Betancourt Ingrid - The Blue Line

THE YOUNG WOMAN IN BLACK

End of Boreal Summer

2006

S he looks into the distance.

She sees the mauve line between the sea and the flawless blue sky.

She sees the wind moving across the water. She can see it coming. Then shes not quite sure.

But the wind sweeps over the path of trembling grass. It slithers, climbs up the bank, and chafes the hedge that ends at the beach in a cross shape. Then it falls silent, crouching like a wild animal, watching the street. Gathering momentum, it swoops down onto the asphalt, skips over the manicured hydrangeas, and picks up strength.

She watches, intrigued, as it advances. Its coming closer now, brushing against the painted wooden houses, very close. It glides up the old maple tree that fills her window and coils itself snakelike around the trunk, transforming the branches into long, twitching fingers.

It taps at her window. It presses up against the glass. It whistles and calls to her as the rattling branches beat against the panes.

Julia is happy. She tugs impatiently at the lock on the frame and forces the window open. Leaning out, she allows the vagabond wind to sweep in and fill her entire being, breathes in deep lungfuls of its sharp air. She closes her eyes. She recognizes that salty, tarry smell. This Connecticut wind is strangely similar to the wind of her Buenos Aires childhood. Its not as intense, perhaps; lighter, more delicate. Or perhaps not. She knows from experience that memory cant be relied on to capture the true essence of things. The present often seems less vibrant than our recollections of the past.

Even so, Julia couldnt be happier.

She smiles. She likes the restraint of her surroundings: the neatly clipped shrubs in the gardens across the way, the carefully aligned elms along the avenue that runs perpendicular to the beach, the hedge and the grass that frame the fine sand like a rampart stretching parallel to the waves, and the horizon like a straight line drawn from one end to the other.

It suits her, this symmetry. She has finished putting her life in order. She is in her rightful place, living the destiny she has chosen for herself, with the man she has always loved. Julia feels fulfilled.

She looks up at the azure sky above her maple tree. Happiness is blue. Blue horizon, blue water.

A Mark Rothko painting, she thinks, forming a picture frame in the air with her fingers.

Shed like to hang that painting just in front of her face to remind herself that happiness is right there, within arms reach.

Funny. This idea that happiness is blue: its as if shes had this thought before.

All of a sudden the wind sets up a high-pitched whistling and rushes in through the window. Maple twigs catch at Julias dress and scratch her skin. The sky has gone dark. Julia shivers. The air smells humid. The next moment a flash of lightning rips her painting from top to bottom. The light is blinding. It hurts, as if a razor had slit her retina.

A sharp cracking sound shatters the silence. The tree across the road has been split in two. Its heart is blown open, scorched, but the tree has not caught fire. One of the severed branches dangles dangerously close to the power lines along the avenue.

Julia ducks her head back in, pulls the window shut, and turns around, trembling. She scans the room, ready to face whatever might be coming. But everything is in order, each item sitting silently in its assigned place. Still, her eyes continue flicking back and forth, lingering on dark corners, decoding shadows.

Seized by an irrational feeling of panic, she gathers up the dirty clothes piled in the hamper and hurries downstairs to the basement laundry room. She arrives panting. Such a fright, for no reason! She shrugs her shoulders.

And then she feels the tremors begin. They always start the same way: a tingling in her heels, getting sharper as it travels up her calves, intensifying as it reaches her knees.

Julia knows she has only a few minutes before she passes out. She climbs the laundry room steps on all fours and crawls across the kitchen and into the living room. She needs to get into a corner of the room and prop herself up before its too late. She wedges herself into the corner, sits up straight, legs stretched out in front of her for balance. One brief moment to congratulate herself for reacting in time, and then her world turns upside down. Her inner eye has taken over.

She feels herself slipping away. Her gaze clouds over; her eyes are choked with a thick white mist, and her mind shifts to another place. Julia floats into nothingness, beyond time and space. She has lost control of her body. She has abandoned it, like a lost glove, between two walls of her living room.

She is familiar with this journey, though she can never predict how long it will last or where it will take her.

Julias not scared anymore. She knows she wont die; she knows she wont suffocate in the white substance enveloping her. She has the gift; she has received instruction; she is part of a lineage. All of her energy is being channeled into the connection that is about to take place. Her inner eye will graft itself onto someone elses visionsomeone completely unknown to her.

Suddenly Julia finds herself in a dimly lit room, looking through a half-open door. She can see a young woman with her back turned illuminated in the glare of a neon light. The woman is wearing a skin-tight black dress down to her ankles. Her black hair is pulled back into a perfect chignon, as round and shiny as a pebble. She is carefully applying her makeup, her graceful neck bent forward to bring her face closer to the mirror covering the wall.

The eyes through which Julia is looking trace the young womans slim figure from the nape of her neck to her heels, lingering on the hollow of her back. Aware she is being watched, the woman turns around. She has Oriental eyes and full red lips. They part in a distant smile, revealing perfect teeth.