Camilla

by Madeleine L'engle

  The particular afternoon when I first got to know Luisa I went to a room that is like the courtyard of a Roman house, with a marble pool in the center, and marble benches at the sides. It has trees and plants and the warm moist odor of a greenhouse. I sat down on one of the benches and opened my history book and I felt very happy because the history we were studying then was Roman history and it was a wonderful place to do it in. After a while someone sat down beside me and said “Hello” and it was Luisa. I wasn’t particularly glad to see her just then (though I had been wanting a chance to get to know her at school) because I was happy by myself and I wanted to do my history, but she kept on sitting there, so we talked. At first we didn’t talk much about anything, just about school and the girls and the teachers. Then she said, “You know what, Camilla Dickinson? I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that I like you better than anyone else in school.”

  I didn’t know what to say to this. I never could have said anything like that to anyone, no matter how much I meant it, but it sounded all right the way she said it, looking straight at me with her blue eyes alive and friendly; and suddenly it made me very happy. She looked at me and I looked at her and I couldn’t say anything and then out of a blue sky she asked me, “Do you love your mother and father?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  She shook her head impatiently so that her straight red hair flopped back and forth across her cheeks. “I don’t mean the ‘of course’ kind of love. I don’t mean do you love them for being your mother and father. I mean do you love them as people?”

  I’d never thought of Mother and Father, then, as being anything but Mother and Father. I mulled her words over in my mind for a moment, and then I answered “Yes.”

  “You’re very lucky,” Luisa said. “I don’t like either of mine.”

  This was something I couldn’t imagine, and I must have looked very blank and stupid because Luisa twisted her mouth into a sad sort of smile and then she asked me if I had any brothers and sisters and I told her that I hadn’t.

  “Do you think your parents wanted you to be born?” Luisa asked. I looked blank and stupid again, and Luisa went on. “My dear child, don’t you realize that lots of times parents don’t want their children at all? Frank and I were planned but I think it was a great mistake. Were you planned?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Luisa sighed. She sat there on the marble bench and put her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands and looked as though she might at any moment burst into tears. “You’re very lucky,” Luisa said. “You’re one of these people who’s a daughter and your mother and father are parents; but Frank and I and my mother and father are all separate people and we’re in eternal conflict. Do you know, Camilla Dickinson, you’re the kind of person it’s easy to talk to. I don’t ever talk to people like this. Would you be my friend? I do so need to have a real friend.”

  Luisa puzzled me and she frightened me a little, but I wanted very much to be her friend, if, after this talk, she didn’t think I was too stupid. “I’d like to be your friend,” I said.

  She lifted her chin from her hands and her face changed from being all tight with trying not to cry and lit up with a smile. “Then it’s all settled!” she shouted, and shook my hand.

  After that we did our homework together almost every afternoon, either at her apartment on Ninth Street or up at mine. Her parents weren’t around often and Frank was away at boarding school that winter, so we had her apartment pretty much to ourselves. It’s quite a small apartment—the third-floor-through of a brownstone house; it has a big living room with two studio couches where her parents sleep and a long blond wood table where they all eat and a kitchenette in a closet; and in the back are two small bedrooms where Frank and Luisa sleep with a bath between. Luisa’s room has a double-decker bed. The room isn’t big enough for two beds except one on top of the other, and she and Frank both used to sleep in this room when they were very little.

  Luisa’s apartment has a very different feel from mine. In her living room all the furniture is very modern-looking; the chairs are oddly shaped and much more comfortable than you’d expect them to be, though rather hard to get out of. There are very modern paintings on the walls, most of them originals, because Luisa’s mother works on an art magazine. I wish I could explain the mood of that apartment. Whenever I am there I feel that life is very dangerous and exciting and that I am rather dull and unprepared for it. I don’t feel uncomfortable in it because Luisa is somehow part of it, and I never feel uncomfortable with Luisa; but until this year it has been something very far removed from my life.

  “Camilla, stop brooding,” Luisa said, finishing her minced ham sandwich and licking her fingers. “Did you talk to Jacques yesterday?”

  “Yes. He brought me a doll.”

  “A doll! To you! Beware of the Greeks bearing gifts, Camilla. What does he think you are! What an insult! I hope you threw it in his face!” Luisa got very excited and banged on the counter with her fist so that the sleeve of her yellow sweater pulled up above her narrow wrist and made her suddenly seem to me younger than I am. Luisa is a year older than I and usually she seems much older but every once in a while I feel as old as one of the burned-out mountains of the moon and Luisa is like a little comet flinging itself violently across the sky.

  “I brought the doll for you,” I said. “I left it in the coat-room at school. It’s in a box. It’s really a lovely one—as dolls go.”

  “For me!” Luisa looked up at the counterman and smiled at him radiantly. “Oh, Camilla, really! You are a darling! Do you think I’m an awful dope, still liking dolls? You’ll never tell any of the kids at school, will you? What a thing Alma Potter’d make of it! Thank goodness it’s in a box. It doesn’t look like a doll, does it? The box, I mean?”

  “No,” I assured her.

  “Frank thinks I’m a dope,” she said. “My gosh, I wish Frank were back at boarding school this year. But I guess even if he hadn’t been kicked out last winter Mona and Bill couldn’t have sent him back this year. You don’t know, Camilla, but really he’s impossible to live with. It’s hell being poor, absolute hell. I don’t know why Mona and Bill don’t send me to public school too. A batty sort of pride when half the time we don’t have enough to eat. Listen, Camilla, you won’t ever think I’m a dope, will you?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  Luisa finished her coffee and I finished my milkshake, sucking on my straws gently so that I’d get all of it without making that bubbly sucking noise too loudly.

  “Come on,” Luisa said. “Let’s go to school.”

  The day after I’d met Luisa in the Roman courtyard at the museum last year I came right home from school. My mother was shopping and I went into the kitchen and got some milk and bread and sugar and went into my room to do homework. In just a few minutes the doorbell rang and it was Luisa. “Hello, Luisa,” I said. “Come on in my room and help me with Latin. I’m having an awful time.”

  Luisa stood there just inside the door and pulled off her yellow string gloves and twisted them. “Are you sure your mother won’t mind my coming?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “She’s out anyhow.”

  “Oh,” Luisa said, and her mouth drooped with disappointment. “I wanted to see her.”

  “Well, she’ll probably be back soon,” I said. “Did you want to see her about anything particular?”

  Luisa shook her head and her eyes wandered about the hall, pausing at the mahogany table with the silver tray for calling cards and the two mahogany chairs with yellow brocade seats and the beautiful map on the wall—a map of America made long ago when most of the continent was unknown territory. “I just wanted to see what kind of mother you would have,” she said.

  “Well, come on in my room,” I told her. She followed me in and stood looking around there, too, still twisting her gloves in her nice bony fingers. Luisa is very thin; she is even thinner than I am.

  “Camilla,” Luisa
said, “your mother is wonderful, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “She understands things, doesn’t she? You can talk to her.”

  “Yes.” Because I could, then. I could talk to Mother about anything, although when I was little it was always Father who gave me a sense of strength and security. It was as though Mother and I were sisters who played all kinds of wonderful games together, but Father was the parent who had the power to make things all right.

  Luisa threw her gloves on my bed and scowled down at my pillow and said, “I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go back there tonight.”

  “Do you want to spend the night with me?” I asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” Luisa said. “That wouldn’t be any good. Things have come to a pretty pass, haven’t they, when I have to say I don’t want to go back, ever ever ever!” She said each “ever” louder, and on the last one she took off her hat and threw it on the floor. “I’m so unhappy!” she said.

  I sat down at the foot of my bed and my room seemed suddenly full of something it had never contained before. I had cried there, had even had tantrums there when I was very little, but the room had never seemed full to the point of explosion the way it did now with Luisa jerking off her plaid scarf, her brown tweed coat, and stamping and shaking her head to keep from bursting into tears.

  “It was a bad day for you, Camilla Dickinson, when you said you’d be my friend,” she said in a harsh voice. “I’ll drag you through the depths with me. All our family are like that. We’re terrible to our friends. But we do care about them. We love them. Truly we do.” For a moment her lips quivered and she turned away so that I could not see her face.

  “They’re being polite, now,” she said. “Mona and Bill. My mother and father. It’s worst of all when they’re polite. When they shout and throw things it’s bad, but it’s not nearly as bad because when they care enough about each other to slap and hit and scream, they really must love each other, don’t you think? Frank and I have terrible fights, but if he died I think I’d die too. But when they’re polite, then I really get frightened. Camilla, I’m so afraid they’ll get a divorce. And what do you suppose would happen to Frank and me if they did? Bill would probably take Frank and Mona would take me, and I like Bill better than Mona even if he is awful to her. Anyhow, it’s better being together just anyhow than it would be to be separated. Why don’t you say something?”

  I sat there at the foot of my bed and I didn’t know what to say. I thought that Luisa would hate me and would never bother with me again because I was so stupid. I wanted terribly to say something that would be wise and strong, and then I knew with finality that there was nothing for me to say, nothing at all.

  Then we heard the front door slam and my mother came running down the hall to my room, crying, “Camilla darling, where are you?” She came bursting into my room and stopped short when she saw Luisa. She smiled at Luisa as though she were terribly pleased to see her, and said, “Why, hello!”

  “This is Luisa Rowan, Mother,” I said. “Luisa, this is my mother.”

  My mother smiled at Luisa again and dumped a big box on my bed. “Darling, I brought you two new skirts and two new— I was passing a shop and there they were in the window so I went—the sweaters are lovely, Camilla, cashmere and wonderful colors. Do try them on.”

  So I had to open the box and try on the clothes while Luisa sat there and watched me and her blue eyes seemed to grow dark and I could not tell whether it was with hate or envy or sorrow. My mother made me leave on one of the sweaters and skirts and then she said, “Darling, Raff and I are going out to dinner and the theater tonight with some friends. Don’t you want your friend to— Would you like to keep Camilla company for supper, Luisa?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Luisa said very quietly. “I’d like to very much.”

  Luisa was quiet all the rest of the evening. She didn’t say anything else violent and all of a sudden she seemed as happy and comfortable as a kitten.

  The day after Luisa first came to our apartment, we were having milk and cookies at recess, and she asked me, “Camilla, what are you going to be?”

  “You mean when I grow up?” I asked.

  “Now, there you go again, Camilla,” Luisa said. “You’re grown-up right now to all intents and purposes. When you’re old enough to be on your own, to do what you want to do, I mean.”

  “An astronomer,” I said. I threw the word at her as though it were a stone because I was afraid she would laugh at me.

  And she did. She said, “Oh, Camilla, people go to psychiatrists now, not astronomers. Astronomers are outmoded nowadays. Anyhow, you’d never be any good at telling fortunes and things because you don’t know anything about people.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. It was the first time I’d ever laughed at Luisa instead of along with her. “You’re thinking of an astrologer,” I said. “I mean a real astronomer, a scientist, the kind they have at Palomar.”

  “Oh,” Luisa said. She pulled on her straws until she had finished her chocolate milk and then she asked, “Why?” But there was for the first time real respect in her voice.

  “I don’t know exactly,” I said. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted. My Grandmother Wilding used to teach me about stars. She knew an awful lot. She’d even met and talked to Maria Mitchell.”

  “Who’s Maria Mitchell?”

  “One of the first women astronomers. Oh, Luisa, doesn’t it give you a shivery sort of feeling at night when you look up in the sky and half the stars you see aren’t there anymore? Or at any rate they’re dead and they haven’t had any light on them for thousands of years. It takes light so long to travel all that distance that we’re seeing them as they were thousands of years ago. And listen. What does the name Schiaparelli mean to you?” Now I was showing off and I knew it, but I didn’t care. I did well in school, but she was the one who always seemed to know about outside things.

  “Schiaparelli? A famous dress designer, of course. Any dope knows that. Why?”

  “Well,” I said, “to me it means Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer—he came from Milan, as a matter of fact—in the nineteenth century.”

  “Okay, okay,” Luisa said. “So what did this guy do?”

  “Well,” I told her, “for one thing he was the first astronomer to see the canals on Mars. Oh—and he was the first one to discover that Mercury takes eighty-eight days to rotate.”

  “Okay, okay,” Luisa said again. “I’m convinced. You’re going to be an astronomer.”

  “I am.”

  Luisa grinned at me. “But you take your Schiaparelli and I’ll take mine. Maybe if my clothes came from Schiaparelli instead of bargain basements I wouldn’t look so bony.”

  I laughed then and said, “I didn’t mean to get so excited. But, oh, Luisa, it’s so terribly exciting! Did you know that some scientists think that the world and the sun and the planets and lots of the other stars are all part of a great big explosion? A huge enormous star exploded somewhere and we’re all just fragments of that explosion getting farther and farther apart as we fly out into space.”

  “Don’t,” Luisa said. “That’s scary.”

  “I think it’s thrilling,” I said. “You’d think it would be the religious people who’d want to find out about it all, wouldn’t you? But most of them don’t. What do you want to be, Luisa?”

  “A doctor,” Luisa said. “Either a psychiatrist or a surgeon. I’d like to be a psychiatrist because I’d like to know what makes people throw things at each other and hate each other and love each other at the same time; and drink too much; and cry all night long. And I’d like to be a surgeon because it would be a lot of really complicated problems, much harder than algebra or geometry, and I’m not a bit afraid of blood and gore and I think lots of doctors cut up an awful lot more of people than needs to be cut up. And it would be terribly exciting to be a surgeon, too, don’t you think, Camilla?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I
guess it would,” and in my mind’s ear I could hear Luisa being talked about as “that brilliant woman surgeon, Luisa Rowan,” and I could see her walking into the operating room and putting rubber gloves on her long bony fingers with quick decisive gestures and then afterward looking terribly white and exhausted and at the same time terribly pleased . . .

  “And it’s nice,” Luisa said, “our both wanting to be scientists. Do let’s always be friends, Camilla, even when you’re a famous astronomer and I’m a famous doctor. Maybe neither of us will ever get married and then we’ll need to be friends more than ever. I don’t think I’ll ever get married. I’m ugly and I’m flat-chested and I’m darned if I’ll buy any of those little rubber things you stick in your bra. And I don’t like men anyhow. Frank always goes around brooding and Bill is horrible to Mona even if I do like him better. I don’t like women, either, I guess. Maybe I’m a misogynist. Is that what I mean? Or is it misanthrope? Anyhow, I don’t think I’ll ever get married unless I find a doctor who’s a misogynist too. And you’ll have your career to think of. You’ll probably have lots of violent love affairs but a marriage might interfere with your work. Scientists should be single-minded. I really agree with Mona and Bill when they say that marriage is outmoded.”

  “Well, I’d like—” I started, but she didn’t even hear me.

  “So we’ll just have to go on being friends more than ever. And if you get ill or have any horrible accidents or anything I’ll take care of you and save your life. Or maybe I could psychoanalyze you. Golly, Camilla, maybe it would be good if I psychoanalyzed you right now!”

  Fortunately, the bell for the end of recess rang then and we crammed the rest of our cookies into our mouths and went back to the classroom.

  I don’t know what I’d have done without Luisa when Jacques started coming to see Mother. But knowing Luisa and having met Mona and Bill had somehow blunted the first edge of shock, though nothing could really prepare me for the fact that something like Jacques could happen to my own parents. It was like accidents in newspapers that always happen to someone else and then all of a sudden someone else is you.