SIDEWAYS IN LOVE

JUNE BUG

It’s summer in Thuringia and I’m living in my parents’ garden house, which is on the outskirts of the city in the midst of many other gardens on a small hill. When the frost subsided, I moved here from the children’s room because I need more space than I have in my parents’ house. Although the garden house is anything but spacious, it’s still perfect for my current needs and after a year in Berlin.

During my childhood, this garden was the ultimate fun place for me. In the warm months, my parents, Luisa and I spent a lot of time here. My first stop used to be at the small shed behind the house, where I put on my rubber boots. Ten pairs stood there. One for my father, the other nine were mine, although only one pair ever fitted. The other eight were either too small or too big. My mother and Luisa didn’t want any. Before I crawled into my boots, I turned them over and shook them. I was afraid there might be a mouse inside that would bite my toes. Once the boots were on, there were several things I was free to do. Sometimes I took my little spade and dug up the earth in front of the fence. I was looking for treasure, but only found earthworms. Other times I’d run to the Unstrut weir, looking for a washed-up empty liquor bottle to catch sticklebacks in. Anyway, the river was pure adventure. The water roared, and as I followed the course of the river with my eyes, I imagined the idyllic landscapes through which it meandered. The nature around was wild and deserted. Hollow willow trees wanted to be explored and climbed, one could dream in the high grass and the bunker of the water system was wonderfully spooky. Its entrance, a metal flap, was never locked. A sign warned against entering, but it never stopped me. If my father found me there, he cursed briefly, but was soon in a peaceful mood again and carried me on his back to the other bank of the Unstrut. On these water hikes, we were mainly on the lookout for balls. Balls of every colour and type. We even found a basketball once, which was really special at the time. Back in the garden, my father cut the balls in half and placed them on the chunky stone posts of the garden fence. To this day I don’t know why he did it. He must have had his reasons, as he did for all the other curious constructions he came up with because there was nothing comparable to buy, and which made the garden adventurous: he built a greenhouse out of old windows, twisted tomato poles out of bicycle rims and placed a zinc bathtub behind a corrugated iron roof for our pool, protected from the eyes of prying neighbours.

When I was a kid, when I wasn’t preoccupied with adventures or forced to pick fruit, I lay in my hammock, squinting at the sun through the leaves of the fruit trees and made up stories. Today there are no stories in my head, but thoughts about my future. I can’t really see far.

It’s up to fate. The same applies to my job because without a doubt I don’t want to work for Schlun & Winheller any longer. I gave up the apartment and went there with my parents, Lena and Lukas as part of a weekend campaign to clear it out. Luckily there wasn’t much to pack, after all, I had never really settled in the capital.

On the other hand, I have completely settled into the garden house. Even 20 years after reunification, the house still has Eastern charm. The small kitchen enchants with its beige pressboard cupboards, hot water dispenser and a sheet metal sink.

My grandparents’ old double bed is in the bedroom. Even the green and white checkered bed linen comes from GDR times. The wallpaper in the living room features orange flowers that don’t go with the grass-green, sagging sofa at all. In a small Romanian wall unit there are old crystal glasses and bowls as well as books from former East German publishers. I discover old children’s books and am quite amused to browse through I am the Nele and Ottokar, the Good Student after all these years. Both offer a wonderfully ironic look at my childhood under socialism.

While the house is simply quaint, the surrounding garden is an oasis. Years ago, my parents converted the former vegetable beds into green areas and borders for flowers, so that apart from a little watering, mowing the lawn and weeding, there isn’t much work to do. Of course, I was strictly forbidden to do any of this. So I eke out my existence under the parasol on the terrace, browse through new old German Democratic Republic books and watch my belly grow.

In the meantime, it has taken on a considerable size and I feel like the little June beetles that have been visiting me every evening for the last few days: round and chubby. Admittedly, I’m a fan of my sweet curves and I’m no longer sad that I can’t fit into my beautiful jeans, not even when an elastic band keeps them closed and up.

As wardrobe choices dwindled as my waist grew, I rummaged around for maternity clothes and was appalled at the abundance of black shapeless sacks. I found even more terrible blue-polka dot or red-heart blouses or even T-shirts with statements like Made with Love printed across the stomach. I finally found what I was looking for on a French website.

Reading Herbert Otto’s Zeit der Storche, I disregard one of Luisa’s advice and drink an iced coffee instead of the recommended, incredibly healthy rooibos tea. From afar, a laugh that sounds familiar reaches my ears. Nobody but Nina laughs so cackling. A little later I hear Lena’s and Lilly’s voices and look over the edge of my sunglasses to the garden gate.

“Look at her!” jokes Nina. “There she is, lazing around in the sun like there’s nothing to do.”

The three come in single file across the flagstone path. Lilly has gooseberry cake with her, Lena has something to nibble on and Nina unpacks two bottles of sparkling wine.

“Alcohol-free,” she explains. “We all have to drive.” With an old woman’s groan, she flops down on one of the lawn chairs. “My goodness, that was a walk from the car to here.”

“Now don’t be like that,” Lilly jumps in immediately with old belligerence. “The exercise won’t harm you. Your butt’s gotten pretty round.”

“Hey! I exercise all day,” Nina justifies herself. “I have a job – and a really tough one at that!” Lilly wants to say something but shuts her mouth. There’s nothing to say. While Lena works in a graphics agency and Nina alternates between early, late and night shifts in the hospital, Lilly is almost as lazy as me or is still in the decision-making phase as to which job she actually wants to pursue as a qualified media expert. Until she knows for sure, she works a few hours a day in her parents’ company.

After all, she has now managed to swap her apartment in their villa for a shared apartment with Maximilian Held. Lena, Nina and I can hardly believe it, but Lilly seems to have actually committed.

As in my parents’ house, Lena is also very familiar with the garden house. She disappears into the kitchen to get plates for the cake and glasses for the iced coffee.

“How can you stand it in this heat with such a big belly,” she says as soon as she gets back. “I really admire you.”

“Not just for that,” agrees Lilly, cutting the cake. “And Jan didn’t even get in touch?”

“He didn’t,” I reply casually. “He doesn’t have to. I don’t care. Leon says he’s a terribly stubborn guy. If he thinks he has to be stubborn even about this…”

“Why don’t you just try Leon?” Nina suggests. “He’s a lot nicer.”

She’s right - at least in terms of the likeability factor. He’s still trying to convince Jan that he has a responsibility - much to my dismay, but fortunately, it falls on deaf ears.

“I’ve said from the start that I don’t need a man to have and raise a child. And I’m sticking by that,” I say for the umpteenth time.

“Besides - if Leon and I switched from friendship to relationship, it would make us both really unhappy.”

“But maybe it’ll even work…” Lena agrees. “Perhaps relationships born of friendship are much more stable than those born of infatuation.”

She grimaces at my annoyed look.

“Maybe you’re not open to a relationship because of Sam…” Lilly suggests surprisingly.

“Sam?” I snort. “Sam’s even more of a friend than Leon. Besides, he’s 12,000 kilometres away.”

“Isn’t he gay too?” asks Nina and puts a large piece of gooseberry cake in her mouth. “Hm, delicious,” she smacks her lips and squints at Lilly against the sun.

“Did your slave bake this?”

Surprisingly, Lilly doesn’t respond to the nitpicking of her parents’ staff of cook and housekeeper, but concentrates on Nina’s first question: “Sam is gay? Since when?”

“He’s not gay.” I give Nina a reproachful look. “He likes women and has only embarked on an adventure with a man once.”

Because Lilly is wrinkling her nose, I’m being clearer. “Would it make me a lesbian to spend the night with a woman? Just out of curiosity?” Nina laughs because Lilly looks even more surprised.

“Would you like that?” Lena joins in.

“That’s not the point. It wouldn’t make Hannah gay any more than Sam is gay.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be my case at all, but alright.” Lilly is satisfied and goes back to the starting point of the discussion. “But what’s the deal with Sam? We keep hearing: ‘Sam says this’ and ‘Sam thinks I should do it like this’, so of course, I ask myself who this Sam actually is.”

“A phantom,” Nina murmurs and laughs when she has a better idea. “Or a Samtom.”

“Uhh!” Unlike Lena, they don’t know that I had s*x with Sam. Lena only found out from me last month and wasn’t surprised. Lilly and Nina don’t have to know. Why not? If they knew, they’d be nagging me even more about Sam and I’d have to argue even more, even though I really don’t want to talk about Sam at all. Lena looks at it realistically: Sam and I really like each other, but we live our lives on different continents. We have a long-distance friendship - and have meanwhile gained a lot of experience in leading it. In togetherness… who knows if we would be good at it. We won’t find out because I’m not moving to New York and Sam isn’t coming over here.

So what’s the point of discussing the past or an unrealistic future?

“It’s just a Skype friendship,” Lilly explains to Nina. “It’s quite normal today. After all, the two of them met each other in the normal way.” To draw quotation marks in the air, she lets go of the cake fork for a moment.

“Skype… whatever. Describe him to us!” Nina asks me and sips the iced coffee.

“Describe Sam? Well, he’s tall and slim…”

“Not like that!” Nina interrupts me. “We want to know who he is. So try again:”

“He’s attractive, not just because of his looks, but because of his personality.” Sam pops up in my mind’s eye. “He’s charmingly insane, quite imaginative, quick-witted and restless. He laughs often. Then he has dimples in his cheeks and his eyes light up…” The ringing of my cell phone pulls me out of my thoughts. The display shows an unknown number. When I answer, the father of my unborn offspring answers. Apparently, my face reflects the unpleasant surprise that Lena, Nina and Lilly fall silent. Nina doesn’t even smack her lips anymore.

When I said “I really don’t think it’s necessary”, “You don’t have to do that”, “We’ll definitely find another solution” and the resigned “Okay, let’s discuss this in person”, question marks grow on their faces.

“That was Jan,” I grumble after I’ve ended the call. “He wants to meet me.”

“Hm!” says Lena. “Looks like Leon finally got through to his conscience.”

“Looks like it, yes. And I don’t like this at all. Why does he suddenly want to meet me? I don’t have anything more to say to him.”

“Well…” Lilly begins cautiously. “It’s his child too. So it’s kind of reasonable…”

“Oh, reasonable!” I snap. “I don’t want him in my life. It doesn’t matter whether it’s his child or not…”

“It’s not that simple when the authorities get involved,” Lilly insists.

“Have a chat with him and hear what he has to say. A child needs a father.”

By all appearances, having a baby without a husband is something unimaginable. What can I say to the conservative Lilly?

“A father? Why?” Nina intervenes. “The one who is the father didn’t want to be until now. It has to fit and he should have the right attitude. I wouldn’t give a damn about any father either, biological or voluntary.”

Lilly remains stubborn.

“It’s Jan’s duty to take care of things.”

What happens next is predictable: Nina and Lilly start arguing. Lena and I stay out of it and wait for the minds of the two to calm down. Sometimes we shake our heads at our two perennial fighting hens, who will certainly never bring themselves to simply accept the opinions of the other.

“How can you be so narrow-minded!” Nina growls morosely and loads a new piece of cake onto her plate. “Fortunately, I don’t have to have such discussions. Bastian almost choked when I told him my news, but since then he’s been a real sweetheart.”

Lilly, Lena and I freeze. Lena regains speech first.

“Since you told him your news?”

Nina pushes the plate away and grins at everyone. “That I’m pregnant.”

“Excuse me?” Lilly asks.

“I’m pregnant,” Nina repeats just for Lilly and pronounces each word slowly and clearly - as if Lilly were slow on the uptake.

“Is this becoming peer pressure now?” As usual, Lena tries to cover up the fact that she’s disturbed with sarcasm. “What’s going to happen to our girls’ nights out when you all decide to have babies?”

“Hey!” Lilly nudges her side. “I’m still here.”

“And that’s not exactly what we’ve decided to do,” I remind her.

“I’m a little surprised that Bastian is okay with it,” I turn to Nina. “I guess I misjudged him.”

Nina opens a bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling wine. Now it makes sense that she didn’t bring the percentage stuff with her, at least for herself.

“It’s okay. At first, we were both scared. But now we’re looking forward to Anton.”

Lena, who got up to get champagne glasses, turns halfway to the kitchen.

“You already know it’s going to be a boy? What month are you in?”

“Oh, just about the sixth week or so. Of course, you can’t see it yet, but I’m sure it will be an Anton.”

We find it quite amusing that Nina is so obsessed with having a boy. However, it would suit her well. She’s more the type of mother-to-be raising a little rascal by nature.

It doesn’t matter to me if I give birth to a boy or a girl. I just hope I’ll be the type of mom who’s also a friend.

Around 11 pm I boot up my laptop and start Skype. Sam is already at home and online. He’s wearing his office clothes but has pulled his shirt out of his pants and loosened his tie, probably intending to swap them out for comfortable clothes in the near future. His laptop is on the counter between the kitchen and the living room, the screen faces the living room. Half ready to jump, he crouches in front of it and grins in a good mood. Then he gets up to do things around the apartment. Meanwhile, he tells me that Ms Dapperdings sent him a new friend request on f*******:. In a message, she also apologized to Sam and explained that she was a bit upset at the time. He goes into the bedroom to change.

My eyes fall on the picture of Danaë above his couch and I think of the four horrid letters.

“Can you turn the laptop around a bit?” I ask Sam when he comes back in his t-shirt and shorts.

“I don’t like to see Danaë all the time.”

He examines the art print and takes it down without further ado. “Better?” he asks on the way back to the laptop.

That’s a typical Sam reaction. “I don’t want you to redecorate for me,” I smirk. “A simple pan of the screen would have sufficed.”

“I’ve had enough of it anyway.” He grabs an apple, probably from a bowl that’s on the counter, throws it up and catches it.

“I blocked the Dapperdings after the message. She can slip over my hump,” he says, biting into the fruit.

I stare at the screen in disbelief for a moment, at Sam eating his apple with relish. I’m about to ask him which damn hump he’s referring to when I remember. “She can slide down your hump?” A German idiom that means something like get lost.

“Exactly!”

I laugh out loud. “Sam, you need help with German idioms!”

“I’ll take it. How much will that cost me?”

I want to answer him, but get distracted because it’s Junebug time.

One is caught in my curls and growls angrily as I try to free it.

Sam is enjoying himself. “What are you doing there? Do you want to pimp your hairstyle? Don’t worry, you look good as always.”

City kid like he is, Sam has apparently never seen these whimsical insects before. So I fiddle the bug out of my hair and let it crawl over my hand in front of the on-screen camera.

“Oh, by the way…” I remember as it flies away. “Guess who called today.”

“The exterminators?” Sam concludes.

“No. The Kid.”

All amusement drains from Sam’s face. “What did he want? Aren’t you taking responsibility? The Kid hasn’t grown up, has he?”

The Kid is Sam’s not very friendly nickname for Jan. For Leon, who led me to believe we’d had s*x, he chose the not-much nicer nickname The Fake.

“He wants to meet me and talk.”

“Do you want that?”

“I guess I’ll have to hear what he has to say.”

“You have to?”

My curt “yes” is meant to end the subject, because Sam’s reaction surprises me. I would have expected him to react casually and give me a few not really serious tips for the meeting. There’s no question that he doesn’t like Jan, but usually that dislike didn’t anger him, as it seems to do right now.

With unmistakable sarcasm, he admits that a meeting is certainly sensible. Then he talks about something else. With his usual humour, he describes his parents’ preparations for a trip. They are planning a four-week cruise through the Caribbean, on which his mother intends to take half the household with her. His father would prefer that they go alone.

I can hardly concentrate. I ponder Sam’s reaction, growing annoyed.

“What do you think I should have told The Kid?” I interrupt.

Sam jumps at this, which can only mean he’s simmering in a similar way.

“How about go to hell? Honestly, honey, what do you want with a guy like him? You’re mentally ahead of him by many years. Not to mention his flawed character.”

“I’m aware of all of that…” I reply irritably. “I’m not thrilled, but I’ll hear what he has to say. I’m curious to see what it is.”

Sam stands up and suddenly seems in a hurry.

“Let’s finish. I’m hungry and want to get a pizza. Tomorrow I’ll probably be an hour late.”

“Then we won’t skype tomorrow. 1 am is too late for me.”

Sam reacts to my defiance with equal stubbornness. “If you say so, then we won’t skype tomorrow. It’s 1:30 am now, but what the heck…” We say good night without really meaning it, and we end the connection. I sit on the terrace for another hour and mumble like a June bug.