Una Rama Oscura
Another day.
Track and avoid.
The bell rings, and I zero in. Jessica Stanley is the one who spends the most time with Bella, and sure enough, it is she who has her arm linked in Bella's as the two of them leave their mathematics class.
"Oh my God! Did you see Edward Cullen staring at you in Biology today?"
Look at her face!
But Jessica's eyes are on Mike Newton as he loiters near his locker. Her mind is also filled with irritation. "Just because she's new, Edward has to be interested in her."
And so I have no clue how Bella feels about my hypothetical staring. I do NOT stare at her. I never stare at her. Bella has said nothing. I am utterly in the dark.
"This is like the fifth time I've caught him doing it this week."
Caught? Wait a minute!
The girls are walking to gym class. It is the last period before lunch. Jessica is obsessing about her calorie count for the day, and also impatient with Bella for walking slowly. "I don't see what her problem is. Just because she's no good at gym doesn't mean she has to make us both late. She better appreciate what a good friend I am, walking this slow with her."
Is that why Bella walks slowly? I have observed (always through her classmates' eyes, never my own) that she is indeed quite clumsy at the sports and exercises.
Bumbling. Innocent. Easy to catch.
Bella still hasn't replied to Jessica. The two of them have arrived in the locker room. They are late. Here in Spanish class, Miss Valdez has already got us with our books open. I can hear her thoughts, preparing to call on me for the first translation from our reader. My mind rebels. I have other business to attend to.
"He's crushing on you for sure."
At last, Jessica looks at Bella's face. And Bella looks back – a sidelong glance under tilted brows. What does that mean?
Unable to escape the teacher's command, I read and translate aloud.
En los bosques, perdido, corté una rama oscura
Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
y a los labios, sediento, levanté su susurro:
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
"He hates me," Bella answers.
era tal vez la voz de la lluvia llorando,
perhaps it was the voice of the rain crying,
una campana rota o un corazón cortado.
a bell overthrown, or a heart cut off.
Of course I gave that impression. What else could she think?
Algo que desde tan lejos me parecía
Something from far off it seemed
oculto gravemente, cubierto por la tierra,
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
Because I did hate her at first. Hated her for nearly ruining me that first day.
un grito ensordecido por inmensos otoños,
a shout muffled by immense autumns,
por la entreabierta y húmeda tiniebla de las hojas.
by the moist, half-open darkness of the leaves.
Sitting for that endless hour.
Pero allí, despertando de los sueños del bosque,
Wakening from the dreaming forest there,
On that wretched stool.
la rama de avellano cantó bajo mi boca
the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue,
So close.
y su errabundo olor trepó por mi criterio
its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind
Teetering on every tick of the clock,
como si me buscaran de pronto las raíces
as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
Poised to devour her -
que abandoné, la tierra perdida con mi infancia,
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood-
y me detuve herido por el aroma errante.
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.
She can still ruin me. At any moment of any day …
"No way," Jessica insists, snapping my attention back to the present. "Boys don't stare at girls they hate."
They are unburdening themselves of their backpacks, now, preparing to change. Others around them are pulling off their clothes. I stop channeling sight from Jessica's eyes. Her background thoughts – half-formed, comparing her classmates' attributes and her own – are frightening enough.
Again, Bella is silent, and I begin to think I shall have to withdraw entirely from this stolen observation post. I don't belong in the locker room with them. But Jessica is still pursuing Bella, her thoughts swirling and hounding.
"He thinks you're hot." In Jessica's awareness I know that the girls are pulling their shirts off over their heads. Bella's arms are trapped for a moment above her head by her undershirt, as she gazes at herself.
"I'm flat."
Jessica's eyes swoop like a hawk, pulling my sight with them, and I see what I have no right to see.
How can she disparage herself so? She is exquisite. Like a young doe.
But what am I?
I am a slayer of young does.
This very morning, just before school.
A yearling. Drinking from a small pool. I flushed her from the water's edge. That is how we hunt. Running the prey on purpose, forcing the heart to beat hard and fast.
I paced her for a while, letting the grace of her bounding form extinguish all thought as it drew me forward, keeping myself in her sight and hearing … until I heard her pulse hit full strength. With a burst of speed I swung wide. She never saw me flank her, never saw me close, to take her from the side. The impact splintered her ribs and scapula, and I broke her neck for mercy, even as my teeth opened the artery below her jaw. Her spinal reflexes fired, causing her limbs to jerk wildly; but it was no purposeful struggle. I contained her easily, as every beat of her dying heart pushed her venison blood into my mouth. Until none was left. And still my teeth bore in, spitting the spent flesh, searching for the last drops, until her head hung by a shred of ligament and skin from the crook of my elbow, and her glossy brown eyes began to film over.
Jessica's thoughts intrude on my mind once more, and I realize I must have missed some part of the conversation. Fortunately Miss Valdez was satisfied with my translation of Neruda, and I am no longer on her radar for the moment.
"Earth to Bella!" The two girls are lining up with their classmates for volleyball, and Jessica is burning with curiosity, even waving her hand in Bella's face.
"What?" Bella asks, and her expression seems confused, or as if she has been wakened from some reverie.
"Would you?"
"Would I what?"
Jessica is exasperated. "I can't stand it when she's like this. What a space cadet." She repeats her question with exaggerated slowness.
"If Edward Cullen asked you out, would you go with him?"
Jessica is now observing Bella minutely, and I am glad. At last I have a chance to see her reactions clearly. It is a preposterous question, but for some reason, I, too, want to know Bella's answer.
Bella's brow furrows, and I have no idea what she is looking at.
I have been inexcusably rude to her. More than that, I insulted and humiliated her on her first day at school.
"She stinks!"
Inexcusable. The only worse thing for her to have heard, would be the true meaning within that lie …
Jessica is waiting with baited breath, yet surely, if Bella has any self respect at all, what answer can she possibly give but ...
"No."
Jessica is stunned. OMG I can't believe it! is repeating in her head a mile a minute.
I find that Bella's answer pleases me, though I am not entirely sure why. And yet, I am also not entirely pleased.
Meanwhile, Jessica's mind has filled with new thoughts.
"Oh my God! I'd give my right tit just to see his face when you blow him off." A rash wish by a clueless girl. You are no Penthesilea, Jessica.
But she is already in full scheming mode. "There HAS to be some way we can make this happen."
And on and on. Jessica isn't paying attention to Bella anymore, so, again, I cannot see any of Bella's reactions to all of this. I only know that she has been absolutely silent. I remember where I am barely in time to stifle my growl of utter vexation.
Gym is over at last. I survived. I'm lingering by the lockers puttering with my stuff. I don't want to go to lunch now. I tell Jessica to go ahead. She seems glad to do so. It's probably a mistake. She's probably already setting out her net of rumors to try to trap Edward into asking me out. Or maybe she just wants to have more time to sit with Mike. That would be nice.
"If Edward Cullen asked you out, would you go with him?"
Let's see, he said I stink, he glared at me like he wanted to kill me, he's made a point of sitting at the opposite corner of the room from me … I think he's got a lot of explaining to do before anything like that ever happens. But he's never even said a single word to me, and he's never going to, either. He hates me. I can tell. So what can I possibly say but no?
The truth is, Edward's fine right where he is, sitting way in the back of the class, and speeding out of the room before I can even get my books into my bag. I never have to look at him. Ever. But kids seem to be always dragging him in front of my eyes. All because of that one stupid remark he made, what is it, three weeks ago now? Come on. Why can't they just let the dead sleep?
"He thinks you're hot!"
Give me a break. I can still be called stick-girl.
"Some guys like it like that."
Boys who like boys, maybe …
I can imagine Edward loving a boy. Or being loved by a boy. He is so beautiful. I wouldn't think it was wrong. But everyone here talks about that as if it's disgusting. 'Queer-bait', 'faggot', 'homo erectus' – the boys think they're so funny calling him names like this. Not to his face, of course, never that. But if I could overhear it, probably he has, too.
He wouldn't let himself get maneuvered into asking me out just to make people stop taunting and hating him, would he?
The whole idea of that makes me feel sad.
He's never going to ask me out, but if he did, and if that were the reason, what should I say?
Yes?
Or no?
Wouldn't it be horrible for him either way?
Maybe he blew Jessica off some time or another, too, and now is her chance to get back at him.
Through me.
…
Through me.
My feet are taking me past the cafeteria, and out the doors to the parking lot. My chest hurts and I can't eat. It's drizzling again, and I don't even care.
I want to go home, but I don't know where home is. Across the parking lot, the forest looms, silent and dark and deep.
Notes:
1. The poem that Edward was translating in Spanish class is Soneto VI, En los bosques, perdido, corte una rama oscura (Sonnet Number VI, Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig), by Pablo Neruda. A very nice sampling of his poetry, in both the original Spanish and English translation, can be found here: adowns dot com slash PabloNeruda dot html # VI along with a picture of the poet as a young man. La rama de avellano – the hazel sprig – is what dousers use to find water hidden under ground …
2. Penthesilea was an Amazon queen. The Amazons, a tribe of woman warriors in ancient Greece, were said to have the custom of cutting off the right breast so that they could fire a bow unhindered by their femininity. As a young woman, Penthesilea accidentally killed a fellow queen and had to perform penance for this act. Edward, having grown up in a time when Greek and Latin and the Classical literature were part of standard high school curriculum for educated young men, would be familiar with these references, and hence when Jessica said she would 'give her right tit' would naturally connect to the Amazons. A brief synopsis of Penthesilea's story and its significance in Classical literature may be found here: standford dot edu slash ~plomio slash penthesilea dot html