The Woman in the Wall Read Free

odd to you, coming from the mouth of such a shy person.
    Well, it
is
odd; I don't claim to understand it. The very thought of a stranger's eyes upon me makes me faint with fear. My heart pounds in my ears, my hands shake, and I see spots in front of my eyes. Yet whenever someone looks right past me without seeing me, I feel myself infinitely superior to him. I laugh in my secret heart at his stupidity and hug my own quick-wittedness to myself.
    Now, I know as well as you do that this is wrong. A really nice person would not think or feel this way. So I do my best to subdue my vanity. For instance, whenever I do something that might be considered clever, I try to take no notice whatsoever. Or if I must think about it, I look for flaws. "
Not
top quality work," I say to myself. And whenever I do something wrong I point it out to myself very firmly. "Anna," I say, "you are a perfect fool." I am not really sure that this is working.
    How difficult it is being human! Inanimate objects never have all these complicated emotions. Just think how simple and pleasant it would be to go through life as an object. An attractive little blue sugar bowl with a painted bird on the lid, for instance, sitting in a patch of sunlight on the breakfast table. How peaceful, how tranquil, that must be. And if a careless elbow knocked you over and you smashed to bits, you wouldn't care, why should you? Being brainless has its advantages.
    I love things; they are so patient and good. They'll do anything you ask, anything at all, if only you understand their nature and treat them well. Things never make me nervous the way people do. Even I make myself nervous.
    But back to the secret room. The library in our house shared a wall with the main staircase. It was a broad, impressive staircase with a curving mahogany banister, and underneath was a narrow, wedge-shaped cloakroom. Since this cloakroom tapered down to a point at the foot of the stairs, most of it went unused. There was a coat rack right by the door, with a jumble of hats and gloves and boots, but the dark recesses of the room were filled with nothing but dust and darkness.
    I erected a thin plasterboard wall behind the coat rack. This gave me an enclosed area five feet by five feet with a steeply sloping roof. I carefully painted the new wall to look as though no wall was there; anyone pulling on a jacket or a pair of boots would see only the accustomed back of the closet, empty and dusty as usual.
    The next step was a rather large-scale, noisy project. To distract my family's attention, I began work on a great number of repairs and improvements around the house all at once, at all hours of the day and night. I hammered and drilled and power-sanded here, there, and everywhere. I shut off the lights and water for hours and then turned them on again. I dismantled the bathroom sink and left it in pieces all over the upstairs hall.
    The first few days, my family complained bitterly, shouting my name, banging on the pipes, and thumping on the ceiling with brooms. This was painful for me; angry people make my stomach hurt. However, gathering up my courage, I carried on. I took apart the table saw and brought it up from the basement. Then I reassembled it in the dining room and began cutting up a great stack of plywood.
    This seemed to do the trick. They became resigned and lay on sofas in the front parlor with their heads wrapped in pillows, moaning softly. That was when I knew it was time to begin work in the library.
    That night as they slept (or tried to), I erected a whole new wall in the library, parallel to the wall that backed on the cloakroom. The new wall was two feet closer to the center of the room than the old wall, leaving a narrow passage down the whole length of the room. I installed a trap door to the basement at one end of the passage, which gave me an entrance to my hidey-hole. No one but me ever goes down to the basement, so it would be much more secure than an entry on the first