TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Olja Knežević

been intentionally cut in a punk hairstyle, it just looks mangy. Mom’s hands are a greenish yellow, and so are her feet, which I am not supposed to see, but I always look at them before she slides them into her slippers because she wants to sit, she tells us, and not lie down while Dad and I are in her room. She wears a lot of makeup and shewears awig when she expects us to visit. All around are those lavender bottles of Yardley deodorant, which she sprays on herself and her squeaky hospital mattress to try to cover up the complex stench of her illness. “It’s good, I always recognize those cheerful footsteps of yours,” she tells me, “so I pull myself together on the fly. I’ll need a new bottle of Yardley.” She gives me a scrap of graph paper. “Here’s a list of things to buy for me.” The list is illegible, just scribbles on paper, lines that scare me, arrows pointed at my eyes. Dad stands behind me, he sees that the paper doesn’t have any real words on it, and he squeezes my shoulder with his beefy hand, a sign that I shouldn’t say anything about it. “But aren’t you coming home soon?” I ask her. “The May Day Festival is coming up. We’re practicing a dance number to a Boney M song. I’m the man in the group. I took your white hat and Aunt Mela resewed Dad’s white summer trousers to fit me perfectly.” Mom waves the thought away with her greenish yellow hand. “I am so sorry,” she says, “I don’t think I’ll be out of the hospital by then. Ask Mela to give you an afro-style hairdo before the performance, she knows how. Bravo for the part.” “Only Marto from the green building knows how to do those 56