by Rachel Klein
I need to ask him: Are people like trees? Is there a season when we can see them as they really are?
“The Man Whom the Trees Loved”: He understood the trees, their need to be protected, especially in the winter when no one else cared about them. The trees loved him in return with a love that was so strong that it consumed him.
November 30
Pater is dead!
By the middle of the morning, everyone in school knew about it. He was found on the Upper Field on Sunday morning with his throat cut open. That’s a pretty horrible way to get rid of a dog. Actually it was worse. Betsy said his head was almost completely off and he had been opened up like a fish.
I knew exactly what he looked like when they found him. His grizzled rusty hair was matted with hard clumps of dark blood. The little legs stuck out behind him, so stiff they didn’t touch the ground. Black flies clung to his eyes and his mouth, feeding at the moist openings.
Miss Rood didn’t mention it during assembly, but under her thick pink glasses, her nose was red. It was obvious something was wrong. She’s never like that. She’s never even sick. At least she has feelings. (I once heard a rumor that she was engaged to someone who died during the war. World War I?) I felt sorry for her.
All the students were away from school last weekend. Local kids are always sneaking onto the grounds, trying to trash the “snob school.” No one suspects any of us.
Pater never runs free.
I know it was Ernessa. All of me knows it. I remember how our reflections floated on the glass, how the dog disappeared behind them, except for the crazy barking. She’s the one who couldn’t bear the sound of it, just as she couldn’t bear the smell of the funeral parlor where her father lay in a coffin. Or so she claims. Pater was just an annoying little dog, but she hated him as if that yapping was meant for her ears alone, a special torture just for her. I can’t understand hatred like that. At lunch, I told Dora and Charley what Ernessa said to me that day in front of Miss Rood’s apartment and how she’s always suddenly appearing where she shouldn’t be. They were both seriously creeped out.
I said, “My father would say: ‘Ernessa’s not following you. Perhaps you’re following her but at a great distance.’”
They were pondering that when Lucy walked up with her tray. Lunch is the only time she spends with us now. She skips breakfast. Sometimes she’ll rush in at the last minute while they’re clearing away the food and drink a cup of black coffee by herself. She claims she wants to lose some weight, even though she’s already skinny. “My pot belly,” she said when we all objected. I remember how annoyed she got when I went on my diet last year. But that was when we had tea together in the afternoon on weekends. Now I hardly ever see her on the weekends. Even when she’s just doing homework in her room, she keeps all the doors closed.
We all stopped talking at once. She sat down a little ways away. After a bit she said, “What’s the matter? Am I interrupting some private discussion or something?” She sounded sad.
“Oh, no, not at all,” I answered. But she was interrupting something. We turned to our food, which had gotten cold, and ate pretty much in silence. Now finally I’m not alone with my suspicions of Ernessa. We don’t know yet what she is.
Lucy’s across the hall with Ernessa most of the time. But she might as well be on the other side of the world.
DECEMBER
December 1
Today they put up sign-up sheets for tryouts for the basketball teams. I almost didn’t sign up. I don’t have the energy to try out again, just to end up on D squad again with all the klutzes who don’t even care about playing. And Miss Bobbie always coaches D squad. It never makes any difference how well I play. Even though I score most of the baskets, I always stay at the bottom. I didn’t see Lucy’s name on the list when I signed up. Last year she was on B squad, even though she isn’t any better than I am, and she has a good chance of making JV this year. It’s harder to make A squad in basketball because the teams have fewer players. I’m going to ask her after dinner.
After dinner
Lucy said she’s not trying out this year. It takes too much time, with all the practices and games. She’s tired as it is. And she’s behind in all her classes. I asked her what she’s taking instead. Calisthenics. That’s for the girls who don’t want to do anything but have to pretend that they are taking gym. I don’t believe a thing she says. She’s always behind. Lucy loves to play sports. I’m sure she’s just doing calisthenics to be with Ernessa. They’ve become inseparable. Lucy doesn’t care about any of the things she used to care about. Ernessa’s taken her over. She’s consuming her.
December 2
I’m thinking of changing my mind about basketball tryouts. Not calisthenics. I’d never do that – jumping jacks and lying on your back with your feet in the air. They may offer modern dance with Mrs. Harlan if they get enough girls. She’s the only gym teacher who’s not a mannish-looking jock, even though she wears a kilt like the rest of them. She’s married. And she’s very nice to me. When I got caught by Miss Bobbie for not wearing a shirt under my sweater, Mrs. Harlan stopped me in the hall and said, “If you don’t want to get into trouble and end up in study hall every Friday afternoon, you should just follow the rules. It’s not that hard to wear the regulation shirt.”
I hate being around Miss Bobbie. This year I hate her more than ever. And she hates me because I’m a Jew. That’s all. At least I have a reason to hate her. I can’t stand to look at the dimpled brown knees and puckered thighs beneath her kilt, the sagging skin under the short white hair.
Today in basketball tryouts (what a joke) she came up to me and asked where my friend Lucy was. “She had a good shot at JV this year,” she said.
“She doesn’t have time for the team,” I answered. “She’s not doing well enough in school.”
“I’ll have to have a talk with her.”
I’m definitely going to take modern dance if they offer it. I think I can get Dora and Charley to do it with me. Certainly Dora.
*
“The Jews’ Beech Tree”: “The Hebrew characters on the tree read: ‘If you approach this place, you will suffer what you inflicted on me.’”
December 3
It’s early for snow. When I looked out the window this morning, everything was white. It didn’t snow much, just enough to cover everything. It’s cold out, and the snow isn’t melting.
I guess it’s time to pull out the winter skirt. I can’t put it off any longer. Is there anything duller than gray wool?
December 4
Last night Charley, Dora, and I snuck out after lights out. I haven’t done that since my first year, when I used to go out at night with Autumn and drink from little bottles of airline liquor that she stole from her mother. That year I didn’t care what happened to me. I went out with Autumn, and I was never scared. I don’t have anything to do with her now. I haven’t spoken to her in over a year. I’ve done very well in school, and I don’t want to mess everything up by being kicked out. I don’t want to be the way I used to be. It was too sad.
About twelve o’clock, Charley came into my room to tell me that Ernessa was not in her room. “I’ve knocked on her door, and unless she’s sleeping the sleep of the dead, she’s not in there. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I don’t know where she got a key. Let’s check for Lucy.”
I was already over by the bathroom, turning the doorknob. I pushed open the door to her room silently, then looked in. That empty bed with the covers thrown back would make me so unhappy. But she was sound asleep in her bed and didn’t wake up.
“Somehow I don’t think Ernessa’s over at Brangwyn College meeting a boy,” said Charley. “She’s not the type. And besides it’s too cold out.”
“Let’s get Dora,” I said.
“Let’s go out and look for Ernessa,” said Charley. “I’m in the mood to get high.”
We went out in our nightgowns, with coats over them. I don’t know what we were expect
ing to find. It’s easy to rig the alarm with a piece of wood and to jam the wood between the doors to keep them from locking. Not much of an alarm system. Everyone knows where the piece of wood is hidden.
We walked along the drive, up to the tall iron gates. The gates are always left wide open, even in the middle of the night. Dora and Charley kept turning around, as if they heard footsteps following us. When we reached the gates, I looked back at the Residence. During the day, the drive is always lined with the day students’ cars, mostly yellow and green VWs. It was practically empty. The snow made everything so still.
I knew at once why Ernessa was out here, walking by herself in the night. She wanted to see the Residence and the Upper Field and the drive as they were before they became a school for young ladies, when guests took tea on the wide porches and rode in pony carts. It’s what I always think about. Not what it is, but what it was. Somewhere out there, she was looking at the porches and imagining.
I didn’t say anything to Dora and Charley. I followed them through the iron gates even though I wanted to turn back. They wouldn’t have understood why I wanted to stay inside those gates. When I’m at school, I forget that the world exists. I don’t have to believe it’s real. Everything outside the gates is shrouded in mist. I can see the outlines, but there’s nothing of substance there.
The night was clear. There were only a few ragged clouds that shone silver in the moon’s light. The moon was high in the sky and so bright it was almost pure white. All the craters and mountains on its surface were so sharp that they seemed drawn by hand. Just on the other side of the iron fence was the Residence with its spires reaching toward that moon, a night cathedral. Do I really live there and go to school there? Is it just a dream?
We didn’t get far. We stood right outside the front gate. It was very cold, and we had to stamp our feet to keep them from becoming numb. The frozen grass coated with snow crunched with each footstep. We weren’t out there for more than ten minutes, standing by the corner on the wide avenue. Occasional headlights rushed by. I wonder what the drivers thought of us: three girls out in the middle of a winter night, wearing coats over their white nightgowns. Maybe we looked like spirits to them.
We decided to go back. As we went down the drive, I looked over the shimmering field toward the edge where there are masses of bushes, where Pater died. That’s where it would be – a long black animal, huge wings that push against the air, a dark streak on the frozen ground. It would show up so clearly in the moonlight against the snow, if I waited. The others ran to the door. They called out to me to hurry up. Yet each time I turned to go inside, I thought I saw something. I needed to study the dark, until it took shape and revealed itself. Finally the moonlight was clouded with ashes, a spot of gray in my vision. It was nothing. That only happens in books.
Charley held the door open for me. “Jesus, what took you so long?” she shouted. “I’m freezing my fucking butt off, and it smells like dead fish here.”
“Shut up,” I answered.
There was the horrible smell, worse than ever. Tomorrow I’m going to ask the janitor first thing to do something about the basement. I’ll never be able to practice. The smell clings to everything.
We raced up the stairs, and on the first landing I thought I heard a thumping sound below us.
When we got to our corridor, Dora and I went straight to our rooms, but Charley stopped at Ernessa’s door and started banging on it and yelling so loudly that I thought she would wake up everyone. “Hey, Ernessa, where the fuck are you? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Stop it!” I hissed at her. “You’re crazy!”
But she kept on banging. “You out copping a lid somewhere? You’ll have to share.”
There was no response.
“You asshole,” I said to Charley. “You’re going to get us all caught.”
“You ballin’ at Brangwyn College?”
I grabbed Charley’s arm and pulled her toward her room.
“See,” said Charley. “I told you she’s not in there.”
I heard noise from Lucy’s room, and the door to her room opened, but by then I had closed the door to my room, and I was leaning against it. My heart was pounding so hard. I hope Charley keeps her mouth shut about our nighttime adventure.
December 6
Charley has become extremely spooked out by Ernessa, but she doesn’t understand why. She’s not ready to hear it. She doesn’t understand that the truth is what you can’t see but are certain of anyway. We’ve decided not to tell anyone else that she was gone from her room in the middle of the night. I do feel better having someone to talk to about this who doesn’t look at me as if I’m a raving lunatic. At the same time, I’m nervous that Charley will open her big mouth and say something stupid by mistake. She’ll end up turning Lucy totally against me.
December 7
I’d had an idea in my head all day, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it until I did it. I couldn’t tell Charley. I don’t trust her.
Just a little after lights out, I ran across the corridor to Dora’s room. I wanted to go along the gutter from Dora’s room and look in Ernessa’s window. The idea of spying on her frightened me. I didn’t know what I would do if she were in her room and saw me. I could pretend that I was going down to Carol’s room, which is next to hers, but I knew she would know better.
Dora watched the hallway while I pushed open the window and climbed out onto the gutter. I was wearing a nightgown, and it kept riding up past my knees as I crawled toward her window. The copper gutter was cold and slick. My hands were so stiff that I couldn’t hold on to the edge. It was only a few feet, but I moved inch by inch, and Dora kept calling, “Hurry up,” from her window. I was too scared to turn around and tell her to shut up. I could feel the moon behind me. Her room was visible through the gauzy curtains. The empty bed was made. It was as bare as in the beginning of the fall, when Dora and I watched her move her dresser across the room by herself, when she was being sort of friendly with us. The dresser was still there, practically blocking the doorway.
I crouched down on the gutter and pressed my head against the glass, to keep my balance. The moonlight streamed into the room in a thick beam. My shadow fell across the floor, and all around the shadow, inside the beam, millions of particles of dust were floating in the air. A breeze blew into the room, even though the window was closed tight. Now I could see that everything in the room – the desk, the dresser, the floor, even the bed – was covered with a thick layer of dust. The breeze swept the dust up into the moon’s light. Suddenly, there was so much dust swirling through the room that it was hard to tell where the edges of solid things ended and where the air began. I heard Dora’s voice calling me from her window, “Quick, come back. Someone’s out in the corridor.”
I couldn’t turn away. My forehead was stuck to the frozen glass; it soothed my burning face. The gutter felt much too narrow. If I tried to turn around and crawl along it, I would lose my balance and fall back into nothingness. Inside the room, millions of particles of dust were gathering, forming themselves. A swarm of small brown moths flew toward the window, toward the light of the huge moon. They banged against the glass in front of my face, thumping their little bodies, trying to reach the light. The noise they made was deafening. I could feel the beating of their wings through the glass, like breath from a thousand mouths. If I turned around to look at the moon, I would feel that same longing for the light. I would fly toward it. I could hear the moon whisper from far away, calling every creature with wings.
“You’ve got to come now,” called Dora.
This time her voice was in my ear, and she was tugging on my nightgown. She was out on the gutter, too, and I thought I might take her with me. I pushed my nightgown up around my waist. The burning cold of the metal against my skin no longer mattered. Somehow we managed to make it back. When I reached Dora’s window, I followed her in headfirst. We hid together under the covers, listening to the shuffling footsteps out
side her door.
I had to tell her what I’d seen. That Ernessa was not in her room, again, that the bed was never slept in, that the room was empty and covered with dust like thick gray soot. I didn’t tell her about the moths and the wings and the moon.
I opened the door cautiously and ran across the corridor to my room. I was so relieved to be back in my own bed. I lay there, listening to my pounding heart. It was so loud I was sure the sound was echoing along the empty corridors and down the stairs. I finally calmed down and fell asleep. I dreamed I was playing basketball on B squad. In the dream, everything was exactly as it is in real life but exaggerated, like a very bright and loud movie. I woke up with the feeling that I had played basketball all night.
I keep looking around to assure myself that this time I really am awake.
December 8
If I ask Dora, she’ll tell me that I went out on the gutter last night, that the moonlight fell on my back while my forehead was glued to Ernessa’s window. But what I saw wasn’t real. And I know it wasn’t a dream.
Dull brown dust moths swirling in the beam of light and thumping against the glass. They’re swarming around my brain, fluttering wings, crowding out everything else, banging against the inside of my head.
I need to write and distract myself.
During the summer, my father and I used to sit outside at night, with flashlights on our laps, and search for moths. Some had dark bands across their wings and deep blue eyes in yellow circles. In spite of their shyness, they would show themselves in our narrow beams of light. One night, in a tangle of wild honeysuckle that grew over the fence and buried us in its scent, we saw a pale green moth with two long tails that fluttered like ribbons in a little girl’s hair. The luna moth was as large as a bird. The yellow eyes on its wings gleamed in the light. We were excited for hours after the moth had flown away, and we kept turning our flashlights back to the spot where it had been. While we waited for it to return, we played a game: describing the color of the moth. A poet’s game. My favorite was the color of sea foam on a gray day, seen from underwater. The color of wet rock lichen. The color of white dogwood flowers, just as they are unfolding from the buds. The color of the moon as you approach it in a spaceship. The color of a comet’s tail.
