Invisible Ellen

by Shari Shattuck

  “And, since we first heard spider boy above us, he must have climbed up first on top of your apartment. We were looking out the back, so we know he didn’t go up that way. So how did he get up on this side?”

  Ellen’s eyes cut to the second kitchen window, the one over the sink. Its sill sat about four feet above the first-floor roof. Even as she watched, Mouse, his daily sojourn to relieve himself on the tar outside interrupted by the rain, slipped in through the broken pane, shook his head and meowed with disgruntled aversion before noticing Temerity and trotting over, stomach flapping.

  The window was barred on the outside, but Ellen had noticed a while ago that the bar’s weight had dragged the screws that held it in place halfway out of the crumbling stucco. Still, the thought of hauling herself through a kitchen window did not appeal to her, so she didn’t mention that.

  Temerity crouched and scratched thoughtfully behind Mouse’s moist, ragged ears. “You just came in that way, didn’t you, little buddy?” She turned toward Ellen for an explanation.

  Foiled by her untrustworthy feline, Ellen explained about the bars and the fact that, once on that rooftop, there was nothing but the sheer wall of her apartment, interrupted only by the window, up to the higher roof.

  Undeterred, Temerity found her way to the sink, explored the window’s surface and found the broken pane. Reaching through, she took hold of one of the three wide bars and gave it a shove. There was the sound of crumbling mortar, and the bars moved.

  “We can get this off!” Temerity said.

  “And then what?” Ellen was eyeing the window, about three by three, with distaste. “I told you, I’m not very nimble, or very small.”

  “Oh pish,” said Temerity. Ellen had never heard that word either, but the intonation defined it perfectly.

  Coming to join Temerity, Ellen leaned over the sink and gazed out as she spoke. “Even if we do get out there, how would we . . .” Her words trailed off. As she looked to the left, she could clearly see the base of a very old, very dilapidated wooden ladder leaning against the wall. And then she remembered.

  About two years ago, she’d been woken midmorning by the sound of shouting, loud stamping and a horrible stench. Creeping to the kitchen, she’d seen a crew of men with darkly tanned skin, all in red T-shirts, retarring the rooftop outside this very window. The curtain woman downstairs, she’d overheard later, had complained of leaks and stopped paying her rent until they were fixed. The ladder, covered in black drips of tar, the wood splitting in places and with two broken rungs, had been discarded along with half-empty tar buckets by the crew when they left after doing an extremely substandard job. It had lain flat under her window, rotting, since then, and Ellen had forgotten its existence. Now it seemed that spider boy had resurrected the death trap, propping it up next to her window for access to the higher roof.

  “Oh” came out of Ellen’s mouth before she could clamp it shut.

  “Aha,” said Temerity. “I knew it.”

  Even with the window pushed all the way open, the space was a tight and awkward squeeze for Ellen. First, she had to climb up onto the counter, put one foot into the sink, and the other out the window while seated, horsey style, on the sill. Then she folded over as best she could, and shimmied her bulk toward the outside while clinging to the faucet with one hand and stretching a cautious foot down to the roof outside. With nothing to step onto and a four-foot drop, she slipped and only avoided falling onto the wet tar in a heap by hooking the inside leg against the sill with the back of her crooked knee. It was painful, and, she imagined, about as graceful as a drunk on a greased donkey, but she managed to unhook the leg and find footing on the tar roof at last, knowing she’d be scraped, sore and sorry later.

  Temerity came next. Ellen talked her through the procedure, but she didn’t really seem to need it, swinging both legs out, turning onto her stomach and dropping neatly. When Ellen asked her how she had known how far down it was, she responded, “Your voice was right by my head.”

  “Oh,” Ellen said again, reminding herself to not forget her friend’s perspective.

  The ladder was a different story. Never one for leaving the ground unless it might be to escape a life-threatening situation, a rabid animal in pursuit perhaps, which, thankfully, had never come up, Ellen eyed the decrepit object with extreme distrust. She tried her weight on the first rung and the wood creaked threateningly.

  There were some things she just couldn’t do. “Nuh-uh, can’t do it,” she said, backing away. “Sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s old, it won’t hold my weight.” Ellen thought that was most likely true anyway.

  Temerity threw her arms out. “Fine. So I’ll do it.”

  The rain was a light mist, but it was substantial enough that, within minutes, both of their hair and faces were dotted with specks of moisture. Minutes filled with Ellen first trying in vain to talk Temerity out of the risky venture, giving up, and then explaining both the perils of the ladder and the lay of the land.

  “So, once you’re up you’ll have to go straight, turn left twice and then I’ll tell you which way to go.”

  “Like Marco Polo,” Temerity said.

  This was the second time she’d mentioned him. To clear up the connection, Ellen asked, “You mean because he was an explorer?”

  Temerity’s brow furrowed in what looked like confusion. She opened her mouth, then shut it. The corners of her mouth twitched. “Well, yes . . . that, but also because of a game that kids play in a pool.”

  Having never been to a pool, Ellen asked, “And why is that important now?”

  With a huge smile, Temerity said, “Because if it weren’t for him, the Italians wouldn’t have pasta.”

  Ellen felt an immediate affection for the man. “Well, thank him for me.”

  “I will, next time I see him. Get it? Okay, up I go.”

  “One more thing,” Ellen said, stopping her. “The roof is flat, but the edge around it is only about two feet high, so stay low. If you trip over it, it’s a long ways down.”

  Temerity grasped the ladder. “And your confidence in my bounciness is even lower. Got it.”

  “And I won’t be able to see you until you get to the front of the building. So I can’t tell you where to go until then.”

  “And I won’t be able to see you at all.”

  “Which brings up another point. How are you going to look for anything in the vent once you’re up there?”

  The blind girl held her hands in front of Ellen’s face and wiggled her fingers. “I’ll use my antennae. Okay, here we go.”

  Ellen watched, holding her breath, as Temerity started up. She maneuvered her way over the third missing rung, but tested her weight on the cracked fifth one. It gave and she dropped, one foot jamming behind the fourth rung as her hands slid down the slippery side supports. Ellen yelped and clapped her hands over her mouth, but Temerity wrapped her arms around the supports in a bear hug and stopped herself from flipping off backward. She was hanging by the back of one knee, not as ungracefully as Ellen in the windowsill, but with a great deal farther to fall. Her arms were so tight around the ladder she could have been giving it the Heimlich. Temerity grunted, rested her brow against a higher rung while she caught her breath, and muttered, “Ouch. You might have let me know that was one of the broken ones.” It was the only time Ellen had heard her sound annoyed, and she did not blame her. With a strong pull, Temerity worked her way up again and reached the lip of the roof above.

  “One more rung, and then you can step over the ledge,” Ellen called up. “Be careful!” In another five seconds, Temerity disappeared onto the roof and Ellen found that she was frantic with worry. Was she insane? Letting the sightless girl negotiate a vent and wirestrewn obstacle course thirty feet off the ground. But another glance at the ladder convinced her that, out of the two of them, Temerity was the only girl for
the job. Like she could have stopped her anyway.

  Rushing to the edge of the roof, she strained her neck to see around the corner of her own apartment and up. In a few moments, she spotted Temerity. Crouching, with one hand on the roof’s raised ledge to guide her, she was moving toward the front of the building. She made the first turn and kept moving until she reached the far side of the U-shaped roof. When her fingers had found that corner, she straightened up and called out in as low a voice as would carry, “Ready? Let’s play pin the crime on the guilty party.”

  “Turn a little to your right,” Ellen called out softly. “Okay, go straight about five steps.” Temerity took two of those steps confidently then lurched forward, disappearing from view beyond the roof’s ledge. Ellen’s hands flew up to cover her mouth. “Oh my God, I’ve killed her,” she mumbled.

  “I’m okay!” Temerity’s muffled voice announced, and in a moment she was up again, but this time she stayed low, arms extended in front of her, and moved more cautiously.

  “A few more steps, almost there! Okay, reach out your right hand a little farther.”

  “Got it!” Temerity said, running her hands over the aluminum exhaust vent. It stuck up about four feet, was maybe a foot and a half in diameter and had a peaked cap to keep the rain out. The conical cap sat over several large openings in the cylinder, each maybe ten inches square, meant to vent whatever furnace was in the basement below. Ellen watched as Temerity circled around it, feeling the ground behind it and then up the sides.

  “Anything?” Ellen called, glancing down nervously to the empty courtyard below. She had been afraid curtain lady would hear them, but her back door remained closed and the courtyard deserted. Odd.

  “I think that there’s something tied onto this strip part between the openings. It’s holding something that’s hanging down on the inside.”

  There were twenty seconds of silence and then Temerity straightened up, holding a bundle over her head like a trophy. “Got it!” she said. “Does this look like it could be it?”

  The light had grown too faint for Ellen to make out the color, but it did indeed look as though it could be an item of clothing tied into a bundle.

  “Come back,” Ellen said. “And we’ll see. Go straight, be careful!”

  Tucking the bundle under her left arm and extending her right, Temerity started forward in her spider crouch, back toward the inside corner of the roof. She rounded it and continued along the front third of the building. Ellen was watching her so intently, it wasn’t until her friend turned the second corner and disappeared from her line of vision that she saw the man.

  He had come back, up the metal ladder this time on the far side, so that in the dying light his silhouette was outlined by the streetlights behind him. A scream froze in Ellen’s throat. He was clearly fixed on Temerity. Though Ellen couldn’t see exactly where she was, he began to advance toward where she must be, moving slowly to stay silent and stealthy, and Ellen realized he was going to sneak up on her from behind.

  Ellen ran to the ladder and grasped the rough, rotting wood in both hands. She stepped up onto the first rung; it gave slightly, creaked, but held. The second one also took her weight. The third rung was gone, so Ellen twisted sideways to clear enough space to raise her knee high enough for her foot to reach the fourth rung and pulled herself up, her arms shaking with the effort. The whole ladder bowed with her weight, and she heard it groaning and cracking threateningly beneath her. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and the rain was coming in earnest now, so she could not hear her friend’s approach, and spider boy had a lifetime of experience creeping silently across rooftops. Ignoring the distance to the ground, Ellen continued on up, clearing the edge of the roof with her head and shoulders. One more rung and her waist was level with the ledge. She could see the man, only twenty feet behind Temerity. Getting up the ladder had been challenge enough, but maneuvering her bulk around it, by stepping over open air onto the higher roof, seemed impossible, and for a second, Ellen’s resolve wavered. She wrapped both arms around the ladder and clung there, her courage frozen like a rabbit caught out in an open field.

  The man, his attention telescoped on Temerity and the bundle, began to move faster. She was only five yards away from the ladder, still moving steadily but cautiously toward Ellen, one arm sweeping the air in front of her as she advanced, bent almost in half. Her stalker was closing the distance between them. Ellen gritted her teeth and tried to force her muscles to unclench, but she was paralyzed with fear.

  Then Ellen saw him reach under his loose shirt, and her eyes focused hard on his right hand. She noticed a semicircle of small scabs on the back of his hand, between his finger and thumb, that resembled a bite mark. As the hand emerged, she saw the knife in it. The timid animal in Ellen morphed into a predatory beast. She threw herself sideways with a great lurch, angling her upper body onto the roof and landing hard on her forearms just inside the ledge, the rest of her body flopping onto the tar behind her. Temerity halted. “Ellen?”

  “Behind you!” Ellen called out as she struggled to her feet. Temerity, just in front of her, spun, still crouched, and listened for the unseen threat. The man hesitated, then started forward again with more determination. Ellen got the rubber soles of her Converse firmly against the tar and rushed around Temerity at the man, who spun toward her in alarm. He was no taller than Ellen, and considerably thinner. She hit him hard from the side and he went down, the hand with the knife smacking onto the rough surface, sending the knife flying. It landed near Temerity with a dull metallic clunk. She dropped to her knees and began to fumble for it.

  “Get off me, you fat fu—” the man began, but Ellen rose up and slammed down on him again, aiming the bulk of her weight at his stomach, and his rude demand concluded with an “—oof.”

  “Stay away from my friend,” Ellen screamed in a rage. One of his hands came free and found her face, he dug his fingers into her cheek, and Ellen twisted to protect the good side of her face. Grabbing at his wrist to pull his hand away, she vaguely registered that the arc of bite marks was matched on his palm side. She glared down at him and his eyes went wide with horror. He yanked his hand away as though it had landed in acid, and squirmed to get free of her. She rose up to slam down on him again and he rolled away, his face filled with shock and revulsion as he gaped at her. Temerity had found the knife and was clutching it in her free hand, but she was obviously sightless and uncertain which way to turn. The man dragged his eyes from Ellen’s scar and began to sidle toward Temerity, inch by inch. Ellen shifted to put herself between them. The man stared at Ellen with a sickened expression and breathed out, “What are you?” as he clutched at his injured stomach.

  A ball of pain formed in Ellen’s gut, rose to her chest like a flaming catapult, and she released it, hurling it at him with a scream. “I’m the person who’s going to stop you from hurting anyone else!” She could feel tears of rage from her bruised life stinging her eyes, but the reaction only made her more determined to hurt this bastard, to hurt everyone who had ever looked at her with disgust. Moving to Temerity, she snatched the knife from her friend’s hand, put her head down and rushed him, an animal roar emerging from her chest, catching him in the side with her shoulder and sending him flying. She stood over him, raising the knife to strike. She lunged, but he evaded her as he fumbled to his hands and feet, already scrambling back across the roof. “And don’t come back, you little termite!” Ellen had fallen onto her knees. They were scraped, her pants were torn, but she felt nothing but fury. “Run away!” she screamed. “Back to your hole, you mean, horrible, hateful cockroach. You’re not better than me! You’re an insect!” Ellen put her head back and screamed up at the sky, tears mixing with the rain.

  She felt an encompassing presence. Temerity had wrapped her arms around her and she was shushing her, cooing and soothing, but Ellen was shaking and sobbing. “Go away,” she said brokenly. “I don’t want you to know ab
out this. I don’t want to be this. Just go away.” She pushed at Temerity, but the girl locked her wrists and held on tight. They stayed there, struggling and rocking until Ellen’s strength gave out and the rocking won. “Leave me alone,” Ellen moaned.

  And Temerity laughed.

  The sound stunned Ellen so sharply that it deadlocked her hysteria. She looked up at Temerity’s face in a half sob, completely at a loss.

  “Nuh-uh, can’t do it,” her friend said. “Sorry.”

  The arms of the lightweight jacket lay flung out across the floor of Ellen’s room as though it had collapsed there, exhausted, staring up at the ceiling. They had unzipped the jacket and on the body of the fabric lay three objects.

  The gun, which they’d been careful not to touch, had its business end pointed toward the sofa, but Ellen kept one eye on it as if it might spontaneously go off. The large brown paper bag, reeking of marijuana, rested near the gun’s handle. The smaller paper bag was right in front of Temerity’s crossed legs.

  Temerity felt for it, picked it up and tested its weight.

  “Feels like money,” she said. “Lots of it.”

  “Should we open it?” They were the first words Ellen had spoken since her breakdown on the roof. She was cowed, ashamed of the outburst, shaken by her loss of control. Temerity had said that it was a good thing, and she’d actually sounded impressed when she’d said it, as she coerced Ellen down the ladder and back through the window with a constant stream of encouragement and praise. Ellen could not agree. She was disturbed that so much pain and anger had been exposed, and even more disturbed that it had even been there. Though she had to admit that the injection of fury had proved useful, she did not ever want to feel that much again. She’d thought she was through being impaled on that kind of spiked, cold metal pain. She’d worked so hard to put it all aside and just exist, floating in a mushier, neutral place. Temerity had told her, in the course of her soothing monologue, that Ellen should not feel badly about having such a reaction, that it was brave for her to allow that anger and hurt to come out. She’d actually said she was glad it had happened, that it was a good thing, but Ellen would have chosen numbness over that insufferable anguish any day; in fact, she did choose numbness every day. But a half hour of Temerity’s ministrations had smoothed her razor-slashed nerves enough to go on.