Tante Eva

by Paula Bomer

  The path was littered with the roots of the pines and the smaller trees and shrubs. Occasionally Eva tripped, but she didn’t fall. She had to duck her head, too, as the branches came down low. Stooped and tripping, she made it to the other cabin, which on closer inspection was a boathouse. Two large doors stood padlocked in the front, toward the lake, and on the side was a window with no glass. Eva looked in. Two rowboats, one stacked on the other, sat next to a large metal locker. She circled around the house and on the other side saw a large cellar door, padlocked. She grabbed the door handle and shook it. The skin of her hands cracked in the cold, the metal nearly ripping flesh from her.

  “Ach!” she said, frustrated with the lock, with herself, with the secrets she didn’t know and wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She walked around to the front door and saw that it wasn’t properly locked. The cold had burst the hinge out of its sockets and the door was stuck ajar an inch. Despite her painful hands, she grabbed the wooden door and pulled to open it, struggling against the crusty snow but eventually getting it open enough for her to squeeze through. The lockers were well locked, and she didn’t want to ruin her hands any more than she already had. She walked up to the boats and sat leaning against them for a while, warming her sore hands between her legs, the coolness feeling almost good on her privates. She closed her eyes. Not for long. She needed the fire.

  The way back seemed easier, as always. Her feet had grown so quickly used to the terrain. When she returned, Hans was still sleeping.

  Chapter 27

  Eva had not been her mother’s favorite. A firstborn daughter was a disappointment back then. A daughter was for the third or fourth child, so as to have someone to take care of you when you got older. But then Willi was born, and he was the center of her mother’s heart. A healthy, noisy, troublesome boy. This is what people wanted then. They wanted sons.

  But even if she had not been her mother’s favorite, her mother loved her. She was a big warm woman, and she had been very young when she had her children—not yet twenty when Eva was born. Her mother kissed and hugged but was also quick to swat and scold. She was not unique, not special in any way with her kids. But she was good enough. Good enough indeed.

  When she got sick, of course, everything changed. Eva was old enough to be strong about it. Any fear and sadness she kept so well hidden she didn’t even remember feeling it, not even after her mother died. It was as if laundry and shopping for cheap meals and sewing the clothes and keeping the floors clean became her emotional life. And taking care of Liezel. Liezel was all hers then. And she loved that. That was how she remembered it. The house, particularly getting meals together was sometimes stressful and overwhelming. But Liezel was her prize.

  Not that it had been so easy, winning Liezel away from her mother. But it hadn’t been so hard, either. As her mother became more sick and spent more time in the hospital, Liezel seemed to forget her. That’s how children are. They move on, so quickly it can take your breath away. They’re built for survival.

  The older we get, thought Eva, the more we sabotage ourselves, our survival. The more all those things we handled so bravely as children come back to haunt us, tear us apart, render us frozen and useless.

  Eva was awake but not out of bed. It was noon. She’d come back late the night before, after spending two quiet and uneventful days with Hans at the cabin. Strangely for her, she was happy when he dropped her off last night, happy to be away from him, and she had stayed up late listening to music.

  A banging on the door startled her. “Eva,” Krista said. “Eva, the phone is for you.”

  She wrapped her robe around her and went out.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you,” Krista said, with a slight, weird smile on her lips. “I thought you would want to be woken for a phone call.”

  “Yes, of course. I was awake. Just not up yet. Thank you for getting me.”

  Krista smiled even more nervously, looking at her feet.

  “Ja bitte?” Eva said into the phone.

  “Eva? It’s Liezel. I’m so happy I caught you.”

  “Liezel!”

  “I’m coming to Berlin.”

  Eva’s heart started to beat rapidly. She hadn’t had her coffee yet. It was all too much.

  “I won’t stay long. But I may try and bring back Maggie. I know I can’t force her back, but I’m worried. You see, she called and asked for money. It appears Tom has gotten himself arrested.”

  Eva felt the heat run to her face. How did Liezel know this and not her?

  “Arrested? For what? Is Maggie okay?” She had a sudden feeling of anger at Maggie, for not calling her first, for not letting her know. Eva went back to her room to get a pen and paper to write down Liezel’s hotel info. Her room, her haven, glared at her cheaply; she did not want her sister to see how she lived.

  “She didn’t tell me why Tom was arrested, just that he was. And that she needed money to get him out of jail. If I ask her questions, she doesn’t answer. That’s how it is with her. She thinks her life is none of my business.”

  “I wrote you and told you that I agreed that perhaps Tom wasn’t the best . . .”

  Liezel interrupted, “I know. I got the letter already. I appreciated it.”

  “But I still am shocked about this.”

  “I’m not,” Liezel said, grimly. “How often are you seeing Maggie? I mean, are you even looking out for her?”

  Eva felt that blackness pour through her. She was supposed to take care of Liezel, now Maggie, and nothing she did was ever enough. And who takes care of her? Who ever took care of her? Her rich younger sister? Her dead mother? Her selfish dead husband? “Of course I’m looking out for her, but she’s not an infant whose diapers I can change like yours.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “She came here because she loves it here and not there, and I don’t blame her.”

  “She doesn’t know what she loves. She’s a child. Jesus, Eva.”

  The images of Liezel a bit younger than Maggie, the photos that Elena made her look at, came at her, her youth and beauty used as a weapon, her betrayal of her only sister, of the only person alive who loved her. Who truly loved her.

  “Anyway, Eva, I’m coming to get her.”

  “You knew she was a drug addict and so was her boyfriend and you let her leave? To move to Berlin?” Eva asked and closed her eyes, letting her head fall back. “I haven’t failed you. You failed her.”

  “She bought the ticket without telling me! She did everything without telling me until after she did it! What was I supposed to do?” Liezel was yelling now.

  It was as if Eva woke up. “I’ll go by there today.”

  “I think she’s at work.” Liezel was breathing heavily.

  “I’ll go by later, when she’s off of work. She doesn’t live far from me.”

  “I know,” Liezel said. And now the crying. The sniffling. “She doesn’t love me, my daughter, but you know that already.” Eva then heard her take a deep breath. “I do think she needs me right now. I think she’s been humbled.”

  Eva was at a loss. “Es tut mir leid.” The anger hadn’t gone, but it was washed over with shame. Remorse.

  “Mir auch,” Liezel said, but Eva detected a flatness in her tone. She had never shown remorse for anything. It was as if when Eva left her, when she was abandoned, something in her shut down toward Eva. And yet, here she was. And here was her daughter.

  “I’m going to the airport now,” Liezel said. “I’m just getting on the next plane to Berlin. See you soon. How long has it been?”

  “A long time.”

  “No need to pick me up at the airport. I’ll call you when I get to the hotel.”

  “Wunderbar.”

  Eva put her hands to her face after she hung up. Her face was hot, and she couldn’t see well out of her left eye. She went back to her room
and lay down and tried to breathe slowly.

  Krista knocked again. “Eva,” she said outside the closed door, “Ist alles okay?”

  “Ja, ich habe Kopfschmerzen, nichts weiter,” Eva said loudly, shrilly, leaning her head toward the door. She hated that, talking through the thin doors. It was so uncivilized. She always stood up and opened it. But not today. She wanted Krista to go away. “Ich kann jetzt nicht mit dir sprechen.”

  When evening came, Eva put on a record that she had bought a long time ago from an unknown blues singer from the East—not a Black person but a Romanian man named Alexei Bondy, singing in English. He sang in a very heavily accented English, and the album was very scratched up. She had listened to it a lot when Hugo had been alive. When she would listen to anything bluesy. It had been a long time. It was beautiful. What did it matter, who sang the blues? She rouged and powdered her face, and he sang about making peace with where he was, with a knife in hand and blood on the wall.

  She lifted the needle from the record when the song was finished. Carefully, she put the album away.

  Chapter 28

  She wore her good walking shoes, black lace-ups she’d bought fifteen years ago. They weren’t pretty, but she didn’t care. She had always taken good care of them, twice a year taking them to the cobbler to maintain them. He was gone now, the cobbler; everything was gone now.

  As she walked, she noticed the skinheads were out on their corner for the first time in quite a while. She began to walk more quickly, with determination. She wasn’t afraid of them; she was not afraid of anything right now, but she was angry that they were there. They were a stain on her city. A disgrace. As she approached the three men, she noticed that they looked awful. Thinner, their complexions greener and more mottled. One of them, the smallest of the three, shivered uncontrollably even though he wore a black leather jacket and a hat.

  The little one came toward her and she veered away into the street, but he kept coming. Eva kept walking. She did not run, but then, for some reason, she felt compelled to look back at him. “Fräulein,” he said. “Können Sie mir helfen? Ich sterbe wahrscheinlich bald.”

  Eva stopped. He was shivering so much, he could barely stand, bent over, drooling. “Was? Drogen töten immer. Das muss dir doch klar sein, Junge?” she snapped. Why was she talking to this cruel, horrible boy?

  “Meine Mutter will nicht mit mir sprechen. Aber hier, hier ist ihre Nummer.” He tried to hold out a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it to her, but he dropped it. Eva quickly picked it up. “Bitte, Fräulein. Ich kann sehen, dass Sie eine gute Frau sind.”

  Eva said nothing. He had turned away, walking back to his friends. She kept going toward Maggie’s. What had happened to them? Such a sudden change. She shoved the paper into her pocket. As she got close to Maggie’s, she saw a Turkish restaurant on the corner. She decided to go in and have a coffee, maybe a brandy. Inside, there was one table occupied by three Turkish men, smoking, talking in Arabic. They stopped talking when she came in, looking at her. Two other small tables were empty and she sat at the nearest one. One of the men came to her.

  “Einen Kaffee und einen Brandy, bitte.”

  The man said nothing but shortly brought her a sweet, Turkish coffee and a small glass of brandy. She drank the brandy first. It was sharp and cheap but she didn’t care. She took out the piece of paper the skinhead had given her, sipping the thick, cloying coffee. Frau Baerbel Weber. The number was local. She carefully folded the paper and put it in her wallet. And if she were to call this woman? It would be what Jesus would have done. Loving thine enemies. The sweetness of the coffee clung, but grounds at the the gritty bottom of the pretty, tiny cup, stuck like mud to her tongue. She could see the darkness of it in her mouth, in her mind, she saw it.

  One thing at a time. She dropped some money and left without saying anything, which felt unlike her, was unlike her.

  In the twenty minutes it took Eva to walk to Maggie’s apartment, the evening turned to night. Eva never walked around this part of Berlin at night if she could help it. She had left the house later than she thought. Standing outside of Maggie’s building, waiting for the wave of fear, of apprehension to rise inside of her, Eva fumbled around in her purse, looking for her nighttime pills, but her heart beat only slightly faster than normal—she had been walking quickly, after all—and her mind did not jump around with terrible thoughts. She stopped searching for her pills and closed her eyes. Jesus, bist du bei mir? She pushed at the door—it was open. The calmness she felt was so unlike her normal state of mind. She didn’t trust it, but she tried to. Danke, Jesus. Behütest du mich? God was giving her strength. It was the only explanation. When she reached Maggie’s apartment, she knocked firmly. No one answered. She knocked again, banging hard this time. A door on the ground floor opened and a middle-aged Turkish woman came to the hall and looked up the stairs.

  “Das Mädchen ist drinnen,” she said, in heavily accented German. “Ich habe sie gesehen.”

  “Danke,” Eva replied. She tried the doorknob and the door swung open easily. It had been unlocked. Hot rage knifed through Eva. How could Maggie be so careless? Maggie the teacher, Maggie, her American niece who loved her? How could she be so stupid?

  Quickly the rage dissipated and she saw the shadow of her niece on a large floor pillow by the back windows. It was dark in the apartment. The calmness that infected Eva earlier came back. Maggie is dead, she thought. And it’s not my fault. But she saw her niece stir, ever so slightly.

  “Tom? Tom?” Maggie lifted her head slightly.

  “No, Maggie. It’s Eva.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh no?” Eva shut the door behind her and reached around the walls, looking for a light switch. She gave up and walked to Maggie, her eyes slowly adjusting. “Why ‘oh no,’ Maggie? It’s me. It’s just me.”

  “I don’t want you seeing me like this.” Maggie’s voice was hoarse. “I’m ashamed.”

  Eva sat next to her. The apartment smelled bad, like sour fruit, the fresh smell of paint gone. Eva wanted to ask where a light was. She wanted to turn on the lights. But it didn’t seem the right thing to do.

  “Your mother is coming.” She reached out to her niece, to stroke her hair. It was damp with sweat and thick with dirt. “Why did you call your mother? Why didn’t you call me first? I am here for you. Me. I am here.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “But I can’t borrow money from you, can I?”

  So this is what it came down to. It wasn’t trust or the lack of it. How could Eva help her when she had nothing to give? “I could have asked Hans. He has money.”

  “I could have asked Hans,” Maggie said, drily. “But that would have been too ironic.”

  “What does that mean? And what about Elena? After all she did for you?” Eva couldn’t contain her anger now. “She would have helped you.”

  “I’ve asked enough of Elena,” Maggie said. “Also, she wasn’t crazy about Tom. The money is for him.”

  “Who is crazy about Tom,” said Eva. It wasn’t a question. “No one is.” Then, “Maggie, what happened to you? What is wrong? Why has everything gone so wrong?”

  Maggie sat up, groaning. Even in the dark, Eva could tell Maggie was a mess. A complete mess. Not like before. Not secretly a mess. Something had changed. Eva was furious, but she tried to hide it.

  “I’m sorry, Tante Eva. I know I’ve disappointed you.”

  Eva stopped touching Maggie’s hair and then touched her stomach, then her face, then lifted her arms. She was a nurse, after all. Her stomach was hard—not a good sign, a blockage? Her face was cold; her arms had marks, needle marks.

  “We need to get you to a hospital.”

  “That might be the right thing to do.”

  “Yes. I’ll walk you there.”

  “I don’t think I can walk very far.” Maggie began to cry.

  “Of c
ourse. We’ll call a taxi.”

  “I have no phone. It got shut off. We didn’t pay the bill. Actually, that was the one bill Tom was supposed to take care of. He didn’t pay it. The one thing I have him do, and he doesn’t do it.”

  “I’ll go downstairs. The woman who lives there may have a phone.”

  “Maybe,” said Maggie. “I don’t know.”

  Eva pulled Maggie to her, embracing her horrible body. “What happened, Maggie? What happened?”

  “I use heroin, Tante Eva. Please don’t hate me. And lately, I’ve been shooting bad drugs. Really bad drugs. Things just got worse, too. I don’t know.”

  “I’m going downstairs to call a car. I’ll be right back. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” Eva said, realizing how stupid she sounded. But what was she supposed to say? Her anger at her niece left her. She was in need of help. Who didn’t need help? What human being doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t need someone to hold them up?

  “You know, Tante Eva, that Tom beat up a whore? That’s why he’s in jail. He almost killed her. A fucking whore. How hard is it to get arrested for that? And he’s been dealing heroin for Hans. Hans’s drugs are bad, though. They’re cut with something awful, and that’s what’s been making me sick. I’m so mad. I’m not even mad at him. I don’t care about him. I’m so mad at myself,” she said, her voice thick with snot and tears.

  “Hans?”

  “We assumed you knew. I mean, he’s your boyfriend.”

  “Yes, he’s my boyfriend. But he’s no drug dealer,” Eva spat. Then she thought of the cabin, of the boxes, of the late night at the gas station. Maggie was smiling through her obvious pain, her physical discomfort.