Girl at War (18 page)

At Petar and Marina’s grief filled the flat, as present as a fourth person in the room. Every night for a week Petar spoke to me softly, asking what had happened, but it still felt strange to talk, and finally he got so frustrated that he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. It wasn’t painful, but it was hard enough to scare me, and afterward he backed away apologizing and cradling his bad arm.

“I’m sorry. I just need to know. I can’t not know.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Petar and Marina were mourning the loss of their best friends, that they felt the same pain I did, and the realization gave me a little courage. I told him about the MediMission office and the roadblock, and how I’d stayed in the valley village. I said nothing of the
Safe House, but Petar had his answer and didn’t press me to account for the missing time.

I returned to school and spoke to no one except Luka. He was always serious with me; with only the occasional slip he succeeded in hiding any evidence of joy in the world that had continued on without me. Still, Petar had told my teachers what had happened, and my classmates overheard things in the hallways. Everyone knew. I had my own uncontested turn on the generator bike.

It snowed. But the excitement that normally filled the city in a storm was dulled by air raid smoke and a new set of ration restrictions. Winter had always been my favorite time of year; I loved walking in the Trg drinking mulled wine, eating kielbasa, and talking to the tent vendors selling wood carvings of boats and crucifixes. I loved New Year’s Eve, when people threw Roman candles in the square and shouted songs while I sat on my father’s shoulders. But the holidays had passed unnoticed in the village, and if Zagreb had mustered a celebration that year, any evidence was cleared away by the time I returned. I recall nothing about those January days except the strain of an Epiphany hymn, eerie and minor, repeating on an organ from another time.

Petar and Marina took up fighting like a hobby. I’d never seen them this way before, so quick to accuse and attack one another. Petar had stopped going to Mass and Marina went
to Mass more. Petar spent hours smoking and on the phone in furtive exchanges, and Marina channeled all her nervous energy into cleaning, scouring specifically, with a focus on tile grout. She’d urge Petar to do something productive, and he’d point to the receiver and turn away, covering his phoneless ear to block her out.

Petar began interrogating me on the finer points of MediMission. I didn’t know much, except that Rahela was at a hospital in Philadelphia especially for children, and that the family taking care of her had been assigned through the program. My parents had never spoken to them, and I didn’t know their names.

“I don’t know anything else,” I said, weary of the conversations.

“Just keep thinking about it. Maybe you’ll remember something that helps.”

“Helps what?”

At night they were sad, which was much worse than the fighting. Marina’s speech was soft and indecipherable, but Petar’s raspy voice traveled easily through our shared wall.

“Bastards. I don’t know what to do.” Marina made a quiet reply, and the bedsprings squeaked. “Fucking hell,” he said, as one of them clicked off the lamp. “What do I even pray for?”

One Saturday, Marina won out and Petar agreed to go to church, “for funeral purposes only.” Besides honoring dead relatives and celebrating holidays, my family didn’t go to
church much, especially once Rahela got sick. I had learned the prayers and made my First Communion like nearly everyone I knew, but emotional attachment to the church had always felt just beyond me. Religion, I’d assumed, would make more sense when I grew up.

Marina, Petar, and I went to the Zagreb Katedrala and spent an hour at the back vigil candles, kneeling and clicking rosaries until I’d burned the tips of my thumbs with the cheap matches and bruised my knees on the cold tile floor.

Afterward, we walked to the Trg, where the beginnings of a makeshift memorial were laid out. The Wall was made of red bricks, each one bearing the name of a person killed or disappeared. Already it was hundreds of bricks long. I took a loose block from the pile, scrawled both my parents’ names across it, wanting to keep them together, and added it to the row in progress. Marina had another candle, the votive kind meant to stay lit even outside, and left it there flickering in the dusk.

Petar began acting even stranger. He came and left unannounced and when he was home couldn’t sit still, instead paced the kitchen and ran his good hand through his hair. His nervousness reminded me of the year my father bought my mother an expensive necklace for Christmas. He’d also paced the flat for a week, so excited that he eventually broke
down and gave it to her three days early. She’d loved it, and when they kissed his face had flushed with her happiness.

Petar’s face did not have this light, and I was increasingly unsettled as it became clear I was the subject of his anxiety. Finally, one night at dinner, while Petar was staring at me and clearing his throat, Marina banged her cup down and pushed her chair back from the table.

“Petar, for chrissakes just tell her already!”

“Tell me what?” I said.

“I don’t want to tell her if I don’t have all the information.”

“Tell me what!”

“We tracked down Rahela and her foster family,” Marina said. “They want to adopt her.”

“What?”

“MediMission didn’t want to tell me where she’d been placed—it’s against the rules—but I found her,” said Petar.

“She was supposed to come back when she was better. She’s my sister.”

“Well,” said Marina. “There may be other options.”

“What do you mean?”

“The foster family said they’d be willing to take you, too, provided we can make arrangements to get you there.”

“Take me?”

“Adopt you, Ana. You could go and live with them and Rahela. In America.”

I felt a rage brewing in my chest. I wanted to hit something and kicked at the bottom bar of my chair. Why were they trying to get rid of me? Dump me with some strangers on another continent?

“Why can’t we just stay here with you? Don’t you want us?”

Petar shook his head. “Do you really think that’s a good idea? To move Rahela, sick, from America back into a fucking war zone?”

“Petar!” said Marina.

I shook my head. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Marina motioned me over, and I went and sat on her lap. She stroked my hair and glared at Petar.

“I think it’s what’s best,” she said. “For Rahela, and for you.”

“I’m sorry for yelling,” Petar said, gentler now. “But I know you’re smart enough to understand. You understand, right?”

I nodded.

“It’ll take some work to get you out of here. But I think I can do it.”

Petar contacted MediMission, who offered a terse response that family reunification cases were not within the scope of their work, but that he could reapply on my behalf if I ever fell ill. Then he considered refugee status, but there wasn’t an
American embassy in Croatia yet. The consulate in Belgrade was running a looping voice mail that apologized for the wait time and said, due to the high volume of inquiries, they were working through a backlog of applications at this time.

“Never mind that,” said Petar. “I know someone.”

The next morning Petar and I rang the buzzer of a basement apartment beneath a butcher shop in a southern part of the city where I’d never been. We waited, listening as a series of chains and dead bolts clinked on the other side of the door. It opened a sliver, enough to reveal one pale eye, then closed to allow for more unlocking.

“Security,” the man said. “You know how it is.” Finally the door opened a passable amount and Petar and I slipped inside. The flat was dank and smelled moldy. It was hard to make out at first, but as my eyes adjusted it was clear the single-room efficiency was home to more than just an overweight bachelor; the entirety of the counter space was lined with equipment ranging from typewriters and printing presses to what was, by my best guess, a blowtorch.

“What happened to you?” the man said, gesturing to Petar’s arm.

“Shattered humerus. Shrapnel still in there.” I felt bad that I’d never asked, but it had always seemed like he didn’t want to talk about it, and that I could understand.

The man changed the subject. “And what can I do for you today?” He squatted down when he spoke to me. “You want a driver’s license?”

“Ha ha,” said Petar, and the two men executed a combination handshake-hug. The man kissed Petar three times, the Orthodox way, and I winced. “Ana,” Petar said, “this is Srdjan.” An indisputably Serbian name. My heartbeat quickened. “An old friend from high school. Srdjan knew your parents.”

Srdjan was holding out his hand. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear.”

“Go on then. Shake his hand.”

“I can help you,” Srdjan said. I put my hand in his. “I hear you need an American visa.”

I looked up at Petar, who nodded. I nodded, too.

“Well, luckily, I happen to produce absolutely foolproof visas,” Srdjan said, with a sweeping gesture at his workshop. “I even have the very same paper that the United States of America uses.” He rummaged through paper-filled cabinets. “How are you going to fly?”

“Probably through Germany,” Petar said. “I’m still working out the finer points.”

“Germany,” he said. “As long as you stay in the international terminal you’ll be fine.”

He flipped some levers on the printing equipment, and the machines hummed. “With this paper I can produce exact American replicas! I got it from an intern at the embassy—”

“She doesn’t need to know where you got it,” Petar said, predicting the course of the story.

“Tits”—Srdjan held his hands far out from his chest—“as big as honeydew melons, I shit you not.”

Petar chuckled uneasily, and Srdjan looked surprised to find worry in his friend’s face.

“What’s wrong with tits? She’s a girl. She’s going to have tits.”

“All right! Enough with the tits.”

“Fine,” Srdjan said. He looked down at me. “Didn’t know he was so sensitive.”

“What about a passport?”

“What do you mean? We’ll just staple it in her regular passport.”

“It got…lost,” Petar said.

“Well, you could apply for a new one.”

“Not enough time. Can’t you just make her one? Make her a German one!”

“Yeah, I’ll make a fake German passport and we’ll send a kid who doesn’t speak any German to
Germany
with it!” Srdjan raised the heel of his hand and smacked Petar in the forehead, then shot me a wink. “Look out—we’ve got a real genius on our hands!”

“All right, all right,” said Petar. “Make her one of ours then. Don’t you need to take her picture or something?”

“Indeed.” Srdjan adjusted a pair of photographer’s lights that looked like umbrellas, and I stood stoic against a white sheet while he snapped a picture.

“I’ll be back to pick it up Wednesday?” Petar handed him
an envelope, and Srdjan fingered the flap and peeked inside. “I’ll bring the rest then.”

“Very well,” Srdjan said, and took a dramatic bow before walking us to the door and releasing us out into the daylight. “Ana.”

I turned back.

“Your parents. They were good.”

“Thanks.” I tried to think of something better to say, but Srdjan had already shut the door, the dead bolts clicking behind us.

Voices of my neighbors echoed in the stairwell as we climbed the stairs to my flat; the walls there had always been thin. Just as I’d been unsettled at the idea that my friends had been going to school without me, I was shocked to find people were still living out normal existences here in my building, that their lives had not stalled as mine had. Petar turned the extra key in the lock, but instead of smashing against the wall, the door stuck to the frame, and he forced it open with his good shoulder.

“Can you stay out here?” I said. He looked hurt but hung back anyway.

Inside, the room was dim and the air was stale. Cuts of sunlight slid between the blinds, revealing swirling columns of dust. The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed, and I left it that way and moved through the kitchen. A sour smell
emanated from the refrigerator, and something small and shadowy ran alongside the baseboard and disappeared under the door of the pantry.

In the living room I ran my hand over the armrest of the couch where my father used to sit. Then I pulled my clothes from the bookshelf and shoved them into my pillowcase. From the bottom shelf I gathered a sampling of the pirated radio tapes my father and I had made. Over the piano there was a photo of the four of us, and another of me as a baby in Tiska. I took them from their adjacent places on the wall. My parents’ wedding picture was hung higher up, but I couldn’t reach it.

Petar called out and asked how I was doing and I jumped. Plunking my hand down on the bottom octave of the piano, I ran from the room, dragging the bulging pillowcase behind me. I thought about asking Petar to go back for the wedding picture, but as he turned in the doorway, the light revealed his reddened eyes, so I said nothing.

The night before I left, Luka appeared under my window on his bike. Petar had instructed me not to tell anyone when I was leaving or where I was going, but I had told Luka anyway, swearing him to secrecy.

“How did you—”

“I snuck out. Come down.”

“Come up.” I met him at the door, and we trod warily
through the kitchen and out to the fire escape. Marina and the family in the next building had strung a clothesline across the alley, and someone’s bed linens crackled in the wind.

“Will you be safe there?”

“I think so. Rahela is safe.”

“But you know in the movies. All those cowboys and gangsters.”

“I guess all places are sort of dangerous.”

“I guess.” He put his hand on mine, then pulled it away.

“Will you write me?” I said. He said he would, and we sat for a while contemplating the Wild West and New York City and Philadelphia, where I might be able to see Rocky. When Luka’s eyelids began to flutter, I punched him in the arm and told him he could stay the night, but he had to get home before he was discovered missing. The ladder on the fire escape was broken, so he climbed back into the flat and let himself out.