She’d expected more opportunities for socializing from the kindergarten, too. When she sees the other mothers standing together in the courtyard and catches bits of conversations about maids and babysitters, afternoons and even weekends spent together, she feels jealous. She has no time, and so she remains the new girl—the one who’s always in a hurry, always dressed in pinstripes and makeup, like a predator circling a colony of cuddly penguins. As much as she wants to pull out their feathers and strangle the jeans-and-sweater-wearers who waddle around in tennis shoes, quacking about organic vegetables and Triple P parenting, she also desperately wants to belong, to jostle her way into the middle of the herd. The children have an easier time. Lisa immediately fell in with a few kids who boss each other around in games of “house” and show off their freshly-pierced ears. Felicia scurries between the older kids and enjoys the privilege of being the youngest; meals, sleep, and physical contact are the pillars of her existence, and she’s completely at peace.
Leonie had chosen the kindergarten at St. Anton deliberately. It was clear to her that her girls belonged there, with the saint’s wooden arm raised in blessing over the hallway, where the activities included helping plant the traditional bee-covered floral “tapestry” for the feast of Corpus Christi. Simon, the heathen, was fine with it. “As long as you spare me the whole business! Those people were awful to my mother. A child out of wedlock with an unknown father—they never let her forget it.” There were certainly more sophisticated places to send one’s offspring: songs in English, “nature weeks,” or even toy-free hours were not on offer at St. Anton. The director wore her gray hair in a perm and let the kids call her “auntie.” The girls were happy there, and in addition to the Catholic sentimentality, the long hours—7:30 to 5:00—clinched it.
All Leonie knows about Hanna, who watches with stoic composure as Mattis climbs up the slide and then vaults himself onto its roof, is that she’s a single mother who works as a dental assistant. Her dirty-blonde hair is held back from her face with a wide band, and rimless glasses, visible only on second glance, sit humbly atop her narrow nose. Hanna wears cheap sneakers, jeans, and a brown wool poncho with a knitted animal design. She’s known at the kindergarten as a “Supermom,” bustling in every day at lunchtime to administer her son’s many medications. Janet, Lisa’s favorite teacher, widens her eyes when she praises Hanna’s hard work, and Leonie has the distinct feeling that the young woman never sings such laudatory odes about her. Regardless, Leonie is impressed by Hanna’s situation and by her quiet manner. At the same time, she’s not sure they have much to say to each other. In particular, Hanna’s makeup-free face, the amber teething necklace around Mattis’s neck, and her collection of cotton tote bags, emblazoned with the logos of various health food stores, arouse suspicion.
“Has it already started? Where are the others?” Mattis springs to the ground from a considerable height, spreads his arms under his black cape, and careers around Leonie. The fabric waves behind him like a huge silken wing while he makes high-pitched whistling sounds. For a moment Leonie thinks he really could be a vampire—bloodthirsty, quick, his little lower jaw with its angular teeth jutting forward in a bestial grimace. He inhabits his costume much more fully than the other children Leonie has seen today. Each gesture flows into the next so that his whole way of moving, the expression on his face, and the screech of his voice become part of the costume. Finally he stops, breathing heavily, and reaches into his pocket to bring out a pair of plastic fangs, which he sets expertly over his front teeth. He’s skinny, and his deep-set brown eyes are surrounded by violet rings. He looks very much like his mother; the childish face hasn’t yet become decisively masculine. Mattis tugs on the fringe of Hanna’s poncho. “I’m going in. I know where the door is, I’m not scared—I’m Dracula, the fearsome vampire!” He dashes toward the house but turns on his heels when his mother calls. “Mattis, teeth please.” She puts out her hand: a soft, white hand with dimples where Leonie has jutting bones. Mattis shakes his head and stomps both feet: “No, I don’t want to. I can’t be a vampire without teeth!” Hanna’s voice is soft and firm: “If you don’t give me your teeth, you’ll lose them inside. Then they’ll be gone forever. Give them to me, I’ll look after them.” Mattis’s eyes are moist. He swallows hard, then takes out the fangs and shoves them into his mother’s hand. A long thread of saliva hangs off them and drips to the ground. The boy runs into the house without even turning around. Felicia looks after him, disappointed. Hanna cleans the teeth with a tissue. “He’ll choke himself—the saliva can’t flow properly when he wears them, and besides, he has asthma. I shouldn’t have let him bring the silly things in the first place.” Hanna pulls her poncho tighter. “He’s overexerting himself. He was so sick last week. It was the diarrhea again, twice an hour. I took him to Olgäle—to the clinic at the children’s hospital—but they couldn’t find anything. I think he’s probably allergic to something, they just haven’t figured it out yet.”
The conversation had found its groove. Hanna recounted Mattis’s first weeks, when he refused her breast and threw up milk from the bottle—they decided it was a protein intolerance and fed him intravenously. She told of the inflammation he got from the insertion of the catheter and the endless chain of infections. Leonie confined herself to the role of a nodding listener.
Her girls rarely get sick. She ascribes this to the cocktail of athletic blood from her side and proletarian blood from Simon’s. But she also knows how children can suffer from a mild fever or an earache. She marvels at Mattis’s bulldog energy all the more, for the way he keeps returning to the group despite all the interruptions, and then plays twice as hard, as if to make up for all the time he’s missed. His wildness is of a different variety than Lisa’s and Felicia’s fits of energy. The sisters marvel at his fearlessness and often recount his antics and heroic exploits. Once he climbed a tree and then sprang down into the sandbox, to Janet’s dismay; once he built a pyramid out of chairs and balanced for an astonishingly long time at its shaky summit. He often hurls himself into combat with significantly older children. Leonie has never seen him cry. He seems to seek out and enjoy such challenges. She has little to add to the conversation. “It’s great that your mother is so dependable.”
Then she asks about Mattis’s father out of pure, empathy-free curiosity. She can’t even imagine Hanna with a man. Presumably he’s another tote-carrier, an acquaintance from the health food store. Or a patient from the dentist’s office. Hanna doesn’t react. She shakes her head. “Yes, mother is a help. But I’m really the one he needs.”
Leonie met Mattis’s grandma briefly, when she was picking the kids up from St. Anton—a corpulent woman with short gray hair, red veins in her full cheeks, a cardigan, and jeans stretched over a protruding rear. When Leonie walks around the city with her mother, she has the feeling that more men turn to look at the slim, tanned woman with the high heels and form-fitting dresses than at her: pale, bumbling laboriously alongside, and starting to pull the first white hairs from her carrot-red head under the neon light of the bathroom mirror in the mornings. Leonie’s parents spend a lot of time traveling, and though they find their grandchildren enchanting, they rarely seem to find time to see them. Leonie doesn’t like thinking about the telephone calls with her mother, twice a year at most, which usually come from southern Europe and attempt to cram in enough information to make up for the time that’s passed. Her parents were always lovers first and foremost, rather than progenitors or raisers of the little redheaded brat who tried to escape their cuddling, smooching, and hand-holding whenever possible.
Felicia is getting heavy. Darkness falls quickly, and a rumbling comes from the house. The door opens, and a mob of children storms over the grounds. “When you find a ghost, read the number. Then stand in front of the tool shed—that’s the haunted house. You can go in order of the numbers on the ghosts. You know how to line up, right?” Bernd calls out. Felicia squirms out of Leonie’s arms. Mattis and Lisa appear. “I
wasn’t scared, Mama!” Lisa yells. Mattis has already scaled the hill with the older kids and is streaking through the brush, eyes fixed on the ground; he soon holds two little green paper ghosts, one of which he generously bestows upon Lisa. Then he runs away with the group. He pays no attention to his mother. “Mama, will you go in with me?” Lisa asks. Her index finger is hooked into her nibbled lower lip. Leonie is sure that Stavros’s stories will make for many an uneasy night. Nonetheless, she’s proud of Lisa. Felicia has found a candy wrapper and holds it up with a loud crackling sound. A long line has formed in front of the tool shed on the sheep run. Dry-ice fog wafts from the canted window, accompanied by muffled sounds. Lisa’s hand is clammy and cold. “Is the haunted house very spooky?” Leonie asks an elementary-age girl-vampire. The girl makes a frantic grimace under her white makeup. Felicia has fallen down. She bit her lip and is bleeding. Leonie picks her up. She bawls shrilly. Leonie casts a glance at the crumpled ghost in Lisa’s hand. “Number 27—that’ll be another half hour, and we have to get your sister home. I’ll ask if any of the big kids will let us go first. Mattis can come too, I’m sure Hanna wants to be getting home as well.”
After some initial grumbling and shrugging, a few older vampires and witches find it in their hearts to let Lisa go first, and even hold the door open for her. Purple and blue beams of light flash over their feet; the piercing smell of the artificial fog mingles with the musty odor of bulbs and bags of peat moss from inside. The drumbeats sound as hollow and regular as the pulse of some hidden creature. Leonie looks down at her eldest daughter. Lisa’s eyes are already watering, and she holds her broom tightly. “Can you come, Mama, please?” Leonie shakes her head. Even if she wanted to, she’s too big to crawl through the tunnel which forms the entrance. “No, it’s just for kids. It’s OK if you don’t think you can do it. You don’t have to.” “But you should come too. I want to go in, just not alone.” “You can go with Mattis.” “No, with Mama!” Lisa’s voice wobbles. Tears roll over her little painted cheeks, her jaw sticks out, and the corners of her mouth turn down. She stomps her feet and clenches Leonie’s hand. “I want to go in. Come with me.” Felicia has gotten to her feet and is also trying to push Leonie into the shed. Leonie blocks the passage by stretching her right leg across it like a gate. The two-year-old starts bellowing angrily and kicks her clunky winter boots with all her might. The older kids mumble impatiently behind them. Lisa sobs louder and repeats the same sentence over and over: “You have to come!” Mattis stands next to her and contemplates his ghost without looking up. Hanna is nowhere to be seen. Leonie feels the warmth on her neck and cheeks; she’s sweating under her thick sweater, and a drop runs down her spine, tickling unbearably. “Damn it Feli, stop it—that hurts!” She stoops down and grabs the little girl by the hood before she can sneak into the shed. Her head is pulled back, her feet kick at the air. Leonie grabs her around the middle and realizes she’s gripping her more tightly than necessary. In this moment, Leonie understands how people can hit their children. Dead children in trash cans, tied to beds, buried in cellars. Just to finally get some peace. Felicia throws a fit in her arms. She flounders and screams so hard that lumps of green snot fly from her nose. Lisa is more important right now—Leonie understands her pain, her wounded pride. She manages to lead Lisa away from the shed, even though she’s really howling now, shaking with rage and disappointment. “I have a surprise at home that I got especially for you, for the Halloween party. Something really spooky just for you and Feli.” It takes a while; she has to comfort Lisa over the sound of the younger girl’s wailing. Words for Lisa, the body-warmth of being held and carried for Felicia. Pain in her knees and back; she treads carefully. Still speaking, holding one child by the hand and jiggling the other upright on her hip, she moves slowly toward the gate. Meanwhile, it’s grown dark. The autumn leaves look black, the path looks like a wide river as they climb slowly up it. There’s no time to say goodbye to Hanna or the others. Leonie just wants to get away. She turns around once more and sees Mattis crawling out of the monster-adorned door of the haunted house and slowly standing up straight. His face, glowing beneath a string of lights, is full of quiet contentment, as if he had just eaten a bunch of candy.
Felicia has calmed down, and Leonie sets her back on her feet. She turns her head, looking for Hanna, to wave goodbye at least. But Hanna walks quickly over to her son and wordlessly takes his hand. The two disappear behind the house. They’re probably taking the upper exit. They don’t turn around.
Judith
Judith and Kilian are the only customers in Nâzim’s shop. Nâzim gives Kilian a small apple, which he bites into immediately. He studies the display. “He looks at fruit and vegetables the way other children look at candy! Are you allowed to help your mother carry the groceries, Kili?” The child nods, mouth full. Shopping is a serious business, something special and tremendously thrilling. Judith is pleased. She knows how other children behave. Nâzim divides a head of celery, selects two particularly fat carrots and a leek, pulls a length of twine from the spool on the counter. The glockenspiel over the door chimes sluggishly. The boy who enters, his giant black and silver sneakers untied, brings along a rush of cold evening air, the scent of strong aftershave, and the smoke of the cigarette that he carefully stomped out on the sidewalk. He goes over to Nâzim, kisses him on the cheek, and greets him with a few sentences in Turkish. Nâzim embraces him across the counter, his hands loose on the boy’s shoulders. Then he takes a step back and taps his watch. His voice grows louder. The boy’s brow furrows. Under the shiny shock of hair, a light red color creeps over his pale face. His reply is detailed and apologetic. Judith recognizes him. He comes from one of the exhaust-blackened, un-renovated buildings near where peaceful Constantinstraße empties into a busy and not particularly respectable major thoroughfare. He often roams around Olgaeck with a group of other boys his age. Even in the mornings they’re often to be seen perched on trash cans or loitering around the entrance of the discount supermarket, gobbling from bags of chips and swilling energy drinks. Kilian inspects the Turkish boy, his eyes wide. “Mama, he didden tie his shoes!” he says in an audible whisper. The boy laughs and tousles Kilian’s hair, bends down to him: “You’re a smart one, you saw that right away—someday when you have cool sneakers, you’ll wear them the same way, right?” he says, poking Kilian, who giggles but immediately hides behind Judith. Nâzim puts the bundle of greens aside with a vigorous motion and comes out from behind the counter, gesturing toward the boy: “This is Murat, my cousin’s son. He’ll be working here for a few weeks. It’s something for his school, an internship or something, I don’t know. He certainly hasn’t learned much there—how not to come half an hour late, for example. But family is family, you help each other out.” Judith just nods. Nâzim turns to Murat and shoos him into the stockroom, now speaking in German: “Judith is a good customer. If you work hard, you can sell too sometime, eventually.” A long lecture in Turkish follows, during which Murat stands before him like a guilty child. Judith sees him through the beaded curtain, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and fiddling with the zipper of his trendy down jacket. In the huge sneakers, his feet look like they belong to a robot. Judith reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out her wallet.
Aside from Nâzim, with whom she often converses at great length about groceries and local politics, Judith doesn’t know any Turks. On Hackstraße there had been the Aydin family, whose members she would greet in the stairwell, and there was Stern Kebab in Ostendplatz, where she often got döner kebab. People lived alongside each other in mutual disregard. All the children at Uli’s Waldorf kindergarten are German. During one of their rare trips downtown, Uli and Kilian had seen two Turkish women with long cloaks and head scarves in front of the Pretzel Basket on upper Königstraße and had refused to go any further. “They’re witches, Mama!” The two women disappeared into a department store without noticing anything.
“Mama, look! What do they want?” Kilian tugs at
her sleeve, and Judith turns around. She looks over the sumptuous bouquet of lilies and through the window, which echoes dully from blows from outside. The faces are so unexpectedly close that she flinches. Hazy circles of breath from grinning mouths; dark caps, muffled shouts: “What’s up, Murat? Bring us out something to drink, dude! The till, get the till!” One of them presses against the window, the others hang further back on the sidewalk. Judith can see every pore of his tender, pimple-free skin, winter-pale and clear. The boy’s straight, narrow nose, ice-blue eyes, and full, scornful mouth are surprising. His dirty-blond hair pours out from under a cap and hangs to his chin. He notices Judith and grins. His knuckles beat the glass in rhythm. “Murat, bring the chick, she’s hot!” The other two boys, both clearly Turkish—none of them is over fourteen—have stopped laughing. They gesticulate in the background. One of them notices Kilian, who’s dared to come a bit closer, still holding fast to Judith’s sleeve, and he taps the beautiful one on the shoulder. “Come on Marco, there’s a kid! And Murat’s uncle, man!” Marco—the name sounds like vacation packages and celebrity crushes—returns to his cronies, making a contemptuous gesture. Judith stares at the hair, sticky with spray-on color, the black streaks on foreheads and cheeks. They fidget before the window, their long, narrow limbs in constant motion, prancing right, then left, turning and jostling each other, almost as if some dull beat was thudding inside of them, forcing them to dance and flop around. They were raised on morning television, Judith thinks. Then she watches as Kilian heedlessly lets the gnawed apple fall to the ground and takes a step away from her, up to the glass. Marco grabs a limp, dirt-colored mask from one of the Turks and stuffs it over his head. Huge eyes stare from the pumpkin-face, and the familiar, vertically-striped fruit displays a tangle of angrily bared teeth, all made of Chinese plastic. Even though the other boy immediately tears the mask back off, yelling, “Quit it with the bullshit, man!” in Marco’s face, Kilian flees into Judith’s arms with a soft cry of terror and begins to whimper. She picks Kilian up, presses her face into his warm neck, and murmurs, “Boo-boo go away,” even though he hasn’t actually been hurt. She feels like smashing her fist through the glass and sending a shower of glass shards down on them. “Hey kiddo, it’s only Hassan. It’s just for fun, see? Just Halloween.” Murat slinks over from the side, visibly embarrassed, and waves a banana. Kilian’s face remains buried in Judith’s jacket. Nâzim opens the door: “Murat’s busy! Take your nonsense somewhere else, people are trying to work here. Beat it!” The boys are visibly shaken by the stream of Turkish that follows. Nâzim closes the door forcefully, to the accompaniment of the glockenspiel’s frenzied tinkle. Judith wipes Kilian’s nose, shows him the embroidered rose on her handkerchief, and he begins to smile again. Judith catches a final glance of Marco through the window. He walks slowly, not rattled in the slightest, straightens his cap, shakes out the legs of his pants. His tongue pokes around his mouth, pushing out his fuzzy cheeks; he grins and calls over his shoulder: “Just wait an hour, man—then we’ll have a real party.” Murat looks out from behind the counter with a sheep-like expression. Nâzim hands Judith the greens for the soup, which he’s wrapped in brown paper. “I’m so sorry. They’re just dumb kids.” Kilian grips his basket tight. Judith lays a few coins by the old-fashioned cash register and leaves the shop.
Shorter Days Page 5