Black by Tatjana Gromača, translated from Croatian by Ena Selimović

1

The house we lived in was made of wood. To one side were wooden steps, and a small squarish extension hung off the back. The extension looked like a beach dressing cabin. We used it to relieve ourselves. It hung high, just below the roof, like a strange craggy growth. Were you to look up at the house from below, from the river flowing just a few meters off, you would hear long streams of urine and spot muted turds plunging down into the open pit. 

On the wood-burning stove in the kitchen, milk was being heated. A thin film had formed on the milk and now rose above the pot’s rim like a parachute. Out on the street a herd of cows strolled past, back from grazing. All knew their way home—except one. In confusion, the cow entered our home. She stood beside the wood stove, lowered her head over the pot of milk, stuck out her tongue, and proceeded to gulp down the milk.  

I shared a bed with my grandmother. At night, Granny prayed to God. She would monotonously repeat the words of the prayer:  

— Holy Mary, Mother of God, full of grace, hear us sinners as you heard… and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, amen.  

She made me repeat those hypnotic words after her. I brought my hands together, pressed my child body against hers—old, lumpy, and withered—and recited same as she had. I closed my eyes, thinking the image of the Virgin Mary would appear. But, curiously enough, He himself had a habit of appearing, delicately wrapped in a blue scarf. 

One day the children in the village taught me a new song. I rushed back to my grandmother:  

— Jesus Christ, the motorist, Mother of God, the bicyclist! 

Granny took out the long switch she kept behind the stove and beat me with it. I cried. I didn’t know why she was beating me. I’d so liked imagining Jesus speeding past on a motorcycle while the wind ruffled his hair and beard, and the habitually calm face of Mother of God in exertion as she turned the pedals, round beads of sweat rolling slowly down her forehead.  

2

One night we were woken by a loud banging. At the door stood a woman from the neighborhood. She was nearly naked. She was only wearing women’s lingerie bottoms called kombine and thin hula-hoop tights. Her feet were bare. It was winter, the road covered by a thin layer of ice. The woman was shivering—she shook like a frozen, half-plucked bird—and crying. She’d run away from her husband who’d gotten drunk again and beat her.  

Granny heated a brick. She wrapped it in an old rag, turned to the woman, and said — Here! The woman grabbed the warm bundle, her breath still visible. Her face was streaked with blue lines, as if someone had drawn on it with a faint pen. She smelled unusual, sweetish. Almost like decay. She said — I’m not going back there, not ever again! 

I wanted to warm her, I wanted her not to be afraid. I pressed the heavy feather blanket with all my strength over my body and hers. Her body was tiny, as if it hadn’t borne so many children. Slowly she stopped shivering as we sank into sleep, and through the small grated window above our heads, we watched the street, the snow, and the flickering of a dim lamp. 

3

We had a dog, given to us by a man named Mika. We named the dog Miki. It was our way of showing gratitude to the man who’d gifted him to us. Winters, Dad would tie Miki to the sled. He would run down the hill where the plum trees grew and pull the sled. A child was sitting on the sled. His face wasn’t visible under the hat and scarf wrapped around it. The child was laughing, and so was the dog. They collided with a plum tree. They were lucky, no one was hurt. The man who gave us the dog had an unusual head. The child was entertained by comparing the head of the dog with the head of the man. The child thought the two heads would resemble one another. But the man’s head was quite different from the dog’s. It was a fiery red color, with craters left over from when the man was a child and had chickenpox. He laughed all the time. He died from alcohol, because he had to drink all the time to laugh all the time. 

4

Father worked in a factory. He often left at night and returned in the morning, when everyone else was still asleep. From the outside, the factory looked like a concentration camp. It was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. Two slender streetlights illuminated the factory buildings and the narrow spaces between them, filled with ladders and metal pipes. At the entrance sat an armed guard. He made sure no one fled from the factory or snuck in without permission. In small clusters the workers entered and exited the factory grounds. Cars waited for them in the parking lot. When they sat in and started their cars, they were free.

Sometimes the workers stole from the factory. They would wrap themselves in wiring, from the waist to the underarms, and then put on a jacket or winter coat. They would pass by the security booth where the guard sat, but he wouldn’t notice a thing. The workers didn’t steal the wire because they didn’t have the money to buy it, but because they wanted to feel—at least for a few moments—better than they usually did.

5

Mother had a box full of necklaces. She rarely wore them. They lay tangled in small, ball-shaped nests as evidence that she had once—when she was still young—lived a different life. In that life, Mother would take the necklaces out of the box, place them around her neck, and study her reflection in the mirror. Now she hid them, like the workers the wire. Only sometimes, she let me put them on around my neck, but before Father returned home from work, I had to quickly take them off and run them back to the room, where they lay tangled again under the lid of the box.  

6

Father smoked heavily. He didn’t go out drinking like the other men. While sawing wood, he sawed off a piece of his thumb, and while riding a motorcycle, he fell off and injured his knee. The knee moved out of position and had to be put back. We traveled to some other village, to see an old woman dressed in black who fixed his knee. 

— Now you’re free to play football — the woman in black said and wiped her hands with a rag that smelled of vinegar.  

The piece of finger he sawed off, no one put back. The finger remained short and crippled. Without the pad or nail, it looked like a person without a head.  

7

Father always rose early in the morning. He was woken by Granny. She would take a broom and whack it against the aluminum pipe of the wood-burning stove. Her blows shook the stove, the chimney, and the entire house. 

—Get up, it’s time for work! 

The fire in the stove was lit and the smoke made its way out through the chimney. It was the same stove in which Grandmother had, in the past, during the war, hid a rifle from the enemy. The enemy had entered the wooden house and searched everything, without thinking to open the door of the stove, which held a rifle wrapped in an old rag. 

8

Summers, a man selling ice cream would visit the village. He rode a bicycle. From the handlebars there hung a large white box holding the ice cream. The man smiled and gently turned the pedals, as if in an old, slow-motion film. He had a black mustache and a white lab coat and cap. He didn’t have to shout out anything—without his saying a word, everyone knew who he was. I ran outside and stopped in front of his bicycle. 

—Granny’s in the field, she’s got the money. Please wait while I get her! 

I ran far into the field. Running, I listened to my heavy breathing. My heart beat hard. Its pounding, deep within, mixed with the quiet rustling of the grass bending under my feet. Grandmother picked up the hoe; she smelled of dirt and sweat. With a hurried step, she strode behind me, pushing the ground away with the hoe, as if she had on skis, and the hoe was her ski pole. It was hot. The heat radiated from everywhere, even from Grandmother’s black dress and headscarf. When we arrived at our house, the man who sold ice cream was still standing there and smiling. And the box holding the ice cream was still dangling from his bicycle, like a giant ice cube. His white lab coat shimmered, unreal, like an apparition, like something from a dream or a prayer. 

9

On Sundays, Father and Mother argued. Mother argued with Granny, and then with Father as well. Afterwards she would leave the unwashed dishes and the unmade lunch on the stove. She would take me by the hand and tug it firmly, hard enough to pull it right out of its socket. We went out of the house and walked all the way to the village limits, where the cornfields began and where you could see the murky river. Two of Mother’s old cousins lived there, with thick glasses and scarves on their heads. They had homemade cow cheese, sour cream, and cornbread. They sat by the stove and talked about illness, misfortune, and death. Their voices were so monotonous and boring, that what they actually said was an insignificant detail. Much more significant was the tone of the voices coming out of their dry, twisted lips. They sounded like old, bristling hens clucking, though years had passed since they’d laid an egg. 

— Do you have seeds? 

— The magpies nipped all the cherries! 

Their scarves, dresses, and aprons could have turned into feathers themselves—old, gray, sharp feathers, with tassels of dried mud.

10

Night approached. Mother and I, walking carefully to avoid stepping into the cow dung in the road, were making our way home. Under the dim streetlight we must have looked strange—holding hands, capering and hopping over the dark mounds. You could hear the rhythmic stomping of our shoes, as if someone had, specially for us, drawn squares on the asphalt not with chalk but with cow dung, and said — There, go play some hopscotch! 

11

Whenever she’d had enough of everything, Mother would say — Look where we live! A castle in the air! Come night, while lying beside Grandmother in bed, I imagined, when I closed my eyes, that our wooden house had grown wings, and that all night, while we all slept—Father, Mother, Grandmother, and I—we floated together with the castle, neither in the sky nor on the ground.   

12

I came upon a little kitten and brought him home. Mother kicked him out into the yard. I ran outside, picked up the kitten, and went far from home, to the same cornfield at the village limits that we passed when we visited our old cousins. There, I cuddled the kitten and crooned to him until night fell. I daydreamed how one day I’d take him far, far away, to some bigger and better place, where the nights shined with colorful lights, and cars slowly glided down the streets, and men wore trench coats and paused before illuminated shop windows, and women had soft and wavy long hair that smelled like strawberry and chocolate pudding. 

Granny found me crouching in the cornfield. She had a stick in her hand with which she beat me. I didn’t cry, because nothing hurt. I pressed my lips together as tightly as I could, thinking about the faraway world to which I’d one day go, together with my kitten.

13 

I had two friends. One wore rubber boots and shorts, and the other had dried snot above his lip. Together we played war, cooks, or merchants. Once, we were playing cooks. I peed in the sand and used that to knead little cakes. I took the cakes over to my two friends to try. I pretended I was also eating, moving my jaw and pursing my lips as if I were shifting the bite of sand and pee. 

— It’s good — I said — this cake’s really good.  

They watched me with eyes full of envy and yearning. 

— Give us some too, we want to eat cake too — they said, their mouths filling with saliva. 

— Okay — I said and handed each a small, muddy glob. 

They shoved the globs into their mouths.   

— It’s so good, this cake’s really good! — they said, clicking their tongues, while their teeth grinded against the tiny pebbles of sand. 

14

In the yard, we had hens, geese, and ducks. They flocked under the plum tree and pecked at the corn. I would bring them crushed grain in my skirt, holding the hem up with my hands. Once I was close enough to them, I would grab a handful of the corn and toss it, tracing circles and long arcs with my arms, as if casting a spell. The corn fell noisily to the ground, as if a strange cloud had appeared over us there and then, raining corn instead of water.  

One of the little ducklings was mine. It was no bigger than a yellow ball that could fit into a pant pocket. Its feathers were soft like a nice silk scarf. Every day I would go behind the house, squat to pick up the duckling, and place it against my cheek. I would croon to him quietly, cuddle and pet him, pressing him against my chest, while the other ducklings silently pattered around us. One day I loved and cuddled him so much that he fainted from that love and fell asleep, and he never woke up again. 

 15

Mother took me to the city. We went to see Grandpa Frost, because he had brought me a gift. We waited for the bus, but the bus never came. We walked to the city. It was winter, and snow was falling. A cold wind blew. All around us were high snowdrifts, like firm white walls someone had erected overnight. We walked along the endless intersecting paths on which the snow mixed with mud. The mud and the snow made our shoes and pants wet and dirty. 

When we arrived in the city, we entered a large department store. It was cozy and warm inside. From the speakers, music echoed, and the saleswomen smiled tenderly at us, as if they’d known we were coming and were now especially delighted to see us. We bought new shoes and new pants, which were even nicer than the previous ones. We stood in the changing room, behind the curtain. There, we scrunched our muddy pants and stuffed them into a bag, along with the shoes. Then we went to see Grandpa Frost. 

16

Grandpa Frost asked me if I’d been a good girl. He had a gift in his hand, wrapped in a large piece of clear plastic that revealed ball-like oranges and a mysterious fabric with an attractive floral pattern.  

I nodded my head as if to say — Yes! — but my cheeks became red, because I remembered the cornfield, the kitten, the mud cakes, and the duckling lying in its little grave.  

17

Mother worked where other women worked: in an office in the city. The hallways of the building where her office was located smelled slightly sour. It was a smell that mixed with the smell of sweat-soaked nylon socks and the smell of salami, which the women ate for lunch. My mother had her own wooden desk, with two drawers and a small machine for calculating. On the machine, she added and subtracted numbers. She had to be careful that not one number was incorrectly accounted for, since that could lead to her being reprimanded, and maybe even to losing her job. In one drawer, she kept paper napkins, half a loaf of bread, canned pašteta, or a sliver of slightly sour salami wrapped in shiny white paper. 

Each day, the women were allowed to leave the office for half an hour. They would walk around the city, pay their bills at the post office, and buy food, which they would later take home. Sometimes they also bought discounted clothes. They would stand in lines, pushing to get to the large bins with all the clothes that had manufacturing defects. When they managed to break through the crowd, they would grab the clothes and ravenously pull them out of the piles, flinging them from one side to the other. As if they had suddenly grown unbridled or become children, picking up and throwing fallen leaves someone had raked into piles. 

— Miss, how much is this undershirt? 

— Miss, how much are these underwear? — they shouted, endeavoring, with clothes dangling from their extended arms, to attract the saleswoman’s attention. 

18

Mother came home from work by bus. The bus dropped off the women at the entrance to the village, and, in little groups, they slowly walked homeward, dragging their bags behind them. They looked like prisoners who’d been released after many years. Their faces were expressionless, without even an inkling of joy that they were finally returning to their homes, to their husbands and their children. 

Upon arriving home, Mother was angry. She would step outside the house and shake out all the sheets, which she pulled tight over the beds. Then she warmed the food she’d cooked the night before. She sliced the bread and collected all the crumbs on the table. She placed the pot on the table. Steam rose from the pot. She used a large spoon to put the food on the plate. Then she sat down at the table and ate. 

19

My friend asked me to play with her under a trailer. We lay on a wool throw. She took off my underwear and put her tongue in my mouth. She had a small, warm tongue. She closed her eyes. Her sickly-sweet breath passed onto my body. She was moaning and throwing her head left — right and back, like an actress in a film. She squirmed and held onto me with her little knobby fists. Her fingernails were painted bright red. The polish had partly peeled off—all that remained were speckled islets of blood. They spread across and came together on my stomach and my arms, like little crab claws that couldn’t fully contain their catch.  

20

My cousin called me over to the hayloft. He was smiling, and his eyes were glowing like two fireflies. He said:   

— If you take off your underwear and show me the inside thing, I’ll give you whatever you want! 

I wanted the little black box with the gray lid in my cousin’s room.  

— Deal — my cousin said. 

And then he crouched and pulled my underwear down. With his long, bony fingers, he opened the inside thing. He lowered his head, like a mechanic inspecting a broken-down car. He tilted it left — right, stretching and lifting the two slivers of white flesh between my legs. His fingers were like tweezers, and that thing in my underwear like an unusual butterfly he’d captured for the first time. 

21

My cousin kept his promise. I took the little black box and gray lid with me into the orchard. There, I opened the box, slowly, like my cousin opened the white flesh in my underwear. Inside, there was a black role with holes along the edges. Unfurled and raised to the sun, the long strip showed people—their faces as sooty as the faces of chimneysweeps—standing in front of their home and looking straight ahead, at the photographer. 

22

Father tore down the wooden house. We built a new one, made of brick. In the house made of brick, we had a large white metal bathtub where we bathed every Sunday night. Granny refused to budge from the wooden house. She sat on the bed as if someone had glued her to it. She kept repeating: 

— I was born here and I’ll die here! 

I had trouble imagining Granny dying, because we were going to tear down the wooden house. So we had to unglue her from the bed and go live in the brick house.  

Father took a long, thick cable and wrapped it around the wooden house. The house looked like a tall person with a tape measure around his waist. When he hooked the cable to the tractor, he hopped onto the seat. He started the tractor and inched forward. The house fell to the ground, coming down as if it had been the most ordinary toy and not a real house we’d lived in, neither in the sky nor on the ground.   

23

Granny was hunchbacked, her body was bent in half. Her head wasn’t in the same place as other people’s heads were. It was like the head of a turtle, extending out from its shell. She wore a headscarf and always dressed in black, as if in mourning.  

In the armoire, in a large white shoebox, she kept a new dress sewn by a tailor. She had never worn it. When we were alone, she would pull that box out of the dark hollows of the armoire, remove the lid, and unfurl the new dress, which smelled of fresh fabric.  

— This will be for my funeral. You’ll all dress me in this when I die. 

As she said this, her face was strangely at peace, as if she already knew how she’d look at the point when she was already dead. 

24

Granny spoke often about death. She had a monotonous, lifeless voice with which she’d say — If only I’d die, all I want is to die!  

She said this while soaking her feet in a water basin or using a knife to remove the thickened skin on her heels. I thought Granny really wanted to die. Only much later, when she had long been dead, I realized she hadn’t said this because she wanted to die, but because she wanted the rest of us to show her we didn’t want her to die. But, in silence, we continued watching TV, pretending we couldn’t hear her and had nothing whatsoever to do with her death. 

25

I often thought Granny was dead. Especially when I caught sight of her sleeping with her mouth wide open. Her bony, yellow face came to resemble the faces of dead people in films. Her plastic white teeth lay unmoving, slanted at the very opening of her mouth, completely detached from her light red gums.  

Then she would wake—she hadn’t died after all. She would ask me to bring her the small square candies in the drawer of the cabinet. Those belonged to her and her alone.       

She only had the candy on rare occasions, which was why they’d turned dark orange, from staleness and moisture. With her knobby, crooked fingers, she would remove the paper wrapping around two candies—one for her, while the other she extended to me, as a reward for my readiness to obey. 

26

Granny I never called “Grandma.” I always called her “Granny.” Father kept correcting me — Don’t say “Granny,” say “Grandma.” I took care in how I spoke, and a couple of times I cautiously said “Grandma,” like I was listening intently to that word, its correctness unconvincing for me. But then I’d slip again and go back to saying Granny, Granny… I knew: Granny wasn’t Grandma—she was Granny. 

Granny brought me along to forgiveness. On the Day of Forgiveness, a big mass was held in front of the church in town. The mass celebrated the Virgin Mary—same as the one who rode the bicycle. The priest recited the holy words of the prayer, while his assistant walked among the people standing in a dejected swarm. He shook a red cloth bag, hanging from a stick, before their noses, and they obediently lowered their hands into it. When he reached me, he likewise shook the bag. 

27

Granny slapped my hand, because I’d embarrassed her. I wasn’t supposed to take money out of the bag on the stick, but put money in. So, before we headed out, she put a few coins in an empty matchbox. As we made our way, the box got pressed and flattened in my pocket. I gave the money to a lady next to the church who sold colorful gingerbread necklaces threaded with thin string. I put the necklace on. The yellow and red gingerbreads lay on my chest, like special medals. Each time hunger arrived, I lifted a medal from my chest, pulled it off the string with my teeth, and let it slowly melt and disappear in my mouth. 

28

Sometimes Granny ran away from home. She would leave us because no one loved her—plus, she didn’t like living in the brick house. She would grab her wooden cane, which helped her move faster. She would put on a clean wool headscarf—black with white squares—and tie it tight. The knot under her bony chin was evidence of her determination. There it stayed: girth and freshly tightened, with no intention of loosening. As she tightened her headscarf, she shouted:  

— May I never come back, ever again!  

There was no one around to hear her except me.    

I begged Granny not to go anywhere. In my mind, I strove to see where she could go. I imagined various relatives and godparents cracking the doors of their apartments the slightest open while Granny stood before them leaning on her cane. No one wanted to admit her.  

Buses passed by on the street—people were returning from the factories. Granny walked, moving faster than was her habit. It was unusual to see her so small, dark, and hunched as she deftly wound between the cars. The neighbors in their front yards stood watching her, motionless like wax figures, like stuffed birds from an exotic museum.   

She typically reached the bus station and the city limits sign. There, she would pause, lean on her cane, then, in an instant, straighten her back. She would raise her head along with her entire upper body high up, like a fire tower suddenly straightening. Then, she would abruptly turn around, as if everything that had happened until then was being undone. She lowered her body again and silently headed back, homebound. 

29

Granny ended up in the hospital. Father and I visited her. The hospital was a large old building with thick walls and high windows, screened by a dense road of chestnut trees. Their denseness suggested something hidden lay beyond the trees. Granny’s bed was at the far end of a large room that reeked of urine. She sat there stiff, like a doll, and watched us, with a smile on her face.  

The other women in the room were restless. One unbuttoned her oversized nightgown, and her shriveled breasts fell out. She approached my father and draped herself around his neck. Her body was relaxed, her bare feet dragged across the white tiles like dirty nylon stockings. She laughed absently and loudly. 

30

Granny pointed to her slippers, which stood right under her bed.  

— Look — she said — they’ve pissed in my slippers again!  

Her face was innocent and pure, as if she’d returned to a time when she was still a little girl. 

31

Granny was suspended in a time past, when she was young, tall, and as upright as a blade of grass. She’d picked out this particular period because it had been her best. The rest of us were also set in that time. I was no longer me, but her late sister. Father was no longer Father, since he hadn’t even been born at that point, but Granny’s brother. Granny no longer had to suffer for being unglued from the wooden house. Nor did she even need to say she wanted to die. She was content. 

When she died, we clothed her in the new dress she kept in the armoire, slipped on her brown suede shoes, and tied a silken black headscarf. Her hands, as they’d always been, were clasped together, as if she was still praying.