Running Away to Home

by Jennifer Wilson

  The early autumn breeze was fantastic as we lay awake that night. “I love making my mom’s cookies,” Jim said. A few years ago, he’d baked twelve batches in a row to perfect the recipe. I gained four pounds; the cookies were worth it.

  Cesar the Hunting Dog of Indiscriminate Origin started barking. I got up and looked outside to see the shadow of a cat standing just a few feet away from him. The cat bolted, and Cesar returned to his tiny chalet, a miniature pot of red geraniums over his doorway swinging gently. Our street looked so pretty just then. My eyes welled up.

  “Everybody loves my cookies,” Jim mused, drifting off to sleep.

  I had not yet found my ancestors, but surely I was getting close. All genealogy and bookwork aside, our friends and neighbors felt a lot like family in Mrkopalj, this place where even the simplest neighborly gesture of baking peach cobblers was received with such a flood of maternal kindness. The last time I’d made my signature recipe, Anđelka had returned her pan filled with plums surrounding a jar of jam she’d made from them. Pavice brought over another pitcher of milk and kolaći for the kids. You could stock a Konzum with all the garden produce Jasminka perpetually showered upon us.

  God knew what they’d give us in return after Jim’s mom’s cookies.

  Medo the cow? A parcel of land? A baby?

  chapter twenty-two

  If I couldn’t find the graves of Valentin and Jelena’s parents, I figured there were other ways to channel my ancestors, starting with doing what was probably the same work they’d done a hundred years ago. So in the morning, I walked over to Pavice and Josip’s house and pantomimed my way through a request to help with chores. They both laughed at me.

  I tried to explain that I wanted to experience, in some small way, the daily life of my great-grandparents. But all that I could say in Croatian was: “Grandma. Grandpa. Cow.”

  Still, Pavice and Josip told me to come on over at the crack of dawn the next day.

  I rose at 6:30 from the red futon, stiff and disoriented from another night’s sleep on a mattress only marginally more comfortable than pavement. I looked out the window at Pavice and Josip’s place. Cesar jumped and pranced in the dawn mist, the chain around his neck jangling as Josip released the turkeys to peck in the yard.

  I dressed quickly. The fog that settled in the valley overnight hung low to the ground, draping Novi Varoš in a ghostly veil. I walked across the yard to where Pavice was smoothing down her terrific explosion of bed-head. A pair of dainty rubber boots awaited me at her feet. I sat in a plastic lawn chair next to her and pulled them on.

  Josip hauled a dark green wooden milking stool from the shed. Pavice brought a basin of hot water. We ducked into the first-floor cellar with the three cattle chained to a wall. Šarića kicked at flies on the left. On the right, Medo’s calf, Kuna, nuzzled Josip and licked his hand with a long, thick tongue. Josip’s face melted and he smiled as if to say, They totally love me.

  Medo stood patiently in the middle. It was her business that I’d be working that morning.

  The air was hot and moist, fragrant with the new layer of sawdust on the floor. I washed Medo’s udders (Sam and Zadie called them “weenies”), careful to remove every bit of hay and mud. They felt unnaturally warm and alive in my hand, and for some reason, this made me feel faint, the way I get at the Red Cross when I feel the bag of blood growing against my arm. Josip indicated that I rinse my hands. I did so, and he directed me to sit down on the stool.

  I sat. I reached. I pulled on the first weenie.

  Nothing happened.

  Josip gave me instructions in Croatian.

  I pulled again.

  Nothing happened again.

  Josip gave me more instructions.

  I milked to no avail.

  I must’ve looked bewildered in the murky cellar light because Josip nudged in and took over. In Josip’s grip, Medo’s udder emitted a stream of warm milk so strong that it nearly blew the pail from between my knees. Josip’s was the type of body that, when brushed against in any way, communicated the immovable solidity of a linebacker.

  I tried again with Medo. She wasn’t happy to be deedled by a novice in this way. She stomped and shoved me. Josip gave her a loud slap on the back of the neck, the kind that didn’t seem to hurt because she didn’t flinch, but the message was clear: Allow yourself to be deedled.

  I worked the udder again. A feeble trickle stood testament to three generations of weakening Radošević constitution. After ninety seconds of fruitless squeezing and pulling, the hand of this ineffectual great-granddaughter of Mrkopalj was getting kinda sore. Again, Josip moved me aside and drew forth that great propulsion of milk. Then he laughed and brought out the big guns: a milking machine that sucked right onto those weenies at the flick of a switch. Within minutes, we had a full vat of milk. The drops I’d eked out were thrown into a pan for a patient audience of cats gathered at the barn door, all of which seemed disappointed in me.

  I hayed Medo, Kuna, and Šarića. A few moments later, I heard a great squalling coming from Robert’s yard. Zadie came zipping around the corner to tell me that she and Sam had gotten up early to play outside and Sam had been stung by a bee.

  My life as an eighteenth-century farmhand ended at just shy of five minutes.

  As I scratched an angry little stinger from my screaming son’s foot, Jim came down the steps in his jammies.

  “How’d it go?” he asked.

  “The milking or the bee sting?” I asked.

  “The bee sting is awful!” Sam moaned.

  “The milking was similar,” I said.

  Jim sat down on the bench.

  “So much for living the life,” I said. “I can’t do genealogy. I can’t milk a cow.”

  “Well, you’re trying,” Jim said. “That counts for something.”

  That night, we walked to the mountain as a family. It was potato-mowing time, a very big deal in a village where everyone had at least one large patch of krompiri, even Robert, who could take care of no living thing without assistance.

  One of the local lumberjacks moonlighted with a potato chopper on the back of his tractor. A few days later, he’d come through the fields again to turn the earth and expose the potatoes for harvest. Potatoes traveled from the dirt to red mesh bags to the cellars of Mrkopalj for a long, harsh winter. The routine of village life was comforting.

  Josip and Pavice’s son, Josip Dva, brought us over a load of krompiri. We took them because he pressed them on us, but we both worried that the neighbors’ generosity would put a dent in their winter stores. In Josip and Pavice’s case, the bounty of their small farm made them self-sufficient, but when they needed staples like flour or oil, or when the winter supplies ran out, they tapped Josip’s small lumber-mill pension.

  Josip Dva beckoned us over to where his parents watched the potato tractor, arms crossed in satisfaction. As soon as Pavice saw us, she set about busily picking at something in a clump of weeds nearby. When we’d made our way over to her, she was bearing a fistful of kopriva.

  “Jeem!” She ran at Jim, flicking him with nettles. “Kopriva! Woo! Woooooo!”

  Jim ran just out of her reach, and a surprisingly spry Pavice continued to chase him, waving kopriva, trying to whack him with it. It’s worth noting that Pavice was carrying the nettles in her bare hands, which were so callused that she couldn’t even feel them.

  “Yenny!” she said, holding out one stalk, shaking it at me as if I should touch it. For some reason, I did touch it. I’d barely brushed the thing when I was stung so hard that I couldn’t feel two of my fingertips for days. Pavice exploded into laughter. This was all very funny! She had paralyzed the fingers of the writer!

  At times like these, I wondered if there was even the faintest trace of family genetics left in this village.

  Pavice pointed at the field of potatoes.

  “Oh, Yenny! Jeem! Krompir!” Pavice cried. Then she added, with a big grin: “No GMOs!”

  “No GMOs?” I repeated.<
br />
  “Hrvatska je organska!” Pavice crowed. Croatia is organic!

  It seemed so out of place, listening to my gruff old-world buddy brag about organic produce. But Croatian farmers couldn’t afford the chemicals we used in Iowa, and because of that, everything we put in our mouths there was pristine, like their sea. Mrkopalj had a way of changing our ideas about prosperity.

  The tractor kicked up a halo of dust in the sunset, shearing the stalky potato plants and throwing chunks of roots and leaves through the air in silhouette.

  Then a young woman joined us. Pavice introduced her as her grandson Hervoj’s girlfriend. I turned to greet her and then froze: She looked exactly like my sister Stephanie. Great brown eyes, thin eyebrows that curved upward as if she were perpetually worried. Olive skin. Wide smile.

  Hervoj came up and introduced himself in English.

  “You are in the village to find your ancestors?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “How are you doing this?” he asked.

  “Well, I milked your grandparents’ cows,” I said, rubbing my two numb fingers. “I think I found my great-grandparents’ houses. I saw the Book of Names at the church. That’s it so far.”

  Hervoj’s girlfriend looked at me with a smile and then spoke. “You should talk to the old ones,” Hervoj translated. “They remember.”

  Maybe it was just a coincidence. But probably not. I felt as if it was a sign from somewhere, carried, as always, by the women of Mrkopalj, who saved me every time I faltered.

  chapter twenty-three

  On the Monday of the last week of August, I was at Helena’s house, where she, her sister, Cornelia, and her mother were translating a recipe for želudac (ZHEL-oo-dots), a haggis-like dish that meant “stomach.” We were at an impasse. My grandma Kate and I made it during Holy Week—Grandma used a pressure cooker, but she swore her mother cooked it in a sheep’s stomach.

  “It had cornmeal, raisins, ham, eggs, and green onions,” I explained. “We had to wait until midnight on Good Friday to eat it, because we were fasting.”

  Helena translated. Her mother shook her head vehemently.

  “My mother says you are describing Sunger želudac,” Helena said. “We can’t understand how you have Sunger recipe in Mrkopalj family.”

  In the one-kilometer distance between Mrkopalj and Sunger, the recipe for želudac morphed from the savory loaf of my grandmother to a culinary superfund site that required forty eggs. I could feel my arteries hardening just talking about it.

  “I am not from Sunger,” I said. “I might not be the best genealogist, but I’m positive I’ve got the right village.”

  My cell phone rang. Jim was on the line, in a tizzy.

  “Come home,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

  It was a good excuse to pack up.

  I rolled open the dorm door in late afternoon as Jim was putting the finishing touches on a pencil sketch. Photos of the Book of Names were pulled up on my laptop screen in front of him.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He stood and held up the drawing: a color-coded family tree. “I think this’ll make things a little easier for you,” he said, grinning.

  He’d spent the whole day decoding the chicken scratches in the Book of Names, using my computer to magnify the photographs of the pages, then copying down what we’d found, translating my family history into a legible (and pretty!) family tree that even I could read.

  “You rock!” I said, putting on water for tea as Jim examined his drawing, pleased with himself. “Now we can at least trace the lineage properly, and see if I might have some direct relatives here in the village.”

  “That’s right,” Jim said. “And I’ve got news for you: If the information I found in the Croatian phone book online is right, then your grandma Kate’s first cousin lived in Lokve. And if he’s lived as long as the old people around here, he might still be alive.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said, looking over his shoulder.

  “I think she might have a few more cousins in Rijeka,” he said. “Grandma Kate’s first cousins, Jen. Those are the closest relatives we can hope to find.”

  The chance to meet Grandma Kate’s first cousins meant seeing my grandma—if only a hint of her—for the first time in ten years. I hugged Jim.

  We hustled from the dorm in search of Robert. We found him in the second-floor rooms, napping. In another Mrkopalj miracle, the rooms were nearly finished. We hadn’t known it.

  “Oh, hey, Jenny. Hey, Jeem,” Robert said, stumbling forth. “I am now sleeping.”

  “I see that,” I said. “Looks like these rooms are really coming along.”

  “Maybe you move in, two or three days,” he said, scratching his head. “Or maybe you stay on third floor. Whatever you like.”

  Jim and I glanced around. In the red-tiled bathroom, the one with the time machine, the sink shelf held several toothbrushes and somebody’s retainer. The kitchen counter was piled with food. Blankets and pillows were heaped on the couch in front of a television set. The Starčevićs were moving in instead of us. Well, I’ll be.

  “What’s going on, Robert?” Jim asked, suppressing a laugh. “Looks like someone’s been living here.”

  Robert shrugged. “Is good rooms,” he said. “Maybe your family come here. Maybe they like instead to stay on third floor. With good window. Nice bed.”

  Jim and I tried not to laugh. Every person in Mrkopalj had heard me complain about the futon. I walked with a limp thanks to the damage it had done to my coccyx.

  “You guys might as well just stay here,” Jim said, looking at me for confirmation. “We’re settled in the dorm now.”

  “Is okay? Is not a problem?” Robert asked. “I feel bad. It takes many weeks to finish rooms. And now we stay! I am sorry for this.”

  His words were those of a sheepish man, though Robert didn’t seem all that sheepish. He stretched with a mighty inhalation of what would have been Mrkopalj air, had the architecture of the second floor not sealed it off from the outdoors.

  It was true that we liked the dorm now. People saw our windows thrown open night and day, and commented that Americans didn’t have the sense to shut out the cold. But we didn’t have air like this back home, so fresh and pungent as it circulated down from the mountains.

  I nodded. “We actually like it on the third floor. We’ve had plenty of time to adjust, it having been two months and all.”

  Robert lit up a cigarette and shrugged.

  “Hey, Robert, can we ask a favor?” Jim began.

  “What is favor?” Robert said, leaning toward Jim, cigarette dangling, ready to rumble.

  “Do you know a Franjo Crnić in Lokve?” Jim asked.

  Robert plucked his cigarette from his lips and rubbed his hand across his mouth. He looked toward the ceiling and exhaled smoke.

  “Franjo Crnić,” Robert mused. “Is father of Boris?”

  “I don’t know,” Jim said, looking at the family tree he’d drawn. “I didn’t draw those branches yet. Can you come upstairs and check with us?”

  “Yes, I come,” Robert said. “In one, maybe two minutes.”

  “See you up there,” Jim said.

  We headed up the steps and waited. The kids came in for a snack, then went back out to play. An hour later, Jim went back downstairs and found Robert sleeping again. Jim sat on the second-floor couch and waited him out. When Robert woke again, Jim dragged him up the steps. Together we studied the computer images of the Book of Names. Sure enough, Franjo Crnić was the father of Boris.

  “Boris, he work in pilana in Lokve,” said Robert. “Yes. I know.”

  “Is his father alive?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t know,” Robert said. “I think.”

  I rubbed my face in excitement.

  Jim picked up the phone and handed it to Robert. “Can you call his house for us? If he’s alive, then he’s Jen’s closest relative in Croatia.”

  “Yes, of course,�
�� Robert said.

  Robert dialed the number Jim found on the computer. He spoke fast Croatian into the phone. He explained that Franjo and I might be related. At least that’s what I think he said. I should’ve asked Stefanija to do this for me.

  I heard a woman’s voice talking excitedly on the other end of the line.

  Robert listened for a second, one hand on his hip. Then he said, “Hvala! Bog!”

  He turned to me. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Yeah what?” I asked.

  “Is Franjo still alive?” Jim said excitedly.

  “Uh-huh,” Robert said, grinning.

  I stood up and hugged him. He smelled like a recycling center.

  “Franjo is alive?” Jim asked again.

  “Mm-hm,” Robert said. “But no remember Valentin.”

  Valentin had been in America for twenty-four years when his nephew Franjo was born.

  “Grandma Kate’s first cousin is alive,” I marveled.

  “Yes, first cousins, Kate,” Robert said.

  “So that’s first cousin, twice removed, to you,” Jim said.

  Robert and I stared at Jim blankly.

  “First cousins, twice removed,” Jim said. “You know. Twice removed?”

  Robert and I continued to stare.

  Robert broke the silence. “Okay, I ask Franjo, one day we go into Lokve.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” I said. “Let’s do it now!”

  “I ask,” Robert said, picking up the phone again.

  Jim stayed silent, rubbing the back of his neck as Robert arranged a visit the following day. When Robert was through, he had a question for Jim.

  “What does this mean, removed cousin?” Robert asked.

  Jim, who gets loud and insistent when he’s excited about something, showered Robert with complex sentences in English.

  “Twice removed means you’re cousins, just two generations away,” Jim said. “Jen’s mom, Paula, and Jen’s aunt, Terri, would have been Franjo’s first cousins, once removed.”

  Robert poked an index finger in the air. “First cousins, Franjo and Kate. Second cousin, Aunt Terri and Paula and Boris. Jenny and children are Boris’s three cousins,” Robert said to me. “Franjo and Kate. Kate is your grandmother. Is good speak Croatian?”