“TODAY YOU ARE Ingrid,” says Norah, my mother. I don’t even have time to rub the sleep from my eyes because Norah’s already put the finishing touches on the mask I’ll wear this month. I feel my hair and notice that clumps of it are missing—she must’ve cut it in the middle of the night again. My mother tells me that Ingrid wears tight clothes and blue loafers that pinch her feet. Her hair is short because she was angry once, and took the scissors and started cutting until there was no more hair to cut. Norah locks up all the sharp objects in the safe. Precautions, she tells me. Norah clips pink barrettes into the places where she cut. I tell her that it’s 1968 and I’m fifteen not five. I tell her that I hate pink and I hate barrettes, but she never listens.
“We’ll write notes to one another in crayon because pens are dangerous,” she instructs. I shake my head. My neck is so cold. I bite back tears. Not again. I’m tired of playing other people.
“Why are you so angry?” Norah says.
“You keep changing my story. I can’t keep all the girls, and that one boy, straight. Why can’t I just be myself, Ellie? Your daughter. Aren’t I good enough?”
Norah says, “Because Ellie, my dear, is boring. Ellie doesn’t amuse me.”
There is a boy. We’ll call him Tim. We sit across from one another in band class, and since he can’t play the saxophone, Mr. Harmon has him practicing scales. During class, Tim moves his fingers over the keys, tap tap, but no sound comes out. Mr. Harmon says Tim doesn’t know how to breathe. But I can breathe, too much for my own good. When it’s my turn to go off register, Mr. Harmon taps his baton and warns me that I’m so damn close to blowing my clarinet straight across the room and he sure as hell isn’t getting sued because some wise kid can’t keep her air in check. “Must you always glare, Ellie?” Mr. Harmon sighs after class, and I remind him that this month my name is Ingrid.
“Right,” Mr. Harmon says, rolling his eyes, walking out. “Ingrid.”
Tim remains, breaking down his instrument. I notice red marks on his wrists. When he sees me see them, he covers them with his sleeves. “You know what everyone says about you?”
I cock my head. Raise an eyebrow. “Tell me. What do they say?”
“In the third movement you’re slurring your notes instead of hitting a staccato.” For a moment Tim stares out the window, looks through it.
“This coming from a guy who isn’t even allowed to play,” I say, licking my reed for no reason. Mother tells me that there are only a few places where a tongue is allowed to go. Wood isn’t one of them, so it feels good to risk it. To hope for a mouthful of splinters.
“Just because I can’t breathe doesn’t mean I can’t read the music.”
“Tell me what they say. They talk a lot, don’t they?”
Tim laughs. “They do.”
“They say I’m weird. I’m desperate for attention, right?”
“I don’t think you’re desperate; I think you’re lonely.” Tim says this softly, quietly. He says this in a way that makes you want to take off your coat after a long walk home and sit in front of a table, knowing that he’s made you something to eat. You hold on to his words while he packs up his saxophone, clips his case shut, and you know that home is a place where you make your own meals because Norah can’t be bothered with something as trivial as slapping cold meat onto two pieces of white bread, or boiling macaroni until the noodles become soft and tender. Because Grandfather will bring home a half-eaten steak from his dinner or hand you a wad of bills and tell you to run down to the diner and get yourself something to eat. Make it an adventure, but you’re tired of adventures, and for once you’d like to play it straight. Be normal. Eat a frozen Salisbury steak with a fork and a knife at the kitchen table.
“I’m alone, not lonely,” I say.
Tim comes closer, says, “I liked your hair longer.”
By then, I’m gone. Out of the races and onto the track.
There is a girl, too. My neighbor, Delilah Martin, sits in the window yet rarely leaves the house. She was born funny, not ha-ha funny, but not-quite-right funny. Parts of her body are bigger than they should be: eyes bulge out of her sockets, protruding teeth beg for escape from the prison that is her mouth, and her arms flail. Everything is too big or too small on Delilah, so she’s often screaming because her clothes never fit or from the pain she feels from the boys who hurl small rocks at her back. One night I overheard my mother talk about what a shame it is that we can put down lame horses yet poor Delilah is confined to a window. Another night my mother’s friend lamented how there should be a law against putting that poor retarded girl on display like some mutant mannequin—She’s not retarded, my mother corrected—scaring all the perfectly normal children who want to walk to school without getting a freak show. We have a right to peace, my mother’s friend whispered, to which my mother responded, Send Joan some curtains then. She’ll get the picture.
Delilah taps at the window, tap tap, whenever I pass by, and I sometimes bring her chips or suckers because she lives in a Christian house and sugar and salt are sins. Delilah opens her window just wide enough for me to slip a bag through. She’ll make one of her loud grunting sounds as a distraction. One time I asked her why she sits in front of the window all the time. “Are you kidding me?” she says. “This is better than the television. People do all sorts of queer things when they think you’re stupid.” Delilah’s big thing is tracking the goings-on of the neighborhood whores: cheating husbands and Catholic girls giving blow jobs in parked cars. Friday’s a big night in the neighborhood as men tend to splurge on their mistresses, and all the girls knew their fathers wouldn’t be home until dawn. “I should sell tickets and popcorn,” Delilah says one Friday as we pass a smoke between us.
“Your sister would flip if she saw us.”
Delilah exhales. Her eyes bulge wider if you can believe. “Joan’s at Bible group praying for my soul. You’d think it was yesterday that my mother died since she keeps crying those crocodile tears. I swear that woman’s capable of making her own river. I don’t know why she’s still so torn up. My mother was an asshole.”
Two years ago, some kids messing around found Mrs. Martin facedown in the ravine. Local gossip pronounced Farah Martin’s death a suicide, but the local church wouldn’t hear of it. The coroner registered Farah’s passing as an accidental drowning. It didn’t matter that she was an excellent swimmer who taught at the YMCA, or that two boys found her in shallow water. What mattered is that the days pressed on, folded into one another, and soon the shock of Farah Martin’s death became a story the kids would embellish and tell—She bled out of her hands, she did!—until the Farah we all knew became a story we conjured, a figment of our imagination. After Delilah’s mother’s death, her older sister, Joan, moved home and took up with the Bible where Farah had left off.
“Do you pray?” I ask.
“Fuck Jesus. What’s Jesus ever done for me?” Delilah says.
“Good point,” I say. Norah waves from the window and I stub out my smoke.
“What’s she got you playing this month?”
“A poor Swedish girl, Ingrid.”
“If you ask me, your mother’s missing a couple of buttons.”
“Lately I’ve been waking to this beeping. It’s constant, loud, like a howl. It never goes away; it only gets louder. So I fall back asleep and in the morning my mother tells me that this month I’m Swedish. Today, I’m Ingrid. Soon the beeping goes away, and after a while I start to believe I’m Ingrid because maybe that’s the one thing that will stop the loudest sound.”
“You could get her arrested, you know.”
As if that’ll happen. When an amusement park is named after your family, people tend to ignore it if you’re a weird kid who changes her name every couple of months, because God forbid anyone raise their voice for fear of losing the jobs that your family so generously gave them. “Rich people don’t go to jail. Rich people get buildings named after them; they get to cut the butcher line for the Sunday roast. My mother wears diamonds, not handcuffs.” Right on cue, my mother opens the window and yells that it’s time for dinner, which is bullshit because it’s four o’clock and the only dinner in my future is a piece of bread and grape jelly. Who’s she trying to kid?
Delilah lifts the screen and grabs my hand. Her hands are cold, enormous; they remind me of oven mitts. She says, “I’m scared that she’s going to make you crazy.”
“Oh, baby. I’m already there.”
When I’m Ingrid, I’m dangerous. Knives and sharp objects must be hidden and all mirrors covered. Reflections are reminders of lives past and I can’t be reminded of all the horror in the camps. My mother and I communicate by crayon and whisper under bedcovers because that’s the only way. Sometimes my grandfather visits and his hellos are a fistful of coins he pours into my hand like gravel and rock, and he tells my mother, sotto voce, that having a child is the biggest mistake she’s ever made. You’re not built for it, Norah. Perhaps you should have acquired a nice German shepherd from the local pound? In response, my mother tells Grandfather that no way in hell was she going to bring a mongrel into her home. Besides, a dog is no fun. A child, well, a child is a great deal of fun.
Scanning our home, I consider the sharpness of objects. Ellie would never have dared, but Ingrid. Ingrid is a whole other country. Try to remember where Norah hid the scissors.
Delilah tells me about a new girl named Cassidy. There are too many people in the picture, I think, too many names to keep track of. Just when I think I’ve got the town covered, just when I can finally manage all the people my mother wants me to be, there’s Cassidy.
“This one’s different,” Delilah says. “Cassidy lived in Europe. Her parents flew to Burma and dumped her in that large house on Barrow Drive, you know, the haunted one, with a colored cleaning lady and a pile of cash. Imagine that. Living on your own. I’d gladly send my sister and her stack of Bibles on a one-way ticket to anywhere if it meant I could drink pop all day.” Delilah plays with her new coke-bottle glasses.
“Your eyes look weird in those things,” I say.
“My eyes are weird.”
“Have you met her?” I say. “Cassidy.”
“No, but I’ve seen her.”
“I think you’re spending too much time with Delilah. What will people think?” my mother says. Today she’s cleared out the cabinets and the food in the fridge.
“Unless, it’s part of your plan,” she continues.
“I’m hungry,” I say. “When am I eating?” It occurs to me that I’ve never actually seen my mother take a bite of food. If she eats, I’d never know it. Once I snuck into my mother’s room to find tins of peach pies under her bed, and, as punishment, my mother padlocked my hands together and poured salt on my tongue. I was seven.
“Ingrid is always hungry. That’s what it was like in the camps—the hunger was palpable. It got such that people regarded one another’s skin and hair as a meal. Can you imagine pouring a little hot sauce on a French braid?” Laughing, my mother grabs my arm and drags me to the basement. It’ll only be a few days, she promises. Then I’ll be rescued and fed and everyone will call me a survivor. When I scream my mother tells me it’s no good. No one will hear you. She cuts all the lights and turns off the heat; her eyes are black pools. “Don’t you see? I’m merciful. I got rid of all the traps so there’s plenty of food to eat. Just like in the camps. Be brave, my Ingrid. Be resourceful.”
In the basement there are no windows, only doors.
A week later I’ve lost five pounds and it feels as if there’s charcoal under my eyes, but I have to keep my cellar secret. Before I leave for school, my mother holds up a roll of duct tape and asks, “Is this the way Ingrid wants to sleep? Does Ingrid want to lose all feeling from her lips? Besides, who would believe you? Just the other day I was telling Margaret that I ought to have you checked out on account of me being concerned—teenager making up names and stories and the like. You kids aren’t like us. We were proud of our lineage. Why is it you hate Ellie so much? Such a pretty name, it was my mother’s.”
I hold my book bag to my chest, as if a piece of nylon could shield me. “I’ll be late for school.”
My mother runs her fingers through my hair. “We’ll need to get this trimmed.”
We learn about the Industrial Revolution, how man went from toiling land to building great steel machines. The people who once churned butter by hand now purchased rectangular bars wrapped in wax paper. Peasant coats were traded in for sensible slacks and caps lowered down to the eyes. Tim sits in front of me as Mr. Haddock regales us with tales of the mass migrations and the promise of a living wage. No longer would farmers be beholden to their crops, the inflated seed prices, and land rents. Now they would sleep near factories and risk their limbs working massive machines. Exhaustion is a constant, no matter how you play it, and in my mind’s eye I draw constellations from the freckles on the back of Tim’s neck until my head finds the desk. Until I wake to the sound of a bell ringing and Tim shaking my shoulders. Sometimes I’m guilty of feeling too much.
“You’re lucky Haddock was half-asleep himself. You would’ve been toast had he gotten up from his chair,” Tim says.
“He never gets up. Haddock’s the only man I know capable of sleeping while standing up,” I say, rubbing my eyes. It’s nearly three but it feels like midnight.
“Where were you last week? You missed band practice. I blew a few notes when Harmon wasn’t looking.” The side of his neck is purple, as if someone squeezed hard and wouldn’t let go.
“On vacation.” I gather my books. “What’s with your neck?”
“Vacation? Where? The county jail?”
“You should consider taking your show on the road.”
“No, really. Where were you?”
“A small trip my mother likes to take. Nowhere you’d go.”
Tim nods his head, pulls a sandwich out of his bag, and eats it. I ask him about the sandwich, the details, because these are the things that I need to know: the composition of a meal down to the condiments on the bread. I’m relieved when Tim tells me that he’s got turkey and cheese on white bread with just a little bit of mayonnaise because his mother still makes homemade mayonnaise while everyone else in town gets theirs out of a jar. Tim doesn’t like mayonnaise, but he loves his mother. He offers me a bite: “Why not see for yourself?” I take the sandwich and pause, nervous, and Tim says, “This isn’t an engagement, Ellie. It’s just some cold cuts on bread.” As I devour the rest of Tim’s lunch, I wish he could know it’s more than that. I wish he could know.
“You heard about Delilah Martin?”
Everything in me seizes. I bite my lip so hard it nearly bleeds. Is it possible to feel your blood vessels constrict? I try to keep my voice even. “What about her?”
“She’s disappeared. Her sister came home from the market and no Delilah. Strangest thing. No one broke into the house. No bags were packed. No one saw her, and you know everyone would have noticed Delilah leaving the house. It was as if she just up and vanished.”
Why did I immediately think of my mother? “When?”
“Last Sunday. The whole neighborhood is in a panic. It’s been in the paper, and there’s even talk about national coverage on account of Delilah’s condition. Her sister sleeps at the church now because—would you believe this?—when she walked through her door last Sunday she could just ‘feel the hand of Satan all around me,’” Tim says, mimicking Joan Martin’s slow drawl. “‘Rising up through the floorboards.’”
“My God,” I say. My hands quake.
That corpse you planted last year in the garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“You wouldn’t believe the headlines: Satan Snatches Local Girl,” Tim says. “Strange you didn’t hear about it.”
“We were on vacation,” I stutter, thinking that I will likely faint. It’s possible to fall right back into your history.
When I get home, my grandfather refills his pipe and tells me, by way of a hello, that he’ll be living with us from now on. My mother strides into the living room with a tray of tea sandwiches and now I know I’ll faint. “And if your mother has any objections to my being here, Ellie, she can move out of the house that I bought her. Isn’t that right, Norah? It must be nice to eat off my plates and sleep in my bed.” My grandfather holds out an empty mug and rattles it.
My mother refills his coffee. “Why would I ever object?” she purrs.
“Tell Ellie what we’re having for dinner,” he says.
“Roasted lamb, new potatoes, and peas. I didn’t realize how many kinds of potatoes there were at the market. I didn’t know which ones to get so I bought the most expensive, naturally. I’ve been all day in the kitchen; I’m practically living in it.”
“Roasted lamb, new potatoes, and peas, Ellie,” he warns.
“Roasted lamb, new potatoes, and peas.” My mother sets down the carafe and cups my face with her hands when she says, “Ellie.”
“Your mother likes it when I clean up after her. She’s always making a mess—in the kitchen and out of it.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“Father,” my mother urges. Her face is a dam breaking, and this is her drowning.
When my mother leaves, I turn to my grandfather and ask, “What happened to Delilah Martin?”
“You mean the woman they found by the Pavilion with the Bible in her mouth?”
“The other Martin.”
“You mean that troubled girl in the window?” We pass a few moments in excruciating quiet. Grandfather lays his pipe down on the table and taps his chin. This isn’t the kind of silence where a story needs to be quickly crafted or a conversation requires diverting, rather this is a deliberate quiet. The kind of quiet where one anticipates the impact of the words that follow, how one should pay strict attention to them. These words are the air we’re determined to breathe.
Time passes. Grandfather says, “I’m not sure you’d like the answer to that particular question. No, I don’t think you’d like it at all. So let’s leave it at this: Sometimes a man needs to do whatever it takes to protect his name. Especially when his daughter is hell-bent on ruining it.”
My mother swans about the house and talks about dinner: How it’s ready. How we need to eat before it gets cold. We use forks and knives because we’re safe now. There’s no more Ingrid. “We’ve closed that chapter,” Grandfather says.
What we have almost resembles a family. We have the taste of it (the tender lamb, the hot butter pooling in the potatoes), the smell of it (my mother’s hyacinths and my grandfather’s aftershave), the feel of it (my face all sore from my grandfather’s shadow, and the skin that nearly comes off when he kisses me). Finally, we have the sound of it: my mother’s hands clapping.
“I brought you a sandwich,” Tim offers after band class, months later. Ham and cheese with a smear of his mother’s homemade mayo.
“Why don’t you just quit band? Everyone knows you can’t play,” I say. “Everyone knows you’re no good at it.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Tim says, “Because it makes my mother happy. If she’s going to spend all this time making homemade mayo for my lunch, I owe her a night away from punching tickets at the Pavilion. You don’t know what it’s like working two shifts and having to come home and make your family sandwiches. She deserves a night where she can get dressed up and watch me perform. Music is music; it doesn’t matter if I’m not the one actually playing it.”
“But you don’t even like mayonnaise,” I say, confused. His words are a riddle I don’t understand.
Darkness stretches across Tim’s face, and he regards me with the same look Grandfather did all those months ago when I asked about Delilah Martin. “I would think you of all people would understand the kind of people we come from and who we are as a result,” he says, snatching the sandwich away.
There is no Delilah. There is no girl in the window, only the memory of it. While my grandfather remains in our house, we have normal feeding times. We open the curtains to let the light in, and wave to our neighbors when they pass by. We have something that resembles a family, a house that takes on the appearance of a home. Except in this house the basement is locked and only Grandfather has the key.
Sometimes, when they think I can’t hear or see them, they grieve. Sometimes, I walk on tiptoe to opposite sides of the house to hear my mother’s cries and my grandfather thrashing in his sleep.