Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

She pulled her hand out from under the cover and touched her temple. Her fingers were shaking, sending quivers into her scalp. She took a deep breath. As it went down, part of it caught like wool on a nail. She inhaled once more but her breath kept snagging.

She inhaled deeply through her nose and looked at the dark, flaking wood of the branches outside her window. Her eyes met the perched bird still sitting on its branch. Its head was tucked into its chest and crooked downward, its stiff, marble eye on her. A wind came and swayed the branch. The branch swayed and shook the bird. The bird clamped itself tighter to the branch, but did not change its expression. There was something flaking in Béatrice’s throat. It sent a tickle through her and her face contorted, unable to cough nor sneeze.

Emmanuelle was still asleep in her room when Béatrice came down the pale-green and now well-worn sanded stairway. She shut the bathroom door quietly and turned the water on for a bath. As the tub filled, she peeled her top off and let it drop to the floor. She touched her bare stomach. Then, she took off her underwear. The water gushed from the faucet and made the sound of hair being frantically brushed. The scratch in her throat began to spread.

Béatrice found her face in the small mirror above the sink. She aligned her eyes with those in the reflection. With both sets of eyes locked into one another, she closed the gap between her face and the face which was hers in the mirror. The two women touched at the nose. She opened her mouth and sang a mindless Do-bee do-bee do … into the mirror.

The voice fogged the mouth of the woman in the mirror.

This was a familiar voice. The jazz voice that she knew to be her own.

Béatrice separated herself from the woman in the mirror and pulled her face back in line with her spine. She lifted her hands to her breasts and held their weight.

Her fingers spread and became firmer. She pressed into the cushion of her breasts. It felt like a rolling pin was sliding up her chest. She pressed further. Her eyelids started to droop.

Her breath rolled up her throat, pushing for an exit. She couldn’t tell if she was floating upwards or on the verge of falling down. Static laced around her scalp. The scratch in her throat started to break. It charged out of her mouth. It sprang and unfolded. A word.

“ Polina ”, Béatrice gasped on to the mirror, then dropped her head.

She grabbed the sides of the sink and spat. The cold saliva slid down the sink’s edge towards the drain, as if into a large porcelain ear.

In the mirror, the warm breath disappeared into its own reflection.

Béatrice felt calm for a moment, as if she had just thrown up. Then she remembered the name she had just pronounced.

“ Polina. ”

She did not know any Polinas. She could not even remember hearing such a name. But Béatrice was more alarmed by the sense of loss she felt than by the word itself. She must have absorbed the name unconsciously, she assured herself. From the radio, for example. Or from a book. Or a song. Or a passerby speaking on the phone. These are names without faces.

She turned off the faucet and stepped into the warmth of the water.

“ Polina, ” she said again.

She took her foot out and stepped back.

“ Polina … Polina … Polina …” she hiccuped, as she left the bathroom and hurried up the stairs to her room.

The telephone was ringing downstairs. Béatrice’s mother was in the garden. Emmanuelle was awake and in the bathroom now. Her father had gone out to buy bread. Béatrice stood in her room, dry and dressed, breathing normally now, with no names scratching through her. She listened to the ringing, thinking it would run out at any moment, but another ring surfaced through every interval of silence. She opened her door and went down the stairs. The ring continued, as if building a stairway towards her. She went down to the first floor, turned to the hallway table where the phone was sitting and picked up the receiver. Before she could even say “Hello” a man’s voice raced at her in Spanish:

“ Hola Señora, estoy llamando en nombre de , que está llevando a cabo esta encuesta sobre satisfacción del cliente con la calidad de la formación proporcionada por este Organismo de Capacitación Registrada .”

Béatrice tried to cut in several times, but the man’s words were chinked together like a metal chain. And yet, somehow, his tone remained pleasant and polite.

“ La encuesta se llevó a cabo para conocer la opinión de los clientes sobre su producto . utiliza la información que usted nos da como parte de sus procesos de mejora continua para asegurar que ofrece productos de calidad a sus clientes. ”

Just as Béatrice was about to hang up, the voice stopped, like an animal sensing her movement. She held the receiver in midair. The man’s voice came out of its hiding place, softened. It spoke with the tone of an earlobe.

“ Esto sólo tomará un momento de su tiempo. ”

Béatrice kept the receiver away from her face, neither placing it on the stand nor bringing it back to her ear.

“Who is this?” she said.

She could tell that the man was still there, his mouth touching his receiver, but he was not saying one word. Béatrice waited. Her elbow was stiff.

Then, the man’s voice pounced through the phone.

“ Señora Monroe! ”

Béatrice dropped the phone. It bounced on its side, then again on its face, emitting the overlapping beeps of several buttons pressed. It rocked up, then back down on its side and became still. Béatrice picked up the receiver and put it to her ear. It was beeping nervously, having hung itself up during the fall. She placed it back on the stand, then walked up to her room.

With the door closed, she brushed her hair slowly, then pinned it up into a tight chignon.

Béatrice went outside. Her mother was in the garden, knees damp with soil.

“Where are you going, Miss M …?” said her mother in tone with the tulips.

Béatrice knew the answer to the question but couldn’t find its beginning. “…A dress. For Friday…” she mumbled.

“I thought we were going to go together?” The mother gave a playful frown.

Béatrice knew it was her turn to speak. She saw her father’s car drive up the road. He parked and hopped out, holding a baguette and a paper bag of pastries.

“Hello, ladies!” he said looking only at Béatrice.

“ Miss M ’s on her way out…” the mother chimed.

“Oh, is she? Where to, Miss Monroe …?” the father said.

“…My concert. I need a dress,” Béatrice repeated.

“Don’t you want to stay for breakfast?” the father said, “I got you a chausson-aux-pommes .”

Béatrice thought about his question. It felt like a room full of empty shoes. Her father waited. Words formed in her head, then melted like ice into puddles on the floor of that room. There was one shoe floating across a puddle on its sole. She remembered what it was she could say.

“No.” She told her father.

“All right,” the father said and backed up. “You want me to take you into town and drop you off?”

Béatrice paused. She held the feeling of the floating, solitary shoe. It reminded her of the word at her disposal.

“No,” Béatrice said firmly.

The wind blew. A strand of hair worked its way out of her chignon. The father lifted his hand to fix it. As his hand approached her temple it changed its mind and laid itself down like a spoon upon Béatrice’s shoulder.