by Krisztina Janosi
As I hurry down the stairs to catch the tram, I wave a last goodbye to my mom. I look at my phone to check the time, and, yep, I’d better take off. So I run. All the way, all hundred-and-ninety meters from our gate to the tram stop. Ugh. To no avail. The tram is gone. I missed it again. I know what comes next. You’re late again, the third time in a row. Sit down and pull yourself together. Okay, exactly. That is what I’m trying to do, but nothing seems to work.
I get to school only five minutes late. Not bad. I race upstairs as fast as I can, but there are so many stairs. I just can’t do it that quickly. I counted them once. The exact number is sixty-eight. And here we go.
The teacher looks at me as if I were some kind of disgusting nuisance, gruffly instructing me to sit down. I haven’t done my homework either, since I played Scrutiny on my phone all day and somehow couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sometimes mom does it for me, but this time it had to be written by hand, so she couldn’t. I didn’t even mention it to her. Because then she would also have nagged me to death. We would have fought about it, but I still wouldn’t have done it. I know myself. I am hopeless.
So here we are. The teacher asks us to pull out our homework. I’m trying to disappear and stay very very quiet, praying he will not pick me. This time I don’t end up on the hook, but last time I got an F for the very same reason. As I already said, I just can’t motivate myself to do homework. Mom is always annoying me about this. I just want her to leave me alone. But she can’t do it. No one seems to understand me. Sometimes even Bloopie is coming up to me as if he were my mom, demanding I clean up my room. What part of “leave me alone” can’t they understand?
When the school day is finally over, I’m not much happier, since I got reprimanded by the teacher for the foul language I was allegedly using. Mom will not understand this either, but I have to tell her anyway. Otherwise, she’ll find out from the teacher, and it will be way worse.
I am walking home with some of my classmates, trying to have at least a little fun before my mom gets angry at me. We decide to go shop-hopping in Mammut Mall, which is just around the corner. We don’t have much money on us, so we skip Starbucks, but we do cram in Rossmann, DM, Pepco, even a cosmetics shop to look at the bath bombs. We are looking at them until, poof, one of us somehow drops one. As it splashes on the floor, we want to run away, but it’s too late. One of the employees has spotted us. There’s no escaping. We have to pay for the damage, so we all chip in, but it’s still not enough. Really, why does a stupid bath bomb have to be so expensive? It’s their fault. Anyway, we give them what we have – with everybody chipping in. The employee looks at us with a strict expression, shakes her head and finally lets us go with a deep sigh. It was funny and miserable at the same time. Hell, I hate this. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel. I want to laugh at it, but I know it’s wrong. Why did it have to happen to us? Somehow, nothing seems to be working lately. The only good thing is that I live close by, because now all I want is to be home where I am at least safe. Sigh. Or not. Mom will be mad at me because of the reprimand. To hell with that, too. Everything is a mess today.
I take the two hundred and forty-eight steps from the mall on Margit Boulevard, open the big brown wooden gate, which gives a loud creek as I push it in, and closes with a big deep reverberating bang after I’m in. I head upstairs. Slowly I walk to our apartment, and plop down in the corridor next to the door. I sit there for a few minutes, and only get up because I’m afraid some neighbor will spot me and tell me I’m going to catch a cold. Which is nonsense anyways. It’s the middle of May. So I walk in. Mom sees through me right away, and I can’t help but tell her about the reprimand. Apparently she is learning. She doesn’t take it that bad. So I proceed with my daily routine, which is laying down on the bed to play Scrutiny.
Soon it’s evening again. I hate evenings. This is the time of the day when Mom starts to nag me about homework, showering, cleaning my room and all that. And, as a bonus, we always end up fighting. I just don’t get it. Why does she have to shout at me for nothing? Life could be so peaceful if she shut up for once. This time I tell her I’ve had enough of her constant whining. It would be so nice to get away from this all. I wish I could do that one day. Yes, I’d walk out of this craziness for good, turn my back on the green walls of my room, the mess I always make, Bloopie’s whining, and the most annoying thing in my life, which is Mom’s badgering. I’d leave behind the yellow buildings on the boulevard, the stuffed smog of the city, and maybe even leave this whole civilization, with all the people that annoy me and that I annoy.
This thought lingers in my head, and the more I think about it, the more comforting it gets. I wish I could just do it. I wonder if they’d miss me, though. Could it be that secretly they also liked the idea of me running away? Subconsciously. Well, I hope that is not the case. I hope mom would get hysterical, and would search everywhere, go to the police, call everyone, just to find her one and only little sweet daughter.
Anyway, I’d just fill my backpack, walk down crowded Margaret Avenue to Széll Kálmán Square, descend into the raw concrete station and take the subway to the Southern Railway Station. Look at the homeless who are gathering in the underground passage and around the station area. Some of them are old, have been living out in the open there for years, decades even. Some of them are young like me, but being homeless has made them look old. Who knows, one day I might end up like them.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)
April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
September: Torn – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)
October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino Uberti (Uruguay)
December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Single left, middle and right column: Budapest, Hungary – Üllői street – That guy from Hungary (Shutterstock)
Left tripartite column (top to bottom): 1. Budapest, Hungary – By sea, by road, by rail – J. Wang (Shutterstock); 2. Velence, Hungary – At the train station – Posztos (Shutterstock); 3. Budapest, Hungary – At the train station – Csiki photo (Shutterstock)
Right tripartite column (top to bottom): 1. Szeget, Hungary – The courtyard playground – Fotogurmespb (Shutterstock); 2. Budapest, Hungary – On the rails – Jiamin Huang (Unsplash); 3. Velence, Hungary – Lake Velence – Csiki photo (Shutterstock)