by Rachel Klein
We hardly saw him for the rest of the weekend. While we walked in the woods near her house, Lucy told me that he has a girlfriend in town and spends most of his time there. Her mother is happy about that. The problem is that he won’t let her mother get a divorce. When she tried to bring up the subject, he put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Lucy was standing next to her mother, staring at the barrel of the gun pressed against her mother’s skin.
Lucy said, “He was just kidding. The gun wasn’t loaded.”
But I know that Lucy was terrified. She thought her father was going to kill both of them.
I remember that afternoon in the woods so clearly. At school, everything was already in bloom, but there the trees looked dead. There was no sign of spring. The world was suddenly drab, finished. I walked behind Lucy, staring at the long blond hair that her father would not let her cut, and I kept saying to myself, “Why did I think she was so normal?”
Is it possible that all this has happened to Lucy? I look at her, and I can’t see any sign of that terror. She insists that she’s only going away to school because she comes from a tiny town where nothing ever happens. But that’s not the reason. It makes me sick to think about him, with that enormous stomach hanging down over his pants. I don’t know how he could manage to have sex, with that in the way. And who could bear to touch him? I look at my pen after writing this, and I can’t stand to hold it.
Dora called Lucy a daddy’s girl. Her father forces her to be what she doesn’t really want to be.
Am I my father’s daughter?
No more: I think Lucy just came into her room.
Lights out
I’ve got my fingers crossed that everything stays like this.
I should have studied tonight instead of writing so much in my journal. I’ve promised Lucy that I’ll quiz her on her German vocab.
Exams. Exams. Exams. Exams. Exams. All week long.
Carol, Betsy, and Kiki came back on Sunday, so that they could take their exams. Everything is pretty much back to normal.
January 16
I’m never going to smoke dope again.
*
“The Black Spider”: “As those sleep who carry the fear of God and an untroubled conscience in their hearts, and will never be awakened from sleep by the Black Spider, but only by the kindly sun.”
What does Lucy carry in her heart? Can I really know?
January 17
It was supposed to be a celebration.
Lucy, Carol, Kiki, and I snuck into Claire’s room late Friday night and smoked some hash that Claire brought back from home. She got it from her cousin. Ernessa was there, too. I don’t remember whose idea it was. I’ve smoked a few times before, but I can’t relax when I’m stoned. I always feel like I’m taking a quiz on a subject I know nothing about, where the questions keep changing before I have a chance to write down the answers. But I didn’t think it could be this bad, that I could feel stoned to death.
Claire filled the pipe. “This shit will take you down the rabbit hole,” she said. She sounded like Charley.
She held a match to the pipe, inhaled deeply, and passed it on. Then she arranged a few sticks of incense in a holder shaped like an elephant and lit a match. Ernessa was at her side, blowing out the flame.
“Don’t do it,” said Ernessa.
“Do what?” asked Claire.
“Light the incense.”
“What kind of pill did you take?” asked Claire. “You’re like Alice when she’s tall. Or maybe when she’s small. It hides the smell.”
Claire started to laugh at her own joke as she picked up the book of matches. “Don’t forget what the dormouse said.”
But Ernessa held up her hand and said, “I mean it.”
“I can’t abide the smell. I won’t be able to stay in the room. The smoke will suffocate me. It’s unbearably sweet.”
Claire shrugged her shoulders. “All right. Guys, open the window and hold the pipe outside. We’ll all freeze our butts off.”
We smoked a bit. I started to say, “I can’t even feel a things …” when I couldn’t finish my sentence. The last word was a million miles away, and I could only inch toward it. I stood up and started walking up and down the room, to try to escape that feeling, but the room wasn’t big enough and everyone kept getting in my way.
“Stop it,” said Claire. “You’re driving me nuts. You’re like the Mad Hatter.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t. I can’t. I’m losing all my words.”
My heart was racing. I couldn’t calm down. Carol got up and put her arms around me, but I pushed her away and kept walking up and down.
“She’s getting really weird,” said Carol, and I could tell that she was annoyed.
“What are we going to do with her? She’s going to get us caught,” said a voice.
Lucy was sitting with Ernessa on the bed. Lucy had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, but even with the window open, I wasn’t cold. Their heads were together, the black hair against the yellow, and they were whispering. They were alone. I couldn’t hear anything. All the sounds in the room were going.
“I can’t stand this feeling any longer.” My words were muffled. They came from another room, from behind a closed door.
Ernessa looked up at me. Her body kept swelling and receding. The teeth were discolored and large, and her lips couldn’t cover them. The red gums showed above her teeth. Her eyebrows were a black band across her forehead. Her face was ashen. As she pushed back her thick hair, I could see her white ears and the dark hair all over her hands. There was dark hair everywhere, on her cheeks, around her mouth. She smiled at me very calmly. She wasn’t at all disturbed by what was happening to her.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. But now I must have been whispering because no one listened to me, and no one noticed her. They were all laughing and eating cookies. The crackling of the cellophane each time a hand reached in the bag for a cookie was deafening.
I could hear Ernessa’s voice, even though she was across the room and had lowered her head from my sight. “You can hear me. I need to tell you what it was like when I first came here. On the boat over, I looked down at the gray waves, and I kept saying to myself, ‘Jump. Jump.’ But it was too cold. I arrived the same way you did, with the same secret. I was ushered in by absence. Dusk was my escort. I checked into my own room, with my own bathroom and fireplace. It was fall. October 10. Brilliant sunshine. The Brangwyn Hotel. We took tea on the porch on the warmest days. Soon it became too chilly. They had to light the fire in my room. But I was still always cold. I lay in bed with hot water bottles, and my feet were blocks of ice. I couldn’t warm them. We came here, my mother and I, to put at least an ocean between him and us. My mother managed to recover. In fact, she met another husband here. But to me an ocean was nothing. He reached out and took me with him. ‘There’s nothing for you here.’ I could hear his words –”
Ernessa’s old, old. Her life repeats itself like Lucy’s horrible record, skipping over and over, always at the same spot. The moon shadow. She’s waiting for my life to become stuck like that.
I ran out of the room, down the corridor to the back stairwell, down the stairs, and through the door out into the snow. Carol must have come after me, because she was there with me outside, trying to get me to put on a sweatshirt. I was only wearing my pajamas and slippers. It was cold outside, and there were several inches of snow on the ground, but I wouldn’t wear the sweatshirt. I wanted to feel the frost on me, all over my skin. The cold always makes my hands and feet ache, but now I needed the cold. I ran down the drive. When Carol caught up to me, I was rubbing handfuls of snow over my face, my neck, my breasts. I was trying to rub something away that was clinging to my skin: the smell of hash.
We walked down to the Lower Field, around behind the Hut, and back up the drive. The hash started to wear off. I was shivering on the way back, and I put on the sweatshirt that Carol handed me. She didn’t say a word. She jus
t held my arm tight. She looked terrified.
When we got back to the door, I was ready to run up to my room and get into bed and sleep forever. I knew it would take hours to warm up my frozen body. I could barely stand up. But the door was locked.
“Shit,” said Carol. “I jammed in the piece of wood. I can’t believe the watchman came by and shut it. He never does.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I didn’t mean for you to die like this.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I really don’t want to get caught. Not now. This is stupid.”
I don’t know how long we were out there, stamping our feet, walking in circles, cursing. Finally Claire came down to make sure I was all right, and she opened the door.
I slept. But when I woke up the next morning, I still felt stoned. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I’m not back to normal yet. I can’t stand it when I lose control. I had planned to start reading Bleak House this weekend, but I can’t think straight. There had to be something else in that hash. Hash isn’t strong enough to make you hallucinate.
I know what was in the hash – the future. The hash was dipped in the future. The future when everybody changes and turns into someone different. I’ll become a person I won’t like at all. It won’t matter because that person will have forgotten all about me. I won’t exist anymore. It’s worse than dying. It means my life now is not really happening.
Am I going crazy? How can I know the difference between losing my grip on reality and seeing things that are truly beyond reality? Everything is beyond reality. There’s no one here to tell me.
Last year I watched Annie Patterson lose control. After that, she was changed. It was at a chorus concert. She was standing in the top row, at the back, because she was so tall. She kept shifting from one foot to another; she couldn’t stand still. Her head was tilted to one side as she sang. It took too much effort to hold it up straight. Her long black hair, which had once been so thick, couldn’t cover her ears. One ear stuck straight up. Her face was colorless, except for her nose, which was red and blotchy. She looked like a sick animal. After the concert, she stepped carefully off the risers, wobbling as she moved. It was incredible how thin she had become. I never imagined someone’s bones were really that small. The old Annie was gone. Gone with the flesh and muscle and fat. And if the energy in the universe remains constant, where does that go?
She had fallen into a huge black hole, and she couldn’t climb out. It was an accident. She was peering down into it to see what it was like, and then she fell. I never saw her again. At breakfast, I heard one of her friends say, “She lives her life as if it’s a novel she’s going to write some day.”
After dinner
When I came down to supper, everyone laughed at me for freaking out. I wanted to run away and cry, but I was starving. I hadn’t eaten a thing all weekend. I stayed in my room all day Saturday and Sunday and said that I was sick. I was so exhausted that I slept most of the time. It was Sunday night buffet, and I could eat quickly and get away. I ate ravenously. I couldn’t get the food into my mouth quickly enough, and then I couldn’t slow down enough to chew it properly before I swallowed. My hunger was unnatural. I ate two plates piled high with food, without speaking a word to anyone. Then I ran back to my room. I didn’t go down to the Playroom afterward, even though we have an extra hour there on Sunday night and everyone goes. I closed myself up in my room. I’m convinced there was something in the hash. I don’t understand why no one else had the same experience. But they love being stoned, and I can’t understand that.
Lucy just stuck her head in to see if I was feeling better, and I told her I wanted to be left alone. I was lying on my bed, with my journal pushed under the blankets. I’m trying not to get violently sick. If I lie very still and let the waves of nausea roll over me, it will pass. I want to crawl into the back of my closet and hide behind the dresses, the way I did when I was a little girl.
This was why I didn’t want to come back to school. I was afraid that it would start up again. I can’t shut my eyes and will it away.
I want to be invisible.
January 19
There are no secrets in this school. Some girl always finds out. Or someone makes something up and convinces everyone else that it must be true. So in the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, or if there was a secret or not.
Claire was waiting for me when I went into dinner. She said she had to talk to me right after dinner. I knew it was about Mr. Davies from the way she pushed the ringlets out of her eyes so dramatically while she told me to meet her in the Playroom. I didn’t want to go.
“I know you won’t believe this,” she said. She was standing too close to me, and I could feel her hot breath on my ear. I wanted to push her away. “Especially you. You only talk about poetry with him.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I can’t tell you how I found this out, but I know it’s true. Mr. Davies and his wife write pornography. They do it together,” said Claire.
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re totally ridiculous.”
“Ask Mr. Davies if you don’t believe me,” she said.
“What do you mean, they write pornography?” I asked.
“For a magazine,” she answered. “They use a pseudonym, of course. He’s not stupid. He doesn’t want to get canned from his job.”
“But how can you possibly know something like this?” I asked.
“I told you I can’t tell you. Trust me.”
“Why should I trust you? You’ll have to prove this to me.”
“Be patient,” said Claire. “I’ll have the proof.”
I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. “Have you seen the magazine?” I asked.
Claire squirmed, but she didn’t answer my question. “Do you think he and his wife work it out in bed before they write it?”
“If they do it, it’s for the money,” I said. “I don’t care if he does it.”
But I do care.
January 20
The day students never touch each other. They think it’s queer when they see two boarders walking down the hall with their arms around each other. But that’s the way we are. The thought of touching another girl disgusts the day students. They gab on the phone every night. They talk about boys and clothes and makeup. The boarders are with each other at night. We hate the phone. None of us wants to be reminded that she has a family. No news is good news. Everyone knows that most of the gym teachers and half the teachers are lesbians, but no one says anything. The day students are all in love with their new hockey coach, who’s young and pretty. But everyone knows she lives with another woman. I don’t care. I’ve almost never spoken to a day student, except for Dora when she was a day student. She was just boarding this year because her father went to Paris on a sabbatical. She was different because she wasn’t stupid and blond. She was always more like a boarder, even though she wasn’t the kind of girl you wanted to put your arm around. She was cold and stiff. The few times that we walked arm in arm, I felt uncomfortable and self-conscious.
I try not to think about Dora.
You can tell when there’s something going on between two ugly, overweight girls. I’m glad all my friends are pretty – that’s probably why I don’t really like Claire.
Last night, after my bath, I was lying on Lucy’s bed. We were both reading. I had my arm around her, and she had her head on my shoulder. I was playing with her hair.
At least she knocked before she entered this time.
I didn’t bother to look up from my book. But Lucy had already jumped off the bed and was moving toward the door. Ernessa wasn’t interested in her. She was looking straight at me, lying on Lucy’s bed in my nightgown, my book on my chest. It frightened me. Lucy reached out for her arm, but Ernessa was gone without a word, and the door closed before Lucy had a chance to touch her.
When she was gone, Lucy and I had to look at each other and feel
embarrassed.
Once Charley accidentally touched Ernessa’s hand when she passed her a cigarette. Ernessa jumped back.
“What’s the problem?” asked Charley. “I’m not a lesbo.”
“Her hand was cold,” Charley told me later. “Really cold. She freaks me out. She’ll never bum another cigarette from me.”
I could tell that Charley was really annoyed. She knew people thought she was a lesbian because she was so wiry and boyish looking.
Ernessa can’t understand us.
It wasn’t just because of Lucy and me. She’s angry at me. I wouldn’t listen to her story that night. I ran away. I won’t listen.
January 21
There are places in this school that are beginning to feel unsafe, places where I’m used to being alone. If I think about it rationally, she has no reason to be there. But she has her own reasons.
I was on the fourth floor, outside Miss Norris’s apartment, about to go in for Greek. She was standing right behind me. She just materialized.
“I thought about starting up Greek again,” she said. “But the situation wasn’t right.”
I had no idea what she meant by that, but the tone she used was not at all nice.
“I used to study Greek and Latin. I wanted to be a classics scholar. I was very serious, even though I was a girl. But then – other things intervened.”
I don’t believe a thing she says.
“I don’t know if you could start in the middle of the year. You could ask Miss –”
“No, it’s too late for that. Are you aware that Dora’s death caused me a lot of trouble? It was very inconvenient. I had to have lots of discussions with the headmistress and the psychologist and the police. They wanted to know how it was that she fell directly under my window and I didn’t know anything.”