Disbelief

The subtle hum of a bird’s song did not wake me nor did the sun’s ascent, rather my eyes suddenly opened in response to a sharp crash that strained my body. The morning light leaked through the drab, unsightly window. Although brilliant, it felt blinding. A voice, undoubtedly frustrated, cascaded down the hallway, only to be stopped by my withering, wooden door. I could sense it was my mother’s irritation by its restrained nature as if she begged for the emotion to remain placid in her throat.

I simply rolled my eyes. The chaos called me to investigate, but my body buried itself beneath my blanket instead, forgoing the indistinguishable mess going on outside my room.

Like a distant groundhog, I shielded myself from the outside world. In my case, however, it was a relatively mediocre sheet of cotton that came to my defense. At least it did until my mother burst through my door. She did it unusually quickly, too, causing the potted fern on my dresser to fall over and break. There it was, another crash to jolt me awake, but she continued on like it didn’t even happen.

I didn’t understand her nature until I uncovered myself, only to be greeted by an obscure rendition of a woman who is almost always the reflection of repose. Sweat gleaning on her temple, shirt backward, and hair frizzing on each end, she glared at me, seemingly wide-eyed and restless.

“Where’s your passport?” She asked while frantically rummaging through my dresser. I just shook my head. Do I even have a passport? I’ve never even left the country.

Now fully awake, I got out of bed to calm the strange fire that had possessed my mother. I looked around the room. Clothes laid haphazardly across the floor. Shattered pieces of clay remained by the door. Everything was a mess. I just wanted to sleep in for once.

“Why would my passport be hidden in my socks? Why are you looking for it, anyway?”

“We’re leaving,” she snapped.

“Leaving? Where are we going?” I asked, half stammering.

“Ana, your father’s sister in Croatia, has an extra bedroom that she’s letting you and your sisters stay in until we find a safer place to live. Your father and I will figure something out for the two of us on the way there.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, more fueled by confusion than fear.

She stopped rummaging for a moment, and for the first time since I’ve woken up, the house felt still. She stared at me, almost grimly, while her dry, cracked hands fiddled with a frayed string on her shirt.

“The militia is coming to Samac and other towns nearby. Everyone is saying they’re raiding homes and taking in prisoners. We need to leave,” she attempted to insist; however, her voice came off sounding weak and unsure, like a little girl trying to put up a fight. I just stared at her, but she couldn’t seem to reciprocate the action.

What is she even saying? It all sounds crazy. This turmoil in the country is simply political and nothing more, and she wants us to leave our home like some refugees. There’s no way she thought of this on her own.

“Did Dad put you up to this?” I asked, demanding an answer. He always does this—guilting her into decisions she doesn’t want to go through with. It’s agonizing how he can shatter the balance of this entire family with the touch of his finger. I looked over. She was crying. I felt my face growing hot.

I know I should’ve consoled her. It’s what she would do for me in that situation, but my body didn’t move. I stared at her for a moment, watching her tears struggle to fall out of her eyes as if they were ashamed and trying to hide. Reach for her! Hug her! I reached out, but my hands met the curtains behind her, instead.

“Is this what war looks like?” I asked as I tugged open the curtains. Although I looked directly into my mother’s plaintive eyes, I found myself speaking more to my father. Outside, a soft hum of voices and an occasional chirp of a bird accompanied the silence. The morning sun now fully penetrated my room, softening everything around us with its light, milky touch, yet the rays were not potent enough to dry my mother’s tears. Two children—young girls—laughed just below the window sill as they danced in their green dresses, spinning through the balmy breeze, yet my mother still shivered, despite the tepid air. For a moment, I admired, while my mother tensely analyzed, the peace outside our home, how quiet and frankly normal it seemed.

She gave no response other than the breath that escaped her lips, so I simply sighed and left the room, dodging the dirt and pot pieces on the way out.

“Ivan, where are you going? We need you,” she cried out, her voice cracking. “I need you.”

“Nowhere! That’s the point. I’m not going anywhere.”

Her voice grew fainter as I walked away, and I selfishly felt at peace. However, a frigid chill displaced the warmth that previously enveloped my body. I continued walking, leading myself down the dim hallway. The walk strangely felt longer than usual. Each second clung to the present as if every one that passed refused the progression of time, dragging the current moment as long as possible. As it happened, I simply ignored the feeling, but I should’ve listened to the vague plead of time.

In the darkness, my ears picked up on a decrepit voice, raspy in tone and quiet in volume. To my right, my father sat sulked in his chair in our sad excuse of a living room. Despite the faint flame, the cigarette that he instinctively held between his fingers was the only light in the room. The tattered curtains blocked out any rays, creating a counterfeit twilight in the early morning. My feet remained glued to the floor directly outside the room, but my body now faced him as I stood unnaturally stiff.

“You never listened. Even as a kid, you were always running away from us, wanting to do your own thing. I hated that about you,” he said, describing it with surprisingly no anger in his statement, rather a disappointed acceptance.

His head lifted and his eyes stared towards at me. His hollow glare simply went through me like a dying light leaking through a window, but it was weak. The cigarette’s frail glint almost felt brighter than any light in my father’s eyes.

“Why now? Why out of all of the times you decided to leave, decided to run off, you want to stay now?” he asked. I sensed the genuinity in his voice. “There’s nothing left here for us. There will be nothing left here. Down south, cities are burning already. People are dying. It’s all dead, all ash.”

“I don’t believe that. Everything here seems okay right now, and who’s going to protect the house, anyway?” I told the truth but left out one part: I was tired of running. I didn’t want to abandon my home. My entire life was here; all of our lives were here. It would be like we were abandoning ourselves, our identity.

He tossed the lit cigarette onto the floor but didn’t stomp on it, allowing it to continue burning.

“Are you stupid? You can burn the house down like that,” I hissed without hesitation.

“Let it burn,” he lamented.

“But—“ I said, slightly abashed. For a moment, I felt like a child—helpless.

“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted as he spat on the ground.

In rebellion, I walked over and stomped on the cigarette, leaving a clouded stain on the carpet.

“Whatever. It’s a weak flame, anyway. It’s just a little spark.” I brushed it off and looked up at him, desirous for any indication of concern. But it was like I wasn’t even there. His eyes seemed heavy but not unfocused, and I realized they were fixed on the small crucifix that hung in the dark directly behind me. The air suddenly felt thinner in the bleak room.

“Every fire has to start with some small spark, though, right? Even a flicker can grow into a forest fire,” he quietly mumbled it as if he were speaking more to himself than me.

I momentarily looked at him and simply left the room. I couldn’t handle it any longer. In doing so, I expected a rush of anger, maybe even despair. How could anything they’re saying be real? But, a numbness blanketed my mind, instead.

In the distance, I heard my mother’s voice. She apparently found my passport, and my father didn’t care. The bickering continued until it grew into a fierce and undying argument. As I walked further away, exact words became an indistinct murmur, yet I still sensed the pain in my mother’s voice. It almost made me want to change my mind about staying. I loved her, but I knew I had to stand my ground.

I quickly found myself walking to my room, just wanting to go back to bed, back to before I awoke to such chaos. However, just as I was about to reach my safe haven, my sweet relief was interrupted. Shattered pieces of glass lay on the floor right outside of the door. How could I miss that when I walked out earlier? Was I that distracted by my thoughts?

Just below my feet, a folded, worn picture of my family stared at me through the fragments of an old picture frame. I immediately recognized it because it had hung in the hallway for as long as I could remember. On the other side of the hallway, a picture of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall, intact and unharmed, looming over the fractured wreck. I stood frozen, dumbfounded at what I should do as my eyes darted back and forth between the two photos. I then bent down to slowly clean the mess.

The day we took that photo, everything felt right. My mother’s smile radiated confidence and no worry gleaned in her eyes. My father was holding me instead of a cigarette. My sisters Marija and Kata were in it too, so it was taken before they moved out of the house. They were smiling from ear to ear, as well. Although the photograph seemed a little forced, the moment itself was real, and it was blissful.

But, now, it simply lay broken on the floor. Shattered. Ruined.

Suddenly, a door slammed from afar, which momentarily halted the distressed bickering of my parents; however, it caused the aged, feeble walls of my home to shake. As a result, another crash pierced the dense air directly next to me. I looked to my left, only to be greeted by the barren wall where the photo of Mary delicately hung a moment before. She, too, faced the same impaired fate.

As I knelt in the heap of glass, I felt everything around me lay shattered, too.