Neda swallowed hard and averted her gaze from his wrongly assembled face.
October 30, 1999
What did I expect? To be honest — I have no idea. I jumped into the water and waited to see if I was going to float.
The first time I said I simply couldn’t do something like that, a nightmare descended on me, something horrendous and yet unreal, like a monster in a child’s dreams. Loose teeth, cuts inside my mouth, and a wide range of bruises unequivocally confirmed the reality of it.
Thinking of all this now, I realize it wasn’t the physical abuse that frightened me the most. It was the silence in which it happened. Can such a methodic manifestation of rage be categorized as rage at all? I don’t think so. I believe the wrath of Viktor Marković is a much more complicated animal, something that draws its black energy from a deep source older than time. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t escaped, if I hadn’t, without a coat or any of my belongings, hawked a cab and given the driver Goran’s address.
Goran was fired the very next day. He wasn’t upset — he was already sick of driving around drunken idiots and taking care of the vomit and other nasty stains from the company’s Mercedes.
So, calling it all an unenviable situation is a euphemism for the deep shit I’m in. But I didn’t have a choice, right? I tried my best, but when it comes to sex, we all have our boundaries. And once the precedent was set, who can say what the other creatures from Marković’s powerful circle would ask me to do?
But at this moment, I am only concerned with whether or not I want to keep the child growing in my womb. One part of me still obstinately desires the life I promised myself, a life with much more freedom and space for seeking than single motherhood can offer. Yet I feel instinct overcoming me. It is a frightening but powerful force, more powerful than any obstacle, be it of philosophical or practical nature.
Yes, I know that my freedom has just been incarcerated by the solid walls of impending day-to-day duty. But I am an almost-middle-aged woman living in Serbia, not a Greek philosopher strolling through the groves of Aristotle’s Lyceum.
What do I live on? Mainly on a creative mix of hormones and dreams of revenge.
October 21, 2007
Occasionally, usually when she had to borrow money to buy Milena something “all the other kids have,” Neda wished she had Marković’s private phone number so she could send him a picture of his daughter. Maybe the snapshot from her first day of school, with her famous broad toothless smile. Milena thought she looked scary when she smiled that way, and she absolutely loved it.
School was a new expense, which Neda’s underpaid jobs in boutiques and corner stores, or the occasional instruction of German, couldn’t cover. Employers were afraid of single mothers, and the school was full of children with parents who thought that jealousy-inducing clothes and gadgets were important enough to sacrifice a good part of a family’s budget for them. Neda’s little house stood like a relic from an ancient time among the modern buildings springing up around Lekino Brdo like mushrooms in the forest. Selling it would resolve some of her financial problems, but her father, who grew more senile by the day, refused to do so, passionately talking about his intention to plant an apricot tree, the one he had actually planted forty years ago. Neda didn’t argue with him. She didn’t want to point out that her father was incapable of proper reasoning. Besides, it was the last house on the street with climbing roses hanging over the fence — living proof that, in spite of everything, she and her world were something separate, something special.
Last year, Marković had founded the Vimark TV station and he became a media personality. Thanks to his new public face, Neda developed extensive knowledge about his family — the photogenic TV hostess who was not the first Mrs. Marković, the daughter who studied design in Italy, and the son who owned his own business of an undefined nature.
“Mommy, my friend Sara says that in Greece — they always go on holiday in Greece, you know — there was a stone statue of a naked woman.” Milena put her little hand over her toothless mouth and giggled. “That is one of the goddesses, you know. Sara stood in front of her and made a wish and it came true.”
The girl stirred her cornflakes around in the bowl, while they waited for the arrival of their neighbor, who took Milena to school every day along with her son. She was late, so Neda was late for work. She hoped her boss wouldn’t threaten to fire her again. She desperately needed money to pay the bills, which were piling up quickly.
“Did you put on new panties?” Neda asked, looking at her watch. She still couldn’t forget the shame she had felt when Milena went to an unexpected annual physical at school wearing old, faded underpants.
“Yes, but I wish you would buy me the ones with little frills like Sara has. Do you know what I would wish for if I visited the stone woman?”
Neda hoped Milena wouldn’t wish for knowledge of her father. For her, Daddy was someone who lived far away and, No, he won’t come see them soon. Neda further embellished the story in accordance with Milena’s age. Whenever she considered telling her the truth, she always concluded that she didn’t want to traumatize her daughter with a very certain turndown from her father.
“What would you wish for?”
“A pot of gold,” Milena said.
Neda wasn’t sure she liked this answer any better.
“So what would you do with all that gold?”
“I would buy…” Milena paused, considering her options.
“What?”
There was a sly look in the girl’s eyes — the very same black, opaque eyes of her father.
“Everything!”
Neda felt guilt overwhelming her. Milena wore cheap clothes bought in thrift stores. She couldn’t afford fancy sneakers or other luxurious objects important to the children of the new age. Neda always wanted to explain to her daughter that having material possessions was not the most important aspect of life, that it was sometimes better to be different from everybody else, to be unique and special, but she warned herself that it was too early to introduce that kind of thinking.
January 21, 2018
Milena’s tattoo was not a butterfly, a heart, or the name of a boy she was in love with. No. Above her shoulder blades spread a pair of midnight-black wings.
Neda put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from gasping. Ever since Milena had become a teenager, Neda had made sure to never enter her room without knocking. But for some time now, the girl had been refusing every attempt at communication and Neda was worried that her daughter was turning into one of those problematic adolescents who easily lose their way. What she wanted most was to build a different world for her child. Yes, she was aware that instead of Neda’s need to “understand Buddha,” Milena had taken after her father and his materialistic spirit. But she was still a child. There was still time for Neda to change her spiritual viewpoint, and give her a chance to look at life from a different angle.
“Stop staring,” said the girl. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t care. Besides, you didn’t pay for it.”
For the first time in her life, Neda wanted to hit her child. To let the Evil in, and beat her senseless. Instead, she burst into tears.
“What do you want, Milena? What is it that you want?” she asked when she was finally able to stop sobbing.