The actual bathroom had exploded in an air raid. It had been boarded off and replaced by an unfortunate replica in the coat closet, complete with bucket, hand-crank flashlight, and UN-issue toilet paper. Whoever got on the captain’s bad side during the course of the day would be saddled with the foul duty of emptying the bucket in the evening.
Each night when we returned from the Safe House—after the second shift took over—Damir would settle opposite his mother at the kitchen table to suck down root soup and play ta?. While we were at the Safe House I was busy, felt useful, but at night I longed for my parents, ran their final moments through my head. In that first month I wasn’t quite mourning. Instead my mind felt hazy and detached, crowded with ideas I knew weren’t true even as I entertained them; maybe, if I worked hard enough, I could win them back.
For days I choked down my bread and watched from my spot on the floor as Drenka and Damir fumbled in the candlelight, rushing to slap piles of dog-eared playing cards together. I felt suspended between living and dead, as if joining them would mean abandoning my own family. And yet, every evening I found myself inching closer to the table, my shadow elongated in the flickering light, until eventually I sat down to play, too. If they were surprised by my appearance there, they didn’t show it. Damir made a bad joke and Drenka laughed at it anyway, and I felt a smile push its way up through me. Her brown face glowed gold in the low light.
The next night I sat at the table at dinnertime, too, and ate soup and bread with preserves. Before she blew out the candles, Drenka spread a sheet across the sofa and called me over. I felt my spine lengthen like it hadn’t during the weeks of sleeping contracted on the kitchen floor, and I stretched my arms over my head and pushed myself deep into the cushions of the couch.
2
I’d been working at Safe House Headquarters for a few weeks when the girls showed up. Mostly teenagers, the girls had been on a reconnaissance mission down south but had been waylaid by a JNA battle outside Knin. Now they returned bearing updates from the surrounding towns. They stomped up to the attic, muddy and commanding attention, then reeled off a list of names from a receipt-paper scroll. From the reactions of the Safe Housers, I gleaned that it was the latest in casualties or missing persons from the front.
After the announcements, the conversation descended quickly into the realm of justs—speculations leveled at the bearer of the list:
“He’ll be fine. He’s just missing, not wounded?”
“Just shot, it says. Not necessarily killed.”
“Probably only a flesh wound.”
The list reader scanned her paper in an attempt to offer some affirmative responses to the barrage. I’d always assumed Damir’s father was in the army, but Damir never mentioned him, and he didn’t come up on the list while I was there.
When people got frantic the captain stepped in and took the paper. He folded it in a lopsided accordion and attempted to put it in his shirtfront pocket before realizing that he wasn’t wearing a shirt and stuffing it in his waistband instead.
“The boys are all fine,” he said firmly, and everyone dispersed back to their posts.
“Who are you?” said one of the girls when she came to get a new clip. She wore a patrol cap and long auburn hair, and fiddled with both as she talked.
“She’s Indy,” Stallone said, having grown accustomed to his role as my spokesperson. “Indiana Jones.” He turned to me, lowering his voice. “That’s Red Sonja. She’s the girl boss.”
There was a philosophical divide in the Safe House about whether or not the girls should take on exclusively female nicknames. Some argued that they didn’t want their pick of badass characters limited on the basis of gender, while Red Sonja said there were plenty of worthy women action stars who were actually more badass than their male counterparts, given they had to fight in tighter pants.