If I Told You Once. Judy Budnitz

walls. I fit the key to the lock; the door swung open. I stepped inside, cringing, expecting to spring some hideous trap but too curious to stop. All was silent, the room was empty save a bed, and on the bed lay a woman. It was a young woman, pale and beautiful and stretched out on her back, arms extended as if awaiting an embrace.

      I thought suddenly of Baba’s house, and wondered if all unusual women kept young girls hidden away in secret rooms. As if they were trying to cling to a younger version of themselves.

      I breathed on the woman’s face, I touched her arm. She was cool, didn’t move. I jostled her. She was not real at all; she was made of soft wax or clay and her skin, I saw now, had a hard waxy sheen. I could see that her mouth led nowhere, there was nothing beneath her eyelids. I punched her stomach, my fist drove right through her.

      From a distance, though, she had been convincing. Lifelike. A work of art.

      I pulled the sheets away to see more. I saw a flash of steel and quickly jumped away. There, set between the legs, were jagged metal jaws, like a monstrous bear trap.

      I snatched my candle, raced away from the strange thing. Locked the door, crept down the stairs.

      I considered keeping the keys, to avoid any possible accidents.

      But when the husband cornered me the next day, asked me if I’d seen the keys, accused me of stealing them in his loud pompous voice, I handed them over.

      There was no need to worry, I reasoned. If he kept his promise to my painter, and stayed away from the room, then there was nothing to fear. And even if he did break her trust, and make his way to the secret room, I was sure he would not be so foolish to mistake a waxen girl for a real one.

      And even if he did, I thought, he would not be so unfaithful to his wife as to do the thing that men seemed always intent on doing.

      This was my reasoning. I did not think he would come to any harm.

      Although it was true I did not like the gleam of ownership in his eye, or the way he shouted and spit in my face and called me a country cow.

      I did not think he would do anything foolish, but the very next night I was awakened by a metallic snap, followed by the most unbearable screams I had ever heard. I ran to the tower room, pounded on the door but it had locked behind him. I could hear him gasping, I shouted to him to throw the keys underneath the door, but there was no room for them to slip through even if he had.

      This is unpleasant to hear, I know. It sounds like the kind of story people tell children to frighten them into good behavior.

      But that’s not why I am telling it to you.

      I am telling you because it is what happened. It is the truth. No other reason.

      Dawn broke and pink light seeped into the studio where I stood, and then I heard a horse’s footsteps far away but coming closer. It was the painter, returning as if she had known all that had happened.

      She strode in, still in her man’s clothes, looking windswept and happy. She gave me a list of errands as long as her arm and sent me to town. She had forgotten that I did not know how to read, but I knew enough to stay away from the house until nightfall.

      When I returned all was quiet. She greeted me serenely, and in answer to my look she said: He failed the test, you see. It’s a pity, it’s impossible to find a man who can remain faithful these days.

      She touched my shoulder with a hand that was sticky, smeared as usual. You should not feel responsible, she said. It was his own fault, he should not have gone poking into forbidden places.

      He broke my trust, she said, and then she hung his portrait on the wall beside the others. I could not look at it.

      I stayed with her a while longer. I loved to watch her paint but could not look her in the face. She went away again and returned with her ninth husband. When I saw him I knew I would have to leave because he was a soft mild man who walked with a limp. He looked at her with worshipful eyes and touched her gently and he helped me light the lamps in the evenings. I could not bear the thought of him ending up with his head hung on the wall with all the others.

      So when she announced she was leaving, and handed him the key ring, I stole the keys from his pocket while he slept and went to the tower room and set off the trap with my candle and then I locked the door and threw the keys down a well for good measure.

      Then I left. I did not want to be there when she returned to find only a candle snapped in half, instead of the disappointment she anticipated. She would know I was responsible and I could not guess what she would do.

      I knew the new husband was not completely safe; I knew she could easily give him another set of keys and again disappear and let him succumb to curiosity and temptation. But I hoped he would not. Perhaps he would pass her grisly test and win her trust and they would live happily together and he would teach her gentleness and they would fill that great house with children and leave that waxen doll to rot in her tower.

      So I left.

      I did not like the thought of the portrait she had done of me, I had wanted to destroy it, but she had hidden it away somewhere. I did not like to think of her keeping my face.

      But she had paid me well for my time with her and the money jangled inside my dress. I had heard people talking of a place, far away and across an ocean, where people stayed young forever and there was room to breathe and everything was hopeful and new and run by machines. They said the streets were paved with gold. I wanted to go there.

      The streets of gold, I knew that was just a story. But the rest rang true.

      

      I passed through villages and larger towns and as I traveled farther from home I noticed changes. The lengths of men’s beards. The sound of their voices. More iron and steel, coal instead of wood, engines and machines that moved and steamed of their own accord as if they were alive.

      These things amazed me, but as I traveled farther and wonders piled on wonders, I began to anticipate them and ceased to be amazed. I think if I had seen men walking up the sides of buildings like spiders or flying through the air with dragonfly wings I would not have been surprised.

      When I walked through these towns I heard people speak of a Great War and when I asked where this war was they laughed and called me a yokel. They asked where I had been hiding all this time, and stared at my hair which had never been cut and now fell past my knees, and they laughed at my wooden-soled shoes. I ran away but heard them shouting after me: The war’s over, little fool, and there will never be another.

      I kept going, for this was not the place I was looking for. These people, for all their fine clothes, were as violent as all the others. Their faces were greasy and lewd. I saw a man beating a yellow horse that would not move because the cart behind it was too heavy, piled to the sky with cast-off furniture. The man beat and beat it, cursing til he ran out of breath and still the horse would not move. He beat until the horse sank to its knees, pink foam running from its nose, and only then did he stop to wipe his brow. And then the top-heavy cart tipped and a clattering shower of broken chairs and legless tables rained down upon him and buried him utterly and no one passing by on their daily business paused to help him. Or the horse.