The Gray House

A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CORRIDOR

Every time she returned to their place, she wondered at the difference between the two corridors and never could understand what the secret was. It wasn’t that theirs was narrower and shorter. It wasn’t the windows (that one didn’t have them), and not the area rugs either . . . But tonight she finally got it: their corridor wasn’t a corridor.

The old principal . . . The former principal (that white beard; she couldn’t recall the face anymore) favored girls, and it was reflected in the disparity between the corridors. The white beard had been long gone, but the favorable treatment persisted. Only four per dorm; yes, they were tiny, more cells than rooms, but still only four, and you could always close the door. And those area rugs, balding and fraying, and the cords on the curtains, and the television sets. White beard put them up in every dorm, but he’d been long gone, and the televisions broke down gradually until there were only two left. One of those two was glowing now by the wall, and in front of it, on mattresses and blankets dragged out of the dorms, an enraptured (whatever could they be expecting to learn?) selection of females from various rooms positioned themselves. Stumbling in the dark between their arms and legs, stepping on the pillows and mounds of apple peels, she finally figured out the difference. Their corridor was not a place separate from the dorms, it was their continuation, one common dorm, a place where after dark anyone could crash down and sleep.

The ghostly glow flitted across the faces. She extricated herself from the tangle of prone bodies, opened the door (in daylight you could distinguish a smeared silhouette of a cat on it), and entered the room. Greenish dusk, four mattresses on the floor, and the glinting eyes of the one dubbed Catwoman. She switched on the light and tossed the backpack on the floor.

“I’m back. Sure is quiet here.”

“Everyone’s out,” a soft voice answered. “Didn’t you see them there?”

A slight stress on there, just enough for a sensitive ear.

“No, they’ve all filtered back to the rooms,” she said reluctantly. “Haven’t seen anyone. Why are the lights out? Your eyes hurt?”

“Mine don’t.”

Stressed again. Barely noticeable. Eliciting the question: Whose do? And if asked, the answer to it would be forthcoming. Catwoman had only two ways of influencing those around her: her voice and her eyes. She used both of them to the fullest. And that wasn’t counting the cats. Those eyes, on top of the pile of clothes and the three fur coats, are best avoided. She turned out the contents of her pockets onto the mattress. The gifts from “there,” from “them” and “those.” Pitiful stuff they might be, but they were still destined for eternal repose in the drawers, wrapped in cloth or shiny gray paper, because gifts were never thrown out or given away.

The bottomless holes of the night in the windows. Catwoman shrugged the jacket onto the mattress, shedding the three identical smoky-gray cats with it and exposing sharp, bony shoulders. The long razor face, the swaying needles of the colorless hair. The cats tried to climb back, she chased them off, then whistled to one of them, sending it on an errand. The cat trotted to the window and pulled on the cord, flooding the black holes of the window with white. It then returned to the mattress, shaking its paw in disgust.

“If only they would make coffee,” repeated those who were never tired of the show.

“If only they would,” Ginger whispered.

She couldn’t tell the cats apart, no one could except for their owner. She crouched down next to the gifts and turned them over distractedly.

“So whose eyes do hurt?”

Catwoman draped herself in the jacket and the cats again.

“Rat’s,” she said. “She returned.”

Ginger craned her neck warily.

“Where from this time?”

“How would I know? Bottom of the river, she says. Where sand people live among the seaweed. I would’ve thought one Mermaid was enough.”

“True.”

Ginger picked up a hair. Mermaid’s, unendingly long. Trying to lift it off, she stretched her arm all the way up, but the end still remained on the floor, lustrous and invisible, coiling and snaking under the mattress. The cats observed her eagerly from their perch. Their eyes and their master’s. Ginger rose.

“I’ll go look for her. I’d like to hear about the river.”

A switch for the corridor lights at every door. Another privilege. As the light flooded in, the indignant cries flared up and subsided into irritated murmuring. She scanned the scene and found what she was looking for. There, by the wall, hunched behind the backs of the TV watchers. The lone figure in the leather jacket. The lights went back off. Ginger threaded her way between the bodies and the transient wafts of perfume, bent down, and shook Rat by the shoulder.

“Hey, Rat! Hey! Get up!”

“Why would you wake her? Don’t do that,” came the plaintive voices. “Let her sleep. Let her dream.”

Ginger jostled harder.

The eyes flamed in the dark, burning her.

“Why are you disturbing my dreams? Tearing at my clothes? Why?”

Thin as a rail (to recognize a girl in her took a special effort), eyes like two black puddles, hair dyed black and plastered down with spray, a much-too-short black leather jacket, pale lips. Rat, not one of, but Rat the Flyer, the traveler into the Outsides, the owner of (guess under which of her nails) the half-moon razor, picked herself up off the floor and took a muddled look at the screen.

“Oh god,” she said. “Fount of knowledge.”

The bodies in front of the TV shifted uneasily. The floorboards squeaked.

“Let’s go.”

Ginger pulled Rat’s sleeve. Rat followed docilely, crushing the stray body parts underfoot. But not a shout, not even a peep out of anyone, because you never knew: one, whether she’s in her right mind, and two, under which of her nails.

“We thought you’d be missing your toes. And your nose. That they’d freeze and fall off.”

“You mean like the tail back then?”

Rat crashed down on the mattress under the gym ladder, each bar with a gaggle of bells on a string. They sang in unison, just the way they were going to sing now every night when she stirred in her sleep.

The cats pawed, hearing the familiar song that became unfamiliar.

“You were away for a whole month, and it’s been snowing.”

“Has it?” Rat said, rummaging in her pockets. “I’ve brought you a present from out there. Wait . . . it’s here somewhere. There.”

Ginger crouched next to the open palm, in which sat a ring.

“Take it. The stone is amethyst. You can get it out and put it somewhere else.”

“Who did you take this off?”

“A corpse.” Rat giggled. “Take it. For luck.”

She turned to listen to the screams of the TV. Catwoman was sitting with her eyes closed. Four-line snippets of lyrics mingled with paint flows on the walls.

Mermaid (where does her hair end?) came in playing the guitar, holding it like a ukulele, and stared at them expectantly. A gentle soul, conversing only in whispers (and definitely nothing under the nails).

“Gingie. Tell me,” she said. “How was it there tonight?”

Ginger wasn’t in the mood for talking about “them” and “there,” but she knew there was no avoiding it. All three were waiting for the story. Waiting quietly and patiently, not even acknowledging her feeble “Same as yesterday.” Even she who’d just returned, not knowing anything and not understanding what “there” meant, even she waited too. Ginger sat down, hugging her knees.

“Why don’t you go and see for yourself. Quit bugging me.”

They were just staring, motionless. Outside the door, the TV shrieked excitedly.

Ten eyes, if you counted the cats.

“It’s completely different there,” she began with a sigh.

The gifts lay on the mattress, looking pathetic to anyone who would like to laugh at them.