The Melting

by lize Spit

  “I think I got it! I feel something,” he shouts. The animal puffs up her belly, her udders swing. She could easily absorb Laurens into her intestinal tract with a reverse fart.

  At first, Pim just stands there, grinning.

  “There’s no ping-pong ball,” I say softly.

  Pim smacks me on the upper arm. Then, all of a sudden, he freezes. He’s staring at the boots on my feet. He looks up at me, then back at my feet. I can tell by the way he walks away: I’m wearing Jan’s boots.

  I want to run after him, but Laurens, still halfway inside the cow, hasn’t noticed Pim’s departure yet.

  “There’s no ping-pong ball!” My voice sounds shrill.

  It takes a few seconds for the message to sink in. Laurens pulls his arm out. What would upset him more: that there’s no ball or that Pim isn’t even watching?

  The animal’s butthole contracts and releases. As Laurens withdraws his hand, a stream of shit comes out with it, plopping down between his legs. Some of it splashes against his shin, dripping into his boot. The cow sways anxiously. The mucus dripping from her anus forms a bubble.

  I try to pull off the boots, but they won’t give. My shoes are stuck inside.

  Even Laurens is rattled. He starts fidgeting. He wipes off his arm on the first straw he can get his hands on. I pass him a towel hanging on a nearby railing. He looks at the boots in my hands, at my socked feet. I wrench my ballet flats out of the boots.

  “I had no idea these were Jan’s,” I say.

  Laurens’s anger quickly dissolves into anxiety.

  “Which way did Pim go?”

  He heads off in the direction I indicate. Against the light, I see him holding his left arm away from his body. His skin has that strange orange glow that people get after applying self-tanning lotion without reading the instructions.

  I put Jan’s boots back outside the door just like I found them, with one leaning against the other. In the distance, I see Laurens and Pim at the base of the mound, both sitting on an upright tire.

  What is Pim saying to him? Are they talking about Jan? Is he finally letting it all out? I move closer.

  “Okay, fine. This is the last one. Dare,” says Pim.

  I can’t hear what Laurens tells him to do. Pim stands up. He brushes off his pants even though there’s no dust or dirt on them. It’s a movement I often make myself, a reflex left over from all the afternoons we spent together on our knees in the hay.

  He climbs a few meters up the mound and stops. For a moment, he gazes off in the distance in the direction where I saw his dad driving the tractor back and forth a little while ago leaving trails of manure behind him.

  “C’mon, what are you waiting for?” Laurens comes over and stands beside me.

  Pim looks straight at us. Then he bends down and punctures the plastic with his finger.

  Elisa

  ELISA WAS A new student in the fifth-grade class that we were parasiting off of that year. She showed up right after summer vacation. We saw her coming down the hall before she was introduced to the class. As she followed the principal to our classroom, her ponytail swung up over the top edge of the classroom windows with every step. Principal Beatrice entered without knocking and proudly pushed Elisa forward.

  “This is Elisa. Her father has been working abroad as a representative. She was homeschooled for a little while, but now her dad doesn’t have to travel for his job anymore. They live in Hoogstraten, but Elisa will be attending school here, twenty-six-point-nine kilometers from home,” she boasted, as if this said something about her qualities as school principal. “She is living with her grandmother on Lijsterweg. We’ll see how far along she is with the lesson material—it’s possible that she’ll be able to move up to the sixth grade in a few months.”

  Elisa was a little on the ugly side, but the kind of ugly you knew would turn out pretty as long as she fixed her eyebrows. They had grown dark and crooked across her face, making everything she said seem calculating, malicious. She had tanned skin, and her long, skinny legs had been squeezed into a pair of tight black pants with white tennis shoes at the ends. Over her shirt she wore a short, square black puffer vest that accentuated her slim hips. She wore it zipped up to the bottom of her breasts, making them look like two half-popped chestnuts.

  Elisa was born in 1986, so she was a year older than everyone else in the class, and two years older than Pim, Laurens and me. She listened to what Principal Beatrice said about her, looking modestly down at her shoes.

  “Who here has ever been to Hoogstraten?” asked Mr. Rudy, in an effort to warm us up to the new student. As long as Principal Beatrice was standing there, he did his best not to stare at her puffed chestnuts.

  Nobody raised their hand.

  Nothing was said about Elisa’s mother. Before the bell had even rung for recess, rumors were flying around that she died giving birth, when she had to push out Elisa’s long legs and puffer vest. Somebody even made a drawing of it—the crumpled paper was passed around the class after recess. It was the first time that me, Laurens and Pim ever got to see one of their notes.

  Elisa didn’t take off her vest that whole first day, or the days after that. She always had it on. She must’ve been used to the idea of always having to be ready to leave in a hurry. To make matters worse, she made the same mistake I did of claiming that, even if she could choose from all four, she wouldn’t want to go out with any of the guys from Get Ready!. After that, no one wanted to be seen with her on the playground anymore.

  Every day at noon, she’d walk home to her grandma’s for a hot lunch and to visit her mare, Twinkle, who was out grazing in the fields near the Bulksteeg, across from my house. A few weeks before Elisa moved in, they delivered the horse in the middle of the night. It whinnied until the sun rose. Every time Elisa came back to school after lunch, she had little seeds between her teeth.

  A few days after Elisa arrived, our class went swimming at the Pulderbos Aquatic Center. A Verhoeven coach picked us up at the school gate. The bus had to make three trips between the school and the pool so that every class would have a chance to swim that day.

  On the bus, I spoke to Elisa for the first time. Pim was sitting next to Laurens, even though it wasn’t my turn to sit alone. Elisa was in the seat in front of me. As soon as the bus got going, she turned around and rested her chin on the back of her seat.

  “Guess what?” she asked, then paused dramatically to make me curious.

  “What?”

  “My mimi has the same name as you.”

  She’d hung her swimming bag on the hook next to her seat. It swung back and forth with every sharp turn on our way out of town. The bag was covered with rhinestones and glitter and dangling from all the zippers were these little neon plastic pacifiers. The thing wasn’t ugly per se. Like her shiny puffer vest, it wasn’t a matter of taste, it was just something she was used to. We’d never seen anything like it before in Bovenmeer.

  “I call my grandma ‘grandma’. Not ‘mimi’,” I said.

  “Same thing,” she replied.

  “No, it’s not.” I immediately started explaining the difference. It took almost the entire route to the Aquatic Center for me to make my case. Every once in a while, I’d look out the window at the autumn leaves to give myself time to come up with new arguments. Elisa just sat there staring at me, her chin resting on the top of the seat in front of me. Her uninterrupted gaze gave me a warm feeling inside: I existed in the eyes of a girl from Hoogstraten.

  When we arrived in the large gray parking lot outside the pool, Elisa finally lifted her chin off the seat. “So ‘mimi’ sounds like some kind of baby toy to you,” she summarized, “but in my opinion, a baby toy is still better than a grandma you only see two times a year because she lives in West Flanders.” Then she laid her chin back down on the top of the seat and pushed down on the handle on the side of the chair, which made it recline until her face was nearly pressed against mine. She pouted her lips and laughed. I could feel the warmth
of her odorless breath.

  Pim and Laurens were sitting two rows up, watching us in silence. I hadn’t heard them laugh once the whole trip.

  “Mind telling us what’s so funny?” Pim asked.

  “Girl stuff,” Elisa said.

  The Aquatic Center smelled like chlorine. I took deep breaths, trying to extract a bit of oxygen from the hot, sticky air. The building didn’t have enough changing rooms for everybody, and boys and girls weren’t allowed to go in together. Anyone who wasn’t quick enough to grab a partner of the same sex and duck into one of the cubicles had to change in the family locker room where the toddlers were being helped by the volunteer moms.

  Elisa immediately grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into one of the cubicles.

  This had never happened to me before. I’d always been forced to use the family changing room. No one ever stared in there. The naked little kids weren’t too picky about other people’s bodies. They clung to the backsides of the volunteers, all unshaven women with blunt edges. At the start of the swim lesson, the moms would wade into the shallow water like a herd of hippos to watch—with their eyes just above the water—the children’s first cautious breaststrokes and somersaults.

  I never had an extra set of eyes on me. I never learned to do somersaults.

  Elisa sat down on the little bench that also served as a door blocker. First, she took off her shoes, then her puffer vest.

  “You first,” she said.

  I’d never seen her without the vest. She looked even skinnier. For once, she didn’t seem concerned about the fact that she might have to leave again in a hurry.

  She didn’t check the cracks around the cubicle very carefully; she didn’t check for boy’s noses or little mirrors. She just looked at me, curious about what she was going to see. I took off my pants and top. I already had my bathing suit on under my clothes. Apparently, they hadn’t discovered this trick in Hoogstraten yet.

  Then I watched as Elisa changed her clothes. I did check the edges of the cubicle walls, vigilantly in fact, but there were no prying eyes, no one wanted to look at us.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Elisa shimmy into her suit. I could count her ribs, at least four on each side. Her labia hung down like the little curtains in the Verhoeven coach, open with gray and pink pleats. On her back was a brown mole the size of a small grape. She could just barely tuck it under the edge of her high-cut bathing suit.

  Without a word, she’d told me all her secrets.

  One week later, I was invited to go home with her to Mimi’s for lunch. Her house was at the start of the Lijsterweg, next to a big chestnut tree. Mimi was one of the few people in town that nobody knew much about. All we knew was the color of her facade, that she had a doorbell in the shape of a lion’s head and that she made jam from the berries that grew in her garden.

  I followed Elisa on my bike as she walked in front of me at a brisk pace, the plastic pacifiers on her backpack bouncing happily from side to side.

  I tried to figure out what kind of person Mimi was based on her front yard. The garden wasn’t perfectly manicured. The grass hadn’t been patiently mowed in circles like a squeezed-out dog turd. There were a couple of postcards in the mailbox.

  Apparently, she didn’t have much time for gardening, which meant she must have a social life and friends who sent her cards from their cruises to faraway destinations—so she couldn’t be all that bad.

  Inside, it was actually pretty cozy. The floors weren’t covered in carpet, it didn’t smell like a dead animal, her cola was still fizzy, she didn’t carry giant burlap bags—every time Mimi didn’t fit my description on the bus, Elisa flashed me a triumphant smile.

  The only thing I’d been right about was the furniture: none of it matched.

  “You don’t get to choose who dies when, and you can’t say no to heirlooms,” Mimi said, wiping away bit of dust on a massive wooden wardrobe.

  After a while, I didn’t dare to take my eyes off my plate.

  We had baked endives with ham on top. They were still nice and crispy.

  “Well, is it edible?” Mimi asked me.

  I nodded. Endives were the one thing my mother excelled in. But Mimi’s were even better. I decided not to mention this at home.

  I watched Elisa wolf down her food. She finished before I did and motioned for me to hurry up. I brought the fork to my mouth as quick as possible, but still gave myself the time to savor each bite.

  “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Then we can go.” Elisa disappeared into the bathroom.

  For the first time in my life, I understood the secret to getting along with a girl: don’t want it too much.

  I laid down my fork and knife.

  “Elisa is just crazy about horses. You better watch out,” Mimi whispered and dumped all the food I hadn’t eaten into the trash.

  11:00 a.m.

  IF SNOW ON a day like today were an added feature on a car, like air-conditioning, somebody would’ve thought to make it prohibitively expensive.

  The first flakes flutter and swirl, defying gravity, disappearing at the slightest touch. But pretty soon it’s snowing harder—boxy, determined flakes. They pile up on the road, in the empty lots between houses, on the poles separating pastures, on the hideous light-up Santa Clauses trying to sneak in through the windows, on the mailbox of the dilapidated house that can’t possibly swallow any more advertisements.

  You can see the mossy black roof of my parents’ house peeking out above the trees from a hundred meters away.

  I park my car on the side of the road, behind the big pine trees doing their best to shield our yard from strange looks. The trees are thinner at the bottom than they are on the top. Between the trunks, I can see our patio. There’s the cracked aquarium with a puddle of green rainwater at the bottom, a couple of iron tubs, a big pile of sand that we used to call the sandbox, a sawed-off tree trunk, a row of planted Christmas trees. The garden looks exactly the same as it did nine years ago. Leaning against the side of the house is the broken plastic bucket we kept our turtle in for a while.

  Mom got the turtle, along with the aquarium, as a present when Tessie was born. Eight years later, in 1999, the tank cracked while the water was being changed, so we transferred the turtle into the orange bucket. It lived there, in a corner on the patio, for the entire summer and fall, far enough away that we couldn’t really see it.

  On the first cold winter morning, the bright orange plastic caught my eye against the white frost.

  I went outside. I knew it was too late to save the turtle. Even the bucket had cracked. The last bit of water had tried to trickle out the bottom, but it didn’t get very far.

  Without looking over the rim of the bucket, I flipped it upside down in one fell swoop. I tapped the bottom and the block of ice broke free and slid to the ground. I carefully lifted off the mold, as if the block underneath were an almost-failed cake. The turtle was stuck upside down in the ice, its belly looked like the slice of an apple.

  If you ask me, drowning and being buried alive are the two worst ways to die. The turtle had been successful in both. Jan’s death was a pretty good combination of the two as well.

  Now that the car has stopped, the flakes start piling up. I pull the key out of the ignition, step out and check the trunk. I have to cross the Bulksteeg to reach the backyard. To the right is Mimi’s field, where Elisa’s horse used to graze. There’s no horse out there now, and it’s not Mimi’s field anymore either. The land has been sold off into lots.

  I walk on, to where our driveway meets the street.

  As usual, the backyard is empty. Other than the broken freezer, there’s nothing but the doghouse, its door hanging crooked on its hinges.

  Now I remember. Nanook is dead.

  The news came via email about a year ago, sent from the new domain Dad had set up for the whole family with a separate address for each person and a link to a website he planned to use to post weekly family updates.

  Dad was good at f
eeding us highly detailed, but totally unnecessary information: a history of paella plucked off of Wikipedia, news about current events that would have been impossible to miss, even without his help. He wasn’t trying to inform us about the earthquake in Haiti per se, he just wanted us to know that he had heard about it.

  His last email came about ten months ago with the subject line “Pa died.” The email confirmed that Grandpa, my mother’s father, had passed away. It stated his date and place of birth and offered a limited timeline of his achievements, again, like something from Wikipedia. At the end was a P.S.: “the dog has been peeing in the house a lot lately—if it’s okay we’re going to put her to sleep.”

  Half question, half announcement—his way of covering himself in advance for the lack of answers.

  The time the email was sent, the fact that Dad had CC’ed Mom (when the news about Grandpa had most certainly come from her), the inaccurate but elaborate descriptions—it all suggested that he was as drunk as he was the time he started responding to his own posts on the family website.

  I didn’t reply to the email, mainly because Jolan and Tessie didn’t either. Answering would mean we’d have to go to Grandpa’s funeral.

  That was, as far as I can remember, the last I heard from my parents.

  Behind me, the car is slowly disappearing under the snow. I could turn around and head back to Brussels while the roads are still clear enough to drive on. But I keep walking, down the path to the back door.

  On the side of the house, there are bedsheets hanging out to dry. One double sheet and three single sheets—Jolan’s with the cars on it, mine with Babar, and Tessie’s with Barbie. Either Mom still changes the sheets on our unused beds regularly, or she and Dad no longer sleep together and take turns sleeping in our rooms. The bedding has collected a lot of snow in a short amount of time. The back door is unlocked. I’m getting covered in snow, but still I hesitate to go inside. With the doorknob in my hand, I gaze up at the back facade.

  This house is way too big for what’s left of our family.