Little Bastards in Springtime (20 page)

Geordie’s mother looks at us, eyes narrowed, waiting for our response. But we say nothing, we pretend we’re deaf. Our eyes are glued to Geordie unpacking the freezer.

“Okay. Well. I’ll be in the living room watching TV. Your dad is out at a business dinner.” Geordie’s mom pours herself a glass of white wine and clicks out of the kitchen.

We fry steaks and shrimp, we down a dozen beers, we go through vats of ice cream with giant soup spoons, we blink like overfed lab rats in the blazing light. Later, in Geordie’s room, square, dark purple, smelling sour of new carpet, we sit on the floor, listen to suburban silence, feel lost in space and time, and finally understand why we’ve never hung out here before. Geordie’s boxes are still packed, her mattress is on the floor, no sheets, no pillows.

“I’m planning to move out,” she says. There’s a glint of panic in her eyes, revealing a side of her we’ve never seen before. Being rich isn’t the solution to all of life’s problems, it seems. “Next year they want me to go to a school up here, a fucking suburban high school with suburban asshole kids. No more commuting downtown. I think I’ll die.”

“You can live with me,” Sava says.

And I think, I want to live with Sava, she’s mine, she belongs in my bed. Maybe we could all live together in an apartment on Dundas or Lansdowne, we’re too ruined by war to be children living in homes with our parents. I take a minute to imagine how it would be, how we could trick it out with Forest Hill and Rosedale booty, how we’d have two fridges and a freezer, how
we’d fill them with every item in the grocery store, how we’d live so much better on our own. But there’s this thing that makes it all impossible: I can’t suggest it to Sava. I can’t make the first move. Because if she says no, that’s it, nothing will ever be the same again, and even the possibility will be crushed.

On our way out we say goodbye, standing awkwardly like eight-year-olds in the plush living room, jonesing for everything in it. Designer furniture, gold-framed mirrors, silk carpets, Chinese vases, sculptures of tall skinny women and round fat walruses.

“Nice to meet you at last,” Geordie’s mom says, and points at the giant TV she’s watching. “See that crowd in Zagreb. Such nice, strong-looking people, so handsome, so pretty. Not a sick person there, you can tell just by looking, they’re all strong and healthy and pure.”

I see a cultural festival in the heart of a European city. I see ordinary people of all shapes and sizes standing around talking. They could be any people in any city in any country on the European continent. That’s the thing about national pride, it’s just one big creepy projection.

Geordie’s mom stands up. “Where are you going now?” Her smile does not slip, but her eyes are hard. She’s looking at Geordie like she’d like to march her upstairs and lock her in her room.

“Out,” says Geordie.

I
STAGGER UP FROM MY ROOM WITH SWAMP-BRAIN
from too much pot and see Mama sitting perfectly still on the living room sofa. It’s a strange sight. Mama hardly ever sits still like this, like a sack of potatoes, a homeless person on a bench, as though there’s nothing to be done in a day. Her days are full with dragging herself from one thing to the next with her grey face. Her cleaning jobs, the laundry, cooking, pretending that life is normal. But now her head slumps forward, her hands curl on her thighs like little dead birds, she’s staring at the coffee table with unseeing eyes.

“Ma,” I say. “Mama.”

She doesn’t answer. Her cheeks are sunken, and I can see the fine wrinkles that cover her cheeks like cobwebs. She was young not that long ago.

“Mama,” I say.

She looks up. “Jevrem,” she says.

“What’s wrong?” I say. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sitting,” she says.

“Yes, I know that, but why?”

“I’m tired.”

“You just got up.”

“Jevrem, you’re such a …” She doesn’t finish her sentence.

I pour myself a coffee. Then I pour one for her and put in half a teaspoon of sugar, that’s the way she likes it. I bring it over to her. She can hardly lift her arm to take it.

“Mama, did something happen?”

“Baka came into my room last night and told me that in the morning we’d all be going out to the countryside. To Veliko Lake.”

“Oh yeah?” I say. I sit down next to Mama. I think about putting my arm around her shoulder but it refuses to move. She’s got a don’t-touch vibe around her like an invisible electric fence to keep the cows in, the wolves out.

“Remember, we went there a few times as a family? And when I was small, we had vacations there often. All summer long. Baka told me to remember to bring my bathing suit this time.
Bring the one with the red polka dots, it’s the nicest
, she said.”

“I’ve got an envelope for Aisha’s violin teacher,” I say, changing the subject. Maybe that will cheer her up. “Paid up for six months, and the back pay she owes too. She can’t perform without lessons.”

Mama takes the envelope and puts it on the coffee table, but she hasn’t heard what I said.

“She’s losing her connection to reality.” She hangs her head, her shoulders shake.

I look around for Papa, but he’s not here right now. Mama crying reminds me of him crying. He’d cry over movies, books, commercials, soccer matches, when he was outraged by a newspaper article, only for a few minutes and then from one moment to the next he’d snap out of it and be all boisterous again. But Mama keeps on going and going. I try to think of something to do for her, but my mind is completely fucking
paralyzed. All I can do is stare at my hands, force myself not to turn on the television, not to light the joint in my pocket, not to stand up and walk away. Then Mama suddenly straightens up, blows her nose.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” I say. I make an effort and grab her hand. Her fingers are ice cold and stone hard, like they’ve died on the end of her arms. “I feel sad too.” And that’s the truth, I guess, if I could feel anything for more than a few seconds. But luckily my feelings are like tiny gnats, they flit around for a bit and then they die.

“She’s all that’s left of the time before,” Mama says. “The good time, the golden time.” The shoulder-shaking begins again. “Her and Aisha.” I hold my breath for a second. “And you, of course.”

Suddenly I’m filled with rage, the kind that’s a bursting dam of blood to the brain. “You have your music, too, you have the piano. How can you forget that?”

Mama stops crying instantly and turns to stare at me, her eyes focused and probing.

“You have to play again,” I say, breathing deeply, trying to calm down. “You just do. It’s the only way.” I think maybe it’s the only important thing I’ve ever said, so important that I’ll even make a fool of myself in front of Mama. So I stand up and go to the piano. I haven’t played since I was little, since the first month of the war. I open the worn lid and sit down. What can I play? Nothing to do with the past, memory, place; everything to do with the wide open space of the future. I stroke the keys silently for a moment, then launch into Vivaldi’s Spring, the piano version, in my lurching, faking little-boy style, learned half by ear, half by score, the way that always drove Mama crazy. I play quite well for someone who never practises, with some
fudges and bluffs here and there, and after a few minutes I feel the notes surging through my body exactly like the driving energy of spring. I stop, look over at Mama. She’s crying again, but she’s got a smile on her face, her eyes are softer, she thinks it’s funny, she thinks it’s sweet, me clomping away like that for her.

S
AVA
and I are lying on the stained carpet of her bedroom. We’re whispering so her mother doesn’t hear us. Sava puts in another CD. Hüsker Dü should be played loud but we play it low. I like the way noise buzzes out of the speakers quietly, like a distant thunderstorm. Sava’s father coughs next door. Her mother click-clacks across the kitchen floor, no doubt irritating the fuck out of the downstairs neighbours. A seagull swoops by the window in the dark, its belly flashing white for a second in the bedroom light.

“Did you ever go roller skating back home?” Sava asks. “I remember that. That was fun. There was this old disco ball and cheesy Euro-trashy music.”

“No, never did that. But I went with Dušan once to listen to this punk group in a grungy pub near where we lived. He was meant to be babysitting me, so he dragged me along. I remember the smell of stale beer and cigarettes, the crazy look on those guys’ faces. It was fucking great.”

“Sad that he’s dead,” Sava says, like she’s talking about a character in a book.

I stop breathing for a second. Dušan is not dead. Dušan exists in my mind, as flesh-and-blood as every other living motherfucking thing on the planet. A warm body, pulsing, sweating, consuming, expelling, scheming, wanting, hoping. I have the smell of him in my nose all the time, laundry detergent,
smoke, cheap cologne, and the feel of his nail-bitten hand on my shoulder as he drags me around the city and shows me stuff and teaches me lessons about living life for the moment. But I forgive Sava. She’s an only child, she doesn’t know how brothers and sisters are connected, how they can irritate you, how you despise them, even hate them sometimes, but how they’re yours like no one else, living with you for your whole life no matter if they’re a continent away, if you never speak to them, if they’re on the other side of eternity. Because they share your childhood memories, the day-to-day ones, the “eat-your-veggies, two cookies after dinner, cartoons on the floor in your pyjamas, walk to school, sitting around the Christmas tree” moments that boomerang back at you and hit you hard when you least expect it.

“He was fun sometimes,” I say. “When we were much younger we did things together, like make up all kinds of games with random toys and objects when we were stuck inside. On our holidays at the ocean, we sailed boats and caught fish together. We snorkelled for hours, pretending we were deep-sea explorers, that we were lost at sea. At night, we slept in the same bed and he told me stories about aliens and goblins and superheroes and whatever else he could think of. Later, when he was a teenager, he always wished he was somewhere else, out with his friends. He was always jonesing to be out in the city. If he hadn’t gone MIA so soon, he’d have liked wartime Sarajevo, how some clubs and bars and restaurants opened again after a few months and stayed open all night, with smuggled food, booze, drugs, music, craziness, thanks to our very own mafia godfather, even when it was really bad, even when the city was shattered, how people sneaked around in pitch-black streets and still found ways to have fun. He was a badass like that, and
he might have brought me along if I promised not to bug him.”

“How did he die?”

I shrug my shoulders, squeeze my eyes shut. “He was shot, what do you think?” I don’t want to talk about it, I wish she hadn’t asked. A few months after, a friend of his who was in his company came by and told me he lived for hours after it happened and there wasn’t enough morphine to go around. This guy thought I wanted to know the truth. I still can’t think about it, because Dušan was so skinny and squeamish and he couldn’t handle pain at all. He’d moan and swear whenever he got the smallest scratch.

“Five of my cousins were soldiers,” Sava says. “They were all under eighteen; three of them were killed.”

I don’t want to hear about Sava’s five cousins either. I know corpse was piled upon corpse in all directions, who needs to be reminded?

“Did you hear me?” Sava asks.

“What?” I say.

“And two of my aunts, married to my uncles in Prijedor, went through Omarska camp. They got it so bad, over and over again, for months—” Sava stops breathing for a moment too, her body goes all stiff.

I don’t feel like hearing about that either, how brutal and filthy it was. “And then the rest of the family wouldn’t believe them,” Sava mumbles. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I was younger. Every time I went to bed that’s what came into my mind.”

I look at Sava and feel so bad for her I want to punch the wall. I wonder about the best way to erase memories and thoughts from a person’s mind. Mainlining heroine, probably, or some such shit. Whatever it is, I’d do it or get it for her in a heartbeat.
But Sava’s face is rock solid as usual, she’ll never need my help.

Sava’s mom is clacking down the hallway. I dive into Sava’s tiny closet. It smells like her cologne, spicy, delicious. She took it from the “his” side of a bathroom in an upscale house east of Bayview.

“What are you doing?”

Sava’s mother has opened the door. She’s standing on her five-inch heels, hip cocked, stomach showing between tight pants and tight top. That’s what I imagine, anyway. Sava’s mom dresses like a fifteen-year-old hooker.

“I’m lying on the floor,” says Sava

“I heard voices. Are you talking to yourself now?”

“Probably,” says Sava.

The door bangs shut again. Sava’s mother clacks back down the hallway. I’m comfortable in the closet on top of Sava’s laundry. I feel like drifting off to sleep.

“Come in with me, it’s like a fort,” I say. And she does.

I think about the last summer before the war when I was ten, how I stayed at Pero’s mountain cottage for two weeks, running half naked through the forest, splashing up and down the shallow river in running shoes, making up those wolf games. I loved the Filipovics’ cottage, the pine needles, the rocks shining on the river’s edge, my skin dark brown, my hair bleached by the sun. The city was fun too, that summer, watching TV in the hot evening breeze, all the windows open, running out for pizza when Mama and Papa didn’t feel like cooking. And there were exciting times coming up, like grade five, soccer league games, tennis lessons, a trip to the Croatian coast, where the ocean is dark blue on the horizon and the clearest aquamarine at the shore. We used to love going there, playing in the water for hours, building sculptures in the sand with Papa. In my mind’s
eye I see myself standing on the beach, at my favourite spot, staring at the glistening, sparkling water.

I wake up with sweaty palms and a jittery heart. The closet is dark as night, just a thin sliver of light seeping in under the door. Sava is asleep, her legs resting heavily on mine. The weight of her feels like heaven and I don’t move, I don’t want to wake her. I light a joint, have a few tokes, put it out on my palm with spit. The closet is full of smoke, I cough, lie back, wonder what it would feel like to burn to death. I think about Baka, Papa, heroes and villains, dreams, and the things that people can endure when they have to. I think about the world, and how it could use some help, another hero or two, but nowadays heroes don’t last long, they get exposed for being fuck-ups right away.