The Iowa Review
Volume 25
Issue 3 Fall
Article 16
1995
Lifting the Curtain: A Serbian-American Memoir
Catherine Rankovic
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Rankovic, Catherine. "Lifting the Curtain: A Serbian-American Memoir." The Iowa Review 25.3 (1995): 64-78. Web.
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the Curtain: A Serbian-American
Catherine Rankovic
Lifting
Memoir
about be
by a Serbian-American
be
that
because
there
aren't
of
us, and
many
ing Serbian-American,
might
we tend not to say much, or rather, write much.
Ifmy experience
growing
them
that's
is
because
Serbs tend not to reflect
any indication,
up among
IF YOU'VE
much,
NEVER
especially
READ
AN
on themselves.
ESSAY
Those
anything resembling
or sanity. My father
calculate how many
horrified
We?for
I knew
in their children
discouraged
its
of
threats to one's spirit
warning
self-preoccupation,
told the story of the Serbian scientist who
thought to
times in his life he'd change his clothes. The total so
him he killed himself. This was less a story than a parable.
a cultural hybrid, a true
I am as Serbian as I am American,
hyphenate?are
traditionally
a fatalistic
people. My
father's
circle of immi
of displaced persons and political
grant Serbs, made up mostly
refugees al
as
most all of peasant background,
voiced this fatalism
of God's
acceptance
in Serbia, in 1919, spent
will. My father, born in the village of Krnjevo,
1941 to 1945 as a slave laborer
in a German prisoner of war camp. Over the
mine he said within my hearing per
his
matched
years
twenty-five
lifespan
after
haps five sentences about it.The past was past. Trained as a blacksmith
an eighth-grade
to
to
in
his
lost
the
U.S.
war, displaced
education,
youth
to support four
1950 and employed
thereafter in a foundry and factories
a
time
he
had
hard
American-born
the
trying to manage
enough
daughters,
I think, to spare us nightmares
and what he may
present. He also hoped,
a
sense of victimization?I
think
he was some
have considered
crippling
for so graciously
how actually ashamed of his enslavement?and
sparing us,
was
an
to
cost
at
unknown
himself, I thank him. In all this he
typical of the
in his circle, which
centered on the Serbian Orthodox
in our city; in fact he was often voted their leader.
founded
men
church
they
as it happened,
children born into
among the first of the American
in its ways that Iwas all of twenty
socialized
that circle, and so thoroughly
to
I
first
look
back on life, and felt stupen
old
before
five years
thought
Iwas,
to see there, instead of fate and chaos, patterns and cycles
enlightened
a
narrative, a drama. This came courtesy of psychotherapy,
forming
product
had been the unspoken
of another, an enemy, culture. So overpowering
dously
64
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against personal reflection,
family proscription
expressed as a deep suspi
cion and terror of reading and writing
beyond what
schooling
required,
even
a
and
life itself had failed to so enlighten me.
that
college education
looking back at a past filled, as it was, with
ugly and inexplicable
things. We could not, for the sake of hope, believe
the future. In a very American way breaking these ta
the past determined
Serbs did
to avoid
their best
I became a genuine American
the point at which
rather than a
now
seems
me
at
to
the time. But it
that the gifts
Serb, and it felt liberating
are not identical with
of hindsight
those of insight, and that the folks off
boos marked
the boat may
have
shown
a superior wisdom
in keeping
their selective
si
lences.
I grew up among?and
I stress that our community was un
founded
and sustained by men
like my father?fol
usually homogenous,
lowed tradition in letter and spirit, preserving
rituals 900 years
religious
The
Serbs
apparent interest in their antiquity or sources, but with enor
and vocal interest in keeping
them intact. They made enthusiastic
if
in
of Serbian history, which
vague reference to the more glorious moments
were
their
the early 1970s
codified for
culturally endangered, half-Ameri
old without
mous
can young in the form of a dual language textbook filled with
pious, muddy
illustrations and shipped in hopeful bulk from its author in Toronto.
I never
read it; by then I had quit our raucous Serbian "Sunday" school, having sat
in the church hall from nine to noon on school
from age four to fourteen
year Saturdays, in all that time learning nothing
except Serbian folk songs
and hymns, because our priest refused to teach us in the English
language
we preferred and could shut us up only when we sang. ( I did stay with the
church's all-girl folk dancing team until Iwent to college.) The adults often
and even
on Serbian patriotic
the priest did so, vehemently,
holidays, giving to the crowd wildly
amplified speeches featuring the word
"Kommunistika"?used
with contempt, for Tito's policies had been at the
talked politics,
root of his and his
and, perhaps worse, were
congregants'
displacement,
were
not
atheistic besides. So these
people of few words; on the contrary.
But of war and exile, the central facts of their lives, they did not speak
and
personally;
they were too proud, too polite, too fragile a community
too
to
fetishize
their
just
busy living
personal pain.
the size of a continent
Yet, very early in life I sensed that something
shadowed
us, breathed
or feasts.
ship
shadow upon
In our church
hall,
us, and impoverished
us, even at wor
two commanding
portrait photographs,
65
of a boyish
in a uniform
ex-monarch
blistered
with
and an aging,
and beyond
the grave.
medals
soldier, oversaw us from exile
fire-eyed
as clues to what troubled us, began to intrigue me; I think it
Photographs,
was photographs
that taught me that the way to live in both my worlds was
to live in each as an observer, at one remove. In Serbian homes in America,
bearded,
black and
deckle-edged,
including my own, I found caches of dog-eared,
a positively
white
foreign inten
snapshots posed and taken in sunlight of
or
assorted adults arm in arm;
showed couples, family groups
sity. They
often there were studio portraits of young soldiers, their faces as composed
and inaccessibly
small collections
mounted
beautiful
might
in cumbrous
precious photographs
were shorn of context
as saints'. Inscriptions of any kind were rare.These
be kept in a cigar box, tacked up near the radio, or
albums with black pages. Badly damaged or very
were
sometimes
and set forth
restored
so that the human
on blank white
fields;
figures
these were the
like American
likely to be framed and displayed. They weren't
in
emblazoned
their
which
had
dates
automatically
margins,
photographs,
as
to
like
them
the ikons
seemed,
rather,
memory;
they
marking
supplements
pictures most
in our church, to function as windows
into the hereafter. I do not remem
in the photos were, but now and then,
the people
ber ever asking who
caught studying them, I was gently told: "My brother," "My godparents,"
"Friends from my village." If there was no more to say, it wasn't
said; for
children nor the adults who might
be present
reasons, neither
was delicacy, not denial; it was a graceful,
to hear explanations.This
because well-taught
and practiced, bow to God's will, however
costly and
I
His
But
intuited
the
of
the many
reasoning.
meaning
enigmatical
appeared
different
needed
and a seeker of
silences, and being half-American
abrupt and conspicuous
me:
were
to
I thought they
believe
ulterior motives,
grew
they
kept against
asked me to forget what I could not remember, an impossibility. And for a
so freely and
darkly
long time I thought that the phrase "Iron Curtain," used
on TV and radio then, had something
to do with containing
the awful thing
that we
found unspeakable.
like coats of thick, obliterating
this lay banked, while,
paint, I ac
I
white American-ness.
quired layer upon layer of blissfully uncomplicated
and
American
of
life?in
the
half
school, socializing,
my hyphenated
spent
a
to
stockroom
work
clerk, office tem
typesetter,
(as photographer,
starting
All
to forget
porary: anything at one remove)?trying
the melting-pot
In that world, where
succeeding.
66
Iwas
Serbian, and largely
ideal as yet went unchal
on my surname or my decidedly
comment
Slavic face,
lenged, someone's
cloud my mind with at most a passing thought or
my father's face, might
two. First, that being Serbian was an accident, and an unfortunate
one; I
I French
better. Were
deserved
Iwould
have a real culture
I felt
I Irish I could have
to point
to.Were
I had neither.
that people's pride.
"Syrian? Sibe
rian?" puzzled people said to me, "Serbian" being completely
beyond their
ken. And I couldn't blame them, call them ignorant, because for over sev
enty years, for most of the 20th century, there was no nation called Serbia.
a
but it did not pay to say proudly
that Serbia was
Yugoslavia,
a
as
if
since
whole had produced anything to
part of Yugoslavia,
Yugoslavia
in America, myself
be proud of no one educated
included, had any idea
There
was
Europe in general was a blank, a void, unstudied,
obscured as it was by the Iron Curtain and not really a part of
unknowable,
that the real Europe isWest
Europe at all. At school I came to understand
ern Europe, the closer to England
the realer and better, and that all white
what
it might
be. Eastern
were
Americans
"Anglos"
by fiat, just a little
less so if they had names
like
mine.
If Serbia
itself had been known
one fact Americans
and killed
seem to know
the Archduke
the established
narrative
duke planned
the assassination
soon
only
to
a sort
I also found
of Austria-Hungary,
of European history
to annex
the war was
of
permanent
to produce anything, it was trouble. The
about Serbia is that in 1914 a Serb shot
igniting World War I. Because
doesn't mention
that the Arch
Serbia, and that with or without
independent
are thereby entitled
spoiling to happen, Serbs
embarrassment.
to take pride in the Serbian peasant culture my
to urban industrial America:
transplanted almost whole
it difficult
father and his peers
to fuel hard labor in the
the folk dances; the cabbagey, buttery food meant
Christian
faith which never appeared among
fields; the Eastern Orthodox
I always checked "Other," fearing that in
the choices on questionnaires.
case of emergency
I'd be taken for an atheist. One of my childhood's most
moments
I was twelve, the most horribly
occured when
self
humiliating
conscious
of ages, when my mother
the four of us, all dressed
shepherded
in our colorful, sequin-bedecked
Serbian folk dancing costumes of velvet
and wool, to a suburban Sears store to have our portrait taken as a crowd of
the lesser em
hovered round. Among
curious, enviably normal Americans
barrassments
it, of which
were my father's thick accent, the "broke
English," as he called
he was also ashamed; our celebration
of Christmas by the Julian
67
calendar, on January 7; the countless Serbian "aunties" who seized us, crushed
us to their
terrifying bosoms, suffocated us with kisses and food and pro
duced fantastical needlework
they began to donate for my hope chest when
I turned
in hopes I'd
sixteen, and their vigilant and unwanted matchmaking
a
soon
Serbian boy; that when Serbs talked, it always sounded like?I
marry
or say more
refused to understand
than polite phrases in the language?
violent
arguing. In short, an inelegant, unsubtle crowd. And early on, cer
I was not of the tribe. My father, half
tainly by age four, I had decided
drill me:
playfully, would
"What you nationality?"
"American."
(Said loudly, and often
accompanied
by
a
joyful
interpretive
dance.)
"Serbian."
"American!"
"Ti Serbianka!"
fa Amerikanka! Ja Amerikanka!"
If he was hurt or disappointed,
he never let on. The full force of Ameri
can culture, applied to a tiny and late-arriving American minority?after
there are still fewer than amillion
Serbian-Ameri
century of immigration,
a
cans?was
to resist by prohibiting
irresistible, although my father attempted
the playing of rock or jazz records in the house and, for a long time, the
of blue jeans. On the other hand, America
offered certain advan
wearing
tages. He never saw me go hungry or barefoot, suffer through an air raid, or
to parts unknown?though
he did
loaded into a boxcar for transportation
one day advise me that should I ever find myself
in that situation, the way
was
room
to get breathing
to scratch and pluck at imaginary head lice. "You
he'd
gottet everything,"
respond when we'd complain. My three sisters and
I, who
course
the word
defined
think
"everything"
by American
standards,
did not
of
so.
faced with proof that Iwas half Serbian, the task always seemed
it meant
to get out from under the cloud of it, since to Americans
or worse. Serbs assured me we had a proud and brave history, a rich
nothing
and worthy
culture, but I saw it reflected nowhere except among Serbs, and
Whenever
to be
in their own favor.
they, I felt, were grossly if naturally prejudiced
Later came the insight that if Slavic cultures were anything to Americans,
as much
as strange. I suppose all foreign cultures
were funny. Ha-ha
they
and peoples
68
are at first
perceived
by
the natives
as comical,
but
upon
ethnics or sub
degree of assimilation most American
and accom
under pressure, their dignities
groups are granted, sometimes
and tragedies: in short, their right to respect and, incidentally or
plishments
to
of information
that counters the stereotypes. Poles,
the
dissemination
not,
acheiving
a certain
Croats, Russians,
Slovenes, Serbs and many more are
as
still lumped together
"Slavs," except when
they fight, and the average
American
certain
has been fed, and has swallowed,
images of Eastern
Czechs,
Hungarians,
Europe
and its inhabitants
that do not quite amount
Maruschka
dolls, barbaric
potato dumplings, wooden
KGB. We
speak languages nobody
alphabets. Okay, so our embroidery
of onions and have unpronounceable
seriously?
Where
Slavs are known,
Great had sex with horses
studies
names.
Siberia,
the
have backwards
eggs are nice, but we smell
I mean, who
could take us
for their oddities.
Tesla, Edison's
eat fruit salad without
couldn't
dances,
in school. We
and Easter
they are known
(untrue). Nikola
to an idea: fur hats,
Catherine
friend
the volume
the
and peer,
of each
compulsively
calculating
Famous
Slavic-Americans
tend to be joke figures: Bela
(true).
the Gabor sisters, polka king Frankie Yankovic
and his sonWeird
cube of fruit
Lugosi,
Al, Boris
and Natasha.
they're traitors: Private Eddie Slovik, and Viet
nam veteran and
antiwar activist Ron Kovic, considered by some
pioneering
a traitor in his way. In films and fiction, dim-bulb or devious characters are
Or
Slavic names:
(a.k.a.
Igor, Joe Palooka, Gertrude
Slescynski
the conniving
young actress in All About Eve), Stanley
Kowalski, Sergeant Bilko, Dave Kovic (the dim-bulb elevated to the United
States presidency
in the 1993 film Dave). And of course there are the ubiq
frequently given
Eve Harrington,
do not spare the Polish pope. Some, such as
jokes which
comedian Ernie Kovacs and film director Jim Jarmusch, both Hungarian
have used the Slav stereotype to brilliant advantage; others, such
Americans,
as actors Karl Maiden
and Charles Bronson
(n? Mladen
Sekulovich)
(n?
uitous
Polack
have ducked it, almost, by changing their names; still others, by
Buchinsky)
not
like John Malkovich
who
changing their names, sacrifice superstardom,
remains a cult actor, and television
Povich
who
would
journalist Maury
as
a
not
be
much
of
had
he changed his name. I very much
perhaps
joke
would hold the same place in
Josip Konrad Korzeniowski
literature as does the Anglicized
In fact, Slavic
English
Joseph Conrad.
surnamed American
authors are few, and besides Nabokov
who's known
doubt
that Teodor
primarily
for the Lolita
scandal, andWilliam
Jovanovich,
known
primarily
69
as a publisher,
I can't think
novelist who wrote or writes
to change or eviscerate
source
fertile
of taunts
now of a
modern
right
single Slavic-surnamed
in English. As awriter, I too have been tempted
or Anglicize
has proven to be a
my name, which
and misspellings
("Rankobitch")
un
"Ron Kovic"). Unspellable,
"Wrancovic,"
"Rankovian,"
authors don't sell a lot of books. Yet despite our strangeness,
("Rankowitz,"
pronounceable
we're not considered
and
puns
can
in the currently fashionable way. One
memoirs
and novels about growing up African-Ameri
a hyphenated
can, Hispanic-American,
Chinese,
Italian, Jew or Filipino,
a vast and well-established
but though American
Slavs together comprise
"ethnic"
read contemporary
I haven't found
population,
Slavic-American.
Consider,
most
famous
about growing up as any sort of
any specifically
is the
finally, that the fictional Count Dracula
Slav of all time, and the fascinating
fact that mirrors
will
not
reflect his image.
The essentially comic Slav stereotype became entrenched and ran its course
it seemed essential to populate
unopposed
during the long Cold War, when
an evil communist
were
inhabitants who,
empire with
though Caucasian,
not quite civilized, banging their shoes on tables and such, and being physi
and shabby to be quite
squat, swarthy, hairy, squinty-eyed
unlike the stereotype of American Blacks, stereotypical
Slavs?
or shall I say "Lower Slobovians"
or "Vulgarians"??like
hard
colors,
bright
cally rather
human. Not
too
not too smart, and given
and unhealthy
food. We are undisciplined,
to spontaneous
and indiscriminate
violence
and anarchy. If strictly trained,
we might become
we
have a culture, it is crude and el
good athletes. If
drink
And, as with American
Blacks,
a
threat. At one important point, though
amusing, we're
African-Americans
and Slavs do have a genuine con
it'smerely philological,
nection. The word "slave" derives from the word "Slav," with good reason:
emental, primitive,
if we aren't being
like Zorba
the Greek's.
to the Ottoman Turks. You can read in The
500 years, for Serbs, of bondage
Joy of Sex about lovemaking "South Slav style": "mock rape." "A misunder
stood people," says an ad for an old, remaindered
book, The Serbs, written
now.
an
I
it.
It
be
ordered
might
by
selling better
Englishman.
It is just such a notion of Slavdom that permitted Rolling Stone to send
Bosnia to report on
that's a funny name?to
PJ. O'Rourke?now,
that "The
observation
the current
civil war, and O'Rourke's
opening
cannot
were
One
the
imagine such
shooting
unspellables
unpronounceables."
an observation
in an ostensibly
liberal
being publicly made, and printed
humorist
70
and Israelis or Tutsis and Hutus, not
about warring Palestinians
magazine,
to mention
that Serbs
English and Irish. Yet it is even more unimaginable
Serbs in particular, would be wor
and Croats, the famously troublemaking
on demonization?of
less than contempt?bordering
the
thy of anything
to portray Serbs
that permitted
Vanity Fair, among other publications,
as a tribe of congenitally
lunatics and conclude
that they must
bloodthirsty
It was just such an ignorant idea
confront what they've done to themselves.
kind
of Serbs that made
early reports of Serbian
for theWo rid Trade
responsibility
Center bombing
that feeds the myth of Serbian
quite logically believable;
run "death
a
camps,"
myth publicly discredited
by The New York Times and
State Department;
and that makes American
of Serbia
bombing
a
a
am
neat solution to messy problem. I
not saying that
like
Serbs aren't responsible for their share or more of the sickening atrocities
reported from Bosnia: emphatically,
they are, and this shames me, as it should
the U.S.
seem to some
I am saying that reportage of the war has been heavily weighted
reports emerged saying that Croats and
against Serbs until recently, when
were
Bosnian Muslims
this hardly comes
engaging in atrocities also. Though
all Serbs. But
as a relief,
it does begin to add shades of gray to an enormously
compli
cated conflict too often reduced to simple black and white.
or
The Serbs I knew didn't teach me to hate Croats, Muslims
anybody
else. I thought if we were going to hate anybody it would be Germans, but
some of our community's many German
some of them Jews, became prominent members
born women,
of the church
auxiliary called the Circle of Serbian Sisters. And except for stray refer
that wasn't
ences
so; married
to Serbs,
to the local Croatian-American
soccer
team which
seemed
to indi
cate a garden-variety
type of ethnic rivalry, I never heard any Serbs mention
at all. They sharply corrected me if I called their language "Serbo
Croatian"
instead of "Serbian," but never told me that we didn't speak of
Croats because the best and worst we could do to them now was to banish
Croats
them from
mainly
mention
speech and memory.
passages in books, since
I was over thirty before I sought
the usual histories of World War
books?
II barely
would
tell me why.
Yugoslavia?that
was
was
over
not
I
it
until
But, too,
thirty that being Serbian had any sort
I or others of Serbian descent applied to
of meaning
beyond the meanings
in a book on public speaking, men
long time ago Dale Carnegie,
tioned an audience
left thoroughly puzzled by a speech on Serbia: "Why,"
he wrote, "half of them did not know whether
Serbia was a town or a dis
it. A
71
in 1991, instead of saying "What?"
ease." Beginning
for the first time that I was Serbian sometimes
acquaintances
heard
their
and many people
since
is less a place than a disease.
throats;
covering
suaded that Serbia
retreated,
jokingly
to have been per
longer a purely personal concern;
to
and opened
identity, formerly obscure, had been politicized,
in character. After the current civil war began,
largely negative
I thought about it, or how
asked how it came about and what
My
Serbian was
appear
being
who
no
my
ethnic
speculation
Iwas often
Serbs could
or why. I didn't know. But I did know that the Serbs I knew
in the mood for massa
seemed incapable of simply waking up one morning
or
a
must
that
there
be
that
would
cre;
facts,
narrative,
explain.
be so terrible,
aYugoslavia.
the Southern
Slav
Uniting
was
a
1918
Croats and Slovenes?in
Serbian idea,
largely
groups?Serbs,
at least in part to tie their small nations together against attack and
meant
and empires.
Serbs,
larger nations
partitioning?"balkanizing"?by
never
There
should
have been
set the new country up under the reigning Serbian
majority,
Roman
king. Croats, whose crucial difference from Serbs is their traditional
and related cultural ties with Central andWestern
Catholicism
Europe, saw
Yugoslavia's
a Serbian
nationalist
power grab, and initiated
extremists called Ustashi
visited
and mutual
France,
Croatia
the opportunity
Extremist
leaders
hugely.
lics, whether
verted;
a separatist movement.
assassinated the Serbian
In 1934,
some
king while he
War II gave
entrenched.
World
enmity
to break from Yugoslavia
and expand its territory
became
then ordered
Jewish, Gypsy
others were driven
the territory purged of non-Catho
or Eastern Orthodox.
Some were forcibly con
and
others
killed. Estimates
out,
systematically
to 800,000; Nazi-occupied
dead range from 200,000
able to engage only in scattered retaliatory acts.
has not been easy for either Serbs or Croats to forget. Tito, a Croat,
of Serbian Orthodox
Serbia was
This
or
steps after the war to suppress ethnic animosity,
including jailing
otherwise
those still loyal to the exiled Serbian king. My father,
punishing
a veteran of the Yugoslav Royal Army, could not return home and became
took
one of 150,000
displaced
said he had been given
Europeans
the choice
relocated
to the United
of the U.S., Australia
States; he once
or Canada. Tito
to hold Yugoslavia
together for thirty-five years, until his death in
managed
rotated among
1980, and for ten years after that a collective
presidency,
to
But then, un
of
all
ethnic
be
groups, appeared
representatives
working.
der Serbian
72
nationalist
leader Slobodan Milosevic,
it began
to break down.
in 1991,
inspired by other formerly Communist
breakaway repub
on both sides
seceded
from
memories
again
Yugoslavia,
ugly
resurfaced, were fanned into flame, and they fuel the civil war there today.
It is doubtful
that there is any ethnic or religious or other kind of tribe
When
lics, Croatia
has never
or
or genocide
in its history fallen victim to enslavement
as
as
cruel
either. Probably,
such persecutions
themselves
just
oppression
create the initial tribal bonds. As a Serbian-American,
half Old World
and
which
even if it may be
this: that it is not necessary,
desirable, to forget one's history or forgive it. It is, however, necessary not
to dwell on it, have it as one's meat and drink, exalt it as the core of one's
half New,
I have
learned
at first- or second-hand,
is, as my father
identity. A sense of victimization,
seemed to know, ultimately
crippling. My father could well have explained
or
me
to
Croats were unfit to live, that they ought to rep?rate
that Germans
our kind with everything
their lives, and
they owned, up to and including
unto eternity.
that a proper Serb should hate them and their descendants
so
not
in
America
because
he
lived
where
he
did
do
any threat to
Possibly
of thoroughly
us, as Serbs, was remote, as was the possibility
satisfactory
revenge. But if he did have such feelings he did not vent them even in the
moments
of his most furious anger, such as when,
soldier, aged
playing
a phrase I'd learned from
about eight, I shouted "Heil Hitler!"
watching
I now see clearly that my father did not really forget or
"Hogan's Heroes."
this alone
wholly
forgive, but he and his fellow Serbs would not?because
on the poison. I cannot say the same for
was not beyond their power?pass
the Serbs in Bosnia now. But if Americans want to play an effective part in
in history
the present one
peace there, every example
including
making
an entire ethnic group. The key
proves that we cannot do it by demonizing
is to realize we have been well
and to a great extent systematically
prepared
to discount
is why that's been so
these people's claim to humanity, which
easy for many of us who are otherwise
thoughtful?and
doing so is doing
exactly what we decry.
You might be wondering
She was Polish-American,
about my mother.
the daughter of turn-of-the-century
Polish immigrants who ran an unprof
But upon marrying my father she
itable farm in far northern Wisconsin.
to Orthodoxy,
learned the Serbian language
and Serbian cooking, became an honorary
Serb and raised her children as
no
same.
was
the
There
question about its being otherwise,
although unlike
most wives of immigrant Serbs, she worked
as much as possible outside the
converted
from Catholicism
73
home,
giving
us a number
of material
advantages not typically available to
rea
girls. For social and economic
first generation Americans,
particularly
of any ethnic group does not generally
sons, the first American
generation
a
or
few
scholars
writers;
prove the rule.
produce
exceptions
spectacular
were few
been an immigrant Serb?there
Had my mother
single Serbian
women
to
the
and
and
among
postwar refugees,
marriage
displaced persons
or American-born
women was common?I
German, Jewish, Russian
might
to
from pursuing higher
have been encouraged
marry early and discouraged
leads to occupations
restful and well paid as
sufficiently
to enable the acts of reflection
and writing. Without
my American-born
own
I
mother's
have
that
children would
influence,
my
might
hoped only
education,
which
so
her different background?the
link may be that
privileged. Despite
was
were
like
mother
both of peasant stock?my
my father in that she
they
did not indulge the past. Still, they differed: my father remembered
but did
not say so; my mother
openly claimed amnesia of almost all events occur
be
before an operation
early
ring before 1963, blaming anesthesia administered
to think she deliberately
chose to deny her first
that year. I am inclined
she found most of her memories
unbearably painful.
thirty years because
Even
so, her amnesia
revealed
did not
save her a consuming
never
bitterness which
Iwould be disingenuous
did I not admit that
its source or object.
transferred
some of this bitterness
expressing itself as the rebel
to lifting at any cost the
everything:
over the past and the not-nice.
I did
itself to me,
lious urge to record, if not remember,
curtain so firmly drawn, in our house,
not see that for my parents, because of when
had been born,
these were
and where
and into what
in truth one and the same, and their choice
they
not
to speak of it deserved not the label of "repression," but respect. It was
me with my inheritance, my father's
that my mother
furtively
presented
his death in 1982. I had never seen it
slave-labor camp dog tag, following
did not
even had
it: a one-by-five
centimeter
scrap of
of
steel stamped "Kr. Gef. Lag. (Krieg Gefangener Lager, prisoner
bruised
not
war camp) XB, No. 105445." It embodies
But
because he did
tragedy.
see his life as a tragedy?he
and appreci
reveled in America's
abundance,
before,
know
he
can't either.
ated freedom, and danced and sang?I
one
hundreds
I've known, ever seemed to me to
the
Serb, among
Only
was my father's mother, my grandmother Kadivka.
embody tragedy, and that
I was seven, my family left behind the small house in what
In 1964, when
was
74
then called
the "colored"
neighborhood,
and moved
to the white
sec
tion of town,
into a tract house where
there was
room
to keep Kadivka. My
since first coming to the
to his mother
money
regularly
United
States, but he hoped to support her in the traditional way by taking
In 1965 he sent to Yugoslavia
still
for her. Grandma
her into his home.
in Krnjevo
in
dirt-floored
lived, alone now, in the whitewashed,
cottage
which my father had been born and reared. She had not seen her son since
father had mailed
he joined the disastrously
by the Axis powers?in
in two weeks
fated Yugoslav
1941.
Royal Army?crushed
I did not witness
the initial
reunion
at the
airport, but as soon as Grandma arrived at our house it was clear our plan
to failure. She had thrown up in the car
to keep her was somehow doomed
cars on all occasions. Her gift bottles
as she would
throw up in all moving
slivovitz, as far as I know the only
plum brandy?the
powerful
broken in transit, ruin
celebrated product of Serbian culture?had
widely
reek throughout
the house as
and raising an alcoholic
ing her belongings
we tried for weeks
to scrub and air her luggage. Upon
seeing our backyard
of Serbian
innocent
of all but grass, she asked my
father where
we
kept
our pigs and
chickens.
the immigrant Serbs, on family trips
to the zoo and botanical gardens, yet America
seemed ever more deeply to
baffle and depress her. Too frail to babysit or cook or bathe alone, most of
took her to church
We
and among
she slept or sat in the living room crocheting, meanwhile
drib
on the satin-covered
chairs. Television,
like car trips, made her
bling urine
vomit. She spoke no English and her grandchildren
spoke no Serbian. My
a phrase that called her to meals. Grandma
mother
taught me, phonetically,
the time
she amazed and amused
rarely spoke. During her first few weeks in America,
woman, wholly
my sisters and me by standing?a
tiny, silent, grim-faced
wrinkled
like a dried pear, dressed all in black except for the magenta
cab
the entrances of rooms and switching
bage roses edging her babushka?at
the electric lights on and off. I do not remember ever touching her.
She was given my bed. I, her Anglicized
namesake, slept on a cot in the
room?or
rather, I lay awake in the dark and listened to her harsh breath
ing, fascinated by and fearing her strangeness and inscrutability. She seemed
even to breathe in Serbian, and I
to
prayed Iwould not be the lone witness
the moment
Besides
I always believed
our names we had, I
imminent?when
her breathing would
in common. Even my
cease.
father
thought, nothing
son
I had been told nothing
the
she had known. Typically,
about
as
was
me
nor
in
and
she
she
neither
love
I
her,
inspired
sympathy. Though
was
not
75
did not know
this then, she had a living daughter, my Serbian aunt, whose
existence my father never mentioned
until after she had died, because my
aunt most shamelessly drank. I had to press him for her name. Between
that
daughter,
Grandma
demic
my grandmother's
had had three more
of 1918. Grandma
was
eldest
and my father, her youngest,
children who had died in the influenza epi
illiterate. A 1958 document,
translated from
child,
can ever know
reveals all the rest that the world
Serbian,
about her:
. . .Kadivka
Rankovic, widow of Petar Rankovic from Krnjevo, was
born in Veliko Orasja on October date unknown in 1888 from the mar
riage ofMilan Lekic and Stanojka, his wife, both of Veliko Orasja.
This paper is given in lieu of the original certificate of birth because the
was
original
destroyed during World War I.
her husband,
Of
my grandfather
exists, or perhaps was
photograph
white hat, glares out from beneath
is open
tache his mouth
Petar who
ever
died
1950s, one
a broad-brimmed
in the mid
taken. He wears
it, and under his snowy handlebar mus
in an angry, disaffected
curve,
and drawn downward
as if he were
cursing the photographer. All I know of him is that he drank.
I could not then and still today cannot imagine it, he and my grand
had lived at the epicenter of two world wars, and here iswhat makes
Though
mother
in
them, and me, Serbian indeed: All further family records were destroyed
the wars, so it is impossible ever to know, beyond the range of living memory,
who
we
were
and
therefore?by
the American
measure?who
we
are.
or antidote to our ancestral void, which
also af
Possibly as a corrective
fected the Polish side of the family, my mother
often arranged to have fam
taken.
their
these were always somehow
harmlessness,
ily portraits
Despite
agonizing
had a portrait taken with Grandma.
In the photo
lost in one of my mother's
dresses, looks
swirl-printed
fact. She sits with her head sunk between her bowed shoul
occasions. We
graph, Grandma,
like a sad human
and helpless and as if she knows it.
the babushka for the photograph,
she appears to be nearly bald.
she does not smile, her lack of teeth is more
than apparent. The
ders; she looks old
Minus
and beaten
down
Though
rest of us, my baby sister excepted, are bearing the discomfiting
moment
in
our individual ways: smirking, shrinking, pouting,
staring, forcing a cheery
in my parents' view,
smile. The most alarming thing about the photograph,
76
father's nose, possibly Turkish or Gypsy in origin?
nose?my
had already grown to its full adult length and with my head, as in the pic
it was indeed not far between myself and
ture, inclined slightly downward
was
that my
the cartoon
to the popular graffito "Kilroy Was Here." My
accompaniment
talked of plastic surgery. My parents discussed getting Grandma some
mother
teeth. Grandma
and I resisted these improvements. And, inevitably, as we
soon became an
had intuited she would, Grandma Kadivka
episode. After
she gladly returned to her familiar home in Yugoslavia,
dying
there ten years later.We received an airmailed letter. My father spent that
I felt I had not
afternoon with his head in his hands. I did not mourn;
six months
a passing
figure dimly re
corded on a length of silent film. "She thought you would be friendlier,"
said to me. I remember
that if Grandma had
my mother
evilly thinking
I felt about
known
her.
wanted
to be friends
her
as I would
about
she should have met me
among the Serbs I knew, Grandma
and vessel of tragedy, bulldozed
by history,
Alone
halfway.
seemed to me
stunned
into
a pawn of fate
silence. She was
she could
the only Serb I knew who ever went back to stay. In America
on her life and compare it with the life we felt
reflect
only
obliged to offer
she found American
comforts and gaieties, and
her; maybe upon reflection
I
the grandchildren who shied from her, the more shallow and embittering.
a
as
and
then
her
felt her dark, hooded
absence,
presence,
reproach. My
built a wall
father told the story of the Serbian king who during wartime
to protect
it from enemies. God however
informed
him
could be saved only if the king buried his beloved
the wall. (In Serbian fables, God frequently makes cruel
wife alive within
awful sorrow the king reluctantly did God's will and saved
demands.) With
around
his kingdom
that his kingdom
is still heard among the
Serbia, but to this day the queen's unearthly wailing
ruins of the wall. So I long felt about Grandma: haunted by the sense that I
was blessed at her expense. This feeling, guilt, which
I did not deserve,
that the Serbs, by example, had shown me
to the present, a dwelling on life?where
if my fate
than Grandma's my only sin would be in not being deliriously
proved incurable until
a cure: a shift in focus
was
better
glad.
Most
I realized
in America's
delighted
liberty and in its luxuries,
available to them during the 1950s and '60s at the relatively inexpensive
price of eight hours a day in the factories, foundries, quarries and brewer
ies of the industrial Midwest,
where most of them settled and we mostly
Serbs
I knew
77
still are. Except for the priests, a tailor or two, and my clerk-typist mother,
as domes
there were in our circle no professionals. A few women worked
as a fry cook or a stitcher at a coat
be employed
tics, rarely, one might
were
to the
and
factory. They
always warmly
ritually hospitable,
especially
half of me that was one of them. When my American
traits became unmis
I couldn't
they chided me in fun, but chided nonetheless.
speak
I know that those who don't know Serbian know nothing?
Serbian? Didn't
takable,
on a "diet"? (For "diets" and other American
exer
Why didn't I eat?Was I
cises in obsessive
self-denial
had
they correctly
incomparable
contempt.)
most
like
were,
clannish,
immigrants,
defensively
They
distinguishing
between
the Serbian-born
Serbs and the American-born
Serbs, who were
a group
pitied,
a little. As
generic
sports-watching,
they understood
think,
threatens
"Dragie"
or
they avoided
genuine
Americans,
beer-drinking,
curlers-in-public
and feared American
ignorance,
especially
the
sort, because,
which
I
belittles,
at the unfamiliar.
laughs
for short; it means
My father's first name, Dragomir?
an American
"dearest"?inspired
neighbor per
so often bluntly asked
Americans
sistently to call him "Dragon-Wagon";
and the
my father to repeat what he had said, rolling their eyes heavenward
on
or
as
to
to
that
he
his
wife
children
do
like,
grew
rely
something
simple
as order meals atMcDonald's
meet
and
he
Serbian
churches
(meals
loved).
the public to
ing halls established by my father's generation
only welcomed
in the 1980s, when my generation
Serb Fests and such beginning
of
over.
now
we
can
settled
down
and
took
We
doubt
whether
hyphenates
to come to our annual Serb Fest this year.
expect many Americans
a growing
a
If being a Serb means
loneliness,
anything now, it means
sense of isolation, the worse for not being sure we do not deserve it.War
news makes me
and threatened; I cannot believe
uneasy; I feel incriminated
the articles, editorials and candlelight vigils urging further sanctions or mass
Iwill ever see,
it is now unlikely
death on my kin. I fear for Serbia, which
Iwill know, as I know America,
which
lens, in trans
through a hyphenate's
lation,
at one
remove.
I fear for fellow
Serbian-Americans,
are now
who
the past to find excuses for the actions of
assiduously
dredging
a victim-consciousness
as treacherous as it is
their brothers, and developing
is not our way. At times Iwish Iwere anything but Serbian.
fashionable?this
and most
But
78
if being
a Serb
is my
fate, I could
do worse
than to accept
it.