“Maybe it’s cause… I’m like… big… like, tall… way up… or something, but…” His voice trailed off.
I felt him take a step towards me and I turned my head. The hallway light caught his thick brow pushing out over his thin eyes, which were retreating like a freshly crashed wave.
“Night,” he said, then gave me an embarrassed smile. Just the tips of his two crooked teeth showing on his bottom lip.
He began studying computer science at the university and got a side job as a security guard in Želevčice u Slaného, forty-five minutes out, at that production plant that made hospital beds. He got a grey button-down shirt with a dark-blue tie and matching slacks, through which he looped his worn black-leather belt. He’d leave the house with his yellow walkman in his hand and fuzz blaring from his headphones. I was discretely crying all the time. He was listening to his Pearl Jam cassette. It had his favourites on it, “Jeremy” and “Alive”. He got it from his friend Slavek, who had golden fingers for American stuff. He’d sing under his breath “Zheremy… zeemed a harmless little fuck…” Luckily our parents couldn’t distinguish an Anglophone syllable from a cough. Once I walked in on him with his headphones on, eyes closed, squirming his arms and clenching his teeth singing “Cheyyyy, cheyyy, I, oh, Im still ah-live!” He didn’t see me. I quietly closed the door and ran outside without my coat.
Zorka was long gone then, her father buried, her mamka moved out. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I started memorising proverbs at an incredible rate. We got more dictionaries in the house. I got into the high school specialising in languages and impressed everyone by doing nothing but studying, all the time, big books gasping open all around me. My mamka started calling me “The Scholar” and bragged openly about my skills in French and English and German and Russian, all the while I was in my room, learning more and more. My papka was a bit different about it – a layer of discomfort, like coarse hair in a comb, at having a bookish daughter who could only spit out proverbs. He always echoed my mother, “Good job, Janinka!” But something in the way his pupils rolled away when he pushed a smile at me, made me want to disappear forever. He observed me the way you look at people who do small tasks with too much passion and precision.
I often wondered if he ever wished I’d go blind so that I’d never read another book again.
I studied and my brother studied and my brother worked in the evenings and my brother hung out elsewhere and I kept my door closed. For our grades, they were proud. Mamka, dumbfounded with pride for her giant son and brainy daughter. Papka, alongside, agreeing and uneasy. In the end, we looked nothing alike, Vilèm and I. But everyone knew we were the same household, because we both walked animal-like, degenerate in our downward glare.
“Von nichts kommt nichts, Papa. Nothing comes from nothing.”
Then my brother was completely and undeniably a man, with gelled dark hair and his clear eyes ebbing beneath his thick forehead. When he smiled, you could see his front straight teeth were framed by two slightly crooked ones. It gave him an instant charm. But if he sat too long without smiling, he just looked a bit bloated and simple. He was dating this girl for a while, Karolina, who was studying engineering and also picking up some hours at the hospital-bed plant. She had thin lips coated with a shimmering pink and drawn on eyebrows that arced over her clumpy mascara-lashes and oily blue eyes. They got married and moved up north, closer to Želevčice. When he came to visit, he didn’t go into my room to say Hi. He didn’t want to disturb my studying, my mamka told me.
“Chacun voit midi à sa porte, Papa. Everyone sees noontime from their door.”
“Huh?”
“It means everyone’s got their own interests in mind, Papa.”
“Exactly, Janinka!”
Because my door was always closed, it was assumed that I was always studying. I took many breaks from studying to cry. After the crying, I’d go back to studying. At night, I’d lie in my bed and start to recite proverbs for no reason.
Blizok lokotok, da ne ukusish. The elbow’s close, but you can’t bite it – i.e. it only seems easy.
La nuit porte conseil. The night brings advice – i.e. sleep on it.
The burned child avoids fires – i.e. you idiot.
Then I pulled the pillow from under me and pressed it against my own face until my cheeks chaffed with heat.
Finally, I decided to have a destiny. I knew Zorka was living hers out somewhere and I wanted one too. I stopped trying to bite my own elbow or burn my face off with my pillow. I clenched down on my tears and pushed myself fully into my studies, then got accepted into the Sorbonne University in Paris.
Autant en emporte le vent! The first French proverb I learned. “As much as the wind can carry!” is the literal translation, and I proclaimed it with zeal. It actually means “empty promises”. Luckily no one in my family spoke French either. My mother said, “Listen, we don’t have the money.” I said, “I don’t need the money.” My brother gave me some. He didn’t tell his wife. It was a beginning.
About Zorka, I’d come to the only conclusion possible. She didn’t give a fuck-all for me. She never did. She had a destiny, and as smart as everyone told me I was, I had a birdbrain about my own fate. And so, I did like Zorka and went my own way. I said goodbye to Prague, goodbye to my mamka and my papka and Vilèm and Karolina, like I was winter’s last snow melting, evaporating back into the sky, to return again as something else altogether, unrecognisable, a different element, a different being. I disappeared and reappeared Parisian.
I’m glad we r alone now
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Hey you.
Dominxxika_N39: I’m glad we r alone now.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Me too…
0_hotgirlAmy_0: *blush
0_hotgirlAmy_0: … now I’m nervous again.
Dominxxika_N39: Don’t b nervous.
Dominxxika_N39: My real name is Dominika. What urs?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Amy.
Dominxxika_N39: What r u wearing, sexy Amy?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Flared jeans. L.E.I.s. with this rose patch on the knee. And a new tank I got at Abercrombie. It’s like melon green, spaghetti straps.
Dominxxika_N39: I’m sure u r looking really nice in it.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: *blush
0_hotgirlAmy_0: … u?
Dominxxika_N39: I have long dark hair, full, sometimes it hang and cover my eye. I like it when I feeling shy. My eyes are very blue.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: U sound hot. What r u wearing?
Dominxxika_N39: I wearing red dress. My husband got it for me as gift.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: *frowns
Dominxxika_N39: Don’t worry, he not home. I have heels on. They are shiny red with long sharp heel. I’m pressing into the carpet.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: O, wow. But just sucks that u have a husband…
Dominxxika_N39: My husband travel a lot for work…
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Hold on. Brb.
Dominxxika_N39: I sorry to mention him again.