by Carrie Arcos
Later, after they had eaten and cleaned up and visited with neighbors, wishing them a merry Christmas, they descended into the protection of the basement because the enemy had started shelling again as soon as the sun set. After one got so close the whole house shook above them, Nadja put the batteries into her Walkman.
She snuggled underneath the layers of clothes and blankets. She felt Dalila’s body rise and fall against her back. Then Nadja placed the headphones over her ears, closed her eyes and pressed Play.
July 7
GRAMMA WAVES HER hands in front of me, trying to get my attention. I’m irritated, but I remove an earbud.
“Yes, Gramma?”
“Zara, here. Eat this, please.” She places a plate of eggs in my hands.
All she’s been trying to get me to do since she and Vovo arrived last night is eat. But I guess it’s better than being stalked by Aunt Evelyn. Gramma is more direct, a woman of action. A plate of food shoved in my face. A smoothie placed in my hand. A banana left next to my pillow. I think she feels guilty they couldn’t get to us right away. They were on a cruise when the bombing happened and came as soon as they got back to Florida. She says food will make me feel better.
Food has nothing to do with how I feel.
“Gramma, I’m not hungry.” I’m really not. Normally I eat an omelet or eggs over easy for breakfast. But these days, food seems like a hindrance, like I just don’t have the energy for it. Everything tastes like metal, and my cheek and jaw are still sore when I try to chew. Plus, I’ve got another headache and I feel slightly nauseous.
But Gramma just sits next to me, watching.
I take a small bite, just to appease her, concentrating hard as I chew and swallow.
She smiles at me.
“See? Trust your gramma.” She pats me on my shoulder. Normally she would be more affectionate, but since I stiffened under her first hug, it’s like she doesn’t know how to be around me. No one does. The only one who doesn’t watch me all the time is Benny. Since he’s just a kid, he doesn’t really get everything that’s happening. He doesn’t act different. And he has no problem eating. Gramma watches him, and you can see the worry draw back from her face like a curtain. But when she looks at me, it slowly returns.
Vovo watches the news in the living room. I wish he would turn it off. The continuous footage and interviews and speculation make my head hurt even more.
The world has gone mad. There have been more and more incidents like the one Dad and I witnessed at the gas station happening all over. It’s like the bombings have given people the justification they needed to act on fear and prejudice.
Right now Vovo is listening to a commentator explain how Muslims all over the world have had more casualties from these terrorist groups than anyone else. That in actuality these extremists have killed more Muslims than any other group. He changes the channel, and it’s an update on the bombings.
“It’s like 9/11 all over again,” Vovo says.
Older people use 9/11 as a reference all the time, as if before 9/11, the world was a different place that has since been divided into before and after. I’ve only known a post-9/11 one. Which means I’ve known a world where the words acts of terror, Muslim extremists, becoming radicalized, ISIS, genocide, insurgents are all part of my vocabulary. It’s just never hit so close to home. I’ve never been personally affected.
It’s like I’m in some constant state of nightmare, always wondering when I’ll wake up. When things’ll go back to normal, when I won’t fear just falling asleep.
“Jim, turn that off,” Gramma says to Vovo. He does and then they both turn to look at me, waiting, while Benny keeps eating. I stand there, feeling awkward and exposed. I don’t know what they want me to say, to do.
Finally Gramma speaks. “Your dad mentioned you started taking a photography class. Maybe you could show Vovo some of your pictures?”
“Yes,” says Vovo. “I’d love to see some.”
“Me too!” says Benny.
But I don’t know how to tell them that ever since the bombing my camera feels like a cold, foreign device, not the usual extension of myself. That I haven’t taken a photo since my self-portrait in the bathroom. That the scariest part is I haven’t even wanted to.
Something inside me is broken.
“Maybe later,” I say, and look back down at my plate. Push my eggs around. Benny is almost finished with his.
“Zara took pictures of me scooting and playing dress-up the other day,” he says. “It was silly.” He smiles at me.
I start to smile back, but a thought flies in. Is my camera still in my room? I don’t actually know. It’s weird that I don’t know where my camera is. I always know where my camera is.
“Zara?” Gramma is looking at me expectantly.
“What?”
“I said I can make you a dropped egg on toast next time.”
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
She gives me a weak smile. “It’s what I always made the kids when they weren’t feeling well. Good for the stomach.”
“Okay. Sounds good,” I tell her, though I don’t know how that’ll help me. I don’t have the flu. I’m not sick. Or maybe I am? My stomach hasn’t felt the same since the attack. It’s always tied up in knots, anxious, like it’s waiting for something bad to happen.
“After we go to the hospital, I thought I’d go to church to light a candle for your mother. Would you like to come with me?”
“Yes!” Benny says.
I wonder how Dad would feel about him seeing Mom in her condition.
“Zara?”
I think about her offer. I had felt peace in the chapel, with that guy Joseph, but I don’t feel like being around people right now. “Um, I’m pretty tired. I think I might try to lie down for a bit.”
“Zara, you scared me last night,” Benny says next to me. His plate is empty, so Gramma puts some toast with jam on it. He takes a bite.
“What do you mean? Why?”
“I heard you screaming in your sleep like Mom.”
My heart stops. “No I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. Just like her.”
A cold chill runs along my spine. I get up from the table.
“But, Zara, you haven’t touched your food,” Gramma says.
I keep walking, almost running, down the hall to the bathroom. Inside, I remove the bandage and stare at my pale, jacked-up face in the mirror. Part of my cheek is beginning to scab over, but I still look like me even with the damage. I’m nothing like her. But I suddenly feel a wave of nausea and throw up. The stitches in my back pull with each convulsion, until my stomach is empty.
I take a shower to clear my head. Get dressed. Even though I don’t want to be around people, I need to get out of the house. I ride with Gramma, Vovo and Benny to the hospital.
We enter Mom’s room. We stand and look at her and try not to look at her. Gramma holds Mom’s hand and says a prayer. Silently, I say one too—the same one I’ve been saying whenever I visit my mom. Benny holds my hand. He seems afraid to go near Mom.
He pulls on my shirt, and I bend down to catch his whisper.
“She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping,” he says to me. “She looks dead.”
The comment shocks me, but I don’t let it show. I try to swallow past the rising lump in my throat.
“She’s just in a deep sleep,” I say. “Her brain is healing.” But Benny’s right—Mom looks so far away from us. What if she never comes back?
After just ten minutes, Gramma escorts Benny out into the hallway. She doesn’t think he should see his mother that way.
Vovo and I stay in Mom’s room. Both of us silent as we wait for Dad. When he comes in, he gives us both hugs. Mom’s doctor also enters and explains what’s going on, which is basically nothing. Her condition hasn’t changed. She’s sti
ll in limbo. Dad lies and says it’s going to be okay.
I stare at Mom and feel just as much fear as Benny.
On the way home, we stop at the Catholic church we go to with Dad on holidays. Gramma lights a candle. She has us kneel on the kneelers to pray for Mom. I say the same prayer as before and watch the flame. Benny says a loud “Amen!” when he’s finished. But even he is quiet on the ride home.
I look out the window. Nothing has changed in the landscape, yet everything in the world has changed.
Nothing has changed with Gramma either, who feeds me again as soon as she possibly can. But the meat loaf and corn morph into body parts on the plate. And I cannot eat them. I don’t want to eat ever again.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
After dinner, Audrey comes over. She gives me a hug, and I try not to wince. My arms hang at my side. Her eyes search my face, and I see them register the damage to my cheek. I’m trying to let it breathe, like Dad said, but I feel super exposed.
I’m anxious to get the attention off me, so I show her my mom’s box. She quietly looks at each of the items, now displayed on my bed. She plays with the prayer beads in one hand.
“These are pretty,” she says, holding them up to her neck.
She’s not careful with them. It bothers me the way she holds them, much too casual about their significance.
“They’re prayer beads.”
“I know.”
“They’re, like, sacred or something.” I take the beads out of her hand and put them back inside the box.
If Audrey is offended, or notices that I am, she doesn’t show it. “Your mom looks so young,” she says, now focusing on the photo of Mom and Marko. “Look at her hair.”
“That was the style.”
“She was beautiful. And this guy, whoever he is. A cutie too.”
I agree with her on both counts.
“How crazy is it that your mom has this secret life.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s really a secret secret. My dad knows. She’s just never told me anything.”
“No, but I mean, all these things. Secrets from her past. Old photos and letters and stuff. It’s like something out of a movie.”
I give her a look.
“Oh, come on, Zara, I just mean it’s even got me curious. Like, I want to know the story. Don’t you? Maybe I can help you.”
“How?”
“I can search for this guy. Marko.”
“What, like, you’re just going to Google his name?”
“For starters.”
We quickly learn that Marko is a popular name in the Balkans. Narrowing down the search by adding Bosnian War next to it and Višegrad doesn’t really help us either. Instead, a bunch of articles pop up, and Audrey reads through one of them.
“I had no idea . . .” she starts to say. “They turned a spa into a rape camp?”
I’m exhausted after only a few minutes. I close the laptop.
“Can we do something else? This is giving me a headache,” I tell Audrey.
“You should lie down,” she says, looking at me with concern now.
“Yeah, probably.” But I don’t want to lie down. I want to push her out the door.
Audrey reaches out and touches my arm. The gesture is meant to comfort, obviously, but I’m irritated. I shake her hand off me.
This time she can tell I’m upset, and she doesn’t reach out again. “Your mom is going to be okay,” she says. “Soon you’ll be complaining about her like usual and we’ll be walking into our first day of senior year.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t know that,” I snap.
Audrey looks down at her lap. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m just getting really tired of people saying that everything will be okay. That’s all my dad says, and it’s not fucking true. Sometimes things are not okay and they’ll never be okay. Like people get beat up at a gas station or killed and blown up, and you can’t just tell their families that it’s all going to be fine.” I feel my anger flare with each word. Suddenly I want to throw something across the room. “You have no idea what it was like, and what it’s like now. I mean, there were severed arms and legs and guts. I still smell it. I smell the blood and the burning. So just . . . stop saying it’ll be okay. All right?”
“I’m sorry,” Audrey says. Her eyes are full of tears. “You’re right. I can’t possibly understand. I don’t even know what to say.”
I press my temples with my fingers. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I think I just need to sleep,” I finally tell her.
She stands up, and the bed shifts with the lack of weight.
“Okay. I should go.”
I don’t try to stop her. I can’t even get up from my bed.
“Call me if you need anything,” she says.
I can’t form a response, so she opens and shuts the door behind her.
I hear her walk down the hallway. I hear the front door creak open, then close.
I lean my forehead into my hands. Audrey was just trying to be a good friend, and I had to go and yell at her. Part of me wants to call her right away and tell her to come back and spend the night. But my phone is over on the dresser. I can see it from where I’m sitting, but it feels so far away. The thought of having to walk over there is too much right now. Instead, I curl up on my bed and let myself cry.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
The next day, I spend pretty much the entire day drifting in and out of sleep in my room, in the dark, with a cool, wet cloth on my head. The fact that I’m using Mom’s migraine remedy is not lost on me. She hasn’t gotten one of her headaches in a while, but she used to get them frequently when I was a kid. A really bad one could put her out of commission for a whole day.
I don’t know if I screamed out in my sleep last night, but I definitely remember having a nightmare. I couldn’t get to Benny. He was screaming for me, but I was trapped. My leg was caught underneath something. I couldn’t breathe. Now, as much as my head hurts, as much as it hurts to keep my eyes open, I won’t let myself sleep.
At some point in the afternoon, when Gramma and Vovo are out with Benny, I take Mom’s prayer beads from her box and put them on. I know there’s no magic in them. They’re just beads. But throughout the day my fingers keep returning to them, and I catch myself whispering, “Please, help me,” through dry lips. I wonder if God is listening.
By the time it’s evening and Dad has returned from working and visiting Mom, I’m feeling a bit better, but I still stay in my room.
My door opens. “Z, how are you feeling?” Dad asks when he enters.
The open doorway casts the bright hallway light on my face, and I cover my eyes with my arm. The cloth I’ve been using falls to the floor.
Dad walks over to my bed and puts his hand on my forehead.
“Tired,” I mumble. And when I say it, I suddenly feel it, even though I’ve been lying in bed all day.
“No fever,” he says. “Let me check your back.”
I moan, but roll over.
“No infection. Good. Gramma says you haven’t left your room all day. Headache?”
“Migraine.”
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t leave either. I can feel him assessing the patient. Thinking through the best course of action.
“Come on. Let’s go for a walk. Stars are gorgeous tonight.”
“Dad—”
“Doctor’s orders.”
I groan and sit up. I feel dizzy. Dad reaches to help me, but I wave his hand away.
“I got it,” I say, and follow him out of my room.
We’ve started walking down the hallway when Benny comes racing up to us. “Can I come?” he asks.
“Just me and Z this time, buddy. But I’ll come and
read you a story when we get back.”
Benny sulks, but immediately perks up when Vovo challenges him to an ice cream sundae making contest.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
Outside, the warm summer air hits my face, and my cheek tingles.
“Isn’t this nice?” Dad asks once we’re half a block away from our house.
“Mm-hmm,” I say. It is, but each step feels incredibly heavy.
We walk a few more paces, and then Dad says, “I’m worried about you, Z.”
I loaf along next to him, quiet. I’m surprised he’s even had time to think about me or notice how I’m doing. Lately almost all of his energy has been devoted to Mom.
We leave our cul-de-sac, and the woods meet us on the other side of the street. We walk parallel to them. Tonight, they feel large and menacing.
“I noticed you haven’t been taking pictures. You don’t want to make plans with friends. I know what’s going on with Mom has us all scared, but I want to make sure you know you aren’t alone. You can talk to me. I’m here for you.”
He doesn’t get it. It’s not just Mom. I feel broken too. I raise my hand to the throbbing that’s now returned behind my right eye.
“Talk to me, Z,” he says.
“It’s just this headache.”
“Do you feel nauseous too?”
“Yeah.”
“I can give you something for that when we get back to the house.”
We keep walking. I try to relax. The stars are full and hang heavy in the black sky. It’s the same sky, I think. At least that hasn’t changed.
We pass our usual turnaround point, and I realize he’s going to make me walk until I start talking. So finally, I do. “It’s just . . . I feel like everything’s off . . . like I don’t know how to be myself anymore.”
He nods. “Well, maybe you should do something that’ll make you feel normal. Like try just carrying around your camera, even if you don’t feel like taking pictures.”