One of the eager beavers will know for sure. I must have seriously suppressed the information about when they schedule conferences, and with it, the fact that the time would come when I’d have to face the music about my plummeting grades, the classes I’d skipped with no excuse and, God help me, the ones I’d hustled an excuse for; the number was not small. “So when are parent-teacher conferences?” I turned to the student sitting behind me, she with the perfect average and, supposedly, a modeling career for an agency in Zagreb. Oh, please. Modeling what? Hand cream? Her face didn’t have much going for it. “Tuesday after second period, and Wednesday after fifth. That’s for the afternoon shift. For the morning, it’s only Tuesdays at the end of the shift,” she rattled and stopped right there. “Thank you.” Why be rude. I told Mama to come around 6:00, in other words now, so she’ll have to wait another hour, but maybe she’ll waylay the homeroom teacher before that. The bell for recess, but I’d rather stay put, I might bump into her and I don’t have the courage to look her in the eye before the guillotine. Recess lasts for ages and when the art teacher finally steps into class, I breathe a sigh of relief, another forty-five minutes of life, use them well. Blah, blah, blah, baptismal font this, baptismal font that, not much of a subject so it’s even harder for me to focus, perhaps God is sending me a sign, though what the sign portends I can’t say. Someone knocks at the classroom door, in comes the girl on duty. A bomb threat? A fire? Have the Serbs attacked us again? Any of these would do the trick. My least favorite option: she reads my name from a slip of paper, I’m being called to the teachers’ lounge. This was to be expected, the class hums, whispers fly, theories spread. The two of them are standing in the lounge over an open book in which everything is written. Mama’s face is stone, the homeroom teacher is pretending sympathy but I see she’s gloating. “What’s this?” asks Mama softly. “What’s with the Thursdays? The grades?” The questions fire off at me, rhetorical, possibly, but I know I’ll soon have to offer answers for all of them. And worst of all, and I hadn’t pictured this, it’s all happening in front of that dragon of a woman. She’s tilted her head to the side and is waiting for my explanation. I say nothing. “Why aren’t you talking?” asks Mama, with real sadness. Oof, this is where she gets me every time, I’d find a raging tantrum easier to bear. I still say nothing. “Look, know what,” says the dragon, “I realize this isn’t easy, Vukovar and all that stuff, but it’s no breeze for others. A friend of mine’s husband was run over by a tram at Maksimir, but her son is still an excellent student, and he’s at the science and math school. Right?” I look at Mama and she seems to be catching on, “Excuse me? Vukovar and all that stuff?” she says slowly and turns to the homeroom teacher. “Well, you know, the war? Right? I know your dad’s not around and all that, but dear child, pull yourself together or transfer out. Not every school is the right fit for every kid, and there are other good schools besides us. Well, now that we’ve had our little talk, if she decides to transfer, we’ll let her pass the semester!” The homeroom teacher has laid out her proposal and she has this little smile, thinks she’s given us a much more generous chance than what we’d expected, hope, salvation at the last moment. I know Mama, I know her well, she usually keeps quiet, but then there’s a moment. I swear I see a bolt of lightning flash in her eyes and I sense something nasty is coming. “Excuse me!” her voice quavers. “You’ll transfer my child to another school? What? Who are you, anyway! After everything we’ve been through, after everything my children have seen, you are going to decide this instead of me? She chose this school and she will graduate from it. She has her mother and do not think you can go around making plans for us. Summon the director, at once!” I am standing to the side, cheering for Mama. What I really want is to hug her, but it’s wiser to stay at arm’s length. Classroom doors open and teachers come out into the hall to hear what all the fuss is about. The homeroom teacher is insulted by the attack on her kind offer so she sneers: “And where will you go with grades like these?” Mama snaps back at her: “That’s none of your business.” She exits the director’s office calm, serious but calm. “We’re leaving now,” she says and we leave. She walks quickly and says nothing, I follow her, three steps behind; I have no idea where we’re going. We cross the street and to my surprise we go into a café right across from the school. She sits in the first booth and orders coffee with milk. “What would you like?” she asks and I, amazed, order a cola. She takes her cigarettes out of her handbag and lights one. “Do you smoke?” she asks me directly. This is not a moment for evasion; I opt for sincerity. “Now and then,” I say softly, staring at the marble table. “Go on, then, have a smoke, don’t lie to me and don’t hide. You’re better off smoking one with me than having a whole pack around the first corner.” I light a cigarette and feel like a moron, and in my head I hear my brother’s words: “dumped your pacifier and took up a cigarette, suits you like tits on a chicken.” I brace myself and Mama starts. “Listen, I know you’re having a rough time, but I will not countenance lies. It’s not easy for me either, but you will not be giving up now. Hear me? You don’t have to have perfect grades, but you will graduate from this school, if you transfer now you’ll buckle every time you’re faced with a challenge. Whenever a problem arises you’ll surrender; face life straight on and do not run away. You’re better than they are, hear me?” Mama is almost shouting, I believe it all and I look her cautiously in the eye to suggest she might speak more softly in this café crammed with high school students. “I could have given up, too, given up on everything. I could have divorced your dad when he brought me home to Granny and Grandpa where they could push me around, I could have thrown up my hands and let them send us off to an army barracks, or, God only knows, to an island, I could have sat there all day in our room and never fought for an apartment. I could’ve, but I didn’t. I didn’t because of you. And that’s why you’ll get through this school and you won’t cave.” She stops talking but her eyes are still eloquent. They’re shimmering, flashing, they’re telling me I can. We look at each other and smoke. “I want to go home with you,” I say suddenly, my voice almost a sob, and I remember Alice nibbling the mushroom, if only I could shrink like that. Mama gazes at me with compassion. “Not now, you still have tomorrow and the next day at school, and then comes the weekend. If you want I’ll come by on Friday and pick you up at the dorm, we’ll go home together,” says Mama tenderly, and the tears slide down my face, big fat tears, plopping onto the design on the tabletop. “Don’t cry, hon,” Mama holds my hand under the table, and this only makes me sadder still, that hand, if only it could soothe me till I fall asleep. If only I didn’t have to be alone in the dorm room, so alone when I lie down and close my eyes, like there’s nobody left in the world. All I hear in the dark is my heart thumping like a rabbit’s and sometimes I’m scared it will burn out or it won’t be able to keep up and it’ll stop. Sometimes I’m scared I’m no longer sane and everybody can tell. I’m scared I’ll go crazy and I won’t know what I’m doing and where I am, because no matter where I look, all I see are unfamiliar faces. How can I know there’s anybody on my side, how can I expect that. “Listen,” says Mama fiercely, “I went this morning to see General L., there were a few of us there from the Apel center, we went to talk about the rights of displaced persons, but I simply had to ask what was up with our apartment. And then something happened, something snapped, I couldn’t bite my tongue. I started talking about how we’re living, how we can’t bear this anymore, I told him, imagine somebody sends your children to live in dorms after years of living in that room, how would you feel? I said all sorts of things, I’m telling you, the women just watched me, and when I finally stopped, Aunt Zdenka said to me, ‘Hey, woman, do you know how to stop?’ But I don’t, I don’t, and I can’t do this anymore. Then he promised me yet again, as they always do, and I asked him, how can I know you’ll keep your promise this time, I want something in writing. So he sent a fax to the housing commission and gave me a copy. I believe this
time something will come of it, and then everything will be easier.” “What will be easier?” I ask. I want to hear her say it. “You’ll have your own room, you’ll be able to listen to your cassette player as loud as you like, when you come home from school I’ll make dinner, and every Sunday we’ll bake cakes, you’ll see, soon.” It will happen, one day it will, I think, probably not soon, because Željka and her mother were granted their apartment a few months ago and still can’t move in. I know all that, Mama knows it too, but we won’t speak of it now. Still, I feel better, she feels better, we’ve sorted things out and now we can laugh a little about the homeroom teacher, Mama says, “Good God, what a lunatic.” Soon we get up and we’re leaving, and Mama sees me off to the tram, and says, “Keep it together!” “I will,” I answer, just two more days, and, not counting today, just one.
I was up at eight even though I was in the afternoon shift at school. I’d wound the alarm clock the night before after I made some decisions. I kept to the new rules all morning. By nine I was done with breakfast and tidying up, and then I went to study hall and after copying out the lyrics for “Like a Rolling Stone” in my diary I threw myself into studying. Suddenly, over the loudspeaker I heard my name, a phone call for me. Who could it be? I’d seen Mama the day before, my brother the day before that, but who cares, it was a welcome excuse for a break. I went down to the porter and when I leaned my ear to the receiver, I heard only a half sentence: “. . . apartment for us.” “Pardon?” I said, and then I heard Mama, I heard words but I couldn’t make sense of them or gather them into the sentence I’d been ready for almost half my life: “We’ve been granted an apartment!” We got an apartment shot through my head. Once more. We got an apartment. I wasn’t sure I dared say it aloud. There were two sentences that lived somewhere in the sky, magical yet so familiar, because you’d said them over and over. One of them was Papa’s alive, the other: We got an apartment. Now I should shriek, this was one of those moments, but I could barely muster the strength for my thin, little voice inquiring fearfully about the particulars. I managed to pull myself together and commit what she said to memory. The apartment was not in Zagreb but near, it was a two-bedroom in a new building, we could move in next week, but first, of course, we had to buy a few things so we’d have something to sleep on. Tomorrow we’d go see it, tomorrow was Saturday, it’d be a nice day, today we’d be given the keys, this had happened, truly, truly, I’m telling you. The girl who used to live in a dorm took off her sweats and got dressed for school, looked at herself in the mirror and couldn’t wipe the grin from her face, couldn’t wait for today to be over. Tomorrow began our new life. I’d believe it when I saw it.
We drove a long way. We’d left the city limits ages ago, but all I saw were family homes, like we were in a village, house after house, garden gates and front yards. Not an apartment building to be seen and I was already starting to think we were on the wrong road when suddenly in the distance glowed the red roofs of new buildings, taller than these houses. There they were. I hadn’t seen such beautiful buildings in a long time, they were stylish, painted green, with arches and gables, so clean and bizarrely beautiful, cartoon-like. From the car I counted up to the fourth floor, in we went, there was an elevator. Apartment twenty-eight. Mama’s hand shook when she took the keys from her handbag, two keys on a ring, one for the building entranceway, they called it a haustor like the Zagreb rock band, and the other for our apartment. She pushed the wrong key into the lock, in went the key but it wouldn’t turn left or right. My brother said, “The other one, the other one.” He yanked them out of Mama’s hands and tried the other key. But the other wouldn’t go in. Even a little. We stood by the door. We looked at each other. No one said a word. “Is ours a different one?” I said. “It says twenty-eight,” both of them pounced on me. How long to stand there? Nobody else had moved into the building yet, there were no neighbors, we were just about to turn, and leave our apartment and the building behind. I supposed we shouldn’t jimmy the lock again, that would be silly. We walked glumly to the elevator, but once we were downstairs we didn’t know where to go. The only thing we heard were the voices of construction workers coming from corrugated tin sheds. My brother walked over, Mama called after him, “Where are you going, what can they do to help us?” He didn’t answer and we trailed after him. He looked for the boss, a kindly man, my brother explained our predicament and the man didn’t know whether he could help, but he’d certainly have a look at the drawings, maybe there were notes that would explain this. “Aha!” It was immediately clear to him while we looked on with impatience and waited for him to tell us the secret and hand us the joy we longed for. “You see, you were allotted apartment twenty-eight, but there’s something crossed out here, it was switched with twenty-six. Our electrician has a daughter who requested an apartment in this building, and that’s the one she liked best, so she took it. The other one is only a few square feet smaller, here, take a look.” We were soaring, we had a place after all, this wasn’t just a dream. What difference did it make, let the daughter take whichever one she wanted, as long as there was something left for us, we’d waited so long, we’d agree to anything. We’d agree to somebody snatching privileges that weren’t theirs, we’d agree that we were just displaced persons anyway who were granted an apartment, so this smaller one was good enough for us, we’d agree that this was the way of the world, anything, just so we had a home. That we needn’t have agreed and shouldn’t have was clear to us only later.
The Hotel Tito Page 14
