I could only apologize to him, though, if I knew where he was. I asked my sister about it the day before the funeral when she was washing coffee cups and shot glasses—never enough of them in those days. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, said something about angels and how the dead are always by our side. But then a coffee cup fell from her hands into the sink. She rested her elbows on the counter, dropped her head so she could be inside herself for a moment, and then said, angrily, “Dad’s dead, he’s gone, you can only talk to him if you pray or visit his grave.” Maybe she meant I could leave a message for him on his grave and he’d get it. That’s why I bugged her to teach me how to write: I’M SORRY.
Maybe he just wanted to see what I’d do if I thought he was dead. He’d snuck in among the black cornfield of people standing at the cemetery and was watching. If I looked sad, he’d know I cared.
The priest talked for ages. I searched for Dad among all the people there but couldn’t spot him. Maybe he was hiding behind the cypresses, or maybe he’d disguised himself to look like somebody else, like in that TV show, The Saint, about that Simon Templar guy. But if I could see his eyes, I knew I’d recognize him.
That was autumn 1988. After that, I learned how to write and read, I learned it’s impossible for a person to write, draw, or say everything inside their head, I learned what friendship is, how thoughts can be dangerous, and, finally, about death.
3.
After the priest was done blessing everything in the world, Feri, the gravedigger, and his son shoveled dirt onto the coffin, and people began drifting away. My aunt and grandmother had made cakes, coffee, and stiff drinks at home. I played with my cousins in my room. I was quiet, but impatient. Once in a while, someone would come in with a coffee cup or a shot glass and say something like “Don’t you be sad now” or “Your daddy’ll always be with you, even if you can’t see him.” I’d bite my tongue and drive my toy car behind the bed.
They were all quiet, but nobody cried until Godmother went to the car to get lollipops and Milka chocolate for the kids. She worked in Germany like my dad, and I was the only one who called her Godmother—everybody else called her Ljubica. Through the window I thought her sweater was the same one my dad had always worn, and when the door opened, I said, “You’re back!” Everybody stopped talking for a moment, and then Godmother came in, closed the door, took out her already wet handkerchief, and buried her face in it. She knelt and hugged me, and the chocolate and round plastic box of lollipops slipped to the floor. Without a word, she went into the bathroom and didn’t come out until it was only my mother, my sister, me, and the smell of the funeral wreaths left in the house.
The dark came, and it felt like it went deeper into the house that night. I lay in bed, thumbing through a picture book about Iva and Ana taking a plane. My sister said I had to brush my teeth, so I followed her to the bathroom. She opened the door, then quickly closed it and said, “No brushing teeth or washing feet tonight. Put on your PJs, and I’ll tuck you in.” When my sister had opened the bathroom door, I’d seen Mom sitting on the toilet lid and Godmother in front of her holding her head. Mom’s face was red and puffy, and she was crying in a whole different way than people had been crying at the graveyard. No restraint. Her hair was stuck to her forehead, her eyelashes were matted, her mouth was raw and red, and her arms shook even though they were resting on her knees. I heard her whisper, “How’ll I do this all alone?” and then they looked at the door, which my sister quickly shut.
My sister helped me pull on my PJs, tucked me in, and left. I watched the shapes of shadows cast on the uneven ceiling by the weak light from the hall. I prayed to the guardian angel my mother told me was always looking over me and tried to fall asleep. After a while, I got up and opened the kitchen door a crack. My sister was at the table, her back to me, taking photographs out of a shoebox. One by one, she held them gingerly, brought each photo to her lips, kissed it, and set it down to her left on the table. I went back to bed and stared at the ceiling.
4.
For the next four days, I didn’t have to go to kindergarten. Everything was almost like normal when Dad was away in Germany, except Mom was wearing black and she’d had her hair cut short, and my sister’s eyes were glassy and she said very little, and only in a hushed voice. In the evening the TV would be turned on as if to justify the hush that filled the house, which I was finding more and more difficult to bear.
Wisps of fog floated all day long between the houses around ours, dispersing when the rain came down. Mom told me I couldn’t go out. I mostly looked at picture books and the ceiling, and through the window where the world was shifting from downpour to shower and back.
I perked up when Mom said she’d be going to the graveyard. I asked if I could leave a message for Dad on the grave, and she said I could. Since I still didn’t know how to write all the letters, I drew myself, then the house and the workshop, and Dad, with his hands and face dirty. Finally I drew water flowing out of a spigot, and a bar of soap. I knew he’d understand.
I’d only started kindergarten that fall, but during the hours I was there, the world outside my classroom became, in my mind, an endless series of miracles and delights. The same thing happened when Mom and Granny decided I was old enough to start going to Sunday Mass. All the best shows were on at the same time as Mass. On the Slovenian channel, there was the cartoon Živ-Žav, and I watched a Serbian kids’ show, Musical Toboggan, which I liked because they used Serbian words I hadn’t heard before. For example, they called children deca instead of djeca, and called rice pirinač instead of riža—the way we said it at home—and for paper they said hartija while we called it papir. I stayed home once thanks to diarrhea, and another time I faked whooping cough and got away with it. One Saturday after my bath I told Mom I’d rather go to Mass on Sunday evening instead of Sunday morning. She asked why, and I told her about Živ-Žav and Musical Toboggan. She said Jesus hadn’t chosen watching cartoons over dying on the cross to save us all. This was no consolation as far as I was concerned. I told her Granny said Jesus was already old when he died on the cross, older than thirty, so maybe he’d watched cartoons as a kid, too, and then still had time to die for us all later. In the mirror I saw a look that meant she was mad, and I knew that in a few minutes I’d be sent to bed even though it was only seven thirty.
Everything outside the church became enticingly delightful as soon as Mom or Granny sat me down on the pew and crossed me with the holy water. It stopped seeming so tempting as soon as I heard “Go in peace.” After Mass there’d be Sunday dinner—yuck—so no way could I go in peace. In those first weeks of kindergarten, the way I imagined everything outside of school also changed. As soon as I stepped through the front door, before I even sat at my desk, a giant seesaw, huge swings, and a trampoline would rise up from the ground, and on it the fat postman, Joža Popić, and Milica, the saleslady with a mustache, would be jumping, eating chocolate and ice cream. Buses would be waiting to take everybody swimming and out for hot dogs in Petišovci. There’d never be news, weather, or cooking shows, but always Tom and Jerry, ALF, or Knight Rider, with KITT, and movies with Terence Hill and Bud Spencer. Farmland would transform into soccer fields, and farmers would play one-goal hockey using hoes as sticks and potatoes as pucks. We would all drink our cocoa cold so there would be no creepy skin from the cooked milk. As soon as I left the classroom, however, my fantasy world evaporated, and everybody pretended to go back to living their boring lives.