Woman as a Foreign Language

by Katherine Wyvern

  Now that would be really crazy, even if once, actually, she did speak to me. We are almost acquainted, really.

  I met her by the post-boxes one evening, me coming in from work, she going out, and when we were almost level, she spoke.

  “Hello, there,” she’d said, no kidding. Two whole words, all for me. Her voice was so quiet, sort of low and husky, that for a moment I thought I had imagined it. Then I looked behind me in case someone else was there. But then she smiled a little and her eyes cut into me like a laser beam, and I knew that it was real. She had spoken, and she had spoken to me. I did try to answer, but I got tongue-tied and shuffled my feet a little, mumbling. The sylph and the kobold all over again.

  She smiled a little more, with this questioning look, and then we were past, me—shambling towards the lifts, she—sashaying towards the front door on legs like a heron. I think she must be over 6’ barefoot; on those heels, she’s a goddess, not a woman.

  I have not spoken to her since (nor then, to be honest), but I met her a few times after that. She always smiles a little, but she never spoke to me again. I don’t know if it is a pity or a mercy. There is something curious about her smile. It’s small, questioning, almost shy, at odds with the intensity of her eyes. It makes me even think, that deep down she is almost as shy as I am, reaching out but warily … but how could that be possible? Why on earth would she ever be shy? There is something there that I do not understand.

  I am too tired to make dinner. It will be frozen pizza again.

  I drag myself up and off to the shower, shedding steel dust on the carpet as I go. It would all be easier if I could just change at work, but I can’t, because there isn’t a locker room for me. As I strip off my working clothes my reflection in the mirror shrinks to nothing. My blue cargo pants are stained with engine grease and singed by welding sparks, and several sizes too big for me, as is my weld-faded t-shirt. It was deep ultramarine blue once. Now it’s a murky grey in front, and faded indigo behind. There’s a somber beauty to the dying colors. The t-shirt hangs down to my knees. When Nick provided my working clothes he apologized, and said that what with child labor being illegal around here, they don’t make working clothes my size. Bullshit. It’s all made in China. Surely, they’ve got small people in China? I don’t mind though. I like my oversized faded blues. I can hide in them, but they also tell what I am.

  I am the real article, ladies and gentlemen, I can weld like a man, better than a man. And just because I am small it doesn’t mean that there is less of me… It’s just way more concentrated. So, beware, I think, while shedding layers of me.

  Thick black socks, I toss them in the laundry basket with the panties and t-shirt, and then white socks on top of them. They don’t make steel-capped boots in my size either, apparently. Bollocks.

  Out of my clothes, I am not even a kobold anymore, I look more like an undersized pixie.

  I scowl at the mirror. “Nobody asked your opinion,” I say to the lying bastard, and slam the shower door shut behind me.

  ****

  Out of the shower, wearing a clean faded working t-shirt over pajama bottoms and thick woolen socks, I pad back to the kitchen and pop a pizza in the oven. The pudding is still droning on the phone.

  En route, the black boots find a way to make eye contact, and wink at me. I turn my back on them. I don’t have to listen to their whispering.

  But then a vision of Julia’s endless legs, and her swaying way of walking down the hall, comes into my mind, and my determination wavers. It would be nice to look like her, move like her. Just a little bit like her. Just once. Behind a closed door. Nobody ever needs to know. Nobody ever needs to see. Not even Julia. Especially not Julia. And certainly not the pudding. Especially not the pudding. I shudder.

  The oven fan makes an awful panting sound that intrudes into my mood almost as much as the phone conversation on the other side of the wall. I shudder again, and switch on the radio to shut it all out. That will scream, I am home, but then, so will the smell of baking pizza. It’s a lost cause. The pudding has a nose for food like a bloodhound for wounded quarry.

  Babybird roars out “You’re Gorgeous” in that deep voice he has. I’d rather have “King Bing” with its bloodcurdling screams of pain and its bound, broken wings, but it’s “You’re Gorgeous” instead. I absent mindedly poke holes into a chopping board with the tip of a knife, listening to the radio, and dreaming.

  Julia. And if Julia did see me? Would that be so bad?

  I don’t know. It is one thing to dream of her. She fills all of my world with her beauty and her glamor. I half dream to be her, and to be with her. But to actually talk with her?

  The idea is frightening. What do I have to say that she would ever care to hear?

  “Have you ever heard of a sylph going out with a kobold?” I ask the tabasco bottle.

  “What? What did you say?”

  Damn. While listening to Babybird I lost track of the phone call, which is clearly over. I look into the living room again, although I’d rather not to. She is sprawled on the sofa in a flimsy dressing gown that pathetically fails to cover the expanse of flabby skin. She’s propped all around with pillows, amongst a litter of empty ice cream buckets and candy bars. Her flesh is cheese-white and sagging. She looks exactly like bread dough left to rise for too long and never baked. She’s overflowing the dressing gown, the sofa, the room, like some killer jelly out of a horror movie.

  “What did you say?” she repeats, with a tart tone, as if the fact that she can’t hear me clearly over the TV is a purposeful insult to her dignity.

  “Nothing, Mother. Just singing along.”

  “The music’s so loud, Nina. I had to hang up the phone, you know?”

  I carefully abstain from mentioning the TV. It’s a lost cause.

  I switch off the radio, grab my pizza, slather tabasco all over it, and repair to my room. I put the pizza on the table, and the black boots look up at me, like a pair of hopeful puppies.

  “Just this once, then,” I tell them. “And don’t expect to get a walk out of this. I’d just sprain an ankle, or worse. We will just sit down here and have a look.”

  It is damn hard work getting into them. There’s ten inches of tight lacing to loosen and a couple of buckles. Inside they are of the softest leather. My small feet should be able to get into them easy enough, but in fact I have to wiggle, push, and pull quite a bit. I wonder if stockings would make this easier. Finally, I am in. Right foot, left foot. I tie the lacing tight again, do up the buckles, and stretch my legs out to give them a good look.

  The shape of my calf is all different. I fold my legs under me and look down on them, entranced.

  It’s not Julia’s legs, but there is something of that grace in them. I wonder if I could stand without risking my neck. When I do, I wobble a bit, and throw out my arms like a tightrope walker on the verge of a fatal panic attack. It feels like I am standing with my heels on the edge of a mile-high cliff. I take one small step, almost lose my balance and quickly sit down again.

  “Wow. This will take some getting used to,” I say, and then frown.

  What am I saying? We aren’t going anywhere, these boots and I. We are not walking out of this room, ever. A shiver runs down my spine like cold water. Steel-capped boots are the thing for me, out there. You know where you stand, with a pair of steel-capped boots. You can kick a bloke in the nuts with steel-capped boots, and you’re sure he’ll keep on the straight and narrow after that. It’s different for Julia. She is … well. I can’t imagine anyone messing up with her. Aside from the fact that she’s at least half a foot taller than practically any man I know, there’s something about her eyes that would stop a guy in his tracks as sure as a bullet. But me … when you are the size of a wet rat you can’t let your guard down. I know that from personal experience. How would I even begin to wear these … these … wear them with what, for crying out loud? Wear them for whom?

  The boxes of clothes whisper. Julia, Julia, Julia. A
sparkly scarf shimmers in the shade of an open cardboard lid. “Isn’t she gorgeous?” glitter the sequins, questioning, “and wouldn’t you do anything for her?”

  Maybe.

  Maybe just in this room. We need not go anywhere. It’s not as if Julia is likely to go out with a kobold, in high heels, or any heels, anyway. But maybe I could play at being … not a kobold, for an hour or so?

  I look down at my legs, and smile, just as tears begin to fill my eyes.

  “Maybe I should buy a razor, what do you think?” I ask the boots. They wink darkly. “Ok, tomorrow I will buy a razor. You don’t need to mention this to anyone. It’s our secret.”

  I take off the boots just in time. The door of my room bangs open without as much as knock.

  “Did you make pizza?”

  “Yes, Mother. But it must be almost cold by now.”

  She grabs a slice anyway, tearing it off like a bear rending a salmon apart, a quarter of the pizza at least. She folds it in half and stuffs it in her mouth in one go.

  “Ooow,” she howls, as if she had just bitten into a red-hot poker, “it’s spicy!”

  “I know it is. I like it that way,” I say sweetly. Thing is, it’s the only way to keep a meal for myself, in this house.

  ****

  Julia

  Julia was sitting at her desk, typing very fast (she had nimble fingers) on a paper called “Letters as a Narrative Stratagem in the Contemporary English Novel”. She was all set for a quiet night at home, working and smoking, and drinking a glass of wine (no more, or God only knows what she’d write).

  The stereo was on. It helped to cut out the noise from the neighboring flats. It was easier to write to good music than to muffled TV sounds. Barbara Weldens’s Je ne veux pas de ton amour gave quite a rhythm to her typing, and a certain attitude, too.

  She was wearing only a bit of makeup (blood red lipstick, for the heck of it, and a bit of eyeliner and mascara), a short, lacy, poppy-red nighty, and a Japanese dressing gown (black silk spattered with red chrysanthemums). Her nails and toenails were painted alternately red and gold, a crazy sort of self-indulgence, first world people with too much time on their hands, but in this awful winter weather, a girl had to cheer up any way she could. It was all a bit theatrical, to be honest, not really her style at all, but she felt the need for some extra warmth, a bit of fun. She could almost feel those painted toenails, like a glowing heat at the end of her long, long, smooth legs, jiggling under the desk, at the rhythm of the music.

  So when the buzzer rang it was quite a blow.

  Suddenly her outfit felt a little bit too stagey. Not altogether inelegant, she thought with some irony, but hardly what she would have chosen to receive guests. She was not expecting visitors. The buzzer buzzed again. Julia was tempted to ignore it. Probably Jehovah’s Witnesses.

  It might be worth letting them in just to see their faces, she thought for a second, but the thought of then having to hold a long theological debate in a red-lace nighty seemed just a bit too surreal, even for her.

  It was not the apartment’s own bell, but the intercom, from the front door downstairs. That puzzled her. The only unexpected visit she could possibly have on such a foul rainy night was Abbie, but she’d hardly ring the intercom, since she lived just a few doors down the hallway. Abbie would have liked the outfit, thought Julia with a wry smile.

  She had almost made up her mind to ignore the buzzer when it rang for the third time.

  Julia wondered if it could be a neighbor in distress. They would hardly ring her, but you never know. Finally, she concluded the whole thing was just too distracting. There would be no working until this was sorted. She walked over to the door in five long strides, picked up, and discovered it was worse than anything she had suspected.

  “Hi, it’s Linda.” The voice was broken up by static, but even so, the enduring resentment in it came through loud and clear. “I found some stuff of yours that you forgot.”

  Oh, fucking great, thought Julia. She almost hung up without opening, but there was no knowing what Linda might do. Probably ring every neighbor until somebody opened the front door and then dump the whole lot in the hallway. With a big handwritten sign on it. “The revolting pervert in Apt. 54.”

  “Fabulous. How kind of you. Come up. Fifth floor. I’ll leave the door open.”

  She had something like two minutes to change and wash her face, if she wanted. She took two or three irresolute steps towards the bathroom door, but then she shrugged.

  “Fuck it, just fuck it, fuck it,” she said aloud to the room, grimly relishing the cussing. Whatever I do, it will hardly change anything. So she stood a couple of steps inside her front door with a defiant stance.

  Linda appeared in way less than two minutes. She had always been a quick woman. Quick to anger, quick to forgiveness. Except for that one time. Julia’s stomach closed into a knot when a big box rammed the door open.

  “You could at least take the damn thing off my hands,” scoffed Linda. “It’s heavy, you know. Oh, it’s you.” She spat the last bit like a gobbet of phlegm, with pure loathing dripping from it. “Did you do something with your hair?” she added as a mocking afterthought.

  “Why yes, it’s me,” said Julia, grabbing the box from Linda’s hands. Their fingertips touched, and Linda jumped back, as if scalded.

  She regarded Julia with distaste, still standing in the doorway. “Is that how you open the door to people these days? Classy.”

  Julia shrugged. “If you have something to say, come inside. No need to have a scene in the hallway.”

  “Nothing to say that I didn’t say last time.”

  Julia doubted that very much. It was not like Linda to come all the way out here in the rain just to deliver a box of stuff. She could have arranged things so that they never needed to meet again, or thrown the whole lot away. She must have come up with some truly spectacular parting shot to make it worth the trip.

  Julia stared her down with perfectly cold, silent ferocity. She knew quite well how to do that. She had always had the knack for keeping a classroom of students in order without ever raising her voice. She was not an especially aggressive person on the whole, but the last months had worn her forbearance to the bone. She didn’t have the energy for another fight, or another crying scene, not to mention that she was fond of her crockery and didn’t want to see it smashed.

  “Well,” said Linda. Out of her own house, in Julia’s sparkly clean flat, she seemed daunted. “Well. I guess I’ll just go then. Enjoy your … things. If something else pops up—”

  “Just throw it away,” said Julia.

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  With that, Linda turned and stormed out down the corridor like a herd of cattle. Julia breathed out slowly. After several seconds, she felt steady enough to go and close the door. Then she pushed open the lid of the box with the tip of her foot, as if something might come out of it and bite her hand.

  It was mostly shoes. A cache of old shoes she had not worn in years. It had to be said that some of them were definitely on the slutty side. Mostly, they were just ordinary lady shoes, a few years old, but good quality, hardly worn at all. There was also a handbag or two, and a few bits and bobs of jewelry. She must have forgotten the box in the cellar of their old place in the hurry of moving out. The last weeks there had been a nightmare, and she wondered how many other “secret boxes” were lurking here and there, like landmines, waiting to explode and rip off another chunk of Linda’s precarious peace of mind.

  Stupid of me. Clumsy.

  It had all been a clumsy affair from beginning to end. Julia had done her best not to lie to Linda, but she had omitted quite a good deal. Much as she was angry at Linda, Julia knew that the disastrous break-up that ended their two years’ relationship was as much her fault as her ex’s. Maybe more my fault than hers, truth be told. But even so, she could not forgive Linda for the way she had reacted once the cat got out of the bag.

  It’s not as if I cheated on he
r. It’s not as if I had some dangerous vice. I don’t gamble, I hardly drink. The worst they can say about me it’s that I’m a chain smoker, thought Julia, lighting herself a cigarette with slightly shaky fingers and a certain devil-may-care attitude. The encounter had rattled her more than she cared to admit. And as for the rest, as for my little quirk…

  I should have told her from the start. I should have warned her. I should have been honest, and explained everything. I would have. Ten years ago, I would have. Even five years ago.

  But love is not like book publishing. There are just so many rejections you can take. There are just so many times you can see that look of mystified revulsion in people eyes. She had told herself, I will tell her when the time is right. But the right time had not come, and then it had been too late. My fault. I was tired, I was bored, I was distracted, and I was careless. But she didn’t need to react that way. Hell, I’m not a serial killer.

  First it had been a hysterical laugh, then tears, then the silences. And finally, the accusations. I was just wearing a dress, not diddling the children in the bathtub, for Christ’s sake.

  Julia had never wanted children of her own, but she had become fond of Linda’s little boys. There had been talk of marrying, for a while. There had been talk of buying a house together, outside the grimy city, something with a bit of garden, maybe. Maybe a dog.

  All gone, now. And that’s for the better perhaps. Imagine being stuck in a marriage where I could never really be myself. Living like a skylark in a cage for the rest of my days. I am not sure that I loved her enough to forgive her that. And by the end, I doubt I would have loved her at all.

  Julia drew the silk gown around her shoulders as if to ward off a chill in the air. She stood on the warm, deep woolen rug and looked at her white bare feet and their painted toenails, with a mixture of sadness and complacency. There are some advantages to living alone at least.

  At least she had the freedom to just let go, and be herself.

  So much freedom in fact, that sometimes she found herself thinking, why not go all the way? Why not be done with this absurd double life, the omissions, the lies, the hushed tiptoeing down the threadbare, dim-lit corridors of life? Why not be just … me?