After school, Gran waits for me at the kitchen table, armed with a big pot of English tea and three chocolate cookies, neatly arranged on a vintage porcelain saucer. It’s our daily ritual: catching up after school. It’s something I really need. Most of the time, I start talking the moment I step over the threshold, blurting out everything that has been bothering and frustrating me, which is even more than usual lately.
We’ve done it like this forever. But not today. How can I tell her about what happened today without stretching even her suspension of disbelief too far? The corridor that turned into a rushing river, spitting up bricks and mortar. The science classroom no one can get into but mysteriously opened with only one touch. The mountain of weird objects. The list bearing not only my name, but also, as it turned out, Gnat's, Shadow's, and Slug's.
Of course, Gran sees that something is wrong—Gran sees everything. But she keeps her tone casual and light, camouflaging her concern. “Everything okay, dear?”
“Sure, Gran. School was ridiculous, teachers were ridiculous, classmates were ridiculous. So, just another day at the office.”
She observes me over the top of her half-moon spectacles with a hint of a smile, recognizing my irony. I feel a proverb coming.
“Who doesn’t want to turn his head will only see what’s in front of him, Tinderstick.” There it is. It even makes me smile.
“Better tell that to Dad,” I try to joke it off. “He has difficulty turning his wheelchair, let alone his head.”
“Has anyone seen my cheese sandwich?” grumbles the doorway in which my father materializes. “Ate half of it. Can’t find the rest. Maybe one of you is sitting on it?” Groaning and cursing, he tries to wrestle his wheelchair over the threshold—our home is not exactly wheelchair friendly. I get up to help.
“You’re probably sitting on it yourself.”
“Of course not, Tinderstick... wait a minute... yes, here it is.” From between his legs, he excavates the flattened remains of a crudely constructed sandwich, looks at it, squeezes it, and takes a bite. “Still tastes good.”
With difficulty, I swallow back a comment. “School okay today?” he mumbles with his mouth full. “Strict but fair as I always say, just like when I attended myself.”
My jaw drops.
“Did you go to my school?”
“Sure, Tinderstick... Gran too... and your mother, of course... that’s... where... we... met,” I decipher from the chunks of sound falling from his mouth while he chews. I look at Gran, flabbergasted. Why didn’t I know this? But Gran shrugs her shoulders. This is not her fight, apparently.
“It’s a long time ago, of course,” he continues casually picking a piece of cheese from between his teeth. “There are quite a few teachers I still know, although some are dead.” Suddenly, a cloud of sadness darkens his face, instantly melting away all my anger and frustration. I’ve learned to live with my father’s boorishness and rudeness, but his grief? His grief breaks my heart. Consoling or comforting, however, is definitely not in our DNA, so I do the only thing I know: I try to distract him with the first thing that comes to mind.
“Eh... the new neighbors have finally moved in? I saw a truck parked in front of the house.” Before the words have left my mouth, I know I’ve messed up. My father freezes and falls silent. Not just a bit silent, but completely silent. A silence that spreads through the kitchen, absorbing all other sounds. The hissing of the radiator, the ticking of the clock, the creaking of the chairs is all devoured by his anger and grief. I hold my breath. Gran doesn’t move.
And then it’s back, as suddenly as it disappeared. The radiator hisses, the clock ticks, the chairs creak again. My father coughs violently, mumbles something unintelligible, turns his wheelchair to the door, wrestles himself over the threshold without waiting for help, and disappears into the dark hallway.
“So... new neighbors?” I ask Gran, helpless. A microscopic movement of her mouth is enough to tell me that the old farmhouse next to us must have finally been sold and that’s a big problem, at least, it is for my father.
That plot of land is an inexhaustible source of his grievances, as he is convinced it belongs to us. He has been involved in countless legal disputes with the municipality over that land, and for as long as I can remember, I have seen him sitting in the improvised office space in the hallway, bent over enormous piles of reports and correspondence.
In the early years, my father’s clashes with the local authorities were marked by loud outbursts of frustration, raging tantrums, and objects being smashed to pieces against the wall, but not anymore. Nowadays his battles are fought in teeth grinding silence. I don’t like that at all. It’s just not healthy. Keeping all the rage and anger inside will only give him a heart attack.
Finally, Gran breaks the silence. “You have to understand, Tinderstick,” she says softly, “that land had been in my family for generations until the authorities dispossessed us after the war. We might have gotten it back if my mother had challenged the decision at the time, but she just couldn’t. She didn’t have the energy to fight anymore, especially after my father didn’t return from the work camps.”
I only vaguely remember my great-grandmother, an emaciated, crooked little figure sitting in our big armchair, staring empty-eyed into the burning fireplace, day in and day out, hardly moving. Once, in an impulse of compassion that only young children have, I crawled up to her to stroke her parchment skin and skeletal fingers, but she was just too far gone to notice.
“I made my peace with it, Tinderstick. That land would only have been a burden. Your father, however, has never been able to swallow the injustice of it. You know him.” She sighs. “Anyway, better not get involved. Who sows on another man’s land, reaps for the neighbors.” She gets up, shuffles to the sink, and rinses our teacups. Within a few minutes, she will have disappeared into the living room to resume her knitting, like every evening.
“I’m going upstairs, Gran. Read a bit.”
“Alright, pumpkin, but turn on the light, will you? Otherwise, you‘ll ruin your eyes.”
“Sure, Gran.”
The lie is so obvious that even someone with less talent than Gran would see right through it. That I still do it is more out of habit, a ritual: providing Gran with some plausible deniability, an excuse not to question me if she doesn’t want to.”
Instead of climbing the stairs, I slip out the front door, step through one of the many holes in our fence, and creep slowly to our neighbor’s house. I’m just too curious. I have to see it with my own eyes.
As I slowly progress, my mind involuntarily starts to wander. Why on earth didn’t I know that my father and my mother attended my school?! And why did he tell me now? Was it a mistake? A slip of the tongue? Whatever it was, I’m happy he did, and as hope springs eternal, I start fantasizing. Maybe I will be able to find something about my mother in the school archives. A photo in an old yearbook, a credit in a musical program, maybe some old teachers even remember her. I hear Gran’s voice in my head: ‘Maybe’ is for people that may be, Tinderstick. That may be, I think stubbornly, but maybe, despite all that, it may be.
When I force myself back to reality , I realize I'm much closer to the house than I thought. I shake off all romantic, lost-mother fantasies, make myself as invisible as possible, and observe. The house looks dark and lifeless, as if it has been uninhabited for years. It’s in even worse shape than ours. The windows are cracked, the paint has peeled off, part of the drainpipe hangs loose, and tiles are missing from the roof. Only through the living room window does a soft yellow light shine.
I sneak closer, as stealthily as possible, but when I peek around the edge of the windowsill, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Apart from an astounding number of burning candles scattered across the floor, and countless boxes stacked up against the walls, the room seems to be empty except for a big lounge chair, an old fashioned dining table with those twisted legs, Louis-XIV-or-XV-or-something style, and two plain wooden kitchen chairs. No sign of life... although... now my eyes adjust to the light... I recognize, in the dark far corner, away from the candles, the tall, slender figure of a man sitting upright and cross-legged, his face hidden behind a gigantic book held up by long, spidery fingers. I'm no book expert, but even I can tell that the book is extremely old.
Shivers run down my spine. This whole scene resembles a bit too much those in horror movies involving séances, devil worship, and blood sacrifices. I need to leave. Quickly. I turn away from the window, but before I can take two steps, I hear a bright and cheerful voice behind me.
“Are you going to burn our house down too?” Aye, this is not good!
“Nah... ran out of matches, sorry.” I bluff. I manage to keep a straight face, but I’m panicking inside. My father can never find out that I’ve been paying “the enemy” a visit. He would regard it as high treason and nothing less. Simultaneously, I try to convince myself that I’m not doing anything wrong, not really. I’m just the next-door girl checking out her new neighbor, very normal, very ordinary. Slowly, I turn around.
The girl is only nine, maybe ten, years old. And very... white. She’s so sharply silhouetted against the dark sky that she seems to radiate light herself. Her blue, almond-shaped eyes are set like jewels in a perfectly symmetrical face with classical features. Her skin is without impurity or blemish. Her meticulously combed blonde hair cascades over her shoulders in perfect curls and her outfit is creaseless. In almost every way, she’s the polar opposite of me, with my dark, short, unkempt hair, my torn secondhand jeans, and my perpetually dirty, gnawed-to-the-bone nails. Normally that would be enough to hate her right away, but to my surprise, I do not.
“My name is Angel,” she chirps. My expression must betray my surprise because she adds, without a trace of irony, “You know, like the creatures from heaven? With the wings.”
She beams happily at me—into me. It should make me feel extremely uncomfortable, but it doesn’t.
“I know who you are. You’re the fire-girl. They found you next to the burned-down farmhouse this summer. They say you are dangerous, but I don’t believe that.” She speaks with the conviction of someone who actually knows the truth, which is unsettling coming from anyone, let alone someone so young. How in the world could she know anything for sure about the night the farmhouse burned down? Even I have repressed most of what happened that night.
By now, I’m used to police interrogations, mistrusting glances, schoolyard whispers, poorly concealed insinuations, even visits from journalists. It hardly penetrates my armor of indifference anymore, but the voice of this small girl cuts right through all of it. I have no idea how she does it, but she does. She just looks at me with those bright, friendly eyes and then, without warning, it wells up: the anti-peristaltic reflex of grief. My stomach feels funny. I swallow. I swallow again. I repress the urge to throw up. My eyes turn away, my knees buckle. I slowly collapse to the ground, and then... nothing.