by Sara Novic
“She’s going to Zagreb,” Drenka said, handing him the first stack of dinar. “Make sure she gets the right transfer.” She gave him the other stack and ran a few fingers over my cheek before she jumped back to the ground. I sat down next to a man in Croatian police uniform. The engine turned, the bus lurched forward, and Drenka stood and watched me leave, holding her shawl across her face against the swirling fumes.
As the village melted into the horizon behind me, I pressed my head to the window, feeling the vibrations of the motor that buzzed through the glass and up into my skull. I never learned the name of the place that had taken me in and tried to look in the dark for a road sign. I wondered whether, if I wanted, I could find it again, if I would recognize it by sight or some deeper feeling in my stomach.
“There are bodies in the back, you know.”
“What?” I looked up at the soldier next to me. He was young, a redhead, with pimples in a line along his jaw.
“Bodies. In the backseats. Dead ones.”
“Now why would you tell her that?” said the soldier across the aisle.
“It’s true!”
“But she’s just a little kid. A girl.”
“She’s in fatigues,” he said, gesturing to Damir’s clothes. “You’re a Safe Houser, aren’t you? I’ve heard about you guys.”
“She’s like eight!”
“Well?” said the first soldier.
“Forward grip, gas chamber, cleaning rod, bolt, frame, magazine. Function check,” I said.
The soldiers’ eyes widened, but the one next to me played it off. “See? Anyway”—he turned to me again—“those seats in the back are all dead guys. Hopefully we make it up north before the smell gets any worse.”
“Would you stop?” said the other soldier.
“She ain’t no little kid.” He put his head back, feigning sleep, and ignored both of us for the rest of the night.
—
I woke the next morning in Zagreb with no memory of changing buses. It was an unseasonably warm day, the winter sun close and exacting. I pulled my sweatshirt off and stuffed it in Drenka’s bag, stood squinting and bewildered in the bus terminal’s dirty parking lot. I took the chain-link exit for authorized personnel only to avoid the crowds in the station and emerged through an alley out onto Držića Avenue.
Zagreb appeared relatively unharmed, and I was overwhelmed by its size and bustle, felt out of sync with the constant motion of the city. I noticed families walking together clad in khakis and patent leather and realized they were probably leaving church, that it was Sunday. The concept of time organized into seven-day units seemed almost foreign now, as if I’d never abided by the calendar. I wondered how long I’d been gone, whether I’d missed Christmas. I thought of school and was dismayed that everyone I knew had undoubtedly continued going there every day without me.
The city I had called my own, one I’d considered a war zone when I left it, now felt like neither. It was as if the whole of Zagreb had been repainted—Technicolor—the hues more vivid, the glass within each windowpane more burnished.
I stared at a family as they crossed the street, let my eyes linger too long, and their mother glared at my dirty T-shirt with the condescension reserved for gypsy beggars. For a second I wished I still had my rifle—just my holding it would have stopped her from looking at me like that—but immediately I felt ashamed of the thought. I needed to keep moving. I went to Luka’s house.
When I rang the doorbell, Luka answered, his face lighting up with one of his rare unbridled smiles. He cleared his front steps in one jump, chattering out a flurry of where-have-you-beens and what-took-you-so-longs, and I felt my throat shrivel and close. I was afraid my voice would give me away or abandon me altogether, as it had before.
Luka continued prattling as he climbed back toward his door, but I found my feet reluctant to take orders. He spun around to hurry me along, and I saw his face change in what must have been the moment he finally looked at me. I watched the seriousness return to his eyes as he scanned the stains on my shirt.
“Ana,” he said. “Where are your parents?”
“At home,” I lied in my shaky voice, but he gave me a look so piercing that I burst into tears. I felt my knees soften, and he pulled my arm over his shoulders and led me up the stairs to his room, where he sat me on the edge of the bed.
“Take it off,” he said, nodding at my shirt.
“No.”
“Take it off!”
I yanked the shirt over my head, and, eyes averted, he held out his hand. I gave it to him, and he dropped it to the floor, then dug through his own bureau until he found a satisfactory replacement.
“Stay here,” he said, and I heard him calling for his mother.
Luka returned with his mother behind him, and he took my bloody shirt from the floor and handed it to her. I hadn’t cried at all in the village, but, now that I’d started, stopping proved difficult. I cried myself a nosebleed, and Luka and his mother sat beside me as I sprawled facedown on the carpet, twisting my fingers tightly through its fibers until my hands tingled. Each time someone tried to touch me I shrugged them away, but eventually I grew tired, and when Luka’s mother reached out I didn’t recoil. The weight of her palm steadied the small of my back, and when I ran out of tears I fell asleep.
—
I woke on the floor and stared at the morning through the skylight in Luka’s ceiling. Luka’s mother was asleep in a rocking chair, and Luka was in his bed against the opposite wall. My eyes and throat were swollen and slow to react. I stood, and Luka’s mother stirred, then snapped awake when her forehead scraped against the wall. She looked at me, confused, not unfamiliarly, but unable to recall why I was standing blood-streaked and puffy in her house at six in the morning. She rubbed her temples. I followed her downstairs to the kitchen.
I sat on a stool at the counter and watched her flit between the refrigerator and the stove.
“You don’t need to tell me any details.” She spoke with caution. “But I’ll need to know some things, so I can help. We can just try yes or no questions first?”
I nodded.
“Okay. You were going to Sarajevo?”
I nodded again.
“Did you get there?”
Nod.
“Is Rahela okay?”
I nodded and hoped it was true.
“So, on the way back?” she ventured.
I didn’t move.
“Were there soldiers?”
Nod.
“Did they hurt you?”
“No,” I said.
“Did they hurt your parents?”
I stared.
“Are they okay?”
Stared harder.
“Are they coming back soon?”
“No.”
“Are they…coming back?”
I shook my head. Luka’s mother sat down and made a strange throat-clearing noise.
“What do I do?” she whispered. She was asking herself, so I didn’t try to answer. Moments later Luka’s father descended the stairs in a hurry, straightening the pins on his uniform. His bushy eyebrows arched when he saw me.
“Been a while, girlie,” he said, then, surveying my bloodied nose, he turned to his wife. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
“Do you want me to call her parents?” He reached for the phone book, but Luka’s mother shot him such a pointed look that he stopped short. He sighed, then wet a napkin, and wiped the crusted blood from under my nose.
“Call Petar,” he said. He fumbled for his keys and headed off to train the newest troops.
—
Luka’s mother heated water on the stove, and I took it into the bathtub and dumped it over my head. It was warm enough, and I scrubbed myself pink until the water at my feet turned gray.
Luka stayed home from school, and we played cards on the kitchen floor. Luka’s mother was on the phone all day, speaking softly and twirling the spiral cord into
an even twistier knot around her finger.
“Petar’s going to pick you up in the morning,” she said when she hung up the phone for good before dinner.
“Can’t I just stay with you?”
“You’re always welcome, honey. But Petar is your godfather, so legally—”
“I know,” I said, feeling bad for having asked.
—
Luka and I slept in his bed that night. I was glad to have him beside me, but the mattress I had been jealous of now seemed sterile and unwelcoming, and I longed for my couch. Luka threw an arm over me and said, “So?” and I spilled the most complete version of the story I could, telling it like I couldn’t to his mother, like I never did to anyone else. I told him about the roadblock and the forest and my father and me tricking the soldiers, the Safe Housers, the bug-eyed captain and how he’d named me Indiana. I told him about Damir, the bus full of bodies, right up to the point where I’d shown up on his doorstep. I told him about my gun.
“Forward grip, gas chamber, cleaning rod, bolt, frame, magazine, function check,” Luka repeated, mimicking my hand motions.
“You’re fast.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
The soldier in the field was the only thing I’d left out of my story. “I don’t know,” I said, which was technically the truth.
We went quiet again, but I could feel him awake, and we stayed listening to the bura wind like that, eyes wide and blind in the dark.
—
Petar had called to say he was on his way. Luka’s mother was buzzing between rooms dusting and straightening, and I followed her around.
“What is it?” she said.
“I need my shirt back.”
“I don’t think—”
“Please.”
She pulled the shirt from the bottom of her bureau drawer as if she’d known I’d ask for it.
“Maybe you shouldn’t put it on, though,” she said, handing it to me. I nodded and tucked it into the plastic bag with Damir’s sweatshirt. By this time the shirt had been washed by several hands, but the stains remained.
Petar was fit from his stint in the army, his hair growing in from his crew cut, his arm strapped in a thick plastic brace, which I assumed was the reason he was back early. He bent to one knee to hug me, then seemed to find it difficult to stop, because he scooped me up with his good arm and held me that way until we got out to the car.
Luka’s mother stood in the doorway, arms crossed against the cold.
“Thank you,” Petar said to her.
“Thanks,” I said.
Petar set me down in the backseat next to a small pile of my clothes, schoolbooks, and the spare keys to my flat. My bike, he said, was in the trunk, and I’d be able to ride to school from his house. He’d had to cut my bike lock but had bought a new one, the combination kind, and fiddled with it for a few moments, rolling the number columns beneath his thick thumbs before handing it over to me.
“Do you know how to do this?”
“Not really,” I said.
He looked away. “Me neither.”
Marina was sitting on the curb outside their building, waiting for us. She motioned me to her, and when we hugged I felt her tears on my neck.
“Don’t cry,” I said, which made her cry harder.
“Let’s get you inside,” Petar said. He handed Marina my clothes and carried me into the house.
4
At Petar and Marina’s grief filled the flat, as present as a fourth person in the room. Every night for a week Petar spoke to me softly, asking what had happened, but it still felt strange to talk, and finally he got so frustrated that he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. It wasn’t painful, but it was hard enough to scare me, and afterward he backed away apologizing and cradling his bad arm.
“I’m sorry. I just need to know. I can’t not know.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that Petar and Marina were mourning the loss of their best friends, that they felt the same pain I did, and the realization gave me a little courage. I told him about the MediMission office and the roadblock, and how I’d stayed in the valley village. I said nothing of the Safe House, but Petar had his answer and didn’t press me to account for the missing time.
I returned to school and spoke to no one except Luka. He was always serious with me; with only the occasional slip he succeeded in hiding any evidence of joy in the world that had continued on without me. Still, Petar had told my teachers what had happened, and my classmates overheard things in the hallways. Everyone knew. I had my own uncontested turn on the generator bike.
It snowed. But the excitement that normally filled the city in a storm was dulled by air raid smoke and a new set of ration restrictions. Winter had always been my favorite time of year; I loved walking in the Trg drinking mulled wine, eating kielbasa, and talking to the tent vendors selling wood carvings of boats and crucifixes. I loved New Year’s Eve, when people threw Roman candles in the square and shouted songs while I sat on my father’s shoulders. But the holidays had passed unnoticed in the village, and if Zagreb had mustered a celebration that year, any evidence was cleared away by the time I returned. I recall nothing about those January days except the strain of an Epiphany hymn, eerie and minor, repeating on an organ from another time.
—
Petar and Marina took up fighting like a hobby. I’d never seen them this way before, so quick to accuse and attack one another. Petar had stopped going to Mass and Marina went to Mass more. Petar spent hours smoking and on the phone in furtive exchanges, and Marina channeled all her nervous energy into cleaning, scouring specifically, with a focus on tile grout. She’d urge Petar to do something productive, and he’d point to the receiver and turn away, covering his phoneless ear to block her out.
Petar began interrogating me on the finer points of MediMission. I didn’t know much, except that Rahela was at a hospital in Philadelphia especially for children, and that the family taking care of her had been assigned through the program. My parents had never spoken to them, and I didn’t know their names.
“I don’t know anything else,” I said, weary of the conversations.
“Just keep thinking about it. Maybe you’ll remember something that helps.”
“Helps what?”
At night they were sad, which was much worse than the fighting. Marina’s speech was soft and indecipherable, but Petar’s raspy voice traveled easily through our shared wall.
“Bastards. I don’t know what to do.” Marina made a quiet reply, and the bedsprings squeaked. “Fucking hell,” he said, as one of them clicked off the lamp. “What do I even pray for?”
One Saturday, Marina won out and Petar agreed to go to church, “for funeral purposes only.” Besides honoring dead relatives and celebrating holidays, my family didn’t go to church much, especially once Rahela got sick. I had learned the prayers and made my First Communion like nearly everyone I knew, but emotional attachment to the church had always felt just beyond me. Religion, I’d assumed, would make more sense when I grew up.
Marina, Petar, and I went to the Zagreb Katedrala and spent an hour at the back vigil candles, kneeling and clicking rosaries until I’d burned the tips of my thumbs with the cheap matches and bruised my knees on the cold tile floor.
Afterward, we walked to the Trg, where the beginnings of a makeshift memorial were laid out. The Wall was made of red bricks, each one bearing the name of a person killed or disappeared. Already it was hundreds of bricks long. I took a loose block from the pile, scrawled both my parents’ names across it, wanting to keep them together, and added it to the row in progress. Marina had another candle, the votive kind meant to stay lit even outside, and left it there flickering in the dusk.
—
Petar began acting even stranger. He came and left unannounced and when he was home couldn’t sit still, instead paced the kitchen and ran his good hand through his hair. His nervousness reminded me of the year my father bought my mother an expensive necklace for Christmas.
He’d also paced the flat for a week, so excited that he eventually broke down and gave it to her three days early. She’d loved it, and when they kissed his face had flushed with her happiness.
Petar’s face did not have this light, and I was increasingly unsettled as it became clear I was the subject of his anxiety. Finally, one night at dinner, while Petar was staring at me and clearing his throat, Marina banged her cup down and pushed her chair back from the table.
“Petar, for chrissakes just tell her already!”
“Tell me what?” I said.
“I don’t want to tell her if I don’t have all the information.”
“Tell me what!”
“We tracked down Rahela and her foster family,” Marina said. “They want to adopt her.”
“What?”
“MediMission didn’t want to tell me where she’d been placed—it’s against the rules—but I found her,” said Petar.
“She was supposed to come back when she was better. She’s my sister.”
“Well,” said Marina. “There may be other options.”
“What do you mean?”
“The foster family said they’d be willing to take you, too, provided we can make arrangements to get you there.”
“Take me?”
“Adopt you, Ana. You could go and live with them and Rahela. In America.”
I felt a rage brewing in my chest. I wanted to hit something and kicked at the bottom bar of my chair. Why were they trying to get rid of me? Dump me with some strangers on another continent?
“Why can’t we just stay here with you? Don’t you want us?”
Petar shook his head. “Do you really think that’s a good idea? To move Rahela, sick, from America back into a fucking war zone?”
“Petar!” said Marina.
I shook my head. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Marina motioned me over, and I went and sat on her lap. She stroked my hair and glared at Petar.
“I think it’s what’s best,” she said. “For Rahela, and for you.”
“I’m sorry for yelling,” Petar said, gentler now. “But I know you’re smart enough to understand. You understand, right?”
