The Moth Diaries

by Rachel Klein

  Finally, we went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I listened to the whirring wings and insect bodies banging against the screen. Every sound outside was the green luna, trying to get into my room to show itself to me one more time.

  Why wasn’t that enough for my father? He only had to remember the delicate creature, flitting through the white honeysuckle on wings of sea foam. That would have helped him. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. More beautiful than poetry. How could he have forgotten it?

  December 9

  I asked Dora if it were possible to hallucinate without taking drugs. She must know. She’s supposedly the expert on psychedelic drugs. “Sure,” she said. “That’s called being psychotic.” Maybe the light of the moon can make you hallucinate. If not, I’m losing my mind.

  December 10

  “Il arriva chez nous un dimanche de Novembre 189 …” That’s how far I’ve gotten in Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier. Tomorrow I have a big French test on the first five chapters. It doesn’t look that hard. I won’t have to look up too many words. No more hanging out at night with Dora and Charley. If I have to stay up late tonight, I’ll be able to sleep over the weekend. I hate to stay up and force myself to work when I can barely keep my eyes open. Even though Dora is supposedly such an intellectual, she doesn’t work very hard in school. Charley doesn’t give a flying fuck. Her words. I’m glad I have something to do. I’m going to make myself read now.

  December 11

  This morning Sofia put a note under my door: “I never see you anymore. You’re spending all your time with Charley and Dora. I’m sad.”

  I felt terrible, but I can’t help it. I can talk to them about Ernessa. Sometimes she’s all I want to talk about, all I want to think about. I haven’t spent any time with Mr. Davies either. I bet Claire is happy about that.

  I don’t want Sofia to be involved.

  At lunch I came up behind her and gave her a big hug and kiss. We’ve decided to spend Saturday together in town. We’re going to the museum and out to lunch. I should look forward to it. She’s one of my closest friends. My dearest friend. But I have to force myself to pay attention to her.

  My French test went pretty well. I managed to do at least two weeks of reading in a single night, so it was fresh in my mind. The book is like a beautiful confusing dream. Childhood – even a sad childhood – eventually becomes a place we think we’ve dreamed or stumbled across and want to find again but never can. I should write about that, not the stuff Mr. Davies has assigned. Maybe later, when I have more time and can think clearly. I’m going to try to finish the book over Christmas vacation.

  “Sredni Vashtur”: The child shared a desolate childhood with phantoms and wild animals, and a god answered his cruel prayers.

  December 12

  On the train into town, I laughed for the first time in ages. Sofia told me how she managed to visit her boyfriend in town last year without lying about what she was doing. She would sign out for the day, and when she got back, Miss Olivo would always look up, her head shaking precariously on her neck, and ask her where she had been. Sofia would say, “I saw the museum.” The train passes by the museum, which rises above the river like a Greek temple, and she would make sure that she looked out the window and saw the museum each time. “That way I wasn’t lying,” said Sofia. “Miss Olivo must have thought that I was really interested in art, because I saw that museum practically every weekend.”

  Sofia’s the kind of person who meets boys in train stations, restaurants, everywhere. Her boyfriend was a sophomore in college. I secretly envied her when she talked about him. Their relationship seemed so sophisticated. She spent most of her time with him sitting on his lap while he tried to talk her into sleeping with him and she tried not to get talked into it. In the end she was too scared to do it, and he got sick of trying to talk her into it.

  After Sofia and I had been in the museum for about an hour, I felt much calmer than I have in weeks. All of a sudden, I wasn’t thinking about anything. The quiet in my head made me realize how accustomed I’ve become to the din.

  Just before we left the museum, I went to the first floor, where my mother’s painting is hanging by the cloakroom. I’ve been so angry at her since Thanksgiving. But when I saw her painting, I let go of the anger. If only she can find that part of her again. The painting is so beautiful. It’s sort of abstract, but with the same two images that keep reappearing in her paintings: an owl in a silvery yellow sky and a boat on a bright red river. I’m not sure what they mean. Sometimes the owl is a bird, and sometimes there’s an owl head on a human figure whose body dissolves into the sky, like the angels without feet in old Italian paintings. Sometimes the boat is empty. Sometimes a person is paddling it with her hands. I know what my father always loved in her, even at the very end when he had practically forgotten about love. She was like the luna moth for him, and at times he couldn’t stand it. She can’t forgive herself for not saving him. But he didn’t want to be saved. I’m the one who needs her.

  On the train back to school, that anxious feeling returned, like a wave that you don’t see until it crashes over you and knocks you down. I was in such a hurry to be back in my room, to get to my journal, and to keep an eye on everything. Nothing happened while I was gone.

  December 14

  I knew all along that something like this was going to happen. I just didn’t think it would be this bad. Yesterday Charley went out with Kiki and Betsy and Carol. She’ll hang out with anyone who wants to smoke pot. They were coming back from town and somehow they ended up at the wrong train station and they had to get back to school and no trains were coming because it was Sunday, so they all decided to take a cab back to school. The driver got out of the cab for a minute to make a phone call, and while he was gone, they drove off. They stole the cab! I have no idea why they would do something so stupid, and nobody can tell me. Who was driving? Whose idea was it? I think it was just a joke, but once they started driving, they kept on going.

  They were arrested by the police and brought back to school late last night, and none of them came to breakfast this morning.

  After dinner

  I got a disconnected story from Claire: They were all stoned out of their minds, and they were afraid the driver had gone to call the police because they were yelling so much. So they stole a cab? Basically, nobody knows what happened. Or they’re not saying.

  After midnight

  I went into Dora’s room after lights out, and Charley was there. We had to be extremely careful not to get caught because we would have been in serious trouble. Charley’s convinced she’s going to get tossed out of school for this and the other girls will just be suspended because they have connections. They’re all rich, blond Waspy types. Also, Charley’s grades are not so hot, and she’s gotten so many comments and detentions already this year. She doesn’t seem to care. She says she’s sick of boarding school.

  “I’m ready to get out of this pit,” she said. “You guys should too.”

  I talked to her for half an hour, and I still can’t figure out what happened.

  Ernessa went with them into town.

  In the middle of the afternoon, she gave Charley a tab of acid. She said she only had enough for the two of them. It was the first time Charley dropped acid. By the time they got to the train station, she was completely flipped out.

  Charley said, “I looked up at the front of the building, and it was moving, sort of pulsing in and out. There were tongues of fire coming out of the roof, and the columns were writhing and twisting. It was cool, you know, but really scary. They must have carried me into the station and onto the train. I sure didn’t want to go in there.”

  “What about Ernessa?” I asked.

  “I think she got off the train with us. For sure, it was her idea to take a cab back to school so we wouldn’t be late. She told us she had enough money to pay for it. She even found the cab for us. But I don’t remember her ever being in it. Of course, I can’t remember
everything. I just know that when the police tried to stop us, I kept on driving. I was laughing, and it was like my hands were melted onto the steering wheel.”

  Basically, Charley is screwed.

  December 15

  Betsy, Carol, Kiki, and Charley are home. It’s just an extra week of vacation. They know that their parents will get them out of this. No one feels sorry for Charley. They all blame her, the pothead. When they were stopped by the police, after a very short chase, Charley was driving the cab. Now they say it was her idea in the first place. It was lucky that no one had any dope on them, because they were searched at the police station. They had smoked it all in the park downtown.

  No one wonders where Ernessa disappeared to.

  Ernessa even managed to be back at school on time. Dora checked the sign-out sheet for the weekend. She signed in at five forty-five on Sunday. Miss Olivo always checks the time when you sign in.

  December 16

  Last night Dora asked me to come to her room after lights out. She had tried to call Charley earlier that afternoon, but Charley’s mother wouldn’t let her come to the phone.

  “Her mother acted like it was my fault,” said Dora, “but I wasn’t even with them in the cab. I tried to stop her from smoking dope all the time. If she had stayed with us, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “I want to ask Charley about Ernessa,” I said.

  “She’s the one who’s to blame for all this,” Dora said. “She thinks she’s so smart and she can do anything and no one will touch her. Maybe it’s time for her to be caught. If they knew she was dealing, they’d bounce her in a second.”

  “I don’t know how she manages to get away with everything,” I said.

  “You know,” said Dora, “I asked her if she wanted to read my manuscript, and she said she wasn’t interested. She said fiction bored her. All the dreary details. ‘I only read poetry,’ she said. She’s so full of herself. And her ideas about Nietzsche are just ignorant.”

  I feel so tired. I’ve had enough of this game, or whatever it is. Christmas vacation starts in two days. Then I’ll have to deal with my mother for three weeks. I didn’t say anything to Dora. I was hoping she would drop the subject.

  “I’m going to find out what she’s up to at night,” said Dora.

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  “But I do,” said Dora.

  She went over to the window and opened it. We both stuck our heads out. It was cold and windy outside. The moon was completely hidden behind clouds, and in the faint greenish light from below, I could barely make out the gutter.

  “It’s too dark,” I said. “You can’t see a thing.”

  “I could feel my way along,” said Dora.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I almost fell last time. I’m never going to do it again. It’s too scary. If her room is empty, you still won’t –”

  “Look,” said Dora, nudging me with her elbow.

  The gutter was nothing more than a thick green line. The wind whipped my hair across my eyes. At the far end of the building, by Claire’s window, I saw something. I whispered, “Is that Claire?”

  The person stood up and started to walk toward us along the gutter. She walked as if she were on the ground, without hesitation, without a single misstep, the way she played the piano. When she reached her window, she turned and stepped into the glass.

  Dora slammed the window shut.

  “Do you think she saw us?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  This morning at breakfast, I asked Dora if it had really happened last night.

  “I think so,” she said. “But maybe it wasn’t what we thought it was. Maybe she left her window wide open.”

  What did we think it was?

  There’s one thing I can’t understand. Why does Ernessa want me to see that she isn’t like the rest of us?

  I’m going to nap until dinner.

  After dinner

  I almost missed dinner tonight!

  I lay down on my bed during quiet hour, and right away I fell into an incredibly deep sleep. Even asleep, I could sense how heavy it was, as if a huge hand were pushing me down into the mattress. I was with my father. At first we were just lying together on my bed at school, flat on our backs with our hands folded carefully on our chests and our eyes closed. I was lying there, but I was also standing by the side of the bed, looking down at the two bodies. “Are we both dead?” I asked them. No one answered. All of a sudden, I felt someone tugging at my arm and pulling me. I turned around and saw the back of the person pulling me. “What are you doing, Daddy?” I asked. He wouldn’t answer me. He just kept pulling, harder and harder. I had to grab onto the metal rail at the head of the bed and plant my feet firmly on the floor to stop him from pulling me under. I kept looking around my room to see if there was anything I could use to hit my father, to make him let go of me. At the same time, I was feeling how unbearable this was and how I needed to wake up and end this dream. I was back on my bed, this time by myself. My father was gone. I could see myself lying flat on the bed, straining to lift up my head, to sit up, to get out of bed. I managed to lift my head up with an immense effort, just a few inches, and then it fell back onto the pillow, and I had to begin again. And again. I was so weary of it. My eyelids were so heavy, they pressed against my eyes. I didn’t think I could ever wake up. I leaned over the bed, to get a better look at my sleeping self. Suddenly the eyes opened wide, and my two selves stared at each other in astonishment. I was wide awake. My eyes were open. But I was paralyzed as if in a dream.

  I didn’t get up until the last bells. Dinner was already starting. I could hear the clatter of dishes as the servers brought out the carts piled high with platters of food. I wasn’t even dressed. I was still wearing my sweaty gym tunic. I pulled on some stockings with huge runs and threw on a dress. When I opened the door, Ernessa was standing there. She had been waiting all this time for me.

  “You overslept too?” she asked with fake concern. “We better hurry if we don’t want to get a comment.”

  I ran down the hall.

  After dinner, Dora and I sat in the corner of the playroom, where Lucy usually hides with Ernessa. I asked her if she believed in the supernatural, “the physical manifestation of the unconscious in our waking life,” as Mr. Davies always puts it. So that we know that it’s real and unreal at the same time.

  “The spirit world,” I said. “What we saw going into Ernessa’s room last night.”

  “That’s for children,” said Dora. “I don’t think there are spirits, or the undead, or anything like that. Fairy tales. They scare you, but you want to hear them. Nietzsche says people would rather have the void as a purpose than be void of purpose. It’s just another kind of religion.”

  “I used to be like that,” I said. “But I’ve changed.”

  “In the end there is a rational explanation for everything.”

  “But you were scared last night, weren’t you? When we looked out the window?”

  “Late at night everything takes on a spurious significance,” said Dora. “During the day, it would have seemed perfectly normal. Ernessa is a weird, unpleasant person with bizarre sleeping habits who thinks she knows everything. Maybe she sleepwalks all night.”

  “Not along the gutter,” I said.

  Now we were the ones who were whispering.

  Ernessa walked into the Playroom, and I tried not to look at her. She sat down with the others and immediately brought a match to her cigarette, waving the smoke around her into a cloud. Her head was leaning in our direction. She seemed to be listening to us. She even nodded her head when Dora spoke.

  “I’m going to prove it to you,” said Dora. “Come to my room after lights out.”

  “No, I’ve had enough. I told you last time. Please don’t go,” I said.

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” said Dora. “It doesn’t suit you. I’m going to find out about her.”

  “Now you’re being stupid.”


  I got up abruptly and left the room. I could feel Ernessa’s eyes on my back, burning through the cloud of smoke and into my skin. I’m not going to leave my room at night.

  December 17

  Five A.M.

  Dora never was my friend, really. She looked down on me. I always knew that. She pretended to be my friend, because she resented Ernessa, too. We shared that dislike.

  It’s still dark outside. I’m waiting for the sky to lighten so this night can be over. The ambulance is gone. The police cars are gone. Dora is gone. From my window, I watched them carry out the stretcher. Her face was covered with a white sheet.

  Suddenly everyone was up. The Residence was shaken awake. All the lights went on. I sat up in bed, as if a hand had yanked me upright, and my entire body was vibrating. There were sirens; an ambulance and police cars raced down the drive. Flashing red lights swept through my room. And outside the door, girls were shrieking and crying. I couldn’t stand that noise. Voices of men boomed down the corridor, along with heavy, hurrying footsteps. I was terrified. Then the sounds came together and formed words. “This is her room here.” “She didn’t go out this window.” “It’s got to be the next room.”