13
I stood for a bit. I didn’t want to go home just yet. I didn’t want today to be a normal day just like every other one. It was a special day. An especially bitter day. I really needed some time.
When I opened the door, nobody was there. A note was on the table: There’s food in the fridge. I got my things out, scanned through my report card real quick, put the Beyonce CD on and crawled under my bed sheets. I couldn’t say whether the music comforted me or just made me more depressed. I’m pretty sure it just depressed me more.
I went back to school a couple of hours later to pick up my bicycle. Seriously, I forgot my bike. My way to school was two kilometers, and sometimes I go on foot, but I didn’t on this day. I was so deep in my thoughts when Tschick babbled, that I simply unlocked my bike, locked it again and went on. Real misery there.
I went by the big sand hill and the playground for the third time today. I sat on the Indian tower there. A tall tower, which they built there for kids to play Cowboy and the Indian, as if there were kids here. At least I’ve never seen any. Also no teens or adults. Not even the homeless sleep there. Only I sit on the tower now and then, where I can see absolutely nobody. Looking to the east, the tall houses of Hellersdorf could be spotted, north ran a line of shrubs and bushes, and somewhere back there is a small garden colony. But there were absolutely nothing around the playground, really a deserted land, which had been under construction before. There should’ve been houses there, which you can still read from a big, weathered, fallen-down sign near the street. White walls with red roofs, trees and next to that the writing: Here are 96 single-family-houses. Under that are the rent information, and at the bottom is Immobilen Klingenberg.
But one day, three dead insects, including a frog and a rare grasshopper, were discovered on this field, and then the environmentalists went against the construction company and the construction company against the environmentalists, and the field remained deserted. The process was already running for ten years, and if you believed my dad, it would continue on for another ten years, because the eco-fascists haven’t started growing plants on there. eco-fascist is a word that my dad created. Sometimes he even drops the eco part, because they’ve ruined him with this act. One quarter of the land belonged to him, and they turned it into shit. If a stranger happened to stay at our house for lunch, they definitely won’t understand a single word. My dad only talked about shit, fascists and motherfuckers for years. How much effort he actually spent on the thing and how it would affect us, I didn’t know for a long time. I always thought that my dad would somehow make it work, and maybe he’s thought about it himself also. But then he just quit and sold his part. He used to spend a whole load of time on it, but he was determined with the idea that if he went on with the process, it’ll just take him more, and so he sold all the stuff way under its worth to the motherfucker. For now, that’s used for referencing his colleagues. The motherfuckers that continued on. That was a few years ago. And it was clear a year later: our holiday was ruined, and the house, which once belonged to us, maybe would not belong to us anymore or maybe even hasn’t been ours for some time. My dad said. And all that because of three dead insects and a grasshopper.
The only one that stood the storm was the playground, which was built from the very start, to show that the neighbourhood was kid-friendly. Now that’s definitely spoiled.
And okay, I give up, there’s another reason why I go over here all the time. Because when you’re on the tower, you could see two white rental houses. They’re over there behind the small garden colony, somewhere behind the trees, and Tatjana lives in one of them. I don’t know exactly, but there’s a small window on the upper left corner, and the owner would always have a green light lit, and I just assumed that it’s Tatjana’s room looking at the green light. So sometimes I sit on the Indian tower and wait for the green light. When I come back from our football training or from the afternoon class, I’ll look through the woods and carve out letters on the wood with my key, and when the light lights up, I feel warm in my heart, and when it doesn’t, it’s always a huge disappointment.
But it was too early on this day, and I didn’t wait, so I went to school. There stood my bike, all alone in the kilometer-lang parking section. There was nobody in the building. Only the janitor was taking two trash cans to the street. A Cabrio playing Turkish hip-hop went by. And it’s gonna stay like this for the rest of the summer. Six weeks without school. Six weeks without Tatjana. I already saw myself spending a load of time at the Indian tower.
Back home, I didn’t really know what I shoud do. I tried to repair the lamp on my bike, which was broke for a long time, but I didn’t have soem of the compartments. I put on Survivor and started refurnishing my room by moving my bed up front and my desk to the back. Then I went down again and fiddled with the lamp some more, but it was useless, and I just threw the tools in the garden and went upstairs, threw myself in my bed and started screaming. That was the first day of vacation, and I was already cracking up. I got the Beyonce drawing our. I looked at her for a long time, held her with two hands and started ripping her very slowly. When I reached Beyonce’s vorhead, I stopped. What that was, I don’t have a single idea. I only remember that I somehow ran out of the house and into the forest and up the hill, and then I started jogging. I didn’t really jog, I didn’t have my sport things on, but I passed about twenty joggers per minute. I just ran across the forest and screamed, and everyone else who was also running in the forest really got me on my nerves, because they could hear me, and then I came across someone who was taking a walk with ski stockings on, he was really missing some goggles, and I really would’ve kicked him in the ass for his shitty stockings.
I stood for hours under the shower at home. Then I felt a bit bitter, kinda like a shipwreck who’s been on the Atlantics for weeks, and then a cruise came and someone threw a can of Red Bull and then I got going again. Like that.
The door rang.
“What’s the stuff lying out there?” My dad shouted.
I tried to ignore him, but it was hard.
“Should those just lie there?”
He meant the tools. So I went downstairs after I checked whether my eyes were still red in the mirror, and as I got down, a taxi driver was standing at the door.
“Go down there and say goodbye to your mother.” My dad said, “Did you already do that? You didn’t remember it, or? quick, go! Go!”
He pushed me down the stairs. I was a bit angry. But, unfortunately, my dad was right. I completely forgot the thing with my mom. I remembered it for the last few days, but because of the excitement today, I forgot. My mom’s going to the clinic for four weeks.
She sat in her bedroom, wearing a coat, in front of the mirror, and she dressed up. I helped her with her suitcase. My dad brought it to the taxi, and just as the taxi started, he called her, as if he cared about her. but that was not the case, as it came out later. My mom wasn’t even gone for half an hour, and my dad came into my room and had the “I’m your father and we need to talk about serious shit” face on. It made me uncomfortable.
He looked like this when he wanted to talk about sex with me a few years ago. He also had this face, when he told me because of his allergy to cat hair, he has to send not only our cat, but also my two rabbits and the turtle away. And he looked just like this now.
“I’ve been informed that I have a business appointment.” He said that, as if he would be troubled by it. He frowned a lot. He explained a bit, but it was really simple. He wanted to leave me alone for two weeks.
I made a face that should say that I need to think carefully about the deal. Could I do it? Fourteen days alone in this environment with only swimming pools, pizzas and video games? Yeah, probably, I nodded, I could try. I would figure something out.
The serious face relaxed for a bit.
“And don’t you fuck things up! Though I don’t think you would. I’ll leave you two hundred euros here, they’re already in the drawer downstairs, and if something happens, call immediately.”
“In the middle of your business stuff.”
“Yes, my business stuff.” He looked a bit angry.
He called my mom a few times in the afternoon, and as he was calling her, his assistant came to pick him up. I came down immediately to see whether it was the same one. This assistant looks really good and she’s only a few years older than me, about nineteen maybe. And she always laughs. She laughs a lot. I met her for the first time two years ago, when I was visiting my dad in his office, and then she rubbed my hair and laughed, when I tried to not let my whole body collapse onto the printer. Unfortunately, she doesn’t do that anymore, with the hair rubbing.
She got out of the car in shorts and a tight sweater, and it became clear what kind of a business trip it would be. The sweater was so tight that you could basically see every little detail. I thought it was okay that my dad didn’t even try to make a big fuss about it. It wasn’t necessary. It was clear between my parents. My mom knew what my dad was up to. And my dad knew what my mom was up to. And when they were alone, they would scream at each other.
What I didn’t get for a long time is, why they didn’t divorce. I thought I was the reason for a while. Or the money. But at some point, I came to the conclusion that they just like screaming and shouting at each other. That they like to be unhappy. I’ve read it in a magazine somewhere: there are people who like being unhappy. That means they are happy when they are unhappy. I have to say, I didn’t quite get it. Something about it troubles me, but something about it clears out my questions.
And I still haven’t managed to find a better explanation for the thing going on with my parents. I really thought a lot about it, I even got a serious headache because of it. It’s kinda like those 3D pictures, where you have to squint at a pattern of some sort, and suddenly you see something crazy. Other people could do a better job with that than me, I’ve almost never experience that, and in the moment, when I see something crazy, like a flower or a deer or something, it immediately disappears, and I would then catch a headache. And it’s the exact same with thinking about my parents, and I get headaches because of it. So I don’t think about it anymore.
When my dad packed his stuff, I talked with Mona downstairs. Her name is Mona, the assistant, and the first thing she said to me was how warm it was and how it was gonna get warmer for the next few days. Practical stuff. But when she realized I’ll have to spend my vacation alone, she looked so sad. Leaving your parents and god and the world! I thought about begging her to rub my hair again, like that time by the printer. But I didn’t do it. But I just stared at the landscape and tried to avoid the sweater, and listened to Mona complimenting my dad. I guess being older really does have some advantages.
I was still deep in my landscape observation when my dad came down the steps with his stuff.
He said the same stuff that he told me earlier for the third time, where he put the money, and then he had his arm around Mona’s waist and went into the car with her. He could’ve spared the part. With the hand on her waist, I mean. I found it nice that she didn’t react too much to it. But when she was on our property, there was no need to put an arm around her waist. Person opinion. I shut the door, closed my eyes and stood still for a minute.
“Mona!” I cried. My throat tightened. “I have to confess something to you!” My voice echoed frighteningly in the empty vestibule, and Mona, who seemed to have already suspected that I had to confess something to her, held her hands over her mouth in horror. Her sweater rose and fell in agitation.
“Oh God, oh God!” she cried.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I sobbed, “I would never volunteer to work for the CIA! But they have us in their hands - do you understand?” And of course she understood. She collapsed next to me, crying. “But what are we supposed to do?” she cried desperately.
“There’s nothing we can do!” I answered. “We can only play along with their game. The most important thing is to keep up the facade. You always have to remember that I am an eighth-grader now and I look like an eighth-grader and that we are just going to carry on with our lives as normal, at least for another year or two, as if we don’t even know each other!”
“Oh God, oh God!” Mona cried, clutching my neck and sobbing. “How could I have doubted you?”
“Oh God, oh God!” I cried, and I pressed my forehead to the cold tiles and curled up on the floor and cried for about half an hour. After that I felt better.