A House Is Not A Home: A Definition Essay Exploration of Xhenet Aliu’s Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories (2015)
Xhenet Aliu’s short story collection, Domesticated Wild Things and Other Stories, chronicles snapshots of working-class Americans–primarily immigrants and children of immigrants– and their struggles. Aliu uses the connotative and denotative meanings of ‘domestic’ and its derivatives to explore feelings of belonging and ownership of a space, as seen in ‘You Say Tomato’, ‘Flipping Properties’ and the eponymous story, ‘Domesticated Wild Things’.
The opening story, You Say Tomato, is narrated by Slatora, a young Albanian-American girl with a working-class mother. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to domesticate is “To make to be or to feel ‘at home’”. While Slatora’s mother has done her best to give Slatora “a real home with a sliding-glass door” (1), Slatora remains dissatisfied. From early in the story the reader sees that for Slatora, her mother’s version of what a home should be is not enough and that Slatora wants something more. After listing what her mother feels should be sufficient for her, Slatora says, “I was lucky to have a real home even if I had to wear fake Reeboks on my feet, and if I wanted to keep that roof over my head then I’d best not be asking for those authentic sixty- dollar Nikes Sue Applebaum was wearing” (2). With this quote Aliu establishes Slatora’s relationship with her mother, but also with Sue Applebaum, who the reader soon learns is Slatora’s best friend. Slatora is envious of her best friend’s home and family life, particularly of what she considers to be the things that make a house a home: “the unexpected indulgences tucked into the musky corners of their house, the feeling that everyone everywhere was entitled to a little something special” (3). Slatora feels distant from her working-class mother who is less educated, but closer to the affectionate Applebaums:
The Applebaums were always hugging and kissing and squeezing thighs. They’d taken the honorary out of my title and made me into one of their kids, Sue and Stacey and now Slatora. […] The Applebaums were people who might even know what alliteration meant, unlike my mother, who laughed at the word assonance written on one of my English papers (11).
The Applebaums make Slatora feel welcome in their home in a way that she does not feel in her own house, even going so far as to keep a bed just for her to sleep in (12).
In a conversation with her mother, Slatora says, “It’s not a house[…] [i]t’s an apartment” (11), but her mother counters that a house is just a place that one lives in. Slatora narrates, “I wanted to argue but there’d be no point” (11). Slatora is unable to articulate to her mother why she feels at home with the Applebaums but not in her mother’s apartment. What Slatora’s mother considers to be the things that domesticate a space differ from what Slatora thinks.
‘Flipping Properties’ explores domesticity in the sense of being “attach[ed] to home and its duties” (OED). The protagonist, Liza, is a young single mother of two children whose partner, Scotty, is recently deceased. As Liza introduces the reader to the dynamic of her and Scotty’s relationship, it is clear that the two do not have the same desires. She says, “I wanted a dog but the complex we were living in wouldn’t allow them, and even if they did Scotty wouldn’t. “I don’t want to share you with a dog,” he’d say” (54). When Liza realises that she is pregnant, she reasons that while she still wanted a dog, she “knew Scotty would at least agree to a baby since he was one of twelve himself” (55). Throughout the story, Aliu makes it clear to the reader that Liza is detached from her children and that it was Scotty who was more invested in the children. In this sense, parenthood represents “home and its duties”. Liza is aware of her inadequacy as a mother, saying, “The World’s Greatest Dad cap me and the kids gave him last Father’s Day, that wasn’t a cheap novelty. But when he got me the matching Mom cap, I thought it was a practical joke” (59). Liza is uncomfortable with the responsibility of raising children and regrets having them, saying, “I was still thinking about that dog. Dry food in a bowl, some newspapers on the floor, a rubber bone and a tie outside-that I could handle” (59).
Liza dreams of running away and leaving her children behind, but she knows she cannot share this with Scotty. Instead, she contemplates finding temporary outside activities, but Scotty admonishs her, saying she should better her children instead (59). After Scotty dies, Liza feels trapped with the responsibility of the children that she feels wholly unprepared and unwilling to handle, and she imagines what her life would be without them (62). As the story draws to a close, Liza admits to herself that she “can’t love [the children] alone the way that [Scotty could]” (63). Liza is unable to conform to domesticity because of her detachment from her children.
The Oxford English Dictionary also defines domesticate as “to accustom (an animal) to live under the care and near the habitations of man; to tame or bring under control; to civilise”. In ‘Domesticated Wild Things’ a young woman, Daina, who has just lost her child helps her neighbour, Danny, care for a pair of kittens. She is initially reluctant to bring the kittens into her home, giving the excuse that she is never home (130). Eventually, she agrees to house the kittens until Danny finds a home for them. As the kittens play violently, Daina wonders if the kittens are “wild domesticated things or domesticated wild things” (138). Aliu interrogates the true nature of the kittens, and uses the kittens as an allegory for the Daina’s neighbours; Like the kittens, the brothers play rough, and their father actually expects them to fight, saying that, “They’re boys. Boys do it [that] way” (139). Like the kitten, the boys’ mother is assumed gone or dead (137). However, Danny and his brother Bobby do not behave in the way that Daina expects them to. Danny seems particularly out of place as Aliu demonstrateswhen he and Bobby show Daina the kittens:
“There’s this mother cat been hanging around back here.
We been feeding her about a week now,” [Danny] said.
“Nipples down to there. About a dozen nipples, man,” Bobby said.
[…] “We been feeding her and stuff. Saw three kittens before, but now there’s only two.”
“Won’t let us near them, though. The mother or the babies. Run into that brush if we get within five feet. They’ll fucking eat our food, though. Got no problem doing that.”
“They’re tiny,” Danny said.
“Typical woman, right? Let us pay for dinner but don’t let us touch them.”
Bobby is abrasive and vulgar, but Danny is gentle and concerned. In the end it is revealed that Danny has been keeping a dead cat in the trunk of the car he and his brother share. The reader is left to decide the motivations behind Danny’s actions and his nature: whether he a wild thing that has been badly domesticated, or a domesticated thing that has become feral.
While the different stories centre around varying derivatives of domestic, these varying denotations provide a lens with which to see the collection’s overarching theme: the search for a sense of belonging and security. This adds cohesion to the collection that may seem haphazard at the first reading but provides insight into the characters’ motivations. Slatora is unable to find a place that she feels at home in; Liza feels trapped by her domestic duty of parenthood; Danny is unable to conform to the norms of the “civilisation” around him. In a sense they are all domesticated wild things, struggling with what being domesticated means for them.