Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

“When exactly did the whole thing with your face happen again?” she asked.

I was expecting all kinds of things, but not this.

“What’s that question supposed to mean? Weren’t you listening? Never seen a newspaper?”

“Is it true that you were really cute beforehand and that you were the star of your theater group?”

I shrugged my shoulders. It was clear she knew everything anyway. I just didn’t understand why she was putting so much effort into getting a rise out of me.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. If she was going to get right to the point I couldn’t see any reason I shouldn’t as well. “Why did you invite me over, hold hands with me, and ask crazy questions?”

She leaned back and turned red. Bright red. It didn’t suit her, not when she was normally so hard-nosed and unflinching and arrogant and unfriendly. When she blushed she looked like a little girl. A nice little girl.

I was immediately sorry for everything I’d said.

I sat down on the bed, on the floral patchwork bedspread, squinted my eyes so I could read the spines of the books on Janne’s shelf.

“You get used to you,” said Janne from the side.

I lifted my bottom and pulled out a pen that I’d sat on and was poking me.

“Now tell me about you,” I said. “Since when have you been unable to walk, and where are your legs.”

“Right here,” she said with surprise.

I turned back to her. She was sitting perfectly straight, like a ballerina, and her cheeks were still slightly flushed. All of a sudden it occurred to me that not many boys could have been in this room before me, on this side of the webcam. Maybe the blind one. I closed my eyes to try to imagine how he experienced Janne’s home. He probably had a really good nose but I couldn’t smell anything except a hint of lime. I opened my eyes again.

“Where is right here ?” I asked.

She grabbed the seam of her dress, that once again went down to the tips of her shoes, and lifted it up like a curtain.

I had pictured it completely differently. I’d assumed she had some kind of prosthetics like Richard. Or nothing, with the shoes as dummies. In any event I had not expected girls’ legs, white legs stuck into even whiter socks. Janne lifted the skirt a bit higher and now I could see her knees.

“They look totally normal,” I said. “Maybe a little thin, but otherwise… ”

She laughed in a way that sent shivers down my spine.

“You can touch them,” she said.

She didn’t have to tell me twice. I slid off the bed and onto my knees. Janne bit her lower lip. Then I stopped paying attention to her face.

I put my hand on her calf. It was cool and somehow soft, like a stuffed animal. I ran my hand up and down. The skin was very smooth but there didn’t seem to be any muscles beneath. But at the same time everything was beautiful. Just not really living. I didn’t ask her whether she shaved despite the long dresses or whether her skin just didn’t have the ability to grow hair. I hadn’t come across that in the Pschyrembel , but I also hadn’t read it all the way through. I moved closer and laid my head in Janne’s lap, on the gathered cloth of her dress. I looked back up at her. She had thrown her head back oddly.

“I don’t feel anything,” she said, and her voice sounded different than usual.

I stood back up. Now I could look down at her. She had an unbelievable mouth, sensual and curvy. She wants to be kissed, I thought. There’s nothing she wants more than that. I used to have a real life, but her? I didn’t want to be envied by her for things I’d long since lost.

I leaned down toward her but she flinched backward.

The door opened. I hadn’t heard her mother knock. Maybe she hadn’t knocked. She was carrying a tray with delicate white teacups with gold rims and a matching teapot, and she put it down on Janne’s bed. She looked me in the face with her eyes wide as if she was putting great effort into ignoring Janne’s exposed legs.

“Or would you prefer coffee?”

I felt unbelievably sorry for her. Her life must have been pretty hellish. Janne wouldn’t have been easy to put up with even if she had functioning legs, but from her wheelchair she could turn anyone into a wreck in an instant.

Holding her hand was enough to put me on the verge of becoming a wreck.

“Are you also pleased with the group?” asked Janne’s mother once she had found a point where she could focus her gaze: the orchid on the windowsill, which was so gorgeous that I would have taken it for plastic if not for the fallen petal lying next to the pot.

I didn’t know how I should answer.

“Janne is like a new person since it started,” said Janne’s mother. “I’m really happy… I have to admit that I had my doubts. But he convinced me.”

“Who?” asked Janne harshly, as if we didn’t know the answer.

Janne’s mother squinted.

“What did he tell you he had planned?” I asked as gently as possible because I felt bad for her.

“Didn’t he tell you himself?” asked Janne’s mother, confused.

Janne and I traded glances.

“Hinted at it,” I mumbled.

“If we don’t like it, we’re going to quit,” said Janne.

Her mother looked at her and shook her head. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said. “No, my dear girl, I really don’t think so.”

When her mother had shut the door behind her, Janne rolled over to me again. I couldn’t understand why she had her eyes closed as she did, and wondered whether she planned to run me over and if you could get badly enough hurt by a wheelchair that you might need one yourself.

But when she coolly notified me that I was permitted to kiss her now if I still wanted to, I understood everything.

I didn’t tell her that she was a dishonest, bored beast, that she was like a carnivorous plant lurking in wait for someone to come near it. I didn’t say that I had no desire to be an extra roped into playing the lead role for her, or for her life, or for whatever else it was she had gotten into her head. I said nothing. I leaned down to her and kissed her on the mouth. She must have been pretty scared; she was shaking and her teeth, which I pushed apart with my tongue, were chattering a little.

Her lips tasted of fruit tea, the kind her mother had poured for us before she said those odd things. I thought of Lucy, the last girl I kissed before Janne. I hadn’t wanted to see Lucy afterwards. And I was pretty sure I was doing both of us a favor, a much bigger favor to her than to me. Once in a while I’d clicked her Facebook profile before I’d deactivated my account, but in the meantime I’d avoided all the places we’d gone together, including the virtual ones.

I tried to remember what Lucy’s mouth tasted like. Unlike Janne, she was a sweet-natured girl, nice and helpful and sunny, maybe not quite as pretty, but so much warmth emanated from her that I always found myself smiling for no reason when she was with me. She wanted to visit me in the hospital, but I hadn’t let anyone in. In the months afterward, she still called and wrote me letters that ended at first with “kisses, Lucy” and later “with love” and then they stopped. I’d written her an email ending things with her in case there was anything left to end. I didn’t get an answer to it and was both relieved and disappointed.

Janne had stopped shaking. My cheek tightened and this entire procedure was nothing like kissing used to be. I got angry. I grabbed Janne’s shoulders and squeezed them. I had the feeling that if I didn’t restrain myself I might crush her delicate bones with the palms of my hands. She threw her arms around my neck and squeezed the air out of me. She bit my upper lip. The last thing to bite me had been the Rottweiler. I grabbed her hair, which felt heavy and cool in my hand, and I wondered about the strange gasping and snarling I heard. Then I realized that it was us making those noises.