by Susan Swan
“By the way, my name is Mouse,” I whispered, but the small room was quiet now and smelled horribly of pee. I was afraid to fall asleep. The tower’s cavelike silence made me uneasy, and I felt a heavy sadness rise out of my chest and float off down the long, wavy corridor like a woebegone spirit searching for a way out.
7
I awoke to a whirring noise—a delicate mechanical sound like the flap-flap of tiny metal wings. And then I heard the voice of my dead mother, the other Alice, singing hymn number 576 in The Book of Common Prayer. It was by Frances Ridley Havergal.
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to thee:
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
Trembling, I crept out of bed and looked down at Tory, longing to wake her. But I didn’t dare. I stole out into the pitch-black corridor. About ten yards from me, a small yellow light no bigger than a firefly bounced along the walls of the tower. Not far behind the tiny bobbing light I saw a ghostly form pedalling a giant tricycle. The odd-looking bike consisted of two small wheels at the back and a large one in front, like a child’s tricycle, only the front wheel was three times as large as the back wheels. I recognized the tricycle and the rider from the woman in the portrait Sergeant had shown me on the stairs. The woman wore the same long black dress with a lace collar that made her look like a maid. Only I knew she wasn’t. Somebody like her wasn’t anybody’s servant. She had the same gleeful carelessness about her appearance as the headmistress, Miss Vaughan. Her cheeks had been messily powdered, and a mannish leather suitcase was strapped to her back. As I watched, she made her bike zigzag slowly back and forth, to avoid the stripes of moonlight on the floor of the tower. The old coach light on the handlebars was swinging crazily from side to side.
Then she saw me and slammed on the brake. Her snowy head jerked forward, and I thought she was going to fly over the handlebars, but she quickly composed herself and turned her powdered face in my direction.
“Do you know where I left this world?” She pointed a crooked white finger to the door at the end of the corridor. “In that room—your room.”
“Where’s my mother?” I whispered. I could no longer hear her singing, and I thought that if I was polite, this odd personage would tell me what I wanted to know. The figure didn’t answer. She sat down again and began to pedal away. The whirring noise grew louder and louder, until the figure was racing full tilt, her shoulders hunched, her arms akimbo. Just before she reached the last music cubicle, she rang her silver-plated bicycle bell, and the door swung open. There stood my dead mother, her hand on the knob.
She looked young and startled, the way she did in the photograph the matron had taken from my dresser mirror. Her soft blond hair—the hair I had liked to hide under when I was a baby—lay in gold puffs across her slender shoulders. I recognized the ruffled silk blouse and long, tailored skirt, whose hem reached halfway to her calves. The ghostly figure dismounted from her bike and turned her broad back to my mother, who proceeded to unbuckle the leather suitcase and take out a great number of objects. I identified an oilcan, a tool that looked like a wrench, and a pair of gardening shears. When this was done, my mother sat down on the piano bench and folded her hands in her lap. And carefully—very, very carefully—the older woman lifted up the oilcan and tilted it just by my mother’s neck, until a thick, slow stream of oil bled down the front of my mother’s frilled blouse. My mother opened her mouth and started to sing:
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Then the older woman put down the oilcan and picked up the gardening shears, and I knew she was going to do something horrible to my mother. Before I could shout a warning, the figure cut a hole in my mother’s blouse, just above her heart. A single tear dribbled down my mother’s cheek. Then I did shout, but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth; I tried to move, but my bare feet were stuck to the cold wooden floor. Now the older woman began to hack out large clumps of my mother’s hair, as if she were clipping fur balls from a cat whose coat was hopelessly matted.
Then, at last, I could move, and I ran on my spindly legs toward my mother. But just as I reached the cubicle, the headmistress slammed the door in my face. I rattled the knob, but it was locked. I heard the snip of the shears and little cries. Then, nothing. I listened for a long while. Still nothing. And then, so faintly that at first I wasn’t sure it was her, I heard my mother’s gentle voice. It didn’t seem to be coming from inside the cubicle now, but from the walls of the tower itself.
Take my feet, and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
8
The next morning, after the 7:30 bell, Miss Phillips made us kneel on the floor so she could measure our tunics to see if they fell to mid-knee—perfect school-regulation length. Then she gave me a new set of sheets without mentioning the reason why and sent us out for a morning walk around the hedge. Tory said Miss Phillips was always nice to you after she’d lost her temper; sometimes she even gave you a stash of gum, which was against the rules. Meanwhile, Pauline—or Paulie, as I dared not call her—looked at me suspiciously from under her puffy bangs, and I guessed that she was scornful of my act of desperation.
After breakfast, the three of us walked together down the winding flights of stairs to the infirmary for our medical checkups. Inside, a line of girls stood with their heads down. All of them had stripped to their bra and underpants, except for some of the fat girls, who tried to get away with wearing their school blouses until the last minute. A few girls turned around to stare at us with fearful faces, and I realized they were looking at Paulie. She sucked her teeth and pointed her index and baby fingers in their direction—the sign that means you’re full of it. One or two laughed, and I heard the phrase “that Sykes girl” whispered among them, as if Paulie’s name were a swear word. Paulie abruptly turned her back and pulled down her purple bloomers, mooning the crowd. Then she yanked at the handle on the wall behind us and a panel door slid up, exposing what looked like the insides of a cupboard. “See you later, suckers,” Paulie called, and ducked quickly into the dumbwaiter, pulling its door down with a bang. All around us, girls giggled or talked in low, astonished voices.
“Won’t she get caught?” I asked.
“Paulie will stop it before it hits the kitchen,” Tory whispered. “The dumbwaiter goes through a tiny classroom nobody uses.” The line had moved up, so we rounded a corner in the hall, where two nurses stood in white uniforms. The first nurse weighed and measured each girl and called out the results to the nurse holding a clipboard. Then, in a loud voice, as if she wanted us all to hear, the first nurse asked each girl if she had started menstruating.
The embarrassed girls answered in whispery voices. I could tell when one of them said yes, because the second nurse waved her clipboard to indicate that she should step into her office and fill out the date of her last period. Every one of the fat girls had removed her blouse by now. Ahead of me, Tory stood on the scales. Her round shoulders were dimpled in the same places as Bess, the Betsy Wetsy wet’um doll Morley had given me when I was six. I winced at how vulnerable she looked when the nurse called out her weight—a hundred and forty pounds.
Soon it would be my turn. I didn’t want to take off my tunic and let everyone stare at Alice—or at my new posture corrector. I’d bought it with Sal at Starkman’s. We’d gone in together, Sal in one of her pillbox hats and me on my crutches. I’d walked in fast, my eyes on the ground, not wanting to see if there were any cripples hanging around. But, sure enough, right beside us, a sad-looking, pock-faced man was staring off into space inside a little cubicle stashed with boxes. His legs looked shrunken, as if they’d been in too many of Sal’s washes. Then a saleswoman came over to us. She glared at Sal with cold, watery-blue eyes when she caught Sal looking at her bleached hair, and then stepped into the sad cripple’s cubicle without excusing herself.
“Oh, it’s
in use,” she said. She took down a box and pulled out a crisscrossed harness and showed me how to tighten the belt slowly at the base so it didn’t draw me up too fast. “Your breathing will get better,” she said.
She wanted me to put it on, and I refused. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed,” she said. “Not in here.” She said this in a scornful, authoritative way, turning her head all the way around to show that she meant Starkman’s. I looked all around, too, and saw tables of boxes that reached to the ceiling and folded-up wheelchairs. Sal made me use the cubicle as soon as the pock-faced cripple had left, and I felt better with the harness on—stronger, like an angel getting its wings. I could float above the head of the saleslady, who couldn’t see my sly beauty.
“You haven’t taken off your blouse,” the first nurse said. “It’s better for measuring.” I didn’t say anything. Out the window I could see the wire fence the boys had crawled over the day before and the four-sided clock tower of their school, Kings College. Tory had told me at breakfast that the clock was called the four-faced liar, because pigeons sat on its huge, black hands so that it didn’t tell the time properly.
“Oh, modest, are we?” the first nurse said, grimacing. She took a measuring tape from her pocket. “Please take it off. Or do you want me to do it?” I stared down at my new oxfords and did what she asked. Then Alice was naked for all the world to see. And my poor, flat, sunken chest.
“Twenty-six,” the first nurse said, and the other nurse wrote it down on her clipboard. The first nurse looked me in the eye. “Have you started menstruating?”
I looked her back straight in the eye. “No.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“But you are in grade eleven. Most girls in grade eleven are fifteen or sixteen.”
“I skipped two grades.”
The first nurse looked at me coldly. “It may surprise you to know this, but I’m aware you have a liking for practical jokes, Mary Bradford,” she said.
I stared at her blankly, and the first nurse whispered something in the second nurse’s ear. I heard the phrase “deformed chest.” I cringed, wondering how much the girls behind me could overhear.
“Is there a medical reason for your condition?” the second nurse asked in a gentle tone.
“Kyphosis,” I whispered.
“Speak up, please.”
“It’s called kyphosis. Doctors say it affected my development. I may never have a period.”
Down the corridor, I heard the silly girls whispering like idiots. I hung my head. Their voices sounded unfriendly. Go ahead, I wanted to scream. Gasp as much as you like. I like being underdeveloped. You can grow up and become women. Not me.
“All girls menstruate,” the first nurse said quickly. “When you start, I want you to come to the infirmary and enter the date on the book we have set aside for that purpose.”
The second nurse led me off down another corridor. Behind us I could hear the girls still whispering about me. We stood in a narrow rectangular room. I was surprised to see girls in cots reading or sleeping. I didn’t know how they’d had the chance to get sick so quickly.
“Your brace looks relatively new, but you need an instep in your shoe,” the nurse said. “And I will speak to Miss Vaughan about sending you to my chiropractor. There’s no reason for your condition to be so extreme.”
“I don’t want a funny-looking shoe,” I said and began to weep. She put her arm around me and asked if I wanted a hot milk. I whispered yes into her soft breasts and let her help me off with my clothes. I knew that whatever reputation I’d been developing as a rebel was shot to pieces.
9
A Conversation with Alice
All my life I have heard Alice’s voice in my ear. I may not want to listen to her and I may not want to believe what she says, but I hear Alice the way you hear what your mother will say about something before you do it. So I figure I may as well talk to her since I’m going to hear what she says anyhow. I don’t know what I would have done without Alice at Bath Ladies College. Or President Kennedy, for that matter.
— Alice, you know I never wanted to become a woman.
— I know, but you didn’t want to be a man, either.
— Well, not exactly. I wanted everything a man has except his penis. It was the other way around for Paulie. She already had everything a man has but that.
— You mean she didn’t want a penis?
— Other people thought she needed one—not Paulie. Not to begin with. Oh, Alice, have you ever met a girl who didn’t giggle when you asked her if she wanted one?
— That reminds me. Why don’t girls tell jokes about boys’ private parts?
— That’s not very helpful. Seeing how I don’t have a real mother. You know I can’t count on Sal. And I’ve already heard that old joke of yours, anyway. Because they don’t like gags on penises.
— I was only trying to cheer you up, Mouse. And remember, I’m the same age as you.
— I beg your pardon. I grant your grace. I hope the cat will scratch your face.
— You don’t have to bite my head off. By the way, what’s the difference between a penis and a prick?
— Alice, please.
— Don’t be such a fussbudget, Mouse. A penis is what a man uses to make babies, and a prick is the rest of him.
— This time you’ve gone too far. No wonder I liked to talk to President Kennedy. I bet he didn’t tell stupid jokes.
— Sure he did, Mouse. And you know it.
September 16, 1963
Dear Mr. Kennedy,
You don’t know me, but 1 know you. So let me get to the point. I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’m locked away in a prison for women disguised as a Canadian boarding school. My own father should be the one to get me out, but he’s too overworked and too kind to his patients, so he doesn’t have anything left over for his family (i.e., me). For instance, I have never had even a five-minute conversation with him by himself. There isn’t time. He allows only half an hour for each meal at home and then sleeps another half-hour. Then he goes back to the office. He works from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. On Sundays and holidays, too. Frankly, Morley (my father’s name is Morley) is beginning to look a little the worse for wear.
He should lose fifty pounds and dye his hair black. It would do wonders for his olive complexion and stop his cheeks from sagging like old rubber tires.
You never look pooped in your photographs. Well, maybe a little uncomfortable now and again—I know you have a bad back. But you never look as if you are on your last legs, which is the way Morley looks every day.
You always look brand-new, Mr. Kennedy. Whether you are clapping at Caroline doing a handstand in your office or smiling down at her in her nice white party dress at Hyannis Port.
The only time I’ve seen her look the littlest bit lonely is in the photograph on the South Lawn of your White House. You’re nowhere in sight, but she’s sitting with her brother taking afternoon tea with her English nurse.
Of course, I could be wrong. Mostly she looks happy. Particularly in the snap that shows you both in a car. She’s snuggled up against your shoulder, and the two of you are watching the road ahead. You look like you couldn’t care less about the world around you.
Your friend,
Mouse Bradford
September 18, 1963
Dear Mr. Kennedy,
After I wrote you my first letter I realized I could tell you anything and you would have no way of knowing if I was telling the truth. For instance, I could tell you my mother is Marilyn Monroe and I live in Canada, a country that was discovered by the singer Paul Anka. He runs it from an igloo on Baffin Island when he isn’t making records, and our main industry is shipping ice cubes to keep your White House cool!!
Anyway, I promise to always tell you the truth, Mr. Kennedy. (You’d only find out if you came up here, anyhow.)
The following—all true, cross my heart—is just to give you an idea of what a day in this hole
is like.
A bell wakes us at 7:00 a.m. and we have to be in our tunics for inspection at 7:30 a.m. Then a matron inspects our rooms from 7:30 a.m. to 7:40 a.m., when we are walking around the hedge next to the hockey pitch. Our lights must go out at 8:00 p.m. The army’s got nothing on this place.
Once in a while, on what they call an “out” Saturday, the matron takes us shopping at Eaton’s. That’s a big department store downtown, and all the boarders load up on gum and cigarettes when she isn’t watching. The rest of the time we can’t go into the city. We get to stare at it through the bars of our windows. It is situated three miles to the south of us. At night, I can see its lights strung out like a necklace of Christmas bulbs on the shore of Lake Ontario.
To be honest, Mr. President, I feel a little blue. I’d like to ask my father to send for me, but I know he won’t listen. I bet I’m the last thing on his mind as he drives about Madoc’s Landing doing his calls. If I close my eyes, I see him driving our Olds convertible to the concession store on County Road 14. It’s run by French-Canadians. My stepmother Sal says they think our dog Lady is his new girlfriend. That’s because Lady sits as close to Morley as she can. So when Morley drives by, all you see is a ridge of blond leaning against his shoulder. I pity Sal. If I were her, I’d take the distracted way Morley treats her personally. A man that tired is capable of letting anything happen to him. Well, I see the eagle eye of my form mistress upon me.
