by lize Spit
The toilet seat is warm from my thighs. I only notice because it feels cold when I shift my weight. As soon as I become aware of my own body heat, the nausea hits.
Someone’s coming down the hall. The door doesn’t have a lock, but there is a ventilation system that starts humming when the light’s turned on, so everyone knows it’s occupied.
“Who’s on the toilet?” Mom asks.
“Me,” I say.
“Who’s me?”
“Eva.”
“You’ve got a phone call.”
“I’m coming.”
“She’s coming.”
I can hear Pim’s voice blaring on the other end of the phone.
“Pim wants to know if you want to go swimming,” Mom says.
“Now?”
“Now?” Mom repeats the question into the phone.
I didn’t know Pim had a pool. It’s crazy to think that someone who just lost his brother suddenly has a swimming pool. An unfair trade that no one should have ever signed off on.
“Not now, tomorrow.”
Mom turns back down the hall and shuts the living-room door behind her. I hear her fiddling with the handle, mumbling to herself. I hope she’s at least remembered to hang up the phone.
Pim’s probably already called Laurens anyway. Maybe they’re swimming right now, without me. Nothing is more fun than splashing around in the middle of a thunderstorm as the vibrations ripple through the water. I should have taken his call, then maybe I could have joined them.
But if I want to go swimming, I have to figure out how to insert a tampon.
After a half-hour of poking and wriggling, I go back into the kitchen. The tampon hurts, making it hard to walk normally. I can feel how deep it is; I could point to the exact spot on my lower abdomen.
On the table is a shoebox without a lid. Lying at the bottom is a stinky, muddy turtle carcass, the flesh greedily eaten away. It reminds me of beef stew. The shell rests crooked on what’s left of the legs. If this were a meal, Mom would put it back on our plate and say, “There’s still some work to be done here.” Next to the box is a bottle of glass cleaner and a pile of cotton balls. Lying on a piece of newspaper are two clean feet. It’s easy to tell which one was cleaned by Tessie and which one was cleaned by Jolan.
The garden is empty. The piles of sand have shrunk and turned into mud. The day’s not over yet. Only now does it occur to me that Tessie never got her swimming pool.
I have no idea where everyone’s gone. I open all the windows in the house, but the smell won’t budge.
Windows 95
JUST LIKE EVERYBODY else in town, we could split our childhood into two periods: before Windows 95 and after Windows 95. In all the other families, that split came in ’95 and was marked by the sudden appearance of English words.
Games. Points. Levels. Winner.
Everybody did their best. But Jolan and I couldn’t help but notice that the round English sounds didn’t fit very well in their sharp, dialect-formed mouths. We were practically the only kids in Bovenmeer who didn’t have a TV or Windows and still called “cornflakes” “breakfast grains” or Quakies, because that’s what was written on the Aldi box.
In our family, the split came a few years later and had nothing to do with the development of Windows but with the start of Tessie’s strange behavior, which was, in its own way, related to the introduction of an operating system.
In ’97, a few days after Laurens beat Tomb Raider for the first time and called me on the landline to brag about his victory during a time of day that was reserved for calls from grandparents, Dad decided it was high time we entered the digital age too.
Tessie was already asleep, but I wasn’t. I did what I had to do—be a lighthouse, but without light. I listened to every sound from my lofted bed but didn’t move out of fear that I played some kind of crucial role and all hell would break loose if I did, that Dad would never come home again.
After a few minutes, there were noises in the hall. Someone was coming up the stairs with shoes on. It was a walk I didn’t recognize, quick and determined. The footsteps reached the creaky top step.
Both the stairs and landing were covered with cardboard, perfectly measured to fit into all the nooks and crannies and secured with masking tape. Underneath the cardboard was a light parquet floor and an oak staircase. The floor had been covered for so long that it might as well not have been there at all. Every morning we walked over the wood grain that Mom and Dad were so desperately trying to preserve. It should have been comforting—the thought of something not getting destroyed—but the longer I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. The parquet floor was being preserved for some other, more important life.
The light switched on in the hallway. I rolled over so my back was facing the bedroom door. The door opened and the bright light from the hall landed right on my pillow, slicing my head in half at the temples. I let my mouth hang open a little, closed my eyes and didn’t react to the sound of my name. Still, I was ousted out of bed. That’s what lofted beds were for—to put children at eye level so it’s easier to wake them up in the middle of the night.
I followed Dad downstairs, watched his head drop fifteen centimeters with every step.
I couldn’t help but think back on the night Dad dragged me out of bed because Mom had announced that she was going to “end it once and for all”. End what exactly—her life, their relationship or the cherries waiting to be made into jam—Dad probably didn’t know. He made us race around the house in the middle of the night and confiscate anything that might make it easier for her.
We had to take the certain for the uncertain.
“Trust me, if you really want to end it and have enough imagination, even the garlic press is dangerous,” he said.
We collected everything in a big cardboard box: compasses, sharp cutlery, toothpicks, fountain pens. The next morning, Mom woke up to a plundered house. The medicine cabinet was empty except for a box of waterproof Band-Aids and a small, blunt pair of scissors. For three days, we ate with a spoon and fork. We weren’t allowed to cut paper anymore.
In hindsight, I think I was more worried that if she didn’t have a death wish already, our ransacking of the cutlery drawer might have been enough to give her one.
We reached the bottom step. Dad walked down the hall ahead of me into the living room and shut the door behind us. Even after I saw the big empty cardboard box with handles cut into the sides sitting in the middle of the living room, I still thought he was planning to hurt me.
“Look.”
He turned the light off in the room. In the opposite corner, on a little table, was our brand-new, second-hand computer. The screen emitted a cold, white glow.
“Evie, the time has come. We now own a Windows 95,” said Dad solemnly. Together, we stared at the feeble light in the room for at least a whole minute. Then he switched on a lamp, went into the kitchen, and came back with four open beers in his drink carrier. “I scored it at work.”
He massaged the neck of the first bottle, as if he wanted to put it at ease before gulping it down.
“Windows 95. What an operating system.”
Even with the white screen, the giant humming tower, the keyboard, mouse and mouse pad right there in front of me, I didn’t really get it. I just stood there shivering.
“Go put your bathrobe on,” Dad said.
After that, he let me stand next to his chair and watch him play five rounds of solitaire in a row.
For about three years, the second-hand computer remained in the same spot, between the wall and the marble fireplace, beside one of the fancy dining-room chairs that had been in Mom’s eyes downgraded and in Dad’s eyes upgraded into a computer chair.
It was the most high-traffic area in the house, which allowed us to keep a close eye on each other’s computer use. Not only was it on the way from the back door to the hallway and from the kitchen to the bathroom, it was also exactly halfway between the basement door and the kit
chen, two rooms in the house where Mom had a lot of power. Her many trips back and forth led to a tacit disagreement: she thought we were spending too much time on the computer. We started noticing how often she went down to the basement with the same can of tomatoes, even when we weren’t having spaghetti or any other kind of red sauce for dinner.
After the arrival of Windows 95, it took us a little while to work out who could use the computer and when. Jolan decided that we could each play for an hour every night and that we’d take turns from oldest to youngest. As long as the person playing didn’t mind, we could watch over their shoulder.
Jolan and I discovered the “Fun stuff” folder on the desktop, which contained two video clips: Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” and “Good Times” by Edie Brickell. We played the clips over and over again—never had we been so close to having MTV. “Good Times” became the soundtrack of ’97.
After we got bored with the songs, everyone chose their own specialty. I started making drawings in Paint, which never worked—the stiff mouse was too hard to maneuver; Jolan devoted himself to Hover!, ramming flags into pixelated backgrounds while the compass spun around arbitrarily on the dashboard; Tessie, who was only six at the time, liked staring at screen savers. Her favorite was Starfield. She’d ask me to set it to the maximum number of stars at the minimum speed, and she’d just sit there traveling through time for hours. The wicker seat on the fancy chair left a red grid on the back of her legs, making it easy to see when she’d been on a particularly long space voyage.
It wasn’t until a few months later, when Tessie was seven and had gotten good at Minesweeper, that I started noticing her odd behavior. Every time a bomb exploded under her mouse, she had to win two games.
Sometimes, when I came to take her place at the computer, I’d find her in tears because she hadn’t managed to sweep away all the mines. As long as the number of explosions was higher than the number of dismantled mines, it was all for nothing. Oftentimes, I’d end up giving up my computer hour to sit beside her and listen to her nervous clicking. Maybe that’s when it happened—as I sat eye to eye with the controlled rage inside of her—maybe that’s when my love for her started to grow.
10:15 a.m.
THE EXACT DECOMPOSITION time of a pair of panties was nowhere to be found. Though I did learn how long it takes for other types of litter to decompose—cardboard, cigarette butts, plastic bottles, banana peels. I estimated the time it would take for a piece of cotton fabric with a light blue embroidered edge, size Small, to disappear into nature to be somewhere between a newspaper and a banana peel—at least one month and no more than three years, depending on the weather conditions.
Even today, the roadside from Brussels to Bovenmeer is lined with trash—the kinds of things that make you wonder how anyone could have lost them without noticing. A shoe, a bra, a refrigerator door, half a ping-pong table.
Chances are the loss eventually was noticed, but the owners never came back to claim their possessions—out of shame, guilt, or a lack thereof.
I hadn’t planned on leaving so early this morning. I woke up before sunrise, got dressed and sat at the edge of my bed waiting for my downstairs neighbor to wake up, for the sputtering sound of his coffee machine, so I could go down and pick up my block of ice. Rather than waiting to start the process of waiting, it seemed more bearable to at least be in the car until three o’clock, to keep moving.
Bovenmeer still hasn’t made it onto the signs yet. The town is locked in between the Albert Canal and the highway, with only two roads in and out. I’m not going to take the shortest route, though that would make the most sense. I don’t want to drive past the pollard willows.
In the summer of 2002, I lost my panties at the foot of those trees. They landed alongside the bike path, the only route to the high school. The loss didn’t go unnoticed, but I wasn’t completely aware of it at the time either.
When school started again, I had to bike along the pollard willows every day, and each time my eyes would fall on the triangular piece of fabric with the little bow on the front, waiting defenselessly on the side of the road. Week after week, the passing trucks blew life into it. The rain pushed it a few meters downhill. It became dirty and colorless, like a flattened animal.
I could’ve jumped off my bike and picked it up. But as long as I could deny that the panties were mine, I could go on pretending the summer never happened.
July 11, 2002
I’VE NEVER MANAGED to show up late for anything. Pim can do it no problem, and he always has a good excuse: the barn had to be swept, the extra milk had to be poured into plastic bottles, one of the cows gave birth to a backwards calf. Now he’s got Jan. After a loss, people don’t ask too many questions.
While biking, sometimes I pass through alternating streams of warm and cold air. If I were in a swimming pool instead of biking between houses, I would think somebody just peed in the pool.
I’ve got my bathing suit on under my clothes. It’s an old one. I’ve had it since primary school, and now it’s too tight. The straps cut into the skin on my shoulders, which puts me under a tension so strong that, if I let it, it could fold me in half.
The more I wriggle back and forth on the saddle, the more crooked the tampon becomes. I put in a new one right before I left the house. We were out of the ones with the cardboard applicators, so I had to use one of my mother’s thick, bullet-shaped ones. My finger turned out to be much shorter than the applicators I’d just gotten used to, so I didn’t manage to get it in very deep. I pulled back the little string and tucked it between my butt cheeks like a bookmark.
The church bell gongs. Four o’clock is a strange time to pass through town on your way to something. Most people are headed home around this time of day, which makes the thought of starting something seem pointless. This is why I left a half-hour earlier than Pim asked.
I cycle past the houses in the center of town, past the cemetery wall, the parish hall.
The carnival has arrived. Six massive trucks rolled into town at the beginning of the week and are now parked on the street corners, waiting to be opened and unpacked. Since we don’t have a town square, the stands are set up around the church in the streets, which have been closed off to all but local traffic—though there’s hardly any traffic here that’s not local.
I recognize all six of them: the shooting range, the bumper cars, the flying planes, the duck-pond game, the raffle stand and the fries stand. Bovenmeer is the only town that considers French fries an attraction.
Now it’s just a matter of waiting until tomorrow. The balloons will be inflated, the guns loaded, the ducks launched, the prizes displayed, the potatoes pre-fried. At six o’clock sharp, the headlights of the bumper cars will switch on, chasing away the daylight. Friday night will kick off with “No Limit” blasting from the loudspeakers until each stand eventually switches over to its own CD, giving way to a cacophony of sirens and pumped-up jams.
I bike up Pim’s driveway to the house. The geese follow me in their pen until the wire fence stops them from going any further. I see Laurens’s blue bicycle parked in front of the milk house. He’s early today too.
It’s the first time since Jan’s funeral that I’ve been invited to hang out at the farm. These last few months, I’ve only looked at it from afar.
Pim’s dad appears at the milk-house door to see what the geese are honking about. Either his overalls are too big or his body is too thin. His pants hang down over the heels of his wooden clogs and are frayed at the edges. Without a word, he points to the hayloft and ducks back inside.
Pim’s dad was never much of a talker. Sometimes I wondered whether introverts became farmers or farmers became introverts. If I knew the answer, I might be able to guess what Pim would become.
The hayloft is in the barn, next to a big silo full of dry feed and a manure spreader parked on the left side of the property. On my way there, I immediately spot the new swimming pool. It’s under a homemade roof with a clear tarp over it. The p
ool is five meters in diameter and has a bright blue serrated edge and a white collapsible ladder hanging over the side. There’s an inflatable dolphin floating around in the water. Sticking out of the black roof of the barn are several pipes connected to the pool’s filtration system, pumping heated water into the pool. Pim learns how to make these kinds of things at school.
There used to be nothing out here. It was just a barn surrounded by pristine concrete, room for the tractors to maneuver. The pool is an ugly scar.
The heavy barn doors are open just enough that I can sneak in without having to slide them open any further. In the back is the blue Honda; it’s missing the rear wheel and the engine is exposed.
I climb up the narrow, free-standing ladder. Once I reach the top, I see the musty curtains, the entrance to the fort we built up here two years ago. Before we started stacking the hay bales, we laid out the whole floorplan. It would be in the shape of a snail, with a secret hideout in the middle. We built three entrances on the outside, two of which were dead ends, booby-trapped with sticky fly catchers to stop intruders. It took us several long summer days to build it. When it was all done, we spent one night up here. The fact that Pim hasn’t dismantled it is a good sign.
Coming from inside the straw is the sound of hushed voices. I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. I crawl under the curtain. The tunnel is darker, mustier and narrower than I expected, or maybe I’ve just gotten wider. I can just barely crawl through it on my hands and knees. The closer I get to the center, where the voices are coming from, the harder it is to breathe. Right before the end of the tunnel, just outside the entrance to the hideout, is a gap between two hay bales with a ray of light shining through it. Suddenly, I can hear Laurens’s voice loud and clear.
“Rita is the one with the okay body. But her face is super-ugly. And with Kim, it’s the other way around. She’s got an okay face, but between you and me, she’s flat as a pancake.” Most likely Pim had asked him to hypothetically choose between two girls.