Chapter Six

July 1995

Wanda did not know what was going on as she watched the news. She did not get why this town in Bosnia was so significant given that people were dying in each of the Yugoslav states every single day. She heard the word genocide being spoken, though she had no idea what it meant. It was a big word for a five-year-old. She looked into the kitchen where her mother was trying to calm down her grandmother. Her grandmother was crying and rambling about it happening again. Wanda turned back to the TV. There were many women crying hysterically.

"Mummy," Wanda called. "What's going on?"

Marya then noticed what her daughter was watching - only because her mother had been watching the news and had not switched over to something more appropriate - and immediately went to turn the television off.

"Wanda, you are too young to be hearing about things like this," Marya told her daughter.

"But…" Wanda did not get how she was too young. Wanda had known no different. Her earliest memory was a shootout between Sokovian rebels and the Serbian government forces. "I just want to know why-"

"You're too young to understand."

"Marya," her grandmother interrupted. "I think it's time for us to tell her."

"No Mum. She's only five."

"And I was fifteen. Wanda, come here Iubirea mea." Wanda walked over to her grandmother and her grandmother lifted her onto her lap. "You know that you are half Romani right?" Wanda nodded. "Well, when I was your age, a man who thought that some people were more pure than others, like the Romani, and they put the others in different houses and even in these places called concentration camps."

"Mum," Marya tried to intervene.

The older woman ignored her daughter and carried on with her story, "They sent me to one of those camps. They worked me to the bone. We had very little food and were kept like animals."

"That's really mean," Wanda commented. Her grandmother blinked at her. Mean was an understatement. "The people on TV…"

"They were different to the Serbs." Wanda did not get it; being different to someone did not mean they deserved to die. "I think you'll understand better when you're older."

"Exactly," Marya said taking Wanda off her mother's lap and bending down to her daughter's level. "Wanda, there are some people in the world who are evil. They believe what they do is right but it isn't right. I don't know why but they do. I wish I could explain to you and Pietro but even I don't understand why people hate other people because they live differently. The one thing you need to know is that you are not a bad person because of who you are."

Wanda nodded, but still did not understand what her mother meant. In her little head, she could not get why a person would want to hurt another being, nor why anyone would think she would be a bad person when she had done nothing wrong.

"One broken arm coming through," a male voice announced through the apartment. Django Maximoff came in with Pietro, who had a cast around his arm and a pitiful look on his face. "Someone is not taking any trips down the stairs on a skateboard again. So what's happened here?"

"Nothing dragă. Wanda was just watching too much TV."

"You'll get square eyes dušica."

"Okay Daddy," Wanda replied.

The news was the same over the next few days: the same town in Bosnia. Marya kept trying to keep Wanda and Pietro away from the awful details of what happened to the men and boys of that town, but given that it was everywhere it was near impossible.

Then the images started appearing in the newspapers and then Wanda saw something she should not have. That night, she had a nightmare and screamed the apartment down.

The night after she did the same, and the night after that and the night after that. Worse still, she had started to wet the bed again. She felt embarrassed. She was five and had not wet the bed since she was three. Her mother did not seem put out by having to change the sheets in the morning but Wanda could never escape the shame.

On the fifth night, Wanda refused to sleep. Everytime she shut her eyes, the image that she had seen in the newspaper was plastered onto her eyelids. Pietro was sleeping soundly in the bed on the other side of the room and the only other noise was the clock chiming to tell the apartment it was past midnight. Wanda's bedtime was seven.

Despite the fact she had heard her parents go to bed two hours ago, Wanda could see a dim light from the living room through the crack under the door, and it made her worry that someone else was in the apartment.

She crept out of bed and gently opened the door so that Pietro would not be woken up. It sounded like the news again and then she realised it must have been her grandmother. It was confirmed when she saw the old woman sitting in the chair.

"Baka, why are you awake? Wanda asked.

"I could ask you the same thing young lady," the woman replied. Wanda shuffled her feet the same way she always did when she was hiding something. "Is it to do with what you saw in the newspaper?" Wanda nodded. "Come here Wanda." Wanda walked over and perched herself on the sofa beside her grandmother. "What you saw was not natural. That is not how most people treat each other. However, some people are pure evil."

"Why?"

"I wish I knew. They just are. I witnessed the most evil thing that humans have to offer but I can't explain why that happened. No one can."

Wanda then noticed the tattoo on her grandmother's arms: it was a series of numbers that Wanda did not know its significance. The numbers just seemed random, and her grandmother seemed to not want to ever look at it, which made Wanda wonder why she would get a tattoo like that if she hated looking at it.

"I'm scared Baka. I think people are going to come in and take Daddy and Pietro away."

"Is that why you've been having nightmares?" Wanda nodded. "Did I ever tell you I had a twin brother?"

"No."

"When the Nazis invaded Romania, we had heard what was happening to the Jewish people, and we knew the Romani were next. We knew that they were taken during the night and it did happen to us. We were taken to be deported, my brother and I were seperated. I haven't seen him since 1944. I think he died because he never came to find me."

"Do you think about him?"

"Every day. Listen, Iubirea mea. I don't imagine anything happening to your father and Pietro the extent it happened to me and Alexandru. You and your brother are joined at the hip so I know you will always look out for one another. If anyone tries to take him, I doubt you will let them."

"I won't."

"It's hard to explain to you now when you are still so young, but you are a smart little girl."

"Am I?"

"You are very emotionally smart." Wanda did not what they meant but she took the compliment. "Just remember that you can be anything you want to be, and no one should hold you back, especially yourself."

When Django and Marya woke up at six in the morning, Wanda was curled up on the couch next to her grandmother, sleeping soundly.


Like I said in the previous chapter, this flashback is going to inform some of the later chapters in this story.

The next chapter is the last one in Part One so there is going to be a little more action.