Chapter 4
E lizabeth and I tried to wake Dad once we landed in Petrovistan, but he just mumbled something incoherent and went back to sleep.
After several failed attempts, we grabbed his arms and yanked him out of the seat.
His eyes popped open, and he let out the loudest groan he’d made since passing a kidney stone three years before.
He glowered at his surroundings for a moment, sighed, and started down the aisle.
Once he was moving, we lumbered off the plane and boarded an overflowing bus that felt like an oven in the late-July sun.
My extra layers made it unbearable. I scrunched the cash around inside my bra, too tired and uncomfortable to care if the other passengers saw me.
The ride lasted less than five minutes, yet I was dripping with sweat and gagging from the stench of body odor by the end .
After we tumbled off the bus, we waded into a slow-moving line in front of what appeared to be the main terminal entrance.
Everything was a confusing blur. The signs were written in an unfamiliar alphabet, and I couldn’t decipher a single syllable of what the other passengers mumbled to one another.
A booth waited at the front of the line, where people slid documents under a glass window. Passport control.
Elizabeth checked her watch every ten seconds, stress marks creasing her drenched forehead.
“Relax,” Dad said. “We have two hours before the next flight.”
“Why check our passports if we’re just in transit?” she said irritably.
A short, round man gave us a curious stare, apparently overhearing the conversation. “You Americans?”
“We are.” Dad nodded.
The man snickered as if he’d just heard a joke.
I was wondering about the punch line, when a stern voice called us to the booth.
We stepped forward, and Dad slid our passports under the glass.
The customs official was the tallest woman I’d ever seen, with short dark hair and an impatient scowl that matched her police uniform.
On her upper lip she had a hairy mole almost large enough to require a seat on an airplane.
She looked at the seal on our passports and threw them against the desk.
“Amerikansi,” she croaked, as if we’d just insulted her mother’s dignity.
I gulped. Elizabeth shrank behind Dad. Dad stared at the woman like a deer in front of an 18-wheeler.
“Where you going?” she asked coldly.
“Malegonia,” Dad said with a tremble in his voice.
The woman’s scowl deepened. “Why you go in Malegonia?”
“Family wedding.”
I’d never seen Dad so intimidated. He clutched his carry-on bag with both hands like it could shield him from the cruel woman. She grunted and paged through our travel documents like they were accessories in a crime. Then she studied us one at a time, frowning and narrowing her eyes.
“Maude,” she said.
I shared a confused glance with Dad and Elizabeth before I realized she was talking to me.
“Yes, I’m Winifred Maude Robespierre,” I said.
“This no valid.” The woman held my passport open to reveal the customs stamp from Chicago had a slight ink smudge. “Get new stamp. ”
“Where?” I tried not to sound as helpless as I felt.
“America.”
My eyes widened, dread seeping over me. “Just for a passport stamp?”
The woman lit a cigarette and stared at me like she enjoyed seeing me jitter. “Yes, you need stamp.”
I glanced at Dad and Elizabeth, who shared my open-mouth look of horror. My chest tightened, and my palms sweat. I looked at the woman like Dante peering into the seventh circle of hell. “But we have to be at a wedding in a few days.”
“How I know where you come from if no stamp?”
“Can you check your computer for our travel days?”
The woman smirked. “System no work.”
“Can you call the embassy?”
She shrugged dismissively. “Today holiday.”
“Do they have an emergency number?”
The woman growled and walked out the back of the booth without further explanation.
I exchanged another uneasy glance with Dad and Elizabeth as she disappeared into a concrete building that reminded me of a dystopian Orwell novel.
We stood clueless on the sweltering blacktop as the people in line behind us grew visibly impatient.
Will would owe me for this irritation once we made it to Malegonia …
if we made it. Forcing me on this trip was the dastardliest thing he’d pulled since our parents got married, and each second made that clearer than the last.
“Ralph, what’s going on?” Elizabeth whispered.
Dad wiped the sweat from his brow and swallowed. “Did America have some issues with this country in the news a few years ago?”
Elizabeth and I shared a nervous gasp. Memories of headlines about faraway wars swirled in my mind like wolves circling an injured caribou.
“You don’t think they’ll take that out on us,” Elizabeth said. “Do you?”
“We’re about to find out.” Dad motioned toward the concrete building.
The customs official reappeared, as joyless as ever, a teacup-sized coffee in hand. She sat down behind the booth without so much as looking at us. My fingers fidgeted involuntarily until the woman’s cold eyes locked on me. A chill crept up my spine.
She slammed an entry stamp onto our passports and chucked them under the glass. “Go away,” she rasped .
I grabbed the passports and gave the woman an insincere nod.
We hurried past passport control into the main terminal.
With deportation averted, our concern about missing the connecting flight reemerged.
We had less than an hour before takeoff.
Fortunately, this airport was much smaller than the ones in Chicago and Rome.
It reminded me of a bus station: dirty, lacking color, and filled with old aluminum benches and advertisements that drooped halfway off the wall.
At least the screens with the flight information had an English translation.
We rushed through the terminal to our gate just as boarding began.
As we stepped onto our connecting flight, I said goodbye to Petrovistan and vowed never to set foot there again.
The new plane was almost identical to the last one but smelled moldy, as if the cabin had recently been flooded.
Dad fell asleep the instant we sat down, and Elizabeth dropped off soon after.
I stared out the window at the sizzling blacktop.
After this flight, we still had one more to catch.
I sighed. How could anyone get married in a place so far away?
It was only common courtesy to get hitched within four time zones.
As I waited, an elderly lady slumped into the seat beside me.
She wore a black skirt and head covering, nylon stockings rolled up to her knees.
Her breath reeked of garlic and onions. The woman fiddled with her seat belt, unsure how to latch it, until I helped her.
She said something I couldn’t understand, and I smiled awkwardly.
“Where you from?” she asked with a thick accent.
“Chicago,” I said.
“Oh, you married?”
I felt my face flush. “No.”
Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, and she patted my hand. “So you come to find husband?”
“I hadn’t planned on it.” I pulled my hand away.
She smiled a toothless grin. “Don’t worry, I help you.”
***
I survived the hour-long trip to Pelagonia without agreeing to marry anyone. Dad slept the entire flight, his legs sprawling into the aisle while he drooled onto Elizabeth’s shirt. She looked too tired to care. We landed, and they stumbled ahead of me off the plane.
As in Petrovistan, the airport staff corralled us onto a scorching, overcrowded bus.
The only difference was that the early afternoon sun beat down hotter than before.
I stood smashed into a corner beside my father and stepmother, stiff and exhausted.
The reek made me cringe. A discreet sniff of my armpit revealed the source of the odor.
I’d have felt more self-conscious, but I figured the smell might reduce my chance of an arranged marriage.
After a short trip, the bus pulled up at the main terminal, and we stepped onto the blacktop.
A dark-haired woman in a pantsuit uniform stopped each passenger to inspect tickets.
Some passengers entered the terminal, while others grumbled and marched onto a second bus parked at the curbside.
When Elizabeth handed the woman our itinerary, she pointed toward the new bus.
“Will this take us to the plane?” Elizabeth asked.
“No plane. Bus,” the pantsuit lady replied.
Elizabeth frowned. “It’s a bus to the plane, right?”
“No plane. Bus.”
Elizabeth waved our documents in the air. “We have tickets.”
“Bus, bus.” The woman picked up my stepmother’s carry-on and dragged it to the cargo compartment of the waiting transport.
I grabbed the woman’s arm and explained we were traveling to Lake Achris.
“Yes, bus in Achris,” she said.
I doubted she knew more than twenty words of English.
Dad groaned and tried to pull up information on his cell phone. He couldn’t get any service in the new country, and no Wi-Fi was available. “I guess they’ll explain it when we get there,” he said, a grumpy weariness in his voice.
With a shrug, he shuffled onto the bus. Elizabeth and I followed, but I couldn’t shake the feeling something terrible was happening.
I gazed at the other passengers nervously.
They all looked tired and annoyed. Some wore traditional Middle Eastern clothing, with thick beards or head coverings.
Others looked like they were coming from an eighties heavy-metal concert, with long black hair, faded jeans, and oversized cross necklaces.
It was a strange clash that reminded me of the L train in Chicago.
I suddenly felt homesick, and we hadn’t even made it to Malegonia.