“Tata!” I cried. He just sat there, arms folded over his knees, gaze transfixed as if by a romantic sunset and not a city collapsing. Mama growled and pulled me away.
The Germans’ basement smelled like grape brandy and moldy sea. It was cold, and the damp bathing suit made me feel even colder. I propped myself on an old vegetable crate and looked out the small window for Tata. Mama hugged me around the legs.
“Make sure he’s okay,” she said, her head buried in my calves. “He needs someone to take care of him.”
“Don’t worry Mama, I’ll do it,” I said, even though I didn’t know what I was saying or what she meant. It seemed like the right thing to say in that moment because Mama looked like a child, and I was tall, like an adult.
I tiptoed to the window. As the noise tapered off, I watched Tata from afar, cleaning the peaches. A fine debris of the shelling aftermath flew on the maestral toward us, settling over Tata and his fruit and collecting in the claustrophobic basement. Mama coughed and coughed.
*
The TV that evening reported that people were killed; the medieval rotunda had been hit, numerous Roman ruins destroyed. Tata said the worst was over. Mama wanted to go home. Lolek, Bolek, and I stood there, unsure of whose side to take. We wanted to be on vacation, but being around Tata no longer made us feel safe. Mama ordered us to pack our rucksacks fast and told me not to waste time changing into dry clothes—a step I was never allowed to skip before, lest my ovaries “catch a cold.” Tata swore, said no war would tell him where to go and what to do. He sat on the couch with his legs propped up on the coffee table. Mama nudged us three down the steps.
“Tata, come on,” I cried. He stayed where he was.
We sat in the car for a few minutes, waiting, before Mama turned on the ignition. I grabbed her hand which held the car keys.
“He’s not going to be okay,” I said.
Mama’s whole face shook. Her breathing spasmed. But before she could spiral into a coughing spell, we saw Tata amble out, lock up Mladjo’s house, and join us.
Mama drove furiously to the highway exit. Before merging, she slowed down and put on Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs to Me,” but Tata rewound to “Masters of War.”
She hit fast forward. Tata rewound. They went back and forth many more times. Had there been cars piling up, honking behind us, had ours not been the only car on the road, and had Mama and Tata’s faces not looked stern and cold, I would’ve scolded them like they scolded me when I fought with my brothers over what to watch on TV. When Tata reached to hit rewind again, Mama grabbed his hand, placed his palm over her cheek, and held it there until he finally relented.
“Put the radio on,” I said.
“The radio won’t tell us anything we don’t know,” Mama said, looking out the windshield. “We’re stuck.”
She turned to Tata. He withdrew his hand from hers and turned away, his body slumped.
“But until we die, we live.” Mama ran her palm over Tata’s cheek, let it travel down his arm until it met his hand, slack on the seat, and squeezed it.
We stopped at the ramp and looked at abandoned fields, the blue sea already behind us, no one else out in the open. A pair of goats tethered to the dry shrubbery stammered to the wail of an ambulance siren in the distance. I was scared, confused. Sitting was torture. I wanted to do something, go somewhere, move. Cross over that wobbly bridge, return to our life: heat, powder, cough and all. Jesters pressed each side of me, and I pulled them closer still. Their little bodies, warm and pulsating, evened my breath. I looked at the whole empty world around us. And here we were, in our ratty little car, hugging.
Mama lifted her hand off Tata’s only to shift gears and to rewind to the beginning of her song, again and again, all the way home.