What Happens in Deutschland STAYS in Deutschland

EINS

The beauty of the glittering, Southern veil spreading above the earth was not enough to assuage the distress the night was bringing Brigitte. As she stood on the balcony of her tiny apartment, she fretted over what chaos was going on inside her home. From outside, she could hear the drunken clamor of her fellow college students blending with discordant music, creating a cacophony of insanity.
She made the mistake when she invited Mercedes and Millie to a study “party”. Apparently, through selective hearing, the two wild girls only caught the “party” part. Now, Brigitte had a house full of strange people who had no intention of studying, and a big test the very next day. She new she was doomed, but she couldn’t think of a way to study with all that ruckus. She could already see her bilious French teacher slamming an “F” on the wooden desk before her, a grade that would ruin any opportunity she had of becoming a translator in France.
At least I still have German, she thought as she leaned over the rail. The evening breeze kissed her wet cheeks and tousled her long, purple hair tenderly, as if to offer a loving comfort for her troubles. Her head felt heavy from the burdens of college and friends. She didn’t want to disappoint Mercedes and Millie by sending everybody home, but she also didn’t want to ruin a career opportunity.
Suddenly, the door from her apartment flung open, and Mercedes stumbled outside with a beer in her hand. Brigitte’s hazel eyes narrowed upon the pathetic sight, and she turned her back on the drunken, Hispanic girl.
“What’s your problem, Geeta? We’re having so much fun inside and you’re just hanging out here all by your lonesome! Come on, girl! Let’s PARTAY!” she slurred with excitement.
For a moment, Brigitte said nothing and simply stared into the distance with rage flaming in her eyes. She finally began to speak, and her voice was filled with such acridness that it sent shivers down Mercedes’ spine.
“My problem? What’s my problem? My problem is that you brought a plethora of strangers into my house after I invited only you and Millie for a study party. I thought you guys were erudite, hard-working people, but all you truly are is a couple of wanton fools! I can’t believe you would have the effrontery!”
“Please! I can’t understand your big words while I’m drunk!”
“YOU-RUINED-MY-NIGHT!” cried Brigitte slowly.
“How can you say that? I brought you fun tonight! All you do on the weekends is study your tail off! You need to lighten up! Why are you always so uptight?”
“BECAUSE MY FUTURE’S AT STAKE! I did not bust my derriere in high school making straight A’s for a scholarship to come on campus and do nothing but party! I came here to study and make something out of my life! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life living how I did for the first eighteen years of it!”
In the midst of their arguing, the girls failed to notice the footsteps echoing from the stairwell. A short, slim figure watched the fight from afar with a knowing smile spreading across her face. She wanted to wait for her old friend to turn and see her, but the words that waited on her lips could not be contained any longer.
“Well, it looks like the goody-two-shoes Brigitte hasn’t changed one bit!”
Brigitte’s eyes became saucers upon hearing the familiar voice from behind her. She spun quickly on her heels and began to run toward the girl with outstretched arms.
“DAGMAR!”
“Oh, god!”
Brigitte flung her arms around her buddy in a violent hug that nearly sent the duo down the stairs. After they recovered, Dagmar said, “Apparently, you’re still just as touchy-feely as well!”
“I’ve just missed you so much and I love you!” she sobbed joyously.
“I know.”
Brigitte turned to Mercedes, who was trying to sneak back into the rowdy apartment while her infuriated friend caught up with the new arrival.
“You had best take all your party animals back to the zoo and have their dung swept up in ten minutes or I’ll call the cops and tell your mamá that you’re pregnant!”
“But I’m not pregnant!” Mercedes protested.
“Your mom doesn’t know that.”
The girl scowled, but she relented and began to do what she was told. People filed out of the smoke-filled apartment, and they cast dirty glances in Brigitte’s direction as they passed her by. She grimaced at the odious fog that curled about her belongings, and she cried out in frustration.
“Did you even ask me if you could smoke in my house? Now my clothes are going to reek!”
“Can I smoke in your house?” Dagmar asked with a smile.
“Absolutely not! You know how I feel about that! After living with a smoking step-father who never had the decency to get off his lazy bum and smoke outside, I think I’ve had enough of that nauseating crap! Even when I was in my smoke-free bedroom, whenever I yawned, I could taste it. I thought I would die from second-hand smoke.”
Dagmar laughed, and the pair entered Brigitte’s apartment after Mercedes and Millie walked out. Brigitte felt bad as she watched the two stumble down the steps, and she hoped that the idiots would manage to find a ride home. In spite of the fact they were tipsy, the two classmates managed to clean up after themselves surprisingly well. To Brigitte’s relief, nothing of incredible value or importance was broken. However, one of her favorite Green Day posters was torn in the corner, and the sight of it sent her into a tirade.
“I’M GOING TO MURDER THOSE CRAZY PEOPLE! I knew I should have framed the posters! I just knew it!”
“Brigitte, could you even afford enough frames for all these posters? No offense, but it’s kind of creepy.”
Thousands of eyes watched the girls as they conversed, all of which belonged to the same three men. Every bit of space on the apartment’s walls was covered with Green Day posters, pinups, and print outs that their obsessed fan had accumulated over the nine years of her addiction. Some of them smiled, some glared, and some stared with sexy gazes, but all of them were the same punk-rockers Brigitte fell in love with as a teenager.
“I can’t help it,” she sighed, dreamily eyeing a photograph of Tré Cool. Dagmar followed Brigitte’s gazed and shook her head incredulously.
“You’re obviously still pathetic, as well!”
“Hey! That wasn’t so nice!”
“You’re flipping out over a poster!”
“Correction: a poster of Green Day!”
Dagmar sighed heavily, rolling her dark, brown eyes.
“You know, I really don’t see the point of you obsessing over the guys. They don’t even know you exist! If they did, they would make fun of you for how worked up you’re getting over a stupid tear in a replaceable poster.”
“Well, you know what? I’m sure Eminem would be equally as creeped out that you have his picture as the wallpaper on your phone!”
“But I actually met him on vacation in Cancún!”
“You met a poser!”
At this point, they had reached an impasse. They glared at each other in mock anger until they couldn’t contain themselves any longer. Their constricted smiles broke free, and they began to laugh with such a magnitude, it was like a dam had broken.
“Oh, Brigitte! Good times!”
“Yeah!” Brigitte hiccupped. “Good times! So how’s National Guard? And why are you back so soon? I didn’t expect you back until Christmas!”
Dagmar’s sunny countenance evaporated.
“It was truly amazing. Being out there, doing something you know that is great…it’s just an incredible experience. Unfortunately, while I was helping a soldier on the battlefield, there was an explosion, and a piece of shrapnel pierced my shoulder. The man was doomed anyhow. I should have simply left him. I just didn’t want to risk leaving a living, breathing soldier in the heat of battle. I ran out there to see that he was fading fast. I did all I could, but his lungs were ruptured and I could tell he wouldn’t last but for a few more minutes. I heard the deafening blast, but before I realized what had happened, I was down. For a moment, I thought I was dead, but I realized that the pain was only in my shoulder and that I could stand with ease. I hurried to a medical tent, and the people said I would have to be sent immediately to a nearby hospital. They put me under, and when I woke up, I tried to lift my arm to scratch my nose. I felt nothing. It was in that moment that realization struck me: I was now handicapped. Now I have an artificial arm, and I can no longer be in the National Guard.”
Brigitte looked at her friend’s arm for the first time since Dagmar had arrived. It almost looked like a real arm, except that it didn’t match her tanned complexion.
“Is it functional?”
“No, it’s just for looks. At least it was the left one! I can still drive and stuff, but it’s not easy.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Dagmar shrugged, and then decided it was time to change the subject.
“So have you seen Shane lately?”
“I see him from time to time at Let’s Play Café. He’s always playing Halo on XBOX Live. Du meine Gute! Does he have a potty mouth?!”
“Yeah, that he does. You know, he’s the best kisser I’ve ever dated. I wonder if he’s still single…”
Brigitte shook her head.
“I’ve seen a girl with him at LPC. I can’t be sure, but it seemed like they were dating.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Yellow and black hair, and I mean really yellow, not blonde. It looks like she was aiming for the bee-wearing-a-vertical-pin-stripe-suit look,” Brigitte laughed. “It looked horrible. She was short, pale, and wore the most ridiculous clothes I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean a non-conformist thrift-shop look; I mean she thinks it looks good, but it doesn’t. And she wore the most hideous glasses, and I don’t mean-“
“Brigitte!” Dagmar interrupted. “Enough of the analogies! I got it with the first one! That’s Bea, and her hair is the worst visual pun I’ve ever seen. She’s his best friend’s girlfriend. I can’t understand what he was doing hanging out with her. He hates her. We should call him and see what’s up with that.”
“Maybe later, but right now, you absolutely MUST come and have a piece of this Schwarzwälderkirschtorte I made! It is so good!”
Dagmar’s eyes lit up in glee, and the comrades leapt from Brigitte’s hideous, tweed couch and ran into the kitchen. The sink was piled with remnants of the party, and Brigitte rolled her eyes upon the sight of it.
“Now I see how Mercedes and Millie managed to clean up so quickly,” she remarked in disgust. “Solche Schweine!” Such pigs! “Why do I even hang out with them?”
With a sigh and shake of her head, Brigitte dismissed the mess and led Dagmar to the fridge. She caught a glimpse of all the decorations that were covering it. There were a few shot of friends and family, but the majority was either shots of Green Day or things related to them. Dagmar cocked an eyebrow at Brigitte as her friend pulled the chocolate cake from its chilly home. When Brigitte caught this gesture as she spun around to lay the platter on the green counter, she returned it.
“What?” she asked.
“Your fridge is covered with even more Green Day stuff! Except for maybe this kid,” she said, pointing to a photo of a brown-eyed boy holding a shaggy puppy. “Who is that?”
“Um…Joseph Marcicano Armstrong?”
“Du lieber meine Gute!” Dagmar cried. “Don’t tell me that’s Billie Joe Armstrong’s son!”
“OK. I won’t…”
“I can’t believe you would have a picture of Billie Joe’s son on your fridge! Stalker much?”
“Hey, I resent that. Also, I can’t believe you would put it past me to have a photo of his son on my fridge.”
“Good point…but why Brigitte? What’s the point?”
“That’s a good question, and I have a good answer: to remind me that the members of Green Day are people, too, with their own lives and families.”
“But why do you need pictures for a reminder of that? Everyone knows that everyone has his or her own life and family, except for maybe you, meine Schwester. Green Day can’t be your life, and they certainly can’t be your family. Gosh! You’re so stupid!”
“I AM NOT!” Brigitte cried. “I just have a lot of respect for them! Can’t you just leave me be? If I want to decorate my house with something I like, then that is my business, not yours! You have no place whatsoever to tell me what I can and can’t do in my own home! Besides, these are not just a bunch of things I went out and got all at once: I’ve been collecting Green Day things for years and you know it!”
“Sei vernüftig, Brigitte,” be reasonable, Brigitte. “You do need to mellow down on the Green Day.”
“I can do whatever I please, and this conversation is over!”
Brigitte slammed her fist on the table, jostling their saucers of chocolate-and-cherry Torte. Dagmar’s mouth fell open in speechlessness upon Brigitte’s sudden change in attitude.
“I-I’m sorry, Geeta,” she stammered. “I was just trying to be realistic.”
“Not helping.”
“Change subject?”
“That’s what I said to do.”
Dagmar thought for a moment of what could ease the tension she created, and then she finally decided to tell of her time in the Middle East. She told her friend of how wonderful it was to play soccer with the local children and how sweet they were. This was obviously the key to assuaging the anger of her pal, for Brigitte smiled brightly and leaned in closer with interest. She could relate to the feelings Dagmar described to her, for she once spent time with children living in New Orleans during her church’s mission’s trip for hurricane disaster relief. She knew there was no greater reward than putting smiles on the faces of the children that one helps. Dagmar, then, began to talk of the pretty men there, and Brigitte leaned in even closer to her in heightened interest.
“Did you see somebody that looked like Sayid Jarrah?” she asked, her hazel eyes glowing with a lamp-like light.
“Was im Teufel?”
What the devil?
“You know! Sayid from Lost! The gorgeous Iraqi from the Republican Guard! The one who fixes all the technical stuff! Naveen Andrews?”
“Yeah, Brigitte,” Dagmar said with annoyed sarcasm. “I totally know what you’re talking about.”
Brigitte’s face wrinkled in offense.
“Come on, Dagmar! You’ve seen a few episodes of it! You should know who I’m talking about!”
“I’m not obsessed with it like you! I don’t know their names! Why do you even ask me these questions? You know I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s almost as if you’re showing off your knowledge.”
“I’m sorry,” smiled Brigitte. “It had to be done. And I do not try to show off! You just don’t understand the way I think about things.”
“Oh, I think I do.” Dagmar shook her head, and then ran her fingers through her spiky, green-and-black hair as she stretched and yawned.
“Where are you staying, meine Schwester?” Brigitte asked, ignoring her friend’s last comment as she polished off her last bite of torte.
“Nowhere, as of now. I don’t want my Oma to know I’m here right away, for I want to be sure she’s not too ill when I tell her of my accident. She loves me so much, and I don’t want to cause her worry.”
“Well, you’re always welcome to stay with me until your ready to tell your grandmother. I have a spare room that’s become no more than a storage room for Green Day stuff. I didn’t really intend for that to happen, but one pinup somehow became thirty posters.”
“Brigitte, your entire house is a shrine to Green Day.”
“Here we go again!” Brigitte protested. “I don’t have a shrine! I don’t worship them! I simply mean I admire their music…to a very extreme level.”
“Whatever you wanna call it, Geeta.”

Wiebke’s stubbornness against the consistent thud of her brother’s foot on her door broke down. She sighed heavily as she paused the pop music on her headphones, and she flung the door open to stare angrily at the young, brown-haired boy.
“What do you want, Basti?” she demanded.
“Dinner’s ready.”
“I’m busy. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Geeta’s here.”
Wiebke’s countenance changed immediately from annoyed to gleeful, and she shoved her younger sibling out of her way. Her feet pounded on the hardwood floors and echoed down the stairwell as she descended. Standing in the foyer was her twenty-two year old half-sister Brigitte, smiling and conversing with her mother. Beside her stood a slim, petite girl that Wiebke had never seen before who she concluded was a friend of Brigitte’s. Her older sister’s hazel eyes met Wiebke’s own, matching eyes, and her perfect smile lit up the entire room.
“WIEBKE!” she cried in greeting.
Brigitte wrapped her tattooed arms about Wiebke’s slender body and squeezed her in a warm embrace. She drew back to search her younger sister’s appearance for a new hairstyle or change in wardrobe.
“Wow, Wiebke! I totally dig the red highlights you put in your hair! It looks exactly how mine did the first time I got it done!”
“Thanks, Geeta! And I love your hair, of course! I’m so excited you got to get it done purple finally!”
“Me, too! Mom is disappointed, especially about the tats, but she’ll get over it. I’m the same girl I was before the makeover.”
“Indeed,” her friend scoffed.
“Who’s that?” Wiebke whispered into her sister’s ear, the cold metal of her multiple earrings brushing her lips.
“Oh, that’s Dagmar!” she laughed out loud. “She’s staying with me for a few weeks. She’s awesome, and she makes a good arm rest.”
Brigitte put her elbow comfortably on the shorter friend’s shoulder. An annoyed smile carved its way onto Dagmar’s face as she eyed Brigitte from the corner of her eye.
“You know I don’t like that.”
“Come on, meine liebe Freundin!”
Come on, my beloved friend!
Dagmar shrugged Brigitte’s elbow off her shoulder and turned in such an angle that her friend couldn’t do it again. Brigitte shook her head and turned back to her sixteen-year-old sister.
“So are you busy today?”
“Well, I was going to take Haushinka to the vet for some shots. She’s my new ferret.”
“Oh,” Brigitte smiled knowingly. “You really did listen to Nimrod!”
“What are you talking about?” Dagmar asked with a confused expression on her face.
“Haushinka is a girl with a peculiar name…” Brigitte sang.
“I met her on the eve of my birthday…” followed Wiebke.
“Did she know?”
“Did she know…”
“…before she went away?”
“OK! OK! I get it!” cried Dagmar. “It’s a song! Who’s it by?”
“Who do you think?” Brigitte replied.
“Green Day?”
“Korrekt!”
“You named a ferret after a character from a Green Day song? You’re almost as bad as your sister!”
“Actually, I’m more into Aly & A.J. and Hilary Duff. Green Day is really good, however.”
“Ok, then, you’re more like Jakob,” Dagmar corrected.
“Who’s Jakob?” questioned Wiebke.
“Ah, our dear friend Jakob!” sang Brigitte. “He’s one of our creepy friends. It would be best if we simply didn’t go there.”
“Ah. I feel special. I remind your friend of an odd character.”
“Nah,” Dagmar said. “Jakob’s only odd because he’s a twenty-three-year old guy that watches Disney. You have a right to like it. With him, it’s just weird. We still love him, though.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Anyway,” Brigitte said, turning to face Wiebke’s mom who had simply been standing silently to the side as the sisters caught up. “Would it be alright if Wiebke came and hung out with me today? We’re probably going to Coolidge Park and Cold Stone Creamery. I really think it’ll be fun.”
“I don’t see why not. I guess I can take Hau…hau…eh, I can’t say it…”
“Haushinka,” Wiebke offered.
“Yeah. Wiebke, you go and have fun and be back by ten. Don’t get into any trouble!”
“I won’t, Mutti. I never do.”

“Brigitte, can I use your cell phone?”
“Sure, Dagmar. Who are you calling?” Brigitte answered, handing her Sidekick to her friend.
“Shane. I’m going to see if he’ll meet us.”
An uneasy line spread across Brigitte’s forehead.
“I was hoping it would just be us three…”
“Come on, Geeta! I miss him, too.”
“Whatever,” she relented.
Dagmar dialed the number slowly, not being used to the sophisticated piece of technology that was the Sidekick. Brigitte could hear the Final Fantasy theme playing as Shane’s ring-back tone, and she smiled softly in approval. She, herself, was a Final Fantasy addict.
“Hey, Shane! What’s up? LPC? Oh, that’s cool. You know, all the money you spend there could go toward actually buying the systems. Yeah, I know. The environment’s cool. So can you meet us at Coolidge Park in about thirty minutes so we can catch up? It’s gonna be you, Brigitte, Brigitte’s sister Wiebke, and me. Really? Cool! Well, I’ll catch you there! Tchüssi!”
Dagmar smiled as she handed Brigitte back her phone.
“He’s going to come! I’m so excited!”
“Well, that’s cool! But he better buy his own ice cream, because I’m broke.”
“I’m sure you are, after spending hundreds of dollars on a special phone,” quipped Wiebke, who had been walking behind the two friends.
“I got a good deal on it. Leave me alone,” whined her sister.
“Anyway,” Dagmar began. “I hope that Shane doesn’t reject me since I’m now crippled.”
“If he does, I’ll cripple him!” Brigitte threatened.
The trio burst into laughter.