grab a World War Two survival manual?” her father asked.

“It made sense at the time.”

“Where was I?”

“Trying to make yourself useful. Out and about.”

“Speak our language, Ferayinskela,” her father said in a raspy voice.

“I’m going to America. There’s no future here. I want peace.”

“Ah, peace. That ever-elusive state of being,” her father mumbled.

“I want good food! Hot baths! Body lotion!”

Her mother sighed, “We all know we can’t live without body lotion.”

Ferayinskela crouched by her mother’s side and touched her knee. “There are American magazines at the bus stop. Pictures of happy people, beautiful homes, heathy children.”

“I’ve seen those magazines. Lots of articles about failed marriages and failed diets.”

“The women in the photos, always smiling.” Ferayinskela smiled wistfully.

“So you plan to join those happy ladies. How are you going to manage that?”

“I’m getting married.”

Her father jerked his head spasmodically. “Who’s getting married?”

“To whom?” her mother asked. “An American? Here?”

Ferayinskela pulled from her pocket the crumpled photograph of a young man: calm gaze, set chin, smooth brow—someone certain of himself. “I’m working with an international marriage broker.”

“So you’re giving up on your country?” asked her father.

“Papa, you’re always saying a person should strive to improve their station.”

“Not when it comes to my daughter!” He spit out phlegm, gesturing with the flowers and grass still in his grasp. “I need medicine!”

“Marrying a stranger?” Her mother’s voice rose.

“Not completely. I was given his bio.”

Her father wheezed, then fell into a coughing fit, his emaciated body shifting in the bed. His pajamas, soaked with sweat, clung to him like a second skin. He glanced up at two sets of brown, almond-shaped eyes, reddened and framed by furrowed brows and trembling cheeks.

“My sight is changing. I’m seeing double,” he muttered.

“You still have your humor,” his wife said, and turned to her daughter. “Who gave you his bio?”

“The broker. Land of the free and home of the brave, here I come!”

“The world’s forgotten us,” her father said. “We mustn’t forget ourselves.”

“I won’t forget who I am, Papa.”

“We’ll never see you again.” Her mother inhaled sharply, then added, “You have an uncle who lives in America. My brother.”

“Wait, who?”

“We don’t talk about him.”

“He broke contact with us,” her father rasped.

“Where does he live?”

“Don’t know,” said her mother. “Don’t care.”

“I thought I had just one uncle.”

Her father’s younger brother had been killed months earlier in a blast when he ventured to town to restock his supply of razors, musk-smelling soap, toothbrushes, and floss to resell to soldiers in the trenches. Hard-muscled and tanned, he had told her stories of avoiding both sharpshooters and lonely ladies. He carried the items he sold in an olive-green backpack, labeled PHARMACY in big letters made from yellow tape.

She had once asked him if he sold a lot of items. “Depends on which side of the fence I’m on,” he said. “I sell a lot to the winning side.” He patted the yellow wording on his backpack. “Got my sign. And I affect a limp, to show I’m not dangerous. Basic game theory. I miss the birds, don’t you? Not a one in the sky.”

The last time she had seen him alive, he had handed her a small package. “Gift for you.”

She unwrapped the paper and stared at the sharp blade, the curved handle. “A knife?”

“For your protection. I’ll show you how to use it.”

“I don’t want to use it.”

He shook his head. “When you’re in the thick of it, you can’t wait for someone else to save you.”

In the hospital tent, Ferayinskela kissed her father’s limp, freckled hand. It was hot against her lips. The dog slid his nose under her arm. Her chest heaved, and the chicken heaved its chest along with her. “I’ll never forget either of you. Be happy for me: I’ve found a way out. When life gives you an orange…”

Her father gently stroked her cheek. “Then take it.”

“Treat each other with kindness,” her mother said.

“I treat your mum like a queen,” her father said, and her mother playfully swatted him.

Another wheeze. The anemones and clover fluttered on his chest as he breathed. He tilted his head forward, pursed his lips, and gently kissed the petals. Then his head dropped back on the pillow.

A blade of grass remained stuck to the side of his nose. His wife moved to brush it away.

“Leave it alone, it loves me,” he whispered in his delirium. “I’ve named it Shirley, Shirley Temple.”

His wife chuckled softly, more snort than laugh. She rubbed one of his temples with the heel of her hand. “Stuck on you, is she?”

He didn’t hear his wife. He had already passed on.

It took three months of red tape to get a passport, a visa, and finally, on the second of November, a plane ticket.

When they reached the airport, her mother pulled Ferayinskela into a tight embrace. “Something for you,” she whispered. “A piece of my cheesecake and the recipe. And your father’s watch.”

Ferayinskela slipped on the bulky watch that she knew so well. The face slid down to the underside of her wrist.

“Add notches to the band,” said her mother.

“I’ll wear it just as he wore it.” Ferayinskela took a quick taste of the cheesecake, then placed it carefully in her knapsack. “I’ll miss you, Mama.”

“You’ll miss me as much as daughters setting out into the world usually miss their mothers.” She squeezed Ferayinskela’s shoulder. “Any time you look at the moon, you and I will be looking at the same moon. We’ll always have that to connect us.”

On the plane, a flight attendant helped Ferayinskela find her seat.

“Electricity, what luxury,” said the young woman sitting next to her.

Ferayinskela glanced up at the light above her seat. “We used a manual generator at home.

“Same.”

Ferayinskela assessed the woman as being about her own age. Thin and malnourished, like herself. “I’m getting married.”

“Me too.”

“Your parents okay with you getting married in America?”

“I told them I was going to college on scholarship. They understand that better.”

Ferayinskela nodded. “I brought my goat.”

“I’m envious. I’ll miss my homing pigeons.”

“Seats must be in an upright position for takeoff,” said a flight attendant. “Pretzels or peanuts?”

They were served cold drinks with ice.

“I haven’t seen ice since I was very young,” Ferayinskela said in English.

“Nor I,” commented the other young woman, also in English.

“How d’you know English?” asked Ferayinskela.

“Taught myself, using crosswords. Here, look.” She held up a partially filled crossword torn from a magazine. “They always use the same answers, sometimes with different clues, so you pick up on the jargon. Here’s one—‘ecru’—very popular. For that they’ll ask you, ‘shade’ or ‘hue’ or ‘beige’ or ‘neutral’ or ‘light color.’ Here’s another, ‘snack in a stack.’ The answer is ‘oreo,’ a popular cookie in America. Or this one, ‘formerly known as.’ That’s ‘nee.’”

Ferayinskela focused on another clue. “‘Brouhaha?’”

“The answer is ‘ado.’ As in Shakespeare’s play. And ‘cinch’ or ‘breeze,’ see here? That’s ‘piece of cake.’”

“My Mama used to say, ‘piece of cheesecake.’”

The other woman smiled. “I’ve got a couple of puzzles I’ve finished. Here, you can have them. What about you? How did you learn English?”

“My mother taught me.”

“She must be very worldly.”

“Yes, I think so.”

The plane took off, and soon they could see the wakes of ships on a cobalt-blue canvas below, reminding Ferayinskela of shooting stars.

“I’ve never seen the ocean before,” she said. “Look how the sunlight reflects off the water—it’s blinding.”

“It’s a good omen. Reflection brings out the best in us.”

They felt the plane shake. “Air turbulence, folks, no need to worry,” announced the pilot. “Even severe turbulence won’t flip this plane. But please buckle up.”

When their flight descended, Ferayinskela watched the wing flap unfold, heard the crack of the landing gear as it dropped, and closed her eyes until she felt the thud of the wheels hitting the ground.

“An entire village would fit inside this airport,” said Ferayinskela, as they walked through the throng of people heading toward baggage claim. She glanced at the smooth linoleum floor that spread like a gray ocean around them. “As wide as five village streets.”

They passed restaurants, bars, cafés, wine lists, menus, racks of paperback books, shelves of candy, gifts with national capitol logos, and long lines of travelers attracted to the smells of freshly baked pastries, pizza, grilled meals-to-order, coffee, and ketchup. “So many choices. A whole new normal,” said Ferayinskela.

They met their betrotheds in baggage claim, where a sharp stiff wind gushed through the automatic exit doors. A clean-shaven man smiled at Ferayinskela. He was decent, like his photo, with a full head of hair the color of wet sand and a self-assured gaze. She liked that gaze, though as he smiled at her now, it seemed as if he might be sniggering. Perhaps she was imagining it. He took her hand, and she felt that her heart had snuck into his grasp as well; she hadn’t meant to give it away so quickly. Beneath an unbuttoned, camel-hair coat, he wore a navy-blue wool blazer with a red pinstripe woven through it, a white shirt open at the neck, beige trousers cuffed at the bottom, and shiny loafers.

“Welcome to our nation’s capitol. Winter’s coming early.”

“What kind of skin is this?” she asked, pointing at his shoes.

“Alligator.”

“I’ve never seen alligator skin.” She knelt to feel his shoes, then stood and slid her fingers over the fabric of his coat and jacket. His shirt was made of thick cotton, unlike the thin cotton shirts worn by the men she knew at home. This is what happiness feels like, she decided. “We never had such fabric in my country.”

Her own clothes embarrassed her. Her embroidered dress, painstakingly sewn by her mother, was made of inferior cloth, and there is only so much one can do with inferior cloth. She wore a hat covered with fake pearls and a gray and white checked coat made from undyed wool.

He looked her over as if assessing her inventory. With a forefinger he pulled the top of her dress away from her neck and peeked inside. “Ample breasts. Flat stomach. Very nice.”

She swatted his hand away and clutched her neckline.

“No need to get upset.” He removed her hat, and a mane of curls fell about her shoulders. “There, that’s better, Fizzisky.”

“My name’s Ferayinskela.”

“Fazziskio.”

“Ferayinskela.”

“Fozz… The hell with it. I’ll call you Filamena. Exotic enough.” He waved with the back of his hand, as if brushing away any hint of where she came from.

“My name is Ferayinskela, Toh-maas.”

“Not any longer. And it’s Thomas, with a flat ‘o.’ Accent on the first syllable. Thomas Phipps. Ceremony’s about to start.”

The other bride-to-be stood near her betrothed. She gave Ferayinskela a wry smile. A minister, who had been waiting along with the grooms, passed out licenses for everyone to sign, then blessed and married them all on the spot. The minister’s wife gave each bride a small American flag stapled to a stick.

Thomas slipped a cheap, gold-plated band onto Ferayinskela’s left ring finger, kissed her on the forehead instead of the mouth, and recited a list of duties that he expected of her, without asking if she understood.

“Okay, Thomas with a flat ‘o.’” She practiced saying her new name under her breath to get a feel for it: “Feelohmeenah, Feelohmeenah, Feelohmeenah. It’s okay, I accept.”

“No, no, no: Filamena. F’lahmeenah.” He looked her over again and added, “We’ll have to get you new clothes.”

“I have other clothes in my bags and the hope chest.” She pointed to a scratched wooden chest near two suitcases that she had claimed from the baggage carousel.

He glanced at the conveyor belt. “Any more luggage?”

“Yes. We must go to another area to pick him up.”

“Him?”

“My goat.”

“I didn’t agree to a goat.”

“You paid for his travel. He was included in the luggage expense.”

“No, no goat.”

“I’ve got a license and health certificate for him. I found a farm nearby.” She scanned the crowd. “They’re meeting us here to pick him up.”

“They?”

“Ah!”

A rumpled man and an equally rumpled woman, both past their prime, approached, their faces wrinkled in a thousand directions and oddly sunburned for this time of year. The woman hugged her.

“This is Claire and Phillip Adams, Thomas. They’ll take care of my goat.”

Thomas looked away, avoiding the man’s calloused handshake.

“Don’t worry about your sweetheart,” said Claire in a hoarse voice. “We’ll head over to quarantine to pick him up. What do you call him?”

“Touchstone.”

“Big name for a little guy,” the woman said.

“He can be a character.”

“Usually they come in twos,” said the man. “He’ll need a buddy. We’ve got plenty for him to choose from.”

“Come visit whenever you like,” called the woman as they headed off.

Ferayinskela bit her knuckles. “Goats are very sensitive, Thomas. I didn’t intend for him to live with us right away.”

“He’s never going to live with us. Anything else?”

“No, this is it.”

“Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again.”

Thomas opened the hope chest and surveyed its contents: linens, folded tops and trousers, a cuckoo clock, a pair of porcelain dolphins, a set of dishes, glassware, silver place settings and serving utensils. He brushed his hand lightly over the contents as if assessing their worth. If he had dug deeper, searched into the depths of the chest, he would have found a notebook from her school days, a set of embroidered handkerchiefs that her mother had meticulously sewn, the book Love in the Time of Cholera, though he might not have recognized the title in her native language, photos of friends who had become casualties of war, and the diaries she had kept for each year of her childhood, to remember how things once were.

He tossed her hat inside and shut it. “No room in the car for this chest.”

THE PECCADILLOES OF FILAMENA PHIPPS is a big-hearted, picaresque tale of overcoming adversity, boldly embracing one’s otherness, and valuing human connection. It follows a unique young woman who braves, and forever alters, the single-mindedness of an American white-picket-fence town. I hope it makes you smile. Ridiculousness abounds.

Filamena Phipps, née Ferayinskela, doesn’t fit into North Chelsea, a large, affluent suburb near Washington, DC. In this homogeneous community, where her homogeneous new husband insists on living, she is a rarity. An émigrée from a war-torn country, Filamena is wild-haired, wears clothes her mother made, is beloved by animals, and puts on Birkenstocks while tending to her unruly vegetable garden. Filamena tries to ingratiate herself in her new community time and again, but she just can’t find the cultural currency her neighbors will accept. She is different; she is a threat. She does not wear athleisure. The matching women on her street shut their matching front doors on her, leaving her adrift on their matching manicured lawns.

But Filamena isn’t afraid of a little snubbing. She kicks her cheating husband out and runs for mayor, in the hope of finding the acceptance that eludes her. The other women—the bullies of our story—are in love with their current mayor, but he, to their shock and envy, becomes mesmerized by Filamena. He falls in love. As Filamena’s campaign takes off, so does her garden. Plants overrun her property. Wayward people, children, and animals enjoy its verdure. Customers come from everywhere to purchase her organic produce, creating long lines and traffic jams. Filamena’s Twitter following grows. The disorderliness of it all is too much for her neighbors to bear. How much more change—more Filamena—can they possibly take?

Intended to be both heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, THE PECCADILLOES OF FILAMENA PHIPPS is a tribute to the different and the bold everywhere. May they run for mayor and win every time.

Deafened in my thirties, I experienced isolation similar to Filamena’s as I relearned how to navigate social, professional, and family relationships. I have chronicled this process through articles published in newsletters, magazines, and an anthology. Over time, I found that my obstacles were not unique; many people feel shunned because they are different in some way.