by Rachel Klein
I’ve never heard Lucy curse before.
I’m just as annoyed at Lucy as she is at me. I only brought up the subject of Ernessa not eating to see if anyone else has noticed. I’m not making it up. She doesn’t eat. I’m glad I’m going to Wilmington with Sofia for the weekend. I want to have a whole weekend without thinking about Ernessa and Lucy once. After breakfast, it crossed my mind to feel Ernessa’s arms, to see if they are covered with fuzz. She’s not the kind of person you touch, though, and she always wears long sleeves and tights, even when it’s warm out. Somehow I don’t think she’s going to join us for strip poker.
A few days ago she came into Lucy’s room while Sofia was on the toilet, taking a pee. All of a sudden, Ernessa shouted, “Shut the door!” We all stopped talking. The only sound was the stream of piss hitting the toilet bowl.
“I can’t,” shouted Sofia. “I’m on the toilet.”
“I don’t want to hear you on the toilet,” said Ernessa.
Lucy hurried over to the bathroom and pulled the door shut. She was embarrassed.
Going to the bathroom in front of each other means that we have no secrets.
I guess Lucy doesn’t pee in front of Ernessa, since she finds it so disgusting.
October 23
Today I did something that I’ve never done before. I was in Mrs. Halton’s sitting room again, finally getting her to sign my permission slip, and I said to her, “I have to complain about Ernessa’s room. It smells so bad. I can’t stand to walk by it.”
The words came out by themselves.
“No one else has complained,” said Mrs. Halton as she signed the form. She wasn’t really paying attention to what I said. It’s true that no one else is bothered the way I am. But I’m very sensitive to smells. In the summer, at the beach, I can’t stand it when the bathroom gets all mildewy because the towels and bath mat are always wet.
I could have dropped the subject, but I didn’t want to. “The smell is nauseating. I can’t stand it. My room is just across the corridor.”
Mrs. Halton looked up at me from under her half glasses. “I thought you would be more sympathetic to the poor girl. Since you’re both in the same situation.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. I wanted to know if she was politely referring to the fact that we were the only Jews around. But she meant something different.
“About her father,” said Mrs. Halton, now flustered. She straightened the papers in a brass letter holder on her desk as she spoke, so that she wouldn’t have to look at me. “The unfortunate situation … that is, he took his own life.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “But it doesn’t make any difference. I don’t have anything against her. It’s just that her room stinks, and it’s bothering me.”
“I’ll talk to Ernessa. But she’s very particular. She won’t allow anyone in there to clean. She promised to take care of it herself. Her room is always neat when I inspect it. Maybe she only needs to air it out.”
Why is Ernessa always allowed to keep her door closed when the rest of us have to leave our doors open so our rooms can be inspected after breakfast?
She shouldn’t be allowed to get around the rules. Last year I pushed my dresser into the closet so that I could have more room, and Mrs. Dunlap made me move it back. She told me: “The school bulletin says that each room will be furnished with a desk, chair, bed, dresser, and lamp. What if a visitor comes to inspect your room and doesn’t see a dresser? That won’t do at all.”
I’m not trying to get Ernessa into trouble. I’ve never “told” on another girl like that. But I can’t stand the smell.
I never tried to get sympathy from anyone. I never used my father as an excuse for anything.
October 25
After dinner
Lucy was so cold to me. I didn’t see her all weekend, and she didn’t seem at all pleased to see me. She’s never been like that before. Did I just imagine that we were best friends and shared a suite?
When we signed in, I tried to look back over the sign-up sheets to see what Lucy did over the weekend, but Miss Olivo was getting annoyed. It was almost time for dinner, and there was a long line of girls waiting to sign in.
“I just want to make sure I remembered to sign out when I left on Friday,” I muttered.
I asked Dora what Lucy did over the weekend. I was afraid to ask Lucy. She’d never tell me if she did something with Ernessa. I’m sure she did. I tried hard to be casual. Dora didn’t know anyway. For once I was glad that she didn’t really pay attention to what I was saying.
I wanted to get back to school, but now I’m sorry that I’m back. This has ruined the whole weekend.
October 26
It was so nice to be away with Sofia, just the two of us all weekend. I didn’t think about school once.
Sofia understands something important that the other girls can’t, that nothing is quite the way it seems. They are all so literal-minded. We can also talk about our families for hours without getting bored.
We had Sunday lunch at her grandparents’ house. Estate, I mean. Their house used to be a little stone cottage, about two hundred years ago. Over the centuries, various wings have been added on to it. There’s even an elevator and secret passages between the upstairs bedrooms. (I don’t know why. I doubt her ancestors were having clandestine love affairs or political intrigues.) Sofia took me down to the basement. It’s a warren of dark little rooms. In one there are shelves with ancient cans of food, all rusty and dirty. You’d probably die if you ate it. There’s also a little gas stove and a machine her grandfather rigged up with an old bicycle to generate electricity. If there were a nuclear holocaust, who would want to survive? You’d never be able to come out of your shelter. You’d be trapped underground until you ran out of food and water. Pretty soon the air raid shelter would start to feel like your tomb.
Her grandparents are always very nice to me, especially her grandfather, even though I’ve never said more than ten words to him. It must be because of my father. He used to say that rich people love to rub shoulders with poets and artists. Sofia’s grandfather spends his time working on scientific inventions and raking the leaves on the grounds because he’s so rich that he never has to work. Sofia thinks it’s very sad. Up on the hill behind the house is a little studio that her grandmother had built so that she could paint. She doesn’t paint anymore because she’s almost blind, but she painted until she was almost eighty. Her paintings are everywhere in the house. The strange thing is that all the paintings look as if they were done by a young woman. They don’t change; they have an charming innocence. I’m already much more self-conscious.
After lunch we went up to the attic. It’s an enormous room, filled with bookcases and rugs and furniture. It’s like a house itself. From a drawer in a desk, Sofia took out the journals her grandmother and her great-grandmother kept when they were younger. She found them up there, but she’s never told anyone because she’s not sure if she’s allowed to read them. We read from them out loud. Her grandmother was very matter-of-fact. She listed all the things she did each day – where she went, what she ate, the weather, that sort of thing. Nothing moved her; even her tour of Europe hardly made an impression: “Reached Zurich at nightfall. Could barely stay awake during dinner. Today weather the same. We had a delightful cruise on the lake and stopped to dine at a little town with a medieval castle.” Her great-grandmother was the exact opposite. She went on and on in syrupy prose: “The hand of One far greater than us had taken up His brush and drawn it across the sky in huge swathes of purple and red. From the deck of the boat, I could see His handiwork illuminate the entire sky, clear to the horizon. It was a canvas as vast as Michelangelo could dream up. The majestic beauty clutched at my heart and made me giddy. I reached out and grasped the hand of my beloved.”
Her great-grandmother ran away with her sister’s fiancé when she was sixteen years old. She was madly in love with him. Sofia’s grandmother could never forgive her mother for disgracin
g the family. That’s why she’s so emotionally repressed. Maybe she can only let go and express beauty in her paintings. I love to hear stories like that. I could listen to them all day.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if the words are true or a lie. They serve the same purpose.
“The King in Yellow”: A book whose words are beautiful, true, and simple yet destroy the reader by driving him mad. Would I be able to resist looking at it? Is there any book I could resist?
October 27
Night
For the first time, I’m embarrassed to write something in my journal.
After lights out, Charley came into my room along the gutter. She didn’t need to. We don’t have Mac breathing down our necks anymore. Mrs. Halton is so lazy that nothing would drag her out of her room. I still go along the gutter sometimes, just to do it. The roof slopes down under you, and you can’t see the ground below. It doesn’t feel so high. Charley has always been the bravest of us. Once on the fourth floor, she stood up and walked a few feet as if she were on solid ground, holding out her arms and balancing herself. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw her do it.
Charley came to tell me something she’s found out about Willow. When I heard there was a girl in the class named Willow, I imagined someone so tall and thin that she swayed in the breeze, with wavy blond hair that fell to her waist. Willow is perfectly nice, but she’s chubby and has dark, wispy hair. Her huge brown eyes never blink, like the eyes of a cow. She’s from San Francisco, the only girl from so far away besides Ernessa. About a month ago, she met a man on the train going into town. He started talking to her, and she probably just giggled. He’s a businessman, in his forties, married and with kids, and now she’s having an affair with him. He picks her up after school in his car, on the corner outside the front gate, and takes her to a hotel downtown where they “get it on big time,” as Charley puts it. Charley caught her getting into his car a few days ago, and she made Willow tell her everything. What a mistake. Everyone knows that Charley can’t keep her mouth shut.
If I had to pick one girl in the class who is the most unlikely girl to do something like this, it would be Willow. She looks like an overgrown baby. And she’s always laughing. She sounds like she’s hiccupping when she laughs, and her chin shakes. She told Charley that she loves having sex. It’s an addiction, like eating chocolate. She can’t help herself.
My first year at school, we sat at the back of the assembly room, right in front of the row of teachers, and I used to spend the whole assembly staring at the seniors sitting on the stage behind Miss Rood. There was one senior, in the front row on the left, who fascinated me. I don’t know why. When I saw her in the hallway of the Schoolhouse with her friends, I used to follow her. I liked to watch her walk, to look at her black hair. It touched her shoulders without a ripple. Her name was Ellen Mardsen. I thought she was so beautiful and so grown up. She was perfect, even though she wasn’t particularly smart or nice or interesting. Each morning, I stared at her over the top of the red hymnbook. I forgot about how much I hated singing hymns. Then one day, she wasn’t in assembly. Her seat wasn’t empty. All the seniors had moved over one seat to fill the space she had left. She had never existed. I must have imagined that glossy sheet of black hair fitting her head like a helmet. After assembly, there was a buzz. All the teachers tried to stop it, but they couldn’t control us once we reached the Passageway. Ellen had left school because she was pregnant. She couldn’t hide it any longer, and her corridor teacher had discovered it over the weekend. They made her leave right away. Her mother picked her up the same day. They couldn’t have someone like her around for a instant longer. She was a bad example for the rest of us. She was a disease you could catch.
I never noticed anything different about her.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to have sex with a man. To be so intimate with another person. Not to hide anything. I don’t know if I could do that. It would have to be a boy anyway, not a grown man, someone as scared as me.
After Charley left, I tried to go to sleep, but all I could think about was Willow in bed with the married man. He was on top of her, moving up and down. I saw his hairy arms and back, his balding head, his sagging stomach. The thought of them together made me ill.
Last year so many seniors snuck out at night and met their boyfriends over at Brangwyn College. There was an epidemic of sex.
For now, girls are all I need.
October 28
After hockey I was starved, so I went to buy a chocolate turtle from Sofia. She’s selling candy for the Service League. I opened the door and saw Sofia sitting on the floor with a huge glass jar of honey between her legs. She was reaching into the jar with a spoon, but when she heard me, she was so startled she dropped the spoon into the jar. It drifted down through the thick golden-brown honey and came to rest against the glass as if it were stuck in amber.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. What’s that?”
“A new diet,” she said sheepishly.
“Honey’s a diet?”
“Well, it’s a variation on a diet. It’s the one Lion’s on, where she eats a grapefruit before each meal and then she’s not so hungry.”
“Yes.”
“I’m eating citrus, lemons, and grapefruits, with honey, because they are so sour. And sometimes just honey.”
“I was looking for you at lunch, but I couldn’t find you,” I said.
“I don’t want to be tempted.”
“Then I’ll buy some of those chocolate turtles, so you won’t be tempted to eat those.”
“I don’t have any more. That’s why I’m on my diet.”
I stared at her.
“Not all of them. Just most of them. I kept putting fifty cents in the box and eating a turtle and putting fifty cents in the box and eating a turtle and putting fifty cents in the box.”
I started laughing. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages. I had to stop; my stomach was hurting. I love Sofia. No one else can make me laugh like that.
“You can have some honey,” said Sofia. “If I can get this damn spoon out.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Why is Lion on a diet? She doesn’t even have an ass. It’s totally flat.”
Lion is called that because she has a mane like a lion. Her light brown hair is incredibly thick, and it sticks straight out. She has such a strange-looking body. Nothing matches; the parts seem to come from different people: no ass, sagging breasts, rolls of fat around her stomach, slender calves, and bony ankles.
“That’s because she had to spend a year in bed lying on her back because she had such a bad reaction to penicillin. She doesn’t like her boobs, they’re droopy. And her stomach’s too fat.”
“No diet is going to change her boobs. That’s they way they came.”
Sofia doesn’t believe me. She thinks a diet can transform someone. But in two days she’ll be back at lunch, so it doesn’t matter anyway.
October 29
When I first came to school, all the girls were nice to me, but I knew they talked about me behind my back. I would have, too. No one comes to school in the middle of the year unless something has happened to her.
I wanted to be like the girl in the room across the corridor, and they wouldn’t let me. Her room was painted light blue, and there was tan carpeting on the floor. During the day, the door was left wide open. The light streamed into the room. I could see the white rays gathering in a pool on the floor. They were like the thin arrows of light that came through the Virgin Mary’s window to announce the arrival of the archangel Gabriel.
When I sat at my desk, I could look across at an enormous pile of stuffed animals under the window. I hadn’t brought anything like that to school. I had no idea what I might want. I didn’t expect to stay for long. My room was bare and dark. The wooden floor was stained and gouged. The sun came in on the other side of the building. My window was just a bright square lighting nothing. The light blue room was full of things: photograph
s of a family, bottles of perfume and boxes of powder, jewelry, writing paper and pens and stamps, records, pillows, and more stuffed animals on the neatly made bed. And every surface was dusted with powder. I dreamed about being friends with the girl with long blond hair and a pretty face who lived in that room, the girl who wore a gold cross around her neck. I dreamed about being invited home with her for the weekend, to a nice house filled with the same kinds of things that filled her room.
I became friends with Lucy, the girl in the blue room, and it still was a dream. But after a while, it began to feel inevitable.
The first time Lucy asked me to come sit with her while she took a bath in one of the enormous claw-foot tubs in the bathroom down the hall, I was so scared. But I didn’t know how to say no. What if I did something wrong? What if I got nervous and laughed when she was getting undressed or stretching out, naked, in the tub? What if I were too serious and could never laugh? What if she decided that she didn’t like me after all? What if she only felt sorry for me? I wasn’t used to being with other people like that.
After one week, we had our baths together, we went down to breakfast together, we came up from lunch together, we spent weekends together. Everyone linked our names together; they belonged together, like rhymed words.
I’ve got to go. It’s time for dinner. The second bell just rang, and I haven’t changed yet. I’ve got to find something clean in my closet. I’ll write more after dinner.
After dinner
It happened to another person, to a pitiful girl who tried to disappear into the dark corners of her room.
October 30
I was in Lucy’s room, waiting for her to get out of the bath. The door to the bathroom was open, and I was lying on her bed, reading “Carmilla” for my English class. It’s about a woman named Carmilla who arrives under mysterious circumstances at a castle in Styria (wherever that is, was, if it ever existed). A young English girl, who lives in the castle with her father, falls under the spell of Carmilla. Actually, she falls in love with her and abhors her at the same time, but she can’t resist her. At first I thought the story was too contrived, but that’s just the style. Before long, I was pulled into it and couldn’t stop reading. Once I realized that Carmilla was a vampire, everything that followed made perfect sense. There was no other possible explanation.
