by Rachel Klein
If Lucy starts to get sick, I’m going to call her mother. I don’t care if she never talks to me again. I don’t want to talk to her anyway.
There’s someone in Lucy’s room. I have to put this away.
Quiet hour
I got Strange and Fantastic Stories from the library. I wanted to write down a passage from “Carmilla” so I can study it.
The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence resembling the passion of love, by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will exercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will, in these cases, husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary ones it goes direct to its object, overpowers it with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast.
Someone got there before me. In the margin of the book, she wrote: LIES!
I am an obstruction, a tree that has fallen across the road and must be removed or stepped over.
April 22
Can a vampire feel?
Can you be evil if you are alone in the world?
What is death to someone who has died and held on to that memory?
If you know everything, can you desire anything?
I look inside myself, and I know I can’t feel what Ernessa feels, not even a tenth. And I love Lucy.
This is all Lucy’s fault. It’s her fault for being such a weak person. She could have saved Ernessa from this. And now I’m forced to save Lucy.
The juniper berry necklace is gone. I have to find a way to protect Lucy without her knowing it.
In Romania, at construction sites, they measure a person’s shadow against a wall and fix it with a nail to the head, to protect the building from earthquakes. But a person who loses his shadow becomes a vampire. How cruel to steal a shadow. Even when the Greeks sacrificed young girls to placate the gods, they never took their shadows, only their lives.
It’s warm outside today. My window is open for the first time. Everything is full of life when the wind blows through the world.
Later
It’s a false spring. I closed the window and lay down on my bed to take a nap. It was so quiet that I could hear the air moving through my throat. But the sound, growing louder, was not inside me. It was all around me. The room was full of flies, and their buzzing was everywhere. Fat black flies bumping against the windowpanes, stupid insects flying straight into the glass over and over again. Clusters of flies thick as grapes. I don’t know where they came from. They’ve been torpid all winter. Now they’re roused to a frenzy by the sunlight. When I shut my eyes, the sound of the flies was right there, pushing out every other thought.
April 23
After breakfast
I want someone else to call Lucy’s mother. I want someone else to take care of her. Everyone keeps telling me not to interfere. There’s nothing the matter with her. No one will talk to me. No one will sit with me at meals. Even Sofia, who’s never deserted me before. I’m not going to go to lunch from now on. I never really got back my appetite after Passover. I’ll go straight to my room after class and take out my journal. I know that no one will disturb me then. They are all downstairs eating. The lunchroom is so noisy with the sounds of chewing and clattering dishes and loud voices that I can’t hear my own thoughts. After dinner, I’ll sit by myself in the corner of the Playroom and smoke.
Only Lucy can stand to be with me because she doesn’t care about anything. She’s sleeping through morning bells and can barely drag herself out of bed when I wake her up. This morning she said to me, “I’m too tired to eat breakfast. It would take too much energy to move my mouth.” I dragged her down and forced her to drink some coffee. She’s much better during the day, once she gets out of bed. Even though she says that she sleeps at night, she wakes up exhausted. Is everyone totally blind?
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing at breakfast. I still go to breakfast because I need the coffee to get through the morning. Not the rolls, though. That food is too cloying. All these girls make me sick. I’m surrounded by people I don’t know. They have all decided that Miss Bobbie was killed. And now they need to believe that a man did it. They’re making up all kinds of stupid stories about the old negro janitor who doesn’t have a name and the night watchman who’s also a mortician and eats crackers in the back of the kitchen.
I know she was killed, but I could never explain to them how it happened. It’s better for them to think whatever they want.
They can’t see what’s right in front of them. They have to make things up. It’s just like what happened with Ali MacBean last year. First the tires of her green VW Bug were slashed, and then hate notes started showing up every day on the Athletic Association bulletin board. One morning she opened her locker, and a jar filled with acid fell out and burned her hands. She was almost blinded. The twisted psycho who had done this had to be found. Her friends, all day students like her, immediately suspected the girls who weren’t just like them. Ali sat up on the stage during assembly, her hands wrapped in white gauze, and she smiled smugly while Miss Rood talked about her tormentor. I looked at her freckled face, her brown hair pulled straight back in a ponytail, her slightly protruding teeth, and I felt sick. I knew then what everyone found out later. She was doing all this to herself. They made her leave school just a month before graduation. And all those friends who had wanted a psycho now only wanted to talk about how she had destroyed her life for no good reason.
I’ve got to go to assembly. The bells rang five minutes ago.
Lunch hour
I never got to the most pathetic part of this morning’s breakfast conversation. I was about to leave the table when I heard Claire say, “What about Mr. Davies?” She was sitting at the other end of the table, but I knew the question was directed at me. I didn’t bother to answer her. Instead, I pushed out my chair.
“What about him?” asked Carol.
“Well, he’s a man,” said Claire. “And he’s kind of … weird. You have to be to write the stuff he does.”
I knew the conversation would turn to Mr. Davies in the end. There are no more men left to fantasize about.
“You have to be weird to write poetry?” I asked. She was baiting me, but I couldn’t keep quiet.
“Not that,” said Claire. “The other stuff, the stuff for porno magazines.”
“Look, you made that up in the first place,” I said. “But even if he does write it, which he doesn’t, what does it have to do with anything?”
“Plenty,” said Claire. “If you can imagine such twisted shit, you can do it. And I don’t think he even likes women. I think he hates them deep down, and he could get off on making them suffer.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said.
“I knew you would stick up for him,” said Claire. “Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be stuck alone in a room with him.”
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted. “You make me want to throw up!”
I got up and ran out of the room. If I’d had to listen to another word from her, I would have clawed her face.
April 24
This afternoon I went down to practice. I haven’t touched the piano in so long. I need the music more than ever.
I was alone. No one else would dare to come down there by herself. Girls are crying during classes. They don’t want to stay after school for gym. If they do stay, they all walk up to the train station together. Even Sofia, who has always adored school, is talking about leaving. It’s getting worse and worse every day. That’s because they’ll never find what they are looking for.
There’s been a lot of rain, and the practice rooms are clammier than ever. My hands are so stiff that they ache when I play. I tried hard to con
centrate and to follow Miss Simpson’s instructions. That’s why I keep making mistakes, she says, because I can’t concentrate. I have to use my will to conquer the mistakes. While I’m playing, someone should be able to come up behind me and slap me on the back, and it shouldn’t make any difference in my playing. I should continue without a pause. That’s what they do to you in music school.
I gave up. I couldn’t play.
The door to the basement was open. I tried it, and the knob turned. I won’t go down there yet.
Every door is my door, just for me. Eventually, I always go through the door, whether or not it is locked. I had to push hard with my shoulder to open the bathroom door. My father’s leg was pressed up against it. The white tiles were covered with dark, sticky blood. His head was slumped over his chest. He could not move his leg. He sat and sat. One breath left, just for me. The last bit of air seeping out of the deflated raft with a faint hiss. He was waiting for me to come. The sunlight streamed into the room, and it was so warm. I wanted to curl up and go to sleep right there next to him. Instead, I had to scream and scream and scream even though there was no one to hear me. And the sound went nowhere; it just swirled around and around in that little room.
If I know something, I am not a victim. Victims don’t know the meaning of their suffering. I am an enemy or a collaborator, not a victim.
April 25
Ten A.M.
Sometimes I forget that other people can’t hear my thoughts. I sit at breakfast drinking my coffee, and I look around in a panic. All the girls at the table must know what I think of them, my total and utter disdain for them. I can’t hide it.
Claire’s made them all obsessed with Mr. Davies. They don’t talk about the janitor or Bob anymore. It’s all Mr. Davies. He’s their favorite monster. They whisper to each other and stare at me when I sit down by myself. I know what they’re saying: “You think he did it to Miss Bobbie first? Or did he tear her to shreds and then do it?” I don’t stick up for him anymore.
April 26
I went to see Mr. Davies after school today.
I wanted to tell Mr. Davies what they were saying about him, but I couldn’t. I talked about the girls instead.
“They’ll calm down,” said Mr. Davies. “Eventually the school will get back to normal.”
“They can’t calm down,” I said. “They can’t because the person who is doing this hasn’t finished yet. She still has one more victim, the one she came for. The others just got in her way.”
“The person doing this?” he asked. I’m sure he wasn’t really puzzled.
“Ernessa Bloch.”
“One more victim?”
“Lucy Blake.”
He waited. I knew he knew what I was going to tell him.
“Lucy’s getting sick again. The way she was before spring break. She’s very weak. She can’t get out of bed in the morning. She can’t eat. Last time, they almost didn’t save her. Ernessa won’t let them take Lucy away from her again. I want to call Lucy’s mother, but no one wants me to. They tell me not to interfere in something that’s not my business. They think Lucy’s death is nobody’s business but her own. They don’t care what she becomes after that.”
I should have kept my mouth shut. But I couldn’t. The words forced themselves out of me as though they were alive. He looked scared. I’m sure he understood, no matter what he said.
“You know what you’re saying can’t possibly be true,” he said very quietly. “Perhaps Ernessa is a thoroughly repulsive person – certainly she is to you – but she’s only that. She’s a girl just like you, not a spirit. You can’t let yourself become trapped by these fantasies. You’ve got so much creativity. Draw on it. Write. You have poetry in you. Let it help you.”
“I know it seems crazy,” I pleaded. “But I have to believe it.”
“This has been a difficult year for you. You’re still coming to terms with what happened to your father, and on top of it all the chaos at school hasn’t helped. Two people die; your best friend gets sick. But you can’t blame everything bad that happens on a person you dislike. If it weren’t Ernessa, it would be someone else.”
“It is Ernessa. I hated Miss Bobbie too, but I didn’t need to tear her to pieces.”
“Ernessa doesn’t exist for you. She’s become your poem about death.”
“My what?” I said.
“You need to try to think about other things. You’re too young to think about this stuff all the time.”
He doesn’t believe in another level of reality. He doesn’t believe in the imagination. He’s not a real poet.
“What else can I think about? Boys? Clothes? Food?”
The conversation felt finished, used up. I would never come to talk to Mr. Davies again. Those hours in the empty sun-filled classroom talking about books were over. I stood up to leave, but I didn’t move. Mr. Davies came over to me and stood directly in front of me. Slowly, deliberately, he undid the top three buttons of my white shirt, underneath my pleated gym tunic. Then he pulled down the straps of my bra, very gently, with such consideration, and placed his hands over my breasts. His hands were so cool, so smooth, against my hot skin. What he was doing was meant to soothe me, to calm me. Each hand covered a breast. Beneath them, my heart was racing. I couldn’t help it. Then he leaned over me and took my mouth in his. He kissed me for a long time.
An incredible lethargy came over me. I would never be able to move again, to free myself from him and walk across the room, through the door, down the hallway to the outside. Claire was posted by the door, trying to look through the frosted glass window. When I walked out that door, I wouldn’t be able to hide what had happened to me. I would be her proof about Mr. Davies, even though it was really the opposite.
The kiss was long. It was sweet. It would never end. Somehow I left that room. It took all my strength to do that.
An hour later, it is already vague. I put a gray sweater over my white shirt, which was soaked with sweat, and buttoned it up all the way. The wool scratched my damp skin. I’m certain that I dreamed it, along with the pleasure that I felt. His hands. Isn’t it worse to dream something like that?
I never trusted Mr. Davies. He was trying to get to my father through me. Something of my father must have rubbed off on me, and he wanted to get as close as possible to that something. What rubbed off? Did he get what he wanted?
I can’t imagine what would happen if someone found my journal and read this. I don’t want anything bad to happen to Mr. Davies.
I’ve pushed the dresser in front of the door and locked the bathroom door.
After dinner
I have no time for homework today, only for my writing.
Thank God I didn’t tell Mr. Davies much, just enough to get him upset. I could feel his resistance to what I was saying, even before he heard the words. Everything will be in my journal. My journal will protect me.
Sunday morning (yesterday) I got up at about eight thirty. I looked in on Lucy, and she was asleep, so I went down for a cup of coffee. When I came up, she was still asleep. I decided not to wake her, even though I know she has tons of homework. She used to be the first one up on Sunday morning and in church before the rest of us got out of bed. She wasn’t the type to sleep late. I was. Now she needs to save whatever strength she has left for the coming week. I went into my room, straightened up a bit and made my bed, then sat down to work on my history paper. I went to the bathroom; I brushed my teeth; I washed my face. I wrote for a little while in my journal, but it made me too sad. I kept getting up and opening the door to her room a crack and looking at her. Finally, I went in and sat down on the bed next to her. Her face was colorless, and her breathing was so shallow that it barely lifted her chest. Her hand was lying outside the covers, and when I touched it, the skin was cold, like marble. She hadn’t changed her position since I first looked in on her. I panicked. She was dead. But when I placed my hand on her heart, her breast was warm, and there was a fluttering under my palm. She still
had her smell, that moist powder smell.
I had to leave her room. I went down the corridor clutching a pile of books and my notebook and pushed open the swinging doors to the library. On a Sunday morning, it was quiet. Everyone was off doing something else. I was all alone. I was away from Lucy. The light was streaming into the room through the high windows in sheets.
How surprised the others would be to know she confides in me. Friendless with no need for friends, she tells me everything. The most surprised would be Mr. Davies, who doesn’t believe in books, who turns them into bad dreams. I hadn’t even opened my books. I was waiting. There was one more thing she wanted to tell me.
“Books won’t save you,” said Ernessa. “Your writing won’t save you. The past won’t save you. Mr. Davies won’t save you. Daddy won’t save you. You could try a crucifix. The star of David never saved anyone.”
“My father wanted to save me,” I said. “I’ll believe that to the end. He will be my final thought.”
“He’s the one who caused you all this trouble in the first place. Parents give you a disease: they infect you with life. Your father made it possible for you to see me as I am and to hear my words.”
“You’re wrong. That was what happened to you. That was your death. The walks we took, the poems, the searching in the dark with a flashlight. They happened. We were together, for a while.”
“He read you other fairy tales that you’ve forgotten.”
She began to hum softly, then to sing, in a whisper, a familiar song.
My mother she butchered me,
My father he ate me,
My sister, little Ann Marie,