by lize Spit
It’s way past three o’clock now. Elisa isn’t going to show.
This can mean one of three things: she got here before I parked under this tree, she wasn’t invited and therefore won’t come or she was invited but has finally figured out that there’s nothing here for her.
No one has arrived for several minutes. No old acquaintances, no shadows of the past.
I step out of the car so I can look over the hedge to the other side of the yard. In the back, next to the barn, is the giant mound of silage, covered with car tires, just as I’d hoped.
All of a sudden, another person shows up, walking towards the barn in a hurry. I try to duck out of sight, but I bang my knee against the bumper of my car. I buckle over in pain. The person sees me and looks my way. It’s Anne, my old babysitter.
“Hi, Anne,” I say.
Anne gives a friendly nod, too friendly, in fact. She has no idea who I am. She walks by, shivering on her stilettos. I remember when she switched from wearing tennis shoes to these kinds of high heels with short skirts. According to Jolan, she didn’t always wear underwear. By that time, she didn’t come over to “babysit” anymore, but to “kidsit”.
The last time she came to kidsit, she showed up with a Colorado beetle skewered on her heel. With every step, it left a trail of yellow-brown blood on the kitchen floor. Jolan helped her remove the insect from her shoe.
That night, before bedtime, she wanted to show us what she did with her boyfriend when her parents weren’t home. We’d just brushed our teeth, but she insisted we sit on the couch to drink a glass of lait demi-écrémé. The milk tasted bitter.
She took off all of Ken and Barbie’s clothes. She’d already fished out everything she needed from our Barbie gym bag. On the kitchen floor, she set up the hair salon, the Barbie car, the living room, the kitchen and some loose furniture and began laying out the floor plan of her life. Then she showed us all kinds of positions, twisting the dolls into one unnatural pose after the other.
“One person is the nine and the other’s the six,” she said. “It all comes down to making numbers.”
She kept making numbers until one of the dolls’ heads popped off. It rolled across the kitchen floor and came to a halt against a table leg.
“It’s way better in real life. You’ll see. Now it’s bedtime.”
I followed Tessie to the bedroom, in as straight a line as possible. Jolan stayed behind to show Anne his beetle collection.
Today, she’s wearing an oversized brown winter coat that hangs over her back like a shield. She pricks her heels into the snow so she can hike up the slightly sloped driveway, until she reaches the group of men smoking under the awning in front of the barn. The smoke from their cigarettes alternates blue and red.
I keep watching them, hidden behind my car. All around me is the smell of the past, manure mixed with hay. I take a deep breath. It makes me nauseous but, at the same time, more determined.
The cigarettes are extinguished one by one. The demonstration is starting. The milking robot is ready to put on a show. I watched a few video clips last night, so I can imagine what’s going on inside, exactly what this robot is going to do. I don’t need a front-row seat to see that it’s not very exciting.
The barn door closes. Now it’s my turn. I’ve got to hurry.
August 1, 2002
LAURENS CALLS ME the morning after they got home. I stand there winding the phone cord tightly around my index finger until he asks me how my week was.
“Too bad for Indira,” he says, without even saying hello. “I just went by her house. All the shutters are closed. We’ll have to skip her. We can’t wait, she’s probably with her dad in Asia for the month.”
The comment is followed by a short pause.
“Too bad she’s got those slanted eyes,” he adds.
I nod.
“You still there?” Laurens asks.
“Yeah, too bad,” I repeat.
Laurens is right. Girls like Indira are the melon in the fruit salad, and in small towns like Bovenmeer there’s never enough of them to go around. It’s just her and her dad, who came to live here after Indira was born. They built a house, a big wooden cube on four high wooden poles, diagonal to the primary school. Even though the school was right across the street, her dad still sent her to another school, closer to where he worked. That was too bad too.
Laurens and Pim sometimes pissed against the wooden poles under her house on the nights we camped out. They called it a future investment: in ten years the wood would rot, the cube would come crashing to the ground and Indira would end up out on the street in her pajamas in the middle of the night, helpless. It sounded like revenge, but I didn’t know what they had against her, except her skin color.
“How was France?” I ask. The tip of my finger turns a darker shade of purple.
“It was sunny, and they renovated the swimming pool. Other than that, it was a shitty vacation. Next year, they won’t want to take me with them. I made sure of it.”
“Nice.”
“No, it really wasn’t.”
“I meant nice about the pool.”
The weather’s changed. Outside, the sky has turned gray. Through the window that Mom’s covered with a sheer piece of fabric tacked up with four pushpins, the clouds move like freshly poured concrete, following their own path. Cars pass by, first making the mailbox tremble, then the makeshift curtain. Their tires rumble over the seams between the asphalt slabs.
“Eva, you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you come to the vacuum shed tomorrow?”
“What time?”
“Two o’clock,” he says. “Oh no, wait . . .”
He pauses. I can hear someone gesticulating on the other end of the line.
“Two-thirty is better.”
“Why not today?”
“I still got to unpack.”
I hear the sound of a wrapper crinkling in the background, but for once, Laurens isn’t talking with his mouth full.
“What are you eating?” I ask.
“Chips.”
“What flavor?”
“Barbecue.” Now I’m sure Pim is standing next to him. Pim always eats barbecue chips.
“Well, enjoy. See you tomorrow, Laurens.” I hang up and let go of the cord around my finger. The blood drains down from the swollen fingertip.
I head out, not on my bike, but on foot. Sitting on a bike seat would hurt. I can still feel the glue stick. My vagina still feels stiff when I walk, like new shoes that need to be broken in.
At every corner, I look down all the streets to see if I can spot Pim rushing home. It’s quiet at the butcher shop. There are no cars or bicycles in the parking lot. Most of the neighbors are either on vacation or they haven’t heard that the Torfs family is back from France.
Laurens’s dad needs time to ease back into his role. The display case is still half empty, but not for long: the side gate to the garden is blocked by a roaring refrigerated truck, and a hefty delivery guy is unloading animal carcasses.
Laurens’s mom waves at me, signaling that I can cut through the shop. As I walk by, she passes me a spoonful of salad across the counter.
“It’s new. What do you think?”
The salad consists of threads of something, fish or meat, and some kind of slimy, salty base.
“Yum,” I say. I swallow without really tasting it.
“The boys are out back, in the shed,” she says.
“How was the vacation?” I ask.
“Camping was wonderful. I’m sure Laurens’ll tell you all about it.”
“Yeah.”
“Actually, would you do me a favor?” She passes me another spoonful of fish salad. “If the boys are planning to smoke again, will you come tell me? I can trust you, right?”
She pushes the spoon closer to my mouth. I lick it clean. My flatfish shadow puppet has been forgiven and forgotten.
Other than the rustling of a chip bag, there’s not much
going on in the shed. Through the small windows, I can’t see where Pim and Laurens are, what they’re doing or who’s with them. They’re in a corner, exactly out of my line of sight.
I wait outside, trying to think of some news or an anecdote to deliver.
“No, don’t look away, man,” Pim commands suddenly.
It sounds like an invitation.
I gently push open the door and slip inside. Because of the dreary weather, it’s even darker inside than usual. In the corner is a small screen emitting a warm glow.
Laurens and Pim are standing right in front of it with their underpants around their knees. The color of their butts blends in seamlessly with the flesh of the bodies on the little screen. Laurens is exceedingly tan, except where his swimming trunks were. Pim looks as pale as ever.
The rhythm of their movements is perfectly in sync with the pumping of the black hips against the two white butt cheeks on the screen. They’re standing about thirty centimeters apart with a low coffee table between them. On the table is a bowl of chips, a mix of barbecue and regular. They’re holding the empty bags out in front of them.
They didn’t see me come in. I take a few steps back, sink down with my back against the wall, next to an old chair. I need to know what they do when I’m not here. I want to be able to simulate every activity they try to exclude me from.
All they have to do is turn around, and they’d see me. But given the nature of the footage, there’s little chance of that happening.
Pim is the first to ejaculate. I can tell by the way his butt cheeks expand and contract, like the nostrils of a galloping horse.
“No!” he roars, when it’s all over. Oddly enough, he sounds disappointed. He smacks his hand on Laurens’s shoulder, creating a thin, snotty thread that only breaks after they’ve restored the distance between them.
He takes a handful of chips, sits down on the coffee table with his trousers still around his knees, and stares at the screen, not at Laurens.
I want him to notice me, to stop the game, so I won’t have to see Laurens come in the chip bag, but I don’t dare to interrupt.
Laurens checks his watch without stopping. He does it differently than Pim, patient but frantic, like someone searching for the end of a roll of tape.
“Fourteen minutes and still counting,” he says, in a bad attempt at English. Dutch people on campsites are so good at this.
Finally, he ejaculates with the happiness of a last-minute penalty shot. He pulls his pants halfway up, wipes off his knob on the inside of his pocket and finishes getting dressed. Then he pushes his bag of chips under Pim’s nose.
“Look how much. That means I didn’t cheat and jerk off before coming here.”
Pim takes the evidence from Laurens’s hands, weighs both bags out in front of him, between his thumb and forefinger. He acts as if his own bag is clearly heavier.
“Mine contains more semen, yours is just mucus and air,” he says.
“Learn to take a loss, man.” Laurens gives him the middle finger.
In the background, the black butt cheeks are now making clumsy, swirling movements, faster and harder. Then, the man flips the woman over, still swirling like you do with egg whites—hoping it’s almost done.
“It’s not how long you last, it’s how you do it.” Pim taps his limp penis against the screen, between the lady’s breasts. It immediately starts getting hard again.
“Top up the salt level and go again?”
Laurens grabs another handful of chips and fishes out the saltiest ones.
“Let’s take a breather.”
“Can I ask you something, dude? Man-to-man. What’s your tactic? Who do you think about when you’re trying not to come?”
I push my face deep against the armchair beside me. It smells musty, like wet dog. I brace myself, following the example of the lady on the screen in front of me.
“You don’t want to know,” says Laurens.
“Yeah I do. Come on, tell.”
“You first.”
“No.”
“Do you ever think about my mom?” Laurens asks, almost rhetorically.
“Jesus.” Pim presses the chip bag against his lips, blows it up as big as it will go and holds the opening tightly closed. He approaches Laurens with the puffed-up bag, his pants still hanging around his knees. Then he pops it right next to Laurens’s face. Cum flies everywhere; a big blob plops on the floor in front of my feet.
Suddenly all eyes are on me.
“Eva? What are you doing here?” Pim pulls up his pants. He sounds more shocked than embarrassed.
Actually, I’ve seen their penises before. I remember them very vividly—it was during those weeks when we had to put our bathing suits on beside the pool because they were renovating the changing rooms. Pim’s penis was long, slim and sturdy, like his hands. Laurens’s penis was brownish-gray and already had all the characteristics of a beef stick.
“Nothing,” was the only answer I could come up with.
“Well, you’re a little early,” Pim says.
“A little? Like a whole day,” Laurens corrects him.
The room falls quiet.
“What kind of chips are you eating?” I ask.
“Pirato.” Pim holds out the other, not-yet-exploded bag in front of me. I refuse to stick my hand in.
“You shouldn’t take this too seriously.”
“We’re just getting ready for August,” Pim says.
“We don’t want to disappoint Elisa.”
I nod. I don’t mention my own preparations.
“Where’d you get that movie?” I glance down at the plastic case, which is being used as a coaster for the bowl of chips. The price tag is still on it. Nineteen euros.
“I bought it at a gas station on the way home from France while my parents were napping in the car,” Laurens says.
“You could buy seventy-four jawbreakers or three hundred sour bears for that money,” I say. The thought surely didn’t cross Laurens’s mind as he surveyed the gas station’s collection of films and magazines.
Laurens and Pim both give me a sheepish look.
I walk home. Pim bikes slowly next to me, a few meters ahead. He’s waiting for me to say he doesn’t have to stay with me. Since I’m on foot, I don’t make the usual detour past his house today.
We don’t talk. There must be an uncomfortable feeling in his pants. Sticky.
I think back on the night Dad tried to explain the difference between men and women. He called me out of bed. Since my eyes were small, he poured me a glass of Coke. His eyes were smaller than mine, but he wasn’t drinking soda.
He waited until my glass was empty and proceeded to trace the bottom of his empty beer can with a pencil. Two even circles on a sheet of paper. Breasts, I thought at first.
Then he drew a cross under one of the circles and an upward arrow on the other.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked.
It was two minutes past two.
For some reason, that seemed more important to remember.
The Club Quiz
A FEW DAYS before the Millennium bug, we were given a choice: either come to the club quiz or stay home. I wanted to go. Tessie and Jolan wanted to stay home. For the first time, my parents didn’t bother to call a babysitter.
“You guys are old enough to stay home alone, aren’t you?” Mom asked. She headed down to the basement, and rather than coming back with the usual can of tomatoes or a bottle of sparkling water, she brought up a big bag of NicNac snacks.
Most of the time, Mom looked as if she’d been folded up the wrong way and shoved into a box, but not that night. That night, she looked as good as new. She put on make-up and brushed her hair. She wore her square-rimmed glasses. The clicking of her heels on the tile floor made every step sound like a confident decision.
She plopped the whole bag of NicNacs on the counter and reached for her sleeve garters hanging above the sink.
“Don’t eat them all,” Dad said as
we were heading out the door.
The Millennium Quiz, like all the other quizzes, was organized by the local clubs and held in the parish hall across from the church.
“You better keep your mouth shut, because you’re not registered to play,” Dad said.
Mom put on her coat. He didn’t.
“It’s warm for this time of year,” he said.
Pretty much everyone in Bovenmeer lived within walking distance of everything, which is why “far away” activities were generally described as “far enough that you need a coat”—a definition that didn’t say anything about the actual distance, it was just a measurement of your own resistance.
The hall was still practically empty. The tables were set up two by two, ten squares that could seat eight people each.
Right in the center of each table was a plate with a precise number of cheese cubes. In the middle was a little flag on a wooden skewer. If you got thirsty, all you had to do was wave the flag to attract the attention of one of the waitresses circulating with a tray and a notepad to take the players’ drink orders.
I only saw one other kid. Mathias, a shy boy adopted from India. He was sitting next to his dad at an empty table, twirling the little flag faster and faster between his fingers. For the first time ever, there were slices of sponsored salami next to the cheese cubes, and nobody had thought to wrap the sharp tips of the skewers with tape. Somebody could get hurt.
I asked Laurens and Pim at school if they were coming to the quiz. They both said they thought it was stupid and that they didn’t want to go. I nodded in agreement.
It was quite possible that they, like me, were lying, that they’d still show up tonight anyway.
Mom and Dad each played for a different club. I sat down at Mom’s table and watched the room fill up with neighbors. Most of them looked like they’d just gone out with the trash and somehow ended up here at the parish hall. Only a few of them, Mom included, had noticeably tried to spruce themselves up a bit.
In the middle of our table was a drink flag representing the Catholic women in agriculture organization. Laurens’s mom was one of the first to join us. Laurens’s dad didn’t come. He didn’t like clubs, unless they were for fellow meat entrepreneurs. He had stayed home with Laurens to eat chips and watch a weekend movie.
