The Other Side of the Wall
by Ann Yuan
One Saturday evening, I was stir-frying beef noodles on our shining cooktop, humming along with Ed Sheeran and planning on the next day’s furniture shopping. A sudden bang shook the wall on my right-hand side, about a foot above the cutting board. It seemed like the old construction had reverberated with our new stereo system, yet it ran at a different tempo. There was one stroke, a few seconds later, two consecutive ones, as if someone impatiently knocking on the door. Mark and I exchanged a puzzled look. He jumped up and turned off the stereo. Everything went quiet.
That was the first time Mrs. Walter greeted us with her fist hammering at our shared wall, two weeks after we moved into this semi-attached house at a gated community.
When our agent first showed us this house, she actually included Mrs. Walter as a bonus — nice, quiet old lady living by herself, no pet, no grandchildren, only her daughter coming once a week with some groceries. “Never bothering anybody or anything,” she said, shaking her head like adding “no, no, no…” to the end of the line.
How could Mark and I be fooled by her words? “Not bothering anybody”, as we all knew, was the euphemism for “Don’t you ever bother me”. Bothering, in our case, was nothing but some soft rock music, a thorough vacuuming, occasional and benign arguments between Mark and me. Well, I had to admit, I might unconsciously raise my voice when I tried to convince Mark. Nevertheless, all these would be far from the definition of “bothering”. However, any of these would guarantee a knock-knock on the wall, from which I conjured up an image of a green-faced lady, one hand on her hip, the other gripping a broomstick, scowling at the wall separating our houses, with the purple potion bubbling away in a pot on the stove.
What’s more, she’d magically worked out the exact place to punch. One night, Mark and I sat on the couch watching young James Kirk, in our 75” TV screen, racing the stolen red vintage car on a dusty road in Iowa. A formidable thud hit the wall behind us, right next to our heads. The wall was, I supposed, just two thin plasterboards with a hollow space in between. Mrs. Walter beat it as if it was a drum. Under her fist, the wall was vibrating along with rhythm that rippled to the couch, to my back, and eventually in the air…
I never saw her face, only caught a glimpse of her once from the upstairs bedroom window. She stood on the deck, wearing a loose blouse and carpet slippers, clutched a four-wheel walker and stared at the backyard. Her white hair was fluffy, unkempt, resembling the knee-high grass on her lawn. Her back was, in an inexplicable demeanor, straight and rigid. Just before she turned her head, I tucked myself back behind the curtain.
Six months after we moved in, all my friends had learned to lower their voices once inside our house. There was always an exception, though. My cousin Jenny, for instance, drove two hundred miles south from Chicago, stood in the center of my living room, in her crisp voice and blade-like words, flayed her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend alive. I gave her the “Shhh” sign, wiggled my index finger and pointed it to the wall. All warnings were in vain.
The pounding came in no time. It was not a couple of blunt beats, but a chain of thumping and booming, like the raging sound effect often heard in an accident or emotional breakdown. I gazed at the wall that seemed painfully ugly despite the subtle yellow paint I’d chosen by myself. Unbelievable! I picked an album, pushed the button of the stereo system, and turned up the volume to maximum. “Shake It Up”, literally, shook up the building. The whole house vibrated like a huge music box, floor rattling under my bare feet.
Jenny’s eyes widened in excitement, Mark jerked at the first note and instantly shot me a dubious look. I ignored him, opened a bottle of Zinfandel. We (I meant Jenny and I) sang and laughed, reveling in the satisfaction brought by the revenge that conquered the dark force and claimed our solemn rights. Our appetitive self sneaked out of the cave and took control. It was the housewarming party I never had.
I had no idea when we got tired and went to sleep. One thing I knew, that night, the wicked witch was gone.
The next morning, I woke up to some noise — there were people outside. I peered through the curtain. An ambulance parked on the driveway. Several cars, including one police vehicle, stopped at the curbside. Two paramedics wheeled a stretcher and shoveled it into the back door of the ambulance. I scrambled down the stairs and walked out of the front door, feeling a spiking drill inside my temple.
“What’s going on here?” I asked a middle-aged woman standing in the driveway.
“My mom didn’t answer my call this morning,” she said. “I left my work and raced here. She was on the floor, unable to move.”
“Is there…is she OK?” I stammered.
“She is a tough cookie. ‘You come early this week.’ was the first thing she said to me,” the woman squeezed out a grin. “Most likely it’s her bad knee. But strange thing is, next to where she fell, there is a big dent on the wall.”
I froze up, the repeated pounding, urgent like an SOS signal, the song, the wine…
The woman continued, “Dear God, I hope she didn’t bang her head on it. Did you hear anything last night?”
Ann Yuan lives on Long Island, NY. She loves reading and writing fiction. Her first flash fiction was published in Flash Fiction Magazine.