The Melting

by lize Spit

  As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything about what I was making to be worried about. The assignment didn’t leave much room for it: our task was to color the inside of a plastic folder with markers, sprinkle it with salt and let it absorb the ink. Then we carefully drained the colored crystals into a glass jar, layer by layer. It was the kind of craft that didn’t require any specific talent, just two hands, patience and a mom that was easily satisfied.

  Pim kept things easy for himself. He brought in one of those tiny capers jars from home. He finished quickly, and the teacher said he could help others. Laurens showed up with a giant pickle jar. The sweet and sour gherkins label hadn’t been peeled off completely. He made sloppy work of it—after all, he only had forty minutes to color an entire kilo of salt. After two hundred grams, his markers were all dried out, so he confiscated mine. He put too much salt in the folder at once and ended up with pink instead of red.

  We all wanted to do a good job because at the end of the day we’d have to walk out the gate carrying our works of art, past all the parents waiting to pick up their kids. There were some kids who would make a parade of it, proudly displaying their jars in front of them. Others, like us, would toss the masterpieces into our bookbags and make a run for it.

  Laurens reached forward and tried to nab Pim’s jar so he could shake it until all the layers turned brown. Miss Emma didn’t call Laurens out. She was still standing there, watching me. Her presence made me nervous. The plastic folder in my hands started quivering.

  Right before recess, just as everyone was getting ready to bolt out at the sound of the bell, she asked me to stay behind for a moment.

  The bell rang.

  “Soccer time!” Pim exclaimed.

  The room emptied out, the playground filled up, and left behind on every desk was a jar filled with colorful layers of salt—except in the back, where the side class sat. Three desks, three jars: one with a black lid, one jumbo gherkin jar filled halfway with light brown salt and mine—a small bottle with a short, elegant neck, filled to the top with yellow and blue layers that blended into green when they touched. I’d been happy with my work before—at least it was prettier than Laurens’s big brown flop. But now, from a distance, all I could see was the shape: it was a miniature wine bottle.

  A lump started rising in my throat. I swallowed hard.

  “Maybe there’s something you’d like to get off your chest?” Miss Emma asked. She sat down on the corner of her desk.

  I couldn’t tell her what I was feeling, what she wanted to hear. If the things I wanted to get off my chest had anywhere else to go, they wouldn’t be weighing on me in the first place.

  Twice, Miss Emma started to say something and then stopped, as if she wanted to tell me a secret but was waiting for me to tell her mine first. I picked the raisins out of my cookie and ate them one by one. I tried not to stare at her pinky and focused my gaze on the crumbs that fell between my feet. A few minutes before the bell rang, she said it was okay if I didn’t want to talk about it and told me I could go play soccer.

  Right before she opened the door, she held up her hand with the cut-off finger and said, “I’ve never told anyone how this happened.”

  “Do you want to tell me?” I asked.

  “It will stay between us, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Miss Emma shifted her weight on the desk, searching for a more comfortable position.

  “I was born this way. My umbilical cord got twisted around some of my limbs, cutting off blood circulation to certain parts of my body. As I grew, it got tighter and left scars.”

  She bent down and pulled up the leg of her pants. On her lower leg was a deep impression, all the way down to the bone, a wrinkled scar, as if the leg were being constricted by an invisible rope.

  On my way out to the playground, in the hall, where nobody could see, I suddenly felt nauseous. I checked my reflection in the window to see if you could tell by looking at me. I shook my shoulders and tried to walk like Laurens, then like Pim, then like other random people who I assumed never had anything they wanted to get off their chest.

  I played soccer more aggressively than usual, hoping that one of the boys would knock me down, and I’d have to go back in to Miss Emma to get patched up.

  This just led to more points for the other team.

  At the end of the school day, something strange happened. When I left the schoolyard, Miss Emma followed me home. I saw it with my own eyes: not her entire body, just her head and neck. All the way home, her head hovered above me in the blue sky, floating in the wind, like a helium balloon attached to my wrist by a string. She was watching me from above—a power that, until then, I thought only Sinterklaas had. There was nothing gruesome about it. I hadn’t decapitated her or anything, her body just wasn’t there. All I needed were her eyes.

  I didn’t have to explain to Miss Emma where I lived, which room in the house was mine. She followed me all evening and stayed with me until I fell asleep. Her face hovered at the foot of my bed until I closed my eyes. The next morning, before I opened them, I could feel her watching me again.

  Miss Emma stayed with me for weeks, months, years. I knew she wasn’t real, but she didn’t let me out of her sight for a second. She could see through ceilings, walls and roofs, through steel, wood, through multiple floors. If necessary, she’d even travel a hundred kilometers with me to family gatherings in West Flanders.

  I only put two restrictions on her: she wasn’t allowed to look through clothes or blankets, and at school, when I was with the real Miss Emma, she couldn’t be the face of my conscience at the same time.

  Because of her presence, I was seldom alone. Still, I felt lonelier than ever before because I couldn’t tell Laurens and Pim my big secret. Not only was I afraid they’d laugh at me, I was worried they might ask Miss Emma to watch over them too.

  After a few months, things got more complicated. Laurens and Pim didn’t have anyone watching over them. They seemed freer to me, less and less inhibited. I couldn’t do anything without thinking about what it might look like from above. I followed myself everywhere: cycling through the streets, swimming across the Pit, sitting at a table, leaning over a book, lying in my bed: the girl with the elephant feet, always on the move.

  The day Miss Emma raised her voice at me on the playground, it became even harder. When I got home, I had to make it up to her. I didn’t dare to do anything that might make her angry for fear that she wouldn’t want to watch over me anymore. I tried to be perfect. I helped with the dishes, I stopped bingeing on chocolate, I stopped secretly using Mom’s expensive anti-wrinkle cream, I stopped farting. And just in case she could read my mind, I didn’t think any bad thoughts about anyone, or fantasize about naked people. That would disgust her. On the toilet, I wiped my butt in such a way that she couldn’t see, I didn’t lie in bed in the morning, I didn’t pick my nose, I didn’t look at breasts in the women’s clothing catalogues. It became harder and harder to sleep. When taking tests, I couldn’t help but watch myself from above. I got bad grades on everything.

  Hiding from someone who could see through walls and ceilings turned out to be nearly impossible.

  In the months that followed, I looked at Miss Emma as little as possible during class. On the playground, I no longer watched her watching us, I just kept track of which kids she talked to and who she took care of. Every time I looked at her, I worried about her head following me home that afternoon, and at the same time, I dreaded the day it would suddenly disappear.

  12:30 p.m.

  THE SKY IS completely gray. There are no visible edges where a cloud could tear itself away and let a bit of sunlight in. Fresh snowflakes cover the birdhouse, the flowerpots, the roofs on the surrounding houses. Every car that exits the highway seems lost.

  I lay my hands on the kitchen table with my fingers spread wide. There’s a cat pacing back and forth on the windowsill. Meowing, she tries to wriggle herself through the closed sliding door. She st
ops and looks at me, concerned. Who is this person, what is she doing here, why is she sitting in my spot? I’m wondering the same thing.

  In my old student house, everyone had a fixed place at the table. It’s hard to say when this seating arrangement was made, who decided that my place was not at the head.

  After I moved out, I rented a flat in Schaerbeek for a few months. It was the first time I’d ever lived alone. Not once did I sit at the head of the empty table.

  Without a degree, I couldn’t work as an architect. To fill my evenings, I signed up for figure-drawing classes at the academy.

  Bodies are kind of like buildings. I went to class every week, until one day the teacher asked me why I never drew the models truthfully, naked. “This is an observational drawing course, after all,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell him that when I got home, I pinned my sketches to the wall across from the table, and it was hard to eat with limp genitalia in your face.

  After his comment, I started going to class less often, and my walls became barer. There was one drawing I left up, because the model reminded me of Tessie. The veins running through the temples, the short spiky hair, the protruding collarbones. I had drawn her exactly as I remembered Tessie, with the red wool sweater she used to wear all the time. This was the only drawing that moved with me to my current apartment. I had it framed and hung it in the bedroom.

  I’ve been sitting here for half an hour. I haven’t left the chair. When I finally do stand up, it will be to leave. But it’s still too early to show up at Pim’s.

  I look at my phone. No emails, no messages, no missed calls. I turn on airplane mode, turn it off again, hoping it will bring something new: a message, a Facebook tag, a roundabout question from someone who needs something, even a bill or bank spam would be okay.

  Nothing. I’m not surprised. Those who don’t sow don’t reap. I didn’t give the neighbor my cell-phone number. I never responded to the last emails about the drawing class.

  I send myself a message: “TEST”.

  My phone makes a loud beep. I immediately put it on silent. It would be stupid to wake Mom and Dad up myself. A message appears: “TESSIE”. It lands in the folder under my own number. It takes me a second to figure out it was just autocorrect. Her name ends up among all the other unanswered tests.

  I call her again. This time I actually let the phone ring. Three times. I hang up right before it goes to voicemail.

  I’m sitting in Mom’s spot at the table. She could stare blankly into the garden for hours without ever really seeing what was going on out there. People who stare would rather their eyes be turned towards the inside of their skull. This chair was the perfect spot for her to reflect on all the things that never happened: the sandbox that never arrived, the diapers that never made it onto the line, the twins she’d never walked down the Bulksteeg to school, the mother she never became.

  July 18, 2002

  “IT’S MELISSA’S TURN today. We’d like the same riddle,” Pim commands over the phone, like someone ordering a pizza.

  “Which Melissa?” I ask.

  “Do you know more than one?”

  “You don’t mean Nancy Soap’s niece?”

  “She’s coming to the vacuum shed at two.”

  Nancy Soap, a widow with six dogs, runs a wet mop through the parish hall every week, but never a dry one afterwards, so the floor always has this sticky film on it, as if it were polished with lemonade. Really, her name should be “Nancy Fanta”, but nobody would ever dare to call her that. You can’t really question volunteer work.

  After mopping the hall, Nancy doesn’t have much energy left over for her own household. She lives across from the presbytery, on Kerkstraat, in a small house with steel shutters that are almost always rolled shut. The last time they were up, I tried to peek into her house, but the windows were so filthy that you couldn’t see inside.

  During the summer, Nancy Soap takes care of one of her nieces, Melissa, who mostly comes to pet the dogs and take them for a walk. Every time I see Melissa walking down the Bulksteeg carrying six bags of poop, I feel the urge to wash my hands.

  “Okay, two o’clock, then. I’ll bring a wet washcloth,” I say bluntly.

  Pim laughs. “Oh, that’s right. It’s gonna be a hot one. She won’t be wearing a lot of clothes. It’ll be a quick game, and if you’re lucky we can go for a swim afterwards.”

  Before I’ve even hung up the phone, a thick cloud has slipped between the town and the sun. Everything looks a shade dirtier.

  On the way to the butcher shop, I see Elisa riding her stallion. Her ponytail swishes around in perky figure eights behind her head. Mimi’s big ugly kitchen chairs have been set up in the field for her to maneuver the horse around. I have just enough time to turn off the Bulksteeg before Elisa turns the horse around to repeat the exercise in the opposite direction.

  Before Elisa was moved up to the sixth grade, she spent another three weeks trying to make contact with Pim and Laurens. The first time was on a field trip. We were on the bus. Pim and Laurens were sitting in the seat behind me and Elisa. I didn’t feel like talking about Twinkle’s mane and horseshoes again, so I didn’t ask any questions. After a few minutes of silence, Elisa turned around to the boys and rested her chin on the back of her seat. That was exactly how she first made contact with me three and a half months earlier.

  “You guys wanna know something?” she asked.

  “No,” Pim replied.

  She continued anyway. “If you’ve got a pen and paper, I can tell you your fortunes.”

  Despite her scary eyebrows, Pim was flattered by the proposal.

  “Eva, you got a pen and paper?” he asked.

  I handed him a ballpoint pen and notepad over the back of my seat, which he passed back to Elisa.

  “I need someone to write for me,” she said and shoved the paper and pen back into my hands.

  “Draw a grid with six rows and number them one to six in random order. Don’t let us see it.” Then she whispered in my ear—“Write ‘boys’ names’ over the first column, ‘girls’ names’ over the second, ‘number of kids’ over the third, ‘honeymoon’ over the fourth, ‘jobs’ over the fifth and ‘cause of death’ over the sixth.”

  I turned the paper away from her and did as I was told.

  “Now I’m going to say six boys’ names, and you write them in the first column.”

  Elisa named six random boys, ones we liked and ones we didn’t, including Pim and Laurens.

  “Okay, Pim, now give us six girls’ names. They can be girls you like and girls you wouldn’t be caught dead with.”

  Pim gave six names, including Elisa’s and mine.

  “No, Eva doesn’t count,” Elisa said. “She’s the fortuneteller. She could rig things in her favor—then it wouldn’t be random.”

  My name was replaced with Melissa Soap’s.

  “Now the number of children, honeymoon destinations, jobs and causes of death.” Elisa held up six fingers for each category.

  I filled in the grid with the information, in the given order.

  “Alrighty,” Elisa said when I was done, “now Eva can tell us the future. First you read all the ones, then all the twos, and so on.”

  She reclined her chair, so her face was even closer to Pim’s.

  “Laurens marries Elisa, they go to America on their honeymoon, have eighteen children, run a strip club and die in a plane crash,” I read.

  Elisa laughs in Laurens’s face.

  “Pim marries Melissa Soap, they go to Bobbejaanland on their honeymoon, have two kids, live on a houseboat, work as door-to-door salespeople and choke to death on a peppermint.” This made Elisa laugh harder than I thought possible. I hoped she had bad breath.

  After that, whenever they got bored on the playground, Laurens and Pim would ask her to tell their fortunes again. And every time, I had to be the fortuneteller. I didn’t mind so much at first. I was proud: my random numbers determined their fate. Until one day, Elisa off
ered to take over the job, and Pim sprang up in protest. Only then did I understand—Elisa was the whole point of the game. Without the chance of being matched with her, there wasn’t much hope for the future. Pim and Laurens kept insisting that I play the fortuneteller, not because I carried out the task dutifully and honestly, but because there was no way they wanted to get stuck having eighteen children with me.

  Not long after that, Elisa was transferred to the sixth grade and the jam-fingering incident occurred. From then on, she went swimming at a different time than we did, and the future no longer needed to be predicted.

  It was a loss, of course—after all those lunches with her at Mimi’s, I thought I knew all her secrets. But when I saw how Pim would look in Elisa’s direction every time he scored a goal at recess to see if she was watching, how she couldn’t care less, I figured that her transfer was probably the best thing for all three of us musketeers.

  Melissa’s bike is already parked in front of the butcher shop when I arrive. I’m late because I stopped at the cemetery on the way to have a look at the names and scores on the wall. As long as we don’t get a heavy rain, they should remain readable.

  I head straight for the shed without waiting for Laurens’s mom to point me in the right direction. She’s busy mixing the meat salad. Every few hours the discolored top layer has to be scraped away.

  As soon as I walk into the shed, Pim locks the door behind me.

  Melissa is a six-pointer, or at least that’s what was written on the wall. It’s not hard to see what cost her those four points. Her scarred, pale face reminds me of my old Mickey Mouse sweater that I once tried to repair by pushing the loose threads back in with a knitting needle. Her shoulders are so wide that her armpits, once closed, form horizontal stripes. She’s wearing a tight top with a glittery thread woven into it. Her breasts are small for the width of her body and way too far apart, as if they were only temporary.