Marble Bleeding
Amit Modha
Camilla climbs the steps up to her apartment, back aching. The day had been long—all the days are long—but she’s going home. Away from the New Jersey public school system, and thank God for that.
She has been looking forward to it all day. Leela was home—had been for almost a month now, since her pipes had burst—and Camilla had given her a book to read, anticipating her opinion. Four years ago, Leela would have said something obnoxious, something juvenile. Something like “Desire’s a stupid name for a car.” The kind of thing Camilla had been given to say when she had been young, and the kind of thing she had worked hard to quit saying. Stop saying. Leela should have known better, though; she and Camilla were the same age.
Camilla is punctual, and at five minutes to six, her key slides into the front door. She doesn’t have the opportunity to open the door herself—Leela gets there first, grinning. Despite herself, Camilla smiles back.
“How was your day?” Camilla asks.
“It was fine. Did some coding for work, screwed around on my phone. I read that book you wanted me to.” Leela’s glances off to the side. She’s lying, and Camilla feels that familiar acrid burn in her throat. Still,Camilla’s home. The familiarity of it makes her magnanimous, and she indulges Leela.
“Oh?” Camilla says, “And what did you think?”
The book was A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams; Camilla had thought the language would be easy enough, but it required two or three readings at least to properly grasp. Existentialism beaded off of Leela, but Camilla rubbed it into her skin like sunblock. Leela was more into short, happy little stories and self-contained TV dramas.
She knew exactly what Camilla thought of that.
“It was interesting,” Leela hedges. “I liked the bit about wanting magic and not realism.”
Camilla suspends her disbelief. “What did you like about it?”
Leela shrugs, looking at the white paint behind Camilla’s head. “I want that too. The world kind of sucks, Cam.” She lets out a half-hearted laugh. “You know. Wars, famine, my pipes.”
“Those aren’t comparable.”
“I know,” Leela says. “That was the joke.”
“You didn’t get to the end, did you?”
“What?” Leela’s the picture of innocence, and Camilla isn’t buying it.
“You didn’t get to the end. Blanche chooses magic over realism. She goes insane.”
“Oh.” Leela scuffs her shoe against the ground, and laughs again.“You know how I feel about tragedies, Cam.”
Camilla sighs. “I know. I wanted you to enjoy it anyway.”
“I tried to get you to watch Community with me, how many times? You never even saw the pilot.”
Camilla interrupts. “Didn’t you stop watching it? I didn’t think you still liked it.”
Leela deflates, just a little. It catches Camilla’s eye. Like watching the sun go behind a cloud. “It just didn’t seem as interesting anymore,” Leela says.
“Probably for the best. It wasn’t very good.”
Leela stares out the window. “Yeah. That’s what you kept saying.”
Camilla sweeps into the common area of the apartment. The walls are a stark white, and Camilla prefers them mostly plain; there is a print of Nighthawks on one wall, and a framed grayscale of the Parthenon on the other. Aside from those two concessions, the walls are bare.
It is drastically different to Leela’s; when she had last visited, there was barely any wall on display. The place was so plastered in posters and pictures and prints. Hello Kitty, Banksy, Sailor Moon, Slipknot. Leela wasn’t picky.
What Leela had always been was sentimental. She had cried when the pipes had ruined so many of her decorations, and Camilla had had to dry her tears. That something so trivial could break Leela’s heart—Camilla couldn’t understand it. They were just posters.
Still, she had been there for Leela. Camilla is a good friend.
Now, Leela hovers over the dining table—square, practical, wooden—and gestures to the plates there. Leela clearly set them up earlier, and Camilla is pleasantly surprised.
“I made dinner,” Leela says, voice bright.
“Really? I thought it was lunch.”
Leela rolls her eyes. “Whenever you try to joke with me, you always sound so cheesy.”
“Only the best for you.”
“Clearly.” Leela gestures to the food. “It’s just something my mom used to make for me when I was little. Khichdi. Hopefully it tastes okay.”
Camilla sits on the edge of the kitchen chair, and Leela joins her on the other side of the table, thrumming in anticipation. Camilla takes a bite; the khichdi is warm, and slightly bitter. It has the same consistency as oatmeal, and tastes of clarified butter, lentils, and rice. It is also incredibly salty.
Camilla chews carefully, taking her time, drawing out the moment. Leela’s on the edge of her seat; Camilla has to fight her smile.
“Well?” Leela asks.
Camilla swallows, and Leela’s eyes follow the movement. “It’s too salty.”
Leela’s mouth jerks downward, her eyebrows knitting together. The expression is on her face for less than a second, and then she’s smiling again.
“Would it kill you to just tell me you liked it?” Her tone is light.
“I’m honest. It wouldn’t do either of us any favors to lie,” Camilla says.
Leela glances again out the window. Sometimes, Camilla thinks she enjoys looking at the window more than she does Camilla. It wouldn’t be unprecedented; the window overlooks a park. There are children outside, laughing. Leela is sunny. Immature. Camilla is an English teacher. Like seeks like.
Still, Leela is smiling, and Camilla can’t bring herself to rebuke it.
“Anyway,” Leela says, “how were the kids today? Did they like the Shakespeare?”
“Did they ever. You know kids and Shakespeare. They get along like a house on fire.”
“Cheesy.”
“To answer your question, though,” Camilla continues, “they hated it. They do every year. No matter how I try to get them to appreciate it, they never see it for the masterpiece it is.”
Leela’s smile is sympathetic, and Camilla feels a stab of vitriol. Leela doesn’t understand it either. Despite Camilla’s best efforts, she remains blind to beauty. For her to even look at it, it has to come in neon and announce itself with trumpets. Really, she’s no better than the children.
Camilla doesn’t say anything, and chooses instead to stand and put her bowl in the sink. It’s still half-full, and Leela’s eyes track her every movement.
“Have you tried—”
“Yes, I have.” Camilla’s words are clipped. “I have tried everything I can think of, and probably everything you can think of, too. It’s no use.”
“Right. Right, well, you know I enjoy Twelfth Night, right? Maybe they’ll grow into it.”
Leela only enjoys Twelfth Night because of She’s the Man. Camilla doesn’t mention it. It’s still better than nothing. Maybe one of these days, she’ll get Leela to read Othello or Hamlet. Leela can grow, at least. Leela has grown. It’s better than nothing.
“Maybe they will.” Camilla’s voice is sandpaper, even to her own ears. Leela cringes away from it, which might hurt if it wasn’t so commonplace. Camilla adds, offhand, “I’m proud of you, at least.”
Leela looks up from where she had busied herself in her food. “You are?”
Camilla does her dishes, and does not look back to see Leela’s face. “I am. You’ve gotten so much more sophisticated in the time I’ve known you.”
“It’s all the Camus you keep making me read.”
“Exactly. You listen to me.”
“I listen to you.” Leela’s tone is indecipherable; Camilla doesn’t concern herself with it.
Leela finishes sometime later and does her own dishes, scrubbing by hand with the exact right amount of dish soap and the exact right amount of force. When she’s done, she remembers to shake her wet hands over the sink before reaching over the linoleum counter for the hand towel. She’s been learning. It gives Camilla hope.
The two of them sit together on the couch, which is functional, gray, and sprayed liberally with Febreze. Both of them reach for books. Camilla doesn’t keep a television set out, mostly as a way to get Leela to read more. With some satisfaction, she realizes that Leela has picked up Streetcar again. Camilla herself thumbs through To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s what her class is covering next.
She can feel Leela shifting on the couch next to her, knows that she is staring out the window. It’s getting late, though. The children have gone home. And it’s hard to see the dark outside with the lights on.
They had met in the dark, under the streetlights. College students at Boston University, both young and stupid enough to be out so late. Leela had been thumbing through comics outside of a lecture hall, The Catcher in the Rye abandoned next to her. Camilla had read Catcher for—God, what class had it been? It had been years. She barely remembered, but whatever it had been for, she had loved it. Leela was sitting on a bench outside of the library; Camilla had come out of a study group. Leela’s face was so close to the pages that her nose nearly brushed them. It was charming; it hadn’t soured on Camilla’s tongue yet. Camilla had asked her about Catcher, and Leela had complained—Loudly! With enthusiasm! And some part of Camilla had crumbled away. Camilla—young, stupid Camilla—had argued with her in the street, and that was the beginning of their friendship.
Camilla thought Leela could have been so much more than she was. It was painful to see. Leela was special—Camilla could see it in her smile. Could see it in the Hopper prints Leela had bought for her apartment, for no other reason than because Camilla liked them. If Leela ever became all that she could be, she would be perfect. Instead, she clung to ignorance and distraction, wielding them like a child’s blanket against the world, a piece of flimsy material. Camilla could help her see that, surely. Leela would thank her for it.
Camilla glances at Leela, who is fidgeting with a loose thread at the hem of her shirt. Leela isn’t reading—her eyes skate restlessly around the apartment, scarcely glancing at one thing before moving to the next.
How does it look to her? There isn’t much in the way of furniture. Just the couch and a low table, the kitchen off to the side with its steel appliances and plain white countertops. A black metal lamp in the corner, gooseneck hanging over the two of them on the couch. The almost bare walls, the corners free of cobwebs. The entire place smells like lemon polish—or it would, if it hadn’t been for Leela’s cooking. The remnants of it hang in the air, and Camilla’s stomach turns.
Leela’s fidgeting grates against Camilla’s nerves. She tries to ignore it. Next to her, Leela drags her feet up on the couch, and curls into herself, resting her head on her closed fist. Her eyes skim across the book. They land on the window. She taps idly on the armrest of the sofa, and sighs. She looks up toward the ceiling, and then at the goosenecked lamp, but her eyes flicker back to the window.
Camilla snaps. “There’s nothing outside.”
“What?” Leela asks.
“There’s nothing outside. Quit looking out the window.”
Leela frowns. “What? Why does it matter where I’m looking?”
“You should be reading. Are you going to actually finish the book, or are you just going to keep moving around? It’s annoying.”
Leela’s head snaps toward her, something hostile on her face. It passes almost as quickly as it comes, and Camilla’s lungs expand again.
Leela looks away. “Sorry. I can go to the room, if you want,” she says, putting her feet back on the floor.
Camilla lets out a breath. “No. It’s too early to sleep. And besides, I want to know what you think of the ending.” She nods at the book and lets a smile curl her lips. It’s almost an apology.
Leela sighs, again.“You already spoiled it, didn’t you? Blanche goes insane.” She pauses, contrite. “I’ll finish it. It would feel like abandoning her if I didn’t.”
“You’ll enjoy it,” Camilla says. “I know you will. I loved it.”
Leela smiles back, and it’s a wavering thing. It carves Camilla out, makes a hollow in her stomach. Camilla wants, and she wants without target. It aches inside her and bleeds into everything. Camilla wants, and Camilla consumes, and Camilla devours.
One day, she will reach between Leela’s ribs and draw out her heart. She’ll eat it like pomegranate, tear into the arils with teeth and let the pulp dribble down her skin, seeds be damned. The sugar will coat her mouth, the red juice of it will be bright and tangy, with the barest taste of iron. Leela will laugh with the id of it, and Camilla will be able to feel it in her own bones, echoing along her collarbones and dancing through her vertebrae. Camilla wants.
She shakes herself out of it—the ghost lingers in her chest—and she reads. Next to her, Leela is completely still, posture perfect.
They read together for some time. Well, Camilla reads. For all she knows, Leela may as well just be staring at the book. It doesn’t matter. Time passes, and the world outside gets darker still.
Eventually, Camilla closes her paperback. Leela’s eyes are on her immediately, her fingers glancing against the cover of her own book. Camilla gestures toward the single bedroom with her chin, and Leela shuts her book, not meeting Camilla’s eyes.
Just as they stand, Leela’s cell phone begins to ring. Leela looks apologetically at Camilla, and answers it.
“Hello?” She asks. “Yeah, you’ve reached me.”
A few moments go by before Leela hangs up with a “Thanks, I really appreciate it.” Something uneasy settles in Camilla’s stomach.
Leela turns to Camilla, grinning. “They’re almost finished with the repairs. My landlord says it should only be a few more days.”
Camilla stands at attention. It takes focus to keep her expression from shifting—she must have failed, somewhere, because Leela’s brows start to furrow. Camilla’s chest hurts—she can feel her pulse in her ears—but she snatches at the pieces and holds herself together.
Camilla only says, “It took them long enough.”
“Hey,” Leela smiles, “At least this means I’ll be out of your hair sooner.”
Camilla looks at Leela—her hooked nose, her high cheekbones, the slant of her smile—and cannot swallow. Camilla only has a few days left—the thought wrenches. She berates herself, but Camilla turns away all the same.
“Yeah.” It sounds off, the pitch coming out strange.
Leela looks sideways at Camilla, but says nothing. Camilla stiffens, and her ribcage has never felt so hollow.
They brush their teeth one at a time, Camilla first and Leela following. Camilla checks the stove, locks the front door, and turns out the light. Streetlamps outside let their gauzy light into the apartment’s bedroom, reminding Camilla of that night at university. For some reason, she and Leela always tend to do better in the dark. Leela stares at the lights until she can’t, hands closing the blinds reluctantly. Camilla watches her from the doorframe.
The bedroom looks softer like this, less tethered to reality. Camilla’s bed has a full-sized mattress and a wooden headboard. The pale sheets only serve to make it look ghostly in the dark. Leela’s sleeping bag is bright blue at the foot of the bed, affixed with old plastic glow-in-the-dark stars that have long since lost their shine. She stuck them there when she and Camilla were younger, tipsy and looking for something to laugh at.
They don’t do that kind of thing anymore—drinking and laughing into the night. Maybe Camilla said no too many times, citing exams or work or carcinogens. Maybe Leela matured. Camilla holds out her hope for the latter.
Some things stay the same, though—the distance between them has never closed, not even when they were young and drunk—and so Camilla wants, the taste of pomegranate on her tongue.
Leela’s eyes find their way to Camilla’s silhouette in the doorway, and she quickly looks away. It’s been a month, and they both know the routine.
Sometimes, Camilla wishes that damned sleeping bag wasn’t there. What Leela might do in its absence was a mystery, but Camilla could hope.
It was getting late; Camilla’s evidence was that she was getting maudlin. Leela wouldn’t be around in a few days. Leela’s impending absence sticks to Camilla’s sternum and makes it hard to swallow. Leela wouldn’t be here, and Camilla would never have said anything about the bag.
Leela stares at her repellent sleeping bag, eyebrows furrowed. She kicks the blanket off without so much as acknowledging Camilla standing overhead, and crawls into it. Camilla keeps a wide berth from the blue monstrosity as she makes her way to the single bed. The thing in her sternum shudders.
Everything is quiet. The only noise comes from the cars outside, carrying strangers to their destinations. Their headlights peer through the blinds, casting parallel lines onto the ceiling. Even now, Camilla can feel Leela watching them.
Tomorrow, Camilla will get in a car and head to school again. She will teach, and grade, and come home, and Leela will be there. Leela will make dinner, and they’ll talk about Tennessee Williams and J.D. Salinger. Worthwhile conversation. Leela will grow, and then she will be perfect. For now, she listens to Leela breathe.
The cars pass by.
“Do you think we’ll be like this forever?” Camilla doesn’t mean to say it out loud. It’s a stupid question. They will be.
Leela’s breath stops, then starts again, a little faster. “Like what?”
Feeling petulant, feeling childlike, feeling reprehensible, Camilla turns on her side. “Like this.”
It doesn’t explain anything. Leela will have to answer anyway.
“Like… friends?”
“Do friends live together?” Camilla asks.
“…You’re giving me a place to stay until my repairs are over.”
Camilla stares at the bare expanse of her wall, and thinks about Edward Hopper. “Yes,” she says, “but you could stay here. We could just… be here, together.”
Camilla hears shifting. Headlights filter through the blinds again, and Camilla sits up. The lights cast their lines on Leela’s face. Her eyes are huge, and her skin glows with them. The effect is temporary; in a moment, they are both shrouded in darkness again.
She’s never heard Leela this quiet.
Polyester fabric crumples, and Camilla knows Leela has clenched her fists in her sleeping bag.
“Why are you up there?” Leela asks.
“What?”
“Why are you up there?” she repeats.“I’ve been here for a month, and for a month I’ve been on this sleeping bag. Your floors are concrete.”
“You could’ve said something,” Camilla says, very nearly floundering. “If you wanted to be up here with me. I would’ve let you—”
“That’s not the point.” Leela says, sounding lost.
“Then what is?”
Leela’s breath comes out pinched through her nose, and she leans her head against Camilla’s mattress, looking at the shuttered blinds.
Leela’s voice is quiet when she speaks. “Do you have any idea how anxious I am around you? Most of the time, I don’t think you even like me.” She says it flatly even as the words rush out of her, a burst dam.
It’s up to Camilla to be the adult, to put all the pieces back the right way, to make them picture-puzzle perfect. This is the way it always is.
Flatly, pointedly, Camilla says, “I love you.”
The words are a vacuum. The grumble of cars can’t reach them, here, the bending floorboards overhead as the upstairs neighbor walks around don’t create sound. The chirruping crickets in the bushes below the window are rendered silent in the middle of their symphony.
“No.” Leela’s voice is small, hesitant.
“I do. Your denying it doesn’t change that.”
“It does, though,” Leela says. “You can’t just—you can’t spring that on me. Like this is some sort of fucking debate you’re trying to win.”
“It’s the truth. I’m not springing it on you, I’m just telling you.” Camilla pauses. “And honestly, I thought you knew already.”
“You!” Leela balls her fists into her eyes. “You’re impossible, I can’t—you love me like I’m some small part of you. I—” Her voice breaks.
“I love you like I love air. I’m always reaching for you, for whatever you want me to be.
“Can’t you see that this—don’t you realize—” Leela cuts herself off, and entangles her fingers in her hair.
“We need each other, Leela. You know that,” Camilla says, moving to the foot of her bed.
Leela’s hands fly out of her hair, ending up in claws in front of her.
“Of course I know that!” Leela says. “We have made that clear every day of the past eight years, that you need me and I need you.”
She’s quiet again, that awful sound. Camilla lets it breathe, this time, and:
“I need you, Cam, but you make me so fucking anxious, it’s like I can’t breathe.”
And:
“You’re so…”
And:
“I—I don’t… I don’t want to need you anymore, Cam. I don’t want to need you anymore.”
The annoyance is familiar, and it rises up faster than Camilla can hide it away. “What does that even mean? You’re not thinking clearly.”
“How can you tell me what I’m thinking? How can you possibly know what goes on inside my head?” Leela asks, voice taking on an unappealing desperation. “I hide everything away from you! Every emotion you wouldn’t like, I don’t let you see! Every single time you say something awful to me, I don’t say a damn thing back! You don’t even—I have loved you so much, and I’m so, so tired, Cam. I’m just… tired.”
Camilla steels herself even as her heart gives an unpleasant jerk in her chest. When she speaks, her voice is as soft as she can make it. It still sounds rough. “Leela, you know you’re it, for me. This—what we have—is what most people dream of their whole lives. We have it. You must see that.”
Leela sobs, the force of it propelling her forward, burying her face in her hands. She looks wretched, and Camilla wonders why she can’t just let Leela go. It would be so much easier than this. In Camilla’s eyes, Leela is a miserable thing—but wanting is work, and Camilla is diligent. She has to be. She loves her. She does.
“Stay.” Camilla reaches down and rests her hand on Leela’s hair. It’s softer than she expected. “Please.”
“I—” Leela heaves. She rubs her eyes, and looks at Camilla. Her eyes look old, in that moment, dark and ancient things that Camilla has never seen before. Their judgement is upon her.
Camilla cannot breathe. The only thing she is capable of is moving her hand downward to cup Leela’s jaw, grasping for something Leela might give, someday. Leela doesn’t flinch. Those eyes do not stray from their place.
“What do you want from me?” Leela asks.
“I—” Camilla is caught off guard. “I just want you. I only want you.”
Leela closes her eyes, and lifts herself up. Camilla’s hand falls from her face. Leela’s posture is perfect. When she speaks, her voice is toneless.
“No, you don’t.”
“I want…” Camilla tries again. “I want the best version of you. Everything you can be. You’re so—Leela, you make me feel so—I love you.”
Leela sighs.“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah. I love you too. But…”
“But?” Camilla asks. “We love each other, and we need each other. What more could you possibly want?”
Leela glances up at her again, and sighs. “You… you don’t get it.” She laughs, and it’s a broken thing. “Of course, you wouldn’t. You never have. This was a mistake—” that terrible laugh again. “—I should have stayed with my sister.”
“Do you… not want this?” Camilla’s voice is small. Her breath doesn’t come to her—the pressure on her sternum intensifies. Pinpricks alight on her palms, and she swallows dryly around her choking, swollen tongue.
“I’ve wanted this since we were in college, Cam.” Leela’s voice is matter-of-fact, and she stands up. Headlights shine through the slits in the blinds again, and for half a moment Camilla can see the ghosts of tear tracks on Leela’s face.
Leela reaches out her hand, and it barely brushes the side of Camilla’s face before falling back to Leela’s side. Leela glances up at the ceiling, and then back towards the door. When she speaks, her voice is soft.
“I’m going to sleep on the couch. Good night, Camilla.”
Camilla watches Leela’s silhouette retreat beyond the doorframe.
When she’s disappeared from view, Camilla brings her own shaking hand up to her cheek.
Amit Modha is a junior in the class of 2025. He is double major in English and Economics with a minor in Philosophy. He is from Edison, New Jersey.
Amit wrote this story in a course taught by Alfredo Franco, who selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.