by Tamara Bach
GIRL FROM MARS
GIRL FROM MARS
TAMAMARA BAHC
Translated by
Shelley Tanaka
First published as Marsmädchen by Tamara Bach
Copyright © Verlag Friedrich Oetinger, Hamburg 2003
First published in Canada and the USA by Groundwood Books in 2008
English translation copyright © 2008 by Shelley Tanaka
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the
publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright
license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801, Toronto, Ontario M5V 2K4
or c/o Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the
Goethe-Institut that is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the
Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the
Ontario Arts Council.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bach, Tamara
Girl from Mars / Tamara Bach ; translated by Shelley Tanaka.
Translation of: Marsmädchen.
ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-724-1 (bound).
ISBN-10: 0-88899-724-8 (bound).
ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-725-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-88899-725-6 (pbk.)
Cover illustration by Hadley Hooper
Design by Michael Solomon
Printed and bound in Canada
“This small town hasn’t got room for my big feelings”
— Björk, “Violently Happy”
Für Mams
und Julia, Anke und elis
PART I
Is anybody out there?
1
Name ___________________________
Address _________________________
Date of birth ______________________
Place of birth _____________________
Height __________________________
Weight __________________________
Hobbies _________________________
Favorite drink ____________________
Favorite food _____________________
Favorite film ______________________
Favorite song _____________________
Favorite actor ____________________
Friends _________________________
Likes ___________________________
Dislikes _________________________
What I wish for you ________________
Name: My name is Miriam.
Age, date and place of birth: I am 15 years old. Fifteen.
Address: The town where I live is small and pretty. In the summer tourists come here to visit the church and the old fortress and wander through the streets of the old town. It’s nice here in the summer. You can spend an evening sitting in a meadow overlooking the valley and admire the view over a bottle of wine. You can swim in the quarry during the day and sneak into the local pool at night. In summer you don’t have to do much of anything at all. It’s enough just to be here.
In the winter, though, this town is too small, and it’s so cold the town itself freezes up. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and suddenly everybody forgets about the church and the fortress and the old town. They even forget about themselves. They hide out instead.
I’m not a winter person.
I am Miriam. Fifteen. Blonde. Brown eyes. Average height, average weight. Daughter, sister, the person who sits beside you at school.
I’m Miriam, I’m tired, and that’s it. No more, no less. Ordinary.
Likes and dislikes.
I dislike sports. My mother says I’m lazy. My math teacher says I’m not stupid. Sometimes I’m like this and sometimes I’m like that.
I stare at the book in front of me. We’re all making these books about ourselves and passing them around to our friends to fill in the lists, maybe add pictures if they want. This fall they combined classes because our old class was too small, so now we’re in a new class with new people. One of the new people passed her book to me and yesterday she got mad because I’ve had it for two solid weeks without giving it back, so I promised I’d give it back to her today.
You’re supposed to describe yourself as accurately as possible.
Why does she want to know so much about me?
I leaf through the book. It’s already half full. You can write whatever you want, but most people have just listed their favorite things, their likes and dislikes. Maybe stuck in a nice photo of themselves. Like this one of Bille. As if she actually looks like that. Fredi has covered the whole page with some kind of weird writing that’s supposed to look like graffiti. Fredi, who has never held a can of spraypaint in his entire life.
Tap, tap, tap. Drumming my pen on the book. I have to give it back today.
What I wish for you.
I wish...
I wish I knew what to write.
Okay, imagine a girl. A stunning, talented girl that everyone admires. A girl people talk to and smile at. A girl who loves to smile herself.
Now imagine a girl that nobody likes, maybe because she smells funny or has a weird laugh.
I’m somewhere in between. Kind of pretty, according to my mother or the old guy who works at the newsstand. And kind of ugly, according to my brother Dennis and his friend Alex.
I am fairly smart according to my math and French marks. But if you look at my marks in history and chemistry, I’m the biggest idiot around.
So what are you, then, when you’re always in the middle, not one thing or the other, neither fish nor fowl?
Boring, that’s what.
So what should I write?
Friends.
Ines is sitting under the sink in the girls’ washroom, copying out her math. Suse is sitting on the john smoking her third cigarette. She’s talking about her new boyfriend. She only met him a couple of days ago, but now they’re an item. His name is Martin, and she says he’s really sweet and has a great body. He’s eighteen and drives a Volkswagen Golf. A red one with a good stereo system — “He’s picking me up in it later.”
I imagine Martin. I can’t see his face, because he’s wearing a baseball cap and it’s pulled right down over his forehead. He’s wearing a beige or white sweater with writing on it, and pants of some kind. Behind him is his Volkswagen. Martin pulls Suse to him and she lets him. He kisses her.
Then he takes her hand and leads her to his car. She gets in. You can see the school reflected in the car windows. Then they drive away. You can hardly see Suse as the car drives off into the sunset. Maybe they’re driving to the sea. Maybe to the mountains. Maybe he has his own apartment...
“What are you doing?” asks Ines.
So I show her the book.
“Ah,” she says. Makes a face. “Whose is it?”
“Carola’s.”
“So, Carola does have friends,” Suse laughs. “And apparently our Miriam fits right into the lovely Carola’s yummy little inner circle.” She sticks her finger down her throat and pretends to gag.
“So, you don’t really like her?”
“No, not really,” Ines says, and turns back to her math homework.
Friends. When our class was split, Ines and Suse went into the same class as me. I guess
we belong together. We’re friends. Or something like that. After all, we’re sitting here together in the girls’ washroom the way we do every morning.
Outside it’s winter, and it’s cold. Every morning is the same. Doesn’t matter if it’s Monday or Thursday. Five days of the week are exactly the same, because they are school days, and they don’t make a difference. Every morning before class Suse and Ines and I sit here in the handicapped stall, the biggest one in the washroom. Suse always sits on the toilet and Ines sits under the sink, and we just sit here because it’s cold and boring outside and so we smoke and wait...for something to happen.
7:23 a.m.: Can I copy your math homework?
7:30 a.m.: God, I’m tired.
7:35 a.m.: You little kids better move your butts!
7:45 a.m. (Bell rings): Just one more smoke — I’ll be with you in a minute.
That’s what it’s like. That’s what we call friendship.
Tap, tap, tap. Banging my pen on the book again.
Suse grabs the book out of my hand. She flips through it and laughs. Then she takes a drag of her cigarette and flips through some more.
“Yeah, right! In your dreams!” she laughs.
Ines looks up.
“What?”
“Kai writes here that he wishes he were a babe magnet. Can you believe it?”
“Give it back!”
Suse resists a bit, but she gives me the book.
I flip back to my page. The bell rings. Ines swears.
“One more smoke,” Suse says.
I get up and look in the mirror over the sink, at me and Suse and Ines in the corner. I’m in the middle. I see myself standing there, looking in the mirror.
This is me. Blonde hair, brown eyes, average height, average weight. Every day the same.
It’s winter and here I am, every day the same.
2
If a fairy godmother came and granted you three wishes, what would you wish for?
World peace. A cure for cancer and AIDS. A healthy planet.
No, now for real.
I’d wish for two thousand more wishes. Then for an alarm that tells me when I’ve reached wish number 1,999, so that I can wish for another two thousand wishes.
Actually, I’m perfectly happy the way things are.
Ha-ha.
But if I could wish for something that was just for me, and if I knew no one would judge me and say, “What?! You mean that was your wish?” then I would want...
There’s this girl in the twelfth grade. I’d like to be just like her. She’s tall and has wonderful eyes and hair and hands and stomach and breasts and...
I don’t know. She’s just beautiful. Not just because she was born that way. Look at her. The way she stands there. For her it’s just normal, but no one in this school — no, no one I’ve ever known — can stand as beautifully as that. And then maybe take a step to the front, just like that. And she moves her hands when she talks, and talks with her hands. It looks beautiful. And her voice is beautiful. Very deep. She speaks clearly and always knows what to say. She’s in a band, too. I’ve seen her at a concert. And she has an unbelievable voice.
I’d like to be like that. Just like that. Beautiful. But not because I’m wearing the right outfit or makeup. Just because I am beautiful.
And I would also like to be really smart. Speak several languages and know more about politics. Like Florian. He knows everything about politics. But I don’t think he just watches the news. He also reads five different newspapers and Spiegel and Stern and Focus and I don’t know what else.
And I’d like to know more about history. Don’t care about chemistry.
And then I’d like to have a talent. The girl in the twelfth grade can sing. Another kid in my class paints and draws wonderfully. Jane, who was in my class last year, plays the piano and takes ballet.
If I had all that, oh, man. If I could be someone like that, things would be really good.
But that is egotistical and shallow.
So, okay. World peace. An end to hunger and suffering and pollution.
“Miriam, your attention should be up here at the front!”
What? I was looking out the window, and the teacher doesn’t like that. (“Your daughter, Miriam, daydreams too much, Mrs. Sander.” “Oh, it’s been that way since her first report card, you’re not the first one to point it out.” Ha-ha.)
If someone granted you three wishes, that means somebody out there wants you to be happy. Maybe a fairy godmother. A fairy godmother wouldn’t scold me and say, “Now, Miriam, those are very nice wishes, but wouldn’t it be better to think about the children in the Third World, who aren’t as well off as you are, or about the melting polar ice caps? But if you would rather know how to play the piano, fine, so be it!”
“Miriam!”
“Yes?”
“For the last time, pay attention!”
“Okay.”
“Stop staring out the window, or I’ll close the blinds.”
Now he’s being silly.
“Okay.”
Don’t look outside. Look at the board. But I’ve already copied everything down.
Pay attention. But it’s so boring.
We’ve been in this class for three months now. Most of the others already know each other, but I don’t have anything to do with most of them. The other girls are scared of Suse and Ines. They’re also a little different, the new girls. They wear sweaters with horses on them, and they go riding on the weekends.
Carola doesn’t know that that’s the worst thing she could say.
Suse: “So, Carola, what did you do last weekend?”
Carola: “I was with my horse.”
Suse: “Oh, really?” Then she raises her eyebrows and gives her this huge grin, and Carola smiles back. But she hasn’t known Suse since the fifth grade. She has no idea what she’s really thinking.
Carola is sitting with a couple of other girls from her old class. Suse calls them the pony pussies.
In front of me, there’s a row of boys who were in our class in the fifth grade, until they chose Latin. Now they’re back with us, but they haven’t changed one bit.
Someone in the front row is looking over at me. Laura. She’s repeating the year, so she’s new in this class, too. She sits in the first row where the keeners usually sit. She looks away and bends over her notebook.
She sits near Mario. I see how Mario signals to the other guys behind Laura’s back, how he makes faces, how he shows off with that I’d-sure-like-to-get-her-into-bed look. Right. Mario is a real asshole. The other guys think he’s cool. They call him Super Mario. He’s the head of a bunch of idiots, which includes every single guy in our class.
What am I doing here, anyway?
That girl in twelfth grade? I have no idea what her name is. She probably has a spare right now and is sitting in the cafe around the corner. Or maybe she’s in class and has just put up her hand and said something very clever about something that she saw recently on the news. Or about this article she read about women in Afghanistan. Maybe she’s talking to her friends about important things. But like what?
Suse talks about her boyfriend. So does Ines. We talk about school and the other kids. About our parents. Sometimes we talk about music, a new CD we bought. I don’t know. We just talk about stuff.
If I were only a little older. Fifteen is a funny age. Fifteen is so...nothing. So in the middle.
I look at my watch.
“Miriam, are things here too boring for you?”
He’s really got it in for me today!
“No. Sorry.”
“Just a few more minutes, okay?”
“Sure.”
What time is it, again?
Ines is writing a letter to her boyfriend. His name is Florian. Flo. They’ve been together for almost five months now. They sleep together when they can, but Ines’s parents don’t like Flo. They don’t actually have anything against him, but they don’t like the fact that she’s sleeping
with him (having sex is what she calls it).
I picture Ines pushing the door closed behind her. I picture Flo undressing her. They have no music on, or else they won’t be able to hear the front door open when her parents come home. I imagine her nosy little sister crying because Ines’s bedroom door is closed and yelling, “What are you doing in there?” I imagine Ines’s narrow single bed that probably creaks, so they do it on the floor or standing up against the wall.
I’d like to check my watch, but Schroeder’s up at the front with his eye on me and I have to act as though I really am listening. When he looks away, I see that there’s still seventeen minutes to go. God.
I look around the class. Carola and the others are writing. In the back row Felix is fiddling with something. Mario looks around at the idiots, points at Laura and makes a jerking-off gesture with his fist. So cool.
Laura is still draped over her notebook and looking up at Schroeder. Then she turns slightly to the side and writes something. I can tell from here that she’s not writing anything. She’s drawing or scribbling, but I can’t see what it is. Schroeder should say something but he doesn’t.
Then she looks up. Not really up. She just raises her glance and looks right at me, but she keeps drawing.
She has green eyes, like a witch. Weird. I can’t look away and she just looks at me, just like that, just looking.
Maybe I should smile or something. Maybe.
Suddenly Schroeder is standing in front of me.
“Miriam.”
“Mr. Schroeder?”
“Nice to see that you at least know my name. Now take this down. Homework for Thursday.”
So I get out my daybook and write, Page 45, all of Number 5, Number 6 b to f, Read text 3.
3
When you live in a city, life must be different. Different from here. In this small town, every day is the same. I get up but I’m not awake. I eat but I don’t know if I’m hungry. I drink but my mouth stays dry. It’s winter but I’m still asleep.
Every day the same.
In a big city life must be different. I was in Berlin once visiting a pen pal. We went all over on the underground and got off at different stops and everywhere we got off things looked different.