The Woman in the Wall

by Patrice Kindl

  The Woman in the Wall

  Patrice Kindl

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston

  Copyright © 1997 by Patrice Kindl

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to

  reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,

  Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,

  New York, New York 10003.

  For information about this and other Houghton Mifflin

  trade and reference books and multimedia products,

  visit The Bookstore at Houghton Mifflin on the

  World Wide Web at http://www.hmco.com/trade/.

  The text of this book is set in 11.75 point Janson Text.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kindl, Patrice.

  The woman in the wall / by Patrice Kindl.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Because she suffers from extreme shyness,

  Anna retreats into herself and her secret rooms, where

  she attempts to remain hidden from the outside world.

  ISBN 0-395-83014-1

  [1. Bashfulness—Fiction. 2. Self-confidence—Fiction.]

  I. Title. PZ7.K5665Wo 1997

  [Fic]—dc20 96-24567 CIP AC

  Printed in the United States of America

  BP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  This book,

  with the exception of Chapter 17,

  is dedicated to my husband, Paul.

  Rose and Joe get Chapter 17.

  Thanks, you guys.

  One

  Hello.

  My name is Anna. I am fourteen years old and a very shy person.

  I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You probably have tons of better things to do than sit around listening to me.

  What else do you want to know? I'm Anna and I'm shy. And fourteen. That's really all there is to tell.

  Thank you.

  Goodbye.

  THE END

  Oh! You're still there?

  Oh, dear. Now I suppose I'll have to—

  All right, I'm sorry. It wasn't really true, what I said. There is more to tell. If you're absolutely positive it won't bore you, I'll tell you the story of my life. So far, anyway.

  I have always been shy. The urge to hide came over me at a very early age. My mother says I was a good baby; I never fussed at all. Both of my sisters came out of the womb with mouths wide open, screaming their heads off, their hands outstretched to grasp at whatever life offered. I, on the other hand, never even whimpered as I entered the world. I just lay there quietly in my incubator and tried to fit in. I had no longings for power or domination. I didn't want to intrude in any way; I simply wanted to blend into the scenery with as little fuss as possible. In this I succeeded.

  "Where's the baby gone?" my mother would say, poking around in the crib blankets. "She's got to be right here; I put her there myself two seconds ago. Anna is a naughty girl, hiding from Mommy.

  "Anna!" my mother's cry would echo from cellar to cupola. "Where are you, Anna?"

  That was what she always wanted to know. Even today, all I have to do is close my eyes and say aloud, "Anna! Where are you, Anna?" and those long-ago days come to mind, perfectly clear in every detail. A tendency to disappear, you see, is and always has been my leading characteristic.

  I don't really disappear, not exactly. I'm just not very noticeable. I'm small and thin, with a face like a glass of water. And I like to hide.

  I believe that I inherited this trait from my father. I never really knew him. After a series of temporary vanishings, each longer than the last, Father faded out of our lives altogether, and we never saw him again. I was only three years old at the time.

  I can't tell you much about my father, except that he bought a very large and dilapidated house for his bride, amassed an impressive collection of tools and materials with which to repair it, and then disappeared.

  I don't think that it was the size of the job that frightened him off. No, I'm afraid that as the years went by he felt that the house, big as it was, was getting too full of daughters. He grew more nervous and jumpy, my mother says, after the birth of each child, and his absences became longer and more frequent.

  My older sister, Andrea, remembers him best, and she says that whenever she entered a room where our father was sitting, he would duck behind a newspaper or book and sit perfectly still, apparently hoping not to be noticed. If she spoke to him, he would shut his eyes and hum quietly to himself.

  "He had a retiring disposition," my mother said. "Like you, Anna."

  We don't even have a good photograph to remember him by. Family snapshots show only an ear, or an elbow, or the back of his head, as he sidled crabwise away from the eye of the camera.

  The last my mother heard of him was more than a year after he left. It seems that he had taken a job at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he'd given her name as a contact in case of emergency. They called her because my father was lost somewhere in the building and no one could find him. It's quite a large place, I understand, with something like two hundred and seventy miles of bookshelves. It's easy to see how a man like my father could get mislaid in a place like that.

  The library guards swore he couldn't have left the building, but they never did find him. Eventually he was officially presumed dead by the authorities and our lives went on. I always liked to think that he was still alive in there, living off library paste and sandwich crusts from the staff's brown bag lunches. My mother says that that's just a fantasy and that we have to face facts, but it makes me happy to think of him like that, and after all, it could be true.

  I did wish that he had stayed with us a little longer, that he had given me more of a chance to be a daughter to him. I believe that he and I would have had much in common.

  I developed an interest in his tools when I was only a tiny girl. They were all I had of him, and I learned everything I could about their use and care. I know that most childhood experts do not recommend the unsupervised use of power tools by very young children, but I was remarkably mature for my age, and. though small, very strong. I discovered that my hands were quick and clever, and that I enjoyed building and making things.

  I also learned to sew. The lady who had lived in our house before us had been an accomplished seamstress and, before her retirement, had owned a small fabric store. When she died she left the attics filled with bolts of material, spools of many-colored threads, boxes of buttons and lace, and all sorts of craft supplies.

  By the time I was seven years old our house was beginning to look like the grand old mansion it had once been, and my family was the best dressed in town. I have always been blessed, or cursed, with a seemingly endless fund of nervous energy. It is a real hardship to me to sit idle; I must be doing something. So I snipped and sewed and sawed and hammered to my heart's content.

  I was proud to be such a help to my mother. She had a good job with an insurance company but, with a big old house and three young daughters, the money wouldn't have gone nearly as far without my efforts.

  We were a happy family, or so I thought. I at least was entirely con
tent to go on living exactly as we were, forever. But my mother had different ideas, it seemed.

  "Anna, where are you?" my mother called to me one day. "Come out, darling. I need to talk to you."

  Uneasily I crawled out from behind the sofa in the front parlor, where I had been peacefully engaged in attaching some fine old Victorian beadwork to the collar of one of Andrea's denim jackets. A nice effect, I thought. I didn't like it when Mother called me "darling." It usually meant bad news.

  I presented myself, standing up straight so that she would be sure to see me. When she spotted me she patted the sofa cushion beside her. "Sit here beside me. So, darling," she said, avoiding my eye, "you're seven years old now, aren't you? Such a big girl!"

  I regarded her with alarm. I was not a big girl at all, and we both knew it. I was an extremely small girl.

  "Such a big girl," she repeated firmly. "You know, dear, school starts in a month. We'll have to start thinking about some new clothes for you as well as for Andrea and Kir sty."

  I simply stared at her.

  Andrea lunged into the room. She was ten years old and going into the fifth grade that year.

  "What! You're going to send her to school? You can't."

  "Stop bouncing at me like that, Andrea," Mother said. "Just sit down and be quiet for a moment."

  "Anna, I want a pink dress with ruffles for the first day of school." Five-year-old Kirsty came in, trailing her doll Bethany behind her. "With those glittery things all over the top. Like Cinderella's ballgown."

  "You are so stupid, Kirsty," Andrea said. "Nobody wears ballgowns to school."

  "Andrea, please," said Mother.

  "Just for the first day," Kirsty said, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

  "Kirsty, Andrea, I am speaking to your sister. Now, Anna," Mother said in a reasonable, kindly tone of voice that turned my knees to water, "you have to go to school. It's the law. You should have gone last year, or even the year before, but I didn't think you were ready. Girls!" she said suddenly, in a sharp voice. "You're sitting on your sister. I can't see her."

  My sisters looked around themselves and shuffled their bottoms on the couch. I waved my arm to indicate that I was fine.

  "Ah! There you are. You must realize, Anna, that this life you lead is not healthy. You haven't left this house in years. That isn't right for a growing child."

  I shrank miserably into the couch. I couldn't possibly leave the house; it was like asking me to strip off my very skin.

  "And you need to play with other children."

  We were all silent after this pronouncement, trying to imagine me playing with other children.

  "You could play hide-and-seek, for example," Mother said brightly.

  Kirsty shook her head. "It's boring playing hide-and-seek with Anna. All you do is look and look and look and you never find her."

  "I wouldn't be doing my duty as a mother if I didn't send you to school," my mother said, ignoring Kirsty. "I don't mean to frighten you, but the state could even come and take you away from me if I don't send you to school."

  "Huh!" Andrea said. "If they came to get her, she'd hide. How would they ever find her?"

  I decided that I had to say something.

  "I think—"

  "That isn't the point," Mother said to Andrea.

  "I SAID, 'I THINK—'" I shouted in her ear. She jumped.

  "Did you say something, Anna?" She leaned down to listen.

  "I think if I have to go to school I will die."

  She shook her head at the passion in my voice, but she looked away.

  "She might, you know," said Andrea.

  They all stared gloomily at a point on the sofa where they believed I was sitting.

  "Teacher would step on Anna," said Kirsty, becoming tearful again.

  "Teacher would not," Andrea contradicted her. "Anna would already be trampled to death in the hall going to class."

  Kirsty began sobbing aloud, with her mouth open.

  "Andrea!"

  "Well, I think it's ridiculous. You know what she's like. Whenever she gets around people she pretends to be a chair or something. And she's good, too," Andrea said, with reluctant pride. "She even fools me, sometimes. I mean, what if somebody sat on her and squashed her flat? Imagine the embarrassment!"

  "Andrea," Mother began threateningly.

  "Mom, Anna is weird and you know it. There's a million things that could happen to her," Andrea said. "Look, why don't you teach her yourself?"

  I brightened up. This seemed like an excellent idea.

  She sighed. "Because I have to work, that's why, to keep food on the table."

  "Well, okay, in the evenings," Andrea suggested. "I mean, come on, Mom. Anna's pretty smart. Bet she already knows more than any first-grade teacher. It'd be a cinch."

  "I want Mommy to teach me," Kirsty said jealously.

  "Yeah, me too, come to think of it," said Andrea. "That'd be great! No more school."

  "Children! Now, don't be silly. It's true that Anna is an unusually intelligent child, but there's more than book learning to the first grade. What she needs most to learn is how to interact with other people. As for you two, it's out of the question. It's bad enough that I've been leaving Anna alone here while I work without leaving you as well. Anna at least is always perfectly behaved."

  Andrea and Kirsty looked sulky.

  "I wouldn't do anything," Andrea said.

  "Me neither!" shrilled Kirsty.

  "Oh ho, like fun you wouldn't do anything!" Andrea said. "How about smearing Mom's makeup all over the bathroom, huh? I guess you call that nothing?"

  Kirsty took a deep breath and opened her mouth as wide as it would go. "AAAAAHH—"

  "Stop!" Mother said, putting a hand over each of their mouths.

  "Anna, I'm sorry," she said. "But what else can we do? You'll have to go to school like other children."

  "I think you're being silly, Mom," said Andrea scornfully, prying Mother's fingers off her lips. "It's not like anybody would ever know."

  This was a mistake. Mother's chin came up and her eyes flashed. She hated to be reminded of the fact that no one outside of our immediate family, not even the neighbors, believed in my existence.

  "Anna," she said, "I admit that you are in many ways a very mature and clever seven-year-old, but you are still a child. I am your mother, and I say that you must learn to mix with other people for your own good." On a kinder note, she continued, "I will call the school today and tell them about you. Perhaps we can arrange something—special tutoring in a small class—something like that."

  She stood up. "I must do what I think best," she said, and left the room.

  "Gee, Anna," Kirsty said, clutching her doll to her, wide-eyed. "What are you gonna do?" but I didn't answer, because I had already crept back into hiding.

  That night I started work on the secret room.

  Two

  I didn't intend to defy my mother, not at first. I was an obedient child, anxious to win the approval of those I loved. I only wanted to hide from the idea of school. It hadn't occurred to me yet that I could hide from school itself.

  The day after Mother informed me of her decision I heard her talking on the phone to someone named Mrs. Waltzhammer. Mrs. Waltzhammer, it seemed, was the school psychologist. She was to come to our house in two weeks to meet me and to Discuss The Situation.

  "Now, Anna," Mother said when she got off the telephone, "it's very kind of Mrs. Waltzhammer to come to our house instead of seeing you in her office. So I'm expecting you to cooperate. I want you to speak up nice and loud so she can hear you. And maybe you should make yourself a new dress for the occasion. Something really bright and cheerful; something to give you a little color. What do you think?"

  I fingered the mottled gray-brown material of my tunic and a tear ran down my cheek. I didn't want something bright and cheerful. I was proud of my clothing. I wore a loose overblouse that had been artfully cut and dyed to resemble a moth's wings, and und
erneath a pair of matching leggings. I have always admired the way moths can camouflage themselves against many backgrounds and have copied their coloration and outline in my dress as a tribute to their skill. I considered my outfit to be both graceful and practical.

  "I think it'll be like watching the Invisible Man," said Andrea. "Mrs. Waltzhammer will just see this tiny little hot-pink dress floating around with nobody in it. No, I'm serious, Mom. I think a flashy outfit would make Anna fade out altogether."

  "Well, Andrea," my mother said tartly, "what do you suggest, then?"

  Andrea gave this some thought and then shrugged. "You could have a big flashing neon arrow that says 'ANNA' pointing at her chair, I guess. That's about the only thing that's going to do any good."

  "Oh, Mommy, can we?" asked Kirsty, charmed with this idea. "I want one that says 'KIRSTY NEWLAND' over my chair. Anna, could you make one for me too?"

  My mother threw up her hands in defeat. "Oh, wear what you like, Anna! I just thought that a brightly colored dress would help Mrs. Waltzhammer to ... to locate you. Anna? I don't want you to hide from Mrs. Waltzhammer. I mean it, now."

  What would happen if I did? I pictured this Mrs. Waltzhammer rampaging through the house like a vengeful tornado, flinging open closet doors, jabbing under beds with a broom handle, upending laundry hampers, relentlessly hunting me down.

  I speeded up the schedule for construction of my secret room.

  Ours is an old house, a Queen Anne Victorian built in the 1880s with the expectation of housing a large family and a staff of servants. It is known locally as the Bloodgood Mansion and has twenty-two rooms, not counting halls, bathrooms, enclosed porches, attics, walk-in closets, and cavernous linen cupboards.

  I created the secret room out of plasterboard, two-by-four planks of lumber, and empty space. Our house had thousands of square feet of unused, unnoticed, unneeded empty space. The space I took for my secret room (really, it was a room and a passageway) was of no importance to anyone but me. So you really couldn't call it stealing, could you?

  This was the most ambitious project I had ever attempted, but I had no doubt that I could carry it out. I am not a modest person. In fact, in some ways I'm afraid I'm horribly conceited. This may sound odd to you, coming from the mouth of such a shy person.