She saw her neighbor Gabi’s daughter on the way in. “Hallo,” the girl said, standing outside her half-open door. A nice girl, maybe eighteen, but still living with her mother and taking care of her. She had values. Family values. She was devoted.
“Hallo, Krista,” Eva said.
“Kann ich Dir helfen?” she asked. So many pretty things about her, thought Eva. Long, thick hair, like so many young girls, not aware of how it’ll thin. High breasts, cheekbones and a mouth like a pink cushion.
“Danke,” Eva said, and Krista took her bags and her keys and let her in to the apartment. If her daughter couldn’t help her, she may as well borrow her neighbor’s. Krista seemed to enjoy helping her. She had a heart. Eva assumed it was also nice to get out of her mother’s apartment, to have a break from tending to her mother’s every need. The poor woman. She’d been sick for so long.
After holding the door for Eva, Krista came in and locked the door behind them. She set down the canvas bag with milk, cheese, and coffee, as well as the sleeping pills. Eva didn’t hide anything from Krista at this point. Krista knew about the pills. God knows what her mother was on. She began laying out everything on the counter for Eva, hanging the bag on a hook next to the sink.
“Du bist so lieb, Krista,” Eva said.
“Ach, das ist doch nichts,” Krista said and sat down on the hard-backed wooden chair at the small table against the wall. “Wie geht’s? Was machen deine Beine?”
Eva sat on her twin bed, a cot really, and rubbed her legs. She wanted to take off her hose. They were constricting and she was ready to be rid of them, even though they were so helpful. As close as she felt to Krista, she’d never undressed in front of her. “Nicht so gut heute, wenn ich ehrlich bin,” she said.
“Das tut mir leid, Eva,” Krista said, and looked at her with a piercing sort of warmth, a look new to Eva.
“Ich könnte sie massieren,” Krista offered.
Eva was taken slightly aback. This was new. She’d never offered to rub her legs before. She always inquired as to how Eva’s legs were; she knew of Eva’s pain. Eva knew that Krista changed her mother’s bedpans, bathed her, did everything for her. Rubbing her legs was nothing in comparison, perhaps.
“Wirklich?” Eva asked.
“Hier, lass mich mal,” Krista said, and knelt on the cheap blue rug at the side of Eva’s bed. Eva watched as Krista removed first her shoes, untying them carefully, setting them, lined up, next to her. They were good shoes; they weren’t leather, they were synthetic, but they had cushioned supporting soles. Then, Krista, determined, began pulling down Eva’s stockings. Eva, to her great discomfort, felt a second of arousal, and her face went red.
“Krista,” she said, “lass mich.” She tried to stand. Krista, hands on Eva’s thighs, pulled them down and off swiftly, much more quickly and less painfully than when Eva did it herself.
There was a whiff of stink in the air, like sour milk. Eva’s flesh, her feet. Now the two women looked at each other as Krista began to massage Eva’s thighs. Eva stared into Krista’s gray eyes. Then she looked down at her own legs—blotchy, but mostly pale with a slight olive undertone. Her sister claimed their ancestors had been raped by Genghis Khan, which is why they weren’t totally fair skinned. Rivers of veins under the flesh, rising at points, then fading deep into her body. Krista’s hands were long fingered and she slightly pinched when she dug into Eva’s thighs. She looked at the top of Krista’s head, a middle part down her visibly oily hair. The scalp that showed had white flakes, and Eva could smell her too, not just herself.
She closed her eyes. A vision of washing her younger sister’s hair in Leoben, after her mother died and she became the caregiver. Wrapping her naked six-year-old body in a towel, rubbing her dry, hairless vagina, her tears. “Nicht so doll,” she’d cry. And Eva, overwhelmed, saying, “Halt die Klappe!” Eva then would brush her tangled hair and Liezel would try not to cry, saying, “Das tut weh.” Eva ripped through, saying nothing, yanking harder as she braided her hair, hoping it hurt her.
“Zu doll?” Krista asked, a bit of perspiration on her upper lip, above that pink cushion mouth.
“Nein, nein,” Eva said. It was slightly too hard, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She leaned back against the wall. Krista stopped for a minute to put the one pillow on the bed behind Eva’s back.
“Du bist ein Engel,” Eva said quietly, and Krista rubbed and rubbed, from her thighs down to her feet, ending by rubbing each toe, one at a time.
After Krista left, Eva sat there on her bed and felt how smoothly her breath came and went. She closed her eyes and thought about how soon she could take her night pill. Since she’d stopped working as a nurse, she worried about getting her prescriptions filled. But there had been no problems. She took stimulants in the morning and often at lunch, sleeping pills at night. Six of each of them on a good day, more if she was having a bad day. She knew it was why she trembled. She knew it was why she sometimes saw things late at night, when the blue light of the moon shone into her room, on her bed, next to the only window in her apartment. She knew all this, of course. And so? It was her life.
