Danja is an English teacher. Her writing interests lie in non-fiction, life writing and historical fiction. She’s currently working on essays about motherhood and a historical novel set across three different eras.

Danja’s family emigrated to New Zealand, from Montenegro when she was a teenager. She now lives in South-East London with her partner, their three children and a cat. 

Email: dsanovic@yahoo.com

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The Call 

July in Montenegro was good to you if you were a child. Our parents stayed in the city, sweating and working in unbearable heat, while my brother and I took the train and stayed by the sea with grandparents. By some wonderful chance, both sets of grandparents had built a house on the opposite ends of a small seaside town, Sutomore, long before my parents met. My maternal grandparents, with whom I stayed, were in a house under the hill punctured by tunnels and railway lines, and I stayed with them, while my paternal grandparents, with whom my brother stayed, lived nearby in a house under the same hill, overlooking the shore. The beach was within view when you sat on the terrace or played up and down the outdoor stairs that connected two floors. My brother and I never questioned this decision to be divided amongst our grandparents, and often days would pass without seeing each other. When we did reunite it was as if we had never been apart.

The sea was the central object of our desires all summer long. Each morning, straight after breakfast we would go to the beach. Whilst my journey to the beach was unfairly long, my brother’s was simply a downhill trek, barefooted, to the seafront. Or so it appeared to me, as I walked hand in hand with my granny, or an aunt or a family friend, past the town’s only supermarket, past the tiny kiosks, bursting open with newspapers, chewing gum, beach balls, lilos, plastic spades and buckets, comic strips and paperback romances, cigarettes and sweets, past the clothes stands, bars and restaurants forever grilling meats and corn and bread and releasing juicy scents into the hot air. We’d walk past the church, which stood so strangely shaded, shut up and sad, against a drove of beach goers, hardly dressed at all. We’d walk past the grand hotel with a fountain in the courtyard, and past the shabby hotel that looked like it hosted party conferences (a joke I never understood). Finally, we’d get to the water. I’d see the golden sand, the azure colours and want to jump straight in, but regardless of who my accompanying adult was at the time, they were never quite satisfied with the first patch of beach we came across. It was too far away from the sea, too close to the sea, too dirty, too crowded, too close to the noise, too close to the tide, too close to the wall. I endured it all, sighing and sullen until finally the perfect place would materialise and I would be able to dump my towel on the ground and run into the water without as much as a cursory glance back to mark where we had decided to set up camp. 

This was my territory. I was first brought to this town at only two weeks old, and had since returned every single summer. My days were spent at the beach, or wishing I was at the beach. When my parents would occasionally take the train down for the weekend, to escape the city heat and to see us, they would feign shock and pretend they didn’t recognise me, that some gypsy girl had stolen me away in the middle of the night and was now posing as their daughter. My skin would darken, my hair lighten and I lived the summer without the many rules which seemed to guide my life between the last night of August, before school started again in September, and the last day of term in June. Those were the buttoned up, corseted days of waking up in the dark and attending long school days, returning home in the dark and doing endless homework tasks at the kitchen table; days of setting out clothes the night before, and following carefully coordinated family schedules. 

In the summer, I was always salty and wild and allowed to wear whatever clothes I chose, read as many comic strips as I could, and eat as many ice creams as we could carry from the shops. I’d get in trouble sometimes too, when I drove the high jinx too far and experimented with things I had no business playing with, like getting my head stuck in the big sun of the white iron gate. Granny had to grease my neck and head with butter and it took two neighbours to help her push my head out of the small iron O. There were threats made then about no more trips to the sea and I cried, stuck in a headlock of my own doing, until I was finally free and my granny took pity and promised to lift the ban. 

A few times per week I’d walk over to the other side of town to see my younger brother. At first I was always accompanied by an adult and then slowly, once or twice, allowed to go on my own, after promising to call my granny as soon as I set foot in grandma’s house. This chore was worth it. I felt at home in both houses, so different though they were. Granny did a lot of cooking and her guests were artists, and poets and musicians. They were all old but had a way about them. They smoked and talked late into the night, when the crickets would sing and I’d fall asleep on my granny’s lap. Now that she was paler and more delicate she would just hold my hand, or stroke my hair, but generally things were the same. I would be asleep long before she and her friends would call it a night. 

Grandma did a lot of gardening and her guests were colleagues from the Parliament and people who used to rent rooms upstairs, during the busy summer months. She knew the names of every flower and every tree and taught me how to knit baby booties under the shade of her walnut tree. She and granddad would play cards in the evening and she’d go to bed when the clock struck ten, to read and do crossword puzzles. Her bedside table held a magnifying glass, half-moon glasses on a gold chain, books, glycerine tablets, nail clipper set, tweezers and hard boiled sweets in a brass tin. 

When I stayed with grandma I soon realised that their path to the beach was not as idyllic as I remembered it during the long winter months in the city. The road wasn’t paved and so you had to be very particular about where you stepped. Big smooth stones were the ticket but if you misjudged your step, the sharp rocks would poke and prod your bare feet and far too often make them bleed and blister. But, that was only at the start of the summer. A few weeks into the visit and either the soles of our feet toughened, or we became experts at stepping on the right stones. Once we navigated the stones, there was a narrow concrete passage made of steep steps, surrounded by overgrown fruit bushes on either side. The dangers were many: slipping down the wet steps, being pierced by thorny undergrowth, or worst of all, attacked by all sorts of hideous, huge, buzzing insects. They would land on my bare arms or legs or head and I’d scream until someone stepped in to swat them away. Finally, at the bottom of the stairs was a busy road which you had to cross just at the right time, or become a name in the obituary section of the paper, of which both grandmothers were most fond, diligently pouring over little black and white photographs and messages from family and friends. Finally, there was the beach, past a stone wall and another set of steps. Shorter than my usual walk from granny’s, but also far more dangerous. 

My twelfth year began in Sutomore, on the twelfth day of July. Mid-summer. On that particular day I made the perilous journey with my brother and some upstairs German guests. They set up their sun umbrella and towels and while my brother played with their child, I went for a swim. Perhaps it was the bravado of being a year older, or the feeling that I was special on that – my – day, but I decided to take my swim further than ever before. I felt so comfortable and happy in the sea. The water was warm and all shades and tones of blue. Murky in parts and then clear. Bruise blue then caerulean. Blue, violet, grey, indigo, like an artist’s palette. I kicked my legs hard and moved my arms with purpose, head ducking in and out of water, whipping up creamy waves behind me. I swam past the rock pool on my right, thinking of local stories and legends, including the time my father, then a teenager, did a double somersault, broke his leg, and turned the sea crimson. And I thought back to the previous week when some older kids had thrown green paint into the rock pool making it look like Hulk’s bath water. I kept swimming. Nothing in front of me but a line where the sea and the sky met and then a faint silhouette of cargo ships, far, far in the distance. At some point I became aware of the noise. Or, the lack of the noise. There was no more excited shouting and happy squealing, names being called and balls being bounced. There was no more chatter of people or music coming from the seafront cafes. I couldn’t hear anything other than my own splashing and breathing. I looked back at the beach, now a strip of gold and orange and red and blue – umbrellas looking like cocktail decorations and people all morphing into a collective line, no longer moving, but still. I swam on, exhilarated by how quickly I had travelled such a great distance. I felt like there was still not enough space between me and the land. I thought about my own strength and power, considering how now, aged twelve, I was already so much more accomplished than I was but one day ago, and definitely compared to last summer. I thought about my summertime friend and rival, Ana, and how our rivalry surely would have come to a swift end had she been watching me from the beach. 

Suddenly the sea felt very cold; the icy waters washed over my face, my fingers, arms and legs, reaching to my toes. Then as quickly as the cold came, it turned terribly warm. Not pleasantly, soupy warm, like it always felt, but unnaturally so, as if someone had turned on a giant hot tap and poured it all over me. I looked down and saw movement. The water was clear and transparent all the way down to the sandy bottom. I could see silvery shimmers underneath me and it took me a second to realise that I had swum straight into a shoal of fish. Big, long, silvery purple fish, with black wet eyes, fan tails, roof top tile scales, fleshy gills, and so many teeth, in mouths opened and menacing. They were each the size of my arms and legs, some fat, some slimmer and they moved, constantly. I felt cold all of sudden, despite the water. My breathing quickened and I turned my body around, to face the strip of land once again. It now seemed so far away. All I could think about were the creatures below, the ones who probably feasted on the fat, toothy fish beneath. I no longer took my time swimming, but raced back to the beach as fast as I could manage. Arms and legs worked mechanically, separately from my mind which was filled with images of spilt blood and flesh floating down, down to the sandy bottom, to be nibbled or devoured. In no time I was back amongst people, squealing with excitement, holding chubby babies, or ducking and diving from each other’s shoulders. I couldn’t stop, not until my toes were touching the bottom, feeling the gravelly sand. My heart didn’t stop hammering until I splayed my body in the shallow water, exhausted by my efforts. I let the mercifully small waves rock and roll me, filling my swimming costume and hair with sand while I revelled in the ordinary scene in front of me again. Towels, sun umbrellas, packed beach, noisy music travelling down from the cafes, ice-creams dripping down chins and greasy people reading, laughing, talking. 

“Where have you been?” My brother’s question brought me back to the moment. “We need to go.”

And even though I then felt older than twelve, a quiet voice in my head suggested that perhaps I needed to be alone in a quiet and dry room, and forget my momentary terror. But I don’t want to get out of the water, another responded. I want to stay here, like a baby, and be lulled by this salty mother. No such luck. The adults were packing up. Their toddler had had enough and so we needed to leave. We trudged back up the concrete stairs, thorny bramble, spiky road and through my grandma’s abundant garden. Upstairs guests were gone and we were told to sit out on the terrace and wait for our lunch. 

“Do you want to play cards?” I asked, wanting to distract myself from staring at the sea. So we played, my brother and I, at least three rounds (he insisted we play “Go Fish”), until the food arrived. Grandma had made sandwiches and was clearing up when the phone rang. 

“I’ll get it,” she called out. I felt annoyed, because I knew it would be for me, my mother calling to wish me a happy birthday whilst I maintained a nervous silence about my moment in the sea. She would be angry that I swam on my own when I was already angry at her for missing my birthday. She should have been there, not in a sticky office, shuffling papers and taking meetings. 

When grandma appeared in the doorway to say “it’s for you”, I was resigned to having to take a call I didn’t want. 

“It’s for you.” My grandma repeated the summons, eyeing me strangely. She wouldn’t meet my gaze and so I huffed and dragged my feet into the hallway. The phone was waiting. I picked up the receiver and felt a sudden, petulant urge to dial every number, spin the wheel around and let my mother hear the ticking on the other side of the line. 

“Hello.” 

“Hello darling.”

Then came a long pause – too long and odd. I wondered if perhaps she could feel my annoyance. 

“How are you?” Her voice was strained. 

“I’m fine.”

“Have you been swimming?”

“Yes, the water was warm.”

“Are you listening to grandma? Are you being good?”

“Yes.”

Another long pause. I was waiting for the song, for congratulations, for an acknowledgment that today was the twelfth. That I was twelve. It didn’t come. Instead – 

“Can you put grandma on again, please?”

“But”, I began to protest, willing this conversation to find its way back to the familiar territory.

“Please, just put her back on.”

I felt a hot, burning rage rising from inside and into my cheeks. I slammed the receiver down on the sideboard and ran back outside onto the terrace. Grandma had hurried back inside and I heard hushed tones spoken. I lay with my head in my arms, on the table. I wanted to cry, but the tears were not coming. How could she forget? I didn’t want to see anyone. Instead I peeped through the triangle hole my arms made and stared down at the marble floor and my feet dangling from the chair. 

“What’s wrong?” my brother asked and I enjoyed his concern. But I didn’t answer. “What’s wrong?” This time he addressed my grandma. He didn’t understand. He was only ten. 

The third time he asked, she came out with it. She just said: “Don’t press your sister. Your granny has died.” 

Now, decades later it still plays in my mind, this film, clear as water, sharp as glass. I can sift through my actions and think about what has passed: the movement, the voices. I know now how my mother must have felt, her heavy hand lifting the phone, the words caught in her throat, dry on her tongue. I didn’t ask at that moment when granny died, how, who was there? I didn’t ask my mother how she was. Didn’t think about her bursting heart. At that moment I didn’t pause to question grandma’s actions and thinking when revealing such a blow to my younger brother. I didn’t connect that somewhere I already knew that those two grandmother figures would be no longer two, but one and that this house would be the only one I visit each summer. I only knew this – 

I can’t breathe. I’m on the floor. I’m at the bottom of an ocean. I just wanted mum to say “happy birthday.” I’ll take it back. I won’t sulk. I won’t swim out without asking. I won’t wish to be at this house, and have a shorter walk to the beach, I’ll stop. I’ll stop. This can’t be true. I can’t breathe.

I throw the chair. And run. Run past the pregnant garden. Past the neighbour’s tall gates. Down the steps. I run past the parked car and up the hill, all the way to my granddad’s sister’s house. I can see my knees running, my sandals slapping the ground, my yellow dress swishing and swaying. I run until I arrive. She is sitting on the terrace, reading the paper. She peers over the flimsy page, over her half-moon glasses. She drops everything on the cold floor. She hugs me and I cry. I cry. I cry. I cry. I cry. I am falling into her soft lap. She holds me. I cry. 

“What’s happened?” she repeats, over and over again. And I cry. 

“She’s dead. She died,” I say eventually and I see that she understands. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and holds me and cries and I am comforted to know that we are both sad, together. She tells me how much granny loved me and how sick she was, and I know. I know the beach trips stopped and I was spending more time with grandma. I know she was sick and it wasn’t good. But I didn’t know she could die. I stay for a while and then know that it’s time to go back. 

I walk back. I can’t look at the sea. It’s calling me but I refuse to look at it. I wish it had claimed me. I wish I was there now, with the fish. I feel that I’ll never go back into it again. 

My brother is crying. My grandma is sorry. 

“I didn’t know,” she says, “I thought your mum told you. I thought that’s why you were crying.” And I see the pain on her face and I know that I can’t cry again.

I walk up the stairs to the second floor. The upstairs guests are out, so I sit by the door, on the top step. I look out to the sea. It’s blue and it’s calm. The people have packed the beach, bodies swarming both water and land. They are playing games, shouting, laughing. 

The sea looks at me. All that water is hiding so much. Of course I knew that, but until I saw those fish reflecting light and moving underneath me, I don’t think I believed that it was real. It was something far away, in my biology books, something not here in Sutomore, not in the water I was dipped in from no age and swam in before I could walk. It was on the horizon, somewhere. I saw fishermen’s boats coming in with nets, spilling with their catch. I ate those fish and oysters cooked in deep clay ovens. I drew them in my pictures of summer holidays. But now I know that they were real, here, in the water, as clear as air around me. 

And I know that I will swim again. That I will see them again. I know that even if I didn’t, I will know about them. 

And I know what growing up is: knowing the ocean only when you see the bottom, deep and unpredictable and not as blue as you once thought. Knowing the stretching horizon ahead and not rushing to swim towards it, but staying closer to the shore, soaking it all in.