33.

There were three of us. Zdenka, Višnja and me. I didn’t have my own bike, but they had theirs. Even if I’d had a bike, my folks would never have let me go far. “Where are you forever wandering off to?” Mother would grumble. He would do nothing but lash me with his eyes, once I’d stopped being invisible. But the previous night he’d gotten drunk, vowing he’d leave the house, go back to the station, and throw himself under a train. His shirt was wet to the neck, he foamed at the mouth, we first held onto him to stop him from going out, she around his belly, me clinging to his leg. The three of us crammed into the door frame and he could barely stand on his feet without toppling over. Then she let him go. “Damn it, yer better off dead!” He swayed above me, then staggered back to the couch. To the station? Hardly. He couldn’t get to the bathroom. When he began to snore, I undid his heavy black shoes. The next day he’d be sleeping at least till early evening, and then she’d make him sausages with sauerkraut for supper. He’d lap it up until he burst. So, in the morning, while Mother was digging in the garden, I took his bicycle, he’d never know.

I cycled along behind them. They were on their bikes all the time, so they spun the pedals fast and evaded the potholes. I did what I could to catch up, but I could barely reach the pedals, and the handlebars kept getting away from me. His bicycle was huge, made of iron, which is probably why I was having trouble maneuvering it.

We leave our street, cycling along even when the path disappears, we reach the river, I see children swimming. There’s a hill a little farther on, and Zdenka, who gets there first, brakes at the foot of the slope and dismounts. I’ve never been here before, it’s an excursion spot. My family doesn’t take Sunday excursions, we cook soup all morning, an early dinner, we’re silent on Sundays. The three of us sit in the shade of a willow on warm ground. Zdenka takes out an apple turnover wrapped in paper from her bag, Višnja produces a glass bottle filled with lemonade, I don’t have a basket on my bike, I am empty-handed, only with the flimsy dress I’m wearing. I could live like this, with friends. With nobody telling us what to do, boxing us in the head or tweaking us by those thin hairs that grow over the ear. Zdenka’s family has money, her mother works at our town hall and knows German, her father is the director of the factory, and they don’t hit her. She goes to the seaside for vacation every summer. Višnja has only her mother, she has always only had her mother who works in shifts at the store or sews in the kitchen. She has really nice blouses and dresses. “Is that Lacika?” Višnja hoots in surprise, and we turn in to see what she’s hooting about. When there, in knickerbockers, bare to the waist, his chest bat-like, stands Lacika. He’s our math teacher, without his glasses, without the ruler he usually uses to rap our knuckles, his legs white and his gut sagging, he leans on his fat wife’s shoulder. “Mrs. Dumpling!” cries Zdenka, pointing to the butterball in a white bathing suit with big black polka dots. We double over laughing and soon we’re rolling around on the ground. The world turned upside down. Everything looks different, our streets have vanished, now it’s our river and even math class is changed, and Lacika and his wife, nothing is serious any more, or scary, only pee-in-your-pants hilarious. Like gasoline poured on a fire, that’s how hard we laugh, burning and fizzling, blazing to the point of smothering. Everything hurts, we’re ravaged by laughter, as if someone twisted the cork off a bottle of soda. Later we prick our fingers with a safety pin from Višnja’s bag. We smear the droplets of blood on one another’s’ finger until we’ve all been bloodied. Zdenka takes out her lipstick. First we sniff it, then we tap our lips, look at our blurred reflections in the metal of the bell on the bicycle. We push our bikes to the top of the hill so we can ride down. We’ve seen boys going down like that, and when they get to the bottom they slam their foot on the brake and stir up a cloud of dust all the way to their necks. Zdenka goes down first, she’s the boldest, she is never afraid or ever ashamed. She goes speedily down to the foot of the hill, almost loses her balance, and then at the last minute drops her feet to the ground, stirs up the dust with her sandals and scrapes to a stop after a few meters. Višnja comes down right after her, she has two brakes, so she doesn’t go as fast downhill, down she rolls elegantly, almost like the boys, and turns sharply. From the top, through the cloud of dust, I see her teeth when she laughs. I am left for last. I’ll go down, even if I end up on my head. It’s not about the ride. It’s the three of us. Girlfriends. I push off with one foot, I can’t reach with both and in a second I’m hurtling down. I lose control, I can’t steer the bike properly, suddenly on my back I feel heat tearing at my skin, the heavy metal frame is crushing my ear, I don’t let go of the handlebars so yet again, along with the metal monster, I flip over, tumble, and end up flat on the ground. I can’t exhale. The two of them dash over, one pulls the bike away, the other reaches to help me up. I’m all battered, there’s blood, and worst of all is when I realize that it’s dripping down my neck onto the collar of my dress. They brush me off and comfort me. This isn’t the worst that could happen. Only then do I see what is the worst, something isn’t right with the bicycle, once we get it up it doesn’t go straight when I push it, the handlebars are all crooked and no matter how hard we try to twist them back we can’t straighten them by as much as a millimeter. I haul the front wheel by hoisting it up in the air and roll the bike along on the back wheel, because as soon as I set the front wheel down, the bicycle starts going crooked again, my arms are feeling a little limp so my friends push it along some, too. By the time we get to my house it’s getting dark, from a distance I can see Mother standing out on the street, looking left, right, and when she sees me, she starts wagging her finger, now you’re going to get it. If she was the only one who spanked my heart would leap for joy. Then she slips back behind the gate, I move slower and slower, and then I see him. He strides out onto the street, blows his nose and glares at me with red eyes. Something warm is dripping down my leg. I’m peeing. He never even opens his mouth. She stretches out her neck, turkey-like, behind him and holds him by the arm. With my last ounce of strength I lift the bicycle a centimeter up off the ground so he won’t notice how crooked it is. I stare down while I walk past him, as soon as I pass I feel the dull blow of a shoe on my rear end. I let the bicycle drop and start to run. I can hear him unbuckling his belt.

While I lie there, an almost agreeable pain courses through me. There is a compress on my forehead, gauze over my ear, and rakija-soaked sheets on my ribs and bottom. He almost killed me. Now I feel so nice. She sits on the edge of the couch, watching me, worried, shaking her head and every so often she sighs into her handkerchief. Then she plumps the pillow under my head, and stirs chamomile tea on the table, then lifts the compress from the ribs to cool it and puts it back, then taps the wound on the knee. Then she pats me on the face, along the side that isn’t bruised. “What were you thinking, child?” I don’t feel I need to answer, I’m just happy. “You know what he’s like, what good did that do you? Did they talk you into stealing his bicycle?” “No, they didn’t,” I whisper, “They’re my girlfriends.” “Girlfriends? Them? Your girlfriends! No such thing. You have only one girlfriend, and that’s me, and don’t ever forget it.”