Girl at War (17 page)

There was no one guarding the door. Inside, the house was trashed. The posters had been torn from the wall; their taped corners clung obstinately to the cement. It looked like Gotovina’s Chair had been set on fire. I ran upstairs, where I found the captain warbling a distress signal into the CB. Besides the Bruces and one of the Turtles, the place was empty.

“Stallone?” I managed, my voice still clumsy. The captain looked startled but quickly regained composure.

“A lot of people are okay. They’re at home, healing up for a day or two.”

“Stallone?” I said again, taking note of the captain’s evasion.

“Stallone is missing,” he said. “His brother is out looking.” I stood there frozen, the strength I’d gained over the past months gone all at once, as if it had drained out my feet. “Don’t worry about that now. Tell me about Damir.”

I told him Damir’s leg was swollen and oozing something yellow. “He needs help,” I said. “He’s dreaming of his dead grandfather.”

“Indy. You must go home and take care of Drenka now. The doctor will be there soon.” I stood there, immobile, which the captain mistook for protest. “That’s an order,” he said, so I gathered myself and went.

In Damir’s room the curtains were drawn, and he stirred as I sat on the edge of his bed, jamming and releasing the lever that detached the forward grip of my gun.

“Almost as good as a boy,” Damir said, surfacing momentarily from the fog of fever and brandy. From him this was a compliment. But his leg was twice the size it should have been, and there was pus. I left the gun leaning against
the bookshelf and returned to my corner of the kitchen floor.

I thought of telling Drenka the whole story of where I’d come from and what had happened, but she was ripping bedding for bandages and worrying. Just as I was beginning to think I’d worked up the courage to open my mouth, a pallid face appeared above me in the kitchen window. I jumped to my feet and let out a yelp.

“Psst. Indy. Open up!” the face whispered through the glass. I looked again, the magnified eyes now familiar. I unbolted the door.

“How’s he doing?” the captain asked.

“He’s alive,” I said.

“Oh good, Josip, you’re here,” said Drenka from down the hall. It was the first time I’d heard anyone call the captain by another name. But her face dropped when she came round the corner. “Where’s Dr. Hožić?”

The captain lowered his eyes. “We, uh, can’t find him.”

“What do you mean? You were supposed to—you said you were bringing a doctor.”

“Last we heard he was over in Blato, but that was a few days ago now.”

“Well then, he should be here soon, right?”

“Drenka.” The captain sounded almost tender now. “We don’t have time.”

The captain pressed by us and began banging around the kitchen, neck-deep in the cabinets. When he reemerged he
was holding a paring knife and salad tongs. “We need to take it out.” Drenka collapsed into a nearby chair, and the captain turned to me. “Can you boil some water?” he said.

The scream that came out of Damir was not human—guttural and even more desperate than the cries in the forest. I stood in the doorway of his bedroom looking and trying not to look as Drenka held Damir’s arms down against the bed and the captain bent over Damir’s leg in the candlelight. I clapped my hands over my ears and ran back to the kitchen to boil more water.

The canisters were almost empty. Should I go to the pump, or wait and see if they needed me here? Soon, though, the captain came out into the kitchen. He gestured to the remaining water, and I poured it over his bloody hands in the sink. He wiped his palms on his jeans, and I stood by, staring, waiting for my next order. But the captain just rested his hand on my shoulder.

“It’s all right, Indy,” he said, though he was looking over my head. “You can stand down. You did good.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and went out into the night.

I fell asleep on the floor and woke up cold. Turning sideways, I slipped through the door of Damir’s room, where Drenka was sleeping in a chair pulled close to his bed. She
looked older now, skin sallow without the warm tones of her shawl up around her face. I grazed my fingers against her arm and she jerked awake.

“Zagreb,” I said, and she looked confused. “I’m from Zagreb.” The name of my city felt foreign.

Drenka stood haltingly and stumbled as she led me to the couch. “Okay,” she said, covering me with a blanket. “Okay.”

News had spread about Damir, and the next day the women of the village came through the house offering help. They brought broth, towels, jam jars of
rakija
, and war cakes—flat, hard discs made with a quarter of the normal amount of yeast and no sugar. I was sitting in my corner and tried to listen for news of other Safe House casualties, but since I’d spoken Drenka had reduced herself to whispers in my presence, and the other women followed. I assumed they’d be rehashing recent events, planning what to do when the JNA came back, but instead I felt them staring at me sidelong and exchanging crinkled dinar notes.

At sundown Drenka counted the money. She took the last two hard-boiled eggs left from the chickens and packed them along with a heel of bread in a plastic sack, tying the
ends of the bag tight. We were leaving. She brought me my old T-shirt, and I put it on, then pulled the sweatshirt Damir had given me back over top.

While Drenka was putting on her shoes, I slipped into Damir’s room. “Thank you,” I said into the darkness. Damir muttered something and moved like he was going to roll over, but they’d strapped his leg down to the bed, and he gave up without much of a fight. “Good night,” I said, and closed his door.

The sky was black and wintry, smudged with smoke from an earlier raid—had it been somewhere else it might even have been pretty. Drenka held my hand, and, gazes fixed downward to calculate each footfall, we crossed through the high grass to the house next door. There was a faded blue car in the driveway, the only car I remember seeing in the village. Drenka rapped a syncopated knock on the front door, and a lantern appeared in the upstairs window. A girl a little older than I pushed open the glass and threw down a set of keys, then quickly swung the shutters closed. Drenka put the car in neutral, and we rolled out of the driveway and into the street. Headlights off, we drove out of the village. The air raid siren let out a farewell whoop as we turned back onto the big road from which I’d come, and I pulled the hood of Damir’s sweatshirt up over my eyes, afraid to see my family’s car, the soldiers, or the ghosts of the forest.

The bus was already at the stop, idling, puffs of exhaust
stark against the icy air. Drenka handed me the bag and led me up the steps. Inside it smelled like rancid meat, and I suppressed a gag. The exterior had looked like a regular tour bus, the same kind that ran the summertime route from Zagreb to the coast, but now I noticed the camouflage rucksacks overflowing from the first three rows of seats, the driver in partial police uniform, the assault rifle prominently affixed to the dashboard.

“She’s going to Zagreb,” Drenka said, handing him the first stack of dinar. “Make sure she gets the right transfer.” She gave him the other stack and ran a few fingers over my cheek before she jumped back to the ground. I sat down next to a man in Croatian police uniform. The engine turned, the bus lurched forward, and Drenka stood and watched me leave, holding her shawl across her face against the swirling fumes.

As the village melted into the horizon behind me, I pressed my head to the window, feeling the vibrations of the motor that buzzed through the glass and up into my skull. I never learned the name of the place that had taken me in and tried to look in the dark for a road sign. I wondered whether, if I wanted, I could find it again, if I would recognize it by sight or some deeper feeling in my stomach.

“There are bodies in the back, you know.”

“What?” I looked up at the soldier next to me. He was young, a redhead, with pimples in a line along his jaw.

“Bodies. In the backseats. Dead ones.”

“Now why would you tell her that?” said the soldier across the aisle.

“It’s true!”

“But she’s just a little kid. A
girl
.”

“She’s in fatigues,” he said, gesturing to Damir’s clothes. “You’re a Safe Houser, aren’t you? I’ve heard about you guys.”

“She’s like eight!”

“Well?” said the first soldier.

“Forward grip, gas chamber, cleaning rod, bolt, frame, magazine. Function check,” I said.

The soldiers’ eyes widened, but the one next to me played it off. “See? Anyway”—he turned to me again—“those seats in the back are all dead guys. Hopefully we make it up north before the smell gets any worse.”

“Would you stop?” said the other soldier.

“She ain’t no little kid.” He put his head back, feigning sleep, and ignored both of us for the rest of the night.

I woke the next morning in Zagreb with no memory of changing buses. It was an unseasonably warm day, the winter sun close and exacting. I pulled my sweatshirt off and stuffed it in Drenka’s bag, stood squinting and bewildered in the bus terminal’s dirty parking lot. I took the chain-link exit for authorized personnel only to avoid the crowds in the
station and emerged through an alley out onto Držića Avenue.

Zagreb appeared relatively unharmed, and I was overwhelmed by its size and bustle, felt out of sync with the constant motion of the city. I noticed families walking together clad in khakis and patent leather and realized they were probably leaving church, that it was Sunday. The concept of time organized into seven-day units seemed almost foreign now, as if I’d never abided by the calendar. I wondered how long I’d been gone, whether I’d missed Christmas. I thought of school and was dismayed that everyone I knew had undoubtedly continued going there every day without me.

The city I had called my own, one I’d considered a war zone when I left it, now felt like neither. It was as if the whole of Zagreb had been repainted—Technicolor—the hues more vivid, the glass within each windowpane more burnished.

I stared at a family as they crossed the street, let my eyes linger too long, and their mother glared at my dirty T-shirt with the condescension reserved for gypsy beggars. For a second I wished I still had my rifle—just my holding it would have stopped her from looking at me like that—but immediately I felt ashamed of the thought. I needed to keep moving. I went to Luka’s house.

When I rang the doorbell, Luka answered, his face lighting
up with one of his rare unbridled smiles. He cleared his front steps in one jump, chattering out a flurry of where-have-you-beens and what-took-you-so-longs, and I felt my throat shrivel and close. I was afraid my voice would give me away or abandon me altogether, as it had before.

Luka continued prattling as he climbed back toward his door, but I found my feet reluctant to take orders. He spun around to hurry me along, and I saw his face change in what must have been the moment he finally looked at me. I watched the seriousness return to his eyes as he scanned the stains on my shirt.

“Ana,” he said. “Where are your parents?”

“At home,” I lied in my shaky voice, but he gave me a look so piercing that I burst into tears. I felt my knees soften, and he pulled my arm over his shoulders and led me up the stairs to his room, where he sat me on the edge of the bed.

“Take it off,” he said, nodding at my shirt.

“No.”

“Take it off!”

I yanked the shirt over my head, and, eyes averted, he held out his hand. I gave it to him, and he dropped it to the floor, then dug through his own bureau until he found a satisfactory replacement.

“Stay here,” he said, and I heard him calling for his mother.

Luka returned with his mother behind him, and he took my bloody shirt from the floor and handed it to her. I hadn’t
cried at all in the village, but, now that I’d started, stopping proved difficult. I cried myself a nosebleed, and Luka and his mother sat beside me as I sprawled facedown on the carpet, twisting my fingers tightly through its fibers until my hands tingled. Each time someone tried to touch me I shrugged them away, but eventually I grew tired, and when Luka’s mother reached out I didn’t recoil. The weight of her palm steadied the small of my back, and when I ran out of tears I fell asleep.

I woke on the floor and stared at the morning through the skylight in Luka’s ceiling. Luka’s mother was asleep in a rocking chair, and Luka was in his bed against the opposite wall. My eyes and throat were swollen and slow to react. I stood, and Luka’s mother stirred, then snapped awake when her forehead scraped against the wall. She looked at me, confused, not unfamiliarly, but unable to recall why I was standing blood-streaked and puffy in her house at six in the morning. She rubbed her temples. I followed her downstairs to the kitchen.

I sat on a stool at the counter and watched her flit between the refrigerator and the stove.

“You don’t need to tell me any details.” She spoke with caution. “But I’ll need to know some things, so I can help. We can just try yes or no questions first?”

I nodded.

“Okay. You were going to Sarajevo?”

I nodded again.

“Did you get there?”

Nod.

“Is Rahela okay?”

I nodded and hoped it was true.

“So, on the way back?” she ventured.

I didn’t move.

“Were there soldiers?”

Nod.

“Did they hurt you?”

“No,” I said.

“Did they hurt your parents?”

I stared.

“Are they okay?”

Stared harder.

“Are they coming back soon?”

“No.”

“Are they…coming back?”

I shook my head. Luka’s mother sat down and made a strange throat-clearing noise.

“What do I do?” she whispered. She was asking herself, so I didn’t try to answer. Moments later Luka’s father descended the stairs in a hurry, straightening the pins on his uniform. His bushy eyebrows arched when he saw me.

“Been a while, girlie,” he said, then, surveying my bloodied nose, he turned to his wife. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” she said. “It’s not.”

“Do you want me to call her parents?” He reached for the phone book, but Luka’s mother shot him such a pointed look that he stopped short. He sighed, then wet a napkin, and wiped the crusted blood from under my nose.

“Call Petar,” he said. He fumbled for his keys and headed off to train the newest troops.

Luka’s mother heated water on the stove, and I took it into the bathtub and dumped it over my head. It was warm enough, and I scrubbed myself pink until the water at my feet turned gray.

Luka stayed home from school, and we played cards on the kitchen floor. Luka’s mother was on the phone all day, speaking softly and twirling the spiral cord into an even twistier knot around her finger.

“Petar’s going to pick you up in the morning,” she said when she hung up the phone for good before dinner.

“Can’t I just stay with you?”

“You’re always welcome, honey. But Petar is your godfather, so legally—”

“I know,” I said, feeling bad for having asked.

Luka and I slept in his bed that night. I was glad to have him beside me, but the mattress I had been jealous of now
seemed sterile and unwelcoming, and I longed for my couch. Luka threw an arm over me and said, “So?” and I spilled the most complete version of the story I could, telling it like I couldn’t to his mother, like I never did to anyone else. I told him about the roadblock and the forest and my father and me tricking the soldiers, the Safe Housers, the bug-eyed captain and how he’d named me Indiana. I told him about Damir, the bus full of bodies, right up to the point where I’d shown up on his doorstep. I told him about my gun.

“Forward grip, gas chamber, cleaning rod, bolt, frame, magazine, function check,” Luka repeated, mimicking my hand motions.

“You’re fast.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

The soldier in the field was the only thing I’d left out of my story. “I don’t know,” I said, which was technically the truth.

We went quiet again, but I could feel him awake, and we stayed listening to the
bura
wind like that, eyes wide and blind in the dark.

Petar had called to say he was on his way. Luka’s mother was buzzing between rooms dusting and straightening, and I followed her around.

“What is it?” she said.

“I need my shirt back.”

“I don’t think—”

“Please.”

She pulled the shirt from the bottom of her bureau drawer as if she’d known I’d ask for it.

“Maybe you shouldn’t put it on, though,” she said, handing it to me. I nodded and tucked it into the plastic bag with Damir’s sweatshirt. By this time the shirt had been washed by several hands, but the stains remained.

Petar was fit from his stint in the army, his hair growing in from his crew cut, his arm strapped in a thick plastic brace, which I assumed was the reason he was back early. He bent to one knee to hug me, then seemed to find it difficult to stop, because he scooped me up with his good arm and held me that way until we got out to the car.

Luka’s mother stood in the doorway, arms crossed against the cold.

“Thank you,” Petar said to her.

“Thanks,” I said.

Petar set me down in the backseat next to a small pile of my clothes, schoolbooks, and the spare keys to my flat. My bike, he said, was in the trunk, and I’d be able to ride to school from his house. He’d had to cut my bike lock but had bought a new one, the combination kind, and fiddled with it for a few moments, rolling the number columns beneath his thick thumbs before handing it over to me.

“Do you know how to do this?”

“Not really,” I said.

He looked away. “Me neither.”

Marina was sitting on the curb outside their building, waiting for us. She motioned me to her, and when we hugged I felt her tears on my neck.

“Don’t cry,” I said, which made her cry harder.

“Let’s get you inside,” Petar said. He handed Marina my clothes and carried me into the house.