The Woman in the Wall

by Patrice Kindl

  Andrea looked terrible, her hair mussed up and her face swollen and red with tears. Mother, Mr. Albright, and F stood behind her. Mother had one hand on Andrea's shoulder, apparently trying to calm her, but like everyone else, she was looking up at me.

  Mother! I thought, and my hand made a little involuntary gesture toward her. But I couldn't, no, I just couldn't. I wrenched my arm away from Kirsty and ran away, up the stairs.

  They ran after me.

  Eighteen

  Like a pack of hounds in fall cry after a rabbit, they came. I heard the sound of my name being called, of many feet pounding up the stairs behind me.

  "Hey!"

  "Hey, Anna!"

  Thud, thud, thud.

  "Darling, come back!" That was Mother, I thought.

  "Anna!" Kirsty, sounding impatient.

  "Stop her! Make her come back here!" That was Andrea, her voice imperious, sounding out loud and clear above the others.

  Thud, thud, thud.

  "Who is this Anna?" Mr. Albright, sounding mystified.

  "Catch her!" An unknown voice.

  "Who?"

  "The girl in the green dress!"

  "Why?"

  "I dunno, Andrea wants her."

  "She's getting away!"

  The thudding swelled to thunder, as the old staircase swayed and groaned under many running feet, like a ship in a gale.

  "Oh, A," I heard F's voice, small and far away in the tumult, "I'm so sorry."

  The attic door. If I could make it to the attic door before they burst in upon me, I would be perfectly safe. I could slam the door in their faces and lock them away forever. And it was so close! Only twenty feet or so from the head of the stairs.

  I rounded the turn and then achieved the top. The door was just there, to the right.

  Directly in front of it stood a boy and a girl, arms wrapped tightly about each other, heads lifted like startled deer.

  "Out of my way," I ordered brusquely.

  They merely gazed at me with wide, astonished eyes.

  "There she is!" The leaders of the pack had breasted the top of the stairs and were baying almost at my heels.

  I turned and ran in the opposite direction. Back through the upstairs hall, into the old nursery, and hence into the servants' quarters. There was a back stairway, down to the kitchen. I could slip back into my world through the broom closet in the kitchen. I flung myself down the narrow stairs, careless of falling, careless of the racket I was making, careless of everything but reaching sanctuary.

  The kitchen was full of people. Evidently not everyone had participated in the chase. A whole group of people were standing around drinking sodas and eating corn chips. Someone had spilled most of the bag of chips on the floor. The broom closet door was open, and a boy was rooting around in it looking for a broom and dustpan with which to clean up the mess.

  How could I possibly walk into the broom closet and close the door in front of all these people? The couple upstairs had been bad enough. There were at least ten people here, staring at me, at my wild eyes and frantic face. And the door to the broom closet didn't lock.

  Gasping and pressing a hand to my aching side, I fled once again. Past the breakfast room, the laundry room, the scullery, through the butler's pantry, into the dining room, and so to the hall once more. The doorways to the billiard room, the back parlor, the front parlor, the library, all flashed by me. There were people all over, staring at me, pointing at me. And always behind, I heard the shouts of my pursuers, coming ever closer.

  They were in the hall now, right behind me. There was nowhere to go. There was literally nowhere to go.

  "Oh, help me! Help me," I sobbed, and turned the knob on the front door. It opened slowly, ponderously, as if it were a slab of stone rather than oak. When at last it stood open, I plunged through it, out onto the porch and down the front steps.

  After seven years I was once again outside of the house.

  It was dark; a flame-lit, dancing darkness. Kirsty had been at work in our front yard as well. Little pumpkins, twenty or thirty of them, were dotted about everywhere, yellow candlelight flickering through wicked, grinning little faces. The street light outside our house was on, and the porch light as well. A swollen, golden moon hung high above me.

  I stopped; I stood still, breathing painfully. Where was I to go? I shivered violently. Dressed as I was, I would probably be found dead of exposure tomorrow morning. Ironic, really. Tomorrow, November first, was the Day of the Dead. Dead on the Day of the Dead, I thought idiotically. I turned around to bid a last farewell to my beloved house. It could not protect me now.

  And they all came pouring out of the door.

  I didn't run. I couldn't. While I kept in pretty good shape crawling through heating ducts and so on, I didn't have the lungs for this sort of activity. Also, my dress was too tight for easy movement.

  They stopped too and stood panting and staring at me. It was a smaller group than I had thought: Mother, Kirsty, Andrea, and three strange boys, and in the back, F.

  "It's—it's you, Anna," Mother said wonderingly.

  At that moment, Mr. Albright appeared. He pushed his way through the little crowd on the front steps.

  "Exactly what do you people think you're doing to this poor girl?" he demanded, in a low, intense voice. He stood in front of me, shielding me from their eyes.

  "Elaine?" He turned to my mother. "What the hell is this all about, anyway? Why is everybody chasing this girl through the house like a gang of wild hyenas? If she's done something wrong, let's discuss it in a civilized manner instead of scaring her half to death. Elaine?"

  "It's Anna," my mother said. "After all these years, it's Anna. And—and she's all grown up!" Mother burst into noisy tears.

  "Look, Mom," Kirsty said eagerly. "You can see her now."

  "Yes," Mother wept, "I see."

  Mr. Albright was clearly bewildered, and he was not a man to enjoy being in that condition.

  "Will somebody please tell me," he growled, swinging on me with a menacing expression, "Who is this girl?"

  Kirsty and Mother both spoke at once.

  "She's—" Kirsty began.

  "Frank, that's my—" Mother said. They both stopped in confusion.

  Mother, I saw, was willing to claim me.

  "Andrea could tell you," I suggested diffidently.

  Andrea stared at me for a moment, expressionless. At last she spoke.

  "That's Anna," she admitted.

  "Oh, Frank, it's Anna!" Mother sobbed.

  "I know that," Mr. Albright snapped irritably. "But who is Anna?"

  "Anna is my sister," Andrea said.

  Mr. Albright looked blank, as though he wasn't following the conversation.

  "Hey, cool!" said one of the three strange boys.

  "My little sister," Andrea continued, "though that may not be so obvious." She turned to Mother. "Do you think she should be allowed to dress like that when she's only fourteen years old?"

  "I think she looks lovely," Mother said, smiling through her tears.

  "Me too," offered another of the three strange boys.

  "That's not exactly the point, Ma," said Andrea sulkily.

  Mr. Albright closed his mouth, which had been hanging open. He cleared his throat.

  "Perhaps we should go back inside the house and discuss this. It sounds like you've got some explaining to do, Elaine."

  "Yes," my mother said, smiling radiantly. "I do. Lots of explaining. I'm so sorry, Frank," she said, turning a beaming face on him. "I couldn't tell you before. I wanted to, but you would have thought I was crazy. I mean, I thought I was crazy. But I'm not. I'm not crazy. Oh, Anna, please, please let me give you a hug."

  Shyly I submitted. It was strange, being embraced by my mother, but after spending what seemed like hours in the arms of one man after another, it was less of a novelty than it might have been earlier. I even hugged her back a little bit.

  We went back into the house. I looked back over my shoulde
r at the autumn night I had visited so briefly. It was rather beautiful, I thought; unlike the terrifying daylit world, it did not give a sense of infinite space. It seemed a secret, private place, with deep shadows between the pools of lamp light. It was a place where I could go, a place I could walk in unafraid, until I grew accustomed to the wide world.

  Mr. Albright scolded the three boys, who were showing a good deal of interest in this new development in our family, and sent them home. Then he sent everybody else at the party home.

  Once the hubbub of leave-taking was over, once Mr. Albright had scoured through the house three times, flushing out an impromptu saxophone recital in the front parlor, as well as assorted couples kissing in the laundry room, the linen closet, and the breakfast room, Mother explained.

  She explained all about me right up until the moment I disappeared into the wall. Her recitation was interrupted periodically by a series of mini-explosions of disbelief and consternation from Mr. Albright, but she persevered to the end. When Mother finished, F, blushing hotly, explained about our correspondence.

  "But, Francis," Mr. Albright protested, looking as though events had gotten a bit beyond his control, "how did you even know she existed?"

  "I didn't." He looked miserably at me. I rescued him.

  "He didn't. He just wrote a note and stuck it in the wall for the fun of it, thinking maybe someday somebody would find it."

  "Yeah," F agreed, nodding enthusiastically. "Like putting a note in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. Kind of a neat idea, I always thought."

  Andrea rolled her eyes.

  "F—that is, Francis—has a very romantic nature," I defended him.

  "Pff!" Andrea made a contemptuous noise with her lips.

  "And you're telling me you've been living in some kind of a little hole in the walls all this time," said Mr. Albright incredulously.

  "Not a little hole," I contradicted him.

  "Oh, Anna, it was too a little hole." Kirsty shook her head at me.

  "But—you never saw the rest of it. You don't know—" I stopped. They would never see, never know the full extent of my achievement. They were too big to travel through my passages. Even I was too big. I sighed.

  "It wasn't little," I said sadly. "It was the whole world to me."

  I was banished from that world forever, I knew. I couldn't go back now. One day soon I would go away from here entirely; I would leave this house, perhaps never to return.

  I hugged myself, comforting my fear. Very well then, I thought, I will be my own house. I will build myself a house out of my own flesh and bones where my frightened child-self can find shelter. After all, isn't that one of the things that women do? We are houses for our children, until they are strong enough to breathe and walk alone. Someday I may carry a baby inside me, shielding it from harm within the stronghold of my body. So surely I must be able to give myself shelter now.

  "At least F will be with me. He'll give me courage," I thought, and then blushed as I realized that I had spoken aloud.

  "No, he won't," said Kirsty.

  "Only in the summer," F said. "I'm supposed to live with my mother during the school year."

  This was a blow! I dropped my eyes and bit my lip, trying to control the tears that threatened to spill over. Surely I was old enough by now to stop crying all the time.

  "Um, we could," F mumbled, not meeting my eyes, "we could write. Letters, you know. Or e-mail. My Dad gave me a computer this year for my birthday. And he has one, so there'd be one in Chicago for you to use. I bet you'd be really good at computers."

  "Yes," I agreed, "we could write. I don't know anything about computers, of course, but I'd be happy to learn."

  In a way, that was better. We would write letters and tell each other things. This time I could be me, Anna, and not someone else. I could probably send him packages through the mail, too. And then there would be the whole summer together.

  It was better. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'm ready for the things Kirsty claims that men and women do together. We could be friends for now, until I learned more about this business of being a woman. And then, some day...

  "You could write to Andrea, too," I said generously.

  F made a funny movement with his shoulders, sort of a combination of a shrug and a shudder.

  "I don't think I will," he said, "I'd rather write to you. Anna—" he hesitated and then went on. "I'm sorry I told Andrea who you were. I was just sucking up to her, hoping she'd notice me. I didn't know they'd chase you like that. I guess that must have been pretty scary for you." I nodded fervently, and he said discontentedly, "And then she called me 'this kid' like she didn't even know who I was. I guess it was a shock and all, but still. I don't think I like Andrea as much as I did."

  "Oh, Andrea's not bad," I said charitably. "When you get to know her."

  "Well, anyway, I'm sorry for being such a creep tonight."

  "That's okay," I said.

  Mr. Albright, who had been conferring in a huddle with Mother for the past few minutes, approached me cautiously, eyeing me as though I might bite if not handled properly.

  "Your mother tells me that you've never attended school," he said. "Can you, uh, read?"

  Kirsty snorted.

  I nodded.

  "Well, that's great!" he said heartily. "Wonderful. But you see, Anna, just knowing how to read isn't enough. You're going to have to get some schooling in. Now, I thought that in the light of your, um, previous history, you might prefer to be tutored at home. We could probably manage a private tutor, if you'd like."

  I considered. Mother watched me nervously, remembering the last time we discussed the subject of my education.

  "Yes," I said at last. "I think I would like a private tutor at first. But eventually I'd like to go to school like other girls." I snuck a peek at F to see if he was suitably-impressed with my courage. He was.

  "If you feel up to it, I suppose that would be all right," said Mr. Albright, sounding worried. "Chicago's a big city. We'll have to find the right school, the right neighborhood."

  "Don't worry, Dad," said F. "If Anna says she'll do something, she will."

  I smiled complacently.

  "Anna," Mother said, "You look tired. It's getting late. And you too, Kirsty, aren't you tired?"

  "No, not at all," she said, through a huge yawn.

  "Come on, girls, to bed," Mother said. "Oh! I wonder—I hope there are sheets on Anna's old bed. Let's go have a look. Kirsty! Bed time."

  "Oh, okay," Kirsty said crossly. "Let's go, Anna."

  At the door I stopped and looked back at Mr. Albright.

  "Uh, yes?" he inquired.

  "About those dress shirts—" I began, but Kirsty grabbed me by the wrist again and pulled.

  "Come on, Anna!"

  And that really is all there is to tell. So far, anyway.