Smoke

Catalina Videla        

That night the girl had French homework, conjugating vouloir. “It’s important to know what you want,” her French professor had said. “What do you want? ...en français.” The girl wrote: Je veux être une écrivain as the Lyonnaise sun set. The darkness lowered quietly, like a curtain. Somehow she never noticed until it was too late. The moon was mocking her through the bedroom window. She couldn’t concentrate. Perhaps it was her imagination: the acidic fragrance of smoke curling into her nose. But it kept slipping deeper inside of her, drying the pink skin of her throat.

        She realized her window was open. On Friday, the host family cleaned the house and opened all of the windows despite the cold. She went to close it, but the gray silk ribbon of smoke tugged her forward to open the window wider. Beneath her window, the flat roof was filled with yellow pebbles like a balcony without a rail. Wincing at the rush of cold air, she stepped out and followed the luring tendrils of smoke to the window of the next room: The oldest daughter’s room. Colette rarely came home. Dragged away from her mysterious work in Paris, she barely spoke at dinner, then retreated to her bedroom.

        With the blinds open, the girl felt like she was gazing inside of a treasure box. The room glowed in warm lamplight. Colette leaned languidly back in her chair, pen in hand—reminding the girl of the black-and-white cat who frequented the neighbors’ rooftops in the evenings. A cloud of smoke enveloped her, burning from the slender cigarette between her long, graceful fingers, and slipped out through the cracked window. As the girl stared at the scene, framed like a painting in the window, she felt a familiar jealousy striking up deep inside and filling her whole being with suffocating smoke. Some remnant from being the seventh child of eight. Not much had been left over for her, including looks. But she thought she had let it go long ago. All that remained was her desire to become a writer.

        When Colette turned her head to the window, the girl had the sudden urge to escape, flinging herself away, off the roof. But Colette smiled and beckoned to her with a hand braceleted in smoke. When the girl approached, she noticed the black-and-white cat on the windowsill staring at her with eyes like glowing coals in the lamplight. Its black-tipped tail twitched. She opened the window with a flicker of fear that it would suddenly spring at her.

~

        Inside, the girl sat wide-eyed on the messy bed, taking in the dresses, heels, and long coats draped over the foot of the bed and the dresser like art, while Colette smoked and flipped through the papers scattered across her desk. Full of scribbled French, dropping off mid-sentence. She talked about the newspaper column she wrote for in Paris, about things that made the girl wonder if the word risqué was French like cliché. Colette loved old-fashioned life: writing on paper with black ballpoint pens and smoking indoors was the only way to live. At some point during the night, Colette asked her if she had a boyfriend. She said she didn’t: “No one has ever asked me.” Colette said the girl seemed like somebody who would wait to be asked.

~

        The girl had to go to French class and sit with the other students who wore bright colors and talked like tourists. The girl wanted to be more, to be French, to return home a new person like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. One night Colette said, “I’m going to take you to Paris with me.”

        “Why?”

        “It’d be something new for you.” Colette looked bored when she was thinking. She paused, the cigarette dangling from her lips, still red from the residual lipstick, and rolled her eyes before turning back to her work.

~

        The girl imagined the onlookers on the train platform admired the way Colette wore her scarf hanging loose, her undone buttons, her trench coat draped, her heeled black boots tapping as the girl stowed their suitcases. The woman sitting across from them in the train compartment with short dark hair that didn’t suit her round face and an old black coat must have despaired when she saw Colette’s serene face staring right through her.

        The apartment was on the fourth floor of a three-hundred-year-old building near the Seine. The girl carried the suitcases up four flights of stairs. Inside, the bathroom was the size of a closet. The bedroom doubled as a living room. The beds with faded gold spreads doubled as couches. There was a glass coffee table with a vase of dead flowers, a half-drunk bottle of wine, and an unclean coffee cup. Beneath the window, with a view into the heart of the apartment across the street, stood a wobbly desk with a big lamp and a jar of black ballpoint pens. The writer’s desk.

~

        The smoke was like its own creature. When Colette lit her cigarette, it reminded the girl of the cat. It curled its black tail. It weaved its way. It was a hunter finding its prey, teasing it first. It teased her. She had the weekend in Paris. No classes. Just her and Colette. Shedding her old skin: the blandness of being second to last—the invisibility. But she couldn’t ignore her irritating new cough.

~

        People often said the girl’s hair was her best feature: chocolate-brown and waist-length. But Colette said it was too long. She wanted to cut it, and the girl let her. The hair on the floor, littering the faded gold carpet, felt like a sacrifice. The girl vacuumed afterwards as Colette read through the girl’s stories. Stories nobody had read before. Colette sat by the window, smoking and considering the girl. Again, the girl thought of the cat. The way her eyes glowed in the dark. The girl felt small. She started coughing. She asked if she could open a window. Colette rolled her eyes. The girl didn’t ask again.

~

        Colette’s friends—artists and writers— sat on the beds, on the coffee table, drinking, smoking, and talking all day. Sometimes, they spoke to the girl. When she replied in broken French, they laughed. She fell silent. When the smoke, the cat’s tail, curled painfully inside of her throat, she coughed on the inside where nobody could see. Some nights Colette didn’t write.  She went out to research her column. The girl was glad to open the window in the little smoky apartment while Colette was gone, but the smoke was part of the room. It followed her like the cat, the hunter. She woke up during the night, coughing until her chest had spasms. She felt like she was throwing up. Still, she said nothing.

~

        One time she tried one of Colette’s cigarettes. Mimicking Colette, she placed it gently between her lips, closed her eyes, breathed deeply. Her body raged against the betrayal. When she finally stopped choking, she saw Colette watching her with amusement. “This life isn’t for you.”

        “It is,” the girl said.  

~

        The girl stopped opening the window when Colette left the apartment. She suffered in silence and stared into the window across the street. At Colette’s desk, notebook open, black ballpoint pen in hand, she watched the husband standing over the sink. His head in his hands. Slumped shoulders. His wife suffocating him. Berating. Finger wagging. Lips like poison. She was intolerable. When he slammed down the plate, shattering it on the ceramic sink, she imagined she could hear the door slam, shaking the building, with the force of his rejection. The woman stood in her nightgown, in the dimly lit kitchen, stunned. The girl felt a fleeting sense of satisfaction. Then, she was suppressing her cough again.

~

        That night she woke and couldn’t stop her whole body from shaking. The smoke suffocated her like a blanket. “What’s wrong with you?” Colette said.  The girl couldn’t respond.  She threw on her coat, her shoes, and ran out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out onto the cold street. The crisp clean air poured into her lungs like water.  She walked down to the Seine and sat on the concrete riverbank. A slip of paper fell out of her coat pocket. She picked it up and reread the sentence she had written: Je veux être Colette. Her tears felt like ice on her cheeks.

~

        When she returned to Lyon for classes, the professor taught them the negative form of vouloir. “Because” she said, “it’s also important to know what you don’t want.”

Catalina Videla is studying Creative Writing at the University of Washington. When she is not absorbed in a book or writing stories and poetry, she enjoys spending time outdoors and finding inspiration in nature. She enjoys writing from her personal experience, inspiring others to write, and using poetry and prose to learn about herself and the world.