“Sonja” she said longingly, her eyes watering, “I’m your Teta Ange.” And with all her tallness and broadness she hugged me. I thought I might pass out. I was weak and sweaty from the heat but overwhelmed by her intense affection, her rustic authenticity, her physical strength, her jubilance at meeting me. I was her American niece—a distance that seemed difficult to cross, but it was bridged when our eyes met and she hugged me.
The next day my Aunt Angie insisted that I come to her house up the road and have some fresh, warm cow’s milk. It seemed a bit heavy for my stomach, but everyone said it would be good for me. Angie’s daughter-in-law, with her smiling face and suntanned, rugged beauty, rubbed my shoulders as I started to feel sick, perhaps from the new bacteria in the milk. They hovered around me, soothing me and taking care of me in low voices.
I visited my other relatives too. My uncles were so similar to my father with the same thick, curly hair and mustaches and dark and intense eyes under heavy eyebrows. But they seemed older, much older. Uncle Vukale’s son, my cousin Lyubo (which means “love”) took charge of us. He and his wife Lela and their two children lived right next door to Vukale and his daughter; Uncle Mark and his wife lived next door to them. They all walked freely in and out of each other’s houses, never knocking. Doors were left open, and sometimes only curtains hung in doorways. There was no privacy.
“You’ll be staying with us,” Lyubo announced.
I hesitantly informed him that we had booked a motel room. He and Lela were offended: “How could you do that, we are your family!”
I explained that my husband was not used to the Yugoslav culture and needed to stay at a motel. They reluctantly acquiesced.
Lyubo took me by the hand: “Well, you can at least rest here for a while.”
He opened the door to a small room they had prepared for us. A big puffy bed with crisp white sheets awaited us. The shades were drawn and it was dark inside. The smell of fresh linens and the coolness was such a relief. Lela stood behind her husband, smiling proudly. “You can rest, we’ll be very quiet.” We thanked them. When we woke up and opened the door, they were all still sitting there talking quietly, waiting for us to finish our naps.
It was difficult to accept the innocent intensity of their love and affection. That kind of hospitality was familiar to me from my own family life, but when my parents adapted to U.S. culture, they had to lose this affection and community in favor of something more formal. My parents tried hard to become Americanized, and they became something in between. I never saw my father kiss or hug my brother the way Lyubo did his son.
That evening Lyubo rounded us up to go into town. Before we left, he showed off his pig. Then he swept his hand around, indicating the land that used to belong to our grandfather Luke “before the Communists came,” before they were forced to collectivize.
“He was a very prominent farmer here and very well respected. And they took all this away from us.” He was bitter at the loss of ownership, as others were.
We went to the cafe in town; he wanted us to take him in our car, to show off that his relatives were visiting him. We sat at a central table in the open-air cafe, shaded by big trees. He ordered slivovitz, a very strong plum brandy popular in Yugoslavia. I told him I drank very little and my husband didn’t at all. He insisted that we celebrate.
“What kind of a man are you?” he said to Tom in Serbian. I was glad they couldn’t understand each other. We ordered some mineral water. Lyubo proceeded to get very drunk. My father had told me that my grandfather also had a severe drinking problem.
Before I left, Lyubo and Lela generously presented me with a set of books by the famous Montenegrin poet and statesman Nyegosh; he was a lone writer in a mostly illiterate milieu. His poetry reflects the warring history of the region. I still have the books.
In April of 1999, during the recent war that split Yugoslavia, President Clinton sent U.S. troops to join NATO forces in Yugoslavia. The first bombing he ordered mistakenly hit the small town of Aleksinac, where my relatives lived, killing several people and causing much destruction. Uncle Mark’s wife was traumatized by the noise and the cracks in her walls, and she died of a heart attack shortly after the bombing.
These are my roots yet only fragments remain. The old way of life will never be the same. As with Aleksinac, the survival of the small Russian village of Lipovka is questionable. When the older people die, so too will the village. My family in Aleksinac has died too. Only a few cousins remain. Others have scattered across the globe. The connection between Auntie Nyura and Auntie Angie is my own, but there are larger similarities in the peasant life, in the strength of the women despite their place in society, even in history. Lipovac is a neighborhood of Aleksinac; its name is derived from the word for linden tree in Serbo-Croatian, as Lipovka is in Russian.
My Violin Loves to Play
I’ve been in bed all day. This is very unusual for me. I’m in a lot of pain. I have no idea where it comes from. And now my father’s face begins to flash before me. It’s been ten months since he died. Various events in my life have kept me from thinking much about what his death means to me. Now I’m suddenly caught in this excruciating neck pain. A cramped muscle pulls my left shoulder to my neck so tautly that when I try to turn my head the pain screams in my ear. I get nervous when the image won’t go away.
His mustache is trimmed the way it was when I was two. I listen for his whistle when he comes home from work and picks me up, kisses me hard, holds real tight. His mustache is bristly, yes, but I love it, his pride in, his love of me for loving it.
He was a big man, tall and strong and solid. He seemed to become more hostile the older I got. The beating when I was sixteen was not the first time he laid a hand on me, but it was by far the worst.
I push and tread in my dark bed.
I’m glad he died. We’re rid of him. But now, as my neck and shoulder throb, my father’s face won’t leave me alone. In my pain and stiffness I feel unexpectedly drawn to him, his smooth olive complexion, his lovely cheekbones high, a burst of capillaries between bone and skin. I want to touch his face. His eyes look into the distance, at his own suffering during World War II perhaps, but not at me.
My father was violent. The day I went to my first prom with Tony, my first real romance, I was sixteen and thrilled. When Tony came to pick me up, my father was decidedly cold and abrupt. He’d told me earlier that I was not to come home after midnight. My mother plotted with me about how she’d cover for me, reminding me to be very quiet when I came home. I left my anxieties behind as I stepped out into my new evening gown on the arm of the handsome and attentive Tony.
It was late when Tony dropped me off We made out in the car before I crept into the house. Every sound seemed to echo. After a while I heard my parents’ arguing voices. My heart was pounding, and I expected an explosion. As I was putting on my nightgown, my bedroom door swung open and my father stepped inside, cursing me in Serbian and swinging his belt.
He began to beat me. There was a terrifying passion in those blows; he looked lost. I remember screaming and falling to the floor, trying to ward off the blows with my arms. My only weapon was words: “Go ahead and kill me.” My mother whimpered in the background begging him to stop. Why did she stay with him? Why didn’t protect she us from his chronic raging?
I was afraid he was going to kill me. Suddenly my cousin, who was almost his size and was living with us at the time, came in and yanked him off me. He kept calling me a whore and a bitch as she dragged him out of the room.