I wondered whether she would consider adopting me, whoever she was. If she liked the look of me this much, she might like Malina even better. She could have us as a matched set.
Under my scrutiny she stopped touching her hair, and then began turning her own hand over back and forth, as if she’d forgotten it belonged to her. “Strange light here,” she murmured. “Grainy, almost? Or much too bright?” She glanced back up at me, quirking her head to the side like a sparrow. “Does it look strange to you? The caliber of the light?”
“Ah, no?” I made a show of looking around as if I had some actual method for gauging light. “Seems like a pretty standard-issue early-morning gradient, to me. But I’ve never really, uh, examined light all that closely. I don’t think.”
“Gradient!” She clasped her hands together, delighted. “Excellent word. Clever, too, then, and not just so lovely to look at. No wonder . . .”
She murmured that last bit low, like a secret to herself, but I could catch the pain behind it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, mistaking my baffled silence for embarrassment. “I’m babbling like an idiot. It just feels so odd to be back here again, after so long. It all seems so slovenly, somehow. And the smells . . .” She took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring. They were absurdly perfect, precise as blown glass. It seemed like such a silly thing to notice, yet there I was, admiring them. “I’m not sure if I even like it here, anymore.”
“Are you from around here, then?” I asked, curious. She had a touch of the lazy Montenegrin drawl to her accent, though nowhere near as strong as mine. Compared to the Serbs’ crisp speech, we all sounded like we were talking around a mouthful of honey.
“Not exactly here, but close enough. Much closer than where I’ve been, anyway, and all this looks more familiar than not.”
It occurred to me that this woman might be at least three-quarters batshit. Talking to her was kind of like riding a Tilt-a-Whirl, but I’d always liked those. “Maybe you know my mother, then? Jasmina. She owns this café.”
The woman’s lips twitched. The table rattled between us, so loudly I looked down to see if she had jostled it with her knees. But both her feet were on the ground, in dainty silver thong sandals. In contrast to the slender straps, her feet were roped with veins and knotted with bone spurs, the nails thick and unpolished. The table gave another solid rattle. Maybe a column of trucks lugging produce from Turkey was rumbling down the highway outside the city walls. Sometimes the stones carried the vibrations from the road.
She took another long breath and set both hands on the table, wrists crossed, a languorous movement that vaguely reminded me of someone, but that I couldn’t quite pin down. “As it happens, I do know her a bit,” she said. “I wonder if she remembers me. Do you think she might be free to say hello?”
“I can go take a look,” I offered. The chances of my mother prying herself away from her kitchen to chat with a near stranger were hilariously slim—and I would bear the brunt of her irritation, to boot—but I found that for this woman, I was willing to take the risk. “Who should I say is asking for her?”
“Tell her it’s Dunja.”
“Dunja . . . ?” I coaxed, eyebrows raised.
“Just Dunja. If she remembers, she’ll know.”
I could feel her gaze still on me as I slipped back into the café, but I didn’t mind. Despite the sunglasses, I hadn’t caught anything but kindness in the way she watched me, and something even deeper, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It felt almost like familiarity, but it couldn’t have been that. We’d never met before; I wouldn’t have forgotten someone like her.
Mama was rolling out phyllo dough in the back room, muscles coiling serpentine down her bare arms as she pressed her weight into the rolling pin. Nev wasn’t there; she’d probably fled out back for a cigarette, like she did whenever she saw us snarling at each other. There was a dusting of flour high on one of Mama’s cheeks, and her short, square fingernails were outlined in white.
Watching her, I imagined my heart encased with ice, like I always did when I had to deal with her after one of our flash-pan fights. Sometimes it was suspended in a laser-edged block, a perfect, transparent cube of clear and red. Other times I thought of a murkier slab, with just a smear of crimson behind dense whorls and eddies. I liked thinking about the shape that sheltered my raw heart, kept it safe.
She caught sight of me from the corner of her eye and straightened. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Are you serving a four-course meal out there? Filling out an application for our Michelin stars? I need you to start slicing strawberries.”
“Someone’s asking for you outside,” I replied, grateful that my voice didn’t even tremble.
“If it’s Marijana, the rent isn’t due for another week, so she can go straight to hell until then. And stay there, too, if possible,” she added sourly. “Humanity would rejoice as one.”
“It isn’t anyone we know. Some woman named Dunja. She wouldn’t give me her last name.”
Mama went so still I took a reflexive step back from her. It was uncanny, the way a snake freezes the split second before it strikes. She turned so pale that even her lips drained of color, and with her eyes wide and unfocused she was somehow even more beautiful, like a silent-movie heroine in a grayscale world.
For a moment, neither of us moved. It was so quiet I could have sworn I heard both our hearts thundering.
I broke the silence first. “You . . . you have flour on your face.”
She blinked, her eyes clearing as she focused on me. Moving like a marionette, she swiped a jerky hand over her face, missing the chalky patch.
“Let me get it.” I approached her warily. She still held the rolling pin in one hand, her knuckles white with the force of her grip. But she wet her lips and gave a single nod, so I reached up and brushed it away with my thumb. When she still didn’t stir, I moved to tuck back a stray curl that had come free of her braid. She caught my wrist with her free hand, and I choked back a yelp; her hands had always been steel-strong from her work in the kitchen.
“Leave it, Iris,” she commanded. “And stay back here. I had better not see you come out.”
“Why? Who is she? What—”
“No questions. This has nothing to do with you. She has nothing to do with you.” Mama looked through me, as if I had no business existing with her in this moment. “She can’t be here, and if she is—” She cut herself off, dragging her hand down her face until the iron mask of composure settled back over it. “You stay in here, Iris, if you know what’s good for you.”