Chapter 7: Ghosts in the Wall
Nadelline sat on the couch and began to recount for Bella the moments that led to her sin. It was information that Bella may have known if she pushed forward with Nadelline’s book, but the calm that soothed her kept her away from the bright binding and story within. Now, it seemed, the storm found her regardless.
“My mother died a month ago,” Nadelline said as she lit a long cigarette. She took a drag while Bella’s face contorted. Nadelline knew the coffee shop girl was trying to search for the words to say and felt love for her because of it. That love intensified when, instead of saying the usual “I’m sorry,” Bella simply shook her head, bit her bottom lip and looked at Nadelline in the eyes. Her eyes just told Nadelline to go on, to let the poison out, and Nadelline did.
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“I don’t know how much of my book you read,” she began, pouring herself another glass of the brilliantly colored (and no doubt alcoholic) liquid, “but it explains quite a bit of my childhood in there. It leaves out pieces, of course, because many people would be bark raving mad to broadcast every dark shadow in their life. I did my best, though. Now I am going to tell you everything. You have to understand that this is hard for me. I have never told anyone everything.” She set down the glass and put her hand on Bella’s leg. Bella jumped a bit, not because Nadelline touched her but because the room was electric with tension. Bella looked at Nadelline’s hand, so delicate and pale against her brown corduroy pants, and put her own hand over it. Then she looked at Nadelline and smiled. Nadelline’s heart became somewhat full at the smile and the touch and in that fullness her strength grew and story began, this time without interruption.
“I was playing in my room once when I was four years old. I remember that I was four because in September I would go to Kindergarten and I was so excited to meet other kids and get out of the house. I was practicing my writing upstairs, because Mom said no son of hers would be the worst scribe in the class. My mom was a reader – a heavy one and she often judged on character by vocabulary. So I wanted to make her proud, because what child wouldn’t want that? I remember I was using a bright blue crayon that probably had some ridiculous name like Aquatic Adventure or some shit,” she said, dragging on the little bit that was left of her cigarette. She butted it out, lost in the memory.
“That was the day Henry lost his job. It was the day I lost everything I loved. Nothing was good again for a long time after that day. Playing in the snow wasn’t nice anymore and I hated snow angels. I didn’t smile when I saw the sun. I lost all interest in warm cookies. In other words, little Bella, I was a freak. Henry made me that way almost from the start. He came into the bedroom. I was young but I knew he was drunk. You could tell he was drink by the way his eyes swirled in his head. They darted everywhere – they never stayed on one spot for more than a second. I was sitting in the floor, but I think I said that already, the carpet was this horrible green color that makes me think of the Exorcist now when I think of it. His cowboy boots were brown. He walked by me and the contrast of the brown boots on that green carpet made me giggle because I thought it looked like the baby poop I saw in my young cousin’s diaper once when mom was watching her. So I giggled and he got mad. He got pissed. Before I knew it his red face and crazy eyes where right near me. His breath made me recoil a bit, because it smelt absolutely horrific. That made him madder. He picked my up by my shirt, which was blue and had little red airplanes on it – you see, I wanted to be a pilot when I was really young so everything back then had to have some kind of plane or helicopter on it. Even my sheets had planes on them. He threw me on the bed, on my back, and he slapped me hard across the face.
‘What are you laughing at you little fucker?’ he screamed. I mean screamed. I thought the neighbors must have heard and would come running in and save me, but they never came. I told him what I thought was funny, because I thought he would understand. I was only four,” Nadelline’s hands began shaking. Bella squeezed the one still on her leg and watched as Nadelline tried to put the glass to her lips. Finally Nadelline succeeded, after much fear on Bella’s part that the damn thing would spill and Nadelline would lose whatever seemed left of her sanity. She wet her whistle, put the glass down, gave Bella’s leg a little squeeze and kept on dancing with the demon ghost.
“He didn’t understand. He was too drunk and I was too young. It was a bad combination. It was a frequent combination in our house, though and that was the beginning. It was also what seeded my life decision to become a woman, but that is beside the point I guess.” At that Nadelline let out a small chuckle, picked up her glass and took a deep sip of the poison. It was almost empty now, but they called it liquid courage for a reason and tonight Nadelline felt like she needed all the strength she could get – so she sipped again. Bella squeezed her hand, gently, coaxing her to continue her tale. But the plain girl with the relatively vanilla life was secretly hoping that Nadelline didn’t find her courage, because there are just ways to know when the next moment is an ugly one and Bella knew this one was going to be a dinger. She knew that whatever came out of Nadelline’s mouth next was going to change her life. Screw being objective, like they taught her in college, there were certain things she couldn’t get her mind open enough to process. Bella was never a religious woman and she didn’t bode well with bible studies or commandments, but she believed in sin. She believed in the dark, hollow dangers inside a human soul. She believed that people were capable of things she could never imagine and would go to lengths she couldn’t comprehend and those lengths were cloaked in stench and filth. That was what Bella believed a sin was and she knew, beyond all doubts, that Nadelline was about to explain a sin against her person. Bella also knew, because unlike most people her age she knew a great deal of herself, how she would react. Any chance of getting out of this news without a black scuff (or a mark on her permanent record as her high school teachers and principle liked to say, which, for the record, Bella thought an unethical way to talk to gullible children who believe the bullshit and find ways to guilt themselves over “bad behavior” for years to come) was improbable. In short, she knew she would help Nadelline with what Nadelline needed. Strangers don’t call “coffee shop girls” out of the blue just because they need to rehash a murder and then let them on their way. Or maybe they do? Bella didn’t know, but she was pretty sure what that charming phone call was leading to was a plea for help and after Nadelline’s confession (she was whipping up more liquid courage now and Bella, lost in her own thoughts, hardly noticed the hand on her leg fall free) she knew she would help. How? Because, for the most part, she knew herself. She sighed and took notice of Nadelline’s absence, which she took as a sign from the Universe to make herself a little bottle of the bravery potion.
Nadelline’s kitchen, much like the rest of her apartment, looked like it came straight from the 1980’s. The walls were white, adorned with neon lights and set off with black trim. It was the neon that made Nadelline look like a silhouetted angel when she answered the door and now, standing beneath a Pabst Blue Ribbon neon that hung over the stove that Nadelline had her ass to the thought of a CocoRosie song came to Bella’s head again. “If every angel is terrible then why do we welcome them?” It repeated over and over – like a skipping record stuck and that one line and Bella smiled in spite of herself. Nadelline, still leaning against the stove and searching her drink for some kind of clarity must have felt the energy change, because she looked up and questioned Bella’s smile, but only in her head. She wasn’t about to make the one person who knew her secret leave.
Bella shook her head at Nadelline and told her a song popped into her head and she was struck by its relevance.
“Ironic,” Nadelline muttered and continued to look deeper into her glass.
“No, it’s not. People use that word wrong all the time,” Bella said. It was short and definitive but good enough for Nadelline, who made a mental note to look up the meaning of irony. Bella was opening the cupboards, they were black with bright pink handles. “Where are the glasses? I would like a drink myself.”
Nadelline snapped out of her trance and went to Bella, placing her hand on her back.
“Go sit down, coffee shop girl, I’ll make you a drink for once,” and with that Nadelline rushed her back onto the black leather couch.
Bella, now left to her own devices as much as Nadelline had been in the hours before her phone call to the coffee shop girl, found that she didn’t like the spaces in between her busy thoughts much at all. Here, in a strange house decorated with an almost offensive use of neon and pop art, Bella had no homework to look to or records to listen to or stories to read that would take her mind away from the places she had come to fear most. While Nadelline clinged and clanged in the kitchen Bella thought of the time she had said no, or would have had the opportunity presented itself. She thought of Johnny, who she undoubtedly loved with an affection worthy of prose and she thought of the ways he so consciously violated that little gift. She thought, despite the ugliness of his actions, that his biggest offensive wasn’t the act itself but the fact that he could commit such an act knowing that she cared for him the way she did. The biggest offense, she thought, was the blatant misuse and disregard of love and trust, which is so frequently built on structures as fragile as sugar cube castles. Her own hands began to shake, but she was saved by that terrible angel with two, not one, glasses in her hands and Bella knew why she welcomed her.
