The Wives of Bath

by Susan Swan

  Your aunt and I have engaged a room at the Park Plaza so that we will be able to treat you in the style which you are accustomed to at home.

  With best wishes and affection,

  Uncle Winnie

  For no good reason, the table stacked with our leaves-room books suddenly started to shake. I heard the sound of an aggressively cleared throat, and heavy shoes hammered Sir Jonathon’s miraculous herringbone floor. The Virgin was on the warpath again. She couldn’t see me behind the frosted panes of the leaves-room door. I stood squished and trembling against the wall, watching her through the bevelled edge of the glass.

  “Now what is the matter?” the Virgin snarled at somebody I couldn’t see. You know George Orwell’s picture of the future? The heel of a soldier’s boot coming down on a human face? That’s how brutish the Virgin sounded that day. As if she were going to step on me or the next poor soul who got in her way.

  “Oh, Vera, is it true? Are we going to merge with Kings College?” I recognized the British accent. “You know what happened at St. Mildred’s when they went coed. The girls chew gum in their uniforms and show up for debates in slacks.”

  “Look—I’ve heard just about enough of this.” Now I could see Lola the Les, the Virgin’s girlfriend, in one of her too tight sweaters. She reached up, as if she and the Virgin were someplace else, anywhere but Bath Ladies College, and patted the Virgin’s cheek. “You poor thing. It must be so hard on you.” To my surprise, the Virgin bowed her big, snowy head and began to tremble all over like Lady when she crawls under the bed during a thunderstorm. I heard little gulping noises. I think the Virgin was sobbing.

  “All the staff feel the way I do. It’s so underhanded,” Mrs. Peddie said. “Replacing you with a man.”

  “I can’t make a fuss, Lola. Think of how the school’s reputation would suffer.”

  “Now, Vera—I won’t have this. You must stand up for yourself and tell Canon Quinn we simply won’t have him for principal.”

  I stood transfixed behind the door. Before Christ merging with a boys’ school? And the Virgin crying? Unthinkable. Plus the two women seemed so sad and broken up, I admit I felt pretty bad for them. In fact, I was a little discombobulated and when I backed up without realizing it, one of the leaves books fell off the table. The Virgin opened the door and saw me, and Mrs. Peddie whirled around and saw me, too.

  But it was too late for them to scold me for eavesdropping. In the school foyer the male teachers were arriving for a curriculum meeting, filing through the front door one by one. Legs in baggy tweeds, legs in creased grey flannel—some with shiny bums on their cheap trousers and some with bums wrapped in expensive Donegal plaid.

  And then I forgot about the Virgin and Mrs. Peddie because Paulie was in the foyer, watching the male teachers from the shadows. I glimpsed her loitering behind one of the spreading stone columns—a nondescript schoolgirl with runs in her black school stockings. Except for the ladders in her hose, you’d never have picked her out in a crowd.

  Meanwhile, the male teachers were filing into the library. They glanced around the foyer slyly, some like schoolboys, hastily picking lint off their Kings College blazers, not sure they’d measure up in front of the girls. Most of them were British. Canon Quinn believed in the English tradition of a classical education. And they seemed to come in two varieties: short and stocky, or tall and rangy.

  The short, stocky ones looked like the English bobbies whose pictures I’d pasted into my Coronation scrapbook—working-class. Small, with pudgy faces under metal helmets that made me think of wastepaper baskets turned upside down and moustaches springing from under their noses like dark, bristly toilet brushes. The tall, rangy ones were upper-class, or at least hoping to pass as well-bred. They talked in high, piping tones that rose skyward and crashed about the ceiling like trapped birds.

  Then Paulie was at the door of the leaves room. She looked haughtily down at Sergeant. “Didn’t you hear Mrs. Peddie calling you? We need more chairs in the gymnasium.” Setting up the chairs for morning prayers was one of the duties Sergeant performed each day—Virgin’s orders. He walked off, swearing. Paulie didn’t even notice that she’d insulted him. She was staring at the male teachers. At their zippered flies—all ten of them. And behind each one of those flies, what set them apart from Paulie and me.

  23

  Alice and I Discuss Penises—Again

  — Alice, I never wanted a penis. Nor did I want breasts, and the second-class status that goes with them. Being a woman is difficult. God’s bodkins.

  — Well, men’s penises are kind of interesting.

  — They’re not all that impressive. I mean, the penis of the human primate is not as long proportionately as, say, the genitals of the Horseneck clam. Consider the male clam for a minute. He is ninety percent geoduck (pronounced gooeyduck)—he has no choice if he wants to connect with his lady clam.

  — Are you going to tell one of my own penis jokes?

  — Don’t be revolting. I’m talking about science. For instance, I read that the length of this human appendage surpasses that of all other animals and is supposed to make man the lord of creation. You see, men owe their penis size to us. When women stood upright, our vaginas swung forward and down. And the male penis, following the same principle as the giraffe’s neck, grew in order to get something that was out of reach.

  — That’s a fine theory, Mouse. It must be nice to be brainy.

  — I guess so. Still, a penis is embarrassing. It also seems vaguely inconvenient, like a last-minute detail that might get tangled up in bad-fitting underwear. Besides, Paulie didn’t want a penis with a capital P, either. I don’t know why her own psychiatrist didn’t understand this. It was his job to know better, after all.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Dr. Torval, you had a professional relationship with the defendant before the crime?

  DR. TORVAL: A very brief one, my lord. You see, she couldn’t accept any interpretation other than the one she came up with herself.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Under different circumstances, that would be considered a sign of maturity, Dr. Torval. Would you tell the court what assessment you made of Pauline Sykes?

  DR. TORVAL: Yes, my lord. Physically, Pauline is a normal, very well developed female. Biologically, she is a girl.

  HIS LORDSHIP: But she didn’t want to be one. Is that correct?

  DR. TORVAL: That is correct, my lord. As a very young child, her mother abandoned her and she was taken in by an elderly man and his wife in a small village in western Ontario. When they died, she went to Toronto and began to assume a male identity. I believe she hated women, my lord, because she felt she had been the victim of one. She associated the good things in life with being a boy, and the kindness shown her by the elderly man made her feel that being male was the light at the end of her tunnel, so to speak. She called him her grandfather and kept up the illusion with herself and others that he was still alive. I believe she forged letters, my lord, so that the school would let her out to visit him. When I examined her she was reluctant to let anyone see her breasts and genitalia. She does not like them. She bound her breasts up with a tensor bandage. And she has done this since she was twelve. She has been masquerading as a boy since she was twelve, my lord.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Is the defendant insane under the definition of the law, Dr. Torval?

  DR. TORVAL: That is an interesting point, my lord. I believe the defendant is a schizophrenic severely affected by what Freud calls primary penis envy. It is an early and crucial stage in a girl’s development.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Excuse me for interrupting, Dr. Torval, but does this stage apply to Pauline Sykes? I’m looking here at the report of another psychiatrist, Dr. Julian. He says the defendant is a sane young woman who was responsible for her actions. He believes she was on her way to becoming a transsexual—a process that can lead to a collapse of judgement.

  DR. TORVAL: Well, it’s interesting that you should bring this up, my lord, but transsexualism is not usually combined with a
psychotic break. It might benefit the court if I elaborated on gender disorder. First of all, transsexualism is not considered a major illness that would affect one’s appreciation of reality. It is a type of sexual deviation. When we are born, most of us have a biologically assigned sex. If you are a little boy you have a penis and testicles, and if you are a little girl you have a vagina and ovaries. And at about the age of two or three, we have already come to feel psychologically the way that is appropriate to our sex. I mean, my lord, if you are a little boy, you do little-boy things; if you are a little girl, you do little-girl things.

  MISS WHITLAW: Objection, my lord. There has been some debate as to what these little-boy and little-girl things are.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Thank you, Miss Whitlaw. May I remind both you and Dr. Torval that this court is not interested in investigating psychiatric theories, no matter how fascinating. We are here to ascertain the sanity of the accused.

  DR. TORVAL: Yes, my lord. But in the interests of this case, I think we have to make certain philosophical assumptions about the genders.

  MISS WHITLAW: My lord, could we move away from these philosophical assumptions? As you have noted, this is a court of law, not a place for the debate of theories. Besides, many traits that were once considered masculine, such as courage and mental aggressiveness, are now seen as characteristics that can be encouraged in one gender and discouraged in the other. And if I may point out, my lord, there are psychiatrists who believe penis envy is a secondary stage of female development.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Miss Whitlaw, are you introducing new medical opinions?

  MISS WHITLAW: My lord, a colleague of Dr. Freud, Dr. Karen Horney, said that Freud himself exaggerated the importance of penis envy among little girls. She believed that both sexes envy each other, and that just as little girls wish for penises, little boys wish for breasts.

  HIS LORDSHIP: Let us get back to the defendant, Miss Whitlaw. And I would like to remind Dr. Torval once again to restrict his statements to the facts of the case.

  So much for Karen Horney and breast envy. Or womb envy. As for me, I wanted something more grand than a penis. I wanted what my hero, President Kennedy, had: courage, individual style, a life of action, and an intellect. Was I asking too much for a Mouse?

  24

  The day I was to achieve mastery over the female sex, I awoke late and caught Ismay in the act of putting on her merry widow. I’d only seen corsets like that in the Frederick’s of Hollywood ads in American movie magazines. Sal wore a Maidenform girdle, because a lady had to hide her bum crack. (Her rule didn’t apply to me—a white cotton garter belt was all she figured I needed around my skinny pelvis.)

  So the merry widow, with its flecking of puckered daisies, was a revelation. I hid under my covers and watched in awe as Ismay hoisted it up over her knees and leaned against the wall, panting and grunting. She appeared to be stuck in the tight, elasticized material, which squeezed her blubbery thighs together like breasts. A gross kind of leg cleavage, you could say.

  I sunk deeper under the sheets so she wouldn’t notice me watching. I found Ismay’s body morbidly compelling. No matter how many Oreos I ate, I stayed scrawny; my ribs showed and my hip bones stuck out. But Ismay, like the Virgin Mary, seemed designed for one use—to get knocked up, as they say in the Landing. Some girls just had no luck.

  When I peeped out again, she was yanking it up with the look of a real, honest-to-God martyr going to her execution. And then the corset settled into place around her heart-shaped hips, and she leaned over and very niftily swung her breasts like bell clappers until they snuggled into the sculptured cups. Now Ismay could stand without the support of the wall. She saw me watching and made a prissy, exasperated sound, then turned her back so I couldn’t see her struggle into her nylons.

  I didn’t want to think mean thoughts about anyone on my day of trial and tribulation, so I rolled out of bed and dressed like I always did, in one of the bathroom cubicles so the other girls wouldn’t see Alice. A few of them were dressing in cubicles, too. The noise of flushing toilets was the only way I could tell the other girls were there. None of us walked around naked anyhow. It was considered showing off, like admitting you thought your old bod (as Tory called it) was hot stuff.

  When I came back into the bedroom Ismay smiled at me, as if she’d forgotten I’d witnessed the war of the corset. Slowly, she pivoted for me on high-heeled black patent pumps. She wore a white polo-neck blouse and a short plaid skirt that accentuated her hips. All the girls wore them, the tall girls wore short ones, and the short girls wore long ones for no good reason that I could see.

  If Sal was with us, I knew she’d take Ismay aside and pull out something black or navy, all full of whispers about how plump girls need dark colours to slim them down.

  But Sal would likely be stopped in her tracks by Ismay’s painted face. Ismay looked pumped up with authority. Oh, she was just asking to be deflated, if you were in the mood to take on the Ismays of the world. And then Paulie leaned in the doorway and whistled at Ismay and said, “Hubba-hubba,” and I forgot about Sal’s views on who should wear plaid and hurried after Paulie, who ran off down the corridor like one of the wild boys who live in girls’ dreams, racing ahead and drawing me on until the tattoo of Ismay’s black patent pumps grew faint behind us.

  25

  I stood in the gloom of the coal shed tasting new thoughts—like eating Italian olives for the first time. My kilt and Hardy Amies blouse lay crumpled in a corner. Not only did I have a mocking boy’s mouth, but Paulie had pinned up my dark hair and stuck one of her baseball caps on my head backwards, and, presto: I was—well, sort of—a guy.

  I christened myself Nick, as in Nick the Greek, who ran a takeout restaurant in Madoc’s Landing. A Sweet Cap hung from the corner of my lopsided lips. And behind the sunglasses (which I’d borrowed from Paulie) Nick’s eyes rolled evasively—sneaky and bad in pockets of shadows; dark-circle-ringed eyes up to tricks of all kinds. And the obscene gesture he instinctively made with his tongue in his open mouth seemed to say la-la-la, this is what I want to do—lick all those nifty brown nipples nestling behind Oxford cloth blouses, just waiting for me to have my way with them.

  “It’s easier for a girl to become a boy than the other way round,” Paulie said as she tucked her long braid inside her cap and started to bind her breasts with a tensor bandage. She hadn’t bothered to bind mine, because they were so small. “If you act with authority, people will accept that you’re a boy. But if you want to be a girl you have to act like a dope, and acting stupid is harder. Who wants to leave behind your self-respect for a vacant kind of openness—a manner that suggests waiting for men to like you is the answer to life?” Paulie added and put on her funny old hunting cap. Now the change was complete. Lewis stood in her place. She, I mean, he, helped me slip into an old coat belonging to Willy the janitor. It was several sizes too big with padded shoulders and tucks in the back. Girls’ clothes, Lewis said, were like wearing nothing, but men’s clothes were tailored and made you feel propped up. And he was right. Just putting on a suit and tie changes you. You feel in control and at ease with the world. And men’s shoes help, too. They’re heavier, so you feel solid—rooted to the ground.

  Lewis said I didn’t need the real McCoy, though; my orthopedic shoes were heavy enough. Their sound pleased me. Boom-boom—I sounded like the Virgin in her gunboats. I was worried my hump would show through the jacket, but Lewis built up my other shoulder with extra padding. In Willy’s jacket I looked bulky, not deformed. He was strict with me about how I moved: I had to stand upright, with my shoulders back and my head up. And I had to lock my knees so that I seemed to swagger. I also had to pull in my chin and, above all, never lower my eyes. I could keep my teeth clenched if I liked, but I had to make sure my jaw was tight. And pull down my lips when somebody asked me a question I didn’t know how to answer. I couldn’t smile much, although it was okay to open my eyes as wide as I could and bare my teeth, so that the other person couldn’t
tell if I liked or hated them. This confusion was threatening in itself, Lewis said.

  That was the man part.

  The Greek part was my doing. It was simple decoration—an accessory, like a shoulder bag. I hadn’t realized I’d watched Nick so much, but I guess I always watch men, the way you watch the weather. From out of nowhere, I found I had Nick’s gestures. The waggly tongue; the constantly moving hands, either swinging a little doodad or hovering protectively over the belt (as if he were about to do something primitive, like rub his balls). Sal had given me a rabbit’s foot, and I’d practised swinging it constantly and staring the way Nick did, as if his eyes could suck up girls’ bodies like a vacuum cleaner. Lewis thought it best if I didn’t say much. I only knew one or two Greek phrases, anyway—thanks to Nick. F. Harry Stowe for thank you, and endaxy for everything else. It meant “okay.”

  The less I said, the less chance there was of my getting mixed up, Paulie said. The most important thing was never to look as if I’d made a mistake. I told Lewis that Nick the Greek always thought he was right, because his mother spoiled him. That’s why mothers are such a problem: they can make or break you. If we had had Nick the Greek’s mother, we’d be set for life, too.

  Just before noon, we set off for the ravine path, which ran between the school and the nearby suburb of Wilbury Hollow. I was too nervous to speak, so I kept my hands busy with the rabbit’s foot, swinging it back and forth at the level of my crotch. Far away, near the grove of camperdown elms, we could see the Virgin planting bulbs with Sergeant. She couldn’t see us because we were hidden by the ravine trees. We climbed through a new hole in the fence Lewis had found, and I heard my heavy orthopedic shoes hit the paved path. Boom-boom, boom-boom. I was a boy. My clothes said so. My arms and legs swam through the light autumn air as we strolled whistling past the small stucco houses where normal people lived. Their little old-fashioned gardens with plots of pink cosmos and fragrant nicotiana made me homesick for Madoc’s Landing. We walked by a group of kids throwing a basketball into a hoop over the garage door, and one of the boys waved at us. I waved back, and Lewis grinned.