The Woman in the Wall

by Patrice Kindl

  "A costume party?" Kirsty asked, frowning.

  "Sure," F said. "A costume party. Right up As alley. She can go to the party and hide behind a mask! See?"

  A costume party, I thought. Hmmmm...

  "It might work," Kirsty admitted grudgingly. "And as a matter of fact, Andrea was talking last night about giving a Halloween party. How do you feel about it, Anna?"

  "Would I have to talk to people?" I asked.

  "No," said Kirsty.

  "Yes," said F.

  "Francis—" Kirsty protested.

  "Kirsty," F said, "she has to start sometime. If we had more time, I'd say fine, let her get used to being around people first. But we don't have time. Once my dad gets the go-ahead for a project, he's like a runaway train. He'll drive straight through a brick wall to get where he's going."

  I flinched.

  "And, A," F continued persuasively, "if you can go to a party, a teen-aged party, and actually talk to people, maybe even dance with somebody, well, after that you can do anything, go anywhere. It's like a baptism of fire. You can never be as afraid again."

  "How would you know?" Kirsty asked, smiling slyly at F. "I saw you at the Freshman Mixer last week. You didn't talk to anybody, and you sure didn't dance. When I said hi to you, you turned bright red and acted like you didn't hear me."

  "What—what were you doing at the Freshman Mixer anyway?" demanded F, obviously a bit flustered. "You're a seventh grader. You're supposed to stick with the middle-school kids."

  Kirsty haughtily explained that she had been invited by a ninth-grade girlfriend, but I wasn't listening.

  "I can't dance," I said sadly.

  "Oh, that's easy," F said. "Don't worry. We'll teach you. I do know how." He looked coldly at Kirsty. "I just didn't feel like it that night." He turned to me. "It's easy. You sort of wiggle around to the beat of the music."

  "No, I mean I just couldn't. With—with a boy, you mean?"

  "I don't see why it has to be a boy," Kirsty said. "Half the couples at dances are two girls anyway. I'll dance with you, Anna. You'll see, it'll be fun."

  "I'll dance with you, A," F said, frowning. "You won't be afraid to dance with me, will you?"

  "N-no," I said. I pictured F and me, waltzing all alone in an immense, shadowy ballroom. The music swelled to a crescendo and F swept me away, cradling me tenderly in his arms. We danced exquisitely together, our steps matching perfectly.

  "I'll dance with you," I said, lowering my eyes and blushing a little.

  "That is," Kirsty said acidly, "if boring old Andrea doesn't happen to look in his direction. Too bad if she does, Anna, because he'll completely forget about you. He'll spend the rest of the night mooning around, hoping she'll do it again. Francis has a crush on Andrea," she informed me. "Along with the rest of the males in America," she concluded gloomily.

  "I know," I said sadly.

  F folded his arms and attempted to look dignified.

  "Which is so stupid," Kirsty said spitefully. "Andrea's fallen in love at long last, and not with Francis, that's for sure."

  F turned away, and would not look at us.

  "With Foster Addams," she explained, apparently determined to crush any hopes he might still cherish. "That's why she's so hot to move to Chicago. Foster Addams's family is moving to Chicago at Christmas. His dad works for the same company your dad does." F looked stricken, and my heart nearly broke for him. I groped in my mind for something to make it up to him, to make him smile. But what could I do that would compensate him for the loss of Andrea?

  "I'll dance with anyone you like, F," I offered, my heart pounding uncomfortably in my throat. "I—I'll ask someone, a totally strange boy, to dance. I will," I repeated stubbornly, as they stared at me in amazement. "I'll be brave, you'll see. You'll be proud of me."

  "Anna, no!" Kirsty said, horrified. "We wouldn't expect you to do anything like that! I wouldn't have the nerve for that myself. Not a total stranger, anyway."

  "I'm not afraid," I said, although I was, very much.

  "But, Anna—" Kirsty protested.

  "Let her be," F said. "She's got guts." To me he said, "We're proud of you already. You'll be great, A."

  "Yes," I agreed, "I will."

  In my dark corner I straightened my spine, assuming the carriage and posture of a queen. I was a queen at that moment: clever, charming, and kind. And brave, heartbreakingly brave. My eyes swam with sudden tears at my own courage.

  I wanted F to understand how splendid my offer was. He admired me now; he would admire me more when he realized that my pledge had been given for entirely unselfish, disinterested reasons. "But, of course," I confided, "you know that none of this is actually necessary."

  "What do you mean, Anna?" asked Kirsty, curious.

  "It is too necessary, A," said F, frowning. "No backing out, now. You promised."

  "Certainly I promised," I said with dignity. "And what I have promised I will deliver, you can be quite sure about that. I only mean what I said. None of this is necessary. The marriage cannot take place."

  "What?" "Huh?" They stared at me, wholly mystified. I didn't like it. Why hadn't anyone else thought of this? Mentally clutching the tattered edges of my imaginary queen's robe about me, I tried to carry it off with a high hand.

  "How can you have forgotten, F?" I asked reproachfully. "Your mother. In one of your letters you referred to a mother in the present tense. Unless she has suddenly expired, your father is a married man. And even if she did just die, I call it indecent, marrying only weeks after a spouse's death." The looks on their faces almost made me despair. "But," I concluded in a rush, "I don't think she has died or you'd have said, and the law must have changed an awful lot since I last checked if it's legal for a man who's already married to marry our mother."

  "Oh, Anna," said Kirsty sorrowfully.

  "For cryin' out loud, A! They're divorced. Two years ago," F said. "Weekends I live with her, and weekdays I live with him."

  "Oh," I said. "Oh."

  My defenses crashed about me. There was nothing to stop the marriage after all. They would marry and move to Chicago, as sure as fate. And I—

  "How long is it until Halloween?" I asked in a strangled voice.

  "A whole two weeks," Kirsty said comfortingly.

  In two weeks I would be out in the open under harsh lights, no doubt wearing an ill-judged costume that would make me look like a fool and a freak and a geek, standing before some conceited, boorish boy with sadistic tendencies. There I would be, baldly begging this vulgar lout to take me in his arms and caper about with me across the floor in full view of a crowd of total strangers. And this entertainment would last only an hour or two.

  My thoughts went further; I waded deeper and deeper into despair. Even if I survived this experience, there was all the future to dread. My mother would marry, yes, and what sort of a man would he be? A divorced man. A man leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him, a man who was obviously yearning for the opportunity to break some more. The fact that he would one day inevitably grow bored with my mother and toss her aside was cheering, but it wasn't as much of a comfort as you might expect. He wouldn't desert her until after we had left Bitter Creek and our beloved home.

  And then of course, we would be homeless. We would be expelled from his luxurious penthouse on Lakeshore Drive, four waifs drifting aimlessly through the alleyways and sewers of Chicago, at the mercy of the wind and the rain and the snow and the evil leers of passersby.

  We sat in silence for a bit. There didn't seem to be anything to say.

  "I think..." F murmured thoughtfully. I waited. Surely darling, kind, wonderful F would now say something that would make things at least a little bit bearable.

  "I think I'll come as a ghost," he said. "That's easy, and then Andrea won't know who I am. If I disguised my voice, we could probably have a really long conversation without her even guessing it's me."

  I sighed.

  Fourteen

  "Cleopatra, Queen of the
Nile," I mused. Slowly I drew thick black barbaric lines around my eyes. I backed away from the mirror to study the effect. I had painted cloth and wood before, but never skin. It was interesting, really; a whole new medium for concealment. The liquid eyeliner felt heavy and strange, weighting down my eyelids, making them look sensuous and cruel.

  I reddened my lips and wrapped a black cloth around my mouse-colored hair. Then I arranged myself in a classic two-dimensional Egyptian pose before the mirror.

  "Hmmm..." I said. In my fringed tunic I looked like a giant moth with cruel and sensuous eyes.

  "The clothes are wrong," Kirsty said, pushing forward to take her turn at the mirror. She had draped herself in yards and yards of faded purple velvet. "Take them off," she ordered.

  I blushed, and clutched defensively at my tunic.

  "Not all of them, you idiot," Kirsty said. "Just down to your underwear. Then we can kind of wrap you up in this white sheet. Oh, here! Take the sheet and go try it on behind that screen, if you're so modest. You're as bad as my friend Shana. She always hides in the bathroom to get dressed for dance class instead of doing it with the rest of us."

  Thoughtfully, I retired behind the screen in the corner of the south attic. Kirsty and I had come up to my sewing workroom to rummage through fabrics and try to decide on costumes. Instead of squeezing through my passageways, she had simply walked up the attic stairs, where I unlocked the door and admitted her.

  "Wow!" she'd exclaimed, staring at the hundreds of bolts of material, skeins of yarn, racks of trim and thread, cutting tables and scrap bins. "I had no idea! Though I suppose I should have guessed. When I was little I thought you just waved your magic wand and poof! There was a new dress or whatever." She fingered a length of figured silk. "Why didn't we ever come up here looking for you? Why didn't we ever even think of it?" Her eyes were forlorn.

  "The door was locked," I explained gently.

  She looked obstinate. "We should have knocked it down."

  Now I asked casually from behind the screen, "Why won't Shana get dressed with the rest of you? Is she—is she malformed, or something?"

  Kirsty sputtered. "Malformed? No, of course not. I don't know, we're all like that, sort of. The other day Maybeth William's older brother and two of his friends came by to pick her up after dance class. They got there early and stood there in the doorway staring at us in our leotards and tights. Lisa Applebaum screamed and pointed at them, and everybody ran for the changing room. Me too," she admitted. "And it's dumb, because a year ago I would have been showing off like crazy for them. I love to dance. Maybe I'll be a ballerina for Halloween," she reflected, and executed several pirouettes before the mirror. "Only," she gasped, staggering a little and hanging onto the mirror for support, "I've been a ballerina for Halloween like about six times already."

  I emerged from behind the screen gripping the sheet insecurely about me and approached the mirror dubiously.

  "'Lo, the beautiful one comes,'" Kirsty said kindly.

  "I can't go to a party like this," I said, grabbing frantically at various parts of my body.

  "Well, no," Kirsty said. "I figured you'd make it into one of those skimpy little nightgown things Egyptians wore."

  "I can't wear a skimpy little nightgown to my first party, Kirsty," I said, feeling the panic rise in my throat.

  "Okay, okay," she said pacifically. "Let's think of something else." She looked at me sharply. "Anyway, I'd think you'd feel more comfortable with a bra on."

  "Oh!" I said, blushing hotly. "You mean—"

  "I mean you're getting pretty well developed. They stick out, you know, especially if you get chilled, like you are now."

  I clutched miserably at my chest. I had noticed that, too. "I never knew what a bra was for," I confessed humbly.

  "Oh, you have to wear one," Kirsty said authoritatively. "Or else when you get older they go all droopy and fall off or something."

  I stared down aghast at my newly acquired bosom.

  "I'll start making some right away," I said faintly.

  "I'll go get you one of mine," Kirsty offered, "and you can wear it until you've made yours."

  Half an hour later, feeling very grown-up, but also rather as though I was wearing a dog harness, I sat thumbing through a book called Lives of Famous Women, looking for a costume idea.

  Kirsty had earlier given me an explanation of my periodic bleeding. She told me about babies and how they come, and provided me with a bag of disposable pads that were to be worn in my underclothing for those days every month. I later found the pad to be useful, even though it gave me the odd sensation of riding a very small horse.

  I must tell you, frankly, that the explanation she offered sounded far-fetched, to say the least, and I couldn't help but wonder if she hadn't got it wrong somehow. The part about men and women and what they do to each other in bed I don't even mention; it's too grotesque to be taken seriously.

  But that the bleeding was a fact I knew from my own experience. And even though it was a great comfort to think that I wasn't the only one so afflicted, it was hard to believe that every woman in the world had to deal with this monthly embarrassment for the majority of her adult life. The only escape, according to Kirsty, was either old age or pregnancy.

  Flipping through the pages of Lives of Famous Women, I tried to imagine Jackie Kennedy and Marie Antoinette suffering from such a messy disability sixty days out of the year. Did Queen Elizabeth have a "period"? How about Madame Curie? Strange to think that while these women ruled empires and studied the properties of radioactivity, their bodies were patiently, single-mindedly preparing for pregnancy and childbirth over and over again, despite all previous disappointments.

  I looked down at my own body with awe and not a little unease. Perhaps my body didn't want the same things I did; it apparently had plans and schemes I knew nothing about. Perhaps one day it would betray me in some unexpected way. But how could that be? We were one and the same being.

  "Hey!" Kirsty interrupted my musings. "Would you make me a cat costume? All slinky and sexy. I love cats and Mom won't let me have one."

  I looked at her consideringly. "Y-es," I said. "Black velvet would make a nice cat suit. We'd have to think how to manage your tail so you don't drag it. With a red feather boa around your neck and a golden crown, you could be the Queen of Cats," I suggested.

  Kirsty's eyes lit up. "I love it!" she said. "Oh, would you please, Anna? I want to be the Queen of Cats!"

  Suddenly I wished I had chosen that idea for myself. An animal costume would call for a mask that covered my whole head. Very well, I would forget about being a famous woman. Just for the moment I didn't want to be a woman anymore. I would unsex myself and be a squirrel, say, or a turtle. No doubt these animals came in male and female varieties, but at least they had the decency not to advertise their differences.

  "A moth!" I said aloud. "I'll be a moth." Seeing Kirsty's dubious face, I explained how I had always admired the moth's ability to camouflage itself against a variety of backgrounds.

  Kirsty shook her head. "Not a moth, Anna. A butterfly, maybe, but not a moth."

  "Well, all right, I suppose," I said, privately resolving to find the drabbest, dullest butterfly in the book.

  And so it was decided. Kirsty was to be a cat and I was to be a butterfly. Instead of Lives of Famous Women, we pored over books about cats and insects. After looking at the color plates in Peterson's Field Guide to the Insects, Kirsty decided to let me be a moth after all.

  "Oh, good," I said, relieved.

  "But only if you let me pick which one."

  I nodded happily. There were little white moths, I knew, and gray ones, and any number of brown ones. I hoped she would pick brown. The color seemed to suit me, somehow.

  "A luna moth," she said triumphantly, turning the book so I could see.

  I winced. The luna moth was a great gaudy thing with sweeping, extravagantly tailed wings and a regal featherlike headdress. It was colored a brilliant poison
green.

  "But—" I protested.

  "You said I could pick," Kirsty said, and ruthlessly swept on, "Look, over there! That cloth right there's exactly the right shade for the wings."

  I studied the illustration and then inspected the bolt of material she'd indicated. "No," I shook my head. "Not that one."

  "Now, listen, Anna," Kirsty said bossily, sounding so much like herself as a small child that I had to smile, "don't you go trying to make this costume fade into the background. You're going to be a luna moth, and lima moths don't fade into the background."

  "Don't worry, Kirsty," I said a little sadly. "I won't make the luna moth costume fade into the background. As much as I might like to, I couldn't."

  "Why not?" she asked suspiciously.

  "Because..." I wrestled with the problem. It was hard to say why, exactly, but I really couldn't do it. "It would be wrong," I said helplessly. "It would be cheating. I have my self-respect as a craftswoman to think of. But that color green isn't right. And the texture is wrong."

  I looked around myself discontentedly. There were still mountains of materials here, but I was beginning to run out of some things. It was annoying. "I don't think I have anything in that shade. I guess I'll have to hand-paint some silk to get just the right effect," I murmured. "I'd have had to do that anyway, even if I had the proper color. And maybe use some wire boning inside the wings..."

  Satisfied, Kirsty left me rummaging about amongst my supplies and began painting whiskers on her upper lip with the liquid eyeliner.

  Making the costumes kept me very busy for the two weeks before the party. There was no time for anything; no time even for terror, only a few odd snippets of panic sandwiched in between frenzied bouts of cutting and sewing. Kirsty wouldn't even let me see F. She didn't want him to know what our costumes would be. She said she wanted it to be a surprise. I wrote to him, though, and he wrote back, and I had to be content with that. His father, he said, had hinted at the marriage, but nothing further had developed on those lines. F thought that our mother was still stalling. Oh, good, kind Mother! I thought.