We Are All That's Left

by Carrie Arcos

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  Outside the building, we find a place in the shade underneath a tree.

  “Grann’s getting out today,” he tells me.

  “Really? That’s great.”

  “Yeah. She’s done with this place, she says.”

  “That means she’ll be okay, right?”

  He shrugs. “She’s still dying,” he says, and looks down at the green grass. When he looks back up at me, his eyes are so sad and watery.

  “I’m sorry, Joseph.”

  “Yeah.” He puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “We’re all going to die someday. There’s no tragedy in living a long, full life.”

  “Death is so . . . weird.”

  He grunts.

  “Remember when we first met?” I say it as if it were so long ago and not just a couple of weeks.

  “Yeah.” He sits, and I join him down in the grass, both of us cross-legged.

  “So I’ve been thinking about what you said—about life and suffering,” I say.

  “Really,” he says.

  “Yeah. And if that were all it is—life equals suffering—that’d be pretty sad. Depressing, actually. But you know, you could look at suffering another way. It’s more like how you grow and change through it. How you build resilience.” I shrug. “Suffering isn’t really meaningless, if you look at it that way. I mean, it sucks, don’t get me wrong. If I could go back and not be at the farmers market that day, I would. I’m not some sadist. But at the same time, if that hadn’t happened, then . . .”

  “Then you wouldn’t have met me?” he says playfully.

  “Thank God for that,” I joke, though he’s not wrong, and he clearly knows how glad I am we met. “But there’s also a deeper understanding and now a bridge to my mom that I didn’t have before.” I pick at the grass. “It’s not easy. I’m still not sleeping all that well, and I’m anxious in crowds, and . . . it’s . . . all a process. But it’s part of me now. I have no choice but to use it, right? Not just the outside scars, but the ones inside too.”

  “There’s this paraphrase of a quote of Rumi’s that says something like, ‘The wound is the place where the light enters you.’”

  I think about that for a minute. Before, I might have been flippant about the quote, but today, I take out my phone and write it down. I want to remember it. Because I kind of get what that means now. My scars don’t have to bring me shame. They can be the places where love, where God meets me too.

  “Who’s Rumi?”

  “A Muslim mystic. I’ll send you some of his stuff. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Okay, yeah.” I’m curious about what a Muslim mystic would say, especially knowing more about my own history and family. “That’d be great.”

  Joseph smiles, but his brow quickly furrows like he’s processing something. He takes a deep breath.

  “So . . .” He exhales the word. “I’m going to Port-au-Prince.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Haiti. Grann wants to.”

  “That’s great. When?”

  “In a few days.”

  “Nice. I hope you have a good trip.” I want to add that when he comes back, we should hang out, but it sounds so lame in my head. Instead I say, “When do you come back?”

  “Not sure. Dad’s getting me a one-way ticket.”

  “Oh . . .” I can’t hide my disappointment, and Joseph can tell.

  “It’s not like I’m moving for good or anything. I’m still going to apply to college for next fall. But for now, I’m just taking a year to figure things out.”

  “Right.” I nod, like it’s no big deal. “The whole gap year thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  But it sucks. We’re both quiet for a moment.

  “Zara, I keep running through that day with Seb. I can’t stop thinking about what I could have done. How I should have stopped him. If I had just reached out. Or even before that. Like if I hadn’t suggested we ditch. If we had just gone to school, or if—”

  “If you weren’t friends. If you’d never met. If you hadn’t moved to Providence,” I interrupt him. “If we hadn’t gone to the farmers market. If Mom hadn’t taken too long at every stand.”

  He looks at me.

  “What happened to you is horrible. And I can’t even imagine the pain in that, losing your best friend.”

  He stares at the ground.

  “But you lived. And you’ve been searching for why. I don’t know if you’re going to find why,” I say.

  He looks up at me and shakes his head.

  “I know.” He smiles. “By the way, I talked to Seb’s parents.”

  “You did? What happened?”

  “It was terrible. His mom started crying. And she told me how she’s spent so much energy hating me. How she’s blamed me. But then she just pulled me in for a hug, and I cried too. She said she forgave me.”

  “That’s so great, Joseph.”

  “Yeah. I’m still working on the forgiving myself part.”

  I nod. “That’ll take time, just like everything,” I say.

  I think about Mom and me, and how forgiveness is part of our story too. How loving someone and being willing to offer forgiveness go hand in hand, and that it’s not a one-time thing. I know things between my mom and me will never be perfect. But the next time she says something that triggers past hurt, maybe I’ll be better able to make a choice not to let it take me on a downward spiral. Not to close myself off to her. I can make a choice to show her grace. Because Mom has a long journey ahead of her, and she’s going to need all the support she can get. We both will.

  “So . . . Haiti?” I say.

  “Yeah. Grann is talking about all the places she wants to take me, like where she grew up, where my grandfather was born. I’ve heard all the stories, so it’ll be cool to go and see where they happened. And maybe I can volunteer somewhere, make a difference. Go to the tent cities and work.”

  “That sounds amazing.” I would love to be able to travel like that after I graduate. Maybe I will. Take a year off school. Just me and my camera. Follow wherever inspiration leads me.

  But a year is a long time. “I’ll miss you,” I say.

  I look down at the ground, suddenly afraid I’m going to cry, which makes me feel stupid.

  Joseph leans forward and puts some of my hair behind my ear. I flinch because it’s my bad cheek.

  He holds my face with both of his hands and kisses me right on my ugly scabs. Then he kisses me on the other side.

  “I’ll miss you too,” he says, and brushes his lips against mine.

  1998

  Summer

  Boston, MA

  USA

  NADJA STEPPED ONTO the bridge. She was early, so she took her time. The day was beautiful. Not too hot yet. Though the weather report for tomorrow said it was going to be hot and humid, more typical for the time of year. She nodded to others as they passed, as was the custom here.

  “Hello,” she said to a girl close to her age.

  “Hey,” she said back.

  “Hey,” Nadja repeated softly when the girl was out of earshot.

  She practiced the short breathy clip of the word. Trying to match the accent. Her time in night classes had already given her much of what she needed with English. Thankfully, she knew the base of the language, the conjugation and syntax, having studied it for years at school. But she hadn’t come to know the rhythm, the idiosyncrasies that every language possesses and that you only really get to know when living, immersed, in the culture.

  Boston was different from Chicago, where she had first resettled with Dalila’s family. The syncopation of the words. The inflection. Though both cities shared the affinity for fast speech and a body language that she also had to master reading. Nadja studied all the t
ime. Watching how people said hello. How they said good-bye. How they stood and waited for a train. How they ate their meals. How they hugged without giving kisses. She wanted to assimilate as fast as she could. She didn’t want to leave any trace of her being from Višegrad. As far as she was concerned, she was a girl without a country no longer. She would be American. Embrace all of it. It was too painful to look back, so she kept her gaze on the horizon.

  When she got to the middle of the bridge, she leaned over to watch the water. It rushed much like it did during certain times of the day. But it wasn’t the beautiful Drina. A memory came to her as she stood there. It had been a day just like this one. She had walked with her family across another bridge. A bridge they must have walked across hundreds of times, almost every day of her life.

  But this particular memory she had forgotten. It had lodged itself somewhere between never forget and never remember. And now it assaulted her like memory often does. Without consent. Without regard for feelings. But today, maybe because her guard was down, because she was happy, or because she was on the cusp of another change, she allowed herself to indulge in it.

  She hadn’t wanted to be there. Something about wanting to go and hang out with Uma. But her parents had insisted that she go with them. They ate at a restaurant, a big deal for them because they rarely ate out, and took a walk where they ended up at the sofa—the seat in the middle of the bridge over the Drina. A group of college students were there—tourists—taking silly pictures of themselves.

  Because of the students, Nadja was embarrassed that she was with her family. The girls wore short shorts and one had a black AC/DC T-shirt on. Nadja had stared at them, unafraid to hide her fascination. With their beautiful long legs and hair and bodies. They were laughing and hugging and free. She wanted to be them. Instead, she was stuck with her embarrassing family.

  Her father offered to take their picture. They stood up and got in super close. Smiled wide. How she couldn’t wait to be one of them. To get out of this place. Be one of those sophisticated college girls from Sarajevo or Mostar or someplace she’d never even heard of.

  Her father gave Benjamin some candy from his pocket, offering some to Nadja too, but she refused. She didn’t want him thinking she was happy about anything having to do with this outing. The sunlight lit the Drina, giving the green a sparkle like it was a precious jewel.

  Then she saw him. Marko stood a little off to the right, underneath the willow. He held up his hand in recognition. How did he know she would be here? She leaned over the bridge, and he mouthed, Later?

  She nodded.

  The girls offered to take the family’s picture. They got together. Nadja’s mom, then Benjamin, then Nadja, then her dad. Nadja smiled wide as the girl with the pretty hair and bracelets took her picture. She wasn’t thinking of her family. She was thinking of Marko and how he made everything more bearable.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  Today on this bridge, Nadja saw him when he was still a ways off. He held up his hand in greeting, and she waved back. She stayed where she was, watching him approach her. His gait revealed his confidence. He wore his standard T-shirt and jeans with a Red Sox baseball hat covering curly dark brown hair. He was everything she was not: confident, funny, easygoing, good with people. She still didn’t understand what he saw in her. But in him, she saw a future. She saw a security that she desperately wanted.

  And as he got closer, the baby inside moved. Nadja caught her breath. She still wasn’t used to the feeling. It was just a tiny flutter. She brought her hand to rest on the right side. There it was again. A small butterfly kiss.

  Wonder and fear filled her. This was not what her mother would have wanted. Getting pregnant before marriage. Her mother would have been ashamed. But her mother wasn’t here. None of them were. We are all that’s left, she told the baby growing within.

  There was a time when Nadja, too, had wanted something different for herself.

  She closed her eyes and saw his. Deep, dark, looking out at her from behind the camera, gazing down at her as they walked side by side, his arm around her shoulders, or his face inches from her in her bed. His eyes never leaving hers until the lid of the trunk came down. The smell of him, how he filled everything at one time. He had been everything.

  Strange how now she couldn’t even remember Marko’s smell.

  The baby moved again. Another small butterfly kiss along her right side.

  When Paul found out about the baby, he asked her to marry him. Even though she loved him, she said no at first, not wanting his obligation. He said he loved her, and that this was the best thing to ever happen to him. He wanted her and their baby.

  She had to squint a little to see him as the sun shifted and began its slow descent. His gaze never left her.

  Paul is a good man, she thought. And she really did care for him. If her mother had met him, she would have approved, eventually. So would her father. Benjamin would have thought of him as an older brother.

  Paul was almost within reach.

  “Nadja!” he called.

  This baby would change her life, give her something to live for. She would be a good mother. She would be like her own and teach her daughter how to be strong and fierce so she would survive in this world. She would know safety here in the States. She would be American, first and foremost, not anything that would bring her harm. And Paul, he would give Nadja love and protection. He would be a good father, a good husband. This was a good choice.

  She embraced Paul, and he bent and kissed her.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  “So did I,” she said, and buried her face in his neck, taking in his smell. Today it was garlic and rosemary and antiseptic. He must have been cooking something after his rounds.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready,” she said. And she took his hand. Let him lead her home.

  August

  I CHOOSE THE photos as if my life depends on it. Slowly. Deliberately, looking for the story in them. This is a story that I have come to learn, and I think it is one that you can only know through experience. I’m trying to give the viewers the perspective, but I know it won’t be the same. They won’t be able to physically feel how wounds are made, then repaired. How stitches are removed. The itch that is constant. The smell of the washcloth after you’ve cleaned the area.

  They won’t be able to touch and feel the raised, swollen skin. They won’t know what it’s like to speak to someone who is no longer the someone you thought you knew.

  But I can tell them the story. I can tell our story through our scars. Of how there is pain and love in the healing.

  I’ve chosen eight photos. I start with the blurred profile of my mom from the farmers market. Then the one of her feet sticking out from under the rubble. The next is my bandaged face in the mirror, followed by a picture of my back and three rows of stitches. One of Mom in a coma—a close-up of the back of her head where they shaved her and had to operate, and the staples they inserted. Another one of my back without the, the one Joseph took at the beach. I’m kind of cheating with that one, but the shot is beautiful with the soft light surrounding my body like a halo. There’s a photo of me and Mom holding hands. The last one is a close-up selfie of us lying side by side in her hospital bed.

  I show Dad the photos, pausing on the ones of my scars, of Mom’s.

  There are tears in his eyes. “Z, these are . . . really good. And it’s not the quality, because of course you’re talented. It’s what they say that makes them so compelling. I know I’m biased, but these are some of your best work.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  He wipes his eyes. “You and your mom have gone through some horrible things, things no one should ever have to experience. But these photos show your strength too. I love this one of you both together.”

  “Me too.”

  He smiles.r />
  “You think I should show them to Mom?”

  He thinks for a moment. “Maybe not now, but yes. When she is stronger. I think she will love them.”

  “I hope Mr. Singh likes them.”

  “He’s a fool if he doesn’t.”

  Mr. Singh isn’t a fool. The next day in class, he takes my photos and says that he wants to enter them into some contest. He praises me for my bravery at revealing our scars and for not exploiting them. He uses my series as an example to the class, going through the photos one by one and asking if they can tell what techniques I’m using in each and what effect they have.

  “So,” he asks us, “what’s the story here?”

  The students throw out different answers.

  “We all have scars?”

  “Scars alter us in more than appearance; they make us something more, and we connect to others because of them. They don’t diminish our lives, but make them richer somehow.”

  “She and her mom have both been through trauma, and it’s the trauma that now bonds them together.”

  “It’s okay to let others know the bad things that have happened to us. And when we reveal those pasts, or those scars, that’s how we become close to one another. That’s how we grow and heal.”

  “Scars can be hot,” says this guy three rows down, who usually gives snarky comments. He’s referring to the beach shot.

  I blush. Everyone laughs.

  “Zara, can you tell us about the story you wanted to tell?”

  I think about the story, what I survived, what Mom survived, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed by it. I stare at the photos. How ugly my back looks. I really tried to bring out the pain in that one. And part of me still feels sad—no, not sad, angry—that I had to go through what I did. But another part of me is proud of myself. Because I survived. And I’m still surviving. I had no idea the amount of strength that I had inside myself.