Becoming Ellen

by Shari Shattuck

  But the slim, dark-haired girl was standing still now. Her graceful hands resting on the counter and her body leaning over it, with her head cocked. “Listen,” she said in a whisper.

  Ellen strained to hear what her friend could, a feat that was not always easy or even possible. In a moment, she realized that strains of piano music were seeping in through the kitchen vent. The music was exotic and enticing, all the more so because of its mysterious origin.

  Temerity listened for a minute, swaying slightly. “Oh, that’s nice! I’ve never heard it before. But I like it.”

  “I wonder who it is,” Justice said. “You know somebody is subletting the Dlugoleckis’ place while they’re in Europe for a year. I think she said it was a cousin or something. Maybe it’s them. Or could the Rogerses be playing the stereo?”

  “No,” Temerity stated firmly. “Someone is playing. Actually, I think they might be composing.” Even as she said it, they heard a discordant note, and the player repeated the musical phrase, switching the notes to a more harmonious progression. And Temerity whispered, “The change to minor, yes.”

  Justice was gazing at his sister wistfully and it surprised Ellen. She had never seen him pity his sister, because of course that would be both unwelcome and absurd. Temerity was one of the most capable, remarkable people Ellen had ever seen, but Justice’s gaze as he watched her now—swaying, a look of longing on her face—seemed somehow sad. Then the cloudiness cleared away and he turned to Ellen. “Right. Now, young lady, you go get into a hot bath and then to bed. Doctor’s orders!”

  The counterweight of a full stomach steadied Ellen’s rocking anxiety so that now exhaustion had its chance at her. She was grateful for both the advice and the excuse to be alone. Rubbing her heavy eyes, she thanked them for breakfast, picked up her bag, crossed the huge open room, and went through the door into the hallway.

  Off of that, a smaller door, barely wider than Ellen’s short and stocky shape, opened onto an equally narrow stairway that had probably, before the building’s conversion into lofts, been an attic access. Ellen climbed the stairs and retreated gratefully into her compact bedroom. The bed, luxurious in its queen-size comfort, beckoned her, but Ellen went first to the window.

  There was only one, but it was all that was needed. It was round, Ellen’s favorite shape, and at least as large in diameter as Ellen was tall, five foot four. It dominated the wall on the street side of the long, thin room. Best of all, it offered what for Ellen amounted to a panoramic view of the street below and the apartment house across the way, which had much more conservatively sized units than the co-op lofts in this one. The facing building offered one- and two-bedroom apartments, Ellen knew from the occasional FOR RENT signs out front, as well as her glimpses inside those apartments from her vantage point.

  She took the prescribed hot bath, reveling as always in the treat, though this time, as she climbed into the huge tub, deep enough for even her to sink in up to her neck, she noticed large, darkening areas on both her right thigh and upper arm. That’s going to be colorful, Ellen thought. She mused on the fact that physical bruises were often obvious, Technicolor even, but emotional wounds were either invisible or dark gray. She imagined them dark gray, anyway, like ashes. Maybe some people saw their emotional scars as burning red or dark blue, but Ellen’s were so shadowy that they had no real color.

  But then maybe, she thought, as she let her head rest against the porcelain rim of the tub, just maybe that was because she couldn’t, ever, let them out into the light.

  3

  Even after nine months, Ellen still found herself mildly surprised to wake up in this bed upstairs from two people with whom she actually willingly cohabited. In truth, she spent most of her time alone in her small bedroom, which she thought of as her aerie. Ellen preferred it that way. She often wondered why the twins allowed her, encouraged her even, to stay here, but when she had finally steeled herself to inquire, Justice had sighed with exaggerated and uncommon impatience. “Really?” he had asked, giving her a look that said Use your brain. “You saved my sister’s life—twice—and you wonder why we like to have you around?” He fixed her with an exasperated stare. “Oh,” Ellen had exclaimed, embarrassed, “I thought it was because I was amusing.” She gave him a half smile to let him know she was joking, but it hadn’t been necessary. Justice had laughed outright. “That’s just a perk!” he told her, and that had been the end of it.

  She paid rent, of course, but Temerity and Justice had insisted on working it out on a square-footage basis, and her cozy room, compared to the loft, which took up an entire floor of the building, came to no more than her old studio apartment in the downtrodden neighborhood of Morningside.

  She still found “relating” difficult, even with Temerity or Justice, but when she thought about it, it amazed her how she’d accepted sharing the loft with them, and how she had tolerated being seen in the process. But she was doubly surprised to find that, today, when she awoke to a gentle tap on her door, she experienced neither of her two preprogrammed, wake-up responses—fear and exhaustion. Instead, she felt calm, peaceful, and rested. Before she’d come to live with the twins, being jolted awake repeatedly to shouts, sirens, disturbances, relentless traffic, gunshots even, had been a daily occurrence. Because it had been easier than going out in the world, Ellen’s former life had consisted of about twelve hours of broken sleep a day. Though rest always eluded her.

  But here, in a comfort and safety previously alien to her, she had eased into the habit of sleeping for several hours at a time. When she opened her eyes to see that the wall clock read five o’clock, she actually felt ready to get up. Until she moved.

  “Ellen?” Temerity called from the top of the stairs outside the small room. “I just wanted to check on you. How are you feeling?”

  “Uh . . .” Ellen sat up and grimaced. Even that hurt. All of her hurt. “I’m . . . a little sore. Come in.”

  Temerity came through the door and trailed one hand along the wall to lead herself. When she was fully in, she called out, “You still in bed?”

  “Yes,” Ellen told her, sliding her legs off the edge of the mattress, which pushed the bottom of her pajama pants up to a bunch around her knees. “Ouch,” she said.

  “Sore?”

  “Only everywhere.” Ellen tried a cautious stretch. “Ouch,” she said again, more emphatically this time. Ellen got carefully to her feet, immediately realized that she was not ready for such an ambitious physical undertaking, and sat down again. “Any news from Dr. Amanda?” she asked as her pain brought back the memory of the night before.

  Temerity needed only that. “Yes!” She took up a position, looking like she’d been called upon to recite a poem in school, with feet evenly spaced and one hand raised. “Justice talked to Amanda, and as far as we know, the mom—she can’t tell us her name—is still alive, but she’s in extremely critical condition, severe spinal stuff. That’s all she could say without violating patient confidentiality, but she could say that much, because it’s in the paper. Amanda couldn’t tell us anything about Lydia except she’s not at the hospital.” Temerity’s dark eyes—so dark that the pupils were almost absorbed into the irises—dimmed with frustration. “Some kind of legal-issue thingy-bob. Stupid laws.”

  Ellen had expected as much. “I didn’t think she would be.” More cautiously this time, Ellen got to her feet and tried a few hesitant steps to the chair where she’d dropped her clothes before going to bed. She picked up the drawstring pants and the big pullover sweatshirt with the intention of putting them in the laundry basket. Out of habit, she checked the pockets and found a small, stiff rectangle of paper.

  It was Detective Barclay’s card.

  “There must be some way to find out if Lydia is okay and maybe help,” Temerity said wistfully. She had turned to bask her face in the warmish sunlight from the window.

  Ellen stared at the card. She knew that the forc
e that was Temerity would not rest if there was a source for information. Barclay had said, If there’s anything I can do for you. But contacting him would mean showing herself again, and she flinched at the thought of inviting another onslaught of participation when she was already drained from the last battle. She slipped the card onto her dresser and dropped the clothes into the basket, closing the lid.

  • • •

  As was her custom, Ellen showed up forty-five minutes early for work. The Costco night-shift cleaning crew, of which Ellen was a distinctly silent member, began at ten p.m., when the store was closed to the public. Ellen had long ago found that it was easier to avoid potential contact with the other employees if she showed up by nine fifteen to put her stuff in her locker and collect her personal smock and gloves. Then she checked the work assignment posted in the co-ed break room and went to the storage room to get her cart and replenish her cleaning supplies, thus avoiding the traffic to and from the locker rooms over the shift change.

  As a secondary precaution, she entered through the loading docks instead of the employee entrance. The dock was alternately deserted or so busy that she could sneak through without much fear of revealing herself with an accidental bump or noise. She slunk up one of the access stairs to the dock and moved between two high rows of stacked crates, but found her route to the floor blocked by two men. Slipping into a narrow space between the crates, she stood waiting for them to leave. Leaning around so that she could see, Ellen recognized one of the dock managers and a worker. The manager was a very tall white man with long blond hair, which he wore pulled back in a thin ponytail. His name, Ellen knew from hearing other people use it, was Eric. She had noticed him because he stood out from most of the dockworkers, who were almost uniformly either Hispanic, of stocky build, or both. Eric, by contrast, was thin, blue-eyed, and his skin was pale, despite being often suntanned.

  The other man, Daniel, was shorter, stockier, and darker.

  “Listen up,” Eric was saying in a harsh, warning tone. “I made sure that Thelma will take the blame for the ruined crates of fruit.” He glared down at Daniel. “But it’s the last time I cover for you. If you get caught using, I won’t know squat about it. Understand?”

  “Sure, sure, I know.”

  This acquiescence seemed to restore Eric to good humor, and he punched the smaller man’s arm playfully. “Back to work, buddy, and be cool!” The two men moved on, leaving clear Ellen’s way into the break room.

  She was pleased with the job list for the night. She had the paper goods section, one of the more remote and isolated aisles. Excellent. She left the locker room, went quickly through the thankfully empty break room, and moved on down a long hallway to the large supply room, where all the cleaners’ carts and products were stored.

  Since she was there first, she picked one of the few carts that rolled straight when she pushed it. It was going to be a good night.

  Then she went back out into the hall. This was a tricky bit of the evening for remaining unseen, as there was nowhere to blend in if she came across anyone else, though over the years she’d developed a strategy. Whenever possible, have a plan was one of Ellen’s most basic rules of survival. Before rounding the corner of the L-shaped hallway, she snuck a look around it and spotted a form moving toward her from the far end of the hall. It was an extremely compact man with the redundant, and unwelcome, nickname of Squirt. Pushing her cart near the wall, Ellen stooped down behind it and pretended to busy herself looking for something.

  Between the cart’s wheels, Ellen watched the man’s work boots go by and thought that they could easily be mistaken for a child’s. He went on around the corner, and Ellen emerged again, nudging the cart along more quickly toward the open floor of the warehouse. But she still had almost twenty-five minutes before the store closed and her shift began, so she found her favorite hideout, a seldom-used broom closet, in which she had stashed a folding chair, a paperback, and a few snacks. Pulling a plastic bucket from a high shelf, she selected a pack of peanut butter crackers from her stash of snacks and settled back to wait out the stream of other employees preparing either for work or departure.

  The book, recommended by Justice as a “classic,” was charming, though its theme of finding husbands for five sisters mystified Ellen. She had never even imagined wanting a husband, much less having to get one, but she was enjoying the words and the story when she heard loud voices outside the closet. Ellen closed the book and pressed her ear against the crack between the door and the wall.

  In the hallway outside, Ellen could make out the distinctly throaty voice of Thelma, the produce manager. Thelma kept to herself and out of everyone else’s business, unlike many of her other coworkers, who had a great deal to say about Thelma and her “wife.” Though Ellen didn’t care for the mean-hearted talk, she found it impossible to avoid hearing it, especially on the docks. It was one of the downsides—or benefits, depending—of being unnoticed. The other voice she identified as Eric’s. They were having a heated argument about some exotic fruit spoiling because it had been left out in the weather. Ellen assumed that it was the same ruined stock she had already overheard Eric tell Daniel he had falsely blamed on Thelma.

  “You know those crates were marked ‘Perishable,’” Thelma was saying forcefully, though she was clearly in control of herself. “Don’t try to make it sound like I just forgot to stock it, you never moved it to refrigeration. It was on the asphalt for God’s sake!”

  “It’s your responsibility to get the perishables onto the floor,” Eric shouted at her with genuine indignation.

  It was always interesting when this happened, thought Ellen. She had learned over the years that people got the most aggressively defensive when they were lying. She assumed that was because their carefully formulated story was being challenged. Clearly, Eric had put some work into his version.

  “Lower your voice,” Thelma snapped at him. “I’m not here for you to yell at. This is your screwup, and you’re going to fix it.”

  “Nope, not my problem. I already explained to the general manager that I told you it was there and you just ignored me.”

  Thelma took in a breath so sharply that it hissed. “That is a lie, and Billy knows me better than that. And even if you did tell me, it’s not my job to forklift crates up off the pavement outside the loading dock.”

  Ellen heard the taunting note enter Eric’s next comment. “Well, that’s not where they found it, is it?”

  “You moved it after it spoiled! You know you did. When I found it this morning it was in the same spot I just cleared and shelved last night!”

  “Aw, too bad, wittle baby.” The insulting smugness turned Ellen’s stomach. “Well, that’s not the way the powers that be see it, so suck it.”

  “Listen to me,” Thelma said in a low, composed voice. “If you don’t go to Billy and tell him what really happened, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Eric sneered. He used the baby voice again to say, “Hit me? Tell your girlfwend on me? Ooh, I’m so scared.”

  Ellen reached up and flipped the closet’s light switch off, then she turned the knob and pulled the door open a millimeter. Thelma’s back was to her, but she could see Eric’s face over the top of Thelma’s head. Though the produce manager was much shorter than Eric, she was a strong woman and she did not seem intimidated, and that, it appeared, Eric had not anticipated.

  “I’ll report you to corporate,” Thelma said, pausing while he laughed. Then she went on. “And not just for this. I’ll let the ‘powers that be’ know all about the rumors that you and your buddies are doing drugs at work and faking your time cards. All of that will go in my report, too.” She turned and started away. Ellen could see the determined set of her face.

  Behind her, Eric blanched and his whole body went slack, but his brief lapse into weakness appeared to only fuel his anger, and he pulled himself together. “It’s my word against yours!
” he shouted. “I’ll say you’re making it all up because you’re afraid of men. It’s not like that’s a big secret.”

  Thelma froze and spun back. “What did you say?”

  “What? Aren’t you supposed to be all proud and equal rights and crap? You decided to be a dyke.” He sniggered, but the sound choked off in his throat as Thelma reversed direction and strode fearlessly back to him.

  She crossed the few feet in a beeline to Eric, not stopping until she was inches away from him. A thin sheen of sweat appeared on the dock manager’s face and reflected the ugly fluorescent lights overhead. It gave him a nauseous, puce tinge. Thelma gazed steadily up at Eric, her fists balled and her body rigid with controlled fury. “I am gay,” she pronounced emphatically. “But straight or gay, I will never be afraid of a bigoted idiot like you.”

  Clearly unsure of how to deal with this woman he couldn’t bully, Eric muttered something inaudible and backed away, beating a hasty retreat.

  When he was gone, Thelma stood looking after him for a moment, head high and perfectly still. Noble, really, Ellen thought. Then Thelma checked to make sure she was alone, and burst into tears.

  Startled at the reaction, Ellen silently closed the tiny gap that had given her a view into Thelma’s world and took out her notebook. She recorded the conversation, Thelma’s reaction, and then added a comment—Frightened bullies can be dangerous.

  She packed her book away, switched off the light, checked to make sure the hallway was clear, and went to collect her cart, which she’d left outside the break room. But she stopped a few yards away when she saw that she was not alone.

  Standing near the break room door with their own carts were two of the other night-shift cleaners, whom Ellen had nicknamed the Crows because of their habit of sticking their beaky noses into everyone else’s business. Gossip was the Crows’ religion, as far as Ellen could tell, and church was in session. Ellen took her cart and moved away quickly.