13 May 1992, Wednesday - Erased

They had driven for ages in the red Zastava 101 that Father had been paying off and waiting for for months. They had travelled to collect it from the other end of Yugoslavia. Zala missed a few days of school to join this family expedition. Father had driven and been horrified at the general disregard for road rules, saying, “This country lacks discipline,” while Mother was nodding or snoozing, Zala didn’t know which, because she herself had curled up in the corner and fallen asleep. She had only woken up when Father began swearing loudly at some driver again and when she had tried to move, her body had not obeyed. She had tried to move her hand, her leg, finally at least her little finger, nothing. She had stared at the roof of the car and the landscape she could see through the window, a feeling of horror unsuccessfully pressing her into trying to move. She called out to her parents for help but her voice would not rise above the noise of the engine.

The terror of immobility, of being stuck in a moment that lasted into eternity. Those closest to her right next to her, and yet she was so entirely alone. They had no inkling of what was happening to her and, even if they had, they couldn’t help.

Was that death? Time stopped at a single moment, feelings frozen, a strangely bent position of the body, the head bouncing up and down slightly with the potholed road. Father was at least stuck in a slightly broader sphere, he swore at other drivers, true, usually with the same words, but occasionally he did fall silent, scratched the top of his head, or dropped the ash from his cigarette out of the slightly open window. Mother’s nodding was interrupted, she asked her husband for a puff, something she did only rarely, took the cigarette and made two long draws.

Zala managed to move the index finger on her right hand and the shell burst. Movement travelled from the fingers into the wrists, the hands, and the legs. Zala straightened.

“We’ll be home soon,” Mother said.

* * *

She could not sleep. She hadn’t closed the curtains and whenever a car drew up, it fanned a yellow light across the ceiling above her. There hadn’t been one for a while, the last to arrive had been a man and a woman giggling away as they stopped outside the entrance, searching for their keys for a long time. They dropped them, the woman squealed and took satisfaction in swearing at him. This was followed by near silence, with only a distant hum from the main road, like someone stroking their fingers across sandpaper.

The night on the island. They had lain at the top of the hill and, feeling cold, she had cuddled up to him. He had reached across her and used the tips of his fingers to tuck the blanket under her.

A falling star had drawn a line across the hazy firmament before it burnt out, and she had wished time would stop. The entire order of days, morning coffees, walks, swimming, and last of all packing and driving home had appeared before her eyes and was not what she wanted. Without looking, her fingers had reached for his head, stroked him above the ears and slid toward his neck, dampening the tips with his sweat that she then brought to her nose. A part of her was already grumbling that she had wasted a shooting star on an impossible wish, as if she believed in such things.

Somewhere above her, the ceiling remained silent and dark. Up until her appearance on the talk show she had used it as a background for her planning and finding solutions. This was followed by two nights of triumph that vanished when the matter was ignored, then nights of dreaming, thinking up impossible plans and miraculous solutions. This was the first night of emptiness – around her, and even worse, within her.

When Marko had first made his presence known to her, she had wondered if it might be her bowels. Slowly, he became more distinct, unmistakable, and eventually stronger. He got the hiccups and it always made her laugh, and this only encouraged him further. He then began jumping around and, in the last month, walking. She could feel the soles of his feet pushing against her and going for a walk. Feet that would come out of her and walk alongside her for many years to come, she had thought.

Sometimes he rolled over suddenly, turning his dwelling and with it her, upside down. He woke her up, she smiled, stroked her belly and quietly, whisperingly, sang a lullaby. Inside, he could hear everything, perhaps even think. Was he afraid now, lost without her voice?

And she? Left with nothing.

An empty apartment, a void within her.

Nothing.

Some other woman...

She grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled until it ripped. A loud, almost dry, sound.

Over the last few days, her brain had gone over all possible plans, picking out fragments of news and films, weaving scenarios and offering resolutions. Now it hummed slowly and helplessly. Her eyes stung but she could not cry. She felt forlorn and inert, not because she could not move, but because it was no longer worth moving.

This must be punishment.

The thought she had carried with her, probably from the moment she had first seen those two lines on the pregnancy test, escaped as a low-pitched sound similar to the excess air of a pipe organ, spent and unhealthy.

Punishment.

Something strange had happened during those days by the sea. She had had an attack of a kind of amnesia, perhaps because she was having such a good time. What day was it today? Was the labelling right? Had she taken the pill? Or had she just put it on the side of the sink, and it had fallen on the floor, rolled under the cupboard? Should she have told Mark they ought to buy condoms?

A kind of uncharacteristic light-heartedness had overcome her and held on for weeks afterwards. Reason, of course, knew that Mark was only an in-between man, married, older, a foreigner, who would do to wash away the stench of the parasite who had been milking her for attention, time, and money for eight years. Holidays with a man who did not lean on her or follow her around like a hungry puppy, so that she too might learn how to live as a couple and correct her taste in men. Something transient, and the Pill was supposed to make it possible.

She had the impression that the ceiling was swelling and starting to come down towards her. Had part of her wanted to get pregnant by Mark, wanted to tie him to her and keep him?

Was that why she didn’t deserve the child? Was that why he had been taken away from her?

Are we what we think, or what we do when we don’t think?

She longed for a cigarette, the taste of sadness, weakness, repulsion.

Were nights like this all that would remain? Had life come to a halt, like that journey long ago with Father, who would soon be dead, and Mother, who would win in the carnations category?