The Lesser Half of the World

So mother, or what should I call you, Heike, Mummy, or progenitor. Don't be startled when you come in. When you see how the daughter you had hopes for is living. It's only temporary. All just temporary. Next week I'll find another place, you'll see, then you can be proud again. You lose one apartment, you find another, it's not like losing your innocence. Just wait: two rooms, view, balcony, me on the sofa and you beside me. I can hear you already, innocence, you pounce on that. ... Was it so difficult, you'll ask me, and slightly hurt feelings hover around the question because I never told you about it. And what do I say? I'm glad to have got rid of it. I could hardly wait. Finally good riddance to this weak spot that separated me from women, this spot that made me an animal facing the slaughtering block. A bloodbath under the skirt seemed unavoidable. At the same time it was totally unthinkable, but on that account possible at any time. Anyway, Mama, I have to tell you that on that August afternoon in 1984 when you sat down beside me on the lawn that had been mowed by our American neighbor, with your kitchen knife in your hand, and glanced at my arm that I had stretched out behind me, and I saw how you were staring at my armpit and so I quickly drew my arm back to my breast, but you had already noticed the few hairs and said a little goatee, and when you stood up and went over to the garden, cut off a head of lettuce and carried it into the house, while I remained outside because I happened to be fasting again, and when you came back and pressed a small flat package and a book into my hand, should I tell you that this small flat package and the instructions came far too late, that it had already happened a long time before? Do you still remember? Now you say, oh, ten years ago? Wait: we had just paid off the house, workmen were in the kitchen laying tiles. But why didn't I notice anything? you say. I wondered about that too. You noticed nothing, you didn't even notice that you were being hoodwinked all through the summer. Hoodwinked? You can sink your teeth into that. Even more interesting, this hoodwinking, than my innocence, no? Well, recall: that same summer, two months earlier. Around the end of June. Shortly before the long vacation, afternoons you were still at the editorial offices, most likely because of the air conditioning, Papa was traveling, calling every day, from Stuttgart, Hannover, Kiel, complaining about the heat on the roads. Oh you poor thing, I told him, and transmitted his greetings to you. Your garden, hardly bigger than the living room carpet, had shot up like fireworks: iris and roses, on the lawn galaxies of daisies. The lesser half of the world, you say, but what difference does it make. If it's so comfortable at home, you say, there's no need to leave it. The flowers blur in my head. At school I am sitting next to a girl with long red hair and I feel like I don't belong. Long red hair, I hear you say, that's Susi. Susi already has a baby, you say. Better think about it, you say, you don't have much time left. Oh Susi, I say, let me tell you something about Susi. Susi took up with a boy. One of the boys who don't go to high school, who just stand around and wait for girls, one of those boys you call rotten. She cleaned up the blood with a kitchen sponge and dishwashing soap. After that she did it by herself. Since then Susi only uses this word. What word? you ask. The "F" word, Mama. Oh, you say, that, and wave your hand as if you were shoveling air. I don't say that horrible word. But it's there, even if no one wants to say it. Not you, not I, least of all Papa. And the neighbor? He says it in English. In English it doesn't sound so bad, everyone says it sometime. That day, it was a Tuesday, I was supposed to have five classes at school but the last was dismissed because of the heat. I came down the stairs, and through the window saw the neighbor on our terrace. Don't keep saying neighbor, I hear you say, he did have a name. …