The Story

I think he’s almost two now. I’m not even really sure he’s a boy. That’s just the only way I can see it. I haven’t spoken to her since we came back, and that was the way I wanted it. Not because I felt ashamed. I just didn't really like her.

I tell the story about her often, at parties or dinners, lying in bed with a new lover, whispered over the phone. It has such a great opener.

     Have I told you how I got a girl pregnant?

This is funny because I am, myself, a girl. It piques interest. This story really kills at parties. It’s the kind of narrative that, when you tell it just so, everyone in the room leans in and strains to hear you.

I lead in with the part where was just me and Andi and it was Europe and we were the best of friends. The part where everybody loved us, even our German boyfriend’s mothers who liked our long, reckless hair and our twangy accents when we said words like bezhalen and flugzeug.

Until Bonnie showed up. I say how she was home-schooled, and everybody groans and rolls their eyes. We all know what this means. They see her already: frizzy, braided hair, dumpy body, old-maid dresses. Awkward and unsure. The way she trailed after us every moment away from school or work. Even my birthday when Konrad and Michael took us for an absinthe, she insisted on going.

When I tell that, I call up how she sat in that chair to my left, staring forever at the wine list, asking me what to order, pulling on her too-long skirt. Like a 200-pound backpack, slung over that one shoulder. But I don’t say that in my story.

Oh, but that’s not all, I explain. That would not have been so bad. She also thought she was so clever. Better than Andi and I. Everyone always nods. Everyone knows a Bonnie. So, she both trailed us and loathed us, inserting herself into our every conversation and confidence to make note of herself. She spoke two more languages than I had learned. She had gotten A’s in Biology when Andi managed a mere B+. Constant, exhaustive lists of ways in which Bonnie was somehow preferable over us.

One day, in a beloved side-street cafe, over a plate of pommes frites, Andi confessed she had done something awful. The look on Bonnie’s face said she has never wanted to hear a thing more. I mimic the face for everyone, eyes wide, lips pursed. They pause in anticipation. Andi had slept with her German boyfriend. I laugh. Everyone listening laughs along, how cute it is. It’s such a silly reason to be ashamed. I looked to Bonnie, awaiting the imminent denunciation. She was awestruck. For the first day since she had arrived, she had no opinion. She sat in silence for five minutes, finished her coffee, and quietly excused herself.

At this point, everyone laughs. The story is fleshing out. Like driving on the edge of a blizzard, we can finally see where the road is going and we’re comfortable.

Once we realized that sex was the only thing that Bonnie had no interest in, the only arena where our opinions could be valid, Andi and I found more excuses to bring it up. We transformed into skanks, sluts, nymphomaniacs. We padded figures of how many lovers and described invented scenarios in ghastly detail. We made sure to bring every male guest into our bedroom, locking her in the living room alone to imagine. This was a fun game. I make sure to smile as I tell it.

One day, I said I hoped I was not pregnant. I even bought a test and left it in the bathroom. Andi thought that was a good touch. I don’t tell this part to the audience, either.

One afternoon, we came home to find the apartment was locked up and Bonnie was not in it. She had the only key, since never left. We didn’t know where she had gone. People sometimes gasp here, although I’m not sure why. If we had died or something, this story would not exist.

We found her two hours later; she was working late. She let us in, then left again, to the market, she said. Andi and I drank huge bottles of Beck’s while we watched some dubbed cartoons and said how uncomfortable she seemed with us. That maybe this joke has gone on long enough. We were ready to say sorry when Bonnie got home.

Only Bonnie didn’t come home. We called everyone we could think of in the city. No one had seen her. Some didn’t understand who we were talking about, weren’t sure who she was.
     Wer ist Bonnie?          
The boys we knew brought more Beck’s and we all napped in shifts. Getting buzzed and waiting for the buzzer.

When day had begun, she finally came back. Andi and I were livid. We took the keys from her, demanded to know where she was. Then, she said the most incredible thing. She was with her boyfriend. She told us she had met a man who worked the falafel stand by the train station and she was moving in with him. And she did. She moved in with a stranger rather than spend another moment with us.

While we packed her things, Andi and I told her we know how big of a deal the first time is and we are here if she needs us and use condoms and call us so we know you are alive.

And then she was gone.

The rest of our time in town, people who knew would ask. Her teacher was my friend, would call me in the mornings. Why wasn’t she in school?

Wo ist Bonnie?

I didn’t know, so I made jokes.

Ich weiss nicht. Ist es Bonnie-freie Freitag? Bonnie-free Friday.

Andi and I hiked, boated, drank every stout beer on the bottom shelf of the rack at the supermarket. I tried not to picture her pasty, dimpled body writhing under some aging, hairy Turkish man as I kissed the smooth faces of nineteen year old Patricks and Jakobs.

We went home more tan and blonde, our bottoms firm and round from all of the walking and biking thrust upon us. We went home with hundreds of pictures and dozens of names and phone numbers. We hugged at the train station, knowing it was a thing we would think about forever.

The next time I saw Bonnie, it was September and I was back at my alma matter to visit a friend. I was seated on a park bench, pushing buttons with my phone the way you do when you're trying to look busy. It was the type of day when it’s still warm but the fog creeps up on you as the morning wears on. The sun had come out and lit everything so it seemed as though we were all inside a Chinese paper lantern. Bonnie walked past me, but she didn’t notice me sitting there. Unless she did. She had the same frizzy hair, still half braided. She wore a sad, matronly dress. This time, though, it was covering a shockingly distended belly. I nearly dropped to the sidewalk at the sight of her. Everyone listening gets wide-eyed and ooohs.

I leave out the part about how I called Andi and she told me that the man never came for Bonnie in the States like he said he would. And how she was so scared of her Baptist parents that she claimed she had been raped and they threatened to sue the school. And how, when she met us, she had said wanted to be an opera singer. And that she really did have a nice voice when she sang around our apartment.Those kinds details might really bring down a party.

And I guess no one has seen her since she popped that thing.

Usually, at this point, we all raise our glasses of Guinness or whiskey or cabernet sauvignon and laugh.

To Bonnie! They say.

To Bonnie-frei jeden Tag! I joke. Bonnie-free everyday.