by Amina Cain
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To Alex & Laida
It’s as if something that should happen is waiting for me … it’s something that owes itself to me, it looks like me, it’s almost myself. But it never gets close. You can call it fate if you want. Because I’ve tried to go out and meet it.
—Clarice Lispector, The Apple in the Dark
I THOUGHT THAT BEING in the country would help me write, with its fields and its horses, but I don’t think I was meant for that. For the country, or for help.
Out in the street, candles light every window. When I can’t get my thoughts down, I look at them. The flames remind me of my future; I’m afraid I might burn everything up. People are walking in and out of the same four shops; I know they haven’t bought anything good. When I went inside those shops, I was bored. I’m bored by this one street.
If something flows through me, I think it is mine. It is not mine. The carriages driving close to my windows.
It’s strange being alone again. In the afternoons there’s a spaciousness larger than I’ve ever wanted. I had a husband and I left him; I wonder how he is. Now I have writing, but I also have too much of my own self. I am stalking my own soul.
I wanted to write about paintings, but I wasn’t seen as someone who could say something interesting about art. I wasn’t seen as someone who could say anything at all and then publish it. When I went with my husband to the museum, I felt I should be cleaning that place. I was used to that work and maybe it is my destiny. Before meeting my husband, I had mopped the floors of those galleries, over and over. I had scrubbed the walls until my palms were rough and dry.
I both liked and disliked going to work. When I was supposed to be cleaning, I would look out the windows of the museum, the paintings behind me reflected in the glass. It meant something to me to see myself with them. Never before had I thought paintings would be important.
I was learning how to be another. I would stand in front of the window for a long time, a bucket of water by my side. I watched the rain falling on the grass; at first, standing there, I hadn’t even known it was raining.
My husband felt he was rescuing me, and in many ways he was.
I was told by my husband I was writing about my own mind. I was told this wasn’t becoming. But I saw myself in the paintings; I saw everything there.
After my husband and I married, I had to open our house to guests—constantly. I had to entertain and I am not a good entertainer. At first I liked my new life. My husband bought me expensive dresses, and then more dresses. For the first time I wore gold. I had a writing room—that’s not what my husband called it—and someone to bring me hot tea and coffee.
It’s not only that my husband believed women couldn’t write—it’s that he didn’t believe I could. My coming up in the world was in marrying him and in my new clothes and jewelry. It’s true I did want everything he gave me, but I will die if I can’t write and then I will have wasted my life.
I see myself then, a figure in the street, walking to the museum. To look out from my window and see myself like that. Moving in and out of experience.
But here is my own body, and my own chair. Here are my wrists. Sitting at my desk, I feel loving toward my wrists. I’ve made them do too much.
THE CLICK-CLACK OF SHOES and Antoinette appeared, the hallway dark behind her. “I was in the gallery with the armor,” she said, “and I thought I heard something, but I always think that.”
“It’s awful in there. I usually hear things coming from the vents.”
“I don’t like when it’s my turn to clean it.”
“Help me here, and then we’ll do that room together.”
Antoinette dusted, barely, while I finished my mopping. “My dress is ugly,” she said, sighing, looking at herself in the large windows. I don’t think she ever looked at the art.
“No one’s here to see you.”
“When I walk home, they’ll see it.”
“Then you’ll be wearing your coat. You’ll be covered up.”
She started to dust again. Then stopped. “We shouldn’t have to wear ugly things.”
The truth was that sometimes, if it wasn’t freezing, I didn’t even wear my coat in winter I was so ashamed of it, but I didn’t say this to Antoinette; I didn’t want to give her ideas, wrong ones. There were people who had no coat at all, who instead had to pile on shirts and sweaters.
“I want a husband,” she said again out of nowhere.
“You’ll have one.”
“Yes, but he’ll be poor and he’ll wear an ugly suit.”
“You’ll love him anyway.”
“No, I won’t.”
“I don’t care if I marry,” I said. “I want to write.”
* * *
WHEN WE FINISHED OUR CLEANING, we went out into the evening and it was a relief, to be done with work and going wherever we chose. Antoinette didn’t have the same freedoms I did—she lived with her family still—but she walked with me for a while. Out on the street we were both different; I felt connected to something around us, something good, though I don’t know if I could say or even describe what that was. I could sense it all the same. I could sense an interaction. In the buildings and in Antoinette, her shoulder to her hand. Even in her face. The back of her head as she looked out at the city. The front and back of my own head too.
At a corner we stopped to watch a puppet show. There were young mothers with their children, and the puppets were colorful animals, more colorful than real animals would be. A bright mouse. A golden cat coming after it.
“I like the mouse,” I said, though I wasn’t a child.
“I wish my brother were here,” Antoinette said. “He’d like it too.”
“How old is your brother?”
“Six.”
To be six, I could hardly picture it now. I had tried to block out a good bit of my childhood.
But this wasn’t about me, it was about Antoinette’s young brother, and I was always returning the subject to myself.
AT HOME THERE WERE the doorways of the other apartments, my own doorway swept clean. A song was in my mind, one I had heard in a shop I had gone into. I didn’t know why it was accompanying me. A young woman had begun to play it right when I walked in, a cheerful harpsichord, or was it melancholy?
Maybe it is unbelievable, but I liked where I lived; another person might find it wanting. My rooms were small with hardly any furniture, but what was there was nice enough, if simple, and I kept it neat as a pin. A bedroom with a bed and a blanket. In the kitchen, a table and two sturdy chairs. I tried to write at that table every night. I didn’t think it was good. Still, I enjoyed it. The house where I had grown up was crowded with babies and yelling. Imagine being on your own after that.
After dinner I sat down to write and saw an image in my mind: three women in long white dresses playing catch with a skull. Dull afternoon there among the green firs. I don’t know why it appeared to me; I couldn’t remember ever seeing it in the museum.
Often when I went to bed at night and closed my eyes: paintings. The way waves must appear when you close your eyes at night if you’ve been to the beach. Or I saw my notebook, sturdy black with white pages, and what I had put down that day.
The first part I had written in pencil, sitting outside in the sun. Then as it got darker, I wrote something else. Then I didn’t wr
ite at all. I felt proud because something outside my mind had brought me there. It wasn’t my energy I was responding to.
Sometimes I saw what I had read:
My needle is sticky, and it creaks as it goes in and out of the canvas. “My needle is swearing,” I whisper to Louise, who sits next to me. We are cross-stitching silk roses on a pale background. We can color the roses as we choose, and mine are green, blue, and purple. Underneath, I will write my name in fire red …
Antoinette was right. We terrified the rich. The waves of people arriving in the morning and leaving late in the evening, I tried to be a part of that energy, but it wasn’t possible. My dresses rough and plain to match all the roughness about me.
I would buy myself something, a pretty new blouse or a pair of red stockings, even if I had to skip lunch for a week to afford it. Maybe I would also buy myself a book. Each thing would give me a different kind of pleasure. I would read the book in my bed at night.
IN THE MORNING I WALKED TO WORK AGAIN. The river was two streets over, and once in a while I caught a glimpse of it, or I caught a glimpse of the air just above. In front of the museum a line of people wrapped around the corner of the building, the women in their full skirts.
Here was a woman in a stunning emerald dress, a white feather sticking out of her hat like a warning.
Inside the museum, another woman looked at a painting of a witches’ Sabbath, the figures on the canvas huddled together, their bodies forming the shape of an oval. Light was on the woman’s face, her cheeks flushed.
I had to mop the bathrooms. I had to scrub the toilets and the sinks. It was the worst part of my job and I didn’t know how to do it without wanting to throw my bucket of water on someone.
This woman who looked as if she’d rather be sewing, she kept taking her embroidery out. She left her husband to wander the galleries while she sat on a bench in the lobby, working steadily on a piece of pale blue cloth. I wanted to throw my bucket of water on her.
EVERY MORNING AND NIGHT I walked through that city, to and from the museum, fall turning into winter. Each doorway, even mine, its own theater of something, with its own suggestion or promise.
I allowed myself to go into clothing shops, and when I found a delicate black blouse I thought would go well with a simple skirt, and when I had saved enough money, I allowed myself to buy it. Trying it on in the dressing room, I became different. I left the shop, the small bag tucked under my arm. I don’t think I looked different to anyone else, but I carried the bag proudly with me.
After work, if Antoinette came too, we would find ourselves walking next to the cold black river, following it to the black lake, sometimes stopping to throw crumbs for the birds. Two figures on a canvas. I saw us in that way.
“I want a bathing suit,” she said one evening. I don’t like to hear a person’s voice during this kind of moment.
Then we walked again. At a market we bought hot chocolate and drank it while sitting on a bench in front of the lake. Other people sat on other benches and the air was chilly. We were anything but alone. This time I didn’t mind listening to the things she wanted: a one-piece, backless bathing suit, a silk dress, a gold necklace with stars on it, a turquoise blouse. A portrait of her desires, there at the lake with the waves rising gently up in the darkness. I wanted her to have all of it.
“Can you imagine,” she said dreamily, “a party in which you receive all the things you’ve wanted all year, and then you put them on one by one?”
“To be honest, I can only imagine receiving one of them.”
“Why only one?”
“I try to imagine things that might actually happen. It’s more pleasurable that way.”
“None of it will come true, so what does it matter?”
“You’re right, and yet…”
I would get her the blouse. After all, I had just saved enough for my own, why shouldn’t I get one for Antoinette? A few more skipped meals and I would be able to afford it.
* * *
FOR A WHILE, then, my breaks at the museum were spent in the galleries. If I couldn’t eat, at least I would see something nice. I would write about it. One of the drawings I liked most was Three Virtues, and I went to it often. I would sit on the bench facing the drawing and forget where I was. Three different figures of a man fading into a red background while I faded into the room. It was certainly a strange drawing, though I don’t think it was meant to be. Sometimes I looked at pages from the Quran, studying its lettering. But I knew I was different from the other museumgoers; I had my work to do. Only when I was walking or at home could I be myself.
I wrote down my descriptions of the paintings, my notes, but I wasn’t sure what I would do with them. The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet, The Annunciation, Margaretha van Haexbergen.
Then I would see Antoinette, looking at herself in the mirror in the bathroom, careless, her sponge on the floor. In the courtyard in her—it was true—ugly coat. I started to write descriptions of her, the things she did when she was supposed to be cleaning, the way she looked when she spoke or was silent. I liked doing this as much as I liked describing the paintings, but I didn’t tell her I was doing it. I didn’t talk about writing at all. She continued to tell me the things she wanted, that she had seen in the shops. Sometimes I wrote these things down in my notebook too. In my mind I began to picture her in the clothes she wanted, as if the intensity of her desire had made them appear. Very clearly, I saw her in a maroon dress.
TODAY AS ANTOINETTE and I were leaving the museum, we stopped to look at a painting of Mary. Or maybe it was me who looked; Antoinette was restless. In this painting, Mary is lying down but she’s awake to something. She’s looking up, her eyes open just enough to see what’s in front of her, or perhaps what she’s seeing is inside her own mind. Her white robe is slipping from her shoulders, her hands clasped, her arms resting on her pregnant belly. A red blanket. A dark room. It must be cold outside. Inside too. She is lit not radiantly, but with a half radiance and shadows all around. They touch her. And the red blanket gives off warmth, but Mary’s skin also looks warm. She appears as if she’s in ecstasy. I wonder what it feels like.
ANTOINETTE VISITED ME at my apartment only once. She came over and I made us mint tea. We each ate an orange. A biscuit.
“You have hardly any furniture,” she said in surprise.
“I have enough.”
She looked around. “Hardly anything at all.”
It was true, but the things I liked were around me. Lying on my bed and waiting for me to return to it was a novel about a poet. An autumn leaf sat on the table between us, Antoinette in one chair and me in the other. We drank our tea.
“Someday I hope to have a parlor with very beautiful furniture in it,” she said. “I would spend all of my time there. A place to relax when I am not out visiting and a place to entertain my own guests. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I’m not sure.”
“The parlor or the visiting?”
“Both, but especially the visiting.” Antoinette appeared hurt. “I don’t mean you. This is different. I consider you to be my friend and so it’s my pleasure to have you here.”
“Do you really think of me as a friend?”
“Of course. And me? Do you see me as a friend?”
“Yes,” she said shyly.
“Go on. What would the parlor look like?”
“The wallpaper would be navy blue with orange flowers on it.” She stopped and thought awhile. “A magenta-and-black Turkish rug in the shape of an oval would sit in front of the sofa. I don’t know what color the sofa would be.”
“Something neutral,” I offered.
“Gray.”
Though we had dirtied only a few dishes, and she always tried to clean as little as possible at work, Antoinette insisted on washing them before she went. It was sweet and I began to love her then.
CLOSE TO CHRISTMAS, there was chamber music in the front room of the museum. Before the concert began,
the audience took their seats and then the musicians did. The instruments were taken up. There was the violin, filling the room. The lights from the windows shone out into the snow.
This was my first concert. I was able to see Antoinette’s parlor. The oval rug.
While I dusted, I listened to the music and afterward wanted to describe it in my notebook. I was thinking things that I was afraid I would forget. Also, I had become interested in my handwriting. I wanted to see it there, in its own way, alive.
Antoinette’s handwriting, I had begun to see it written across her face. What she wanted, in cursive.
But I did my cleaning. The toilets sparkled afterward. I scrubbed the walls. They were constantly, constantly dirty.
Then I walked home enjoying my evening, still hearing that music in my head. A green wreath made of bay leaves hung in the center of a door. Next to it, a stack of wood gathered for a fire. There was the shop with a blouse for Antoinette. I could already picture her in it, eating dinner with her future husband at a nice restaurant. Sitting in the botanical gardens in the domed greenhouse, the windows frosted over in ice.
When I was at home for the night, I sat in my bathtub in water as hot as I could stand it and read for as long as I could.
In books I found even more strongly my desire to write, to write back to them and their jagged, perfect words. I found life that ran close to my own.
I don’t think Antoinette had time to read; I don’t think she had time for anything, and maybe that was why she was so lazy at the museum. When she wasn’t working, she had to take care of her brother and sister, for her mother, who was sick, for her father, already dead.
I tried not to remember my own family. Away from them I had found my freedom, a space to think. I would clean my rooms with tenderness (I still couldn’t believe they were mine alone) and then sit down again at my table. There was nothing to block me from it. The relief of reading and of being alone. The relief of trying to write.