by Paul Pen
“Another door?” I asked.
“Another door,” she repeated. “But I’ll only tell you where it is if you show me that you deserve to know.”
I was silent for a while.
“How do I show you?”
“By only listening to me,” she answered. The smile that wasn’t happy returned to her face.
30
My sister was last to appear at breakfast. She wore the mask as if nothing had changed. She winked at me with one of her hidden eyes, renewing our alliance from the night before. When she approached the table, Dad fanned his face with a hand. And he coughed.
“What a stink,” he said. “Go take a bath. Go on.” The smell was a mixture of dry sweat, fresh sweat, and a chemical whiff that made it more pungent. It must’ve been some of the poison exuded in the night.
She pulled her chair out, disobeying Dad’s order. “I’ll take a bath when I’ve had my breakfa—”
Grandma pushed the chair in. The back hit the table. Some of the teaspoons clinked against the cups.
“Go take a bath,” Grandma said.
“Before breakfast?” My sister was still holding the chair’s ears. “It’ll make me feel ill.” She tried to regain control of the chair, but the movement of her arms barely budged the piece of furniture.
My brother laughed like a donkey. I thought of him as the traitor who ratted me out to the Cricket Man.
“Go take a bath,” Grandma said again.
Behind the mask, my sister’s eyes scanned the table. I saw them stop on my mother, who was holding the baby against her chest. She’d found an old baby bottle in her room and was giving the little boy an improvised mixture of water and milk from the carton that we drank. It hadn’t been easy getting the baby to suck that strange teat, but when he finally took it, he fed hungrily.
“I can see I’m not needed for anything,” my sister said. Her eyes came to rest on me. I remembered parts of the conversation we’d had in the night. Then she let go of the back of the chair. With a quick movement she swooped on the table to pick up two slices of toast. She also snatched my cup of milk. She ran out into the hall before Dad had time to do anything. He was left half-standing with his fist resting on the table, the napkin poking out from inside it like the folds of my sister’s blouse had poked out before he’d dropped it on the floor by the bunk in my bedroom.
She slammed the bathroom door shut behind her.
The teaspoons clinked again.
“Just like when she was eighteen,” said my mother, getting up and bringing me another cup.
“Your mother’s made eggs for you,” Grandma said, “like you wanted.”
“But boiled this time,” Mom pointed out. The egg wobbled on my plate.
I looked at my nephew sucking. He was drinking milk that wasn’t from his mother. The rubber teat only just fit in his mouth. His scrunched-up face still showed some kind of inner suffering. I thought of his future. I imagined him learning to walk in the basement. Wondering, like me, where the spot of sun in the living room came from. Asking questions into the air that neither Mom nor Dad was going to answer for him. Thinking his mother had a burned face when he saw the mask she shouldn’t be wearing. And gripping the bars on the window at the end of the hallway to breathe in the air that smelled different. Dreaming of getting out.
I had to know where the other door was.
I could ask my sister while she was alone in the bathroom.
I peeled the egg as quickly as I could. I gobbled it down and poured milk into my second cup. I drank it in one gulp.
“I’m not surprised you’re so hungry,” my mother said. She pinched my cheek.
“Do you want to talk about what happened last night?” asked Grandma. “Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t trust their answers anymore.
I left the empty cup on the table. Mom ran her thumb over my lips to clean off the remnants of milk. A smile creased her face unevenly.
“Can I go to my room?”
“Why such a hurry?”
“I want to make space for my sister’s things,” I lied. “She’s going to stay in my room, isn’t she?”
Mom gave me permission to leave. On the way, before I reached the arch that led to the hall, Dad stopped me.
“Isn’t it your turn to ride the bike today?” he asked.
He was right. It was one of the three days when I had to do exercise. I let my shoulders drop. I turned toward the bicycle.
“Work a bit harder,” my father said. “Exercise is important.”
I climbed onto the bike. I pedaled hard so I’d finish before my sister came out of the bathroom. As if time would pass more quickly if my legs moved faster. I counted the number of times the pedal brushed against the contraption’s frame. When I reached a thousand, my usual goal, I jumped off the bike.
“Already?” asked my father. He was finishing off his fourth or fifth coffee at the table. My mother was clearing the dishes. Grandma, sitting in a dining chair, was staring at the wall. I heard the faint but constant moan that got caught in her throat when she took up that position. The unconscious murmuring triggered by a bad thought. She was holding the baby on her lap.
“I did a thousand,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“I went”—my breathing was labored—“faster.”
Dad doubted my words. “And what if I tell you that you have to do another thousand?”
There was silence.
“Leave the boy alone,” Grandma then said.
I ran to the hall while he was undecided. I went into the bathroom still panting.
“Where is the other door?” I asked my sister.
“Open your eyes,” she said. “You can open them now, remember?” I’d closed them out of habit. I still took a while to follow her instruction. It isn’t easy to give up a habit maintained for years.
“Open them,” she said again. I did it unhurriedly. The mask lay on the sink. She was in her underpants and bra, sitting on the edge of the bath that was emptying. I avoided the pile of clothes on the floor.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Do you really want to know how to get out?”
I sat opposite her on the toilet lid. “If I leave . . . will I be able to come back to the basement to visit Mom?”
“Of course you will,” she answered.
“So they’ll come get you, me, and the baby out, and they’ll leave the others in the basement?”
She nodded with her eyes looking somewhere else.
“Then yes,” I concluded. Outside there were lots more fireflies than there were in the basement. Outside I’d see my chick. Outside I’d have the chance to find a real Actias luna. And then come back to the basement to show it to Mom.
“Tell me where the other door is.”
My sister slid along the bath’s edge nearer to me.
“In a wardrobe,” she said. She whispered the three words very close to my face. She blinked, trying to read my reaction.
“What is it?” she asked.
I crossed my arms. The reply to her question was obvious.
“What?” she persisted.
“I’ve read that book,” I finally said. “I’m not so easy to fool.”
“Huh?”
I glared at her.
She shrugged.
“Narnia,” I said. “Narnia’s where you get to through a wardrobe.”
Her mouth opened on its own. When she got over her amazement, she asked, “How did you turn out so clever shut away in this basement?”
“I knew it,” I said. I tried to get up, but she trapped my legs with hers, like Dermaptera shut the pincers they have at the end of their abdomens.
“You’d better start believing me if you want to get out of here,” she said. Her chest rose and fell quickly. Her breath smelled of milk. “Believe it or not, the way out is in the wardrobe in your parents’ room.”
I weighed that information. I’d never been in that room for more t
han two minutes. The night I ran to find Mom so she’d witness my chick being born may have been the longest time I’d ever spent there.
“So why haven’t you escaped if you know where there’s a way out?” I asked without looking away. “Why’ve you never tried to get away?”
“For the first few years it was all I did,” she answered. “You don’t know the half of what’s happened in this basement. These people want to see me suffer.”
“These people?”
“Your parents,” she replied. “And your grandmother. She’s no better, even if she seems like she is.”
The Dermaptera’s pincers gripped my legs, anticipating another escape attempt.
“What they’re not expecting is you wanting to get out,” she went on. “We have to take advantage of that.” She narrowed her eyes before asking, “Because you haven’t told anyone, have you?”
I shook my head. “We swore on the One Up There,” I reminded her.
The baby cried in the kitchen. The soles of Dad’s brown slippers dragged along the hall. When they went into my room, I was afraid he’d discover the firefly jar in the drawer. Then he neared the bathroom. He stopped on the other side of the door. Listening.
My sister leapt to the washbasin. She jammed on the mask. “I’m in here,” she said. She put a hand in the water that was left in the bathtub. She slapped it so he could hear, splashing the wall.
“And your brother?” Dad asked.
The door handle shook. He’d grabbed it outside. My sister made an urgent gesture with her head.
“I’m on the toilet,” I said. “I’m fine.”
The rub of his footsteps continued in the direction of his bedroom. My sister let out the air she’d kept in. She sat in front of me again, leaving the mask on. She wasn’t finding it easy to give up the habit, either.
“Does the wardrobe lead outside?” I asked.
“Not quite,” she said. “There’s a tunnel that leads to the surface.”
I remembered Mom’s lesson on the Earth’s layers. She’d drawn an arrow pointing at the blue-and-white crust.
“But Mom told me that we live on the surface. On the blue-and-white part of the Earth.”
My sister’s mask tipped to the side.
“And there was me thinking you were clever . . . Have you seen anything blue when you look out of the window?” she asked. “Or anything white?”
Through the window there was just a lot more darkness. A box inside another box.
“No,” I replied.
“Your mother’s told you a load of lies,” she said.
“And how do I get to the tunnel?”
“The tunnel’s not difficult to reach. The hard bit is opening the door that’s after it.”
“What?” I was confused.
“The question’s not what,” she answered. “The question is how.”
My sister looked down at the floor. She murmured something I didn’t understand. I could only make out a numerical figure among her mumbles. Then she said something that threw me off.
“Go count the potatoes in the kitchen.”
I remained still. Not understanding.
“Go on, go,” she insisted. “Then tell me how many there are.”
She gave me a slap on the thigh. Then another. I didn’t get up until the fourth. I walked backward through the bathroom without taking my eyes off her. My heel hit the glass of milk that she’d stolen from me at breakfast. It rolled along the floor, already empty. I backed into the door handle.
Only my mother was in the kitchen. Grandma was still staring at the wall. I went up to the cupboard where the potatoes were kept.
“Are you going to try again?” Mom asked when I opened it. She was referring to one of the experiments from the How to Be a Spy Kid guide, which consisted of making electrical energy by connecting three potatoes to each other. I tried to do the experiment once, but the components available to me in the basement were very different from the ones used in the book. In the illustration, the three potatoes lit up a tiny bulb the size of a bean. I had to try with one of the bulbs that hung from our ceiling. Mom unscrewed it with a cloth. When I connected it to the potatoes, there wasn’t even a spark. The experiment was a failure, but Mom still made mashed potatoes with them.
“How many do you need this time?” she asked. She put down the plate she was holding and knelt beside me to take out the potatoes. “And tell me when you want the lightbulb. I don’t want you touching it.”
“How many are there?” I asked.
“How would I know?” she answered. “Lots, can’t you see?” She gestured toward the inside of the cupboard, which was full to the top. Bits of soil fell off when Mom rummaged through the potatoes.
“Are three enough?” She showed me them first. Then she covered her hand with my T-shirt. “Don’t let Dad see them.” She stretched the material to hide them completely. “Go, run, while he’s in his bedroom.”
I ran to the bathroom with the potatoes hidden.
“How many?” asked my sister when I went in.
“Loads,” I said. “There’re loads. The cupboard’s full.”
She clicked her tongue.
“I knew it,” she said. She looked down at the floor again. She began to move her leg, resting it on the toes of her bare foot.
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Let me think.”
I heard a constant clicking from one of her foot’s bones. I put the potatoes I didn’t need for any experiment back under my T-shirt. Their sandy texture scratched my belly.
Then my sister’s foot stopped with a final click of the bone. The mask tilted up to look at me.
“We have to wait for the Cricket Man to come.”
I dropped the three potatoes onto the floor.
31
We moved from the bathroom to my bedroom before Dad came out of his room. Still in her bra, my sister walked around the bedroom with the potatoes in her hand, not finding anywhere to put them down. She went up to the drawers at the foot of my bed.
“Move that,” she said. She was referring to the cactus. I moved it out of the way. She left the three potatoes there.
“I don’t want to wait for the Cricket Man,” I said, unable to accept what my sister was proposing. “I don’t want him to take me away.”
“If you do what I say, he won’t take you away in his wheelbarrow.”
“Wheelbarrow?”
My sister looked at me in silence.
“Sack,” she then corrected herself. “In his sack. Come here.” She pulled my T-shirt to drag me to the bookshelf. A bump of material was left in the piece of clothing when she let it go.
“Take one,” she said. She chose one herself. She crossed her legs to sit down, the book open on her lap. “Go on, take any one.”
I ran my finger along the spines, reading the titles. Trying to decide which one I felt like reading most. My sister pulled on my T-shirt to make me sit opposite her.
“Take this one here,” she said. “Pretend you’re reading.”
She passed me The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The book opened by itself on a page that had its top corner folded over. It was number twenty-one.
“Did you see the Cricket Man?” my sister whispered near my face.
“Yes, I did. I saw him in the kitchen.” I pronounced the words with emphasis, tired of having to make myself believed. “The Cricket Man really exists.”
“Of course he exists,” she said. “I believe you.”
I was going to challenge what she said almost without hearing it.
“You believe me?” I asked when I’d processed her words.
“Sure I believe you.”
“Mom says he doesn’t exist.”
My sister gave a loud sigh. “What did I tell you about your mother?”
I didn’t want to answer that question. I looked away, but she straightened my face with a finger.
“What did I tell you about her?” she repeated.
“Tha
t she tells me a load of lies.”
“That’s right,” she said. Her lips stretched out behind the mask. “And if you saw the Cricket Man, it was because he came in the house, right?”
I nodded.
“And if he came in the house he must’ve come in through the only door there is.”
“The kitchen door’s locked, it won’t—”
“I mean the only real door,” she cut in. “Which is the only real door?”
I ignored the question again.
“Which is it?”
“The one in the wardrobe in Dad’s room,” I replied.
“So . . .”
She said the word in a high tone, inviting me to complete the sentence. Like she did when she read the factors of a multiplication and waited for me to calculate the product. I usually solved sums in no time. I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
“So that man came in through the wardrobe in your parents’ bedroom,” she said, completing the sentence herself after a silence.
I felt a sudden coldness when I imagined the Cricket Man walking around in my parents’ room. Scraping the ceiling with his antennae. Prowling around their bed, his legs bending backward on each step. I rubbed my thighs.
“I don’t want to wait for the Cricket Man,” I said. I raised my voice without realizing it. “He scares me.”
“Wait,” she said, hushing me, “I haven’t finished.” Her eyes moved behind the orthopedic material.
“Can you take the mask off?” I asked. “I don’t like seeing you in it anymore.”
My sister hesitated. Then she pushed it back, leaving it on her head, like a second face looking up at the One Up There. I was relieved to see the smooth skin of her features.
“But when we hear someone walking in the hall,” she whispered, “I’ll put it back on.”
“OK.”
She resumed the conversation.
“For the Cricket Man to reach your parents’ wardrobe he must’ve come through the tunnel that leads to the surface. Which means that—”
“No,” I interrupted, “that’s not right.”
“How come?”
“The Cricket Man lives underground,” I explained. “The Cricket Man never goes up to the surface.”
