Cafe Babanussa

by Karen Hill

  Werner stormed off without another word. Ruby lay low for the next three weeks. He came knocking at the door a few times and left her a few pleading notes, but she managed to avoid him by keeping the chain on the door and by ducking in and out of the building only when she thought he would be busy with work or school.

  One morning she woke up sick as a dog. She continued to feel shaky and queasy for several days. Finally she went to the doctor. He confirmed her suspicions. Ruby was pregnant.

  Ruby told Emma the news.

  “Oh my god, no. What are you going to do? I wouldn’t tell Werner if I were you. You have a big decision ahead of you. Like, are you going to keep it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know whose it is. Werner and I use condoms and so did Dom and I. It’s a crapshoot. Impossible to tell.”

  The doctor had told her that she was only seven weeks along. She could still have an abortion if she wanted one.

  The next morning she stopped by Emma’s, hoping she was home. When she got upstairs, Dom opened the door, and Lina stood behind him in his shadow. Ruby almost fainted. She hadn’t expected him to be there.

  “Where have you been lately?” he asked.

  “I’ve just had some things to take care of, things to mull over.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.

  Emma put on a pot of tea. Ruby was really stuck now, weighing what to say to Dominick. She wished he weren’t there, so that she could talk to Lina and Emma in private first. Finally, unable to contain herself any longer, and wanting to know how he would react, she asked Dom to come into the kitchen. There she blurted out, “I’m pregnant. I don’t know if it’s yours. I mean, I’ve been having sex with you and with Werner, too, occasionally. But I’m pretty sure I’m going to have an abortion.”

  “Oh my god, Ruby, no. Jesus! Don’t make any decisions too quickly. What about keeping it?”

  “I’m not exactly mother material right now.”

  “Look, Ruby, take some time to think.”

  “Christ, Dom, that’s what I’ve been doing all week. Feeling sick and thinking.”

  “If you’ve made up your mind already, go ahead. You know what’s best.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me, but I’ll do my best.”

  Ruby and Dom settled back down in the living room, but sat apart.

  Emma studied them, and then stood up. “I’m gonna rustle up some potatoes and quark, if anyone’s interested.”

  Ruby wasn’t feeling very hungry, but as usual, she found consolation in food. This was one of her favourite German meals. Werner made it for her all the time: waxy potatoes covered with a thick and creamy fresh cheese with linseed oil drizzled over top and some fried onions on the side. Simple and absolutely delectable. Thinking about it made her feel a little better right away, though the reminder of Werner stabbed.

  She made an appointment for the following Thursday at the Turmstrasse Hospital. She had ten days to steel herself for the abortion. Emma came by for tea the day before her appointment, and in the evening they decided to go to Mean’s. Ruby ordered a beer for a change, wanting something cold and frothy to soothe her throat and quench her thirst. Then Dom stumbled through the door, and Ruby suddenly noticed just how thin he had become, and how dark the circles were under his eyes. He had put gel in his hair, and it was standing on end, all askew. He was drunk and frayed around the edges—shaking, his face drawn tight. He sidled up to Ruby, slurring his words as he locked his hand around her arm. “I have no time for you and your baby, you hear. I’ve got my own life to live.”

  Ruby sighed and started to leave. Emma grabbed her hand and said, “You go on home, but you can count on me to come with you tomorrow if you need it. Just come by ahead of time.”

  At home, Ruby lay down on her bed. She placed her hand listlessly on her belly and mused to herself whether it was a boy or a girl. Then she said a little prayer to her child, asking for forgiveness, and fell into a fitful sleep.

  Muffled grey light slipped, barely noticed, through the curtains. It felt like the sun would never round the corner of the sky to come awaken her. In German, Thursday was Donnerstag: the day of thunder. She felt she had no other choice than to let herself be pummelled today. She rose quickly and showered in the stall that was built into the pantry in her kitchen. She was sure she was supposed to fast, but she drank a glass of juice anyway. As she dressed, she heard the key turning in the lock and then Werner stood before her. He tried to lead her playfully to the bed, but Ruby pushed him firmly away.

  “Werner, I’m not interested. I have a lot on my mind.”

  “What are you so busy with that you can’t spend some time with me?” he asked, looking doleful.

  “I’m trying to find a purpose in life, remember? You need to give me space.”

  “Why can’t I be involved? You need help finding yourself here in Berlin.”

  Ruby threw her hands up in the air. “Stop trying to protect me from life! I’ve had it.”

  Wheeling around, she grabbed her bag and ran out the door. She still had plenty of time, so she decided to walk down to Moabit from Wedding. She passed the square at Leopoldplatz just as the church clock was chiming. Ruby loved that she never had to wear a watch. The city was full of old squares with churches and their clocks. Time was everywhere and belonged to everyone—not just those with watches.

  It took Ruby forty minutes to reach Emma’s street. She climbed to the second floor and knocked on the door. Emma opened and said, “Gimme a second, just got to pull my sweater and boots on. You know, I’ve been there before, too. I’ll bring you home after and feed you. You can stay as long as you like.”

  Ruby just wanted it to be over, to stop thinking about babies and what this one would have been like.

  She felt groggy and nauseated when she woke up, but Emma took hold of her hand as she sat up in the narrow bed.

  “You should stay here for at least half an hour before we go home, just to get your bearings.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Do you want me to call a taxi?”

  “Do you mind if we walk a block first? The fresh air will do me good, I’m sure.” Ruby was hoping to slow the rush of thoughts pouring into her head.

  “Of course, but rest first. You shouldn’t get up yet.”

  Eventually they got up to leave. Ruby felt tired and sore but was determined to walk the distance. When they arrived at Emma’s, Smithie was already there. As soon as Ruby sat down on the couch, he grabbed Emma and pulled her into the bedroom. Ruby barely noticed the hushed whispers taking place in the next room. She lay down and covered herself with a blanket. A moment later, Emma came back into the living room, looking as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.

  “Ruby, I don’t know how to say this, and I’m so sorry.”

  “What? How to say what?”

  “I have some bad news for you—Smithie just told me. Dom overdosed at Mean’s last night. He didn’t make it. He’s gone.”

  Ruby gasped and struggled to get up. She knocked over her tea. “What do you mean? Emma, please say it’s not true.”

  Emma looked at her with pity and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Ruby. It’s not nice to tell you when you’re like this, but I didn’t want you to find out on the news.”

  Ruby collapsed back on the couch and buried her face in her hands. She was unable to catch her breath. Emma sat down beside her, put her arms around her and just held her, rocking her back and forth as they both cried. Ruby finally lay still in Emma’s arms. She put her head in Emma’s lap, and Emma stroked her hair gently.

  When Ruby woke up several hours later, she felt numb, and a flat greyness had settled down on her. Despite Emma’s invitation to stay, she felt an urge to go home, where she could sequester herself, so she took the bus to Wedding.

  Alone on the bus, she began sniffling into her sleeve. When she came to Leopoldplatz she got off the bus and w
ent into the church to rest. She sat on a pew at the back and soaked in the beauty of the stained-glass windows and the high, arched ceilings, thinking about how God could be so heartless as to take away so much in this world. It was all too much. She ran out of the church and continued running till she was out of breath. That night she sat up in the kitchen with a pot of tea, writing in her journal. Dead. Gone. Two down, one to go. I am so exposed. My head feels like it’s opening wide. So many thoughts coming in. Dead souls. Where’s Jessie? Please come save me.

  Finally, as light strayed in through the window, she lay down on her bed to rest. Her head was filled with a jagged stream of words that gnawed away at her soul. But she couldn’t stop the click click click of her mind. Dom’s face flashed in front of her over and over again. I’m so sorry, Ruby, I just had to go. Nowhere else to land safely in this world. And then there was Werner’s stern countenance. His words seemed to merge with an image of her father shaking his head. I told you so. You have to be protected. You are not safe or capable. This is my world. You follow my rules. Both of them were talking rapid-fire.

  Emma came by to visit a day later and walked into the bedroom with a tray laden with teapot and mugs.

  Ruby said to her, “I’ve been talking to Dom. He’s apologized for rejecting me and the baby. He’s sorry.”

  Emma looked at Ruby quizzically, and poured their tea before she spoke. “Ruby, I’m sorry, but Dom is dead. Nothing you do is going to bring him back. Of course you can talk to him in your dreams, hold him in your thoughts, but beyond that . . .” Her voice quavered. “I think we should get you back to my place where we can all watch over you.”

  Ruby was beginning to slowly lock herself up inside her mind. More and more people were prying their way into her head, talking to her. Ruby, come home, Ruby, come home. Don’t go. Eat chocolate after your meals. Always walk with your right foot first when going south. Turn your head to the right to delete a thought. Lie on your left if you want to be close to him. Get up move around clean the house. She became entranced listening to all their voices, searching for some truth in their words. Emma’s voice broke through occasionally from the outside, but her presence was beginning to make Ruby feel paranoid.

  “Ruby, help me out here. What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing, Emma, just let me be.”

  When Emma left, the voices became more insistent, and Ruby found it harder to ignore them. Why were people talking about her? Why were they saying these things to her? When she lay down they all came out of their hiding places, all trying to talk to her at once. She could hear her own voice responding, but she couldn’t understand her own words and therefore didn’t know what she was saying. Her father, Werner, Jessie: everyone was talking at her and it was all negative. She didn’t know how to defend herself or if she even had to.

  All her life she had felt like she had done something horribly wrong, though she truly didn’t know what. She thought of the recurring dream of the man lying on her and smothering her. It had plagued her since she entered puberty. What did this mean? Now she cried and cried, for all those years of failure. Her father was telling her that she was mean to leave Werner behind. Her mother was telling her to come home. Jessie told her she was too free. Dom was still whispering in the background: Come get me, Ruby. Some voices were clearer on her left, others on her right. If she wanted to stop hearing certain voices, she just turned the other way. But inevitably there was negativity on the other side, too.

  Another day Emma returned to take her to the greengrocer’s. Emma hung on to her arm all the way there. Ruby picked out some apples, oranges and vegetables, and the cashier cast his head to the right as he was ringing up the produce. Ruby looked right, too. She started sorting people depending on whether they were on her left or her right. Her mother was left-handed and left politically, so she was on Ruby’s left. Her father was more conservative and represented the past and family history, so he was on her right. On down the line she went, dividing up family, friends and acquaintances. That way she could tell who was working with whom. There was some kind of conspiracy against her and it was her job to figure it out. But it was too labyrinthine a task.

  Ruby almost ran home, leaving Emma trailing behind. She didn’t want to see any more people, didn’t want to keep classifying them. She shook her head ferociously over and over, starting to feel crazy and out of control, then clambered up the stairs, flung the door open and ran to the kitchen. Emma followed her in.

  Ruby got out her journal and started scribbling furiously. Her thoughts were broken. Who is on the left? Who is on the right? Left is future. Right is past. Where’s the present? No, I can’t keep my head in the middle, there’s someone there, too. Everyone is against me and I don’t know why. How is it that they can read my mind, but I can’t read theirs? Page after page, she wrote down the thoughts that jackknifed into her head.

  “Emma, people are out to get me. Everybody was looking at me outside, like they knew me, like they knew my thoughts.”

  “Ruby, you’re just imagining things.”

  “That’s the point. Maybe I am imagining things, but I can’t not think about them. I can’t control it much anymore. It helps when I see people one-on-one, though. It forces me out of myself a little when I can talk to someone like you.”

  “Ruby, I’ll do whatever I can to help. But maybe you should go to a doctor.”

  “Oh Christ, what can they do? Lock me up?”

  “Let’s hope not,” said Emma.

  There was a knock at the door. Ruby hissed, “It’s Werner!” Emma told Ruby that she better finally talk to him and went to open the door. Werner rushed into the kitchen. He stood eyeing Ruby for a few moments.

  Emma picked up her bag and hugged Ruby goodbye. “You’ll be okay,” she said.

  Ruby didn’t lift her head and continued to write.

  Finally, Werner grabbed her arm and said, “Don’t write that garbage, Ruby. What’s wrong with you? Are you on something?”

  Ruby shook him free and got up to wander around the apartment. She couldn’t stop moving. Ruby didn’t sleep that night and by the next day, she was only worse. Gibbering away, always writing, moving around or crying, unable to sleep. Werner called the doctor and then he called Ruby’s parents. He told them that depending on what the doctor said, he planned to take Ruby away for a week, for rest and a change of scenery. Ruby sat listening to the conversation, as Werner did not want her to talk to her parents. She started humming a little song as she squirmed in the chair, unable to be at ease. Werner shushed her. She moved to the bed to lie down but felt as though a snake was slithering around her, tightening its grip with every turn. Over and over the scenario repeated itself until Ruby jumped up and ran down the hall and started beating Werner with her fists. “It’s time to let go. You have to let go!”

  “Ruby, I’ll do no such thing. I’m taking you away for a while.”

  The next thing she knew they were racing through the night in a taxi. Ruby thought they had crossed over to the East and that Werner was going to trade her for some spy on the Glienicke Bridge. Then came the glare of an office and a man in a white coat pulling down her pants to put a syringe in her ass. Within an hour her brain was on lockdown. They took a taxi home and she stared morosely out the window, her hand in Werner’s. At home she could still feel the lockdown closing in on her like a vise as she sat trembling quietly at the kitchen table.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Breaking Through

  RUBY SLIPPED OFF HER CLOTHES AND WATCHED AS they fell to the floor. She let the cloud-coloured hospital gown unfold its worn cotton threads slowly over the tan curves of her breasts, her belly, then her hips. She sat down on the edge of the bed, bending over to feel if there were any straps hiding underneath. Curling up into a ball on the crisp sheets, she frowned at her ashen kneecaps. She thought of how her grandmother would have disapproved of their greyness and would have scolded her father for not teaching her how to lighten them up with the juice and rind of
a lemon. In her mind she cradled this vision of her grandmother and her father, letting their comfortable sepia images rock her back and forth in sleep’s lullaby.

  Ruby woke with a start. She heard words hurtling out into the night, then a rush of feet stampeding off in the direction of the distressed voice. Then silence. The vastness of it engulfed her. She had dreamed about the faceless man again, but this time he actually raped her. There was something about his voice that seemed vaguely familiar. She tried to sit up, to escape it, but her body kept shaking violently. She began plummeting down a tunnel of darkness. She tried to still her frantic hands long enough to grab on to the rails of her bed. If she held on, maybe she could stop this sudden, mad descent. But she felt her spirit seeping away, leaving her bones and flesh wide open for the demons. In they came, piercing and penetrating what was left of her. A thousand different faces from her past erupted into her brain and just as quickly as they appeared, eyes that had laughed with her, lips that had kissed her, arms that had held her became disfigured. Ruby watched in horror as the flurry of faces flashing before her transformed into one massive heap of rotting flesh on the floor by her bed.

  Then she saw his feet. Brown shoes, perfectly shined. Clad in a pale doctor’s gown, Werner approached steadily. Ruby stared at his feet, transfixed.

  Werner began to whisper. He swung an iron swastika tauntingly in his hand, its points sharpened like daggers. Ruby began screaming silently into her pillow, her arms pummelling the sides of the mattress. Her chest was heaving furiously; the air was being choked out of her lungs. In a low, halting groan she begged, “Go away, go away and leave me alone. Please,” but his cold breath closed around her.

  Rat a tat tat tat tat tat tat! Ruby thrashed free of Werner’s hold. Hanging on to the bed rails as tightly as she could, she listened for this sound that played insistently on the edge of her mind. Rat a tat, rat a tat, tat tat tat! Her right hand loosened its grip and slammed against the wall in response. Rat a tat tat, rat tat tat, ta ta ta tat! She heard the door to her room fling open and a shaft of angry light bathed the wall where her hand was drumming ferociously.