The Woman Behind

I have found out something at last, and it came the way the useful things always come, at night, when I was not trying.

The front pattern does move. And no wonder, because the woman behind it shakes it.

Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind it, and sometimes only one, and when it is one she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes the whole wall from end to end. In the very bright places she keeps still. In the dark places, the corners, the bare patch behind the head of the bed, she takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.

And she is trying to climb through, all the time. But nobody could climb through that pattern; it strangles. I think that is why it has so many heads.

They get their heads through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white. If those heads were covered, or taken off altogether, it would not be half so bad.

I believe that woman gets out in the daytime.

And I will tell you why, privately: I have seen her.

I can see her out of every one of my windows. It is the same woman, I know that, because she is always creeping, and most women do not creep in daylight. I see her on the long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her under the black grape arbors, going around the garden. I see her on the road under the trees and when a car comes she steps in under the blackberry canes and waits for it to pass, which is exactly what I would do.

I do not blame her a bit. It must be humiliating, being caught creeping in daylight.

I have started locking the door when I creep. I cannot creep at night, because Hollis would suspect something at once, and Hollis is so odd now that I do not want to irritate him. Anyway, I do not want anybody to get that woman out at night but me.

I often wonder whether I could see her out of all the windows at once. But turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one window at a time. And though I always see her when I look, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn.

If only that top pattern could be gotten off the under one. I mean to try it, a little at a time.

This book is the only thing in the house that has never lied to me, and I have learned to be careful with the things I love: it goes back into the wall whenever I hear a car on the lane.

There are only two more days to get this wall done, and I believe Hollis is beginning to notice. I do not like the look in his eyes.

I heard him ask Della a lot of clinical questions about me, in the kitchen, with the fan on, which is his version of privacy. She had a very good report to give. She said I sleep a good deal in the daytime. She said I am eating better. She said I am calm.

He knows I do not sleep well at night, for all that I am so quiet. One of them is lying to me. I cannot find out which of them it is without asking, and if I ask, they will both know that I was listening.

He asked me all kinds of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I could not see through him.

Still, I do not wonder that he behaves strangely. He has been sleeping under this paper for two months. It only interests me, but I am fairly sure that Hollis and Della are secretly affected by it. Della has started leaving the hall light on all night. She says it is for the baby. The baby is on the other side of the house and sleeps through everything.

The woman who used to be the gardener's daughter came to the gate on Saturday with a rhubarb pie, and stood there with her hands on the top rail and told me that she had grown up on this place and that the whole family had been strange for three generations, and that her mother would not come up the lane after dark even when the lights were on. Then she looked at my hands, and at the ring on my finger, and asked me whether I was sleeping. I said I was sleeping very well. She said, that's what they all say, and went off down the road with her empty dish.