Novic Sara - Girl at War

“You’re just tired,” he said. He put his arm around my shoulder, tentatively at first, then letting his full weight come down on me.

“I want to go home,” I said, all too aware I had no idea where that might be.

In the morning I felt better. I’d spent the night in a jet-lag coma, dreamless, on Luka’s living room couch, its worn upholstery retaining just enough texture to leave a checked pattern on my cheek. The couch was the same one they’d always had, recognizable in an innocuous way — just an old couch in the home of an old friend.

Still, when I saw Luka standing in the kitchen I felt unsettled. He offered me a plate as he took one down from the cabinet, but we were clumsy with one another; he pulled away too quickly and I felt the china slipping between our hands. I set it safely on the counter and sorted through my archive of go-to conversation topics, searching first for something witty, then just anything to say.

I smeared Nutella over the remains of yesterday’s bread, and Luka mixed a pitcher of fluorescent yellow Cedevita. As a public health initiative we’d been organized into lines in the school yard and handed little cups of the stuff, chalky powder injected with vitamins and stirred into water, to make sure we got something of nutritional value in the weeks when food was hard to come by. They hadn’t expected an entire generation to become addicted to the concoction — lemonade on steroids — but we had, eventually making its producers the most successful pharmaceutical company in the country.

I put the glass to my lips and felt the juice fizz in my mouth.

“ This is what my life has been missing,” I said.

“They don’t have Cedevita in America?” Luka asked. “I thought they had everything there.”

“They don’t need it in America. It’s war food. Speaking of.” I remembered the gifts I’d brought for Luka and his family, mostly food I’d found exciting when I first arrived in America. “I forgot. I brought you some stuff from over there,” I said. “It’s probably stupid.”

“You brought me a present?” Luka’s voice was almost syrupy, and for a moment I thought he might be mocking me. “Can I have it?”

In the living room I unzipped my bag and pulled out the plastic sacks that accounted for a third of the space in my suitcase. Inside was an “I NY” T-shirt, M&M’s, Reese’s peanut butter cups and a jar of Jif, and three boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. Now I felt silly offering him a bag of gifts for a little boy.

“I kind of underestimated the state of things here. I’m sure you have all this stuff by now—”

“Cool! What is this?” Luka said. He pulled out the Jif and tried to smell it through the lid.

“You really haven’t had it before? But you’ve got a mobile phone. I just got a mobile phone in America.”

“We only have them because the government didn’t feel like repairing the bombed-out landlines. Though you can imagine how obsessed everyone is.” Luka was struggling to talk through a mouthful of peanut butter. “So superficial. Everyone in this fucking country gets their shit paycheck, wastes it all on clothes from Western Europe, then complains about how they don’t have any money. Idiots.”

“That’s what happens when you ban Levi’s, I guess,” I said. During the height of communism jeans had been a symbol of rebellion, Americanness. For some reason the aura hadn’t worn off.

“Too bad I didn’t know you were coming. I would’ve made you bring me a pair.”

“Ana.” Ajla’s voice trailed in from an upstairs room. “Come here.”

“I thought everyone was stupid for caring about that stuff,” I said.

“This is really good,” Luka said, scooping out another spoonful of peanut butter. I downed the rest of my Cedevita and went upstairs.

I found Ajla in her bedroom among an array of unmatched socks. “Do you have any washing?” she said. “It might rain tomorrow and I want to get everything out on the line. Come, sit.”

I sat cross-legged opposite her and plucked a matching set of socks from the pile.

“Sorry if the cousins were a bit much for you yesterday. I didn’t think of it.”

But I knew holding a big meal in my honor was the utmost compliment she could give. “It was great,” I told her. “The food and everything.”

“So how is it,” she said. “In America? The family?”

In truth, things were strained between us. I’d only spoken to Laura once more after I’d snapped at her. She’d called a few times, but I hadn’t answered. She’d sent my passport. Finally I’d forced myself to call her back the day before I left. I’d given her my flight details and she’d told me resignedly to be careful. But I did not want to tell this to Luka’s mother. “They took good care of me,” I said.

“Are they happy for you? That you’re coming back home?”

“They worry a little. But they understand,” I said, and hoped it was true.

“They sound like good parents.” She pulled me into an awkward embrace. She smelled of rosemary and bleach and something else I remembered but could not name.

“Ana!” Luka was yelling from what sounded like the opposite end of the house. “Come on! I’m going to be late.”

But I couldn’t put it off anymore. Halfway down the stairs I reversed and stuck my head back through his mother’s doorway. “Do you know if Petar and Marina are—” I paused. “Okay?”

Ajla’s smile waned; she looked ashamed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t tried to contact them in a long time.”

—

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Luka looked wary as we walked to the Trg, like the sight of the city might set me off crying. We spoke Cringlish, a system we’d devised without discussion — Croatian sentence structure injected with English stand-ins for the vocabulary I was lacking, then conjugated with Croatian verb endings.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just having culture shock.”

“You can’t get culture shock from your own culture.”

“You can.”

In the Trg the morning sun bounced from tram to tram in spectral refractions. I felt myself beginning to move with the rhythm of the city again. The buildings were still tinted yellow, a remnant of the Hapsburgs; billboards hawking Coca-Cola and Ožujsko beer were propped up on rooftops with the familiar red and white lettering. Teenagers in cutoffs and Converse high-tops formed sweaty clusters beneath the wrought-iron lampposts. And Jelačić was at the center of the square, sword drawn, right where I’d left him.

“Wait. Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Zid Boli.” The Wall of Pain had been constructed over the course of the war, each brick representing a person killed, until the memorial of brick and flowers and candles spanned the whole square. I’d made my parents bricks there, when I’d gotten back to Zagreb, and it was the closest thing they had to a gravesite.

“They moved it.”

“Moved it? Where?”

“Up to the cemetery. A few years ago. The mayor decided it was too depressing to have it in the Trg. Bad for tourism.”

“It’s supposed to be depressing. Genocide is depressing!”

“There was a big fight about it,” Luka said. “Shit, that was our train.” We arrived at the tram stop just as a full car pulled away and were alone on the platform.

“I’ve got to drop off some forms at my college,” Luka said, fanning the papers in my face. “We can go up to the cemetery tomorrow if you want.”

But I could not visit my parents there, not really, and I felt a creeping sadness at the thought. I pushed it from my mind.