American Hungarian Trilogy

CHAPTER 1-5

I thought it was funny. But then, the gate flared open and these uniformed men with bayonets came charging out.

All I saw was one crackling flash after another, followed by the sound of gunfire. The intense volley from their guns pierced the darkness.

Michelangelo snatched me by the hand, ready to run for it. I froze. Another volley. Then another. The ÁVO men sprayed the Skoda’s windshield with bullets, killing the driver. I saw a student go down, squirming in pain. We should’ve run, but I couldn’t move. “Oh, my God,” Michelangelo said. Then he let go of my hand. He lurched forward, grasping his leg in agony. Blood seeped from between his fingers. “My leg,” he groaned.

I kneeled next to him. I had to do something to stop the bleeding, but first I had to get him out of here. “Bastards!” Michelangelo hissed.

Strangers bent over us. One said an ambulance was on its way. A blond woman in a long raincoat helped me get Michelangelo on the sidewalk and into a*****e doorway.

We were only a block from my apartment. I didn’t want to leave Michelangelo, so I gave the address to the woman in the raincoat who helped drag Michelangelo out of the line of fire. “Tell them to get help. A doctor. Anything. Hurry.”

Thanks to my days at Pioneer camp, I knew how to make a tourniquet. I took my pullover off, wrapped a sleeve tightly around Michelangelo’s leg, just above the wound. I made a knot and kept tightening it and tightening it until the bleeding stopped.

Michelangelo was still groaning, shivering, his hand glued to his wound. In minutes my mother arrived in her English tweed suit. She looked horrified. I took the blanket from her and covered Michelangelo.

“Jesus! My God! Are you alright?”

“I’m alright, but Michelangelo isn’t.”

“I know,” she said, “The woman told me about the shooting.”

My mother took Michelangelo’s bloody hand and gently pulled it from his leg so she could see how bad it was. “I can’t see here. We have to get him to where I can see.”

My mother and I each took an arm and pulled Michelangelo under a street lamp. There, my mother went to work. She patted around the bloody wound and wiped away at it with her handkerchief till she saw the torn skin where the bullet sheared it. Then she fished out a large sewing needle and a spool of thread from her half-finished pocket. “Oh, my God!” Michelangelo said. “Have you done this before?”

My mother didn’t look up. “Never,” my mother said. I sewed up a goose a few times in my life. After I stuffed it.”

“God!” Michelangelo groaned.

“Leave God in heaven. It’s only a flesh wound,” my mother said as she started to stitch Michelangelo’s wound. Michelangelo gritted his teeth.

The ambulance arrived as she finished up. The white vehicle, with a Red Cross emblazoned on its side, rolled right past us and continued toward the gate.

“Look where they’re going!” Michelangelo said.

“You don’t need an ambulance,” my mother said to Michelangelo. “Now, see if you can stand up.”

We hoisted Michelangelo up and propped him against the bakery door. He said he could use a cigarette. “Not good for you,” my mother said. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t think so. Not without pain.”

“I’ll go to the ambulance and get some bandages and see if they have anything for pain.”

“No, mother, it’s dangerous.”

“You’re going to tell me about dangerous? You? You stay with Michelangelo, you hear me?”

She tried threading herself through the crowd milling around the ambulance. We heard one of the protestors shout that the ambulance only came to help the ÁVO injured. The crowd blocked the ambulance from going further.

A burly student grabbed the ambulance’s door handle. Someone smashed the passenger window with a cobblestone. “Guns!” they shouted. “They got guns! They’re trying to sneak them in to the ÁVO! Seize the guns!”

The crowd swarmed around the ambulance. Its doors swung open. They pulled out the driver and the crowd pounced on him. It was a free-for-all. For the man. For the guns.

I couldn’t see my mother.

Was she still trying to get bandages? God! A young man held a rifle high in the air. Suddenly, a flare fired from the roof lit up the building and the street. I heard a burst of machine gun fire. I didn’t know where it was coming from. Then I saw him. The man in the ÁVO uniform. Between the Skoda and the ambulance. He was the shooter. His bullets ricochet off the ambulance with a tinny sound. Another burst, this one close, very close, chipping stone right in front of me, shattering the bakery window. I fell back like rag doll.

I was dazed. Michelangelo was gone. Where was he? Where was my mother?

I spotted Michelangelo. He was screaming, limping toward the ambulance when a fresh volley pinned me down. I crawled on my belly toward the ambulance.

My mother! Oh, my God! My mother lay on the ground in a pool of blood.

I knelt by my mother and tried cradling her. Michelangelo was unbuttoning the few buttons on her half-finished suit.

My mother clutched her neck. Blood soaked her suit, the English tweed absorbing her blood like a sponge.

She nodded to me that it was alright. I knew it wasn’t. My poor mother had run out of the apartment without giving a second thought about anything except me, her daughter. The buttons weren’t properly sewn on yet. Here she was bleeding to death in front of me in the only suit she ever wore in her life. And even that unfinished. I heard myself bawling. “Mother, please! Please don’t.”

Gunfire. Then an explosion. When I opened my eyes, I was on the other side of the street. I must’ve been thrown there by the blast. All I could see was the overturned ambulance on fire and my mother burning beside it.

Michelangelo had to use all his strength to drag me to safety behind a tree. I was choking, coughing from the black, oily smoke. Oh, my God! Mother!

I ran a trembling hand through my hair.

Another flare went up from the roof. People in the crowd were returning fire.

Michelangelo was suddenly next to me, dumbly staring at the submachine gun someone had thrust at him. He looked scared, confused. I saw the ropes working in his jaw. Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed the gun, pointed it at the shooter and pulled the trigger. A burst, then a jolt. The sound was deafening. I felt powder on my face but I didn’t care. “Killer! You killed my mother!” I cried as my throat burned with rage.

Riddled with bullets, the man fell backwards. Michelangelo said, “My God, you got him. Was that you?”

“I don’t know.” But I did know. I just killed a man. And I kept firing away, spraying the uniformed ÁVO man – until I ran out of bullets. Until I was numb enough not to have to feel.

There was a lull in the shooting. A dead silence.

Michelangelo tried taking the gun from me, but I had a death-grip on it. He forgot about his pain. He said he had to take me home. Now. That was enough shooting for one night.

I told him I couldn’t go home. Not now. I couldn’t face my little sister after all I’ve done.

“It’s not your fault.” Michelangelo said. He pointed to the blood-soaked body of the ÁVO man. “It’s his. It’s theirs. They’re the killers. They killed your mother. They’re killing innocent civilians. They started it!”

“I swear to God,” I said to Michelangelo, “they’re going to pay.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re just a kid. What about your sister? Your poor aunt? She loves you like a mother.”

“I have no mother.” Michelangelo’s forehead tightened. For a long time nothing was said. He nodded to himself as if acknowledging something. He held out his hand for the gun. “Alright,” he said. “Let me show you something.” He showed me how the round magazine of the submachine gun was loaded. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He took the gun and slung the leather strap around my neck. “It’s yours,” he said. “You’ve earned it. Now, let’s go.”

“No,” I said, my jaw set. “I will not leave my mother.”