The Woman in the Wall (5 page)

Now I stirred myself from my self-induced stupor. I whirled feverishly around my rooms and passageways, scrubbing, sweeping, dusting. When all was shiny and clean once again, I took stock of the house.

It was a positive shambles. The plumbing in the front bathroom had gone awry and needed immediate attention. An ice dam in the eaves last winter had caused a leak in a back bedroom, and the timbers of the house were quietly rotting inside the walls. The basement stairs had become rickety and dangerous, and the paint on the ceiling under the bathroom was peeling—an ominous sign. Clearly it was time that I stopped indulging my talent for self-pity.

My passageways were another concern. I had
not
stopped growing. On the contrary, I had to let out the seams of my first suit of new clothes while I was still working on the last. I could no longer reach the old servants' quarters because I couldn't, by any amount of squirming and wriggling, fit through the passageway that led to it.

Having strangers in the house was now a nuisance. The house was infested with Andrea's friends, from top to bottom, at all hours of the day and night. They seemed to be everywhere, in the laundry room, in the butler's pantry, in the conservatory. You never knew where they would turn up.

The girls among them had discovered a trunk of old turn-of-the-century clothes in one of the back bedrooms and had dragged it downstairs for dress-up. They took turns trying and failing to cram their huge feet and waists into the tiny shoes and gowns. When once they had managed to lace somebody up, they paraded through the house, shrieking with laughter and falling against each other. Kirsty, one of the few small enough to fit into the clothes, was allowed to join in. They dressed and petted her like a big doll, and she soaked up the attention like a sponge.

The boys mostly lay around on pillows grumbling about life. The only time they seemed to become animated was when Andrea entered the room. Then they'd sit up and begin arguing loudly amongst themselves and punching each other in a playful manner. When she left they would sink back on their pillows with a deep sigh.

"God, she's gorgeous," someone would remark, and they would all agree, nodding their heads fervently. Then they'd yawn and stretch and get back to the real business of their lives: complaining.

"My mother says I should get a job this summer instead of hanging around at Newlands' all the time," one would say gloomily.

"God," the others would groan, and stare bleakly at the ceiling.

Unfortunately, none of them could be relied upon to stay put. Even the boys bestirred themselves now and then in order to play their musical instruments or to dribble basketballs in the back hallways. And they weren't all alike, either. There were a few who roamed the house moodily by themselves. Two of the girls, for instance, seemed to have permanently broken hearts. They skulked around the servants' quarters, weeping furiously and muttering to themselves. And one of the boys, a short, rather chubby young man, spent all of his time alone in the front parlor playing scales on the piano. Whenever anybody looked into the room, he would stop abruptly and blush deeply.

How on earth I was going to get any work done around here was a mystery to me. And I was growing taller and bigger every day. Twice I got stuck in the bend of the passageway that led to the attic and had to spend several painful minutes unsticking myself. I began to carry a little jar of petroleum jelly around with me to help me through tight spots.

One thing, though. I was looking much better. I borrowed a hand mirror belonging to Andrea and had a good look at myself. I trimmed my hair and brushed it till it shone in the dim light. My skin was a little better now and my new shape no longer offended me so much. All in all, my reflection didn't look so bad. Perhaps, just perhaps, I was not a monster after all.

Suddenly I realized that it was August 18th. My fourteenth birthday was tomorrow. I smiled shyly at myself in the mirror.

Softly I sang:

"Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birth-day, dear Anna,
Happy birthday to you."

Surely, I thought, I would stop growing soon. I would learn to live in my new body without shame. I would find a way to repair the house and enlarge my passages without being detected. Soon, very soon, everything would settle down and go along quietly in the old way.

I'm not a monster at all; I'm a woman.

Now
I understand what has been happening to me for the past two years. I was a girl, now I am a woman. How simple, and how silly of me not to have realized.

After all, Andrea went through it before me. I ought to have seen; I ought to have known. And now Kirsty is on the same journey to adulthood. I have seen her ruefully fingering a few skin blemishes, though neither Andrea nor Kirsty seem to have suffered in this way as much as I did. She stands sideways in front of the mirror in the hall, studying her chest. And sure enough, there are two little bumps there. I'm glad to see her pride in them. She seems to know what they mean and to look forward with hope and pleasure. Mother probably explained it to her, as she would have done for me if I'd only had the courage to ask.

In fact I have been surrounded for years by the evidence of adolescence. All those giggling, tearful teenagers I have watched through my peepholes; they ought to have taught me something about my future. But somehow, your own story always seems unique, your own miseries unlike the miseries suffered by anyone else on the planet. It is hard to recognize your own particular predicament as the common fate of millions.

I am a woman. I am ridiculously proud of that fact, and yet—in a way it seems a little pointless. I'm assuming that all of these changes in my body mean that I am supposed to be involved in some sort of interaction with—well, with a man. But I am inside the wall. No men ever come here inside the wall, thank goodness, and I never go out.

So what good is it, being a woman in the wall?

There is a certain urgency to my question. I'm in love. Oh, I am in love!

I'm sorry. I had to stop for a brief fit of weeping. Falling in love seems to make you awfully moody. My emotions fly randomly from laughter to tears, like a little brown carpet moth caught up in the whirlwind of spring cleaning, fluttering now here, now there.

Would you like me to describe to you the man that I love? I can't! I know it sounds stupid, but I have no idea who he is. I've fallen in love with a cloud, a vapor, a nothingness. More specifically, I've fallen in love with a letter written on ivory notepaper in brownish ink, and with the mind and hand that wrote that letter.

There! You see? Now I'm laughing for no reason, except that thinking of him makes my heart lift in a strange way. I have to be careful, though. If one of Andrea's friends heard someone laughing to herself inside the wall, they might think it a bit peculiar.

When I first saw the letter, I was frightened. It was two days after my fourteenth birthday. I had gone to my little room under the stair to look for a lost tool (my Phillips head screwdriver; it's the only one I've got and I'm always losing it). I saw the letter at once, a little triangle of white like a spear point protruding into my private place. It had been folded over and over again into a tiny square. It was pushed into a narrow crack in the molding under the main staircase.

I stopped and stared. Nothing had entered my domain in all these years except those things that I brought here myself. Slowly I reached out a hand and touched the alien thing. I freed it from the crack in the wall and carefully unfolded it.

Dear A,

I love you.

Sincerely yours,
F

P.S. I'm too much of a coward to sign my name to this letter, or even to write yours. I know you'll never find this, but there's always the chance.

I dropped the paper on the floor and backed away from it as if it were a snake, smacking my head smartly on a stair tread. My heart thundered in my throat.

Someone knew I was here! I had been seen, observed! And by an outsider; no one in my family had that initial, "F." "A," of course, meant me, Anna.

But—what was that last sentence? I bent and picked up the letter gingerly between two fingers. "I know you'll never find this" must mean that the writer didn't know how close to the heart of my world he had come. The paper had been pushed through a random crack in the wall in hopes that I would come upon it by accident.

This calmed me somewhat. No one was going to come smashing through the walls of my sanctuary just yet. I studied the message carefully, with growing curiosity. I had never gotten a letter before.

"I love you," the paper said.

F didn't seem hostile, anyway. Far from it.

Who was F? What was F, a boy or a girl? A boy, I thought. I was pretty sure that girls didn't usually send love letters to other girls. Very well, I would assume that F was a he.

Apparently F had discovered my existence somehow, but I didn't think he could have seen me, and he had certainly never had any conversation with me. Was it possible to love someone, knowing so little about them? Now of course I realize how easily one may catch that particular disease, but back then I knew very little about the ways of love. The only love with which I was familiar was the love of my family, based on years of knowledge and familiarity.

I sat down in my easy chair and smoothed the letter in my lap. F, I mused. Who could F be? And should I (terrifying yet oddly exhilarating thought) answer his note?

Had I gone completely insane? Answer his note? I couldn't imagine myself doing such a thing. On the other hand ... it wouldn't be as bad as actually speaking to a stranger, would it?

Mentally I began to compose a letter. "Dear Mr. F," I began, but then came to a halt. What could I say?

I could ask who he was, I thought. That seemed reasonable. How could he expect me to respond to his overtures when I didn't even know who was addressing me?

But it sounded as though he didn't want me to know his name. He said he was too much of a coward to sign his note in case I ever found it. Why should he be afraid of my knowing his name? My heart beat faster. I knew why. He was afraid because he was shy. He was like me.

It was astounding. F was worried about what
I
thought of
him!

"Oh, F!" I breathed. "There's no need to be frightened of me. I know
exactly
how you feel. No one could understand you better, in fact!"

Poor F. Feeling the way he did, how courageous of him to write at all! Of course I would answer his letter; it would be cruel not to. I would have to be careful what I said so that I didn't scare him any more than he already was. I folded his message and put it tenderly into one of my many pockets. Absently I picked up a scrap of linen on which I had been experimenting with embroidery motifs and began to sew, my mind busily considering my letter and a possible reply.

How would I deliver my response? I supposed I would have to use the same crack in the wall for a mail box. Well, then, I wouldn't sign my letter either. What if it fell into the wrong hands! It would be bad enough if my mother or sisters found it, but imagine if one of Andrea's friends, or Kirsty's for that matter, should find it? How they would scream with laughter! And the questions they would ask!

"Who is this Anna person?" they would want to know. It would put my family into an uncomfortable position.

What should I say? Not much, I decided. His letter had been short; so would mine be short. I wouldn't mention the part about his loving me. It was too embarrassing to discuss, when I knew so little about him. And I would only sign it "sincerely," instead of "sincerely yours" as he had; it would seem to be promising too much otherwise. But I must answer or else his feelings would be terribly hurt.

I looked down at my work and then laughed aloud, very softly. Without really meaning to, I had already written my response. Neatly embroidered in gold on the white linen were these words:

Dear F,

I think you are
very
brave.

Please, won't you tell me who you are?

Sincerely,
A

At least it was done, and done without too much heart burning. It looked rather pretty, too, surrounded with little embroidered flowers and vines in colored threads.

Quickly, without giving myself time to think about it, I hemmed up the little piece of material (it was only about five inches square), folded it up small, and pushed it firmly into the crack.

Then I went about my business. Or tried to. It seemed as though I could not get that little square of linen out of my mind. Whenever I was in a distant part of the house, I began to wonder if right
now
he was taking it out of the crack and reading it. Then I would hurry back to the room under the stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.

Unfortunately, that crack in the wall had formed my only peephole into the whole hallway, and I couldn't see anything with the linen square blocking the way. I say unfortunately, but actually it was probably just as well. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten anything else accomplished. I would have simply sat watching the hallway like a cat at a mouse hole, waiting for him to come and pick up his mail.

But he didn't pick up his mail. A day went by, and then a week. Then two weeks and three. I began to despair. The linen grew gray with dust. I cried sometimes, in the evenings.

I realized that I was becoming obsessed with this mysterious F. To keep my mind off him, I began work on a tailored tuxedo suit with satin accents on the lapels and pant legs for Andrea. I was absolutely determined not to look out my peepholes anymore or stare at that bit of dirty cloth stuck in the wall.

Being absolutely determined about something doesn't always give the results you might expect. Within an hour I heard a band of Andrea's friends coming up the kitchen stairway. I abandoned the tuxedo, which lay in pieces all over the floor of one of the back rooms I had annexed into my quarters. I hurried to the nearest peephole, tripping over the sewing kit in my hurry. Which? I wondered feverishly, which one was he? And why had he deserted me like this?