by lize Spit
In the top of the tree, hanging between the thick branches, is a ragged T-shirt. Attached to one of the strongest boughs is a black radio strung up with bungee cords that was once used to chase away the crows. The antenna has broken off. The plug is dangling a meter from the ground, waiting for an extension cable.
Never did we have so many cherries as we did in the summer of ’97.
That year’s spring had met all the conditions of a good harvest. Warm, but not too dry. By early June, the branches were already groaning under kilos of fruit.
Dad put a sign out front that read: FREE CHERRIES, LADDER IN YARD.
He was delighted by all of the sudden attention from the neighbors, who came over to pick to their heart’s content. All summer long, moms and dads would take the dog out for a walk and come home with a pair of cherries dangling around their ears so they could make the same joke with their kids—look at my new earrings.
Mom was the only one who complained about the ladder under the tree and the unexpected arrival of cherry pickers. To her, it was all in the way, the tree had always been in the way. Whenever somebody she knew showed up, she’d run into the house.
Maybe it was the cherry tree that had heard all her griping or maybe it was the neighbor who dug up his blackberry bush, sending the birds our way—but every year after that, the cherry harvest only got smaller.
More and more crows descended on our backyard to eat our fruit. They’d swoop down and snatch up everything they could. Sometimes they’d pluck a cherry from its branch, only for it to fall out of their mouths a few seconds later. The damaged fruit shriveled in the summer sun. After a storm, the garden paths were covered with cherry guts.
Mom hated having to trudge through the rotten, sour fruit in her sandals on her way out to the chicken coop. This didn’t have so much to do with the strange crushing sensation under her soles, but with the bloody footsteps left behind on the kitchen floor that betrayed the frequency of her trips.
At the beginning of the first summer of the new millennium, Jolan and Tessie came up with a plan. Jolan was the mastermind; Tessie just carried it out. I wasn’t there. I was off somewhere with Pim and Laurens. If I had been there, I probably would’ve put a stop to it.
Jolan crushed a cherry in Tessie’s ear. Then he dragged her on her belly through the rotting fruit under the tree and laid her on the path between the back door and the chicken coop. She was wearing a short beige summer dress.
It must have looked pretty credible, as if she had fallen from the top of the tree and landed on her face. And it actually could have happened—Tessie climbed up the trunk all the time trying to reach the T-shirts that Jolan tied to the ends of branches to scare away birds.
All I remember is that when I came home for dinner that night, one of Dad’s old T-shirts was hanging in the tree. The cotton was too heavy; there wasn’t a breath of wind, the T-shirt wasn’t fluttering. Mom was nowhere to be found, not in the kitchen, not in the armchair. Nothing had been laid out on the counter for dinner, just a frozen pig’s snout for the dog.
I found my mom in the garden lying in the gray hammock strung up between two of the stronger Christmas trees. She’d wrapped the sides over herself and held the edges together from the inside. She hung there like a grain of rice, completely impenetrable. Under the hammock, lying askew on top of her sandals, were her glasses, the temples folded.
“Mom?”
“No,” she replied.
Afterwards Jolan told me what happened. He had been hiding behind the tree, waiting for her to go out and check on the chickens, which happened pretty much every hour.
She walked out of the house and saw her Little Runt lying there in a contorted position under the highest branch of the cherry tree with a puddle of blood in her ears. Mom screamed her name, patted her back, turned her head to the side, but Tessie didn’t make a sound. She hadn’t been crowned Dead Fish champion at school for nothing—she was able to lie motionless on the floor for an entire gym class, even after she’d won the game and the other kids were allowed to break the rules and tickle her.
Tessie played dead until the ambulance siren could be heard off in the distance, and Mom had mustered up enough courage to call Dad at work. Only then did Jolan understand the seriousness of the joke. He made a few owl sounds, and Tessie sprang back to life. They ran into the corn field and hid from Mom for the rest of the day. When the ambulance quietly drove away, Mom tore all the linen off the clothesline in big, exaggerated motions so the neighbors waiting around on the sidewalk would know there was nothing to see. After everyone had disappeared, she crawled into the hammock and kept returning to it for three days. She didn’t make a single hot meal, didn’t run a single machine. She only went out twice a day with the dog, and they took even longer walks than usual.
It was her best and only attempt at detox.
I walk down the Bulksteeg to my car. I can see the house through the hedge. There are no lights on. Maybe Dad doesn’t care that it’s so dark all the time anymore. How old is he by now? Early seventies? An age when logic isn’t quite gone yet, but it’s definitely in decline—when you have to think about how to tie a tie, have to start hauling out instruction manuals, have to search longer for the ON-OFF switches on simple devices. An age when you can’t really talk people out of life anymore, because you’ve almost lived it out yourself, and that would make you about as credible as a dairy farmer who only drinks sterilized milk.
I’m sure that if he’s standing in the kitchen gazing out the window right now, he wouldn’t dare to hope it’s me off in the distance. You have to see to believe. And the older he gets, the less he sees.
I unlock the car from a distance. The ice block hasn’t shrunk a bit. There’s just a tiny bit of slush at the bottom of the plastic tub. I get in the car.
In my rear-view mirror, I see the crown of the big tree peeking out over the house.
July 22, 2002
PIM AND LAURENS rarely set foot in our house. Today, as usual, they politely wait in the doorway for me to get my shoes on, as if they’re afraid of being swallowed up or infected by something inside.
I called Laurens this morning. His mom answered. It sounded like she was in a hurry. She put down the receiver and shouted, “Laurens, phone!” and went back to her customers. The phone is on the wall in the shop, between the helicopter photo and the roll of meat-packing paper. I listened to the sounds in the shop from the other end of the line, the hum of the machines, the fraying of meat, the murmuring of customers, the cheerful ding of the cash register. I closed my eyes and felt like I was there, part of it.
“Pim and I are pissed.” Laurens’s tone was abrupt, not unfriendly, but it didn’t sound like he missed me. “What do you want?”
“How was Amber yesterday?” I tried.
“Amber was a lesbian.” That’s all he said. For a moment, there was silence on the line, and all I could hear were the sounds of the shop.
“Are you coming today?” he asked.
I nodded immediately, but Laurens couldn’t see that. “What’s the plan?” I asked, my voice betraying how happy I was.
“We can’t skip your house,” he said. “Everyone’s equal before the law.”
“Okay, come over then,” I said.
I squat down to tie my shoelaces. The padding in my bra presses into my stomach. So far, Laurens and Pim haven’t noticed my larger cup size; not once have I caught them staring at my chest. To be fair, I am wearing a pretty loose shirt. It’s all part of my plan: wear baggy shirts for a couple of weeks and strike at the end of the summer with a tight top and two better assets.
“Where are your parents?” Laurens asks.
“They just left for Top Interior.”
Pim looks knowingly at the cracks in the stone facade, at the piles of dishes on the kitchen counter, at the stained curtains serving as cabinet doors.
He’s right. What are my parents looking for in a showroom full of sparkling kitchens, faucets that you never know where the
water will come out and coffee tables with goat legs? People who don’t come to buy, who are just there to browse for inspiration for a better life, are quickly driven out of the store. They don’t get offered espresso or free samples.
I lead Laurens and Pim out to the chicken coop, past the turned-over vegetable patch. Clumps of grass are drying in the midday sun. Nothing has sprouted yet—it takes time for the seeds to germinate.
Today, it’s Leslie’s turn. An eight-pointer. Chances are Laurens and Pim will be on their worst behavior now that they’re not on their own property. It’s always been like that—we only ever dared to make dirty hot dog jokes at other people’s birthday parties, never at home, where the walls had eyes.
“Leslie’s parents are going through a divorce. That’s good for us—girls like that don’t have a solid foundation anymore. You can do all kinds of stuff with them and still get away with it afterwards,” I hear Pim explaining behind my back.
Halfway through the yard they stop for a moment, not for the view, but for what they hope to see: Elisa riding her horse. She usually wears tight black riding pants with two shiny stripes that run up from her ankles, along the inner sides of her thighs.
But Elisa isn’t out there, only her horse. The lean, muscular animal rubs his head on his trough. Laurens and Pim quickly lose interest.
I rush to tidy up the chicken coop before they walk in behind me. I slide the hay bales against the wall, close the chicken-feed bin and toss a few logs into a rusty barrel.
“Watch your head,” I say, only after I hear Laurens bang his forehead against the low doorframe. He rubs his knuckles over the bump. They both take a seat on a bale of hay.
I remain standing. In a few minutes, I’ll recite the riddle, with the same intonation, the same pauses for breath. The more I repeat it, the dirtier I feel.
As long as Laurens and Pim can’t solve it, they still need me, and I won’t betray them, which is why they’ve never asked me for the answer.
“Have a seat, Eva,” Pim says, slapping the bale beside him.
This is it. I shouldn’t have given away the two hundred euros. Now there’s no money left to manage. My role as secretary-treasurer is about to be dissolved. They’re going to demand the answer to the riddle. Then they’ll send me away, or they’ll leave and never call me again. I don’t sit.
“What exactly happened with Amber?” I ask quickly.
“Amber was a lesbian,” Pim replies.
“So, she didn’t solve the riddle?” I ask.
“No. She wanted to see the two hundred euros before she started guessing.”
“And then?”
“Well, we didn’t have it, of course,” says Laurens. “So we said, ‘We don’t want to see if your boobs are real anyway.’”
“I said that, not you.”
“Pim said that.”
“And?” I ask.
“Amber just stood up and showed us her tits,” Pim says. “It turns out lesbian boobs aren’t all that different from man boobs.”
“She did bring beer.”
“Yeah, it was pretty good actually.”
“We made the best of it,” Pim concludes.
“Yeah, we made the best of the situation,” repeats Laurens.
They shrug in unison. Now that they’re sitting here in front of me, I feel guilty about the fact that this is exactly what I’d wished for all day yesterday—for their plan to fail.
“Listen, Eva. Our rules aren’t watertight, especially now that the money’s gone,” Pim says in a strict tone. “But we still want you there. Laurens and I tweaked the rules a bit after Amber left. They’re more or less the same. You tell your riddle. But now all the girls get eight guesses. If they can’t figure it out, they have to do us a favor, whatever we ask. If they get it right, we have to do something for them.”
“So, it’s not for money anymore?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“And they don’t have to take off their clothes?”
“No,” Laurens says, “it’s like Truth or Dare. If you can’t figure out the riddle, you get Dare.”
I nod. Eight guesses. So far, no girl has shown up wearing more than eight items of clothing, even if shoes did count for two.
In a way, Leslie should thank me. Her chances of success have just been increased due to a lack of funds.
“And what if one of the girls gets it right and dares you to eat chicken shit?” I ask.
Laurens and Pim exchange quick looks, unimpressed.
“As long as you provide us with a good riddle, it won’t come to that,” says Pim, bumping fists with Laurens.
Easy for them to say. They didn’t make up the riddle, they don’t feel guilty about anything. I’m just bait. I’m not here because I’m Eva, I’m here because I’m a girl and my presence makes the other girls feel more comfortable.
It’s hot under the black roof of the chicken coop. The elastic in my underwear itches in my sweaty groin but I don’t want to scratch it while they’re looking.
I sit down on the hay bale. We wait.
Next to us is a chicken that won’t leave the coop. Her skinny head is pointed straight at Laurens and Pim; she doesn’t take her eyes off of them for a second. Patches of bare flesh shine through her feathers.
I stand up, walk over to the chicken-feed bin and run my hands through it. In the cool, fresh kernels, my hands land on the neck of a wine bottle. I push it down deeper, then toss a handful of feed to the bird in the straw.
The chicken jumps up and starts pecking around. Pim grabs a stick and jabs her wounded wing. At that, she scurries out of the coop, forced to face the flock she was trying to hide from.
“Chickens don’t have feelings. They’re cannibals,” Pim explains.
I don’t respond.
“You got anything to drink?” Laurens asks.
“Apple juice or fruit juice?” I suddenly realize how thirsty I am too. We keep the juice in the basement, where it’s cool.
“You got anything else? Beer? A half pint?” Pim sticks his pinky in the air.
There’s plenty of beer, but Dad will need all the cold ones.
And there’s wine—it’s all over the place, but nowhere officially. Mom will notice if I dip into her stash. She wouldn’t care if I drank some, but it would mean that she could no longer pretend I don’t know about it, and that she’d care about.
I can’t leave and come back empty-handed. I walk over to the bin, whisk away the lid and conjure up a bottle of chilled wine as if it were a minibar.
“Well, well, look what our little Eva’s got here,” says Pim, almost proud.
He unscrews the bottle of cheap German wine and presses it to his lips. I watch the bouncing of his Adam’s apple as it goes down. Then he passes it to Laurens, who gulps it down like fruit juice. He leaves plenty for me. I plop back down on the hay bale.
“Come on, Eva, are you a musketeer or not?” Laurens pushes the bottle in my face.
I’m not a musketeer here. I’m an umpire. My job is to remain completely neutral. I take a few tiny sips of the wine. It tastes like sour, rotten apple juice.
Laurens and Pim split the rest of the bottle.
Even though I didn’t drink very much, I instantly feel fuzzier. Just then, we hear the tingling of spoke beads approaching outside.
“Sure you don’t wanna just pretend?” Laurens asks.
“Pretend what?” I ask.
“That you didn’t give all our money away to a retard,” snaps Pim.
“No.”
He staggers to his feet and walks out of the coop.
A few seconds later he returns with Leslie. She has brown skin and is wearing a thin yellow sweater with three-quarter sleeves.
“It’s not my bike, it’s my sister’s,” she says. She’s sucking in her belly. Her high-heeled sandals make her walk like a duck, with her pelvis tilted forward. She stands there like that while Pim explains what’s going to happen. It takes her as much effort to maintain this posture as it
does to listen.
“With eight guesses, it’ll be a cinch,” he concludes. “And Eva, is there any wine for Leslie?”
I nod before I’ve figured out which stock I can tap into this time. For a moment, all eyes are on me, and in my half-foggy state, I can’t remember any other hiding place than the bin of chicken feed.
But before I know it, I’m walking down the garden path, past the cherry tree and into the basement. The hinges on the door creak just like they do when Mom goes down there.
I go down the stairs, grab a box of wine from the back of the shelf, tuck it under my arm and hesitate about which random snack I should take.
I hurry back up the stairs with a box of Kinder Surprise Eggs, close the door and head back out to the chicken coop. I hurry, not because I don’t want to miss anything, but because I don’t want anyone to notice how miss-able I am. There are only three surprise eggs left in the package.
Leslie has already sat down and is thinking about which eight questions she’s going to ask to try to solve the riddle. It’s quiet in the coop. The chicken is back—she’s just sitting there, looking at us.
“I’ve already told her the riddle. But you can still say whether her guesses are right or wrong,” Pim says.
Laurens immediately opens the box of eggs. The surprise inside his is a little light-up ghost with a hat. He doesn’t even put it together.
Leslie’s egg contains a little car. Pim gets a Smurf on a skateboard.
He removes the bag of wine from the cardboard box and pours it directly into Leslie’s mouth to wash down the chocolate. Then he pours it into Laurens’s mouth, then into mine. It streams down my chin. Pim keeps pouring. All I can do is swallow.
After that, Leslie starts guessing. Every time, I answer with a yes or no. Since she doesn’t have to give up any clothes, she thinks differently.
I roll the little car back and forth over my hands, thinking about how I’m going to cover my tracks: I can put the empty bottle and the winebox back where I found them, or toss the bottle in the glass container and act like I don’t know anything about it. I can go to the Corner Store with my allowance and try to convince Agnes to sell me a full box of wine, pour half of it in the empty bottle, bury it back in the chicken feed and then put the half-empty box back in the basement.
