Barbara the Slut and Other People (13 page)

Benjamin and I kept breaking up and getting back together, because he didn’t want to French-kiss me because he thought it was gross, and because I purposely flirted with other boys on the bus. I sort of tried to stop doing it, but not really. No boys had ever talked to me before, and now they did, older boys from the eighth grade. I liked that and I kind of enjoyed how mad it made Benjamin. There were also smaller problems, like that for Christmas I got him a stuffed dog and he got me a nose horn. He got one for himself too. You put the nose horn up to your nose and snorted, and it played a note. I never played it but my mom did. She thought it was hilarious and she played it all the time, even though it made me mad.

In January the twin who loved Benjamin (Viktoria) passed out in class, and the other one (Veronika) was stumbling around, and it turned out they were taking diet pills and not eating. When the teacher talked to them about it they said it was because of me, because they wanted to be skinny like me. If they had asked me I would have told them that I would have preferred not to be so skinny and not to have to wear elastic-waist jeans. But they didn’t ask. Our teacher talked to me about the problem, but I still didn’t understand German well, and I didn’t understand why I needed to know that they were taking diet pills because of me, or what he wanted me to do about it. A lot was getting lost in translation, in and out of class.

In the spring I broke up with Benjamin for good, and then tried to get him back a few days later when I remembered that no one else in my class talked to me. He didn’t want to get back together, so I made him a mixtape of the most romantic Backstreet Boys songs and rode my bike all the way to the next town and left it on his doorstep. When I called to see if he got it, his mom got on the phone and asked me in English to please leave her son alone.

After we broke up, all the girls wanted to talk to me to find out what happened and who I had a crush on now. They didn’t exactly decide we were friends, but they seemed to be softening. If I had realized the solution to my problem was as simple as breaking up with Benjamin, I would have done it earlier.

In June my parents got me Backstreet Boys concert tickets for my birthday, and I asked the twin who liked Benjamin (Viktoria) if she wanted to go. She was the biggest Backstreet Boys fan in the class, and I hoped that the ticket would be irresistible and would make her forgive me. She said yes, and on the morning of the concert my mom and I got up at five in the morning, picked up Viktoria, and went to wait in line to get in. We were finally let into the arena in the afternoon, and we made it into the section closest to the stage, which was what we were hoping for. We packed into the crowd at the front, with my mom right behind us. When the opening act started, the crowd pushed forward, and Viktoria started to panic and had to be lifted out by security and taken to the medic’s tent. My mom and I made our way out of the crowd to follow her, and when she was feeling better we went back to watch the rest of the concert from outside the crowd. On the way home she said thank you for inviting her, and from then on I was allowed to go to Breuningerland with the other girls in the class.

Ilona

By September I was starting to gain weight. I wasn’t trying to, because I had already reached my goal of being able to wear regular jeans, but I had gotten into the habit of buying snacks after school, before I got on the bus or after I got off, or sometimes both. Back home I had never even been in a grocery store by myself, but now I could stop anywhere and get anything I wanted, and my favorite thing was these soft pretzels with butter. Maybe because of all the pretzels I started to get boobs, but to cancel them out I got braces.

My dad was also getting fat because he also liked those pretzels very much. My brother was the same as always, and my mom was getting skinny. She didn’t really have anything to do while we were at school so she joined a gym and she went every day. Now she was even riding her bike to the gym because she couldn’t drive anymore. She got to use her American license for the first year but then she had to take the German driving test, and she failed because the right-of-way rules in Germany made absolutely no sense. Luckily my dad passed his test or we would have all had to ride our bikes or the bus. Anyway, now my mom was really thin and had a lot of muscles.

On the first day of school it turned out that the twins’ sidekick Ilona had somehow been dethroned. I didn’t know what had happened, but I didn’t care because Ilona asked me if I wanted to share a desk with her, and I obviously did. Ilona had really long black hair and she did her makeup like the older girls—she wore black lip liner on the outside of her lips and pale lipstick on the inside.

Natascha

Also on the first day of school, there was a new girl. Her name was Natascha, and Ilona and I saw right away that she was weird. Her clothes were different from everyone else’s—they looked healthy. They weren’t made of burlap but they were pretty close. Everything looked like it was made out of some kind of natural material and came from some kind of store that none of the rest of us had ever even been to. She had a high voice and spoke very quietly, and she moved in a funny way—her head bobbed when she talked. She was very thin and pale, and she wore thick glasses and had braces. She and her two older siblings rode their bikes to school every day, and she carried her helmet around with her. The food she ate was mostly really bad-smelling vegetables, like cabbage and brussels sprouts, and things my mom would say tasted like cardboard, like rice cakes and seed crackers.

At first no one knew what to do with her, so we didn’t give her any trouble. But soon she started following groups of us to lunch. We didn’t like it that she followed us without asking, and one day we decided to lose her on the way there. Ilona said she didn’t want her to come, and I made a plan. I told everyone to run in a different direction as soon as the bell rang, and when we lost her we would meet back up at Ikea. If she did follow someone, they had to have lunch with her, alone, and they couldn’t tell her where we were.

When the bell rang we took off, and I ran out the wrong door, around the building, and then to Ikea. When we all got there we were out of breath and laughing, and Natascha was nowhere to be seen. We ate our lunch and then went back to school, and I didn’t look at Natascha for the rest of the day.

•   •   •

At the end of the fall we took a class trip to the North Sea. It was a privilege that we earned for being in the seventh grade, and we had a fund-raising bake sale and our parents wrote checks and the teachers booked train tickets and a hostel. Our homeroom teacher and our religion teacher were going to come with us, since we needed a man and a woman. The religion teacher (
evangelisch
, not
katholisch
) was young, and she had the longest armpit hair I had ever seen. Ilona and I made jokes about it blowing in the wind, because it did.

We spent several weeks getting ready for the trip: going over the trains and making sleeping arrangements for the hostel. The girls’ dorms had eight beds each, and there were thirteen girls in the class. It didn’t end up being even because the twins picked six girls for their room, and the other five of us were in the other room—me, Ilona, Brigitta, Monika Biermann, and Natascha. Ilona had never recovered her rightful place with the twins, and instead she and I had become inseparable. We weren’t happy about being stuck in the second room, especially because of Natascha and how weird she smelled. We made jokes about how she was going to bring a whole suitcase just for her giant maxi pads.

On the train ride to the North Sea, I hung out with Benjamin. I wondered if maybe we were going to get back together. He sat with his arm around me and I sort of hoped we were because it felt nice to be close to someone. Then he said he needed to ask me a question and whispered, “Will you have sex with me?” I told him no, and I wondered what he would have done if I said yes, if he even had any idea what to do. Even though I knew all about sex from the magazines, it hadn’t occurred to me to have sex myself. But now I thought about how I wouldn’t be able to get pregnant because I hadn’t gotten my period yet. My answer was still no, but that was something that would have been interesting about having sex then.

When we got to the hostel, it turned out that Natascha did have a whole suitcase just for her maxi pads. It was a small suitcase but the package was the only thing in it—a maybe twelve-by-eighteen-inch package of the biggest, healthiest pads on the planet. Ilona and I died laughing. We couldn’t believe that we had been right. Natascha’s other suitcase was half clothes and half healthy food that her parents had packed her for the trip.

The five of us, but mostly me and Ilona, made a point to sound like we were having a lot of fun in our room. We laughed loudly all the time. One night we had a fake orgasm contest until the religion teacher came to shut it down. Natascha was trying to sleep with a pillow over her head and the other girls were giggling.

We spent the trip studying worms that lived in the sand, and on the last night we had a dance party in the basement of the hostel. Ilona danced with the boy she liked, and I watched her and everyone else for a while. Benjamin wasn’t talking to me again, because I said no to having sex with him and later in the week I refused to tell him my bra size. None of the other boys (or girls) were talking to me either. I didn’t want to leave but I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I asked the boy who was DJ-ing if I could help him, and he laughed in my face. I went and stood by the door for another minute, and then I went up to my room. Natascha was lying on her bed, reading a book and eating dried apricots.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

I climbed up to my bunk and got under the covers. I felt tears coming and turned over to face the wall. I tried not to make any noise. After a minute I heard Natascha get up. She patted me on the back two times, and got back into her bed.

•   •   •

When we returned to school after the trip, we did an exercise where we broke into groups and each group got a big piece of paper with an outline of a boat on it, and we were supposed to put our names in the boat according to our roles in the class. If we thought we were popular we were supposed to write our name in the very middle of the boat, if we were almost popular then close to the middle, and if we were unpopular then far away, at the edge of the boat. I knew I didn’t belong in the middle of the boat, but I definitely thought I had moved in from the edge. I thought maybe I was halfway between the middle and the edge. Then we were supposed to talk about how it made us feel to be in our part of the boat. But my group didn’t get to that because Benjamin was in it and he and I got into a screaming fight about which one of us was less popular. He said I was at the edge of the boat, I said he was standing on the side of the boat, about to fall off, he said I had already fallen off and was in the water, I said he was farther out in the water, and he said I wasn’t even on the piece of paper. I started crying because he was right. The teachers came over and said we could only put our own names in the boat. I left the room and they let me go. I would have taken a bus home, but my bus pass was in my bag in the classroom, so I had to wait until the class finished and go back in for the rest of the day.

•   •   •

In the spring, Natascha’s dad had a bike accident. He was riding in the bike lane, and someone opened a car door and he flipped over it. He was in a coma for two weeks, and then he died. Natascha didn’t come back to school for a month.

In the meantime, our class was turning a book into a play, and we were going to perform it when we were done. Our homeroom teacher asked for a volunteer to turn Natascha’s assigned chapter into a scene, and I raised my hand right away. It had taken me forever to do my own scene in German and it took me forever to do hers, but when I turned it in, no one seemed to care that I did it.

Eventually Natascha came back to school and she didn’t talk to anyone. No one tried to talk to her, and no one gave her any trouble. At the end of the year I moved back to the States. My mom and I were really happy to go home, but my dad and my brother had liked it in Germany. Later I found out that Natascha moved away that summer too. I bet everyone in our class missed us a ton.

N
ew humans are here. I smell them. Everybody is barking.

I hear them and now I see them.

“Hi,” the female says. “You’re so quiet.”

They go away and they come back.

“She looks like a golden retriever to me,” says the female.

I thump my tail.

“Yeah, you’re pretty.”

I thump my tail some more. The female laughs.

“I thought you wanted a young dog,” the male says.

“I don’t know. All the other dogs seem so crazy.”

The female bends down and puts her fingers through the cage. I taste them.

“She’s so sweet,” says the female.

“She does seem like a nice dog.”

They go away. Eunice comes and opens the door. I wag my tail.

“Here’s your big chance, Princess,” she says. “Don’t blow it.”

We are outside and the humans are here. I wag my tail for them.

“Here she is,” says Eunice. “We don’t know what her name was before, but she just looked like a Princess to me.”

“Hi, Princess,” the female says. “I’m Jenna and this is Mike.”

“I know she’s dark for a golden but I think she’s a real purebred,” says Eunice. “Sometimes they can be reddish like this.”

The female kneels down and I lick her whole face. I like the way she tastes. She laughs and scratches me from my head to my tail, under my fur, right on my skin. The male has a ball. He throws it and I fetch it. He laughs and pets me, and I taste his mouth and the inside of his nose.

“Yay!” the female says. “You love her!”

“She’s a nice dog,” the male says. I wag my tail.

“Sweetheart, huh?” says Eunice.

“Such a sweetheart,” says the female.

“She hates it here, she hardly touches her food,” says Eunice.

“Yeah, she’s skinny,” says the male.

“Do you think she was abused?” says the female.

“You never know for sure,” says Eunice. “But I don’t think so with this one.”

“Poor thing,” says the female.

“She just said she wasn’t abused,” says the male.

“She said it was possible,” says the female.

She squeezes me.

“So she’s six?” says the female.

“My guess is six or seven; that’s a great age, they’re so calm by then,” says Eunice.

“Well, we’ll think about it,” says the male.

“Oh, baby,” says the female. “She needs to get out of the shelter.”

“You could go ahead and fill out an application,” says Eunice. “That way, if you decide you want her, the paperwork’s in, and if you decide you don’t, that’s okay too.”

“Can we just fill it out?” says the female. “Please?”

“Okay,” says the male. “We’ll fill it out, but we need to talk about this.”

I lie down between the female’s legs.

“She just adores you,” says Eunice.

•   •   •

Eunice opens the cage.

“Okay, Princess. Time to get your girl parts out.”

We go outside. I ride in a truck with other dogs. I sit in a room with other dogs. There are new humans. They look at me and touch me. I feel funny.

•   •   •

Eunice is here. I ride in the truck with the other dogs. We are at the shelter. That female is here. My tail is heavy but I wag it.

The female and Eunice talk about me.

“Good-bye, Princess,” says Eunice.

“Thanks for everything,” says the female. “Come on, pretty girl. Let’s go home and have a bath.”

“Oh, no,” says Eunice. “No baths for fourteen days because of the stitches.”

“Oh,” says the female. “Okay.”

We are in the car.

We are at a place that smells like dogs and food. I follow the female.

“I guess this is what you were eating at the shelter,” she says.

“Do you want a toy?” she says. “Which ones do you like?”

I find a good snack. “Oh, Princess, no,” she says. “We have to at least pay for that first.”

“My dog already ate part of this,” the female says. “Maybe the treats should be kept higher up.”

“Maybe,” says a human.

“Is beef jerky good for dogs?” says the female.

“I doubt it,” says the human.

“Okay, well, this is your first and last piece of jerky, Princess,” says the female. “I hope you enjoy it.”

I have the snack again. It’s delicious.

We are in the car. We get out of the car. I smell everything. We go into a house.

“This is your new home, Princess.”

I smell everything in the house.

The male is here. He pets me.

“Wow,” he says. “She does not smell good.”

“We can’t give her a bath for two weeks,” says the female.

“Can she live outside until then?” says the male.

“Mike!” says the female.

A pizza is here. I wait to eat it.

“No, Princess, this is people food,” says the female.

“So her name is just going to be Princess now? That’s it?”

“No, let’s talk about it. I just don’t know what to call her in the meantime.”

“I don’t want a dog named Princess.”

“Me either, but you don’t like any of my ideas.”

“If you want to have a dog named Papaya, you can do that on your own. You can take her back to campus with you.”

“I never said Papaya, I said Plum.”

I wait to eat the pizza.

“I like Red,” says the male.

“What about Scarlet or Carmine or some other kind of red? That’s why I thought Plum, it’s kind of a red.”

“Those all sound like celebrity baby names.”

“No they don’t. What celebrity named their baby one of those names?”

“You tell me, you’re the one who knows all that stuff.”

The female puts a bowl of kibble on the floor. I sniff it and knock it over.

“Princess!” says the female. “That’s your dinner.”

Later the female puts a blanket down and says, “This is where Princess sleeps.” The humans are on the other side of the door.

•   •   •

The doorbell rings and Jenna leaves. She is back with a box. I smell it and she opens it. “This is your new dog bed!” she says.

There is a bed and I lie on it.

“Do you love it?” says Jenna. I thump my tail.

She scratches me all over my body. I lean into the scratches, wherever they are.

•   •   •

I smell meat. It’s on the counter. Jenna and the male are talking about the meat. I am waiting.

“That’s what dogs are naturally supposed to eat.”

“Really? Does it cost six dollars a day in the wild?”

“She suffered so much before we got her, she should at least eat good food.”

“She didn’t suffer! Eunice said she was fine. And eating kibble is not suffering.”

“She obviously does not like that food, Mike!”

“I’m not feeding her this when you go back to school.”

“Fine, give her cancer. I’m not making dinner.”

“Fine, neither am I.”

“Fine. Why don’t you order one of your magical buffalo chicken pizzas?”

“Maybe I will.”

The meat is in my bowl. I eat it. It is delicious.

“Look how much she likes it,” says Jenna.

•   •   •

I am wet. I try to escape. Mike gives me snacks. Jenna covers me with water. I try to escape.

I am in the bedroom.

“But she smells good now,” says Jenna.

“She can smell good in the hallway,” says Mike.

“She’s lonely,” says Jenna.

“Dogs can’t be lonely,” says Mike.

“Of course they can, they’re pack animals,” says Jenna. “She wants to be near us so bad that she’s lying on the cold, hard floor.”

“It’s ninety degrees out and she’s lying on like two inches of her own hair.”

“It’s my last night with you guys for five days.”

“And you want to spend it with the dog,” says Mike. “Clearly you’re going to do what you want, so just go get it.”

“I love you, baby,” she says.

The dog bed is in the room. I lie on it.

They are moving in the human bed. I stand up to see. They are licking each other. They are moving around. It smells good.

Mike looks at me.

“The dog is watching us,” he says.

“So?” says Jenna.

“I can’t concentrate.”

“Princess, lie down,” says Jenna. I lie down.

There are many good smells.

Mike puts his feet on the floor and I lick them. They taste delicious.

“Ugh,” says Mike. He leaves and comes back and Jenna leaves and comes back. She scratches behind my ears.

•   •   •

Jenna is not here. There is kibble in my bowl. I knock it over.

I am in the dog bed and Mike is in the human bed.

He pets me.

“Here I am with you,” says Mike. “And Jenna is back at school. With Nick. So that’s great.”

•   •   •

Jenna is not here. There is kibble in my bowl. I knock it over.

•   •   •

Jenna is not here. Mike puts kibble in my bowl. I knock it over.

“Fuck this shit,” he says. He puts meat in my bowl. I try to eat it. It’s very hard and cold.

“Yeah, go ahead and eat it frozen,” says Mike. “That’s six frozen dollars right there.”

•   •   •

Jenna is here. She is crying.

“Come on, baby,” says Mike. “It was supposed to be funny.”

“There should have been some kind of warning that the dog was going to die,” says Jenna.

“Are you getting your period, by any chance?”

“That should be, like, part of the rating. D for death of dog.”

“Are you?”

“None of your business,” says Jenna.

“Called it,” says Mike.

Jenna sits on Mike. I get on the couch.

“Off,” says Mike.

“Aw,” says Jenna. “She wants to comfort me.”

I follow them to the bedroom and I get on the bed.

“Absolutely not,” says Mike.

“Princess, off,” says Jenna.

I move to a different part of the bed. The bed has many smells and they are all good.

“Oh baby, please?” says Jenna.

“This is not fair,” says Mike. “You two are taking advantage of the situation.”

“Just for tonight,” says Jenna.

“Ugh,” says Mike.

I sleep in the bed with the humans.

•   •   •

I find a very good snack.

I don’t feel my best.

I am in the bed with the humans. I wake up and stand up. Mike wakes up and holds me over the edge of the bed. I throw up. I feel better. Mike turns on the light.

“Jenna, wake up,” he says.

She wakes up.

“The dog threw up, and I think there’s blood in it.”

She sits up. “Mm,” she says. “That’s a tampon.” She lies back down.

“Oh my god,” says Mike.

“I’ll clean it up,” says Jenna. “Will you take her out?”

Mike gets out of bed and says, “Come on, dog.”

I see a good snack and eat it.

We are outside and then we are inside. The mess is there and I wonder if I should clean it up.

“The tampon is missing,” says Jenna.

“What?” says Mike.

“It’s not here anymore. Was she right behind you the whole time?”

“I think so,” he says. “Maybe not. Oh god.”

“I’m calling the vet,” says Jenna.

“You’re a disgusting animal,” says Mike.

Mike and I lie in the bed together.

Jenna comes back.

“They want us to bring her in so they can surgically remove it,” she says.

“How much is that going to cost?” says Mike.

“I don’t know, a lot.”

“Can’t we just make her throw it up?”

“They said not to, she might choke.”

“She threw it up once, she can throw it up again.”

“Oh god,” says Jenna. She cleans up the mess.

We are in the bathroom. I drink something.

“I can’t believe she just drank it,” says Jenna.

“She eats garbage,” says Mike. “What do you expect?”

I throw up. The snack is here again but Jenna takes it away.

We are in bed.

“That was a very bad thing you did, Princess,” says Jenna.

“Her name is going to be Princess forever,” says Mike. “Fuck.”

•   •   •

“I wish you didn’t have to go back to campus,” says Mike.

“I’ll be back on Friday.”

“And I have to stay here with this disgusting dog.”

“Oh please, you love her.”

“And you’re on campus with Nick.”

“What?” says Jenna. “Are you being serious right now? You cannot even tell me that you’re still worried about Nick.”

“I just wish he wasn’t on campus with you.”

“Seriously? Do you not trust me at all?”

“I do trust you. I just don’t like it. I don’t like him.”

“Babe. Come on. This is crazy. I’m here with you. I chose you.”

“I know.”

“We have a dog together.”

“I noticed.”

“She’s like our first kid.”

“I hope our real kids are better.”

“We’ll get through this year,” says Jenna. “Less than a year. Eight months. And then we have the rest of our lives.”

“Okay,” says Mike.

“I love you,” says Jenna.

“I love you too,” says Mike.

•   •   •

“You know what I want tonight?” says Jenna.

“What?”

“Butt sex.”

Mike laughs. “Why wait until tonight?”

Mike chases Jenna and I chase Mike.

We are in the bedroom.

“Princess, stay on the floor,” says Mike.

I get on the bed.

“Fuck, Princess, no,” says Mike.

“Just leave her,” says Jenna. “Come on.”

I am close to Mike and Jenna. There is a new smell and it’s an incredibly good smell.

•   •   •

“I can come stay on campus with you,” says Mike.

“What about Princess?” says Jenna. I wag my tail.

“I’ll bring her.”

“Babe, I just kind of need a weekend to myself.”

“What do you need to do?”

“Go to Halloween parties, I don’t know.”

“What if Nick is there?”

“Oh my god! Are we going to talk about this for the rest of our lives?”

“Just answer the question. What if he’s there?”

“We still have a lot of the same friends, I can’t help it if I run into him.”

“But you don’t have to go to a party with him.”

“I’m not going to a party with him!”

“If you went to a party and he was there, would you leave?”

“I don’t know,” says Jenna.

“If he’s there will you text me? Just so I know he’s there?”