Alina Bronsky - Broken Glass Park

Then I came home from school and she took them down again. Real fast. She made a blouse for herself out of the fabric. And one for Alissa.

Then she quickly took apart Alissa’s and turned it into three tops for Alissa’s dolls instead.

The drunken doctor

Told you

That you

No longer exist.

Peter reaches out with a bulging arm and taps me on the shoulder.

“What?” I say, taking a step back.

“Why don’t you come out to Broken Glass Park sometime?” he asks without looking at me. “You know, back in the woods.”

“What — where you guys drink and smoke weed and tag-team girls three at a time in the bushes? What would I want to do there?”

“Well, you just explained that yourself.”

“I’ll pass.”

“It’s not true about three guys doing girls at the same time. Where did you hear that? That only happened twice — and the girls wanted it.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want it.”

“Are you scared?”

I go right up to him and stand on my tiptoes.

“Get something straight,” I say. “I. Am. Not. Scared. Of. Anything.”

“Then come along. What’s the problem?”

“You guys make me sick. That’s the problem.”

“Aha,” he says calmly, lowering his head. “You want something better.”

“Exactly,” I say, and watch as his face changes. As if he’s been stung.

Then he gets his facial expression under control again.

“I wouldn’t be saying that kind of thing if I were in your situation,” he says slowly. “It could come back to haunt you.”

“I’m shitting myself. With fear.”

“Wise of you.”

“Alissa,” I say loudly. “How long do I have to wait for you? Let’s go home.”

No answer.

“Is he a good fuck?” asks Peter suddenly, looking me directly in the eyes.

“Who?” I say, stunned.

“The sugar daddy I saw here, the one who dropped you off. Some old guy with gray hair. I know how you are. You think we’re nothing but trash. But in reality you’re the worst of all, just a miserable slut. So is he a good fuck?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Amazing. I can hardly wait for the next round. Alissa! I’m leaving.”

She comes shooting around the corner and grabs my hand with her hot, sticky fingers.

“You can keep the bracelet,” she says to Katja, who waves goodbye somewhat lethargically. “I’m giving it to you.”

In the elevator she asks, “Who is Vadim?” Then she shouts, “Wait! Let me push the button!”

“Vadim?” I say, hoisting her up so she can reach the button. “Nobody.”

I’ve started running again. My favorite time to run is evenings, when it cools off a little. I run past the supermarket, past a sad old man’s pub, through a grove of sycamores, once around the local school, and then into the park and under the underpass. There’s almost always a train rushing past overhead.

It’s dark and moist under there even in the middle of the day at the height of the summer. Kids Anton’s age are always lighting little fires under here. I always come across little holes in the dirt filled with ash and charred twigs or burnt strips of newspaper.

I saw Anton down here once, too, and I was glad to see there was no fire burning near him. But my relief was premature. Anton was squatting down, busy doing something back in the bushes together with a black-haired boy. He flinched as I came closer and looked over his shoulder.

And I flinched, too, because at his feet was something that looked like a raw steak with fur and tiny feet.

And I thought to myself: I need to toughen up. How am I going to fulfill my mission if this is making me nauseated?

The thing that surprised me most was that Anton was clearly leading this odd operation. The other kid was just watching, and rolled his chocolate-colored eyes as I angrily lit into my little brother.

“Why did you kill this little creature?” I yelled at Anton, who just shrugged and shook his head.

“It was already dead,” said the other kid. There was a strange hostility in his pretty, brown saucer eyes, though he looked past me rather than right at me. As if I was too disgusting to look at directly.

“What is that thing anyway? And who are you?”

“I’m Ilhan.”

“And what’s that?”

“A hamster. Are you blind or something?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not blind.” Though I wouldn’t mind it when faced with this bloody clump of fur.

“Did you kill the hamster, Anton?” I asked in a weak voice. “I don’t believe it.”

“It was already dead,” he mutters.

“Died last night, I’m telling you,” said the other boy. “It’s my hamster. It belongs to me.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked with disgust. There was no other way to react — Anton was holding the handle of our kitchen knife in his blood-smeared hand, and the blade was buried in the lump at his feet.

“I’m trying to skin it,” Anton mumbled without looking up at me. It was taking every ounce of effort not to throw up on my shoes.

“With your bare hands?” I said.

“How else would you do it?” asked Anton as he gripped the lump with his skinny fingers and tried to pull it open, as stuff oozed from the carcass. The other boy leaned over him, his brow wrinkled with concentration.

“What’s that?” asked Anton curiously. “Do you know, Sascha? Have a look.”

“I’d rather not,” I said faintly. “Maybe another time.”

“Is that the heart?” asked Ilhan with interest. I pulled myself together, kneeled down, and took the knife from Anton’s hand, gulped, bit my lower lip, and tried to turn the hamster carcass carefully with the blade. Quite a bit of stuff fell out of the body cavity.

Crazy how much fits into such a small animal.

“The heart is very small in a hamster like this,” I said, rummaging around inside the carcass with the knife. “This is probably it here. No idea. That big thing there is the intestine.”

“And that?”

“Not sure. Probably the kidneys.”

“Cool.”

“Yuck. All right, Anton, get home, wash your hands. This thing is full of germs. Dead animals are poisonous. Remember that. Wash your hands three times with soap. How can you guys be so stupid and so savage?”

“It was already dead,” Anton mumbled.

“We just wanted to dissect it,” said Ilhan.

“Look at me when you talk to me — even if your father doesn’t look at your mother when he talks to her,” I said. To my surprise he obeyed.

“We were going to stuff it,” he explained grudgingly, looking me in the eyes. “Anton said he could do it. I brought gauze from home. And he brought a needle to stitch it back together.”

“You thought you could do that?” I asked, perplexed, looking at an increasingly unhappy Anton, who pushed a few strands of blond hair out of his face with his blood-smeared hand. “For the love of god, get your fingers away from your hair.”

“Why don’t you think I could do it?” asked Anton glumly.

“Aren’t you disgusted by it?”

“No, why?”

“Anton!”

“What?”

“I said to get home.”

“What are we supposed to do with the hamster?” asked Ilhan.

“Nothing. You can’t stuff it. You have to be trained to be able to do that. It’s complicated. It’ll just rot if you guys try. Disgusting. Throw it away and off you go.”

They looked at each other for a long time, Anton and Ilhan. Then Anton sighed and Ilhan looked up with disappointment in his eyes as a train rushed past overhead.

“Let’s at least bury it,” said Ilhan.

So I squatted down and watched as they dug a hole a few yards deeper into the brush and Anton collected the hamster and its innards with his bare hands and chucked it all into the hole. Ilhan didn’t seem to want to touch it. Then they filled in the hole again and decorated the mound with dandelions and lilacs. I watched as Anton then found two sticks and made a cross, with Ilhan helping him.