"Hey, kid," she said, startled, "hey, kid"-and took me in her arms. When she straightened up, she saw I was crying. Then she took my pail and sent a second wave of water across the walk. She swung her arm, the water sluiced down across the walk and washed the vomit into the gutter. I took the other one, filled it, and followed her through the entryway. "Get that one!" There were two pails standing by the faucet she grabbed one and filled it. The woman turned on the tap, washed my hand first, and then cupped both of hers and threw water in my face. Wood was stacked in the courtyard in an open workshop a saw screamed and shavings flew. Up above there were lines strung from window to window, loaded with laundry. The woman seized my arm and pulled me through the dark entryway into the courtyard. When rescue came, it was almost an assault. I leaned against the wall of the building, looked down at the vomit around my feet, and retched something clear and sticky. My mouth was suddenly full, I tried to swallow everything down again, and clenched my teeth with my hand in front of my mouth, but it all burst out of my mouth anyway straight through my fingers. That was another thing that had never happened to me before. I woke up every morning with a dry mouth and the sensation that my insides were in the wrong place and too heavy for my body. Even if I sat down at the table hungry, I soon felt queasy. When I was faced with stairs either at home or at school, my legs would hardly carry me. I'd been feeling weak for days, in a way that was completely new to me.
That's where I'd thrown up on the way home from school one day the previous October. The first time I ventured outside, it was to go from Blumenstrasse, where we lived on the second floor of a massive turn-of-the-century building, to Bahnhofstrasse. As dusk came one evening in February, there was the sound of a blackbird singing. I saw sky, sun, clouds, and heard the voices of children playing in the courtyard. January was warm, and my mother moved my bed out onto the balcony. Things didn't start to improve until the new year. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker and weaker. It started in the fall and lasted until spring.
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