Birthday

Logline: The screenplay is based on the short story already published in my book of short stories "Acrobats". Please find this story below:

Synopsis: Written by Monika Mostowik
Translated from Polish to English by Adrian Glass

From the very beginning she seemed very distant, the very first time I saw her. I remember when I was a child I climbed a cherry tree and went up to the highest branch, because I wanted to touch the sun. One time I almost managed to do so, but I didn't see anything for a whole day because of it. When I met Emily I felt like I had climbed up on a cherry tree and licked the sun. I had the hope that something interesting was finally beginning to happen in my life. I was bored, it made me dizzy and I didn't know if I could control myself from doing something stupid in order to destroy all the order in my life. One day, a caretaker from an orphanage came to my firm. She was looking for work. One of her children were finishing 18 years of age and leaving the orphanage. I couldn't offer her anything in the company, but I needed someone to look after my house. From the time my man ran away abroad I haven't had the energy to clean. Then I met Emily. She didn't speak, and they said she'd been this way ever since childhood. I reminded myself when my drunk father pushed me from the stairs into the basement and locked me in. I didn't speak for over a year. After that my mother always cried at dinner. I tried to understand who pushed Emily, from what kind of stairs and why did she not want to speak anymore. She didn't want to remind herself about any stairs, I thought that she forgot a lot of words even the most important ones.

When Emily gave me her hand I felt a coldness from her, but it felt like I had been waiting for her a long time, as if for a friend who came home after 200 years on another planet. I've never had a friend before. Women hated me, because men quite visibly loved me. I avoided women like fire, but it's probably not the best comparison, because I walked on fire barefoot. I once was afraid of them so much that I thought the world was made up of just women. I couldn't find a man and needed one badly.

I was an average, modern woman from Monday to Saturday, because on Sunday I wasn't present at all. I slept all day after toast with marmalade for breakfast. Everyday I was at work I read statistics, the morning news, drunk coffee with sweetener, didn't know anything about taste and all my needs were a moment to moment thing. My broker was the only person I trusted. Maybe because I never understood what Emily ever wrote. I could only read her eyes and only then when I caught her glimpse. She normally would keep her head and eyes down, looking under her feet like she was constantly afraid that the floor would suddenly turn into a tile lake.

She wrote a diary on paper torn out from my notebook. I found them by accident or maybe intentionally in different places of my house. There were times I couldn't see a difference in our writing styles, the letters were identical. The only difference were the words we used, words that would never come out of my throat. Maybe that's why she didn't want to speak.

I once threw her a birthday party. I invited a lot of friends and wanted a beautiful party. I remember when I was 20 years old, people were very important for me. She didn't seem to have any friends, even there, at the orphanage. They said that she was always a loner. I ordered a beautiful walnut tort. She didn't leave her room. I knocked, asked, she didn't open. The next day I didn’t even see her in the window. Everyday I left I drove out of the garage, looked up at her window and she would always be standing there. She would get up early when I would leave for work to see me off. Everyday I would wave to her, but then she would walk away from the window. I longed for contact from her, but the closer I got the more she would close up in herself. Thanks to her I learned to discern different types of silence, different depths and colors. Before I met her I was deaf, blind, I couldn't imagine how I could of lived before. In the end, I learned what kind of present she received on her 18th birthday: an orphanage supervisor raped her, he wanted to show her what it was like to be an adult. I called a couple of two big men and we drove over to the orphanage to pay him a visit. I don't know if he lived through it, but I don't really care.

There was a moment when I wanted to be with her only to make her life a little easier. I wanted her to feel what it is like to be free, free from a hump of memories on her back so that she could rest from herself. I was afraid for her when she wouldn't come out of her room for days. She always cleaned after herself and everything was in order and always on time, but there were times when in her room there was absolute silence. She always locked her door. I once thought she did something to hurt herself. I broke into her room. It was simple, almost empty, no personal effects, like no one lived there, nothing to mark her presence. If she would suddenly disappear no one would suspect that someone even lived there. I opened her closet and found a box inside, everything inside was stacked evenly. There were a lot of empty matchboxes with a date written on the bottom of everyone of them. Day after day. In every one of them was a strand of my hair. I then reminded myself that that day I intended to not come home for the night. It was late when she phoned and she knocked on the wall of the speaker to the phone three times. It was her code in case of emergencies. I rushed home. It turned out that Mefisto (my baby cat) had a crushed paw. Apparently she tipped the closet over accidentally trying to clean the dust off of it. I now know that she did it on purpose in order to get me to come home so that her matchbox wouldn't be empty. She loved Mefisto very much, I couldn't believe that she could be capable of hurting him. She would take the hair out of my brush, which I would leave on my night table. This ritual for her was evidently very important. When I learned about it I have to admit I was a little afraid, but in the end she isn't hurting anyone. If she were ripping the hair out of my head then I would probably think a professional psychiatrist should look after her. But doesn't everyone have their own little perversions?

Emily was a bigger secret then I was for myself. I didn't have any idea what she had in her head. She came to my bedroom once. I saw her in the doorway, she stood there, looked at me and was shivering a little. I thought then that the whole incident with Mefisto upset her and she couldn't be alone. I let her fall asleep by me but she didn't close her eyes. It didn't matter how many times I woke up she was always looking at me. I thought of her all day and night. I sat at work and couldn't concentrate on anything. I wanted to be with her all the time, know her, take care of her. She was very brave. When I told her about how I know what happened to her in the orphanage on her birthday, that I was sorry for the entire misunderstanding with the almond tort, the guests, and that probably because of her awful experience at the orphanage she didn't want to celebrate that day, she didn't even blink, no reaction whatsoever. I hugged her then, but she was so cold, she didn't hug me back not even with her shoulders. Afterwards she spent the entire afternoon in her room and didn't even come down for her favorite sitcom. I had to take the TV to her. Once I couldn't sit at work because I wanted to be with her so badly. I left everything and drove home. I caught her playing with my dirty underwear. She had an orgasm and then began to cry out loud. That was probably the first time I heard her. Maybe that's why I wasn't capable of thinking straight. I heard how she whined, groaned, cried, her scream was so rhythmic, it made me cry. It wasn't normal, I began to watch how she would try on my clothes and dance around my home. I gave her a couple of my things to wear, she put them in her closet, and wouldn't stop sneaking into my room to try on my clothes. I pretended that I didn't know anything about the matchboxes or the underwear or the dress. When I read her diary later I learned new, interesting things but it didn't help me understand her. I couldn't figure out why she liked to eat from my plate or drink from my cup. She pulled out the dirty dishes from the sink and immediately after I left for work she ate breakfast. She wrote about this and how once when I invited people over for dinner she couldn't figure out which cup I had drunk from. She was finally satisfied with my wine glass, on it was my lipstick. I began to think that she might be in love with me. I went to her room once, laid down next to her and hugged her hair. She has such soft skin. I asked her if she would like to kiss me but she didn't say anything. She didn't turn around to face me. I didn't go to work the next day. For a certain time I couldn't work at all. The situation was unbearable. Sometimes, I wanted to throw all those empty matchboxes in the rubbish bin. Once, I took all the hair from my brush and flushed them down the toilet, but suddenly reminded myself of the situation with Mefisto. I was afraid that she would do something again to fill up her empty matchbox. I returned to my brush, combed my hair, but she was already picking up some hair from my sheets after which she would lie naked in my bed with some sort of strange admiration. I saw that it gave her pleasure and that her figure would melt into the depths of my dreams. I know that I was terrible and mean for her. I would throw lesbian magazines into her bedroom. I'm embarrassed for what I've done. But in all honesty, I felt like I had to defend myself. I felt that there was going to be some sort of catastrophe and that it will lead to something bad. I was afraid and she did nothing to calm those fears. I begged her to respond even if it was only one word. There were times where she would close up so tight that she didn't want to listen. In the end I think she didn't want anything from me, she never touched me, she looked at me and mostly through a mirror. She would walk behind me. Things that I would leave my finger prints on were more important then me myself. I don't know how I could of thought that she was in love with me. She was just ill.

In the end, I needed help myself. I thought that I would go crazy from it all. I reminded myself how long it had been since I had slept with a man. That night everything was supposed to return to normal. I screamed with pleasure. I screamed loud so that I could be sure that she could hear us through the wall. I pretended that it was great just to get her out of my mind. It didn't work, not even for a minute. It felt like I was hurting her, that she was the most important thing in my life and the man in my bed was one huge mistake. Suddenly, she came into my room and shot him in the head. Do you understand sir? I just heard a shot. Afterwards, she took me by the hand and pulled me outside. We ran down the road like someone was chasing us. My head was spinning and I didn't know what was going on. She pushed me into some bushes. I shivered from the cold. She held me close to herself, held tightly and whispered "It's alright, he won't hurt you now, it's alright my little one". I lost consciousness. In the hospital I learned that she was arrested. She confessed to everything. I want you to understand that she wanted to save me! She's innocent. She thought that I was being hurt, I was screaming. No one saved her when she needed it.

I don't know myself why later I brought her the matchboxes. I visited her everyday and I knew that she feels lonely. I wanted to help her somehow. Her doctor said that I'm only helping her illness instead of fighting it. But I felt that thanks to the matchboxes I was somehow making contact with her. Everyday I would brush my hair, imagine that I was brushing her hair and that she was smiling in the mirror to me. I wanted her to come home to me so that we could start everything over again. She wouldn't need any hair, clothes or cups. She would have me. Her doctor said that she was dangerous for society, she was a threat, that they would not let her go unless there was an evident improvement and she had to start speaking.

I now live with Emily in the suburbs in a beautiful small house. We have a garden and in that garden we have cherry trees. I'm teaching her how to speak and she is teaching me words.

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