We Are All That's Left

by Carrie Arcos

  When Mr. Singh’s had a chance to look at everyone’s photos, he tells us that we have two assignments. The first is to work on a single-frame story due next week. At the end of the course we will also have to turn in a series of ten photos for our multi-photo story.

  “There’s a photography exhibit going on in Boston that you may want to arrange to attend. It’s actually called Narrative, perfect for our class.” He writes the link to the exhibit on the board for us to take down. Half the class takes a picture of it with their phones. I write it in my notes. “In the meantime, look for the stories around you. What stories do you already find yourself in? Maybe start there. Good luck!”

  I get out of there pretty quickly. All kinds of ideas are swimming in my head. I’ve just got to catch one and then I’ll be on my way.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  When I pull up to the house, Benny is outside on his scooter. He’s not wearing his helmet, so his dark curly hair shakes and bobs as he moves.

  After I park and exit the car, I begin shooting some photos.

  “Zara! Look.” He jumps off a tiny ramp Dad got for him at the start of summer. Click. Click.

  “Awesome, Benny. Do it again.”

  He does and I take a ton of pictures, trying to get the sequence.

  “Did you get it? Did you get me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want to see.”

  He ditches the scooter and runs up to me. I bend and show him the pictures.

  “Oh yeah. Cool. Look at how I’m jumping. Bam.” He strikes a pose with his leg up in the air like I captured him.

  “Hey, want to do a real photo shoot with me?” I ask.

  “But I’m playing.”

  “You can keep playing, I’ll just follow you around.”

  He shrugs. “Sure. I won’t do anything weird, though.”

  I laugh. “No weird. Just be normal.”

  I take photo after photo of Benny doing all the things he usually does, like playing with toys and eating snacks, drinking milk, playing video games. I know I don’t need that many, only ten. But you really need to take a lot in order to get the jewel.

  Even with all my shots, though, I’m not sure what story I’m trying to tell.

  Then I decide to stage some. Maybe I could call the series Boy or Childhood. I take a series of photos of Benny strumming his ukulele. The next shot I set up is him holding my old dolls. It takes a little bit of negotiating to get him to do this, but an offer to buy him a toy the next time we go to the mall does the trick. He makes me promise to take him tomorrow so I won’t forget.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  A little while later, Dad gets home from work and pokes his head in my room to see what I’m up to.

  “What’s this?” he says when he sees Benny. Benny is wearing an old dress of mine and playing with action figures that I’ve set up like a tea party. I’ve also smudged red lipstick on his mouth, making it smear on both sides so you can’t tell if he’s frowning or smiling. On his head is a Red Sox hat.

  “Zara says I have to.”

  “Benny,” I say. “Traitor.”

  “Hey, bud, why don’t you jump in the shower. Get cleaned up and then we can build that new Lego set together.”

  He jumps up, almost rips off the dress and runs out of the room.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I say sarcastically.

  He comes in and sits on the edge of my bed.

  “Do I want to know what’s been going on in here?”

  “It’s just a project for my new class. I’m exploring the concept of boyhood.”

  “Okay, well, just don’t torture the kid.”

  I roll my eyes. “He’s fine, Dad.”

  “So, how was the class?”

  Dad is stalling. I know he wants to talk to me about Mom.

  “Great,” I say. And wait for what’s coming.

  “So . . . we should talk about what happened last night with your mom.”

  Like I said.

  “Dad, you know she was overreacting. She just makes me so angry. She never tries to understand my work.”

  Dad can’t argue with that. Ever since I started taking photography seriously a couple years ago, Mom acts like she’s not interested. She’s always telling me to put my camera away. The only time she even comments on my photos is to express disapproval.

  “I understand you were upset, but your mom just has a different way of looking at things,” he says.

  “She called my photo pornographic. Do you think that’s what I’m doing? Shooting pornos?”

  Dad gets a little flustered at the word, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “No, Z, of course not.”

  “So how do you think that makes me feel?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  I settle a little into the pillow behind me. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “But how do you think your mom feels?”

  “I know exactly how she feels. She hates what I do.”

  Dad sighs. “Or she may feel like you don’t like her, or that she’s losing you, and that scares her.”

  I look at him like he’s crazy. “Mom is not scared of me. She’s the one who’s scary.”

  “I didn’t say you scare her. Look, I know it’s not easy, but you know, she’s had to overcome things that most people never have to.”

  And here it comes. The speech about how I should try to be more understanding.

  “Sometimes people who go through the kind of trauma your mom experienced get affected in all kinds of ways. Now, it doesn’t mean that bad behavior is acceptable, and that a person isn’t responsible for their actions, but it does mean we can try a little harder to show empathy. Your mom has dealt with a lot, and she’s worked really hard. Sometimes we have deep wounds, and when they get poked or scratched, we lash out. The lashing out usually happens to the people we love the most.”

  “Well, she must really love me, then,” I say.

  He laughs. “You have no idea.”

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  When I was little, I used to follow Mom around, a little duckling, just to be near her. Part of it was instinctive; she was my mom and I wanted to be close to her. Just like any kid. But the other part was bigger—I wanted to know her so I could understand where I came from. With Dad, it was easy. I could tell that I got my love of trying different foods from him, my eye for clean lines, my insistence on doing something over and over again until I got it right. But with Mom, I could never find an opening. She only gave so much of herself; most of it she kept somewhere else. Somewhere boxed up, out of my reach.

  After a while I stopped searching, stopped looking for the secret and not-so-secret doors. I also closed my own. Now we are two houses alongside each other. A long fence built between. There was that poem we read in English class last year, something about good fences making good neighbors. But I wonder: what do good fences do to mothers and daughters?

  In seventh grade, I was assigned a project where I had to do a profile on my parents. Dad was more than happy to answer all of my questions about growing up in Fall River, Massachusetts, his family, how hard he worked in medical school. But Mom, she didn’t want to do it, and the more I pressed her, the angrier she became. Dad told me it was painful for Mom to talk about her past because she lost her whole family in the war in Bosnia.

  I hadn’t even known she’d been in a war.

  If I had been in a war, I wouldn’t keep it a secret. But for Mom, it was like her life was divided—before the war, and after. For her, there was no looking back. She never even called herself Bosnian. She was American.

  I’ve researched the Bosnian War on my own and from what I’ve been able to piece together, former Yugoslavia started to break up in the early ’90s after the end of communism. Yugoslavia
comprised six different socialist republics, which each sought independence in the early 1990s. Serb leaders in Bosnia feared a Muslim-controlled Bosnian state, so the Bosnian Serbs began a campaign to eliminate every non-Serb in Bosnia, focusing mainly on driving out and killing Bosnian Muslims. The policy was called ethnic cleansing.

  What still makes it really confusing to me is that the people of former Yugoslavia were all Slavic in origin, so they all kind of looked the same. But there were many years of bad blood politically, and unresolved conflict between the three main ethnic and religious groups: Serbs (Orthodox Christians), Croats (Catholics), and Bosniaks (Muslims). Old hatreds and fears drove much of what was behind the fighting.

  I was shocked to read about the killings, the rapes, the death camps. I watched footage of snipers picking off civilians in broad daylight on a city street. Bombs dropping from planes. Buildings exploding and on fire. It was as if I was reading about World War II, not something that happened only twenty-five years ago.

  And I couldn’t believe my mom had been a part of it.

  The Bosnian War lasted almost four years and was pretty brutal. Something like one hundred thousand people were killed, fifty thousand women were raped and countless were injured. Afterward, leaders of the Serbian military were hunted down and charged with war crimes, including genocide, since they had strategically attacked and eliminated Bosnian Muslim men, women and children.

  Because Mom’s Muslim, her whole family was targeted, and she had to flee to Sarajevo. After that, she came to the States as a refugee. I’m not really sure what went down, though, because she never talks about it. I only know the very basics.

  I know she’s Muslim in name, but aside from observing Ramadan and Bajram (which is like a small Christmas), she’s barely religious. Dad refers to Mom as Muslim-lite. She believes in God but doesn’t follow a prayer calendar or observe Islamic laws and traditions. I can’t say I mind. I don’t think I’d like having to wear a hijab all the time. Even though I do think some of them are pretty.

  I used to catch Mom staring off sometimes, and I’d ask her about her past and the war. She’d wave my questions away like they were nasty swallows, stay silent or leave the room. Or, if she was in a good mood, she’d change the subject, switch focus, ask about my day at school instead. But it always came across like she was trying to keep things from me. A few years ago the silence crept in between us and never left. Now it’s always there. A quiet, deafening protest forged and nurtured by each of us for different reasons.

  And when Dad bought me my camera, things between us grew worse. Something about the sound of the shutter bothered my mom. Or the lens pointing in her direction. Maybe both, I don’t know. She never liked having her picture taken, even though she was always camera ready. Her perfect face painted on first thing every morning. But whenever I tried to take her picture, she’d turn. Or make an excuse. Or just walk away.

  I don’t ask to take her picture anymore.

  I’ve tried to find old photos of Mom, but there are no pictures of her before age twenty—when she first came to the United States. It’s like she didn’t exist before arriving here. Those early photos I took were my attempt to will her into being. Into a person, and a past, I could access. I’d study her face, try to dissect my own from the prints.

  Everyone who meets us says we look so much alike. As far as I can see, we share the same sea-green eyes, that’s it.

  Not that it would matter if we did look more alike. Green eyes or not, we have nothing in common.

  July 3

  THE NEXT MORNING, Benny and I join Mom on a trip to the farmers market. Even though the air is so thick with heat you could cut a knife through it, the warmth is not enough to thaw the usual cool front that still hangs somewhere between Mom and me. Dad suggested I go as a peace offering, help her with the shopping. I’m here, all right, but I’m not sure peace or help is part of the equation.

  At one of the stands, a couple of yellow jackets hover, drawn by the pungent smell of overly ripe peaches. Mom doesn’t seem to notice them. Her hand rests first on one lopsided peach, then on another, taking so much time, choosing as if her life depends on it. I stare at the yellow-and-black bodies, ready to run away if they head for me.

  Mom picks up a peach that is bruised and caved in on one side. I turn and shake my head, both disapproving of her choice and as an attempt to relieve the nausea I feel from the smell and the heat combined. It’s so hot out already.

  Mom asks the vendor how much.

  They are a dollar each.

  Mom says she’ll take five. Five dollars for rotting flesh. I don’t get her at all.

  She gives one to Benny, who immediately takes a bite. The juices run down the corners of his mouth like melting butter. I hold up my hand to stop her from offering me one.

  As we move down the line, I take pictures. Some are of people. Most are of food. I’m thinking I’ll call this series The Farmers Market. Not a very original title, but effective.

  We keep going until Mom stops in front of baskets of multicolored heirloom tomatoes. I zoom in on and snap a few shots of a green tomato, beautifully white striped like a zebra. Mom talks with the vendor and then she’s laughing at something he says. Before she can react, I get a few in of her too. I check them and am surprised that I got more than a blurry profile. Most of my photos of her are indistinguishable. She could be any woman with bangs and shoulder-length layered brown hair.

  “You want my photo?” the vendor asks.

  As an answer, I start taking some of him. He has no problem being my subject. He even poses, tipping his baseball cap in my direction.

  It’s only been a couple of seconds, but Mom says, “Zara, others are waiting.”

  There’s no one behind us, but I drop the camera and follow, determined not to get into it with her. Again.

  Mom’s like that girl who’s always following the rules and worried about getting in trouble. I bet she never took risks, never did anything crazy.

  I feel sweat running down my back, so I find a sliver of shade from a small blue umbrella and stand there. Today it feels like the tropics, or what I imagine the tropics would feel like since I’ve never been. It’s probably mid 80s with 100 percent humidity. Hopefully I’ll get some good photos to make the trip worth it, since Mom clearly doesn’t care that I’m here.

  Benny pulls on my shirt, ungluing it from my back. His hands are all sticky and gross. They leave a stain. But he points at something up ahead and across the way. I follow his finger to see what he’s looking at.

  “You can get me candy instead of a toy,” he says.

  “Later,” I say. “You know Mom’s system.”

  “Yeah,” he says, but his eyes remain on the homemade candies on the other side.

  Mom’s system looks like this: we walk up one side of the market all the way to the end and then turn around and go down the whole other side. There is no crisscrossing allowed, no changing of lines. No varying from Mom’s way of doing things, just like with everything else.

  And then there are all the weird things you shouldn’t do at all, like drink cold water or sit too close to the TV or sit on concrete.

  One day last year, I was sitting on a concrete slab out front when she picked me up from school.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said once I was in the car.

  “Don’t sit on concrete like that again,” she said. “It’ll make your ovaries freeze.”

  I stared at her openmouthed and then put in my earbuds.

  The sick thing is I don’t sit on concrete anymore. I don’t even want to use my ovaries yet, and I’m already worried about freezing them.

  * * *

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  At the strawberry stand, the vendor holds out a toothpick with a piece of fruit attached. I take a bite and nod to my mom.

  “These are amazing.”

  “Yes, but expe
nsive.”

  I look at her like she’s got to be kidding because she just paid five dollars for the worst peaches ever and now she’s balking at three dollars for a pound of strawberries.

  For probably the thousandth time, I think about how I don’t understand my mother.

  “Mom, really. These would be great at Audrey’s party. Everyone loves strawberries. I could cut them up and add cream. Pour it over some pound cake. Perfect dessert.” Dad would approve of my culinary suggestion.

  “Okay. One basket.”

  It’s a small victory, but I relish it.

  “Come, Zara,” Mom says. “Watch your brother.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  Benny and I follow her up the line, eating samples along the way. At some point, he takes my hand.

  The candy’s coming up on the other side. Benny sees it too. He sighs.

  Maybe it’s the sigh or the way he’s watching the candy, but I decide to hell with Mom’s weird system.

  “Mom, I’m getting Benny candy.”

  “Zara—” she starts to say, but I keep walking. Just because she’s neurotic and probably OCD doesn’t mean I have to be. I don’t have to be anything like her.

  I’m not.

  Right as we reach the candy stand, there’s a huge boom that reverberates through my whole body. I don’t even realize I’ve been picked up and hurled into the air by some unseen force until, suddenly, I hit the ground, hard. My lungs gasp for air. I cough and cough. I can’t breathe. I roll over. The side of my face comes apart. My hands fly up to my ears, protecting them from what feels like screwdrivers pounding into both.

  I open my eyes, but they instantly sting and water. I shut them tight.

  Benny.

  He was standing right next to me.