by Carrie Arcos
He crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue.
I laugh. “No, I mean with your stance. You can loosen up a little.”
He puts his hands in the pockets of his jeans, leans against the wall and smiles. Click.
“Make sure you get my best side,” he says, and turns to the left. And then to the right. His jawline is defined with high cheekbones. He could actually do modeling work. Something about the way he is loving the camera, and the way the camera loves him, tells me that he already knows this.
I grin. He is totally playing me right now.
“I think that’s good,” I say.
“Good, because all this work is making me thirsty,” Joseph says playfully. “You want a drink, Grann? Zara?”
We both respond yes, and he enters the hospital to get us something.
“How did we do?” Flora asks.
I sit down on the bench next to Flora and show her some of the photos. Careful this time not to go too far back.
“These are all very good,” she says.
“They’ll be better after I edit them. But I can send them to Joseph and then he can decide which ones he wants to print out.”
“You are very talented.”
“Thank you,” I say, and smile. It feels good to please her.
“So, Joseph said you’re here visiting your mother? Why is she in the hospital?”
It’s still hard for me to put what happened into words. It’s hard to tell the story. Because it’s not like I’m just telling it; I’m reliving it. But there’s something about Flora that makes it easy to open up, and as I tell her about the morning at the farmers market, she takes my hand in both of hers. I’m uncomfortable at first, but her hands are lined and soothing and steady, as if they have carried a great deal in them. So I give her some more to carry. I tell her what I remember.
“Mwen regret sa, Zara.” She rubs my hand. “People do such terrible things to one another. It’s a wonder how we survive any of it. I’ll tell you, none of us come out of it unscarred. When I was a little girl, I saw incredible suffering in my country at the hands of our own government. Not just poverty, but corruption and murder. We were terrified that we’d be killed in our beds. This terrorism is just proof of the sickness of the world.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just let her massage my hand. It feels good, even if her words don’t, and soon my body is a bit more relaxed.
“But you know what I have learned?”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Love will guide you on the course of your life. Love has freed me from letting them win. I don’t know why this happened to you and your family. There is no why. But I know this to be true.” She leans in and places her hand on my chest. “There’s more inside here than you realize.”
I stare at the ground, afraid I’ll start to cry if I look at her.
“I will pray for your mother.” She motions to the prayer beads at my neck.
“Thank you. She’s not very religious.” But I rub my fingers across the beads.
“That’s okay. Bondye’s not interested in religion. He’s interested in people.”
Joseph returns with water bottles for each of us. I gladly take one and drink as if I haven’t had water in days.
“I think I should go back to my room now, Joseph,” Flora says.
“Of course.” Joseph helps her stand and places her hands, strong enough to steady my own just moments ago, on the rims of the walker.
The idea of going back inside the dreary hospital right now upsets me. “I think I’ll stay here,” I say.
Joseph nods.
“Okay. Orevwa, Zara,” Flora says with a wide smile.
“Orevwa,” I say.
“May we meet again. Si Bondye vie.”
“That means if God is willing,” Joseph translates for me.
“Si Bondye vie,” I whisper as he leads her away.
1994
Winter
Sarajevo
BiH
MRS. VINKOVIĆ’S HOUSE smelled like old potatoes. Light from the cracks in the curtains hit the thin layer of dust particles dancing in the air. Nadja crept along the wooden floor, so as not to disturb anything. Which was silly, she knew; there was no one there. Only dust and the thin shards of light that always found their way in.
She ran her finger along the top of the kitchen counter, making a worm track. It didn’t take long for dust to cover what once was living. Two weeks? Maybe three? And it was already as if someone hadn’t lived there in a long time. Any sweets would be long gone by now. The neighbors had already ransacked the cupboards and taken anything else that could be put to use, including the piano. It had been cut up and used for firewood. All that remained now were the ivory and black keys, which lay in a pile on the floor like extracted teeth.
Nadja picked one up, wondering what note it had been, and placed it in her pocket. Outside, she heard the shelling start up again. She dropped to the ground and pressed her back against the wall, drew her knees to her chest.
She started counting. The shelling lasted to number twenty-eight, fading as she continued past thirty.
When she felt it was safe, she stood back up and went to check out the bedroom. It was undisturbed. Maybe people thought this was where Mrs. Vinković still remained and didn’t want to touch it. Nadja knew her own ghosts only came in her dreams and nightmares. She would love for them to visit during the day. Then she could speak with them, ask them to never leave her.
There was a bowl on the floor for a cat. She wondered where the woman’s cat had gone. If someone had eaten it. Or if, realizing its owner had not returned, the cat had left. Gone looking for food.
Nadja walked through the hallway, where pictures and artwork once hung. Now only nails marked the walls. She picked at a spot where the pale-orange-striped wallpaper was starting to give way, and tore a large strip off. It felt good to tear it, so she did it again and again until she had uncovered another layer of wallpaper. This one was an ugly lime green with flowers.
Creak.
The sound came from upstairs. The attic. The cat, she thought, and she found the door in the ceiling. She pulled it open and climbed up into the space.
It was dark and dusty. She sneezed.
When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she peered around the room. Nadja’s eyes met another’s, but it was not a cat. It was a woman.
Nadja’s heart raced. She backed away from the eyes and down the stairs, closing the attic door above her.
As she stepped back into the hallway, the front door burst open.
“Hey!” a man yelled at her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to the kitchen.
“Got her!” he said.
Two other men came into the room. Their eyes searched her face.
“Not her,” the one with a brown beard said.
Nadja kept both hands on the table, clasped together, so they would not shake. She tried not to let them see her terror. She tried not to remember the last time a group of men burst into a home.
“What are you doing here?”
“I . . . I knew this woman. I was just looking, seeing what was left.”
“Have you seen anyone else?”
“No.”
“Damn.” The one questioning her pounded the table with his fist.
“She can’t be far,” said the other man. “It’s only a mile from the line. She could have made her way.”
“How?”
“The roofs?”
“Jumping from roof to roof? She’s a sniper, not Spider-Man.”
The brown-bearded man looked up and noticed the door to the attic. “What is up there?” he pointed his gun to the ceiling, where Nadja had climbed down.
Nadja pictured the scared eyes in her mind.
&nb
sp; “Nothing but a dusty room.” She held up her dirty hands to show him.
He pointed a finger at Nadja. “Do you have family?”
“Yes, a block over and down the street.”
“You should go home.”
The three men looked through the cupboards and swore, having come up with nothing. They left through the front door. At the window, Nadja watched them enter the next house. Across the street, another small group of men was doing the same.
She waited until she was certain that the men were a couple of homes away before she crept to the door of the attic.
She trembled as she climbed the stairs. She peeked inside, blinking and letting her eyes adjust to the dark. She saw them again, the human eyes in the far corner.
“What’s your name?” Nadja whispered.
“Jela.”
“I’m Nadja.”
“Are they gone?”
“Yes.”
Nadja joined the woman in hiding and sat with her legs crossed on the floor. The woman was huddled in a far corner behind an old lamp and a stack of books. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a green flak jacket and jeans. If you just glanced at her, maybe you’d think she could be a boy, a small one.
They continued to whisper as if the men could come back any minute.
“Are you really a sniper?”
Instead of answering the question, the woman asked, “You from Sarajevo?”
“No,” Nadja said.
“Me neither. I visited once before, though. My parents took us all over. Even up to the bobsleigh and luge track on Trebević mountain. You ever been up there?”
Nadja shook her head no.
“You can see the whole city.” The woman said it like she wished she were there now.
“The Serbs have it now,” Nadja said.
“Yes, they do.” Jela paused. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” But that wasn’t right. She had been eighteen for too long. “No, nineteen. You?”
“Twenty-two. Before this, I was in my third year at university in Banja Luka. I was going to be a physical therapist. Sports medicine.”
“I’ve never been to Banja Luka.”
“You should go. It’s very beautiful. From my house, I could see our river, the Vrbas. We have tall weeping willows along the banks, just like the name suggests. As a girl, I used to swing on their branches. If you like to go river rafting, we have the best places.”
“I grew up next to the Drina, but there are no rapids. We have a bridge. We have willows too.” Nadja didn’t tell her that she also swung from branches.
“That bridge from the huge book that they force us to read in school. By Ivo something, right?”
Nadja nodded. Growing up in Višegrad, their main claim to fame was a writer who won the Nobel Prize, Ivo Andrić. The house he grew up in was preserved near the bank of the Drina close to the entrance of the bridge. The only reason tourists came was because of that book and the bridge.
“The Bridge Over the Drina.”
“That was a boring book,” Jela said.
Nadja smiled. She kind of thought the same, though it was cool seeing her little town in a book and learning about the history. They had a copy of it in their house growing up. She wondered if it was still on the shelf.
“Took forever for me to get through,” Jela said. “Though I’m not much of a reader. Are you?”
“Sometimes.”
Jela motioned to the pile of books next to her. “You should take some of these, then. If not for reading, for kindling. Most are covered in mold anyway.”
Nadja didn’t make a move for the books. A long rifle lay on the ground that she hadn’t noticed in the beginning. A reminder of more than just the physical divide between them. But if Jela was going to kill her, wouldn’t she have done it already?
They didn’t say anything for some time. Nadja wondered how long Jela had been hiding in the attic.
Finally, Nadja spoke again. “It is late,” she said, though she didn’t know what time it was. “I should get home.”
Her mouth was dry. She licked her lips, feeling the rough patch at the corner of her mouth that was a recurring canker sore. Ramiza said she needed more vitamin C.
“I only have one more year left,” Jela said. “Then I’ll have my degree. I’ll probably go to Germany. That’s where my sister and her husband are. I’ll learn how to be a good German.”
“I’m going to America,” Nadja said. She hadn’t told anyone this except for Marko, back in another time and another place. Until this moment, Nadja had forgotten that had been the plan. It took everything she had not to think about the past, just to focus on surviving. But now she decided. She would go too. She would get out of here, never look back. “With my friend.” Dalila wanted out too.
“McDonald’s and Madonna,” Jela said.
Nadja nodded. “I’ll become an American and forget this place.”
“That’s a good plan.”
Jela pulled her legs up to her chest. A sign that she was going to stay put for a while.
“Bye, Nadja, the American.”
“Bye, Jela, the German.”
Nadja backed away from the woman, never taking her eyes off her. She stepped backward down the steps, her head sinking as though underwater.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
A week later, Nadja heard that they’d captured Jela. After torturing her for information about the Serbs, they had let Jela go. But in the middle of the day, they forced her to walk toward the Miljacka River. Once Jela stepped on the Latinska Bridge, a sniper’s bullet blasted through her skull, knocking her body into the river. Nadja wondered if the waters would carry her home to her beloved Banja Luka. If the willows along the banks would weep for her.
Or if they would remain quiet like Nadja, having no more tears to give.
July 9
AFTER JOSEPH AND his grandmother leave, I stay on the bench outside the hospital for a little while. The humidity isn’t as bad today, and even if it was, anything is better than being inside the hospital. I breathe deeply and look at a few of the photos of Joseph and Flora. There are many to choose from. Both of them are so photogenic. I love the one where they’re holding hands and looking at each other. Maybe I could even use this one for my single-frame story, since Mr. Singh’s not going to let me off the hook.
There’s something about Flora’s eyes. I’m curious now about her. She mentioned having gone through terrible things in Haiti. I wonder what happened. I pause on a photo of Joseph leaning against the wall. I wonder what his full story is.
My phone buzzes with a text.
Where r u?
It’s Audrey. My heart sinks with guilt. I haven’t spoken to her since I was kind of a jerk. Truth is I’ve been avoiding her. I don’t know how to be around her.
Hospital
Where?
On a bench in the garden.
Ok. Coming
?
She doesn’t respond.
Five minutes later, Audrey walks toward me.
“Hey,” she says, and plops down next to me. She hands me a Red Vine from the small pack she’s carrying. I accept it as the peace offering it is. She knows they’re my favorite. Though I should probably be the one asking for forgiveness.
We sit quietly, the sides of our arms pressed up against each other, chewing our candy, and suddenly things feel a little bit okay.
“What’re you doing here?” I ask after I’ve eaten four Red Vines.
“Thought I’d come and support you.”
I give her a half smile. “Thanks,” I say. The blob of emotion that I’ve been stuffing down deep rises up into my throat.
“Also, I wanted to see Christine. Have you been yet?”
“Oh, um, no . . . I haven’t r
eally had the time.”
All I have is time. I wonder if Audrey recognizes my excuse for the lie that it is. Even so, she knows that Christine is more her friend than mine. We’re more like acquaintances who share Audrey. It’s not that she’s mean, just a little standoffish and hard to get to know. To be honest, I haven’t really thought of Christine at all, which is probably worse than trying to avoid her. I forgot that she was here too, that she was injured. The guilt spreads like a rash on my skin.
Then something else clicks.
“Wait, she’s here? I didn’t . . . I mean, I just assumed she was home,” I say. It’s been almost a week since the bombing, so I’m surprised to learn she wasn’t already discharged, like me.
Audrey opens her eyes wide. “You didn’t hear?”
“What?”
“Zara, she lost her arm.”
I stare at Audrey, but I can no longer hear what she’s saying. I see her lips moving, so I know she’s still talking, but all I hear is static, white noise. Like I still have residual hearing loss from the bombing. Even though a full medical examination revealed that I had no damage other than bruising and contusions. Nothing at all like Christine.
I have no words.
I shake my head to clear out the din, and I hear Audrey say, “It’s horrible.” She focuses on the ground.
Normally I would ask Audrey to clarify, to tell me everything. But all I see are body parts, the man’s leg I crawled over. How when I stepped on it, it felt like something both dead and alive. The severed hand I saw in a closed fist, was that Christine’s? Had she been standing anywhere near me?
“She’s been working toward her tennis career since even before I knew her, like, since she was five. And now . . . I just feel so terrible for her,” Audrey says.
“Yeah,” I say. Suddenly my feelings about Christine seem so small and petty. They’re the feelings of a horrible person.
“Want to come with me to see her?”
No. I do not.
“Of course,” I say.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
It’s easy to spot Christine’s room. Her family spills out into the hallway: grandparents, her mom, probably some aunts and uncles. I feel awkward about intruding.