Woman as a Foreign Language

by Katherine Wyvern

  “Er … are you going to throw that in my face? You have that sort of look about you.”

  Julia is wearing dark brown suede boots, nude colored stockings, a black skirt, which reaches just below her knee, but is split so far that half her skinny thigh is visible, and a pearly-grey, knitted, sleeveless turtle-neck top. Her eyes are done in a bit of black eyeliner and just a hint of pale grey-blue eyeshadow. Her eyes are, most of all, smiling.

  I grin. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting you. I didn’t mean to threaten you with a frozen pizza. I just don’t like to leave my dinner lying about.”

  She gives me this perplexed look, but she doesn’t comment, for which I am grateful, all things considered. When she leans forward to kiss me on both cheeks, I almost fall backwards into my hallway, senseless. Well, friendly, polite people kiss on both cheeks when they meet, that’s what they do. There is no need to infer anything from it.

  But we never kissed before, not even last Friday, when I retrieved my pajama and t-shirt from her flat before going off to bed in my own. I return the kisses almost automatically, the pizza between us like a jealous chaperone. I am too stunned to even savor the softness of her cheek against my cheek, but I do notice that for a second I am inside her enchanted private atmosphere, her washing powder (which is different from mine), moisturizer, cigarette smoke, her incredible perfume. Her hair is like a cascade of silk and feathers as it brushes against my cheek.

  “Why don’t you take your dinner with you to my place? I will throw in a bottle of wine. Unless you are eating together with… Am I interrupting? I am sorry.”

  I blink. Did she just invite me to her place this very evening? Did she?

  “Er … sure. No, I am eating alone. Whenever I manage, that is. It’s just a frozen pizza, but we can share it, if you are that desperate.”

  She shoots me that mischievous grin of her.

  “I have had dinner. But nobody to share it with, which was sad.”

  I am on the point of telling her how I envy her, but I doubt she has ever eaten with anyone like my mother.

  And right on cue, “Nina! Nina? Who’s there? Why don’t you bring them in? And did you make pizza?” the pudding is screeching at the top of her voice to make herself heard over the TV.

  I stare at Julia in horror. The thought of spotless, impeccable Julia in her split skirt and high boots in that room makes my stomach turn.

  “Never mind,” I say hastily. “You don’t need to come in, really. I’ll just fetch some socks. Can you hold my pizza, please?”

  I leave her standing in the door, with a pizza in her hands and somewhat baffled look on her face.

  “Nina!” shouts the pudding as I pass the door of the living room. She is still lounging sideways on the sofa. I suddenly have an image in my head of Jabba the Hutt. “Did you make pizza?”

  “Yes, Mother. It is my dinner, you know?”

  “Who’s at the door? What do they want? Why don’t they come in? Must I always get up myself?”

  “It’s a friend of mine. You don’t need to bother about it. Don’t get up.”

  “Friend? What friend? Nina? Nina! Hey!”

  I am in my room by then already pulling woolen socks on my feet, and scooping up my keys on the way out.

  “Nina! Nina! What about my dinner? Are you going out again? Nina? Nina? I don’t want you to go out! What am I going to eat?”

  “Cook! You know how it’s done!” I shout behind me before closing the front door.

  “Sorry about that,” I say to Julia, relieving her of the pizza. It is just wrong to see her graceful, exquisite figure standing there holding something as mundane as a cheap frozen pizza.

  “It’s ok. Is the TV always that loud in there?”

  I shrug. “Sometimes it’s worse.”

  “Jesus Christ. Sorry, I really should not comment. It’s none of my business. Shockingly rude, I apologize.”

  “Oh, no need to stand on ceremony. It’s a madhouse. I know. I just can’t keep on top of things anymore. I am out almost twelve hours a day for work and stuff. I spend the weekends cleaning and doing dishes, and laundry. And by Monday evening, it’s all a mess again.”

  We are in her flat by then.

  There is a tiny table in her small kitchen, enough for two persons to sit and eat, if they don’t mind being very intimate. I don’t mind. My pizza seems immense, on this table. A vast field of tomato and mozzarella between me and her. Suddenly I am sick of frozen pizza. I wonder if Julia cooks real food, what she likes to eat, how it would be to cook with her, and eat with her every evening, without worrying that my next mouthful of food will be snatched from under my nose.

  “Eat while it’s warm,” she says. “Is it still warm? Should I run it in the microwave a minute?”

  “Yes, no, I mean, it’s fine, don’t worry.”

  Only someone as lithe and divinely poised as Julia could possibly move around me in this kitchen without knocking anything over. She puts a clean glass in front of me, and opens a bottle of red with practiced gestures.

  “Let’s be dogs, and just drink. It can breathe in our belly,” she says. We bump glasses and drink.

  “Nina, you need to get help. For your mother. You cannot live like that forever. She is not that old. What are you going to do? Waste the rest of your life away cleaning after her? You have a right to your own existence.”

  I spread my hands helplessly. I wish I could explain to her how an Italian family works. Not very well, I suppose. But I am stuck with it. It occurs to me, while I ponder over my cooling pizza, that an Italian family is designed like a trap, a cunning machine with a sweet bait and steel jaws, from which children can never escape, at least not without chewing their own legs off in the process.

  “I don’t know what to do about it. She has a pension of sorts. And the flat. I suppose I could walk out, technically. She wouldn’t starve. She’ll probably drown in candy wrappers eventually, but she would not starve. But. I don’t know. I don’t even know where to start. You don’t understand. You can’t just leave an Italian family. Even one as dysfunctional as mine. They would never understand. They would make it look like I’m evil or something. That I owe her everything, because she’s my mother, and I am a bitch for leaving her alone. Like I am abandoning an invalid. Which she isn’t. Not really.”

  Julia looks at me with those piercing eyes. Suddenly I wish we were talking about something else, anything. I want to be with Julia, not think about my dirty flat, or the Hutt on the sofa. Julia seems to divine my thoughts. She puts out a hand across the tiny table to squeeze my arm, and drinks on in silence for a minute. She lights herself a cigarette, turning her chair sideways, so that most of the smoke floats away towards the living room instead of towards me. She crosses her endless legs, and the slit in her skirt opens to reveal the silky length of her thighs.

  “I do understand, actually. I had my own sort of break-up with my family. Years ago. They didn’t readily accept … what I am, you know? Well, I could have kept lying and hiding, but I just could not bear it anymore. I was sick of sneaking around my own flat, running to change every time they rang the doorbell, that sort of thing. When I came out to them … Jesus. You’d think I’d murdered their firstborn son. I suppose that’s exactly what I did, in their opinion. Story of my life. So I walked out on them. Metaphorically speaking. I was already living on my own. But, you know. I thought it would be forever. That I’d never see them again. It was not easy. Even if at that moment I hated them. Well, they came ‘round eventually. More or less. Some of them more than others. I know it isn’t easy, honey. I know. They will be angry with you for a while and say stuff behind your back, and hiss and spit. But you don’t need to stay there and listen to it, you know? And really, is it so important what they think of you that you will waste your life because of it? Eventually they will get over it. You need to get out of there, sweetheart, and just start living your life and being yourself.”

  Myself. And what am I? I look at Julia, taken aback from t
his sudden flood of confidence.

  “I am not even sure what I am … or what you are,” I say in a small voice. It’s not a very clever comment. But it’s the only honest thing I could say.

  She gives a small snort of laughter. “Some days I don’t know either. But I do appreciate having the freedom to find out.”

  “Would you like to be a woman, like, forever? Like, well, for real?” I ask awkwardly. I immediately feel that this is not the right way to say it—I know that Julia is perfectly real already—but I don’t know the right words for discussing this. I hope she understands this. I hope she can forgive the poor choice of words.

  She doesn’t seem to be offended or upset. She carefully blows a perfect smoke ring towards the living room before answering. I thought that only hobbits, dwarves, and wizards did that, and I stare at her beautiful lips in awe. Oh, the temptation. My, my. How can I resist?

  “It’s not as if I haven’t thought about it,” she says slowly, watching her smoke ring float away, completely unaware of the turmoil she’s thrown me in. “I can’t honestly say that I am much of a man, am I?”

  I shake my head forcefully, then realize my gesture might be misinterpreted, but before I can open my mouth to talk, she laughs and pats my hand across the table. “It’s ok, don’t sweat it. No, but the truth is, I don’t hate being a man. I don’t feel especially misplaced in my body. I don’t feel all angsty and miserable if I need to wear a suit to work once in a while. I get along with my private parts reasonably well, as long as they stay where I put them and don’t make a nuisance of themselves. I don’t think I need or want a surgeon to make me a real woman. But I do need to be a woman, from time to time, sometimes more often, sometimes less. If I have to be a man all the time I become fantastically stroppy. You have no idea.”

  I smile at her. I am relieved that she can talk about this with a dash of her customary dry humor. I wouldn’t know how to handle it, else.

  “I think you are the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever met. I don’t mind you being a woman as often as you like,” I whisper.

  She smiles again, a slower, sweeter smile.

  “I know. I noticed. Do you mind me being a man?”

  “No. I like you just the way you are.”

  She smiles that strange, slightly stunned smile I have seen on Julian once or twice before. I know that my heart will break if I can’t hold her hand. I yearn for her. I have yearned for her so long that it hurts. So I take her hand. I have never done anything so bold in my life.

  She weaves her long fingers into mine and squeezes gently.

  “I thought that maybe you just liked girls,” she says almost shyly.

  I shake my head again.

  “I don’t like girls. Or boys. As such.” As a matter of fact, I don’t think I really ever liked anyone until I met you. “I don’t know. Boy, girl. All this fuss about it. Doesn’t it seem like very much a first world problem? When I look around at the couples I know … it’s pretty gruesome. It seems to me, that if I found somebody who was so very kind as to really love me the way I am, I wouldn’t be bothered what they have between their legs. It would seem like counting the proverbial horse’s teeth, you know? I mean. If someone really loves you, that’s the greatest gift, isn’t it? And as for the, ahem, ins and outs of it, well, I am not a plumber. I am an artist, of sorts. There is some margin for creativity in my life.”

  Julia looks at me with a bemused smile, which slowly breaks into soft laughter.

  “You are one of a kind, you know that?”

  “I suppose I am, yes.”

  She squeezes my hand again, with a tenderness that makes me want to go, and hug her there and then.

  “What do you say we go see a movie, one of these evenings? Before Friday, why not? We won’t be that late.” She smiles at me playfully, and I could just sit here, drowning in that smile. Until tomorrow. Until Friday night. Until kingdom come.

  ****

  When I get back home, I am wearing a fantastic makeup, pale skin, and Egyptian eyes, with smoky shadows and sparkling depths around long, black lashes. This is not Julia’s work. After some trial and error, under her instructions and encouragement, this is my own doing. It’s a bit theatrical, we both agreed, and not something I’d really wear out and about except on Halloween, but it was fun to experiment. Julia said I have an artist’s true touch.

  As I pass by the kitchen I almost have a heart attack. The pudding is sitting at the kitchen table. Waiting up for me. That can’t be good.

  Our kitchen is larger than Julia’s, and the table is a real kitchen table, but even so, it is dwarfed by the pudding’s overflowing shape, sitting there with her elbows planted wide apart and a scowl on her face.

  Her eyes have taken on a permanent lowering look in the last few years, like she’s perpetually brooding on the wrongs that the world has visited on her.

  “I told you not to go out. You left me alone at home all evening.”

  “It’s not as if we keep each other that much company, do we? You just watch the TV. What difference does it make if I am in my room or six doors up the corridor? And you can hardly be starving. The fridge is empty. Again!”

  “So what? I still have a right to have my dinner. And you should be here. I have a right to…”

  “I have a right to eat a meal in peace once a day! I work forty-five hours a week! I have a right to see my friends! You don’t own me, you get it? You get it!”

  I realize with horror that I am shouting. I close my mouth with a click. There has been enough shouting in this flat already.

  Her head is shaking from side to side in the demented gesture she makes when shedding any argument I make like a dog sheds water.

  “I am your mother. I took care of you, and now you must…”

  “You did what? You took care of me? Oh, and when was that, pray? It must have been when I was not in the house, because sure as hell I don’t remember witnessing it!”

  “I put you in this world, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

  “By mistake! As you remind me every fucking day!”

  She pretends, briefly, to be shocked by the language, but then her mind is already wandering off to more pressing topics.

  “We need more food. Bread and ice cream. You will have to get some shopping done tomorrow, before work.”

  “No, to tell you the truth, I don’t think I have to do any such thing. You know the way to the shops. You have nothing better to do all day. Do you good to go out a little, walk a bit. Good night!”

  “Nina! I am not done. There’s something else we have to talk about!”

  I am walking down the corridor to my room. I don’t care to hear the rest. But the voice pursues me, full of a false tremulous horror.

  “Nina, that friend of yours, that Julia. I don’t want you to see her anymore. She’s an unnatural cat. We don’t mix with those people.”

  I give a small hysteric laugh at that. I can either laugh or start shouting in earnest. I walk back to the kitchen ready to strike her. I am absolutely ready to punch her, or draw the cut of my hand down on the side of her face and wipe that scowl from her ugly mug forever. It would be so simple, so final, so well deserved. I can see why her husband hit her. She seems to beg for it. I am shaking with a black rage.

  I close my eyes, and take a deep breath.

  You never get away from violence, do you? It lurks inside of you, even when you think you got over it. It’s like a half forgotten native language. When you lose control that is the language you curse with. The only way you know how to discuss things. And here I am, ready to strike, and punch and break things, like he used to do, to her, and to me as well. Violent parents teach violence to their children. And the wheel turns, and the cycle keeps repeating.

  I grip the doorframe with both hands, to keep track of where they are. I don’t want to lose control of them like I lost control of my voice a minute ago. I don’t want to be the person that thought those thoughts. I draw a deep breath and think of Julia’s ca
lm, clean flat. Happy place. Happy place. Happy place.

  “What do you even know about Julia?” I say slowly, coldly. “You never get out of your hole. You have never even seen her.”

  “I hear things. Il signor Ragona told me a good deal. She’s a … oh, I dare not even say it. Una nurzia, sai? A bad woman. Girls should go out with boys, not other girls. She’s putting ideas in your head, too. All these clothes and shoes. And the way your face is painted.”

  I burst out laughing. It’s just too good. “You think Julia is a lesbian, Mother?” I have absolutely no idea what on earth a nurzia is supposed to be. When she speaks the old dialect, it’s like Arabic to me. But her drift is clear enough. It is just too ironic. It is a testament to the absurdity of my mother’s mind processes that she never worried about me being a lesbian when I went around in oversized man-clothes, but now that I am wearing something nice, she suddenly comes up with this idea. Just because I have a female friend. Sort of.

  “You don’t need to use that language. She is a wrong ‘un. That’s what she is. And she’s dressing you and painting you like, well, I can’t even say it.”

  “Julia isn’t dressing me like anything. Nor she is painting me. I am not a doll. These are Lizzie’s clothes and shoes. My friend from school, remember?”

  “Yes, but surely you don’t need to wear them? You never used to wear such stuff before. You should give them away. There’s charities and shops. They are not your style. They make you look like, like a, una sgualdrina. E una sgualdrina brutta at that.”

  Sgualdrina brutta, is it? That much Italian I know. An ugly whore. Why, thank you, Mother. Ever so kind.

  I hold on tighter to the doorframe.

  “You don’t have the looks for those things,” she goes on, oblivious. “You walk like a truck driver. You look half like a boy. You are not pretty. You look better in your own clothes, where nobody can see a thing. You always wore them before.”

  I laugh again, although it’s a laugh so sharp and hard that you could bottle acid in it. “And why is that? Why is it that I have spent my life hiding? What would you know what my style is? I did nothing but trying to disappear in this house! I never had a style! What do you know, maybe I want to find one! And what do you know what a whore looks like? Did you work on the street for a while, maybe? Or did your husband bring one home from time to time?”