Just after the new year, the CBC brought cameras to the apartment because they wanted to talk to a regular Bosnian family after some militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a tram running down the main street of Sarajevo, killing a woman the same age as Mama. Elle and I worked on what my comments should be and we were pumped that I was going to be on TV but the reporters cut out the part where I said those militants obviously hadn’t got the memo about peace.
Then a week later Nana Spaho had a stroke in her Sarajevo apartment and Amina went to Dajdža Drago behind Mama and Tata’s back and Dajdža Drago gave Amina money to fly home to be with Tata’s mama.
And then it was like our Winnipeg apartment was at war. Amina called home to say that Nana Spaho was a stubborn old bat who exaggerated her symptoms so she didn’t have to leave her hellhole of a flat and come to Canada, and Mama told Amina that after all they’d done to keep her safe, if she carried on to Belgrade to see Baba and Deda Ilić while Serbia was still rattling sabers with the Albanians in Kosovo she would never speak to her again.
Budgie asked how I felt about all this and I said all I cared about was keeping CristElle on track. Before Elle left for Jimmy’s in April we started focusing on “Another Night” by Real McCoy, but then our new principal, Mrs. Yaskiw, decided she didn’t believe in facing one student off against another. Instead of a talent contest, she turned it into a talent show, and in the end I sang and Elle did her signature moves, but the whole thing didn’t come close to before. Maybe without winners and losers, without all the drama and judgment and questions of justice served or justice denied, the whole thing seemed kind of pointless.
Soulgroan didn’t even bother showing up.
October 6, 1999
I keep thinking about something Budgie said.
You have a good memory, Laz-Aaar. You can remember many things almost word for word. But not others. I want you to think about why that might be. Okay?
Amina loves to talk about this post-traumatic stuff and maybe Budgie thinks all my problems come from not remembering bad things that happened. But I do remember.
Amina told a reporter once that she remembered us huddling together around the dying fire while the shells fell and Mama’s crystal glasses clanked and pinged like fairy music in the cupboards. And I was like, huh? Because she made it sound like poetry, and Elle says I don’t have an ear for that and I should stick with math problems and other people’s lyrics. So I might not remember that, but I do remember.
Like maybe four months after the start of the siege, I remember it was a perfect summer day, no clouds at all, when Baba and Deda Ilić closed the cinema for good. They brought all the leftover treats and the American-style popcorn machine across town to our apartment and Deda Ilić and Tata couldn’t fit the machine up the stairs, so for the next six months while it lasted, we made popcorn every time someone in our building had a birthday. The oil and butter and the good ol’ pop-pop-popping made it impossible not to smile at each other.
I remember the way Baba and Deda Ilić cried like the world was ending because Tata and Mama refused to go with them to the Dark Side in Belgrade, and I remember Mama letting me eat two Kakao Krem a day for weeks on end. I remember the exact last words my deda said to me when he left: Your father wants to stay and defend his beloved city. But what does a schoolteacher know about such things? And I remember hating him for leaving more than I ever thought it was possible to hate anyone.
Even then I knew he was just an old man who’d spent most of his life acting like owning a cinema was like owning a professional sports team or something. But when push came to shove he left our cinema to the pigeons and the snipers and he was no better than some Belgrade-armed Chetnik hidden in a broken window.
Now I’ve done something way worse than he ever did, and Elle hates me more than I ever hated anyone, even my own deda.
October 7, 1999
Mama told me I had to go to the tailor shop tomorrow and learn how to work the cash register and I could hear Elle’s voice, like she was talking in my head.
You are dead to me. You are more than dead to me. It’s like you never came here. You were never born. You never existed.
Then Sara dropped me off at Budgie’s office and drove away while I was still slamming the door and my heart was beating really fast and I wanted to chase after her car, maybe grab onto a side mirror like in the movies and let her drag me all the way home.
When I sat down I thought my heart might jump out of my mouth and Budgie was wearing a shiny yellow blouse that pulled at the buttons, very puffed out at the chest and budgie-like, and she cocked her head to the side and asked if I was okay and I said I can’t talk about what happened yet.
She said, Laz-Aaar, this is your story, you tell it your way. I’m not going anywhere. And I said we needed to keep going, from the beginning of CristElle and all the way through to Ivan, and the end.
I told her that the first week of grade eight, Elle came back from Jimmy’s a vegan. She had to explain to me what that was and then I had to explain to Mama that some people not only didn’t eat dead animals, but they didn’t eat any animal by-products.
Elle said, Human beings are the only animals who drink milk from other animals and Amina said, We’re also the only animals that watch TV or drive armored vehicles, and Elle said she didn’t get the point. Amina said, You’re not comparing apples to apples and Elle said, Who said anything about apples?
And Amina laughed, because when it came to Elle she let a lot of things go that she normally wouldn’t.
Mama, though, wouldn’t stop going on. I neber heard of such a thing. The ones who come up with these crazy ideas neber been hungry. It’s easy to be big hero when you got around more than you could eat in a year.
I told her this was the new thing, because the mass cultivation of cows for milk and beef was destroying the earth and Jimmy predicted that New Orleans would be under water and we’d all be vegans by 2020. Mama said this Jimmy was an idiot and even Tata said some people have never even met someone who butchers his own meat so don’t understand how superior such livestock tastes.
Budgie sucked on her pen and smiled. Like me, she said, and I told her Tata’s father was a halal butcher so it was easy for him to say.
But it was around this time that Elle started shrinking a bit, like a snow bank during a spring thaw. I didn’t even notice until Hana told Mama that it was impossible for Elle to stay so debeo eating nothing but kunić food. I didn’t tell them that Elle still ate lots of things that rabbits don’t eat, like corn chips and Frosted Flakes and Slurpees. It was just maybe hard to stay quite so fat when you’re not eating handfuls of grated mozzarella or drinking cartons of chocolate milk.
Budgie asked if I thought Elle had a problem with food, and I said her only problem was she liked it too much. Then she wanted to know if I thought Elle’s weight bothered her and I told her I didn’t know, I’m not a mind reader, but a couple of months after we met, Mindy said maybe Elle should go to a counselor about getting healthier and Elle accused her of giving in to the fashion police and hating her own daughter’s body because it didn’t fit the manufactured mold of beauty.
Elle said a lot of stuff, though. Like she told me organized activities were not for a free-wheeling spirit like hers but then she decided we should try out for the Divisional Middle School Jazz Choir. I said, I thought you said you weren’t a joiner, and she acted like I was out of line for even bringing it up. What the what, Cris? How long ago was that? People change, you know. What are you worried about anyway? You’ll make it in no problem. Last year Dubé acted like you were her personal little protegé.
Budgie wanted to know if I thought Elle felt bad because I had such a good voice and I said I don’t know, I’m not a mind reader, which was kind of an a-hole thing to keep saying, but I was suddenly so tired of talking, talking, talking, even though I just told her I needed to tell her this.
What I should have said was I didn’t need Elle to tell me that people change. Families change, cities change, people come and go, whole countries come and go. And this was no different, because nothing was the same after we made the choir.
I told Budgie that in the end, Elle and I auditioned at the same time in the basement of Westwood United, where it smelled like a mix of craft glue and toilet cleaner, and Elle told Ms. Gulliano we’d been an inseparable singing team since we were ten. That’s also when we met Amanda-P, who Elle said was panda bear cute. There were three Amandas from three different schools who ended up in jazz choir and she was the only one whose family was from the Philippines and who actually talked to us when she didn’t have to.
Budgie said, So you two made a friend, and I told her Elle said the thing with girls like Amanda-P is they make it their mission in life to be nice to every person they meet not because they like you but because it’s their mission. Like even though the year had just started and we all barely knew each other, she invited every single person in the choir to her little sister’s birthday party. And the thing is, I was so sure that when Elle opened the fancy pink invitation she would have a snark attack and say no way. But instead she said this was our chance to meet people and what else did we have to do besides sit around and watch Dumb and Dumber again. I told her I’d made some money helping Tata unload paint cans at the recycling depot and I was going to buy Bust-A-Move 2 for the Sega and she said we could do that anytime.
Mama acted like this was the first party I’d ever been invited to, which I guess it was, at least in Winnipeg, and Hana and Sara had a good time talking about what to buy for a Filipino kid none of us had ever met.
In the end Sara went to the grocery store and had them wrap up some pink roses in fancy paper and there were over a hundred people at the Filipino cultural center, mostly crowding by the buffet and karaoke machine. Amanda-P’s seven-year-old sister was wearing a mini ballgown that looked like it was made of purple tinfoil. She took the flowers from me with a little curtsy and kind of glared at Elle.
Budgie said people from Old World cultures tend to know a thing or two about etiquette, and I said all I know is that Elle acted like she didn’t want to be there even though she’s the one who wanted to go. Amanda-P introduced us to her cousin Marc who had pimples all over his forehead and was holding hands with Alyssa from the choir. Elle pulled me aside and said that Alyssa was even paler than me, not bad if you liked the undead type. She complained about the lack of vegan options and the three ridiculous dresses the kid changed in and out of like some pop star and the tipsy old people hogging the karaoke. She went on and on about how kids our age who thought they were part of a real couple were just little children playing at the game of love.
It’s so ridiculous. Some of them have been at it since grade six, like they have any clue about real sexual attraction yet. I told her I heard Filipinos traditionally make a really big deal of certain birthdays, just like the Jews, and she laughed like she couldn’t believe how dumb I was. We’re not even talking about that anymore.
Budgie wanted to know how I felt about kids that age dating, and I said it was kind of like the kids at school who smoked behind the garbage bin. The smokers I knew — my deda, my tata, soldiers from every side — they fixed boilers and cleaned guns with a cigarette hanging off their lip like they were born with it. They puffed like it was as natural to them as breathing air. The boys behind the bin sharing a pack stolen from their grandma’s purse had no idea.
Elle said we didn’t have to pretend, except then she started talking about her own birthday party. I said, Since when you do care about that stuff, and she said, You have birthday parties, and I said, Not really, it’s just you and Mindy and my family and it’s Christmas. Besides, my thirteenth had not exactly been a great time since Mama had the flu and Elle said Mindy had the blues and we mostly sat around playing Olympic Summer Games: Atlanta 1996.
Elle usually spent April at Jimmy’s but he was in Thailand that year so she used Mindy’s credit card to book Angelino’s because they allowed minors in the lounge for family karaoke on Sunday afternoons. I said CristElle should prepare something because it had been a while and the sleeves on my shirt were getting so short I couldn’t wear it much longer but Elle kept stalling and finding excuses not to rehearse.
On the day of the party I went early with Mindy and it was like Elle was competing in the talent contest all over again. She kept pacing around the empty lounge until Amanda-P and Alyssa and Marc came. Budgie asked me why I thought Elle was so nervous and I said I didn’t know since I was the only one doing a prepared performance.
I’d decided to go back to some classic songwriting with Elton’s “Candle in the Wind,” which was huge that year, and when I was finished Elle came and threw her arms around me and told me the song was lame pop nostalgia but I was da bomb and she kissed my ear. Then Amanda-P asked how long we’d been going out, and Elle said, Oh god, we’ve known each other forever.
Budgie sucked her pen. Things were changing.
Elle would have said, No shit, birdbrain.
October 8, 1999
The deal is, if I don’t go to school I have to go to the tailor shop. The place is full of nothing but ladies, which is the story of my life. Mama gets testy with customers who want their pants hemmed while they wait. She says, What you think these ladies are machines? Maybe she has no sense of customer service because she was a Party member and worked in an office before. Maybe they want me to help out with the cash because Mama’s bad for business.
Amina says now that the trams are running in Sarajevo and life is returning to some kind of normal, those who took up arms against their neighbors are living in their own personal hell.
Maybe working in the tailor shop is part of my punishment for what I did to Elle.
October 11, 1999
Ivan came in grade nine, the first one in choir to have gelled hair and invisible braces.
But what if he didn’t? What if his dad never got the job as first French horn with the symphony? What if he never moved here from Montreal? Would things have unraveled anyway? Like if Slobodan Milošević had never been born, or if he’d never taken an interest in crazy Serbian nationalist politics, would the war still have happened?
Can one single person change the course of history? Or are the quantum guys right and none of it matters because it’s all happening anyway?
October 12, 1999
It snowed a bit this morning, the kind that pretty much melts right away, and Sara almost got into an accident on the way to the session. Unlike Tata, she looks at me all the time and says things like, You’re old enough to take the bus, you know. They’re not doing you any favors by babying you.
Budgie looked tired again, but maybe it was just the hair. She got it cut short with one side longer than the other and dyed oranger than before. It was like her haircut was younger than her face, and the whole thing made her even more like a bird, with its head cocked sideways and bright feathers ruffled. It kind of freaked me out because it’s like maybe she’s somehow reading this when I’m not around and testing to see how crazy I can get.
There’s something wrong with my psychiatrist. She is not a mammal.
She wanted to know when young people start dating in Bosnia and I said I didn’t know, probably the same as here. As far back as I can remember Hana was always bringing home boys who Tata said were all the same. They stand in the kitchen doorway in their tight jeans, every single one of them, rocking back and forth on the balls of their feet, smelling like soap.
Amina was sixteen when the siege started and one day she brought home a Jew named Ira who had a giant head of curly hair and he gave me a Kakao Krem, which was nice except we had about six hundred of them stockpiled from when Deda closed down the cinema. Amina cried and cried when he left a few months later and Tata pulled her on his lap like she was still small and said, The Jews have som
ewhere to go, so they are going, malo kokoška. After this insanity is over they’ll be back. This city is their ciy too.
I hadn’t thought of that in a long time, how Tata used to call Amina his little hen.
Budgie asked if we should talk about how things were changing and I told her everything changed when we became freshmen. That’s what they say in American movies, but I guess for us it was just grade nine. Elle said it sucked because we were just stupid little music geeks and suddenly there’s some code we were supposed to understand just because we were in high school. She said I was lucky because I was blissfully oblivious to social cues.
All I knew is that suddenly CristElle was just some funny kids’ thing we used to do and a choir festival in Fargo, North Dakota, was the trip of a lifetime.
Budgie said let’s talk about Fargo then. Like it was that simple, because when Elle came back from Jimmy’s after the Labor Day weekend, she was a lot skinnier. But that wasn’t the only change. She said it was time to cut, slash and burn her lifelong nemesis, fat.
Turns out Frieda was into selling herbal detox plants and hiking and when I asked Elle what was the difference between hiking and walking, she said hiking was in the mountains. I said in Bosnia we had lots of mountains and we walked in them all the time and she told me I was just being an a-hole because hiking was in nature.
That year Elle went on and on about how you couldn’t even walk in this Arctic outpost of a city and she sounded like Hana who could never get used to the dry cold. She kept saying she was going to move to Texas and Amina would tell her to go ahead, go get shot in a McDonald’s in gun-slinging America, and Sara would say they could both go to hell as long she didn’t have to listen to them.
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