Everything There Was

by Hanna Bervoets

  But this morning I thought about it again. The train. The cupcakes. My old life and the way it was organized.

  * * *

  “Good morning,” said Leo. “Leaving again, Cinderella?”

  “Yes,” I said, “off to the office.”

  “And why so early today?”

  “It’s my birthday.”

  “Ah ha.”

  “The pastries have to be picked up.”

  “Ok,” Leo said now. I wondered whether he believed me. “Fair enough. What kind of pastries?”

  “Those pink cubes with the marzipan.”

  “Can’t you just get those at the supermarket?”

  “Oh no, they won’t accept that at the office. They’re really fancy; they don’t want just any generic cake. And I also have to pass by the organic place to get something sea-weedy, because Pascal in HR has a gluten allergy. Or maybe it was a carbohydrate phobia, I forget; he refuses to eat anything involving dough.”

  “How annoying.”

  “Yep.”

  Later this morning, in my own classroom, I wondered if I couldn’t have stayed just this once; Leo’s lips on my neck when I told him it really was my birthday. Now I’m happy I didn’t. Because it was Barry who woke me.

  “Good morning, sunshine! Time to come on upstairs.”

  I got up, Barry took my hand and pulled me into the hallway, up the stairs.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I let myself be led into the kitchen.

  “You can open them again.”

  There was Leo on the other side of the table, Kalim beside him, both of them grinning. The decorations I only saw at second glance. Streamers of colored strips of paper hanging from the kitchen cabinets, crêpe paper flowers on the sink.

  “Ta-dah!” Barry shouted. He kissed me on the cheek, “Congratulations, dear!”

  Leo got up and gave me a hug. He hadn’t showered, still smelled exactly like last night; sweat and rubber mat.

  “How did you…”

  Leo nodded to Barry. “That guy knew.”

  Barry shrugged, faux nonchalant, “Oh, it’s easy enough to remember. November 12th, just after St. Martin’s Day.”

  “Wow…” I exhaled. Surprised that Barry knew my birthday. Even more surprised that he still kept track of the dates too.

  “And this is for you.” Barry pointed to a saucer on the table. There was something slightly translucent on it that mostly resembled an overcooked piece of endive.

  “What’s that?”

  “Cake!”

  I laughed, “Uh huh.”

  Barry gave me a little cake fork; I chopped a corner off the thing on the saucer.

  “And?” Barry asked as soon as I’d swallowed it.

  I tasted something bitter. And in the distance something sweet that’d probably been intended to mask the bitter.

  “Tasty,” I said, “What is it?”

  Barry looked at Leo conspiratorially. “Are we going to tell her?”

  Leo nodded. “Flower bulb,” he said. “The hyacinth from the teachers’ lounge.”

  “Braised especially for you in a refined blend of creamer, and caramelized in carefully reduced soy sauce,” Barry added.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t eat while the others watched; it would feel like murdering something right in front of them. With my fork I divided the bulb in four. And although I saw the others hesitate, I knew none of them would refuse.

  “Shit,” said Barry after the first bite. “Kinda gross this. Sorry.”

  I shook my head, “Not at all, best cake ever.”

  The others laughed; it also sounded like a joke. But I meant it. Because someone gave me this bulb. Being able to pass out cake that someone gave you: You can’t find yourself in better circumstances, on your birthday or maybe even in life.

  “In any case better than that seaweed cake,” Leo said once the bulb was all gone. “Did Pascal like it in the end?” Leo winked, but I just raised an eyebrow. Why was he doing this? Making an inside joke. Anything that includes, also excludes. Everybody knows that.

  “Seaweed cake?” asked Barry. “What do you mean?” And, to Leo, “Did you guys talk about this? You said you didn’t know it was her birthday.”

  “It’s something from before.” Leo quickly said.

  “But who’s Pascal?”

  “Someone from work,” I said.

  “There wasn’t any Pascal in our office,” Barry slowly mumbled. “And I was there longer than you.”

  I looked down, at the empty saucer on the table; the brown smear the flower bulb had left behind. And I was ashamed because I knew: Barry deserves a better lie than this. Luckily there was Kalim.

  “We haven’t sung yet!”

  * * *

  First “Happy Birthday,” then “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  I did what most people do when people sing for them. Looked around grinning: a show of discomfort and appreciation all at once. And the longer they sang, the bigger my grin got.

  For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow

  For she’s a jolly good fellow, which nobody can deny!

  I suddenly found them hilarious. Those lyrics. As if we’d fallen for something for decades, although I wasn’t sure for what.

  After the singing there was a brief silence. The kind of silence right after people have clinked their glasses: What to say after cheers?

  Leo coughed, Barry sighed, and I wondered if someone was still thinking about Pascal.

  And again it was Kalim who broke the silence.

  “I have a present for you.”

  It sounded like he had thought it up on the spot; maybe the boys hadn’t included him in the streamers and now Kalim thought he owed me something.

  “Will you come to my classroom?”

  I looked at Leo and Barry. Standing next to each other at the sink, they shrugged at the same time.

  * * *

  How long had it been since I was in Kalim’s classroom? He opened his door for me, urging me to go in first.

  “Ladies first, you go.”

  I stepped across the threshold. Looked around. And was so startled by what I saw that I didn’t know what to say.

  Necklaces. Necklaces hanging everywhere. On the walls, over the blackboard, in the plants: dozens of necklaces, made from hundreds of little beads. They hung over and onto each other; sometimes four or five necklaces on one nail, screw, or tack. Not a single stretch of wall was bare: threads and colored beads were all there was.

  “Wow,” I heard myself mutter.

  And as I stared at the necklaces, I thought about garter snakes; the way garter snakes mate. I once saw it in a documentary. Once a year all the snakes in the area come together at the foot of a rock: five hundred males versus fifty females. They rub their bodies against each other, writhing, teeming, forming one large impenetrable skein. The writhing lasts for days. Until fifty females have been fertilized and four hundred and fifty males have been bitten to death.

  “Choose one,” said Kalim.

  “Oh,” I mouthed.

  How do you choose something you don’t want?

  By imagining what it would be like if you did.

  “That one,” I said. And pointed to a necklace of blue and green beads. Because I love green. And I love blue.

  Kalim nodded, walked to the necklace. It was pinned to the wall with a thumbtack, two more necklaces hanging from the same tack. I watched as Kalim separated them. He did it carefully, with the precision of a person extracting a pick-up stick. I wondered what would happen if one of the necklaces fell to the floor: Which game would be lost and who would be the winner.

  “Here you are.” Kalim put the necklace around my neck; I let my fingers run over the beads.

  “Thank you.”

  Kalim nodded, sat on the corner of the table and gestured I sit down too.

  ”So,” he said, “how old are you now?”

  “
Twenty-nine,” I said.

  “Almost thirty.”

  “Almost.”

  What were we doing here? In this classroom, across from each other, surrounded by colors, beads, and necklaces that now seemed to be moving by themselves. Yes, it was as if the threads full of beads were making things spin; making me dizzy. So as not to have to look at them, I focused on Kalim. On his eyes, then quickly on his chin. He had trimmed his beard.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Almost the same age.”

  “Thirty?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Okay.”

  I said it slowly. I had thought Kalim was older. Thirty-five. I would’ve also believed forty. Kalim and I having been the same age all along felt strange.

  “Are you surprised?” Kalim asked.

  “No. Yes. I just… didn’t know.”

  “Because you never asked.”

  My eyes slipped downward. A blue thread stuck out of the armpit of Kalim’s t-shirt, he must have sown up a hole. Kalim hadn’t yet given up the fight against wear and tear.

  “You’re not wearing one,” I said, pointing to his throat and then the necklaces.

  “No,” Kalim said.

  “Then why did you make them?”

  Kalim shrugged.

  “Does it have to do with your religion?”

  Now Kalim threw back his head with a little jerk.

  He let out, no: Breathed out a little laugh.

  “Ha.”

  A diva, I thought in a flash. A diva making it clear that something is beneath her.

  “I have no religion,” said Kalim.

  ”Oh,” I mumbled.

  And suddenly I began to realize why I was here. As punishment. For not having been to Kalim’s classroom in so long. For never asking him his age – for never having asked him anything at all – and for erroneously assuming he was religious. Yes, I was here as punishment, but that also meant I was here for another reason: to make up for it. With my attention, I decided. Ask something, something nice.

  “Where did you learn how to sing?”

  Kalim looked at me suspiciously. “You really want to know?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell me.” I put my hand on his knee, “Tell me everything.”

  “Well,” Kalim started, “I have a mix tape…”

  And that’s how I learned more about Kalim in one afternoon than in the past seventy-two days. Things I had never asked about.

  * * *

  The mix was a cassette tape that Kalim’s mother had made for his father. His dad always played it in the car, when they were still living in his parents’ country. There was a lot of Springsteen on the tape. But also four songs by Bon Jovi, some U2, a little Guns N’ Roses. Aerosmith was on the click; the tape had to be turned over during “Love in an Elevator,” so Kalim’s father didn’t know the third verse. And he always sang along with everything: volume turned up to nine, windows open.

  But one day he had suddenly given the tape to his son.

  “Here,” he said to Kalim. “This is yours now.”

  Kalim’s father had sold the car. They needed money, he said. For pictures.

  Not long afterwards, Kalim and his parents got their pictures taken by a man with a refrigerator full of passports to stick the pictures into. After every flash, the man told Kalim not to smile so much.

  When Kalim came home from school the next day, his parents had disappeared. The cutlery was gone and the dresser empty, only the cassette tape was still under the big mattress. Kalim sat down on the floor, his back against the wall, the tape in his Walkman. Four times he played it, eight times he turned it over. Until he was found by the man who had taken the pictures.

  Then there was a boat and water and a great many long days when Kalim didn’t talk to anyone. In a new country, a woman was standing on the dock. “I’m your aunt,” she said. Then she asked whether Kalim had already eaten.

  The rest of his youth Kalim spent with her. They lived in a neighborhood where more people from his grandfather’s country lived, but here these people were different than there. They wore closed shoes, they all gossiped about each other. And their children laughed when Kalim didn’t know what a croque or a putain was. It didn’t bother Kalim. He had his schoolwork. And he had his tape. He put it on every night, until he knew all the lyrics by heart and his aunt introduced him to the conductor of the church choir. A tenor, the man said. They didn’t have any yet. And so Kalim spent years singing about church things he didn’t believe in. It didn’t matter. He also didn’t believe in the Bon Jovi ballads. And when Kalim was sixteen – a month before his final exams – the conductor of the church choir drove him to the conservatory of music. There he sang for two women and three men sitting behind a long table, their faces rigid. But they got tears in their eyes as soon as he hit the high note in “Always.” Kalim couldn’t wait to tell his aunt about those tears. When he came home, she was on the floor. Her fists clenched, a strange expression around her mouth.

  People told him she’d had an aneurysm. People also told him she wasn’t his aunt. And as there no longer was any money for the conservatory, and no time for his final exams, Kalim had to look for a job. Temp agencies sent him away as soon as they saw his ID: The passport he’d gotten years ago from the photographer. There will be jobs for us in the Netherlands, a boy from church said.

  They went by car: Kalim’s cassette playing, volume turned up to nine, windows open.

  There weren’t any jobs in the Netherlands. What there was was a room of nine by fifteen feet, which they had to share with four strangers. Five years Kalim spent in that room. During those years the strangers came and went and a lot of rain came down. Sometimes Kalim still sang. But most of the time he looked out the window at the man looking out of the window from the barracks on the other side. And when Kalim had finally convinced the Dutch that he would get his fingers chopped off bit by bit back in his grandfather’s country, they gave him permission to clean houses. With his first paycheck he bought a boom box with a tape deck and he used it every night.

  * * *

  “Right now, my music is the only thing that I miss,” Kalim said to me. “Really, the only thing.”

  I nodded.

  And for a moment it was as if we were somewhere else. Someone else. Two strangers at a bus stop, striking up a conversation. Taking shelter from the rain.

  “And you,” asked Kalim. “What did you lose?”

  I shrugged.

  “A home?” Kalim asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry. Father?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “He left your mother?”

  “He never met her.”

  Kalim didn’t pry.

  Silently he put his hand on my chest, taking hold of my necklace with his thumb and index finger. And while he followed the beads with his fingers, I thought of what I had lost: a half-full box of pastries on my lap. And of what I had gotten in return: a necklace, a bite of flower bulb. For a moment it seemed to me the best trade ever.

  Day 79

  The cramps come in waves. As if someone is holding a stick against my stomach and bearing down on it every few minutes. It started the day before yesterday and keeps getting worse.

  Maybe it’s my bowels. Nothing’s come out of them for two weeks now. Hardly anything’s gone in them for two weeks either. Whatever was in my bowels must have been digested by now. Maybe the gasses that were released in the process are now pressing against my intestine wall.

  Or is the pain related to my cycle? I should have gotten my period a long time ago; my body is postponing the ovulation, like in slender gymnastics girls. They seem to have tamed their body: keeping it underweight, making it do the hardest cartwheels. But the body strikes back: denying them menstruation, refusing to bear children. Like it wants to show them who’s boss.

  I don’t know how much weight
I’ve lost. But I can see the protruding collarbones and shoulder blades of the others. What do they see when they look at me?

  * * *

  The largest mirror is in the girls’ locker room, above the child-level sink. Standing right in front of it, I can only see my shoulders and chin. To also be able to see the rest, I got up onto a chair this morning. Hips, I saw now. And breasts, and a lot of ribs.

  The hips and breasts moved when I turned, the ribs disappeared when I exhaled. And yet it didn’t feel like they belonged to me. As if I wasn’t looking at a mirror but at a screen: images of a girl in front of her webcam. People who logged in could see her dance, although that wasn’t necessarily a pretty sight. Skeletal bones, nipples that pointed downwards. Ribs that stuck out with every movement. And when she turned around, this strange girl, a deflated set of buttocks appeared in front of the camera. Listless and flat; clay rolled hard across a tabletop.

  So this was what Leo saw when I lay next to him. As I stepped off the chair, I wondered whether he knew my buttocks had once been round and tight. And why I cared what he thought.

  I placed the chair a little farther away from the mirror, climbed back on.

  Now the mirror showed my legs. They didn’t seem to have changed much. Still slim, not necessarily bony. Yes, I decided: My legs were still attractive, still there.

  That was when the splashing began. It came from the showers off the boys’ locker room; the showers we all use so we only have to keep one bathroom clean. Probably Leo was there now. He had just done his push-ups and always showers immediately after exercising.

  I stepped off the chair and walked the few steps to the boys’ locker room. The same benches, the same hooks, the same low sink as in the room I’d just left. Only difference was the piece of terry cloth draped over the edge of the sink: We ripped the towel in four the other day, a strip each.

  Before going into the showers, I stuck my right leg through the doorway; my pelvis pressed against the doorjamb so the leg looked extra long. Now I began to move my lower leg up and down; like a cancan dancer but slower. The water stopped splashing.