Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“You look terrible,” Kevin said to me, shielding his eyes with his hand. “I can’t look.”

Oddly enough, I was touched. Even though I’d only been away a few hours, I was happy to see them all again. They also seemed happy that I was alive and hadn’t ruined their week by dying a silly death. We were a big, happy family in which one brother beat the other up, but at the end of the day it was done out of affection.

The sister was the only one who sat there with her face averted, ruining the joy of the reunion.

We joined the circle of chairs, which widened to accommodate us.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen moving forward,” Friedrich continued. “The eventual outcome of my clinical profile is multiple organ failure, just like my two uncles on my father’s side.”

Marlon sighed loudly. Friedrich fell silent, unsettled.

“But you go to a regular school?” asked the guru, who seemed to remember he was conducting a sort of interview that we had interrupted.

“I try,” said Friedrich. “Whenever I’m not out sick or being treated at the hospital.”

“I’m really, really afraid of hospitals,” Kevin said. “Especially when you can’t open the doors from inside.”

I turned to him so as not to continue staring at Janne’s lap, at the creases in her dress. Oddly enough, I liked Kevin in a way that I myself most likely confused with sympathy. Kevin looked like he wasn’t going to do well for much longer. Like something terrible was going to happen. And then I would feel sorry for him. Because he was the nicest queen I’d ever met. Of course, he was the only one I’d ever met. In the last 436 days I had basically seen nobody.

“And you, Janne,” said the guru, “what are you afraid of?”

I was sure that she wouldn’t answer. But she turned to him and said, “Stupid questions.”

“Do I ask stupid questions?” asked the guru in an understanding tone.

“They’re fine,” said Janne generously. “The worst ones are the questions people don’t say out loud, the ones written on their foreheads. What happened to you, cutie? Wouldn’t everything be easier if you were at least a little uglier? Can anyone love you the way you are?”

My heart beat so hard that I could hear the echo in the back of my head. Boom, boom, boom.

“You’re totally sweet, of course everyone loves you,” said Kevin.

Instead of jumping for his face with claws extended, she looked at him gratefully. Apparently she liked him, too. But I wasn’t so insanely jealous of him.

“When I was little I went to the elementary school around the corner from our house,” she said. “I was the special needs kid in an immersion class and there was an extra assistant there to help me. And all the children thought I was just pretending. That I could hop around just fine and was just too lazy to walk on my own.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have told them you were a princess under a magic spell,” said Marlon.

Janne turned to him. Suddenly I realized that the whole punch and collapse had been completely unnecessary. Nobody was ahead in this race. Janne hated him no less than she did me.

“And then what happened?”

“After the fifth grade I stayed home and only went to the school to sit for exams.”

“That worked?” asked Richard. “I mean, that’s not against the rules? Don’t you have to go to school?”

“Yes, you do,” said Janne. “But not in my case.”

“Did you get a certificate that said you were impaired?” asked Kevin eagerly.

Janne smiled at him. “How did you know that?”

The guru put down his pen and leaned forward. “What I wouldn’t have given for a certificate like that when I was your age.”

And suddenly it came pouring out of everyone. It was loud and it was weird; it was laughter. Even Janne giggled, and on Marlon’s face I saw a trace of a smile. I was the only one who didn’t laugh. I was shocked. They were joking around with each other like old friends enjoying their time together. They were happy about trivialities and about the fact that I hadn’t broken my neck. They had forgotten that we were just a bunch of cripples and head cases. I was the only one who still knew it. Again I was filled with a sense of foreboding.

We had to go into town again because there was nothing left of the groceries bought the day before. Apparently the others had killed the time without us by eating. The guru said that we could have thought to go shopping after we went to the doctor’s office. He probably had already forgotten how he was so worried about me — or perhaps about himself — that he wanted to call Claudia and have her pick me up. I asked how we were supposed to know what was needed. The guru shook his head.

“Like little children. You have to cut everything up and spoon it into their mouths.”

Dumbfounded by these sudden expectations, we watched as he walked frantically around the grill, which was in front of the shed. Earlier it had been sunny, but now it was noticeably cooler and the air was crisp. “We need charcoal, bread, meat, vegetables,” the guru enumerated while rubbing down the grill with a napkin. Then he spun around and screamed without warning, “What are you waiting for?”

Kevin went inside to freshen up before the shopping trip. I tried to explain that for me personally, one trip a day to the village was more than enough. Marlon was nowhere to be seen. And then Janne suddenly said she definitely wanted to go.

Because of Janne we couldn’t take the shortcut through the woods. We had to take the longer, paved path. I pushed her wheelchair with her silent acquiescence and I didn’t let on that because of the fall my back was wrenched and the pain was spreading down my leg. Now and then I stopped and tried swinging my hips to get rid of the pain. I could have stripped naked while doing it, nobody was paying the slightest attention to me. Janne was chatting away with Kevin about the right technique for creating smoky eyes. At first I thought they were making fun of somebody but then I realized they were actually deadly serious about the topic. I didn’t have much to contribute.

When we set off, the guru had stood on the stairs with the camera and filmed our departure, as if he wanted to remind us that we were assembled here for a higher purpose.

Kevin said his boyfriend was an actor. I saw how Janne’s back immediately straightened.

“What has he been in?” Something about her voice sounded different.

“TV shows.”

“And how does he put up with you?”

I could hardly believe my ears, that she would ask that. It seemed like a mix of tactlessness and stupidity. After all, I never asked her: “So Janne, what’s it like being in a wheelchair, what do the boys in the neighborhood make of it?”

Kevin wasn’t insulted.

“No idea,” he answered. “I can’t possibly explain how he puts up with me.”

“He probably loves you,” said Janne sadly.

“No idea,” Kevin repeated, smiling broadly. “He’s a bit older.”

I killed the time by looking down at Janne’s neck. Her hair was clipped up in a bun. She looked like she was from another century. Her skin was delicate pink and unbelievably vulnerable. I never would have thought that you could kill an hour staring at a girl’s neck without getting bored. But I actually had no desire to ever do anything else again. One black lock of hair had fallen out of the clip, I stared at it and could have cried.

In the village I treated Janne to the experience of being in the company of someone who enjoyed a certain notoriety. Apparently my visit to the doctor’s office had made the rounds. There were more people out and about than earlier in the day and their eyes popped out of their heads. It was tough to tell whether it was because of me or Janne. Or because of Kevin and his high heels, his pink cap, and handbag that he swung back and forth by its long strap. Probably a combination of all of us.