Fifteen minutes later, Lolek was throwing up in the back seat. Tata swerved onto the highway shoulder. Mama gave my brother a lemon drop to suck on while Tata emptied the plastic storage compartment on the side of the door where the vomit had collected, pushing out the sour brown sludge with an old newspaper.
“This is the perfect time to travel,” he said as the last of the vomit sloshed on the asphalt and we all got back in the car. “None of those loud foreigners on the beaches.”
“You’re right, Love. No tourists, just grenades,” said Mama. We could all tell she was starting to get in a mood, and likely over more than just the vomit. When Tata reached for the Bob Dylan mixtape that lay in a groove by the stick shift, she grabbed his hand.
“Stop it,” she said.
“Good peasant food,” Tata said. “That’s what will be there.”
We saw military vehicles on the highway, an ambulance here and there, a stray civilian car. The devastation waxed as we drove through small towns—all those distant grumbles of collapsing mortar now in plain sight—and waned when we reached the forests and sleepy hamlets. We stopped once to buy a wheel of hard cheese and a jar of honey from a tiny stall by the mountain road, and another time to pee in the bushes, when Tata shushed us so we could listen to the birds. With only chirps for distraction, my mind got loud with the imagined wail of the siren and the buzz of bomber jets. The rubble in those small towns haunted me, made the war seem more real. But I never feared anything when I was with my parents: being around them switched off the phantom sounds spinning through my mind, though Mama’s resolve seemed shakier lately. As we drove, she kept reaching back to scratch my bare shins or pinch my brother’s toes peeking from their strappy sandals, as if reminding us all that she was still there.
Tata stretched his arm out the window, fingers spread, and swayed it to the tune of the music that must’ve always played in his head, the wavy movement of his arm making it audible to me, to all of us, along with the lyrics of defiance—his refusal to tense up, cater to politicians’ whims.
By the time we got to the bridge, the night had thickened. Tata turned off the engine and put the car in neutral. He looked to the back seat.
“Ok folks, now is a good time to take a nap,” he said. He spoke in code for the benefit of my little brothers, who after a long day were already dozing off. But I knew what he meant. Tata wanted us to keep down so that any sniper bullets would swish over our heads instead of through them. For him, this was an uncomplicated precaution for a big payoff waiting on the other side: the sun and the sea, tomatoes, liver pâté sandwiches in the pine grove after a swim in the cool, tame Adriatic. I gave Tata a thumbs-up and lowered my head onto my brothers’ piled-up torsos.
“Turn around,” Mama said, her voice urgent. “This is crazy.”
I squirmed, felt the back of my bent knees sweat.
Tata placed his hand over Mama’s. “Do you hear anything?”
Mama shook her head fast.
“It’s the sound of peace,” Tata said. “Do you see anything?”
Mama inhaled with a grunt. “I don’t. And don’t you dare tell me the darkness is a sight of peace. Turn around.”
Tata pulled her forward by the hand, leaning on the dashboard. He looked up through the windshield and Mama followed. Her cheekbone glistened in the moonlight and her lips rounded, breathing out a slow gust as if cooling soup in a spoon.
Tata got out of the car, mumbled with the checkpoint soldiers—our guys—in a low voice. I heard the trunk open and our bags move about, rustling against each other. When the trunk clicked closed, a soldier’s face appeared in the driver’s window. He glanced blankly at all of us in the car as Mama returned an anxious smile, tying the fabric belt of her dress in an elaborate sailing knot.