Running Away to Home

by Jennifer Wilson

  “Is tea,” Jasminka explained slowly. “You say to Pavice you have woman pain. Is tea for pain.”

  My neighbor ladies may not have liked Jim’s chili. They did, however, like dessert. My dessert. I rambled toward the house, my arms laden with milk and wine and blueberries and tea and fried dough balls. Then, as if on cue, a preteen girl who seemed to have stepped right out of a Judy Blume novel approached me.

  She introduced herself in perfect English as Lucia, the granddaughter of our neighbors to the north, Željko and Anđelka Crnić. Anđelka was pronounced like “Angela,” but with a “k” thrown in, just for fun.

  A fascinating combination of awkward and confident, Lucia wore blue steel-framed glasses tucked over her long brown hair. Her tippy-toes walk with puffed-out chest may or may not have been the result of the brand-new Wheelies with sparkly shoelaces she wore.

  “My grandmother Anđelka brought me here from my home in Fužine so that I could translate for her,” said the girl.

  She seemed so eager to impart the wisdom gained from her twelve years, fired in smarty-pants bursts that left me short of breath: She was Lucia and she had been studying English since she was four, and she could not help but notice that my husband studied his lexicon, but that I did not study my lexicon, and was I not the Croatian one? And why also had I allowed my children to ride their bikes on the sidewalk unescorted? This was not wise, because many people drive crazy in this town.

  I stood there for a moment. “Hello,” I said.

  Lucia toed the gravel of the driveway with her Wheelie. “My grandmother Anđelka would like you to come for coffee tomorrow morning.”

  I looked up at the Crnić house. Anđelka stood in the window, waving. She had short brown hair and thick round glasses, and was taller than most of the women I’d seen. If I hadn’t been carrying so much stuff, I would have waved too.

  Lucia produced a small Mason jar from behind her back. “This is jam made from raspberries. We call them ribizla in Croatian language,” she said. “You should remember this word. You should remember every Croatian word. This jam is from my grandmother. She makes it from the bushes in her backyard.”

  I could not believe any of this. They liked me! They really liked me!

  I showed up Monday morning in Anđelka’s kitchen. The old man Viktor sat at the wooden table set for coffee. The two of them were shooting a morning dose of rakija, potent country liquor that was clear like water.

  “My grandmother says that you must drink rakija in the morning,” Lucia said.

  Anđelka nodded, hands clasped in front of her, her eyes closed with a beatific smile. “Rakija is an aid for digestion. My grandmother has heard from the neighbors that you also have lady pain. Rakija is also for that.”

  Anđelka slid a shot glass toward me. I checked my watch. It was ten in the morning. Was it bad to drink before noon? Did it matter?

  I’d been telling the kids since we arrived in Europe that the old rules didn’t apply anymore. I had to take my own advice.

  I picked up the shot glass. “Živjeli!” I said.

  Wizened nearly to the point of miniature, Viktor raised his glass and smiled slightly, his teeth brown with age. He tipped his head at me.

  “Živjeli,” Viktor said.

  I drained the whole thing.

  “Bravo, Jennifer!” Anđelka cheered, rubbing a brisk circle on my back.

  With an immediate burn in my belly, I knew I had just been inducted into the village of my ancestors.

  chapter ten

  I blinked awake the next morning, listening as tractors ripped through the streets while the sun colored the sky outside the window. It was the season of making hay, and great clumps of it dropped on the roadside. Chained dogs barked at feral cats, which roamed free, all their parts intact, and multiplied heroically throughout the summer.

  Somewhere a chain saw started up. One of the giant produce trucks rumbled through the streets and honked without mercy so that people would come out of their houses and shop for veggies, just to shut up all the honking. There was so much honking in Mrkopalj! Neighborly honks to say hello were short and jaunty. Little Fiat honks. The obnoxious honks—hoooooooooooooooonk, honk, honk, hooooooooooooonk, honk, honk—were vendors selling something. If you didn’t shop, they’d only honk more. It was a Machiavellian marketing strategy, and I wished that they’d invest in a little bullhorn, like the fishmonger used. He drove from the sea in his white fish truck chanting “Riba, riba, riba” like a Little League third baseman taunting a batter. It was a cool sound, as soon as we knew riba meant fish, and not, say, “take shelter.”

  The dorm stirred collectively. Sam gravitated to his Legos. Zadie helped Jim make breakfast. I jogged to Tuk. I came home, showered in the smelly bathroom, and downed some sausage and Nescafé before heading out the door to walk to the priest’s residence to see if I might get a look at that Book of Names. We’d spent the first few weeks in Croatia acclimating, and even Mom was getting her bearings. It was time to get down to the work of finding the old family.

  The people of Mrkopalj greeted one another on their morning errands, and now they greeted me, too. Everyone including the children said “Dobro jutro,” which meant “good morning.” In the afternoon it was “Dobar dan,” and then “Dobro većer” in the evening. The general casual greeting was “Bog,” also a Croatian word for God. It felt surprisingly natural to wish everyone a good morning as I did my best to imitate the cadence and the accent of the Mrkopalj dialect. The r rolled just the slightest bit, and the final consonant was never dropped. Though language itself wasn’t my strong point, I could mimic well, and people seemed generally unruffled at my greetings, so I must have been doing okay.

  The villagers were similar to me in a physical way—muscled, but soft around the edges, with funky noses. There was little artifice. Moles stayed intact. The missing digits from war or DUI Friday remained missing. Few women wore makeup. The summer girls Robert hired to cook and bartend at Stari Baća dressed like rock stars, with big sunglasses and enormous studded purses, but for the most part, clothing was simple. Button-down shirts, work pants.

  As I made my way down Stari Kraj, I called Dobro jutro! to random old women tossing buckets of water on their front stoops. Cuculić leaned in the doorway of the municipal building, apparently on break from drinking at Stari Baća, and we nodded suspiciously at each other. A dirty white Jeep bucked up the road: Helena’s husband, Paul, hand raised in greeting, a big smile moving his bald scalp forward an inch.

  I was feeling pretty confident on my walk, jaunty even, as I crunched over the empty gravel parking lot at the priest’s residence. Alas, no one answered my knock on the channel glass door. This genealogical sleuthing business would be no quick and easy errand for me. From here on out, it was all just part of whatever big, messy journey my ancestors had in mind when they called me here.

  I humped it back home, to where the Motherland was providing much easier access to my family. Everyone was across the meadow from Robert’s place, playing at the škola. I could see Jim sitting on a stone bench, reading a book. Sam, Zadie, and Karla were up in the cherry trees, eating fistfuls of fruit. I headed over.

  “Hi, Mom!” Sam called, fingers and mouth stained.

  Zadie spit a cherry pit in a graceful arc. “Did you see that, Mommy?”

  “I did!” I clapped, settling in next to Jim. “How’s the morning going?”

  “Good,” Jim said. “They browbeat Karla into coming over here to play.”

  The kids loved the škola. God knows why. It was relatively barren, save for the decrepit Communist-era playground, of which they particularly liked the genital-squashing teeter-totter. Being able to climb trees was a revelation, too. They’d hogged most of the cherries, like good little Americans, and were moving on lately to apples, which weren’t even close to ripe, but assisted their digestive tracts with all the mortadella and cheese we fed them. It probably seemed like a major adventure, being perched in the crotch of a tree, foraging
for food. For my kids’ generation, tree climbing was a lost art.

  The škola also offered Sam and Zadie independence, as it was within view of Robert’s house. Sam had always been comfortable with solitude, and Mrkopalj just encouraged it in a prettier setting. Zadie had never been a solo flyer. She wanted to do her own thing, but she wanted someone beside her when she did it. In Mrkopalj, with the Starčević girls at her beck and call, she reveled in exactly this kind of freedom. The stubborn streak that made her seem so obstinate amid the structure of home was entirely relevant in Mrkopalj, where it was safe to wander and we had no particular schedule to follow. In fact, Zadie was physically growing in Mrkopalj, shedding her toddler wardrobe piece by piece. In Mrkopalj, my daughter, who spent much of her second year in time-outs, learned to laugh deep from her belly for the first time. I’d heard her laugh before, but it always sounded odd and tinny to me, as if she’d heard other people laughing and thought she’d better try it every now and then just to keep up appearances. But in Mrkopalj, she howled.

  It happened for the first time the night Jim was trying to pass out chili to the neighbors. I was hanging out on the yard swing, watching Zadie and Roberta kick around a soccer ball. Bobi had been penned up all day, and Karla released him into the yard, where he made a beeline for Zadie, who, as I mentioned before, was often covered with ice-cream residue. Bobi nearly swallowed her whole with licking. Zadie started to laugh, stepping backward carefully until she got to the picnic table and pulled herself up while that great white dog just lick, lick, licked.

  Once atop the table, Zadie flopped her hands on her little hips. “Joj meni!” she said, exasperated, using that ancient Mrkopaljci exclamation “Oh my!” for the first time. When Roberta had joined Zadie on the table to examine her wet face, the two of them got to laughing. Soon, they were clutching their bellies and rolling. Roberta laughed so hard her wire-rimmed glasses went askew. Every time the girls looked at each other, they’d break out in giggles again. Soon, I found myself laughing too at such a fantastic sound.

  The more time we spent with the kids like this, the less they craved our attention. Back home, a sort of desperation lurked beneath all their behavior. In Mrkopalj, they always had the full concentration of at least one of us (and often both of us). They basked in it, relaxing into the place and the circumstances with tree-climbing grace. Even Sam. He still had bouts of teary homesickness, but mostly they came at night when he was tired.

  We were adjusting to life in the slow lane. Jim and I wondered how we’d ever gotten by without hour-long coffee breaks. Seriously, how?

  Well, I was pretty much adjusting. You can take the mom out of Iowa and all. Case in point: After my initial failure in getting to the Book of Names, I began stalking the priest.

  Visiting his residence across from the church began as a simple after-dinner stroll. I’d finish washing dishes and shoo the kids out the door to play. When Jim was settled on the lawn with Robert for a man-to-man beer, I’d walk to Mile’s house. (Mile was the man who’d helped with the priest in the fall.) I’d knock on his door, and Mile would look out, his sun-sensitive glasses dark though he’d been inside. He’d slip sandals over his dark socks and escort me across the street to see if this might be the night I’d be allowed another peek into the book that held the names of my great-grandparents.

  Mile and I would rap on the channel-glass door, and the same tiny nun in a black habit would open it a crack and ask what our mission was. Mile would explain that the američki wanted to see the Book of Names. And every night, the nun would deal out an excuse for the priest with a quiet urgency. The priest was sleeping. He was not feeling well. The priest flat-out wouldn’t see us. Though she was not five feet tall, I knew I couldn’t get past her. She was one of those people who looks delicate and then they lift a tractor to save the trapped farmer.

  The priest became the Owl in my mind, both in looks and elusive behavior. I really had no idea why he was avoiding me. Maybe I’d irrevocably offended him when I’d tried to touch the book so long ago. Unfortunately for the Owl, I was a falcon. I would find my great-grandparents in that big ole book if it was my last act on Earth. Besides, I didn’t have anything better to do.

  One night, the nun answered the door, wringing her hands. “The priest fell down in church. He is sick. Something like this,” Mile explained. “He is having a hard time and cannot talk tonight, like this.”

  I walked to Stari Baća and quizzed the barflies through one of the English-speaking summer girls. Some said the priest was probably drinking. Another said he had Alzheimer’s. One guy spoke up and said it was both diabetes and drinking.

  And then, some useful information: The priest would retire in August. Might I consider laying off the poor man and try again when the new guy got here?

  But who knew if the next priest would even let me see the Book of Names. For all I knew, the mere fact that I was a woman might be barring me from my research in this old-fashioned place. I just couldn’t take the chance.

  The next night, I walked down to Mile’s a little early. I figured maybe we had the timing wrong. I knocked for him at 7:45. Mile came to the door, flustered and scolding. “I have told you eight o’clock!” he said. “I am watching now the news of Michael Jackson. Something like this!”

  I tried a different tack. “Well, maybe if we try earlier, we’ll catch the priest off guard and he’ll let us in this time. Then I won’t have to bother you anymore.”

  This seemed like a very good idea to Mile. We walked across the street. To our surprise, the nun beckoned us in.

  The Owl sat at a cluttered dining room table, surrounded by religious pamphlets, stacks of loose papers, day planners, and, inexplicably, a PlayStation 2 SingStar Dance Party guide. We sat down. The Owl perched on his chair at the head of the table. I was suddenly struck with a memory: Sister Paula had adored owls. She collected owl figurines and placed them all over her room in the convent. I’d made her an owl latch-hook rug when I was Sam’s age. She thought the owl was a sign of good luck.

  “How find house number?” the priest asked, face stoic.

  “We will have to look through all the Radošević names,” I said. “I still don’t know the house number.”

  “And I don’t know,” he grumbled.

  The Owl shook his head, disgusted with me. Had he not told me in the fall that I needed house numbers to find family names? Was I daft? I said nothing but stared back.

  “Today is impossible to find,” the priest said, looking away from me.

  My lack of language skills sharpened the one journalistic trick I knew: I waited him out in silence.

  After a full minute of quiet, the priest spoke. “For me, it is best that you come tomorrow in the morning.”

  “I will still not have the house numbers.” I raised an eyebrow and added: “I am happy to look through the book myself.”

  When Mile translated, the priest shook his head. He’d see me around nine.

  Walking out, Mile told me he had an appointment to get his car looked at in the morning. He couldn’t join me. The Owl and the Falcon would spar alone.

  In the morning, I was allowed entry immediately.

  I silently handed over Jelena and Valentin’s naturalization certificates.

  “Helena, born Iskra. Married to Radošević,” the priest said listlessly.

  “Married to Valentin Radošević,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Oh! Iskra is so many families.” He sighed. He stared at the Book of Names lying closed on the table in front of him.

  Fortunately for international relations, the doorbell rang. The tiny nun escorted a harried young woman into the room. She talked with the Owl for a few minutes and made some sort of an appointment, I think for a baptism, which the priest recorded in a planner.

  The lady then dug into her pocketbook and pulled out a one hundred-kuna bill.

  He took it and thanked her. Then he looked purposefully at me.

  Joj meni! No wonder I’d been striking out. I
hadn’t remembered the greatest tenet of the Catholic Church: Pay to play!

  I patted my purse on my lap and returned the nod. Understood! He smiled and opened the book at last.

  “Iskra, Iskra…,” he said, drawing his finger down the columns of all the Iskras who had ever lived in Mrkopalj. Juraj. Matej. Franciska. Ferdinan. Sylvestra. Dragica. Ivana. Školastika. Marija. Karmela. Zlata. Petra. He chanted names of Iskra women, marching through decades of Mrkopalj life, through tens of pages, with a few false starts—Jelena Iskras born much earlier or much later—for about thirty minutes.

  Then he hit the jackpot.

  “Iskra. Jelena. Born May 15, 1889.”

  “Yes, yes, yes! That’s the right year!” I jumped up from my chair and peeked into the book.

  I think I heard a chuckle from deep within his possibly diabetic, possibly Alzheimered, possibly alcoholic chest.

  “Parents are Josip and Marija,” he said.

  I was very happy to see those names. I was allowed to run a finger over them.

  The priest read on.

  Siblings: Anton, Franjo, Katarina, Johana, Paulina, Anjela, Franciska, Ana.

  Her family lived in House No. 40.

  I read little scrawled notes in the margins next to the names of Jelena’s siblings. “Udata Mrkopalj” for Johana. She’d been married in Mrkopalj.

  Franjo, Katerina, Franciska, and Ana: all smrti, or died, as children.

  There were no notes about Jelena after her birth date. It seemed that the Owl could speak English when he wanted to, because he then told me that if it didn’t happen in Mrkopalj, it wasn’t in the book. I could conclude that Jelena had married my great-grandfather Valentin after she’d arrived in America, because there was no date of marriage entered into the Book of Names.

  Next the priest searched for Valentin, chanting the Radošević names one after the other. “Marija, Ivan, Marija, Ivan, Marija, Josip, Marija, Marija.”

  I laughed. “Everybody’s Marija.”

  The priest remained stone-faced. “Yeah.”

  In the silence of the room, a fly beat itself against a closed window. The room was hot, and I felt hotter still just looking at the Owl before me, laboring in shirt, tie, and sweater.