The Woman Who Tried to Be Normal Read online

  What I didn’t enjoy, however, was the way she dropped the two plates onto the floor the second I shut and bolted the door behind us, spilling perfectly good sausages, eggs, muffins, tomatoes and mushrooms onto the carpet that had been up to that point perfectly clean, just so she could grab me by the waist with both hands and plant multiple, frantic kisses on my lips.

  “You shouldn’t waste food that way, Ethel,” I told her, pulling away. “Many people starved to death during the war.”

  She, an American who hadn’t really suffered all that much during the war years, didn’t care. She shrugged, pushed me down onto my bed, pushed up the skirt of my pyjamas and proceeded to eat me out.

  Apples. And that orange fog turning fuzzy, thick and blood-red. I winced but I was really glad. Glad to be feeling, tasting and seeing all that again. I moaned and was about to close my eyes to focus better on the sensations in my sensitive regions when I noticed—

  The curtains! Open and flapping around in the sunlight and wind that came in through the window which was also open. Through them, I could see the bright red bushes that lined the hotel. We were on the first floor. If someone happened to go round the back of the rooms, we would be seen right away!

  I sat up at once, tried to push Ethel away and told her to stop but she wouldn’t stop. She kept coming back between my thighs to pleasurise me and turn my world blood-red. I had to struggle to stay upright. “We need to close the curtains first! Someone might see!”

  She didn’t stop so I had to push her away with a great amount of force, forcefully enough to send her toppling back onto the carpet on her bottom. I knew convention dictated I pick her up first but I didn’t care, jumped over her sprawled out legs and went to close the curtains.

  She laughed, wiped my fluids off her lips, then proceeded to worm her way out of her dress and underclothes without even getting up from the floor. “Relax. They’ll be back at the time they say they will.”

  “I know but—Wait, what? How do you know?”

  She smiled and made my body parts tingle. “Charlie doesn’t even eat dessert at home. ‘Dessert’ was obviously code for ‘why the hell aren’t those birthday people here yet’. So obviously, they’re out hunting for an explanation now, as we speak... and stare... and stare… and stare at each other, with hungry, hungry eyes. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  “I wanted to tell you before we even left. Baker is a planner. He doesn’t just up and go on holiday without planning months in advance so I suspected it was really a work trip.”

  “Hm.” She smiled again and her eyes became completely shrouded by gold and pink sparkles. “So, you’re really a genius.” She got off the floor and slid upwards towards me, right into my arms and got me tasting apples again. When she kissed me, passionately, as always, I saw more of that gorgeous, pounding blood-orange fog and realised how much I appreciated her presence in my life then. All the same, I pulled my mouth free because there was something more pressing I needed to know first.

  “Who do you think those birthday people are?”

  “Probably aliens,” she said, right before she went right back to sucking me in the crotch.

  I gasped, and not because I was surprised by the aliens. “Aliens?” The back of my knees began to get all wobbly and sweaty again. “Isn’t that what you want to see?”

  “Yes.” She caught a breath. “But right now, I want this more.”

  I gasped when her head went back between my legs. “Wait!” I said, breathlessly. “Who do you think those Germans really are then?”

  Ethel’s head popped up and the annoyance on her face was clear in my ears. “Obviously some work contact our husbands were told to meet up with. Likely alien specialists.” She tried to go down on me again but I stopped her.

  “Why obviously? How obviously?”

  She sighed. “Charlie’s an introvert. He avoids small talk like the plague, so when he got all chatty with those people, in the middle of nowhere, for no good reason at all, I knew something was up. This is definitely a work trip, not a holiday.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Ohh!” I added when Ethel went back to doing everything she had been doing between my legs.

  I lost interest in conversation after that. Ethel pushed me down on the bed then climbed over my chest. She turned her back to me, took my hand and put it between her legs, right before she leaned forward and placed her fingers on my crotch, to finish up what her mouth hadn’t completed.

  Now that the room was all dim and gloomy again, I was feeling much better. I moaned, I think. And I gave her everything I knew she wanted till she gasped and made noises you wouldn’t hear a normal woman making in public.

  My world became a blur of blood-red orange fog, red sparkles and apples again. Lots and lots of apples. And soap.

  I understood then I was no different from Ethel. Or Violet. Or Lilly. Despite knowing everything I knew about the biological mechanisms that brought about the blood-red orange fog and the red sparkles, I still tasted soap. I was still ashamed by it. Just like they were.

  It was normal for a woman to be ashamed of wanting another woman for physical self-gratification, I realised. Just as it was for my fog to turn into a wall, and for that wall to explode into a million little circular blue pieces. Just as it was for Ethel’s opaque red splotches to explode into another million little dusty pieces.

  We looked like a ‘4’ that had fallen on its side this time. A ‘4’ decorated by a moving colour show of reds and oranges and saxophones that was oh-so-beautiful, exactly as it had been before. Ethel was moaning and gyrating like a woman should never be doing under normal circumstances and I was screaming praises to God the way she had done before, as if I were truly thankful for everything he had ever given me in my life.

  It really looked and sounded very spectacular.

  Chapter 23

  17 July 1975, Thursday

  Three hours later, Ethel and I were walking through the town square with large sun hats over our heads and shades over our eyes, browsing trinket stands in front of restaurants, cafes and bars, exactly as American housewives on holiday would be doing in the absence of their husbands.

  We purchased Choripans—sausages in bread—to eat on the street, gaped and gushed at all colourful objects and buildings, smiled with interest at men and kept an arm’s length away from each other the way women back at Northridge always did.

  What wasn’t immediately apparent to anyone who might have been looking at us was the pink and gold sparkles around Ethel’s eyes and the faint taste of apples in my mouth. Oddly, I no longer tasted fecal matter when around her, the way I often did back when we first met.

  Quite the contrary. I was starting to like her for liking me. Nobody had ever liked me quite that much before. Not even Baker. He liked me, yes, but Ethel’s sparkles were bigger. Brighter. And they alternated between pink and gold more regularly. They were more beautiful and made me realise I quite enjoyed looking at them. I never thought of myself as a person who would need another person to be happy, but I learned with her that I could be too. I found myself constantly checking to see if she still liked me, to see if those pink and gold sparkles were still there, shimmering, and I found myself extremely satisfied whenever the sparkles verified she still was. It became quite the obsession for me.

  Ethel, on the other hand, having been satisfied physically and emotionally, and having taken all the Valium and alcohol she needed to function properly, was now obsessed with wanting to see aliens. She bought the first pair of binoculars she saw available for purchase and kept her head and eyes increasingly towards the sky till she found what she’d brought us out of the hotel in search of.

  A lighthouse. On the beach. Tall enough to see the whole downtown area from. Touristy enough for us to be up there peering out into the horizon with binoculars in hand without arousing suspicion.

  “There’s their rental car,” she said with binoculars over her eyes, fifteen minutes after we’
d arrived at the top of the lighthouse, after she’d scoured the town below. “Parked outside a house in some residential area, I think.”

  We were not alone. There were two other Mexicans up there with us who were more interested in looking out to sea than at the downtown area. As Ethel searched for our husbands, I had been sneaking glances at them, watching how they behaved when looking out to sea and when they passed each other and us, just so I could have a wider store of references to use to know how to behave when up in a lighthouse or any touristy destination.

  “How do you know they rented a car?” I replied, with a look of surprise on my face for effect. Without binoculars, I could see many cars, all of which were the size of cockroaches. Any of them could be the car she was referring to.

  “I followed Charlie when he left. Before I went to get breakfast for you. The Germans were in a white Volkswagen compact, waiting for them. I memorised the number plate, just in case.” She took the binoculars off her face, handed it to me then pointed a manicured finger at the far distance. “There it is, next to the pink and green houses. Outside the orange one.”

  I put the binoculars on my nose and stared in the direction of her finger till I saw what she was talking about.

  It was a neighbourhood of large and colourful old houses, just a short distance away from the beach, in the heart of the historical district. A white dust-covered 1963 Volkswagen Type Three Notchback was sitting empty in front of an orange one-storey house that was made of a main house and a casita—a small, self-sufficient guesthouse attached to the main house that had its own entrance. The house had a large outdoor area that had been decorated by pots of cactus of various sizes—some the size of cats, some the size of tigers.

  “We have to go there,” Ethel interrupted. She grabbed me by the arm before I could remove the binoculars from my eyes and dragged me down the stairs we’d painstakingly climbed not too long ago. “It’s just a couple of blocks away from our hotel. We can walk.”

  She skipped downwards two steps at a time and I could barely even catch up with her. As I followed after her through the weaving streets of La Paz, winded and confused about which direction we should be heading towards, I found myself thinking she would have made a brilliant secret investigator, had she only been given the chance.

  Our husbands were in that orange house all right. Walking through it with milk-coloured latex gloves on their hands, looking around like it were a crime scene they’d been sent to inspect. Their body language made me hear the chugging of a heavy, overloaded train.

  We’d gone as close as we could get to the house’s windows by sneaking behind the bushes that lined all the houses on its street till we were right next to it. It wasn’t the most secure hiding place to be conducting espionage from—anyone within the surrounding houses would have seen us easily from their windows—but we got lucky. It was an hour after lunch and the street we were on was deserted. None of the neighbours appeared to be at home and wild birds were the only living things in the vicinity apart from us.

  Rolf and Weslyn were inside too. They didn’t have gloves on their hands but they did have guns. Hunting rifles, to be precise. They were roaming the four rooms of the main house exactly as our husbands were but instead of making me hear the chugging of a heavy train, they made me hear the crackling of wood burning in a fire. They were angry, not curious.

  I wasn’t surprised.

  “The house is empty...” Ethel whispered. She was pressed up against the side of my arm and had been hogging the pair of binoculars the whole time we’d been there. “Cupboards are all empty and there are... tacos on the table. Mouldy tacos. But not that mouldy. Maybe only a day old? Like whoever had been eating them left in a hurry. And... Oh wait. Charlie just found something. Under the floor boards. A photo album.”

  I had been watching a lizard climb a tree, noting with fascination how varied the lizards in the Americas were, but my attention jumped right back to Ethel the second she mentioned the album. “Really? Let me see.”

  She handed me the binoculars and I looked.

  Indeed, Charlie and Baker were now standing in one of the colourful bedrooms, flipping through a book-shaped photo album. They began pointing at a few photographs and speaking about something. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but the warplanes I heard flying by in my ears told me everything I needed to know.

  The photo album contained important evidence. Our husbands were well aware they would be getting big raises and promotions because of it.

  “My turn.” Ethel snatched the binoculars out of my hands the way only a very intimate relation would ever do and put it back over her eyes without waiting to hear me say yes.

  Despite everything else on my mind, I found myself also thinking about how cute Ethel looked when she did just that. “Can you see what’s in the album?” I asked, with a small smile on my face, I think.

  “No. Oh wait, yes. They’re turning around. I can see it now. It looks like… photographs of…. women. Five. One with red-hair... two with brown hair. Two with black hair... one of them Asian. Human women. All of them. No aliens.”

  Ethel removed the binoculars from her face to wipe away the bead of sweat crawling down her nose so I took the opportunity to retrieve the binoculars for a better look at the photographs myself.

  Indeed. Five women. Immortalised on matte photo paper. Their faces sharp, focused and unmistakably clear.

  “Who are those girls?” Ethel asked, looking thoroughly alive and smart and ready to take on the world in one long, ceaseless twenty-four hour fight. “Victims of the aliens? Or friends?”

  “God knows. What do you think?”

  “Let me see it again.”

  Ethel took over the binoculars and spent the longest time looking through it with the intensity of a scientist observing a specimen. She looked energised, attentive, purposeful and intelligent—the exact opposite of the person she was when at home. Once again, I couldn’t help but think that might have been the person Ethel could have been had she not been forced to stay home to keep a house clean and raise kids and have her impulses zapped out by Valium.

  “Wait a minute,” she suddenly said. “The main house has four bedrooms and the smaller house has one. But all of those bedrooms are different. With different types of items in them. Dolls in one, books in another, for example. As if they’ve been decorated differently by different people with different personalities. And our husbands have been picking random objects up from shelves and drawers and putting them into evidence bags so that could mean...” She looked up at me and dropped her mouth open as a highlighter yellow squiggle of electrical current dashed from the top of her head to her shoes.

  “What?”

  “There’s a chance those five girls could be the aliens,” she whispered.

  I felt a jolt of shock run down my spine, the first I’d felt in a really, really long time. “But how? They look human.”

  “I don’t know. What if it’s just a disguise? Maybe, they are... shape shifters? Maybe the alien that killed Violet… didn’t look like an alien? Maybe it looked like someone she knew. Or loved? That woman she fell in love with? That sweet young thing who… could fly! Maybe that was the alien!”

  My mouth fell open too. I didn’t know what to say but, “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  I took a deep breath and blew out the quiver within my heart then placed a frown over my eyes. “What would our husbands want with them?”

  She shrugged. “Science? Knowledge? National defence?”

  “But those girls look harmless. Four of them look barely older than teenagers.”

  “Yes, but, don’t you see? If those five women really are aliens in human disguise, that could mean there might be more like them. Aliens walking around us, undetected! That could be the real danger! Earth could be thoroughly infiltrated with time without anyone even knowing!”

  I was speechless. I had no reference to what a normal person was suppos
ed to be saying to that in my head.

  “If they knew our husbands were coming for them,” Ethel continued. “They must have been tipped off by someone who managed to get close enough to our husbands to know what they were going to do. Someone or thing who might have been in a human disguise.”

  Sour lemons. “Like who?”

  Ethel turned her gaze to the left and became all silent. A clock began ticking in my ears. Then, when I least expected it, she looked up and suddenly made me hear frantic tribal drumbeats again.

  “What if it’s...” Her eyes slid past me, to the space behind my back and she gasped. The thumping of drums instantly added an extra sub-beat between its beats. “Rolf,” she whispered. “And Weslyn.”

  I turned at once and saw the two people she mentioned behind us, with rifles in their arms, ready for use at any time. Rolf had reached us first and was standing behind us, still and solemn. Weslyn was some distance behind, running up to us in a rhythm that made me hear the screaming of a fire truck. Neither of them looked like they were going to be inviting us for another round of Pina Coladas anytime soon.

  “What are you doing?” Rolf asked in that thick German accent he had. His eyes were paler than Weslyn’s were. A pale, silvery blue that made him look as if he had the eyes of a wolf.

  Even so, I wasn’t afraid of him, but I was afraid of the woman who stepped in front of him and stared at me in a manner that made fire truck sirens go off in my ears.

  All of a sudden, I found myself unable to hear my own thoughts and felt helpless again, just as I had been so often in my childhood. All of a sudden I was mute again, motionless, with no good idea about how I was going to get Ethel or myself out of the horrible situation we were in without anyone getting hurt.

  All of a sudden, I felt stupid. I felt I should have listened to Lilly. I felt as if I never should have acted independently of her.