by lize Spit
Slowly the table filled up with rural women, all different shapes but all with the same sleeve garters. That was what was so rural about it: they’d all agreed to wear them as if they were fashion accessories. On Laurens’s mom they didn’t go up very far—halfway up her lower arms they were already stretched out to the max.
The only person who looked out of place, despite having the right equipment, was Mom. The sleeve garters had been a present from Dad, but she never wore them to do the dishes. It wasn’t that she had a problem with the things themselves, it was more the attempt to belong to something that didn’t suit her. She must have felt that too. At first, when she was still alone at the table, she sat there sipping her first glass expectantly, shrinking at the sight of anyone who barely noticed her, who forgot to say hello. Until the room filled up, that is. Then she ordered another drink and fell into another behavior I recognized: shrinking after she actually was being seen.
The quiz was set to begin at eight o’clock sharp.
True to their word, Pim and Laurens didn’t show up. The few kids who did, including Mathias, retreated to the beer corner in the back, where they’d set up a mini-TV with cartoons.
There were eight question rounds of about fifteen minutes each.
For an hour or so, I sat there wondering whether I should’ve just stayed home like Laurens and Pim. I tried to imagine what I’d be doing at home but the only image that came to mind was me sitting there wondering what was going on at the quiz, whether my mom was sitting next to Laurens’s mom.
At the back of the room were two big green swinging doors cut into a white wall; all the other white walls had windows with beige curtains. They were all closed, clumped in strange pleats. They kept the cigarette smoke from escaping through the open windows. It was getting hotter in the hall, but I didn’t want to take off my long-sleeved sweater. Then everyone would see my chubby arms.
Between nine and ten o’clock, Mom waved the flag three times.
Meanwhile, as they called out the quiz questions, she stayed in her seat and occasionally closed her eyes for a few seconds. Other people, like Laurens’s mom, might have thought she was just trying to think of the answers to the questions. But I knew—she wasn’t trying to think of the name of the guy who invented the Zeppelin. Most likely, she wasn’t thinking anything at all.
As long as her eyes were closed, I kept my eyes on her. I owed her that; somebody had to do it, to record her in the moments when she couldn’t see herself.
At eleven o’clock came a question that I knew the answer to before they even finished reading it: “What was so unusual about the year 1988 in Bovenmeer?”
All the teams began thinking out loud. Mom leaned forward and started to speak.
“There was a huge thunderstorm that year. The clouds just burst—forty centimeters of rain. We lost a couple of shingles on our roof,” she concluded. “I remember sending Karel up there to look.”
It was the first thing she’d said all night. The table got quiet and people exchanged looks. Laurens’s mom was holding the ballpoint pen—even she didn’t dare to question it. Mom’s answer was written down in the corresponding box.
The theater club, Dad’s team, thought it had something to do with the brothers who lived in the castle up by the brewery. It was a well-known fact that two of these brothers owned so much land that they could walk all the way to the Dutch border without leaving their own property. Just about every run-down farm in the Noorderkempen region belonged to them. They were both single and had lived together their entire lives, on either side of the castle. They had no electricity or central heating, bathed in an old washtub and patrolled their property with shotguns.
“Wasn’t ’88 the year of those famous city council elections?” someone on Dad’s team asked.
It was during these elections that the older brother formed a one-man party to change the collection scheme for household waste. In the end, his party only got one vote, which is how he found out that his own flesh and blood hadn’t even voted for him.
“He tried to put a bullet in his head—what was that guy’s name again?” I heard Dad roar.
The answers to the questions weren’t read out until the end of the round.
“Question number nine: What was so unusual about the year 1988 in Bovenmeer?” In the microphone, the quizmaster’s voice sometimes sounded far away and other times dangerously close by. “You were all way off on this one. Unfortunately, we can’t award the three points to any team.”
At midnight, the quiz ended, and it was time for the raffle. The grand prize, a color TV, had been on display under a white sheet at the front of the hall all night. It wouldn’t be raffled off until the very end.
The little kids were ushered out of the beer corner by the youth priest to help draw the winning numbers. Some of their eyes were misty from sleep, others from grief—Pocahontas had just been forced to say goodbye to her beloved.
“We got the question about the year you were born wrong,” Mom said. She scooched back her chair, stood up and gulped down the rest of her Tripel so no one would clear the half-empty glass in her absence. She pushed the sleeve garters up on her forearms; they slipped back down again.
“It’s not Eva’s fault we got it wrong,” Laurens’s mom said to the other ladies, “we should have made more babies.”
People laughed. Under the table, she placed a hand on my knee and gave it a little squeeze.
The littlest kids skipped around the room, delivering the prizes to the winning tables. They gave out the worst stuff first—bags of balloons, ballpoint pens, cactuses. The second to last prize was a beer basket.
The daughter of one of the judges carried it around the room. I saw Mom glancing down at the number on her ticket. The child brushed past her and handed the basket to Laurens’s mom. One of her neighbors offered to trade it for a set of Tupperware, and she immediately accepted.
Mom waved her flag in the air, ordered another Westmalle Tripel from one of the passing waitresses and gave me a handful of coins to pay for it.
She staggered behind the first person to get up to go to the bathroom. As she stepped out of the hall, the swinging door swung back and hit her in the face, just as they were about to announce the winner of the grand prize.
I saw it happen. Still it took a second to sink in—the loud thud and the silence that followed—before I realized how much it must have hurt. It made a loud clunk, like an apple falling from high up in a tree and smashing open on the ground.
Several people turned around to look. Mom lost her balance and fell backwards on the tiles. For a few seconds she just sat there, too miserable to even reach for the spot that hurt the most. Then she scrambled to her feet. Her glasses had landed somewhere farther away, behind her, she didn’t see them. Her face looked fine. No scratch, no blood.
But having taken plenty of penalty shots in the face, I knew what it felt like: your nose feels swollen and ridiculously huge, but everyone keeps saying you look fine.
Mom didn’t seem to remember why she wasn’t sitting in her chair, why she walked through the door in the first place—or maybe it didn’t even matter anymore. She stood there motionless for about ten seconds. I realized she was about to pee her pants. I’d seen her do it before. I knew how it looked. Then, sure enough, the dark spots appeared, gradually moving down on the inner sides of her thighs. Nothing happened.
Her immobility lasted for about three more seconds. Finally, she took a few staggering steps, searching for the right configuration, for the right balance, and turned around to face the hall. And that’s when it all came out. The vomit spewed from her mouth with a final bow.
The entire hall went quiet, even the people who had tried to ignore the incident altogether for the sake of their grandchildren.
Then somebody started applauding, three claps. Women’s hands. Probably some lady taking advantage of the situation to put her own drunk husband in his place. Before I could see who it was, the clapping stopped.
/> Mom’s eyelids opened slightly at the sound of the applause. She moved in a more controlled manner; that too could be explained—the adrenaline that came with the shame. But her stomach still hadn’t quite recovered. She turned back towards the wall and puked again. Against the white background, you could see the blood clots in the beer flakes.
No one stood up to help her. Even Nancy Soap didn’t hurry over with a bucket of water.
For the first time, I didn’t have the reflex to jump up and rush to her side either. I’d never seen my mother embarrass herself like this before. I didn’t dare to look at Laurens’s mom. In the end, it was Dad who stood up and tapped me on the back.
“Run home and get the wheelbarrow,” he said. In his hand was the winning raffle ticket.
The church bells weren’t ringing when I walked out of the hall, but it was exactly half-past midnight—high time for criminals, but the darkness was the least of my worries.
I broke into a run, not so I could get back quicker, but so I wouldn’t have to listen to the swelling murmur of the audience. I ran past the mailboxes on the Kerkstraat. The full moon cast a faint glow on the front yards, like an energy-saving light bulb still warming up.
On the way back with the wheelbarrow, I walked under the same moon and along the same flowerbeds, slower now, out of breath. It wasn’t until I reached the end of our street that I saw their shadows.
Mom and Dad were just starting to make their way home. She was crawling on her hands and knees on the sidewalk. He was carrying the color TV. The box was heavy and bulky and didn’t fit in his arms.
The closer I got, the more I hurried.
Mom didn’t want any help.
“I’ll get myself home,” she barked. In her hand were her glasses, the lenses cracked. Every time she leaned on her hand, the temples bent under her weight. Her knees were all scraped up. I tried to position the wheelbarrow in such a way that all she’d have to do was fall backwards and she’d land right in it. But she crawled away from me, out into the street.
Dad set down the TV. He pulled Mom up by her armpits and pushed her into the wheelbarrow. She bumped the back of her head against the rim and dropped her glasses. I picked them up off the ground. Dad laid the cardboard box on top of her. She didn’t flinch.
“It’s not too heavy?” I asked. She didn’t nod, but she didn’t shake her head either.
Staggering, Dad heaved the back end of the wheelbarrow off the ground and lurched it into motion. It took him a second to get used to the uneven weight distribution.
“This TV is heavier than you’d think,” he said. He’d probably had a fair amount to drink as well, but his body was bigger, which did something to the density of the beer.
From the parish hall, there were still voices coming through the microphone. The final sponsors were thanked. The mayor had just become a grandfather and called for “one last round on the house”, which was met with more applause. Men’s hands, women’s hands.
Our house was straight ahead, barely four hundred meters away. There wasn’t much I could do to help; my one hand was clutching the glasses, the other hand was on the edge of the wheelbarrow. Dad shouted whenever I tried to help steer or moved to let go.
We weren’t sharing the burden; we were sharing the shame.
Mom’s arms were wrapped around the television. She didn’t react to a word we said.
“We got a lot of use out of that freezer,” she mumbled as we pushed her the last few meters down the Bulksteeg and into our junk-filled yard.
Dad pushed the wheelbarrow around back to the big walnut tree, where he finally set it down. He carried the television inside, leaving Mom to fend for herself.
“If she can get herself into a pair of clean underwear and find her way upstairs, she can come to bed,” he said right before he let the back door slam shut. Mom closed her eyes. I could see the wet spots on the inside of her pants. All of a sudden, I smelled them too.
I walked in behind him. The house was dark and quiet, except for the light over the stove. Tessie and Jolan had already gone to bed, probably on time. On the kitchen counter, I found the evidence: the untouched bag of NicNacs.
While I waited for Dad to finish in the bathroom, I stared out the kitchen window. I was still holding my mom’s glasses. Without them, she’d never make it—she’d have to feel her way up the stairs.
At first, I didn’t dare to go back out to her.
Then the dog started barking in her kennel. The spotlight turned on. I opened the door, went out, pulled off Mom’s shoes and covered her shoulders with the first blanket I could find. I placed her pretty high heels next to the wheelbarrow with the glasses on top, temples neatly folded, just as she would have done herself.
Halfway up the stairs to my room, I stopped on the landing and looked out the window into the backyard. Mom was still there. I knew she threw up blood sometimes, but I’d never seen it on a white wall before. As long as I kept paying attention to the details, I wouldn’t be able to get used to anything.
I struggled up the ladder into my bed. I felt exhausted—though I’d barely even helped with the wheelbarrow. Tessie sat straight up in her bed. She’d been waiting for me to get home.
“Did you see the NicNacs on the counter?” she asked.
Outside the dog started barking hysterically again. The spotlight turned on.
“Of course,” I said.
“Who won the quiz?”
“Nobody.”
“Was it a tie?”
“No,” I said.
“But isn’t there always a winner?”
“We won a TV.”
Tessie jumped out of bed. Only after she’d turned on the light to make sure I wasn’t joking did she understand that Mom and Dad didn’t even notice the unopened bag of NicNacs.
For the rest of the night, we kept watch behind the window on the landing to make sure Mom was okay, hoping that our gaze might change something.
“She doesn’t really look like Mom without her glasses,” Tessie said.
I said nothing. I’d never really looked at the wheelbarrow before. I wouldn’t have been able to pick it out in a row of ten. Every detail needed to be thoroughly examined—the red handles, the half-flat tire. We stared at it all night until we could have picked it out of a thousand wheelbarrows.
Every so often I saw Tessie open her eyes wide in an effort to stave off sleep, to force the sun onto the stage.
“What do you think would be worse?” she asked. Nanook stopped zooming back and forth for a second; Mom was still out there in the dark. “If the dog died, or Dad died?”
I could tell by the way she asked what her answer would be.
Although I felt sorry for the dog—like us, she’d done her best to bring a little sunshine into Mom’s life—I still said “Dad”. That way I was sure he would at least get one vote.
We didn’t say a word about the scene outside, which was becoming increasingly visible and pathetic as it got light.
Finally, the sun showed up to relieve us of our post, but we didn’t leave. It wasn’t until Mom turned around to shield her eyes from the first rays of light that we went back to bed. We owed her a chance to crawl out of sight, to slip into the house barefoot, to pass through the rooms she’d walked out of in high heels, to search around for a dry pair of underwear and her weekday glasses. The chance to sit down at the breakfast table and act like nothing was wrong. At least she could still have that dignity. That, and a color TV.
4:30 p.m.
IT’S GETTING DARK. Halfway up the driveway, across from the goose pen, is the dog cage. There’s a new sign attached to the bars with metal wire. BEWARE OF DOG. Under the words is a picture of an aggressive-looking dog baring its teeth. I hadn’t noticed it before. Lying on the ground under the sign is a docile Labrador that doesn’t even lift his head when I walk by; he watches me with about as much energy as a concierge in Brussels who works for his keep instead of a salary.
There are a couple of cars parked out
in the yard next to a big yellow tractor. Tea lights in empty Nutella jars lead the way up to the barn. The feeble flames struggle against the freezing temperature. I put the remaining candles out of their misery.
The last Nutella jar is less than ten meters from the entrance to the barn. I could just walk in. Greet people, shake hands, tell them what they want to hear, how much their children look like them.
“Why did you do that?”
I turn around to find a little boy standing behind me. He’s about five years old, all bundled up, wearing gloves that are way too big for his hands. I have no idea how long he’s been watching me. He’s pulling an empty sled on a long, thick rope. It slides towards him until it comes to a halt against the back of his legs, knocking him off balance and sending him toppling into the thin carpet of snow. Attached to the sled is a neon bicycle flag flapping in the wind.
I have no idea where he came from. Kids are like mice. It doesn’t take much for them to wriggle their way in.
I pull him up by his hood.
“Why aren’t you wearing any pants?” he asks. At first, I don’t understand what he means, then it dawns on me how it must look from his perspective—my winter coat is longer than my short skirt.
“I’m wearing tights,” I say and pluck at the flesh-colored hose on my legs so he can see them. The little boy comes closer; he wants to touch them. I allow it. He caresses my thigh with the limp, empty fingers of his glove.
Other than the big sled, everything about this kid is small and sweet, which somehow makes his touch more pleasant.
We just stand there for a moment.
“Don’t you want to see the robot?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “That robot can’t even talk. All it does is milk.”
“What’s your name?” I ask.
Before he’s opened his mouth to reply, a sharp, high-pitched screech blasts from the barn. Someone’s holding a microphone too close to the speaker. Nervous animal sounds reverberate across the farm: tongues scraping on salt licks, hooves stomping on grates, heads banging against troughs.
