Until that day I thought you could only hear such a sound at an air show, when the planes in the sky left blue, white, and red trails and the pilots performed breakneck stunts like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. All the little Yugo cars lost their Ys, while Converse high-tops gained a Croatian checkerboard taped over the star. I knew their attention was reserved for the hot girls in their grade. My mushroom haircut participated as an accessory to one of a million pitiful, glitterless corduroy outfits that two generations of women my mother and grandmother relentlessly sewed for me.
Anyway, back then, my brother had taken an interest in books about weapons and fighter jets, and, during rare moments of goodwill, and for lack of better company, he would talk me through them. Even though I never found any of it nearly as interesting as he did, there was some decent stuff. Like that American plane with its snout painted to resemble a shark. My brother knew everything there was to know about planes, about weapons, armies, you name it. I could appreciate that shark plane, and moments when my brother considered me a friend.
School was supposed to start the following day, so those were our last moments of joy on the raised sewage vent out front. The ensuing anxiety-ridden fall afternoons would be dictated by homework, music lessons, piano practice, and solfeggio to avoid embarrassing my mother and father in front of the music teacher, Ms. As a matter of fact, the feeling that Sunday was much more terrifying.
We scattered immediately because we were chased off by Ms. We used the stairs and not the elevator, like we usually would after we played. My mother and father were straight-faced and agitated, but not like when they were fighting with each other or scolding us about something. Inside the apartment, the radio and television were both on and tuned to the news. And when a group of unshaven men appeared on-screen standing along barricades, and other slightly less unshaven men were shown assembling under the Croatian checkerboard with Dr.
My first-ever air-raid siren. The state of affairs in our apartment now reached its culmination: my father was rolling down the shutters, my mother turning off the gas, my brother moving the birdcage away from the window. My heart began pounding again like in that would be heart attack. Then my father was telling my mother to grab their suitcase, which had already been packed several days prior and had since stood at attention in the foyer.
