Woman as a Foreign Language

by Katherine Wyvern

  There is just so much pain you can take, just so much poison you can swallow. I just wanted to be myself, all of myself, in my spare time, alone in my room, when nobody was at home, without bothering a soul. How is that a crime?

  Well, she was free from all that, now.

  A pity that all this freedom felt so hollow, without someone to share it with.

  ****

  Nina

  That she is called Julia I have from Abbie, the lady next door (Julia is six doors up the hallway, Abbie is one door down). Abbie is an ex-tro-vert, and she talks with everyone. She knows everything that goes on around the building. She is very nice, but a little bit scary that way. When old Mrs. Bhatnagar went to the retirement home and vacated the flat, Abbie wasted not a day in introducing herself to the new lodger. On Julia’s post box and doorbell it reads only “J. Kovalec”, that’s all. I know because I went (padding very, very quietly on the hallway carpet) and checked. But Abbie said the name of the tall girl from Mrs. Bhatnagar’s flat was Julia, and giggled. It’s a not a comical name, but what can I say? Extroverts giggle a lot.

  Abbie also told me that some of the neighbors are complaining about her. Apparently, she is “weird” (by which I suppose they mean that she is incredibly elegant and unusually well-bred) and what is worse, she plays the piano—she actually plays an actual piano—in the flat, which must be loud as hell in the adjoining flats with our crappy cardboard walls. But as long as she plays between 8 AM and 8 PM she should not have any real trouble. At least I hope so. I’d love to hear Julia playing the piano, but I am mostly off to work or going to and fro between those hours and she keeps depressingly quiet in the weekends. I hope they don’t chase her away with their complaints. Bloody hypocrites. God knows they never complained about Father, not even when he was smashing furniture and yelling so loud that the ceiling almost came down on all of us.

  Shaving your legs is nowhere near as simple as you might think.

  I have been scraping diligently for ten minutes, and all seemed quite well, but now I feel like I have been flayed. I wonder if there is some secret trick to it that nobody told me about. Christ, I wish there were pretty-girl classes that one could attend anonymously. I hop around the bathroom cursing and puffing while I collect my clothes, and then I go hiding in my room hoping that the burning will subside.

  The legs are smooth and nice, though, if somewhat spotty, and bleeding from half a dozen cuts. Well, I’ve had worse. I have scars enough to prove it. I shudder a little while mopping a thin line of blood off the back of my left ankle. For a moment, my right hand closes into a fist. It takes an effort of will to relax it. Only the ring finger shows it, but each finger has been broken. I make a fist again. Then I go back to mopping blood.

  When I try on the boots again, the boots approve of the change.

  I really wonder what I would wear with them. It is a purely imaginary exercise, of course. I am not planning to go anywhere. Of course. Even so.

  I take off my lovely boots and put them on the table (where they can watch the proceedings from a good angle). I put on a clean t-shirt (weld-faded blue) and pajama bottoms, and I start rummaging through boxes and bags. There is a number of long, long evening dresses, mostly black and sequined, truly elegant. Too elegant. There’s at least a dozen pairs of skin-tight jeans, blue, black, grey, teal, burgundy. Better. Surely there’s no reason to go overboard and wear an evening dress, with my boots. Skinny jeans are daring enough. If only I could find a pretty top that is not downright outrageous… The door bangs open with the usual lack of forewarning and the pudding is in the room.

  “What are you doing?” she asks, looking at the boots and the dresses scattered around the room. Then she hoots.

  I look at her, incredulous. Even after all these years I am still astonished at how crass she can be.

  “Do you mind leaving? This is my room,” I say, straining for a coldness that I don’t feel. I feel raging hot, furious.

  She ignores me, as if I never talked. She always did that. Why should I be surprised? Why do I even try?

  “Do you mean to wear those?” she asks, pointing a sausage-like finger at the boots. Her tone is weirdly unreadable, and I am stumped. In fact, for a moment I delude myself that she might approve of me prettying up a little. Then she bursts into a coarse laugh, and the world is back into its normal orbit.

  “Oh, I’d like to see it! Oh, I’d like to see it, really. You’ll look like, you’ll look like … a truck driver in heels, ooh, oh, ah, ah!”

  I struggle for words. I know that I am blushing, and staring, and stammering all at the same time. I can’t believe that I’m mortified by this stupid person’s inane derision, even after all these years, but I am. Old wounds are bleeding all over my soul. I am crushed. Once again, I am trampled to nothing.

  “Well, Mother,” I say, finally, still cold, although the chill begins to crack at the edges, like thin ice under too much strain, “there’s many a truck driver out there who would pull off heels better than you ever did, you know?”

  It’s like talking to the prow of the Titanic. Everything I say just slides right off her like water. She is quaking with laughter, wheezing, every lump of shapeless flesh a-wobble, filling my doorway, my field of vision, my whole life, utterly cutting any way out. For a moment I am sick, sick with disgust, resentment, frustration.

  Then pure, unadulterated wrath takes over. I grab the boots, and I barrel shoulder-first into her heaving breast. Heavy as she is, it’s like hitting a padded wall. Then, unbalanced by the unexpected charge, unused to anything more strenuous than lounging on the sofa, she collapses backwards into the passage. She makes a galvanic grab for the doorframe, misses, and then she goes down, not in a crashing fall—she’s propped up by the wall on the opposite side of the passage—but in a slow, inexorable, glacier-like slide. She lands on her left side, still flailing about ineffectually for purchase. She gasps, winded, utterly winded. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, and then she shrieks. But by then I am running towards the front door. I need to be out of this flat, I need to be out of this life, out of it all, outside, somewhere, anywhere but here.

  I throw the door open and rush into the hallway, blindly. I am literally blood-blind with rage. Now I know what “seeing red” really means. I don’t know where I am going and I don’t care, and within two steps, I collide with somebody for the second time in less than ten seconds.

  For the briefest moment an indistinct shape looms over me, as tall as the Grim Reaper, pale faced, black-caped, scythe-bearing … and then I run chin first into a lean, hard breastbone.

  “Oy!” exclaims the Grim Reaper, stepping back and sideways with a dancer’s balance, and throwing out a hand to save me a fall.

  The red mist clears from my eyes and I realize it’s Julia.

  It’s Julia, it’s Julia, it’s Julia! Julia, in her long, unbuttoned black coat. She’s pale—she’s always been pale—but there is nothing sinister or grim about her. The scythe is a grey umbrella, tightly furled and still dripping.

  The coat is damp with rain. Close-up like this, she smells of wet, fresh air, cigarette smoke, and of some rich, resinous, earthy, chocolate-ish scent. Her gloved hand is still holding my upper arm, and her eyes look down into mine, first just astonished, and then concerned. She lowers her gaze to the boots I am still clutching to my chest like a shield.

  “Ooh,” she says huskily, with a sudden, bright, wide smile, a fully open smile I had never seen before. “Those are really pretty!”

  But before I can open my mouth to comment, she frowns, and her eyes suddenly grow flint-hard, sharp as broken glass. I have never known anyone with such quickly mobile, intensely expressive features.

  Her hand holds my shoulder a bit tighter. “Are you all right? Did you just scream, thirty seconds ago? Did someone hurt you?”

  Why, why are walls so damn thin in this building?

  “No. No it wasn’t me. Maybe I should … I should…”

  I should … what? I won
der. I should do what? Go back and help her up? I’d need a crane for that. It might be easier to finish her for good.

  A stab of guilt at leaving the pudding flat in the passage of the apartment begins to bother me.

  I hate myself for it. So many years of needling, unspoken, pointless guilt … for what? I only wanted to make beautiful things, have friends, and a life, and all they gave me was grief. Why must I feel guilty? Because I was born? It’s not my fault I came into the world and ruined their precious freedom.

  Julia is still staring into my eyes as if to bore two holes in the back of my skull.

  Then something softens in her face, a smile creeps back over her lips, and she squeezes my shoulder again.

  “I think you should come in, and have a cup of tea.”

  ****

  Julia’s flat resembles her. In Mrs. Bhatnagar days, the walls and furniture were a moldy greenish brown, covered in musty doilies, terribly lit family pictures, souvenirs from long-gone holiday, and dun-colored posies of dried flowers, fuzzy with decades of dust and cobwebs.

  Now everything is bright white, black, or bleached wood, smart and sharp. The only colorful things in the room are a lacquered crimson cabinet, some scarlet cushions on the black sofa, a red abstract painting on a wall, and the deep, soft, honey-colored rug in front of the sofa. The room might have been too stark and designed for comfort, but the books bring it to life. There are books everywhere, in trim, white, ceiling-high bookcases, piled about in stacks on the floor, even wedging doors open. Over and among the books are scattered other tokens of human habitation. A few unwashed wine glasses, a scatter of more or less full ash-trays, an expensive looking laptop perched on a pile of magazines, an off-white Aran sweater dropped on the sofa, a pair of boots by the door. Not high-heeled boots. Man boots, in fact. My heart drops a little.

  I sit cross-legged on the rug, in front of the sofa. There are no coffee-table-books on the coffee table. It is a throng of bundled papers, newspapers, piles of dictionaries and well-thumbed tomes in half a dozen languages. Among the books, almost hidden, is nestled a large bowl of brushed steel, full of stone spheres, big and small, from the size of a walnut to the size of a pomegranate. Marble (black, white, and pale pink), jade, malachite, even a beautiful labradorite globe the size of my fist, and at least a dozen other stones of which I don’t know the names. I realize that I am still shaking with the after-quake of my rage explosion and holding Lizzie’s boots to my chest like two wounded animals. I carefully sit the boots beside me on the carpet. I lean back against the sofa and I try to take a deep breath, stretch my shoulders, and quiet my heart, looking around.

  Where Mrs. Bhatnagar’s dining table used to be, there are a desk piled with books and papers against one wall, and a piano, against the opposite wall, gleaming black and incongruously massive in this average-sized city flat. I wonder where Julia eats her meals. Maybe on the floor, like I do. Or maybe she doesn’t eat at all, judging by how skinny she is.

  I cannot believe that I am sitting here. I cannot believe that I am inside Julia’s own world, instead of the helpless spectator who always watched her floating in and out of my existence, a few seconds at a time.

  When Julia comes back from the kitchen with the tea things in a tray, she puts the tray on the sofa, not on the crowded coffee-table. She goes and tosses the Aran sweater into the bedroom and sits down in its place.

  She pats the other side of the sofa and smiles.

  “Come sit on the sofa. You make me feel like a stork on a lamp-post sitting down there on the rug. It’s bad enough as it is.”

  That makes me laugh. She is tall … but I never thought that was bad, aside maybe from giving me a crick in my neck every time I try to look at her.

  So I sit on the other side of the tea tray, while she pours steaming, dark, fragrant tea in celadon mugs.

  I have never had a chance to observe her so closely. Tonight, she’s all in black. A black turtleneck, black opaque stockings, black thigh-high boots, a black miniskirt with a wide black leather belt. I don’t know anybody else who could pull off a look like that without looking like a Halloween party-goer. But on Julia, it works. She makes it so effortlessly sophisticated and elegant. I realize that she is somewhat older than I had thought, quite a few years older than me. Under the makeup there are fine lines around her eyes and mouth, smile lines mostly, I think, and her hands, although extremely elegant, are not as smooth as all that anymore. I have never really seen her hands before. In this awful weather, she always wears gloves when going out. They are white, her hands, long and slim, like she is. Unlike my own stubby fingernails, which are clipped to the quick—it’s the only way to keep them clean, with my job—hers are, not really long, but perfect, and painted silver-white.

  She is truly skinny, like a boy, and a skinny boy at that, all knees and wrists and elbows, sinewy and angular, outside her flowing long coat and swishing scarves. An altogether odd woman, handsome rather than pretty, beautiful, in a powerfully charismatic way. There is nothing girly about her, except a certain playful smile she has sometimes.

  When she hands me the tea she catches me observing her, and she smiles exactly that roguish grin. There is a question mark in her expression, too, but I can’t read what the question is.

  “So,” she says, as I sip the strongest black tea I ever tasted, a tea that tastes almost of roses. “What happened in there?”

  I know instantly what in there means.

  “Nothing, really,” I say hastily. “Just a little disagreement.”

  “A loud disagreement.”

  “An Italian disagreement. I apologize.”

  She smiles. “Non sapevo che eri … fossi? italiana. Una bellissima lingua … che non parlo molto bene.”

  I look at her flabbergasted. I hardly ever speak Italian myself.

  “Well, no, I am not really Italian. I was born here. But my parent were—that is, they are Italian. And Italy is … sticky. It clings to you, you know? Like herpes.”

  She laughs. She looks ten years younger when she does, even if the laugh lines around her eyes become so much deeper. Her smile is absolutely radiant.

  “And the boots?” she asks.

  “The boots were … well. They were part of the disagreement. I think we all three needed to get out for a walk. Me and the boots that is.”

  She laughs again, looking at my bare feet.

  “You might want to wear them, then.”

  “Ah, you might think so, but…”

  “But?”

  “Well. I am not very good at heels.”

  She smiles again.

  “Nonsense. It’s easy. Put them on. I’ll show you.”

  I stare at her, horrified. The idea of little lumbering me wobbling around in high heels in front of heavenly Julia is nothing short of sickening.

  “What? What! Er … no! No, I mean, thanks, but no thanks.”

  She scoffs ironically and waves her hand, finally dismissing my refusal with a shake of her head.

  “We need some nylon, sweetheart. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  She disappears into the bedroom and comes back after a minute with a pair of stockings. I am tempted to make a run for it. But crashing out of two apartments in one night seems a bit extreme, even for a semi-Italian hothead. I watch her walking to the sofa like a hare caught in the headlights of a speeding truck.

  “I suppose they’ll be a bit long, but they’ll do.”

  “I, erm…”

  “Hush.”

  She kneels in front of me on the rug and takes my left foot in her lap. I remain absolutely quiet, because I know that if I tried to speak my voice would let me down in the most disgraceful way. This is Julia, tall Julia of the upper airs, kneeling in front of me, and touching my bare skin with her long, long fingers.

  She pulls the dark grey stocking over my foot and calf, lifting the edge of my pajama bottoms as she goes. The stocking is about knee high, or would be, on Julia. In my case it would reach halfway up my thigh pr
obably, but she leaves it bunched around my knee, and lets the pajama drop to my ankle again. Then she does the same to my right foot.

  “And now the boots,” she says.

  “I, er…”

  “No ‘er’. Boots on. Now. Vite, vite, cherie. They are much too pretty to stand there on the carpet. They are supposed to be worn, not carried around like luggage. They are not handbags.”

  So I put down my teacup, and I start wearing the left boot while Julia undoes the laces of the other one. I feel like a particularly fortunate lady in a shoe shop. It is easier to get inside the boots with Julia’s stockings on my feet. I wonder if there is some magical property about Julia’s skin that has been transferred onto me. She smiles at me encouragingly when both boots are on. She stands up in front of me and gives me both her hands. When I take them, she pulls me to my feet in one go. I almost lose my balance, but she is there to steady me, with a smile.

  “Now don’t you go putting weight on those heels. Stand on tiptoe for a minute or so, ok?”

  I do. She is still holding both my hands, at arm’s length.

  “All righty then, now come with me. On tiptoe. Mind the rug, it might catch the heels. Step up a little. Let’s get off it.” She walks backwards still holding my hands, until we are both outside the deep, lush rug. “All right. Now you put some weight on your heels, not a lot, mind. Take it easy at first. Feel the balance.”

  I am not really sure how to this without falling on my butt, but I slowly let down my weight until I am somewhat settled.

  “Steady?” she asks, smiling. I nod. “Good, let’s go.” She points towards the bedroom door. It’s the longest walk we can take in this flat. She lets go of my hands, but walks besides me with an arm around my waist. “Don’t worry. I’m a strapping big lass. I won’t let you fall. Short steps. Heel first. Heel first, then you sort of roll along on it until your toes touch down. Very good.”

  My first steps are a bit wobbly, but it gets better. She has to walk behind me in the narrow passage. I can feel her hands like two warm, warm angel-wings sprouting from my shoulder blades. I cannot fall. How could I fall? I am floating.