Babayaga

Seated on a bench on the hospital grounds, watching the gardener clip the hedges, the girl thought about what the old woman had been telling her. It was exciting, so many possibilities. The old woman had made her swear by the saints to keep it a secret, but even if she had wanted to share it, the other patients were too far gone to confide in. Even sweet Martine, who had her moments of clarity, was sure to break out into one of her nonsense songs before Noelle could get through the whole tale.

The old woman had become Noelle’s only reliable company at the hospital. Nurses came and went with their shifts, their only concern being whether she had tried to hurt herself again. Her parents had not visited in a month, and the last time they were there her father had stood in his gray suit staring with a grim, pale expresssion at the scars on her wrists, while her mother rattled on about the tangled state of her hair. Now the two of them were off traveling to visit relatives in Brittany and would not be back for a few more weeks. At first her loneliness had been profound and she lay in her hospital cot with slack-jawed despair, but then the old woman had found her and now it seemed things were going to be very different.

It had happened a few nights earlier, just after her melancholy had crept back like a black beast coming to eat at her heart. Noelle was sitting up in her bed, looking out her hospital window and wondering if she would ever trust herself again, out there in the wilds of the world. Every thought that came into her mind tortured and oppressed her. Recalling her mother’s eyes, or remembering the swarms of small children playing wild in the schoolyard, or even the memory of the sea of shiny black umbrellas that filled the rainy boulevards, all these random recollections made her chest ache.

“So, tell me, what do you see up there in that night sky?” said a voice behind her.

She looked and found the old woman standing by her bed. Noelle was not frightened, the staff often came through after-hours to check on the patients. “I don’t see anything out there but darkness,” she said.

“Ah,” said the old woman, sitting down beside her and roughly patting her on the back. “That is good. Very good. I have known Gypsies that will tell you they can read your fortune in the stars. But they only do this to trick you into looking up. They say, ‘Look close! There is the Leo, there is the Aries!’ and while you are squinting up into the blackness, these Gypsies stay plenty busy picking your pockets below.” They were both silent for a moment. “I hate Gypsies,” the old woman said, and then she got up and waddled off, disappearing down the hallway.

The next day the old woman returned after the lights had been turned off, coming out of the gloomy blue shadows carrying a comb and brush. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a sucette. “Here,” she said.

The girl happily took the lollipop as Elga sat down on the corner of her bed and began working the knots out of the girl’s black hair. As she worked, the old woman asked questions in her short, blunt way and, knot by knot, with a mouth full of the sweet sucette, Noelle told her the short, sad story of her life.

Ever since she could remember, she had wanted to be a ballerina. She had trained and practiced, starving herself to be as thin as those beautiful creatures she watched flitting about the spot-lit stage draped in silk ribbons and tulle. Her mother had been more than encouraging, pressuring her to always be top of her class, taking her to the city to see the Opera Ballet and then sitting in on all her lessons. Her father had paid sums far beyond what they could afford for the best schools and most highly regarded teachers. They lived outside Paris in a small country village, but there was a bus, and Noelle and her mother rode in for classes three times a week, often not returning home until long after her father was asleep. Finally, although her teachers intimated that she might not yet be ready, Noelle’s mother insisted it was time to try out for a spot in the Academy.