“Yep,” I say. “Lots of times.”
He slams down the phone. Probably on the table so I can hear it. Only afterwards does he hang up.
I go down to the third floor to pick up Alissa from her friend Katja’s place.
The walls are thin in the Emerald. By the time I get down to the fifth floor, I can hear Alissa’s voice. It’s high and piercing, loud and happy. A future soprano, as my mother always used to say back when Alissa was really little and would screech for her bottle. “Sounds more like something on an ultrasonic wavelength,” I would answer. “Like a dolphin. Bores into your head.”
I sound completely different. My voice is lower and scratchier. “Because I smoked when I was pregnant with you,” my mother used to say.
“I won’t smoke if I ever get pregnant.”
“I guess you’re smarter than me.”
“Which is exactly why I won’t get pregnant.”
“That’s what I used to say. Until I had you. Then I realized it was a joy worth repeating.”
“And you smoked your way through it.”
“I’m really sorry about that, sweetie. I would do it differently now. You could have gotten kidney damage from it.”
“And I’m stuck with a baritone because you smoked.”
“More like a tenor. Your father had a baritone. You should have heard him lecture. I went once. I understood only one word.”
“What word?”
“And.”
“You know what? This doesn’t interest me.”
“That’s what he used to say. About everything I told him.”
Anton’s voice isn’t particularly high or low. He has hardly any voice at all. Just a quiet rustling. Anton is practically invisible — thin and blond and weak and fearful.
Anton, I think. My Anton. I would give you my voice and my brains if I thought it would help you come to grips with everything. But I don’t think it would help you. I’m so scared for you. I know you’re not going to make it. If you’re lucky you’ll end up like Harry.
And if you end up like Vadim, I’ll kill you.
Back then, the time when your parents came home from that first parent-teacher meeting, you had such a fucked-up evening. Your father was so angry at you, and he kept yanking on his tie — the one your mother had put so much energy into tying — as if it were trying to strangle him.
The polka dot pattern of that tie is forever burned into my memory. Along with Vadim’s face above that pattern, full of rage, flushed, his eyes squinting.
And words, his words.
“How dare you — my son — awful in school — don’t talk — you dimwit, you failure, you pussy — what an embarrassment — little idiot — shut your mouth, you — nobody asked you to say a word — I’m warning you, I’m doing the talking here — tell that brat she better shut up or there will be consequences — you’ll never, never, never amount to anything — in the old days your type would have been. . ”
Anton was cowering in the corner of the sofa, light eyebrows, lips drained of blood, his face colorless, his wide-open eyes trained on Vadim — who loomed hulking in the middle of the room, gesticulating, spitting out his words along with saliva.
And then his hand, with its short fingers, gripping his leather belt and opening it with a few quick motions, the hiss of the belt cutting through the air and my memory of his words: “Back in the old days, in the army, we would fill our buckles with lead and, man, did that crack your skull.” Chuckling as he did it.
I misunderstood, thinking he had lead in this belt buckle and was about to crack open Anton’s blond head.
Of course it was just a normal belt, a normal belt that whipped me across my face when I stepped between Anton and Vadim — not that it felt good. Everyone screamed except Anton, who I thought was dead by that point, keeled over in the corner of the sofa.
And I thought that was just normal, nothing shocking, the nature of a situation like this, just like the pain burning across my face. Until I realized my mother was screaming, too. That was something I couldn’t comprehend.
She never screamed. Never.
And now she was in Vadim’s face yelling, shouting that it was over, done, finished; that they were through, there would be no more agonizing over it; that he would never, ever hurt a child again; that he was leaving the apartment right this second; that she was filing for divorce — out! Out!
And Vadim dropped the hand with the belt to his side and listened with his mouth agape.
Out!
And I thought that he would whip her now, and that I needed to think of something fast to keep him from killing her. Where was the phone? Mother was so disorganized and never put the handset back on its cradle.
Out!
Then Vadim fell to his knees and started to cry, still clutching the belt in one hand while the other quivered in the air.
The scene made me sick.
I looked away, at my mother. But she didn’t look at me. She was still looking at Vadim, her eyes tightly squinting. And in her hand was the phone.
“Out,” she said, almost whispering. “I’ve already dialed the number. I don’t want to hear another word.”
Vadim had difficulty standing up, nearly falling over, fighting to regain his balance. You could tell he realized how absurd he looked at that moment.
“Now?” he said, just as quietly, trying to read her face. If he was able to read it, he didn’t like what he saw in it.
She nodded and put the phone to her ear. Vadim shook his head no, wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve and began to put his belt back through the loops of his pants, slowly, having difficulty, finally leaving it be, walking past her and out of the room with his belt dangling. I didn’t even realize that I had jumped to my feet again, ready for the possibility he would try to hit her.
At first I couldn’t believe he was gone. Until I heard the front door close, I thought he was waiting for us in the entryway.
When I finally came to my senses again, my mother was already sitting on the couch with Anton on her lap. His eyes were still wide open, and his face was smeared with brown from the chocolate she was stuffing in his mouth like a life-saving medicine.
I looked at them and blinked uncomprehendingly until my mother said, “He did it. He did it again. He hurt my child.”
And I answered automatically, “Don’t exaggerate. He didn’t even touch Anton.”
“I’m not talking about Anton,” said my mother. “He hit you. He dared to hit you.”
And as I sat down next to them and took a piece of chocolate for myself, she said, “He’s never coming back here.”
And fifteen minutes later she said, “Where did you get the nerve, Sascha? Are you not afraid of anything at all? How is that possible? How did you get that way?”
I felt the chocolate melting in my hand. I didn’t even want to eat it. So I wiped it off on my pants.
“Never again,” my mother said, hugging Anton. “Never again, it’s over, done.”
“Me!” shrieked Alissa. I could clearly hear her from the staircase. “Me, me, me!”
I’m not worried about Alissa. She’s been good to go since she came into this world. She was born in the ambulance because my mother didn’t make it to the hospital in time. A screaming red bundle with a head of pitch-black hair and a startlingly observant look in her dark blue eyes. Pretty as a picture and full of energy. I held her, newly born, in my arms as my mother, no longer pregnant, took the elevator back up to our place and got into her bed. I never saw her so happy again.
“A girl, Sascha,” she kept saying. She hadn’t let them tell her in advance what she was having. She was drunk with joy. “You know what, Sascha? I never said anything, but I really wanted it to be a girl. Girls have it so much easier in life.”