Girl from Mars (2 page)

And I'd like to know more about history. Don't care about chemistry.

And then I'd like to have a talent. The girl in the twelfth grade can sing. Another kid in my class paints and draws wonderfully. Jane, who was in my class last year, plays the piano and takes ballet.

If I had all that, oh, man. If I could be someone like that, things would be really good.

But that is egotistical and shallow.

So, okay. World peace. An end to hunger and suffering and pollution.

“Miriam, your attention should be up here at the front!”

What? I was looking out the window, and the teacher doesn't like that. (“Your daughter, Miriam, daydreams too much, Mrs. Sander.” “Oh, it's been that way since her first report card, you're not the first one to point it out.” Ha-ha.)

If someone granted you three wishes, that means somebody out there wants you to be happy. Maybe a fairy godmother. A fairy godmother wouldn't scold me and say, “Now, Miriam, those are very nice wishes, but wouldn't it be better to think about the children in the Third World, who aren't as well off as you are, or about the melting polar ice caps? But if you would rather know how to play the piano, fine, so be it!”

“Miriam!”

“Yes?”

“For the last time, pay attention!”

“Okay.”

“Stop staring out the window, or I'll close the blinds.”

Now he's being silly.

“Okay.”

Don't look outside. Look at the board. But I've already copied everything down.

Pay attention. But it's so boring.

We've been in this class for three months now. Most of the others already know each other, but I don't have anything to do with most of them. The other girls are scared of Suse and Ines. They're also a little different, the new girls. They wear sweaters with horses on them, and they go riding on the weekends.

Carola doesn't know that that's the worst thing she could say.

Suse: “So, Carola, what did you do last weekend?”

Carola: “I was with my horse.”

Suse: “Oh, really?” Then she raises her eyebrows and gives her this huge grin, and Carola smiles back. But she hasn't known Suse since the fifth grade. She has no idea what she's really thinking.

Carola is sitting with a couple of other girls from her old class. Suse calls them the pony pussies.

In front of me, there's a row of boys who were in our class in the fifth grade, until they chose Latin. Now they're back with us, but they haven't changed one bit.

Someone in the front row is looking over at me. Laura. She's repeating the year, so she's new in this class, too. She sits in the first row where the keeners usually sit. She looks away and bends over her notebook.

She sits near Mario. I see how Mario signals to the other guys behind Laura's back, how he makes faces, how he shows off with that I'd-sure-like-to-get-her-into-bed look. Right. Mario is a real asshole. The other guys think he's cool. They call him Super Mario. He's the head of a bunch of idiots, which includes every single guy in our class.

What am I doing here, anyway?

That girl in twelfth grade? I have no idea what her name is. She probably has a spare right now and is sitting in the cafe around the corner. Or maybe she's in class and has just put up her hand and said something very clever
about something that she saw recently on the news. Or about this article she read about women in Afghanistan. Maybe she's talking to her friends about important things. But like what?

Suse talks about her boyfriend. So does Ines. We talk about school and the other kids. About our parents. Sometimes we talk about music, a new CD we bought. I don't know. We just talk about stuff.

If I were only a little older. Fifteen is a funny age. Fifteen is so...nothing. So in the middle.

I look at my watch.

“Miriam, are things here too boring for you?”

He's really got it in for me today!

“No. Sorry.”

“Just a few more minutes, okay?”

“Sure.”

What time is it, again?

Ines is writing a letter to her boyfriend. His name is Florian. Flo. They've been together for almost five months now. They sleep together when they can, but Ines's parents don't like Flo. They don't actually have anything against him, but they don't like the fact that she's sleeping with him (having sex is what she calls it).

I picture Ines pushing the door closed behind her. I picture Flo undressing her. They have no music on, or else they won't be able to hear the front door open when her parents come home. I imagine her nosy little sister crying because Ines's bedroom door is closed and yelling, “What are you doing in there?” I imagine Ines's narrow
single bed that probably creaks, so they do it on the floor or standing up against the wall.

I'd like to check my watch, but Schroeder's up at the front with his eye on me and I have to act as though I really am listening. When he looks away, I see that there's still seventeen minutes to go. God.

I look around the class. Carola and the others are writing. In the back row Felix is fiddling with something. Mario looks around at the idiots, points at Laura and makes a jerking-off gesture with his fist. So cool.

Laura is still draped over her notebook and looking up at Schroeder. Then she turns slightly to the side and writes something. I can tell from here that she's not writing anything. She's drawing or scribbling, but I can't see what it is. Schroeder should say something but he doesn't.

Then she looks up. Not really up. She just raises her glance and looks right at me, but she keeps drawing.

She has green eyes, like a witch. Weird. I can't look away and she just looks at me, just like that, just looking.

Maybe I should smile or something. Maybe.

Suddenly Schroeder is standing in front of me.

“Miriam.”

“Mr. Schroeder?”

“Nice to see that you at least know my name. Now take this down. Homework for Thursday.”

So I get out my daybook and write, Page 45, all of Number 5, Number 6 b to f, Read text 3.

3

When you live in a city, life must be different. Different from here. In this small town, every day is the same. I get up but I'm not awake. I eat but I don't know if I'm hungry. I drink but my mouth stays dry. It's winter but I'm still asleep.

Every day the same.

In a big city life must be different. I was in Berlin once visiting a pen pal. We went all over on the underground and got off at different stops and everywhere we got off things looked different.

“Smell,” I said to her. “The way it smells here.” We were in the underground station, there was graffiti all over the walls.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Smell it. The smell here.”

“Smells like shit, I know,” she said.

Another time she showed me pictures from her vacation at a riding stable. “Right in the country,” she called it.

But in the underground it smelled like City, like
chewing gum and dust and neon. It was a smell you could really get hold of. A smell that hit you in the face and went straight up your nose.

Whereas here everything smells so, so...I don't know. Sometimes a bit like earth or like rain or shit. But if you don't think about it, it doesn't smell like anything at all.

It's the afternoon. Afternoons are all the same. Go home from school. Eat. Clear the table, wash the dishes. Go up to my room, turn on the radio. Sit at my desk and do homework. Go back downstairs. Make tea. Look out the window, where nothing's happening but keep looking anyway until the water boils and I pour the tea. Maybe someone will phone and I'll talk and listen a bit.

In the city it would be different. In the city you can simply sit on the underground and watch the people. City people don't sit at home hiding out in their little houses with chimneys on top. In the city you can get on the underground, get off, walk around, look at things. And everywhere it's a little bit different.

Would I be different there, too?

I imagine what I would be like if I lived in the city. I'd have an underground pass so I wouldn't have to use my bike. I'd have friends who lived in old houses with balconies. I wouldn't need a map. I'd be out and about all day, I'd see people and do things. Interesting things, other things. Things I've never done before.

Instead I sit in this small town at my desk and finish exercise number five. It is half past four. In a few hours or so I'll be going to bed.

Shit, I'm bored.

No one else is home. The house is completely quiet.

Sometimes it can be really quiet all around, but inside everything starts screaming very loud, and you just want to scream yourself, or kick something or spit or bounce off the walls or something.

Sometimes I feel so big inside that I don't seem to fit.

I put on some music and turn it right up. I dance a bit. Then I sit by the window and look outside. I lie on my bed. I turn down the music and then I turn it off.

I lie on my bed and listen. It's an old house and sometimes you can hear the wood creak. The tree in the garden stretches its branches toward my window, scratches on the glass. Maybe it's cold and it wants me to let it in, like a cat.

At some point I hear my mother open the front door.

“I'm home,” she calls, without expecting an answer. Someone turns on the TV. Dad has late shift. Dennis is in the hall talking on the phone. His voice gets quieter. Then he goes downstairs.

Sometimes you just hear this steady hum, like a neon light or a fridge. It's never truly quiet, but nothing is really happening, either.

I start thinking about a city and then I think about nothing. Then I turn on my music again and turn it up loud. Damn loud.

***

In the evening our house is even quieter. I stand beside my mother at the sink and dry a pot.

My mum is only pretty now and then. She has a loud laugh and isn't exactly thin. Since she started going gray she's been coloring her hair red. I don't think we look alike but everyone says we do. Once when I was little, I heard some stranger say, “Look, you can see that they are obviously mother and daughter.”

Mum takes the pot out of my hand and puts it in the cupboard. Then she grabs a cloth and wipes the counter. Humming away, swaying lightly to the tuneless music on the radio.

“How was school?”

“Good.”

“Anything happening?”

“No.”

“Did you call Aunt Helene and thank her for the card?”

Shit. “No.”

“Go and call her right now, or she'll be annoyed again. It won't take long.”

“I still have homework.”

“Still?” Oh, look, she's wrinkling up her forehead the way she always does.

“Yes!” Are you deaf?

“It'll just take five minutes, Miriam.”

I'll bet entire countries have collapsed in five minutes. I wipe up after her with the tea towel.

“Get moving, Miriam.”

“Okay, okay.”

“The number's in the book. Under D. For Danz.”

Do I look that dumb? I go to the phone, look up the number and dial.

It's busy. Ha!

“It's busy!” I call out in the direction of the kitchen.

“Then try again later.”

I go back to my room, shut the door, sit in my chair by the window and pull my knees up under my chin.

A little later there's a knock on my door. Without waiting for an answer, suddenly Mum's standing in my room.

“I thought you said you had homework.”

No, I lied, because I didn't want to call my aunt to thank her for a stupid card from Tenerife and then listen to her go on for hours about how long it has been, blah, blah, and how much my dear cousin would like to see me, blah, blah.

“I do.”

“Doesn't look like it.”

“How come you just march in here like that?”

“I knocked,” she says crisply.

“Yeah, right.” I stand up and stare at her.

“I did so, I knocked.”

“But I didn't say Come in!”

She smirks, folds her arms and gives me this look that makes me so damned furious.

I can feel the anger building up inside me slowly, bubbling up like hot milk. Grrr.

“So, you didn't say
Come in
. Hmmm. Right. How
about if we just take the door off, and then you can stop worrying about whether I knocked properly or not?”

Arrrrgh!

“Well?”

“But this is my room!” I say, knowing only too well that it's like shouting at a wall, that my cries will fall on deaf ears, just like the slaves condemned to a lifetime of drudgery. They had no rights, either.

“Yes, but
your
room is in
my
house, and
I
paid for this door.”

You see what I mean? What's she doing up here, anyway? It's always like this. If I told Suse and Ines what Mum and I fight about, they wouldn't believe me. So I don't tell them.

“So take down the door, then. I don't care!” I know I'm being ridiculous, but she started it!

“Fine!” She pushes
her
door open and makes a move to take it off its hinges.

“Want some help with that?”

“No. I want you to go and call Helene!”

Yeah, right. “Now!”

Okay, fine.

Downstairs I pick up the phone and press Redial. It rings a few times before someone picks up.

“Peter Danz.”

“Hello, Peter, it's Miriam. Is Helene there?” IhateherIhateherIhateher.

“No, Miriam, I'm sorry. Helene just walked out the
door about ten minutes ago. Can I give her a message?”

Yes, you can tell her that I'm sick of that bloody word door and that my life is shit and I want to puke. That's what you can tell her.

“Yes, could you please tell her thank you so much for the card, and give her a big hug from me?” There. Did it.

“Will do. Tell me, Miriam, when are you going to come and visit us? Sandra would love it if you —”