Afterward I climbed up to the roof and tried not to cry.
“What was I thinking?” I said to Luka, who had followed me. “I can’t stay here.” Luka, who’d always gotten nervous when I was sad, turned away. I knew it was only because he liked to be alone when he was upset and wanted to afford me the same privacy. After a while, though, when I hadn’t calmed down, he sat beside me, pulling his knees to his chest to get traction with his bare feet against the clay roof tiles.
“You’re just tired,” he said. He put his arm around my shoulder, tentatively at first, then letting his full weight come down on me.
“I want to go home,” I said, all too aware I had no idea where that might be.
6
In the morning I felt better. I’d spent the night in a jet-lag coma, dreamless, on Luka’s living room couch, its worn upholstery retaining just enough texture to leave a checked pattern on my cheek. The couch was the same one they’d always had, recognizable in an innocuous way—just an old couch in the home of an old friend.
Still, when I saw Luka standing in the kitchen I felt unsettled. He offered me a plate as he took one down from the cabinet, but we were clumsy with one another; he pulled away too quickly and I felt the china slipping between our hands. I set it safely on the counter and sorted through my archive of go-to conversation topics, searching first for something witty, then just anything to say.
I smeared Nutella over the remains of yesterday’s bread, and Luka mixed a pitcher of fluorescent yellow Cedevita. As a public health initiative we’d been organized into lines in the school yard and handed little cups of the stuff, chalky powder injected with vitamins and stirred into water, to make sure we got something of nutritional value in the weeks when food was hard to come by. They hadn’t expected an entire generation to become addicted to the concoction—lemonade on steroids—but we had, eventually making its producers the most successful pharmaceutical company in the country.
I put the glass to my lips and felt the juice fizz in my mouth.
“This is what my life has been missing,” I said.
“They don’t have Cedevita in America?” Luka asked. “I thought they had everything there.”
“They don’t need it in America. It’s war food. Speaking of.” I remembered the gifts I’d brought for Luka and his family, mostly food I’d found exciting when I first arrived in America. “I forgot. I brought you some stuff from over there,” I said. “It’s probably stupid.”
“You brought me a present?” Luka’s voice was almost syrupy, and for a moment I thought he might be mocking me. “Can I have it?”
In the living room I unzipped my bag and pulled out the plastic sacks that accounted for a third of the space in my suitcase. Inside was an “I NY” T-shirt, M&M’s, Reese’s peanut butter cups and a jar of Jif, and three boxes of instant macaroni and cheese. Now I felt silly offering him a bag of gifts for a little boy.
“I kind of underestimated the state of things here. I’m sure you have all this stuff by now—”
“Cool! What is this?” Luka said. He pulled out the Jif and tried to smell it through the lid.
“You really haven’t had it before? But you’ve got a mobile phone. I just got a mobile phone in America.”
“We only have them because the government didn’t feel like repairing the bombed-out landlines. Though you can imagine how obsessed everyone is.” Luka was struggling to talk through a mouthful of peanut butter. “So superficial. Everyone in this fucking country gets their shit paycheck, wastes it all on clothes from Western Europe, then complains about how they don’t have any money. Idiots.”
“That’s what happens when you ban Levi’s, I guess,” I said. During the height of communism jeans had been a symbol of rebellion, Americanness. For some reason the aura hadn’t worn off.
“Too bad I didn’t know you were coming. I would’ve made you bring me a pair.”
“Ana.” Ajla’s voice trailed in from an upstairs room. “Come here.”
“I thought everyone was stupid for caring about that stuff,” I said.
“This is really good,” Luka said, scooping out another spoonful of peanut butter. I downed the rest of my Cedevita and went upstairs.
I found Ajla in her bedroom among an array of unmatched socks. “Do you have any washing?” she said. “It might rain tomorrow and I want to get everything out on the line. Come, sit.”
I sat cross-legged opposite her and plucked a matching set of socks from the pile.
“Sorry if the cousins were a bit much for you yesterday. I didn’t think of it.”
But I knew holding a big meal in my honor was the utmost compliment she could give. “It was great,” I told her. “The food and everything.”