Turning away from her, I shucked my stale clothes and rummaged in our cluttered closet for my favorite sundress: deep violet patterned with iridescent beetles, a treasure I’d found at the flea market. Then I threaded my favorite silver hoops through my ears, feeling the comfortable drag of their weight on my lobes, and winged my eyes with liner. Unnerved as I was by the image of Jasmina blank-faced and intent in the dark, her fingers flitting through my hair like an animal preening its young, I wanted to look nice for her today. Maybe the ribbons were some kind of apology for . . . for everything. Maybe they were her way of opening the door again.
By the time I arrived at the café, I’d decided I liked the ribbons. They’d fluttered in the breeze as I biked, and I’d caught myself straining to catch whiffs of that bright perfume, to separate it from the salty air and car fumes, the savory simmer of bean and sausage stew put early on the pot for lunch.
“Jasmina?” I called out as I stepped inside. “How are you feeling? And what are these ribbons—”
The door to the kitchen swung open so hard it thundered against the wall, and my mother simply dropped through it, like a rag doll tossed aside by a child.
Time shuddered, then slowed to a crawl. It seemed like hours that I watched her falling, the image of every moment sharp and hard like an insect caught in amber, each locking indelibly into my memory like the missing pieces of a terrible puzzle:
Her outstretched arms flung up above her head like a dancer’s, the incidental grace.
The streaming banner of her hair, sluicing through the air.
The droplets of her blood on the walls, spattered so bright and vivid they were almost pretty.
And then the bone crunch of the back of her head as it met the tiles behind the counter, out of my sight.
Just before I screamed and time snapped back into place like one of the rubber bands around my wrist, I heard the boom of the back door slamming, the distant staccato of running footsteps. The electric instinct to chase after whoever had done—this—to my mother juddered through me as I fumbled my way weak-kneed around the counter, as if my nervous system had brushed a live wire and caught fire. But I couldn’t run, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave her.
Once, years ago, I’d fallen off the chipped, rusting monkey bars in our schoolyard and knocked all the air out of my lungs. I remembered gasping desperately for breath, the air sparkling in front of my eyes as if I’d temporarily gained the ability to see oxygen molecules.
That feeling of breathlessness, of almost dying, couldn’t compare to the sight of her body, pale and curled like a pistil in the spreading pool of her own blood. I dropped down to the floor next to her, hard, a brilliant bolt of pain shooting up from my knees.
“Mama,” I managed, through the taste of iron in my mouth. “Mama, please . . .”
She couldn’t move her head—her neck was probably snapped, or her spine, or both—but her eyes slid sideways, unfocused, to meet mine. They were glazing over, jellied, and the lids twitched frantically with every slow blink, as if it was taking the last of her lifeblood to move even that much. Maybe it was; there was blood everywhere, the copper reek of it sickly sweet and overwhelming. I could hear it thick and gurgling in her throat as she tried to draw a drowning breath. It was sticky in her hair, and all over my hands where I touched her chest, to try to peel the sodden blouse away and see how she was hurt. For a moment, the way it had seeped through the fabric looked almost like a blossom, and my vision lurched, threatening to fracture the blood into something beautiful.
Then the impulse receded, because I couldn’t find a bullet wound or a stab mark. Nothing so clean or relatively kind.
Instead, beneath the blouse, her chest was smashed, entirely staved in.
My gut collapsed—what did I need it for, anyway, what was I ever going to eat again—and my own lungs wicked in on themselves. I made a smothered, keening sound as I caught her by the shoulders, trying to shift her head onto my knees, as if that could make a hint of difference.
“Iris,” she forced out, blood leaking between her lips. “Dunja . . . don’t . . .”
Then she simply stopped trying to breathe. I’d always heard there was supposed to be a last breath, a death rattle, but she didn’t even have the luxury of one. Her eyes slid shut, lashes curling over the hollows beneath. I could still see a sliver of white between her lids—and then they flickered like moth wings, lashes twitching. As if she were dreaming.
Frantically, I felt for her pulse at her throat—nothing. My insides clenching, I leaned in close to her parted lips, hoping fiercely that I’d feel even the faintest whisper of her breath against my cheek.
Still nothing. No heat. No heartbeat.
Just her eyes, still ticking back and forth beneath her lids like a metronome. Suddenly, all I could see was a shimmering net that had lowered in front of my own eyes. The last of my consciousness broke over me, and right before I went under, I looked up at the wall over the table and found it empty.
My glass bougainvillea was gone.
MALINA’S SCREAMS BROUGHT me back.
“Iris!” she was shrieking. “No, no, no, Riss, no!”
I thrashed my way back to her, sitting up so abruptly the world tilted and slid sideways. A rush of nausea swelled up my throat and I clamped my hand over my mouth, wrapping my other arm around my sister.
“Oh thank God, Riss, I thought you—I thought—” She buried her face into my neck, her shoulders heaving. “I thought you were gone too, there’s so much blood. . . .”
I looked down at myself. My front looked as though I’d been dipped in it, patches still shining slick. I trailed my fingers over the drenched fabric, feeling as though my hand belonged to someone else. It was sticky and cool, tacky between my fingertips as I rubbed them together.
Malina was crying more quietly now, but steadily, her nose streaming. “You were bent over her, and I thought maybe someone had attacked you both, and . . .” Her voice trailed off into a whimper. “She’s dead, Riss, she’s dead, oh my God. . . .”
I squeezed her hard against me. “But she isn’t. I know it looks like—it looks so bad—but she blinked earlier, and her eyes were moving—”
She shook her head once, a tight snap like a spasm, biting her lip. “She’s not breathing, Riss. There’s no pulse. I think . . .” Her voice broke. “I think she’s really gone.”
I shifted and folded my legs beneath me, but as soon as I tried to stand, the world grew blinding and trembly, as if I were inside a lightbulb filament. I let go of Lina and pressed both hands against my face until my cheekbones ached.
“I can’t stand up yet,” I told her. “Call an ambulance. If there’s anything left, maybe they can still bring her back.”
THEY TOOK MAMA away from us; we weren’t allowed to go with her, not even as next of kin, no matter how much I fought the paramedics and the police.