Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

Their father owned his own business selling oriental rugs and carpeting to a clientele with a taste for luxury and the Far East. He had two boutiques in Paris, one in Saint-Germain and one in Montmartre. Her mother was a home decorator by vocation, but had become a stay-at-home mom to raise the girls. She transferred her home decorating skills into the stylised upbringing of her daughters, where great care was taken in arranging them to fit the house. After her girls had grown up, she had become so accustomed to this kind of work that she continued her upkeep of the house as if raising a third and favourite child.

Both mother and father had taken notice of Béatrice’s voice at a young age when she still shared a room with her sister, and went around the house with her brushed angel-hair, singing Céline Dion, and to their surprise, reaching every note. In middle school, Béatrice discovered Mariah Carey and spent her free time mastering the octave changes and the frequencies of lushness. When Béatrice sang at home, her mother led her around the rooms as if spreading a scent. Her father, however, had an idea. He sat his angel down beside him as he listened to his favourite radio station, Smooth Jazz.

“Listen… listen…” her father said secretly. Béatrice listened.

“You think you can sing like that…”

“Like what?” Béatrice asked.

“Like the woman on the radio,” he said, referring to Lena Horne singing “Stormy weather”.

“Dunno.” Béatrice shrugged.

“Give it a try, angel…”

Her father paused, trying to contain his excitement.

Béatrice looked up at him. “Okay…” she said cautiously.

Béatrice slowly opened her mouth. The sound began to rise. Her father’s eyes lit up.

At first, Béatrice tried simply to imitate the classics, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Etta James, Peggy Lee… But then, little by little, she found her own swing, texture, and emotional charge.

When it was time for her to go to high school, her father enrolled Béatrice in a private music college. Her mother’s contribution was to rearrange the storage space in the attic into a bedroom for Béatrice, so that she could sing undisturbed.

From that storage space down to the second floor of the house was a steep and narrow stairway of unvarnished wood. It was clear that it would need to be painted. Her mother chose the colour, a pale, milky green — it worked well with the egg-white and feather-grey palette of the hallway. It was important to her that colours did not fight.

Her father wedged open the tops of the paint tins, one for himself and one for Béatrice, and together they spent a Sunday morning painting the stairs. Béatrice started with short, stubby strokes as if painting an elephant’s toenails. Her father swept his brush generously, and every now and then dabbed Béatrice’s elbow with the paint, at which Béatrice frowned, then smiled, then frowned.

Béatrice concentrated so much on the way her brush spread the paint upon the wood that her dad would lean in slowly, and blow on her nose.

“If you stay this quiet, I won’t know the difference between you and the stairs and I’ll paint over you both.”

When the stairway was coated twice, her father insisted that three’s the charm, or as far as paint goes, you could never be too sure, so they sat down together on Monday night as well and gave it a last coat.

In the end, the stairs seemed to have more paint than they could hold. They were glossy with it, a milky apple green.

“You’ve made the paint too thick!” her mother exclaimed, tensing her lips and looking back at her husband. He looked away. Into his silence, Béatrice spoke, saying that it was fine, that she did not mind the glossy stairs, in fact she liked them better that way.

With a flicker of pride, her father lifted his hand and placed it on Béatrice’s shoulder. She turned her head and looked at him. He looked right back at her and saw then a landscape of dunes.

The wind pushed on the trees. Inside the house, Béatrice began to climb the stairs. Her mother put down the laundry basket and walked into the corridor. She saw her daughter rising, one step at a time. As her eyes swept down her daughter’s back, she thought she saw Béatrice veering. She imagined her daughter’s body flopping down each step like a fish. Her mouth opened and all the air in the house rushed in.

Béatrice heard her gasp and turned her head. She had not known she was being watched. In that pivot her foot stuttered. Béatrice’s arms flew upward and grabbed hopelessly at emptiness. Her legs folded and she galloped down the stairs on her tailbone.

When Béatrice came back from the hospital the doctor said she was a lucky girl, no serious damage. She had only broken her hymen.

Emmanuelle hugged her sister very carefully and even lay in bed with her, stringing together lulling questions. Béatrice explained that it wasn’t so bad and that all it meant was that she was no longer a virgin. Her sister was at the age where, to understand unlived concepts, vocabulary develops in binary pairs. Emmanuelle slid herself closer to her sister and asked in a gentle voice: “So now you’re a whore…?”

That night, their father came home with sandpaper. His wife explained to him in emphatic repetition about the stairs that almost broke their daughter’s neck. He looked at the waxy steps. They were indeed as sleek as the scream that must have come out of his little angel when she fell down them.

“Don’t you realise,” his wife repeated, “you almost made her a cripple for life!”

Her father pressed his lips together until his eyes became styrofoam. He spoke softly. “…Her neck is fine…”

His wife rolled her eyes and left the room. All alone, he released his lips, and his eyes began to water.

As Béatrice drifted into sleep, he pressed the grainy paper into the slippery surface and rasped diligently at each step. Béatrice dreamt that she was placing stones one by one in a circle on hot sand. Emmanuelle dreamt that Béatrice died and that the whole family had to watch TV together on the couch and hold her dead body across their laps.

When Béatrice reached puberty, her father made two changes: he stopped calling her his angel and started asking about the boys in her class . As Béatrice’s face and body sculpted into a form of enticement, she acquired a new name in the house. Miss Monroe. No one can remember if it was her mother or her father who had started it. The name caught on with variations, Miss Marilyn , Miss M … Emmanuelle was the only one to continue to call her sister “Bee”.

One day, however, a variation came out of her sister’s mouth. Miss Playboy . She swore that she heard it from some boys at school. Béatrice pulled Emmanuelle towards her and demanded, “WHO is Miss Playboy … !”

Emmanuelle bit her lip sheepishly. “ You are, Bee…”

Béatrice’s hand stiffened to hit her sister across the face, but before she could swing it up, Emmanuelle was already pressed against her, hugging her tightly and murmuring a faint meow.

That was fourteen years ago. Now, Béatrice was twenty-nine.

It was morning. A white September sky. The branches outside Béatrice’s window were already almost completely bare. In the place of leaves was a perched bird. Béatrice’s eyes opened. She slid her hand beneath the covers and down to her stomach. She moved her hand beneath her pyjama top, until it reached her breast, which sat amply atop her ribcage. She let her fingers climb slowly up her breast like feet through a swamp, then drew her fingertip over the tip of her translucent nipple. These were the breasts that made men press their teeth together when looking at her.