by Carrie Arcos
I don’t tell her that I’ve already had the pages of her letters translated. I’m scared that’ll make her angry, like I’ve overstepped a boundary. I could explain that I thought she might die and I just needed to know. But it feels like we’re making progress. I don’t want to mess that up. So there’s no way I can tell her about the picture of her I found at the Boston exhibit either.
She closes her eyes and soon drifts back to sleep.
I stare at the photo of her and Dad in my hands. Study her face, the joy, the light in her eyes, and try to let it sink in that all of that’s for me.
July 20
EACH DAY MOM gets stronger, escaping from the deep dark place she’d been in. Her mind is still a little fuzzy at times, but her English is getting better. Dad says it’s because of my time with her. I tell him about the box of hers I found. He tells me she shared it with him long ago. But he was just as surprised as I was about the picture at the gallery. I’m still waiting for the woman to get back to me on that. It’s only been a couple of days, but it feels like forever.
We take turns sitting and being with Mom. Even Benny stays for longer chunks of time now, since seeing him makes Mom so happy.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
I’m sitting at her bedside when she asks me about the prayer beads. I’m surprised at how much I miss them. How often my hands still search for them when I feel the need to pray. The rhythm and ritual and peace they gave me. Maybe I’ll buy my own.
“Where did you find?” Mom says, touching them with her strong hand.
“The box,” I say, “remember? I found it in your room?” Has she forgotten our conversation about me finding it?
I watch her face for a moment of recognition, and she nods ever so slightly.
“I brought it for you. Would you like to see?”
I place the box on her bed next to her good arm.
Her eyes widen as she touches the outside of it gently, but her hands have trouble with the ribbon—lingering effects from the coma, in addition to her slippery memory. On her good days, she can sit up and talk and practice moving her legs. On her bad days, she needs someone to help her use a spoon. Today is in between.
“Here, let me get that. It’s tricky.” I untie the ribbon for her.
She looks inside and is quiet for some time.
“I wrote these during the war.” She holds up one of the letters addressed to Marko, her hand with the IV line in it shaking.
I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t. She’s off somewhere, remembering.
“Long time ago . . .”
“Do you think you could maybe tell me about some of it? Like maybe, this . . . Who are these people in the picture?”
“This is my mother, my father and my brother, Benjamin.” She giggles, taking me aback. “This day I was so mad. Vidiš? Moje lice izgleda kao da sam pojela limun.” She puckers her lips and scowls like the girl in the photo.
“Why? Where were you?”
“I wanted to be with Marko, but my dad wanted the family together.”
“Who was Marko?”
“My boyfriend.”
“And this one?” I ask. It’s the one of just her, on the bridge.
“Marko. He was always trying to get me to pose. The bridge is beautiful, yes?”
“Yes.” But I’ve read the letters; I know what happened on that bridge. How can Mom still find it beautiful?
“I was seventeen.”
“My age.”
“Really?” She looks at me, trying to find something.
I stiffen. I know her mind is far from healed. Is it possible that she doesn’t recognize me? Could she think she’s been talking to a friend all this time?
“Zar je proslo toliko godina?”
“What, Mom?”
“How’d I get so old?”
She looks back at the photograph of her teenage self.
“This was my last best day in Višegrad. This was before my life ended.”
“What were you doing?”
“Posing for Marko. As usual. He was like you. Good photographer.”
I sit up a little straighter on the seat next to her bed. It’s the first time Mom has acknowledged me being a photographer, let alone a good one.
“Always clicking, clicking the camera. He wanted to be professional, like you. You remind me so much of him. The way you are with your camera. How you see the world.”
My breath catches as though the wind has been knocked out of me, and suddenly, something else comes into focus. All this time, I thought Mom didn’t support my photography, my dreams of becoming a photographer. I had no reason to think there was more to the story. I realize now that maybe in some way, she still connects it to Marko. Like it’s a trigger for sadness that she only knows how to express in anger. It doesn’t make her behavior right, but it gives me an understanding and something more, deeper, instead of just hurt.
Mom keeps talking. “That night we hung out on the steps with some friends until the old women yelled at us to be quiet.” She smiles and closes her eyes. “There was music. We danced in the street. He was a good dancer.”
I can’t imagine my mom dancing.
“Sounds like a great day,” I say.
“Yes.”
Mom hands the picture back to me. I wonder what she would think if she knew it was in some exhibit in Boston. Would she be happy or angry? Before the bombing, I would have guessed angry, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I should call the woman at the gallery again. Leave another message along with the other two I’ve already left.
“I’m tired, Zara.”
“Okay, Mom. I’ll let you sleep.”
I listen to her breathing as she drifts off to sleep. I wonder what she dreams now.
“God,” I say, reaching out to touch the beads still in her hand, “keep the bad dreams away.”
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
That night, I call Joseph. We talk for almost an hour about everything and nothing. I’m beginning to learn his speech patterns. How his voice rises and falls. How he holds his breath a little before speaking sometimes. How he asks me questions and makes me feel like he really wants to know me.
I go to sleep with the same prayer I said for Mom, and for the first time in a while, I don’t fear the dreams that may come.
July 21
THE NEXT DAY, after I spend some time with Benny in the morning, I ride with Dad to the hospital and try to continue my conversation with Mom.
“What was it like growing up in Višegrad?” I ask.
Mom shrugs. “We were regular teenagers. In the summers we swam in the river. We went to cafés at night. We got dressed up and had dances. We had sports. I loved my town.”
“Did you have a best friend?”
“Uma,” she says. “She was like your Audrey. We were always together. She was really good at sewing and designing clothes. My mom taught her how to make jewelry.”
“Your mom made jewelry?” I ask.
She points to the necklace with the heart from the box. “This is one of her pieces.” I remove it and place it in her open hand. The other hand is closed. She’ll need physical therapy to help her be able to unclench her fist on her own. “Mama was the best jewelry maker in eastern Bosnia.”
I continue to ask Mom questions, prodding her along. She doesn’t need much. It’s like a dam has been broken. I learn about her brother, Benjamin, how he loved superheroes and swimming and soccer. He sounds a lot like Benny, except for the soccer part. My grandfather, a math teacher in the high school, who was well respected. He taught her how to shoot and fish. I learn that my grandmother had small hands and loved birds.
“I used to play piano,” Mom said.
“Really?” I’ve never seen Mom play piano in my life, even though we have one. I took lesso
ns when I was little.
“Yes. I was going to study music in Sarajevo. But then . . . the war.”
There’s another question I’ve been dying to ask. “Mom, were you in love with Marko?”
Mom takes the prayer beads in her good hand. She avoids my eyes. And I regret asking her. I’ve pushed too far.
“I was, yes.” She looks up toward the ceiling, stares at something I can’t see. “It was so long ago now.”
I stare at the picture of him and Mom together. I feel like crying. He was so young, so full of promise. So was she.
“Can you tell me about the war, Mom?”
“It’s . . . it’s very difficult,” she says, and lowers her eyes.
I’m quiet next to her, listening to the sound of the beads rolling between her fingers. Waiting.
And then she lifts her head. Her eyes vibrant, the color of mine. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I say.
1994
Summer
Sarajevo
BiH
EVERYONE WAS ASLEEP, except for Nadja. In the morning they would leave Sarajevo, possibly forever. The family was anxious, even Dalila, at what the next steps would be for them. But Nadja didn’t feel the same. Everything had already been taken from her. Lying there awake, Nadja wondered why her ghosts had all chosen now to revisit her. Maybe it was because she was about to begin another life, and they wanted to be sure she’d take them with her. So they sat with her all night, feeding her the memories she had tried so hard to forget.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
Just two years ago in Višegrad, Marko left without waking Nadja. She had felt him stir next to her, run his fingers lightly across her cheek, kiss her softly on the forehead. She had heard him walk across the floor, put on his shoes and go out the window. She’d pretended to be asleep.
He left her a note on her desk.
Stay indoors. I will be back when I have a plan. I love you. Marko.
Nadja walked to Benjamin’s room. His bed was made. She opened a notebook on his dresser. Page after page of his drawings. She hugged the book to her chest.
She touched a family photo on the wall. The four of them—with her parents sitting in the middle and the children on both sides. All four of them smiled. Nadja’s mom had hated her own permed hair, but the photo session had already been scheduled. Her father had a mustache. Nadja was twelve. Benjamin was six.
Nadja left and stood in the living room. She waited. She went to the kitchen. Stood with her hand on the counter. She found peanut butter. She didn’t put wood in the oven. She didn’t light any candles. She didn’t do any of these things for fear that someone might smell or see and come looking for the origin. Besides, there was enough light seeping in through unknowable cracks.
Instead, this is what Nadja did: she walked from room to room and stood. Each time she hoped maybe she had missed something. That maybe her father would be sitting at his desk in the corner. Maybe her brother would be drawing in his book. Maybe her mother would be leaning against the counter, making a list of what she needed to get at the store. But there were no maybes.
She inhabited a home full of ghosts.
She tried to read. She tried to rest. She tried to clean. But mostly she tried not to think about what might be happening. She pushed away what Marko had said, dismissing his words and sending them off like little puffs of smoke.
When it got dark outside, Nadja still didn’t light any candles. She sat in the darkness, naming each shadow so she wouldn’t fear it. She played a game like she used to with Uma when they were kids. They would lie on their backs and call the clouds into shape. She would point and say, “Lily,” and the cloud would transform into the flower. Uma would say, “Car,” and the cloud would shift again.
Nadja said, “Rabbit,” to an especially large shadow cast against the closet door. It shrank down into a little rabbit like the ones that lived in the grass and hills and came out at dusk. Like the ones she used to try to catch.
Nadja heard some commotion outside. Gunfire. Shouts. She huddled against the wall of her parents’ bedroom. It was the room farthest away from the front door. Or maybe she should be in the basement, she thought. But the basement was cold and stank, and in the end hadn’t saved them earlier, so why should it now?
There was the opening and shutting of a door and then a vehicle driving by. She heard the faint sound of music. An accordion played a happy dance song.
Nadja listened for a while to all the night sounds, taking no comfort in any of them.
* * *
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙
When the tap came at her window again, Nadja was ready.
She tossed her bag that contained some clothes, photos, her old stuffed bear and Benjamin’s sketchbook to Marko and climbed out the window. He went first, making sure no one was around. He put his finger to his lips, telling her not to talk, but he didn’t need to do that. She didn’t dare speak; she was terrified of everything the darkness threatened to expose.
Marko led her through the deserted streets. The lights were off in every home. In the distance, she saw the ends of cigarettes bouncing in the air, a group of men huddled together. She and Marko avoided them.
Down by the water, Nadja saw soldiers on the bridge. Marko led her past the famous writer’s house and down the side, following a small footpath along the water. The sound of squealing brakes made them stop and duck down behind the bushes. A truck parked at the start of the bridge, only about fifty meters from where they hid. Soldiers ordered the people standing in the truck bed out. They yelled at them to move and waved guns.
The soldiers lined them up against the stone rail of the bridge. Even in the darkness, Nadja recognized her father right away. He was tall and stood out amongst the others. Her mother and her brother were on either side of him. It had been two days since she had seen them all. She began to rise, but Marko pulled her back down next to him. Nadja heard the voices then. They were pleading with the soldiers. Her father’s voice.
“Please, what have we done? What is our crime? Let my wife and son go. They have done nothing.”
The whole town seemed to be holding its breath from the banks up into the hills, both sides of the river listening.
Then, in reply, one soldier raised his gun and began shooting.
From her spot in the bushes, Nadja saw her father’s body fall, slumped over the rail. Her mother and brother fell in a heap to where she couldn’t see them. One woman screamed and screamed. A soldier slit her neck with his knife, silencing her. Marko’s hand covered Nadja’s mouth so she wouldn’t scream out too. He made her turn away from the bridge, but she could hear the bodies. The splash they made as they were pushed over the rail and into the Drina.
Twelve splashes. Twelve bodies. Three Nadja had known.
Nadja shook and thrashed underneath Marko. Marko had to use the weight of his entire body to hold her down. She started crying and moaning.
“Please, Nadja. Please, shhh,” Marko said. “They will hear you.”
At that threat, Nadja stopped. She looked at Marko and nodded, and he released her mouth. He had tears in his eyes as they waited until the truck left, then Marko helped Nadja back up. They kept moving away from the bridge.
Nadja followed Marko, moving only because of her primal desire to stay alive, simply because she was a living being. Otherwise she would have stopped. She would have dropped, already dead. Her body next to her father’s and mother’s and brother’s.
“We cross here,” Marko whispered.
Marko waded into the river, pulling Nadja along behind him. The water was freezing, and Nadja struggled. The numbness she now felt outside matched her insides.
Marko wrapped his arm around her stomach and swam for the two of them. Their heads barely poking above the water. He had always been a good swimmer. He was on th
e swim team and competed every year in the huge swimming competitions held in the city. He even traveled to other cities. Nadja would watch him, marvel at how strong he was. At how he could swim for hours and never tire.
The current was strong. Nadja felt Marko strain against it. She wanted to tell him that it was okay. That he could let her go. She could join her family underneath in the deep, drifting down the swift waters.
She began to see them next to her. Her father floated on his back. His eyes were closed. His face pale in the moonlight. Her mother was there too. Her beautiful brown hair fanned out from her head, floating on top of the water like a fairy. Her brother came next. His eyes open because he loved the night sky. He told her that in his comic, his hero had defeated all the Serbs. His hero had swooped down upon the bridge and blasted them all with lasers that came from his fingers. He had been meticulous, splitting the soldiers in two, cutting off heads and freeing them all. How wonderful it was out tonight, he said to her as he floated by. He wondered why she was swimming. She should just float along. It was so easy to just lie there and let the current take you.
Nadja tried to touch them, the bodies, but her hands found only darkness, liquid. It was thick and smelled like rust and death. She began to panic and slipped under. The blood water, heavy and sticking to her, dragging her down. She felt hands on her, and she tried to break free from them, but they were strong.
Marko’s hands pulled her up and pushed her toward the bank. She climbed out of the river, coughing because of the water she had swallowed. She threw up on the small pebbles that dug into her palms and knees. Marko patted her back. “You all right? We have to walk a little more.”
“The blood. I can’t get the taste of blood out of my mouth.”
He stared at her with worry, but he helped her to her feet and led her into the woods. At the base of a large tree, he said, “I’ll be back. Wait for me.”
Nadja clung to him, not wanting him to leave her alone.