by Rachel Klein
“It caused you a lot of trouble? What about the trouble you caused me? You told on me. You sent the police to me.”
“They asked me if I’d ever seen anyone out there. I told them you and Dora liked to walk along the gutters. I didn’t invent anything.”
“Dora was probably going to Carol’s room. We’ve done it for years,” I said, trying to sound offhand.
“The hall is more direct,” she said. “I’d never try the rain gutters. They’re much too dangerous. Look what happened to Dora.”
“It was an accident,” I said. “Everyone knows that.”
The door to Miss Norris’s apartment opened, and she stuck out her head, wreathed in fine, white hair. “Ah, my delinquent student. I thought I heard you out there, dearie.”
The light poured out of the open door, and it fell over the two of us in the corridor. I could hear the sound of the birds behind Miss Norris, a dissonant choir. Her white hair now glowed like a nimbus. Behind me, Ernessa stepped back out of the light. I hurried over to Miss Norris, and she pulled me inside.
She blames me for what happened to Dora and the fact that the accident, or whatever it was, has made them pay too much attention to her. I told Dora not to do it, and she didn’t listen to me.
I found this in one of my father’s books when I was home: “The vampire knows all secrets and the future.” She doesn’t need hash. We need it so that we can enter her time.
Someone is at the door. I’m going to put my pen and my journal away.
January 22
Mr. Davies stopped me in the hallway. I think he was looking for me.
“You didn’t sign up for my poetry class,” he said, as if he were accusing me of some awful crime.
“I’m not in the mood for writing poetry right now,” I said. I never intended to sign up for that class. “I’m taking ‘Responsibility in Literature.’”
“What are you reading?” asked Mr. Davies.
“Daniel Deronda and Bleak House. I’m in the mood for really long books. And realism. For a change.”
“But weren’t you the one who argued so convincingly in class that writers make their stories real? You can’t get away from the supernatural that easily. The writer is always inventing, believing in the truth of the unseen,” said Mr. Davies. “Dickens was fascinated by the supernatural.”
I was surprised to feel that I had somehow disappointed Mr. Davies. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I couldn’t take your class. It didn’t fit into my schedule.”
“I’m sure you’ll enjoy those books. Miss Watson is lucky to have you. But don’t forget me just because you’re not in my class anymore. Come visit, and we’ll talk about poetry if you don’t want to write it.”
I smiled.
“I mean it,” he said. “I miss you.”
I have been avoiding him.
That day I was a spinning top losing momentum, wobbling on its axis. I felt myself tilting forward into him, then crashing back.
All my teachers have it out for me. Miss Simpson got annoyed at me for not being ready for my piano lesson. I used to get A’s without even trying, now I can’t keep up. I’d rather write in my journal than do homework.
Lucy missed assembly for three days, and she has a week’s detention. She says she’s too tired to get up in the morning. She sleeps right through morning bells. She can’t understand why she’s so tired all the time. This morning I went in to wake her up, and I couldn’t get her out of bed. She seemed drugged. When I shook her shoulder, her head rolled back and forth on her pillow. Her eyelids fluttered like gray moths. She couldn’t raise them. I went down to breakfast and signed her in. After breakfast I came up and dragged her out of bed so that she wouldn’t be late for assembly again. I brought her up a doughnut, but she didn’t eat it. I saw it, wrapped in a napkin, on her dresser an hour ago, when I looked in on her. She hadn’t touched it. I didn’t see her at lunch either. She was probably in her room, doing homework. She says she’s gotten really behind, and we have a huge chemistry test next Wednesday. I’ll have to help her study. I don’t want to.
January 23
Yesterday I forgot to mention that I got my first-semester grades. All A’s. Lucy did so badly that she won’t even tell me what she got. I think she got a D in Chemistry. I feel so sorry for her. I wonder what Ernessa got.
I didn’t feel the usual thrill when I took my report card from the envelope and unfolded the crisp paper. I didn’t deserve those A’s. My teachers gave them to me because they expect me to do well, the way Lucy’s teachers expect her to do terribly. The comments weren’t even that good. Everyone but Mr. Davies said I needed to participate more in class. I was embarrassed when I read what Mr. Davies wrote about me. My face got red, even though I was all alone in my room. It isn’t true, but my mother will be pleased.
January 25
This morning in assembly, Miss Rood announced the names of girls who have to make up gym on Friday afternoon. Lucy and Ernessa were on the list. Lucy, the perfect daddy’s girl who never gets into trouble, didn’t seem to notice that Miss Rood had called her name. Ernessa was furious. She turned around and stared at Miss Bobbie. Lucy had to nudge Ernessa to get her to stop. She noticed that.
I looked at the backs of their heads: the waves of Ernessa’s black hair next to Lucy’s straight blond hair.
Ernessa manages to get away with absolutely everything except missing gym. Miss Bobbie is the only one who makes her follow the rules. That’s because Miss Bobbie hates her.
It’s mostly the day students who hate Jews. I can always tell who would prefer not to sit next to me because I’m Jewish. There are empty chairs on either side of me until a boarder comes into class. I remember so clearly the shock I felt the first time something like that happened. I was going up to the drugstore near the train station to get a Coke and French fries after school. A group of girls from my class was on the platform with some boys. All the girls had shoulder-length blond hair, blue eyes, small noses – the kind who are stupid but good at sports, who wear their gym tunics really short to show off their tanned and muscular legs against their white socks. One of the boys was writing something on a post with a marking pen, and everyone was watching him write. The boy had curly reddish hair and dark freckles across his nose. He didn’t look in my direction, but I caught one of those girls looking at me with her vacant blue eyes while the others laughed. On the way back to school, the platform was empty. They had all taken the train to wherever it is they live. I went over to see what the red-haired boy had written. He had drawn a swastika with the letters K-I-K-E in each of its four arms. There was a circle around it and a black line through the circle. They were black marks on a brown post, where the paint was cracked and beginning to show the silver metal underneath. I chipped the paint away.
I used to draw swastikas in secret, to see if I could force myself to do it. Then I would tear up the paper into tiny pieces before I threw it away.
They’re pretty now, but they’ll grow up to be just like their mothers: heavy around the middle, with dark leathery skin, going to the beauty parlor every week to have their hair frosted, driving around in wood-trimmed station wagons, and baking cookies to bring to hockey games. I’ll still be thin and young-looking like my mother, and I won’t have a family.
I never spoke to any of those girls again.
January 28
Lucy failed her chemistry test, even though we went over every formula together.
We spent so much time studying together in her room. It was just like last year, except that it wasn’t any fun. I couldn’t stop thinking, Lucy is using me. She’s only being nice to me because she needs my help. When she’s finished needing me, I’ll cease to exist for her, at least in the way I want to exist for her. I’d look over at her staring with dull eyes at the study sheet, chewing on her pencil and trying to make sense of the words and numbers. She can’t understand a thing unless I explain it to her. Then she forgets my explanation immediately. I wanted to leave the room
. I tapped my foot impatiently. I opened my mouth to tell her that I couldn’t do this. It wasn’t like last year. She couldn’t expect this any longer. But how could I explain to her that I didn’t want to help her because Miss Rood had read her name on Monday along with Ernessa’s?
Yesterday she fell asleep after lunch and missed two periods. Lucky for her, they were English and French, and when she explained to her teachers what had happened, they were very understanding. I’ve been signing her in for breakfast. Now I’ll have to make sure she gets to class after lunch. She shouldn’t be so tired, although she did stay up pretty late before her chemistry test. She’s so worried about failing the makeup.
The others have finally noticed. We (Sofia, Claire, and I) have decided to take Lucy downtown on Saturday, just to wander around, look at clothes and records, maybe go to a movie. Anything to get her out. I’m going to call Charley tonight and ask her to meet us. The bells just rang for dinner, and I’m not dressed. I have to hurry. All my stockings have huge runs, and my clothes are dirty.
After dinner
Tonight I’m doing something I almost never do. I’m sitting in the library for study hour. Even though it’s filled with old books and oak chairs and tables and reading lamps with green glass shades, I never read here. Usually, there are lots of girls sitting around, and they’re all talking, and it’s impossible to work. Tonight it’s empty.
I like to do my homework lying on my bed, but I wanted to get away from Lucy. She’ll never find me here. She’ll have to figure out her formulas by herself. She’s probably sitting at her desk staring into space and waiting for me to help her.
I’m annoyed at her for not eating dessert at dinner.
For a long time, I looked at the faded spines of the books and breathed in the dusty papery smell. I am happy. Lucy is in her room, far away from me. I can write about her without worrying that she’ll see my journal.
The dessert isn’t really important. She’s stopped eating everything, and she’s lost a lot of weight. We’re together at Miss Meineke’s table. That’s by far the best table to be at. Miss Meineke’s just like us. She lives up on the fourth floor, next to the infirmary. She walks down the corridor in her pajamas, and her room is a mess. She has stacks of books and uncorrected English papers on the floor, and she never makes her bed. It drives Mac crazy, but she can’t say anything. At dinner, Miss Meineke makes fun of the corridor teachers and giggles all the time. That was how Lucy and I first got to be friends, setting up together at her table. Last week, when I saw the lists posted in the Cloakroom and our two names together, I was so happy for an instant. I thought, I have to go find Lucy and tell her. But then I didn’t. Tonight we had our favorite dessert: caramel cornflake ring with coffee ice cream. At first, Lucy said she didn’t want any, she wasn’t hungry. Miss Meineke said, “How can you resist this?” and put some on a plate anyway. Lucy just picked at it. The ice cream melted into a puddle. I made a point of eating all of mine, even though I had lost my appetite watching her. She’s not interested –
She came into the room without a sound and sat down next to me, as if I were expecting her. And I guess I was, in a way. For a long time, neither of us said a word. I didn’t look up from my journal. I slid my arm over the page, to hide what I had written. I didn’t want her to see the letters L-U-C-Y on the page. The black ink was still wet. I could feel it on the underside of my arm. My skin blotted the ink. I put my pen on the table, without closing it, even though I hate it when the nib dries out. From the corner of my eye, behind my glasses, I could see her arm resting on the table next to mine, inches away, but not touching. The hairs on her arm are long and black, and the skin underneath is so white. But thick. The veins are hidden.
“Do you think we’ll be like that one day?” asked Ernessa, looking over at the portraits of the founder of the school and her first few successors, hanging on the wall directly in front of us. They are all in dark browns and grays and greens, very somber and stern. A smile could never soften those expressions. It would crack the paint of those lifeless faces.
“I doubt it,” I said, laughing nervously. “Not my style.”
“I don’t mean dressed up. I mean grown up and desiccated, like Miss Rood and all the women here. I never wanted to grow up, really. I was content to be a child.”
“So was I. But you don’t become like that overnight. Unless you were born like that. The way Miss Rood was. It’s probably less painful to get old than it seems. Everybody does it.” It surprised me that I was actually talking to Ernessa.
“It happens faster than you can imagine,” said Ernessa with the certainty that she always has when she’s talking about life and death and all the other things that people don’t know how to talk about.
“It seems so far away,” I added softly.
“You wake up one day and you’re just like them – amazed not to have lived the life you imagined you would. Do you think anyone is satisfied at the end?”
Ernessa waited for an answer that I didn’t want to give her. I looked over at the door and prayed that someone would come in and release me. Why was the library so empty tonight? Her questions were like the moths’ wings.
“I’d kill myself if I became like that,” I said at last.
“They waited too long,” said Ernessa. “They thought they would live forever.” She pushed back her chair, got up, and walked out of the room. I looked at her for the first time just as the door closed behind her.
The words that drove me out into the snow that night in my hash-induced haze: “I kept saying, ‘Jump. Jump.’ But it was too cold.”
January 31
Our expedition to town yesterday didn’t work out the way we planned it. It was a disaster, like finding yourself riding in a stolen taxi. We met Charley at the train station downtown. At first everyone was excited to see her. It was a new Charley: she was wearing dirty bell bottoms, a faded blue jean jacket with an American flag sewn on the back, and a red bandanna around her head. It looked like she hadn’t washed her hair since she left school, it was so greasy and stringy.
When she saw us, she raised her fist and shouted, “Power to the people – let’s go to Wanamaker’s.” We ran along the wide sidewalks of Broad Street, shouting and jumping.
On the way there we passed by a big record store, and Charley called out, “Let’s look at records” and was through the door before anyone had a chance to protest. We all followed her inside. I stood off to the side and watched the others flip through the records in the bins. Lucy was suddenly animated. As she looked at the albums, she started singing about being followed by a moon shadow. Cat Stevens again. She repeated the words over and over in a low, droning voice, like a chant. Moon shadow moon shadow moon shadow.
But by the time we reached the department store and all of us crowded into a dressing room with Sofia, Lucy sank to the floor in the corner, exhausted. Maybe it was the strange lighting in the dressing room that makes everyone look so awful, but Lucy’s skin was gray, and her eyes were dull.
We hadn’t seen Charley since before Christmas. She was telling us stories about her new school, especially how many different drugs she had sampled in the past month. “I’ve learned a whole new alphabet,” she said. “LSD, MDA, DMT, PCP, THC. It’s a total mind fuck.”
I think we were all disappointed that she didn’t miss us or school at all. We were silent. Only Claire wanted to hear more about the drugs. She wanted to know how she could get some.
“I don’t know if I would try that shit at school,” said Charley. “It’s too spooky there. That was really freaky about Dora. She always talked about killing herself, but I never took her seriously. You know the way she used to go on about philosophy and books and things. I just used to tune her out. I mean like it’s one thing to talk about it and another to actually do it. To snuff it.”
Lucy had turned white and was breathing quickly. I waited for something to happen.
“No one wants to talk about her … about her accident,” I s
aid.
“Sorry,” said Charley. “I didn’t mean to bum you guys out. I’m cool where I’m at. I don’t have to do a stroke of work. But I have to say the weed is not as righteous as it was at school.”
Then she looked at the dresses Sofia had hung on the hook, for tea dances this spring, and said, “These are like totally capitalist old lady clothes. Come the revolution, you’ll all dress like me!”
We laughed at her.
Sofia tried on the dresses, but she thought they were too short and made her look fat. She kept looking in the double mirrors and complaining about the cellulite in her thighs. What is cellulite, anyway? Does it even exist? Sofia is always rubbing Italian creams into her legs to make them smooth and firm, but it never makes any difference. She was born with dimpled thighs. She kept turning from side to side and twisting her head around, as if she were trying to imagine herself three months from now and twenty pounds thinner.
“Let’s go,” said Sofia. “These really are old lady dresses.”
We pulled Lucy off the floor and dragged her out of the dressing room. Sofia and Claire wanted to look for bras, but Lucy didn’t want to stay in the store. “It always makes me so tired to wander around big department stores,” she complained. “My head hurts.”
We went outside with Lucy and stood around on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. All of a sudden, we had nothing to do.
“I need to get some coffee,” said Lucy. So we went into a coffee shop, and Lucy drank two cups of black coffee, no cream or sugar.
While Lucy drank her coffee, we decided that we would walk up to the park where we always sit and watch people. It was only ten blocks away, but we hadn’t gone five blocks before Lucy had to stop and rest.