I’m too furious to scream, and it’s probably just as well, because then Mom would say that I was just like Dad. Whenever I misbehave or am out of line, I’m told it’s my father’s genes that are to blame. So what, then, do I get from my mother? Is it the ability to swallow just about any crap and never dare to open my mouth when I am being treated unfairly? It must be. Mom never says no to anyone, never to that brother of hers, nor his family. She never says no to those extra shifts they lay on her at work or no to the people who ask her to sew. Always yes with a smile on her lips. Then she can sit and moan about it to Auntie Carol, but apart from that, she never says anything out loud to anyone. The nos in my genes must be from my father’s side, and therefore they’re bad.
Dad is no.
Mom is yes.
Maybe that’s why they couldn’t work as a couple anymore. I draw the blinds, close the door, and throw myself facedown on the bed.
I was seven years old when he left, six years ago. We were renting another apartment somewhere else back then. They had frequent, long arguments, always at night, sometimes until dawn. I’d just started school, and they forgot to buy the things I was supposed to have with me, a pencil case and notebook. They forgot it for a whole week. One day Dad came home with some empty cardboard boxes and started filling them with books off the shelves and stuff from the cupboards. Then he stuffed clothes from the closet into big black plastic bags. Then some friend of his came in and carried his armchair to a small van outside. During all this, Mom sat in the kitchen, chain-smoking and crying.
“Are you moving somewhere?” I asked Dad.
He stopped packing the boxes and gave me a long stare. Then he took me into his arms and ruffled my hair.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “Your mom and I can’t be together anymore. You know how it’s been — you’ve heard the racket we always make. It can’t go on, you understand? People who are always disagreeing on everything can’t live together.”
Then he kissed me on the ear and led me into the kitchen to Mom and closed the door while he finished moving his stuff. When the van drove past the window, I saw that Dad’s pal was at the wheel, and Dad was sitting beside him holding a green beer bottle, which he was struggling to open with a key. Then the van vanished around the corner.
People who are always disagreeing on everything can’t live together. And as I lie facedown on my bed, six years later, it occurs to me that this is probably why she always says yes, and never no, to everyone: she doesn’t dare to disagree — people might stop talking to her. And maybe I’ve got so much of my mother’s genes in me that the yes comes out faster than the no; it squeezes itself out of my mouth in the form of a smile and lights up like a giant blinking sign on my face. The feeble no crawls into a corner, having lost the race against the yes yet again. It throws itself into the sulking pile of all the other nos that were never said. One day these nos will have to find a way out and will all try to come out at once. Maybe I’ll stand up to my mom’s genes one day and will have to yell for a whole two or three days until I’ve puked all the nos out of me. Maybe that’s what has to happen one day to make someone take notice of me, at least enough to make my mother ask me for my opinion before she starts filling the apartment with brats from the middle of nowhere.
I am like a lizard: changing color every day.
One morning I wake up before Mom. I am already dressed and eating breakfast when she appears in the kitchen. I’ve finished my homework (math, the little I can), written an essay, and completed my grammar exercises. Then I run to school.
The next day, Mom has to drag me out of bed because I cannot wake up. I yawn into my cereal bowl and am late for school, annoyed and frowning, with none of my homework finished.
But whether my days start this way or that, one thing stays the same. Each time I sit down next to Peter and glance over my shoulder to look at Clara’s face, I feel the burning on my cheek. I’m like a piece of bread in a toaster; no matter which way I turn, all around me are the glowing iron threads that heat me up until I start to burn around the edges. It also feels as if my nose has grown all over my face and my arms and legs are constantly bumping into things; it’s like they’ve grown too long and I can’t control them anymore. My knees ache every morning and every night, so that I can hardly stand up straight. After school I pop out of the toaster and sneak home. I feel like every movement gives me away. If I happen to swallow in the middle of a writing exercise when silence fills the classroom, it’s so loud I’m afraid everybody can hear it. And not only that, but that everybody can hear by the way I swallow that I am in love with Clara. The tiniest movement in my face can blow my cover. I have to work hard to hide those all-too-obvious signs of my love, the little things that will expose me if I’m not careful.
“You’re not getting the flu, are you?” Peter asks.
“Why do you say that?”
“You just always seem to be moping lately.”
“Oh. No, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
Then we don’t discuss it anymore. But on the inside I am one huge emotion. Or like a cage full of singing birds, and sometimes I can’t fall asleep because of the noise they’re making. Then I get out of bed and sit at my desk in my pajamas and throw my feelings out in a poem, under the protective wings of Christian the Ninth.
I love you so, the best that I know how.
All that was before is nothing now.
Tonight, in dreams, I’ll be with you at last,
But the night goes by so fast — oh, far too fast.
I see her face reflected in the dark glass of the window, surrounded by moonlight that seems to weave into her long black hair. In her large shining eyes, under those curved brows, the stars are dancing, her mouth half open in a tiny smile, as if she knows my feelings and wants to tell me she feels the same. Then she puts her delicate finger up to her lips to indicate that we must keep this a secret; our love is in hiding, and it is only in moments like these that we can meet and show our true feelings for each other. Our love is tragic and happy at the same time, hidden away from the prying eyes of the emotionless mob around us. Only on the wings of a starry night, in the freedom of a dream, can we meet and walk hand in hand.
The first song of the morning is the Beatles — the radio blares out, telling me to hide my love away. I crunch my cereal with sleep still heavy in my eyes. Mom butters bread. She hums the tune but doesn’t sing the lyrics; maybe she has forgotten them. She doesn’t sing any words, just “dah dah dah” or “bah bah bah,” and harmonizes with the chorus. It’s only in church on Sunday that she knows all the words and sings her heart out. She sings louder than everyone else, and I just wish she wouldn’t force me to go with her every time.
She’s been manically slaving for two days, arranging the little room. I was adamant I wouldn’t help her. But then she didn’t even ask for my help and ignored me while I lay in bed reading.
Mom found a cardboard box full of books my father had left behind. There were novels, poetry books, biographies of old ships’ captains, crime stories, and pulp-fiction paperbacks. I took the box into my room and started to read a book about a wife who hires a drunk private investigator to spy on her husband, but then she falls in love with the investigator and tries to save him from the bottle and wants to start a new life with him. I find at least two really hot descriptions of copulation, which I don’t entirely understand because my knowledge of words regarding this act are as limited to me as knowledge of the act itself.
The morning outside the window is gray, wet, and windy, the splashing raindrops lit up by the yellow streetlights. Sometimes I take a long detour into the neighborhood where Clara lives in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Maybe I’ll follow her or appear suddenly from around a corner, quite coincidentally and talk to her for a while, although I have no idea whether I would be able to say anything — or what to say, for that matter. But I never see her. In my mind, I act out our conversations where I talk eagerly about this or that. She is full o
f admiration and a little shy and timid; I am bursting with self-confidence and manhood. Little by little I turn the conversation toward my feelings for her; I place my hands on her shoulders, look deeply into her elfin eyes, and confess my love to her. She blushes, searches for my hands, and squeezes them, and finally she is in my arms, giving me the most honey-sweet of kisses.
But when I finally arrive at school, boiling hot all over from my fantasizing, I see her standing with all her friends, laughing, chatting, and so sure of herself in her unworldly beauty, and I fall apart. My temperature drops to zero. My fantasy is as far from reality as the east and west borders of the universe. I don’t exist in her eyes. I’m just an invisible shadow, passing by silently in the darkness of the morning and disappearing into the classroom and into my seat. And since she is sitting in the back of the middle row, I’m just like any other back and shoulders in her eyes.
It’s that idiot Thomas Magnus who has all her attention whenever he wants. Tom, the soccer and gym hero, has everything needed to get girls’ attention. It is unbearable how shameless and disgustingly free of low self-esteem he is. He can turn in his seat and look any girl in the class straight in the eye, do some rude gesture with his tongue when the teacher isn’t looking, and the girls just beam at him. He is so funny! Then the girls go crazy and giggle together while Tom just smiles a confident smile. At recess, he’s out on the soccer field and doesn’t give the girls a second look. They stand and stare at him playing, all hanging on a thread of excitement, waiting for him to give them an eye. But Tom has nothing to do with them at recess. They’re just an exciting pastime in the classroom when he’s bored. At recess it’s the serious stuff: soccer.
Nothing in the world is as meaningless to me as sports, soccer in particular. The only time I went to Tom’s house, he didn’t talk about anything but soccer, and his room was covered in posters of sweaty, muddy guys with their shorts on their heads, screaming for joy just because one of them had been able to kick the ball into the goal. Of course, these guys get loads of money for this, and that’s exactly what Tom dreams of doing. He’s going to be a professional. I can’t understand how anyone can be interested in games long gone by which this team or that team won at one time or the other. It’s a huge heap of meaningless garbage; everything revolves around a victory frenzy for a fraction of a second, and then the fighting starts all over again. All the running is for nothing in the end. It’s like a desperate attempt to kill time, just to have something to do, rather than doing nothing. Tom runs screaming over the field and jumps head over heels if he scores, but sinks into a heap of desperation like a flat tire, hiding his head in his hands, if he doesn’t, just as his idols do on TV. Tom’s fight for victory is as meaningless as the fly’s when it struggles up the windowpane. You could set the fly free by opening the window. But even though somebody would open the window for Tom and point out to him some other possibilities in life, he probably wouldn’t understand what that meant. And as long as he’s in my class, I have to accept that his masculinity, his attitude, and his fighting spirit will always win in the race for her attention, the one whom I love with all my heart.
I’ve got to hide my love away.
There’s only one person who hates gym more than I do, and that’s Ari Penapple, nicknamed the Pineapple. He stands like a ghost in the school yard every recess, and he never does anything or says anything. For as long as I can remember, he’s been teased because of his name and because he is so tall, but at the same time like a heap. But he never does anything or says anything — not even when Thomas Magnus, the jackass, ever the hero, is right in his face. Then Ari just turns around and walks away. His face never changes. I’ve never seen him laugh. If he’s forced to answer some questions from the teacher, it’s just a low mumble that nobody understands, so the teacher has to walk right up to him to hear. But what he says is almost always correct, and he is usually the one with the highest grades.
But gym is the worst for Ari because he can hardly run at all. And that’s bad. He’s big and heavy, with legs like an elephant and hips like a woman. And the gym teacher, Ray Axel, enjoys torturing him, ordering him to run faster, do more, jump higher. Once he made Ari try to jump the pommel horse five times while everyone else waited and watched. But Ari couldn’t jump the horse; Ari wouldn’t be able to jump a cat, and Raxel knows that very well. Ari landed on the horse with a heavy thud and sat there, stuck, five times in a row. But when Ari has had enough, which rarely happens, then he does what I find really admirable: he stops obeying, sits by the wall, and doesn’t move. Nobody else would dare. But Ari is just as tall as Raxel, and even though he’s the Pineapple, he can sit quite still under Raxel’s scolding and his face doesn’t move. It’s like he’s thinking, Raxel wants me to jump, but I can’t jump. He knows it, I know it, and he knows that I know he knows it. Now, I’ll just sit here and wait till gym is over; I’ll shut my ears and turn myself off. And then he shuts his ears and turns himself off. Sometimes Raxel kicks him out of class with degrading remarks. It’s the only time I’ve seen a change in Ari’s face; he smirks, and I know it is his greatest relief when he’s kicked out of gym.
I wish I had Ari’s courage, because I dread Raxel. His name alone sounds like a threat. He’s got a limp, and he walks with a cane. His face is made of stone and his voice is low, except when he’s angry; then he shouts. Then it’s best to lie low, but the trouble is, it doesn’t take much for him to lose his temper. He expresses himself mostly with his yellow training whistle, which he always holds between his teeth. And God help those who don’t understand the meaning of two short whistles and one long. Or three long and one short. I can never remember the meaning of his chirping. That’s why I’m too late to figure things out, too late to run — late, late, late. Then he picks me out of the row and makes me do thirty push-ups as a penance — that’s two long whistles.
But there’s another reason that makes me hate gym, that gives me a chill and fills me up with anxiety thinking of gym, that gives me nightmares the day before gym, and that’s Sandra the shower warden.
To begin with, I can’t figure out why on earth a woman is a shower warden in a gym for boys. Surely no other school in the world has a female shower warden in the boys’ showers. Would anyone hire a man to be a shower warden in the girls’ class? I doubt it. And it has to be this woman. Why her? She doesn’t even look like a woman. Maybe that’s why. Not that she looks like a man, no way. She looks more like a ghost or a monster or an alien or all three at once. And I’m scared to death of her. For some reason, no one else seems to experience this the same way I do, at least nobody talks about it, and that’s understandable — because this is something that you can’t talk about with anybody.
She’s not old and not young either, not thin nor fat. And there’s absolutely nothing she does or says that is terrible or horrifying; she just herds us into the showers, turns the water on with a long iron pole, and orders us to wash thoroughly. That’s all.
But there’s something about her, how she moves, how she looks, even the way she does her hair, that makes me terrified of her.
And her face is the worst. It is pale blue, and her hair is white and thick, cut at the jawbone, and her jawbone is broad and strong. She always wears pink lipstick, screaming pink, and her lips are really thin, so she puts the lipstick on the skin around her lips, probably to make them look bigger.
And her mouth is so wide, it fills me with disgust just to think about it; the corners of her mouth reach far into her cheeks and turn downward, so you can imagine it opening up forever, like inside there are no teeth, just a bottomless black pit. Her eyes are large and round, protruding far out of her skull, so when she blinks, it takes the eyelids forever to slide over these glassy water bags that barely hang in her face. And it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself that no human being has orange eyes, still it’s a fact that hers are.
This is a face that stares at you in your worst nightmares, a face that never looks away but just keeps
on staring, not cruel or threatening but completely empty of all emotions, cold and unmoving. That’s why you fear that a face like that hides all the worst things you can imagine, and maybe something even worse than that.
We are running, sweating, and short of breath and cram into the locker room, and I hurry to undress and get into the shower before Sandra appears. Tom starts to fool around, stripped naked, waving his willy, standing on his hands, snatching somebody’s underwear and throwing them in the showers to the applause of others who are in with him at the moment and therefore get to keep their underwear.
“Hey!” he suddenly shouts, throwing his leader’s glance over the locker room. “Hands up who’s done it!”
Everybody who wants to be in with him throws an arm up. The others fetch their wet underwear from the showers.
“Naaah!” somebody says. “Who do you think you’ve done it with?”
But Tom smirks for a long time and moves his eyes from one to another while they’re all waiting eagerly for the answer, ready to laugh and shout.
“With Clara cute-ass, of course,” he says finally, and the shouts and screams echo in the room with whistling and laughter. I, on the other hand, feel a cold sting in my heart under the boiling-hot shower.
Fish in the Sky Page 4