Jim slapped a chunk of pork on Sam’s plate for emphasis.
Sam took a nibble. The look on his face changed from repulsion to revelation.
“Like this, Zadie!” he chomped. “It’s good!”
Zadie hadn’t eaten French fries for a long time, so she was willing to gamble.
“I like it, but I feel bad we’re eating a pig,” she said.
Sam quickly lost his enthusiasm. He’d been seated with an unobstructed view of the roasting spit, which was explicitly illustrating the full circle of this dining experience. I couldn’t really blame him. Once, at the Iowa State Fair with the neighbors, we ate next to the lamb barn at a restaurant serving lamb burgers. I couldn’t finish mine.
“I don’t want to eat meat anymore, if it’s just an animal without its fur,” said Sam.
Jim and I ate as the kids returned to the spit to watch the pig go around for a few turns. Its eyes had opened in the cooking process. We heard Sam and Zadie mumbling something.
“What are you two doing over there?” I called.
“Counting the pig’s teeth,” answered Zadie. She came back over and grabbed another piece of pork, examined it, then popped it into her mouth. Jim high-fived her.
“I still feel bad for the pig,” she told him.
“Well, since we’re eating him anyway, let’s not feel sorry. Let’s feel thankful,” I suggested. “Let’s toast the pig.”
“Or roast it!” Jim said, chewing.
We raised our beers, and the kids raised their Sprite bottles. “To the pig,” I said. “Thank you for lunch.”
“The pig,” both kids said reverently, a new kind of mealtime prayer.
We returned from the afternoon drive in high spirits, singing along to a Kenny Rogers CD as we pulled the Peugeot onto our patch of grass across the street from 12 Novi Varoš. Robert’s girls were hanging around on the cement steps, looking bored.
They rose when we walked up.
“My mother, she say we are having a family meal tonight at Stari Baća,” Ivana said. Karla and Roberta nodded solemnly.
At Stari Baća, a checkered cloth covered the long harvest table, in the middle of which sat several pizzas. Goranka hung back in the kitchen, where she’d handmade the whole lot, enough so that each of us could have our own pie. The girls explained that Helena’s family once ran a pizza joint out of their house and Goranka had worked there.
“My mother is known for making the best pizza,” said Ivana.
Goranka had drizzled a homemade sauce onto thin crust. The chopped-up smoked ham was local. I don’t know about the mushrooms, but the Mrkopalj woods held a variety of them, and whatever these were had been diced into tiny bits and topped with cheese. Each pizza had four individual olives dropped on top—the really good green kind with a stone in the middle. The pizza was so spare, and yet so decadent, I felt I needed privacy to eat it.
Sam delicately picked a piece of ham from his pizza and held it up.
“This is pig flesh,” Sam said to Roberta, who knew no English except for the English-Croatian blend that we jokingly called Croglish.
Roberta looked over at Zadie and wound a finger around at her temple. “Ludi Sam,” she said. Crazy Sam.
Zadie plucked the ham from her brother’s fingers. “I like pig flesh.”
“Attagirl,” said Jim.
I looked over at Goranka, who was watching quietly from the doorway. I gave her the thumbs-up. She smiled and nodded once, then receded into the kitchen.
After we ate, the kids played hide-and-seek and Jim and I walked home alone, poured glasses of wine, and headed toward the mountain to watch the sun set.
As we walked, I saw a garden like a furry green blanket laid out on the mountainside, and the hump of a woman’s back as she weeded. She’d planted it this way, I guessed, to shed excess water when it rained. I thought of my garden back home, so sopping wet in spring that the earth made sucking sounds. What I needed for my garden, I told Jim, was a mountainside.
“Or you could just go help out with hers,” he said, nudging me. “Go on, Jen.”
As Jim headed back to the house, I felt the old reticence well up, but I beat it back. There was only so long I could explore the land of my ancestors while avoiding the actual ancestors. I thought of Goranka, who couldn’t speak a word of English and so made pizzas as her version of small talk. I picked my way through the flowers and tall grasses and rock—a precarious task when you’re carrying a drink.
I reached the woman as she set upon a long row of onions, their green tufts so ridiculously tall and upright that they appeared bionic.
“I have a garden at home,” I said in English, hoping for the best.
She straightened and put a hand to her back, jutting out her enormous bosom and squinting to examine me, her sun-browned face thrown back. She wore a hard hat, mud boots, and track pants.
She peeled off one of the plastic surgical gloves she wore and threw it at me, brusque but smiling, speaking rapid-fire Croatian as she did so. I set down my wine and stepped into the light brown clay.
I weeded.
As I worked, she pointed to each of her plants. Mrkva, luk, kupus, paprika, grašak, grah—carrots, onions, cabbages, peppers, peas, beans. We didn’t talk after that, just weeded. She applauded when I showed her my clean little section of luk. Then she slapped me on the back. Hard.
“Dobro!” she hollered. Good!
I stuck out my chest in an exaggerated show of pride—I was making a friend!—and we laughed.
The woman gestured toward the waning sun, looked at an imaginary watch, grabbed her hoe and planting dowel, and shooed me out of her garden.
I stuck out my hand. “Moje ime je Jennifer,” I said.
“Pavice! Pavice Paškvan!” she bellowed, pronouncing it PAH-veets-uh POSH-kvan, indicating herself with a thumb to her chest. Then she pointed to me. “Yenny!”
I shrugged. Sure. I could be Yenny.
We walked down the mountain, and she showed me a hidden patch of wild strawberries on the way. We popped a few in our mouths.
Pavice held up a single berry. “Jagoda!” she yelled.
“Jagoda,” I repeated.
“Da!” she replied. “Dobro, Yenny!”
We moved on to a cherry tree in the schoolyard that was stripped bare up to the height of children, but there were plenty of cherries within our reach, so we ate those, too.
“Trešnja!” Pavice held up a cherry.
“You bet!” I popped it in my mouth and shot out the pit with a great “Pitooey!”
Pavice smacked my back. I tried not to fly forward with the impact of the blow.
We walked north across the field toward her house, which was just two over from Robert’s. Manda and Viktor’s place separated us. I stopped to point out the yellow field flowers that I’d seen Manda picking.
“This is ćaj, right?” I asked.
“Da!” Pavice said. Each successful communication between us was met with her triumphant volume and a great beating of my back. I liked it. I’d had enough of my own mincing worries. Goddammit, we were happy to meet each other! And now there was tea to discuss! Pavice bulldozed right into the tall grass, pulling off yellow gospina trava flowers, tossing them at me and calling “Čaj!” as they plunked against my shirt.
“Thanks, Pavice,” I said. I knew she didn’t speak English, but I plowed ahead anyway. “You know, I always have a hell of a period. I wonder if any teas might help.”
I traced a finger around my belly, and made a pained face.
“Da! Da! Čaj!” She rubbed her hand all around her own generous belly.
We passed a giant mound of manure. “For your garden?” I asked.
“Aha! Dobro!” Pavice yelled, plugging her nose. “Drek!”
“Oh, my grandma Kate used to say drek,” I said, tearing up a little. “It makes me feel like she’s looking down on us right now!”
Pavice kicked manure with her boots. “Yah, drek,” she said, and walked on.
&n
bsp; Penned up behind her house were several sheep that I had seen her husband, Josip, and their son—also named Josip—herding through the meadow twice a day. Near them, chickens pecked busily on a slab. At the center of the backyard, a typical stone oven dominated. I ran my hand along the cool rock and flicked my finger over the charred remains of wood. Pavice pointed to the oven, then to me. I wasn’t sure what she was saying, but I’m fairly certain it was something like: “If you want to use it, come on over anytime. Just weed my onions first.”
“Drago mi je,” I said to Pavice. Good to meet you. It was getting late, and I could hear that the kids had come home a few doors down.
“Dobro hrvatski!” Pavice cried, slugging my arm. “Dobro, Yenny!”
I was so jubilant that I had made my very first friend that I nearly skipped home.
Weeding with Pavice had been so successful that I thought I’d reach out again to the neighbor women. I set to work the second weekend of July making the one dish that I could successfully and consistently execute: peach cobbler. We drove to Delnice, where we’d seen a fruit and vegetable market. The friendly Albanian behind the counter, named Aziz, nodded when I busted out yet another Croatian word—breskva for peach—and pointed at a giant basket of them. He handpicked the juiciest ones and threw them into my bag with a wink, and when we got home I baked four of those suckers in pans borrowed from Goranka’s kitchen downstairs.
Jim made a pot of chili to share, but it didn’t really work out. He walked around Novi Varoš with a giant stainless-steel vat from Stari Baća. Though it was his gold standard recipe, he found no takers. He’d see a neighbor, hold up the pot, and say: “American chili!” But people just reeled away, horrified, clutching their stomachs and fanning their mouths, crying “Vruće!” Mrkopalj did not like spicy food.
I delivered the cobblers to all the women who lived near our house, starting with Pavice, sliding them shyly onto porch steps and then scuttling away. The next morning, we climbed in the Peugeot and celebrated our efforts with our first trip to the sea. We’d been anxious to see the Adriatic, which was about an hour away. Robert told us that Mrkopalj families traditionally visited the resort village of Crikvenica, on the north end of Croatia’s coast.
The kids were pumped. Beach time was one of the major perks we’d promised on our trip. As we drove the harrowing coastline, both kids retched into plastic bags from carsickness, yet they actually seemed chipper.
“Maybe I can find a pet dolphin,” Zadie suggested, her voice muffled in the bag.
“I’m going to look for a shipwreck,” Sam said, already wearing his goggles.
We were stunned into silence by our first real view of the Adriatic, a bright blue vista of perfect clarity. Great white boulders edged the water, upon which children sunned themselves like tiny merpeople. Miniature gnarled pine trees grew from the tidy pebble beach, giving the seashore an appearance of a massive bonsai garden. I felt a late-in-the-game surge of gladness that I’d dragged my brood to Croatia.
We spread out under a pine tree as the sun warmed our skin against the cool sea breeze. Like other families around us, we’d brought a picnic. Jim unpacked mortadella, a hunk of cheese, and white fluffy bread. We ate and looked around.
There sure was a lot of skin showing on the Crikvenica beach. We’re talking boobies everywhere. Jim and Sam finished their sandwiches and sprinted into the water, barely noticing. From the sound of their screams, that water was quite cold.
Without hesitation, Zadie went native and stripped to the waist. “Let’s get in, Mommy,” she said. “Like two fancy girls!”
I was less brazen. I’d bought a two-piece swimsuit before coming to Croatia because everyone said I’d look like a moron in a one-piece, unless one-piece meant bottoms only. Jim helped me pick something modest (from a sporting-goods store, no less). Its skirt covered my butt, which had roughly the same layout as those of Sister Paula and Grandma Kate and Auntie. That is to say, it’s big and it wanders.
I felt shy compared to my daughter, who left me fretting on the shore as she ran along the shallows with her little belly sticking out like a compass. My own belly more resembled a bagel. I looked great in a wool scarf and sweater. I rocked a suede jacket and boots. But my soft Iowa body hated being unsheathed in public.
Jim, who’d been ducking through the depths with Sam like a walrus, noticed my discomfort and came over, collapsing on his mat as I sat, sweating and fully clothed in the Adriatic sun.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, water dripping down his face.
“I’m fat,” I said.
“You are not fat,” he said. “You’re beautiful. Knock it off.”
I pulled my knees up and put my head down, embarrassed to be experiencing an anxiety attack on one of the most peaceful beaches in the world.
“C’mon, Jenny, look around you,” Jim said. “Who here has a perfect body?”
I looked up. Except for the very young people, whose sole job it was to spend entire days in pursuit of looking good, everyone just flopped it all out there. Big white German couples, bobbing like jolly whales on the water. Sleek Italian dudes, wearing swim panties so small I could actually see chicken skin. Naked baby boys, uncut penises floating like little yams on the water. Moms and Dads doing the back float, blissful.
I shaded my eyes and squinted up at Jim. “Just give me a minute.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “I have to stay with the kids anyway. But come in. Soon.”
He sauntered off on long legs, barely-there love handles the only evidence of his weakness for beer and late-night cheese. I loathed the metabolism as I loved the man.
The beach had gotten crowded. I just sat there, roasting, waiting to be thinner. Then I honed in on a tight circle of old ladies. They were bronze and huge and full of rolls that shifted when they resettled themselves on foam beach mats. They passed around a bottle of brandy and gossiped about someone named Hervé and threw their heads back and laughed and pinned and repinned their hair. They were so lovely. Unashamed like Zadie, but slow-moving, with an air of decadence about them. They’d stolen time from husbands and grandchildren and Sunday dinners to be here. There was no time for shame.
My half-naked daughter ran up and knelt beside me, her lips blue with cold, shivering with pleasure as she settled against the warm rocks. With baby hands, she picked up large flat stones and piled them on her thighs.
After a while, she looked up. “Mommy, will you swim with me?”
To Zadie, and to the ladies behind me, the matter of the human body was a very simple thing: Disrobe and it feels good. So easy. I figured, screw it. Who was I kidding anyway? I was a middle-aged woman who’d nursed two children and ate cheese at night with her husband and refused to spend every free moment in the gym. To hell with shyness. It was hot outside. And my daughter was watching my every move.
I pulled off my shirt and shorts. “Let’s go, buddy,” I said.
“You got a big tummy,” said Zadie, pushing her finger into my belly.
“You lived in that tummy for nine months. So did your brother. Respect.”
We returned to 12 Novi Varoš that night, our sunburned skin encrusted with a fine coating of sea salt. I flopped down in the rocking chair by the dorm window as the kids headed to the shower in the bathroom that hadn’t stopped smelling of sewage.
I closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of my children haggling over who got to go first, when my thoughts were interrupted by a bellowing voice.
“Yenny!”
I hopped up from the rocking chair and looked out the window. Pavice was standing below with Josip next to her, holding what appeared to be a tin pot. Josip was short and stocky with a face like Robin Williams.
“Hi!” I called.
“Yenny!” she bellowed again, beckoning me outside. I skipped down the steps past the second-floor rooms that had recently gone quiet with inaction.
“Mljeko,” Pavice announced proudly, nudging Josip roughly with her elbow. He stepped forward to dutifully ha
nd over a pot of foamy milk.
“What’s this?” I asked him.
Pavice indicated that I follow them. Josip led me through a little barn door on the first floor of their house, across from the summer kitchen where Pavice, Josip, and the other Josip spent most of their time. It was dark inside, but I could make out three looming shapes. They were cattle. In the house.
I turned to Pavice. “You have cattle in there,” I pointed. “Just like old times.”
“Neh ‘cattle.’ Krava!” She held up the milk again. “Mljeko!”
She pointed to the cows, one at a time. “Medo! Kuna! Šarića!”
Teddy Bear, Dollar, and Little Shari.
I took the tin pot from Josip. Pavice slapped me hard on the back. I stumbled forward with the milk, but managed not to spill any. She disappeared into her summer kitchen and came out with a bowl full of powdered-sugar-coated kolaći: dough balls fried in oil. “Sam, Zadie,” she said to me, handing me the bowl.
Pavice rocked back on her heels, arms crossed proudly over her generous chest. Her chocolate-brown eyes twinkled.
“Thank you!” I said. “This is awesome. I love it. Hvala. Hvala so much!”
“Mljeko, mmmm!” she laughed, rubbing her belly in a circle.
“Mmmm!” I repeated.
As I crossed the yard to return to the house, Jasminka hollered at me from her window and held up one finger to say: “Wait!”
She hustled down her steps, crossed the street, and added a crystal bowl of mountain blueberries and a decorative bottle of blueberry wine to my armload of gifts.
She smiled and paused, closing her eyes for a second. Then, speaking English to me for the first time, she said, “Thank you for cake. I like for receipt to make for my son Stjepan. He like cake.”
She wanted my cobbler recipe! Then Jasminka pointed at the dainty bottle of wine and winked. “Just for women. Only a little.”
“Hvala,” I said, smiling. I tried out a new phrase. “Hvala ljepa.” Thank you very much. Then I bowed. I don’t know why.
Jasminka’s mother-in-law, Ana Fak, stepped out from her apartment onto her front stoop. Now she, too, crossed the street and added a canister to my growing mountain of plenty.
Running Away to Home Page 11