Girl at War(44)

“Would’ve been easier if you had a skirt on,” Luka said when I mentioned it. His words were steeped in a masculine dismissal I found startling.

“When have you ever seen me in a skirt?”

“I’m sure you got new clothes at some point.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Different.”

He slowed his steps as we left the college. “Sorry,” he said. He veered close to the edge of the curb, and I took hold of his elbow and pulled him back onto the walkway. “I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“By what?”

“You’re back. It’s a lot of shit.”

“It’s my shit.”

“It’s not just your shit,” he said. “You don’t get to claim the war as your own personal tragedy. Not here.” I watched his eyes flicker like he was deciding which cards to play in a hand of poker. “What’s the family like?”

“They’re nice,” I said. “They’re Italian. I mean, they’re American, but—”

“I get it.”

“Rahela’s eleven. She thinks she’s American. Everyone does. They call her Rachel.”

“Rachel,” he said, testing it out with his accent, a heavy rolled r. “She doesn’t really think that, though, does she?”

“She knows,” I said. “But she doesn’t feel it.”

“Hey! Luuu-kaaa!” A thin voice punctured the quiet between us. “Wait up!” I heard the click of heels, and we stopped as the girl approached. Her black hair, smoothed and straightened, swayed in just the right rhythm as she walked. The pointed patent-leather toes of her shoes protruded from the cuffs of her jeans. She seemed to belong to a decade I could not pinpoint.

“How have you been?” she was saying to him but looking at me. I looked down at my flip-flops.

“Danijela, this is Ana. An old friend, from primary school.”

“Drago mi je,” I said, and felt a fake smile stretch across my face as she planted a kiss on each of my cheeks with unnecessary force.

“Ne, zadovoljstvo je moje,” Danijela said, and I recognized the same smile reflected back at me. She and Luka talked about registration for fall classes while I studied her olive skin, the kind my mother and Rahela had. I thought of the school yard girls who had made fun of my hand-me-downs and teased me for inheriting my father’s fair, freckled complexion, calling me Czech or Polish. I wondered if this girl had been one of them. I was relieved when she flipped back her phone to check the time and said she had to go. She and Luka made vague plans to meet for coffee, and she winked at him as she left.

“What was that all about?”

“What?”

“That,” I said, fluttering my lashes.

“Girl I used to date,” he said, suppressing a smile at my impression. “She’s not that bad. She’s actually kind of smart.”

“Used to?”

“Yeah. As in don’t anymore.”

“She looks smart.” I pushed out my chest.

“What’s it to you?”

What is it to me? I thought. She was annoying, yes. But maybe I was just jealous that he was not as lonely as I had become.

“What about you? You got a boyfriend?”

“There was a guy. But I’m taking a break from dating.”

As we neared the tram stop, I said, “You all right to get on the tram without your AK?”

“Let’s get some ice cream first.”

I submitted to more questioning over a shared bowl of chestnut gelato. I told him about the Uncles and how I’d learned to pass as American.

“But I don’t get it. Why didn’t you just tell people the truth?”

“A lot of reasons. Mostly because they didn’t want to hear it. But also because I couldn’t figure out how to get over it without getting rid of it.”

“That’s crazy,” Luka said. “I’d never be able to hold it all in for ten years.”

“I got used to it.”

“Then why’d you come back?”

“All right, Freud,” I said. I dropped my spoon into the bowl for emphasis and hated him, briefly, for being right.

Back at Luka’s house we sat in front of the TV—there were two new channels, bringing television networks to a total of four—soaked in a Mexican soap opera that Luka’s mother forbade us to change, and waited for the sun to go down. But it had only gotten muggier as the day wore on, and I began to remember why the residents of Zagreb always fled the city in the summer.

“Just wait,” said Luka’s mother as she ladled servings of vegetable soup over shallow bowls of mashed potatoes. “I heard there’s going to be a heat wave.”

“This isn’t the heat wave?” I said. Luka’s mother looked at me and smiled, a smile that seemed to say You’ve been gone quite a long time.

“What about a portable air conditioner?” I said. “In New York people get little window units.” But the suggestion was met unanimously with looks of horror.

“Air-conditioning will give you kidney stones,” Luka said. I was gradually recalling those mundane moments—the ones that had until now given way to more traumatic memories—of a childhood governed by collective superstition: Never open two windows across from each other—the propuh draft will give you pneumonia. Don’t sit at the corner of the table; you’ll never get married. Lighting a cigarette straight off a candle kills a sailor. Don’t cut your nails on a Sunday. If it hurts, put some rakija on it.