They take me to the bar with them at the end of their long work weeks because I tend to ham it up in front of an audience, plus I like to sing and dance. They lift me to the shiny top of the bar counter. My shoes are shiny too—Hana polishes them as if they were the nonexistent family silver—and I like to fling myself around in time to the peppy folk dance music, all of which seems to please the heavy-lidded men. Most of them look like my tata and my djed: serious, even tragic, with their high cheekbones and abundant hair combed straight back, and their eyes that tell you almost nothing, except when they weep, which they often do while they are drinking their šljivovica, their powerful plum brandy. Hoping to cheer them up, I sing a bird-like, four-year-old’s version of the Croatian national anthem, “Our Beautiful Homeland,” and, with a tremendous snuffling and clearing of throats, they all join in.
I love these sad-eyed men, their cigarettes and their šljivovica and their impassive, male faces. I love their smells, which are exactly like the male smells of my tata and my djed, and I feel safe and whole with them. But where is Stefan? Why isn’t Stefan ever along? Even at four, I know they have rejected him, Bruno and Milo. They have cast him out of the family, or would if only Hana let them.
Here’s what else I remember. I am seven and my brother is eleven and we are taking a bus by ourselves to some place in the city I’ve never been, which is really most of Chicago since our family rarely strays from the neighborhood around St. Silvan’s. It’s late in the day and we are both wearing our gray and blue Catholic school uniforms. Stefan seems nervous, probably because I’m along. For several years now, ever since he got his paper route, he’s been making private excursions to who knows where, and I’ve been bugging him for quite some time to take me too so I don’t have to rattle around the house alone with Hana. Which is what happens on most weekdays after school since Tata and Djed only take me to the bar on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons. Hana, who is always messing with my hair and giving me lectures about being more ladylike, drives me nuts, so I’m in constant trouble with her these days, a thorn in her otherwise impervious flesh, which makes Bruno appreciate me all the more.
Stefan has finally succumbed to my pleadings, no doubt with trepidation; if anything happens to me while we’re out and about, he knows what our father will do. Hana thinks I’m spoiled (of course I am), but my beef with her is nothing like Stefan’s with his tata. Bruno can barely stand to look at him, except when he’s got an excuse to take off his belt. Stefan has learned to stay out of his way, which means out of Milo’s way too. The two of them are like peas in a pod, Milo simply a smaller, older, and somehow more ominous version of Bruno, though with a lot less English at his disposal. I, who am still so full of charm, so childishly untroubled by any notion of justice, remain perfectly at ease with all three of them.
But more than anything, I love being alone with Stefan, whom I call “Brat,” which means brother in Croatian, a term I think completely hilarious. I give him a complacent glance and pipe, “Brat, where are we going?”
Sunk in his own worried thoughts, he’s been staring out the bus window, but now he looks down at me in his kindly, abstracted way. No matter how hard I push him, no matter how I swashbuckle around the house when Bruno and Milo are there to watch my back, Stefan loves me like nobody else does or ever will. Even at seven, I recognize this. He sees something in me that’s not simply funny or cute or entertaining, but instead hidden and valuable and mysterious, something that even now, at thirty-four, I’ve never yet had a single glimpse of no matter how hard I’ve hunted.
He slings an arm around my narrow little shoulders. “I’m taking you to the art museum,” he says. We spend the next two hours in the Art Institute’s photography collection, and when we emerge into a chill wind off the lake, I am in a state. I have never seen anything so glorious, not in church, not in the interminable Croatian festivals we go to, not in books. Riding the buses home in the dark, suddenly understanding what a price Stefan’s going to pay for this adventure of ours, still and all, I am happy. Silent, entranced with what I’ve seen, I cling to my brother’s hand.
Here’s what I remember. It’s my birthday, I am eight, and for once, everybody seems relaxed. I have agreed without a battle to wear the frilly dress that Hana sewed for me, have even allowed her to put ribbons in my hair. Bruno and Milo are smoking celebratory cigars, a practice normally forbidden within the confines of my mother’s domain. Stefan’s hanging around in the background, looking bashfully pleased with himself. I open my gifts—a light-up Virgin Mary from that eminently predictable Catholic amongst us, a chocolate bar from my silent grandfather, a little green jackknife with a satisfyingly sharp blade from my abnormally boisterous tata. Then Stefan’s, which to my joyous surprise turns out to be a camera, my very first, a Brownie 127 bought with his hard-earned paper route money.
Here’s what else I remember. Milo, my taciturn djed with the give-away-nothing eyes, becoming fixated overnight on fourteen-year-old Stefan. Suddenly wanting to talk with my brat, the same sweet and skinny boy he’s always been, though much taller now, taller even than Bruno. My grandfather standing guard on the porch until my brother appears at the end of the block in his too-short Catholic school uniform, then shepherding him into his room and closing the door behind them, shutting me out entirely. I resent this, but not as much as Bruno does when he finally figures out what’s going on. It’s not just that he’s been replaced as the long-time apple of his tata’s eye. It’s a whole lot more than this, though I can’t figure out what. Silent Milo wants to talk, the silence of years is sloughing off like dead skin, and Bruno is half-frantic about . . . what? What is driving him so crazy all of a sudden?
And why has Milo zeroed in on Stefan this way? Is it because he’s become, at fourteen, the star pupil at St. Silvan’s? Or that he’s rapidly morphing into a long-legged young man with hints of incipient handsomeness about him, who clearly has a future? Whatever’s going on, Milo is determined to harness something in Stefan for his own purposes. And weirdly enough, Hana, normally so suspicious, so resentful of being left out of things, is fine with this. She’s immensely proud of her boy, who is not only the valedictorian of our school but also head altar server. It’s only Bruno who can’t handle the new family dynamic. Only Bruno, and of course, sweet little me.
I try to worm my way in, but Stefan’s having none of it. For the first time in his life, the family patriarch is taking him seriously. And after years of brutal rejection, he’s totally vulnerable, swept entirely off his feet by the attention. I lurk sullenly around, trying to make him feel guilty, and when that doesn’t work, I wait till he’s off delivering papers, then sneak into his room with my Brownie. What’s Djed been giving him? Because I’ve seen Brat carrying things when he leaves my grandfather’s room.
Nothing is hidden very well. Stefan is too trusting for that. I find a faded watch cap, a small bag of medals that look to me like something you’d buy in the St. Silvan’s Catholic gift shop, a red-and-white checkered scarf. I find some old papers, written in Croatian, which I can’t read, and a handful of black-and-white photos, one of which may actually be of my dead grandmother. I study this for a while. She’s pretty, I decide, though definitely looks exhausted. And then I find the box. It’s under Stefan’s bed, pushed to the back corner, up against the wall. It’s scuffed and stained, and at first I think it’s an old cigar box except there’s a lock on it with no attached key. I hold it sideways next to my ear and shake it. Something—it sounds heavy—shifts inside. I pick at the lock with my fingernail. Nothing. I find all of this highly irritating, Brat hiding something important from me, so I set the box in the middle of the bed, hold up my Brownie, and snap a photo. I snap photos of everything, and to make sure Stefan knows I’m onto him, leave all of it spread out across the bedspread, then flounce out of the room, slamming the door behind me. There.
This is what I remember. Out of the blue, Milo vanishing. One afternoon closeted in the bedroom with Stefan, the next, gone without a trace. Bruno going berserk, brandishing a pistol I’ve never seen before—even at ten, this concerns me—vowing vengeance against the kopiles, whoever they may be, who’ve kidnapped his dad. Hana, on the other hand, noticing out loud that Milo has not been himself these days (look at all the hours he’s been spending with Stefan, though she doesn’t say a word about this to the