eyes. You’ll just dream up anything to get people’s interest. Go to the corner. On your knees! That’s the punishment for all your horrible suspicions and fantasies!”
In the corner is the tower of an ancient castle, covered with red autumn vines. There is a large cor-nerless space, round and warm as a breast, and a piano filled with promise in the middle. A little girl that looks like me approaches, sits freely on the bench, places her fingers on the notes, and extraordinary music caresses the silence. She follows the rhythm with her head, and her long hair imitates the trembling of leaves and blonde colours in the autumn wind. Arabesques of freedom. A woman joins her, placing a hand on her shoulder. It is her dreamother:
“Wonderful! Do play it again!”
Her dreamother knows compliments are the nutrients a talent needs.
So the little girl improvises, and sets all the feelings in her heart to dancing, one by one, until the utter joy of it causes her to stop in a burst of laughter. Then, up she gets onto a stage built into the hemisphere of the tower by her mother, who is also an actress. Then something wonderful happens. They give each other a part to play.
“Today, I’ll be Snow White,” announces the little girl, whose name, by the way, is Clara.
“And I’ll be the step-mother!” agrees her mother, taking on a nasty air to help things along.
Then Snow White pours out a torrent of words that lighten the heart of a child who is misunderstood. All sorts of words, even bad ones.
They are beginning a game that is both splendid and dangerous. Each speaks for the other, puts words in the other one’s mouth. Speaks with the intonation of the other.
Clara’s mother suggests, “Make it ring truer!”
Here I am. I look at them, amazed, and I see all the truths that come out of their mouths spring to life, even the very worst. Then, the giddy laughter of the happy and free!
Then their lines are mixed with dreams, which become whatever they wish.
Clara and her dreamother are not lying. They love one another and find every possible way to say it.
“There is so much beauty in the human soul,” thinks her mama, “and so much ugliness too. We need to learn to find it out and express it without falling in or suffering too much”
I see from over in my corner that somewhere else there is a universe that is vibrantly alive. But it’s inside me, too, in a place I thought I had left behind. So when I think I’m going very far away, am I really just reaching a dimension quite close to me, but where the dreams of life can find their echo? I do believe I’m an artist like Clara.
“You can get up now, Amélie!”
I obey, and as Clara and her mama leave the stage, I introduce them to Mama.
“And where did you meet Clara and her mother?”
“Um... in a tower... someplace.”
“You’re lying again, Amélie.”
Again she rips me to shreds with accusations.
I tell the sweet story at school, so my teacher will excuse me for having seen her faint...
“Here you go lying again,” she says. “Your mother warned me you’d need to be punished for this nastiness. The same punishment as before. Into the corner, Amélie!”
Being punished in front of the whole class, I just can’t seem to get back in touch with my dreamother. It feels awful to be spied on.
Now it is nighttime, and in the dark, the castle seems scary. The leaves close around me, folding me into a terrifying plant-like womb. Their veins bind me and hold me in. I can’t see any way out. Is it so dark in my mother’s womb that morning could never dawn there? Will I ever be born? Can I ever make out of these dark folds? Anywhere would be better than this. I’ve got to get out of here! I have to find someone I can talk to about my dreamother and her castle and the light and the music.
On the way home from school, I catch up with my neighbour.
With all the flower and perfume of my words, I invite her into my tower, and I fondly, fervently describe those that live there. She is dying to meet them, but I can’t do anything. The only thing I can point to is the corner of the kitchen or the classroom. She is disappointed and annoyed, and she tells everyone it’s true... I am a liar.
I send myself to the corner this time. I don’t need anyone else to punish me.
I no longer listen any more at all. Not at school, not at home. Everyone tells me I get it all mixed up. It’s true. The only thing I’m really sure of is the corner. Right angle, the point where two walls meet. The prison point. I invent my own punctuation points. I know it takes signs to enclose words in the corners of thought> Otherwise, words would just run all over the place like unruly children> And they wouldn’t say what they mean any more, like children who tell lies>
I know that tower well, too. A beautiful, corner-less circle O When I feel right in my words, I put a circle at the end O Instead of a real period O It’s a vanishing-point O When I feel trapped, I write a corner> It’s a prison point> When I feel there’s a way out, I put an open angle< I think that’s a point of view. My notebooks are full of drawings. I’m “maladjusted” apparently. I’m a case, in any case...
I know what commas are, like a sigh, between two thoughts> Semicolons too: two periods all set up for an explanation... Ellipsis dots are for something that needs to go on without landing ..... like the fog filled with water-drops hanging in the air ..... Drops that don’t fall as rain ..... Like my wish to be understood by my mother ..... I wonder why ellipsis dots go on the lines instead of over them, like this ..... In any case .....
In the end, I think we grow, even when we’re on our knees> I can see it by the pencil marks Fve traced at forehead-level. I turned ten yesterday. Fm growing. Eyes glued to a right-angle> Legs perpendicular> Guilty > Fm incapable of telling the real truth> The true truth, out of the mouths of good children, well adapted to older people’s>
Today someone else is in the corner> A boy the others call pepper-leek because he’s thin and covered all over with blackheads and spots> Red pepper, black pepper> He’s got my punishment spot> I don’t know if he can see my tower with its suffocating vines at night ..... I’ll ask him when he gets out of the prison-point>
His coat’s so big, he seems awash in it> He’s floating off over out heads> Everyone is laughing at him because his mind seems far away> He says nothing> I don’t know what colour his eyes are, just that his eyelids are red with sties> The others say he’s very ugly> In any case, he’s all alone> All alone like me> Maybe he can understand me>
I wait for him when school lets out> I ask him if he understands the way I do punctuation and its prison-points, its vantage points on my tower, the vanishing-points on the horizon and the commas like sighs< I stare at him so hard he dares ..... He opens his red eyes, dark as coal> Very tiny> Like two more little dark points among all the others on his cheeks with the red spots and sties> This surprizes me, because I imagined he had eyes as grey as ashes> Like a fire gone out> Surprising and inter-esting>
His answer on punctuation is that he does not punctuate anything> He just sails over words and people> He has understood that society is all a series of circles O Circles of friends, of relatives and students O He estimates that everyone lives on the surface of some circle O On the circumference giving conferences on anything and everything O With words imprisoned in the corner of thoughts>
I tell him then about words that pop out of my mouth like lies and get me punished all the time>
I go on to tell him my stories about my music-spilling piano and my character-filled theatre, and I become Clara and play dreams as well as she plays the piano>
Usually, when I talk that