The Wives of Bath (7 page)
Authors: Susan Swan
“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.
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.
As ever,
Mouse Bradford
September 25, 1963
Dear Mr. President,
I’m writing this in morning prayers. Yesterday Miss Vaughan gave us a little talk about the hymn maker Frances Ridley Havergal. She read us a boring chapter from a book called
Morning Bells
and talked about how we should give ourselves up to God—i.e., not just our minds but, Mr. President—our hands, feet, lips, eyes, ears, and so on. What for? So we can become instruments of righteousness. “The little hands will no longer serve Satan by striking or pinching; the little feet will not kick or stamp, nor drag and dawdle, when they ought to run briskly on some errand; the little lips will not pout; the little tongue will not move to say a naughty thing.” Personally, Mr. President, I’m going to keep my hands, so that I can write you. This morning the talk is just as bad—i.e., the history of Bath Ladies College. Apparently, this dumb school is modelled after Cheltenham Ladies College in England, like a lot of girls’
schools in Canada. Some of our teachers—i.e., Miss Vaughan and Mrs. Peddie—taught at the British school. Now Miss Vaughan is reading us a funny poem about two British headmistresses from the olden days.
Miss Buss and Miss Beale
Cupid’s darts cannot feel
How different from us
Miss Beale and Miss Buss
All the girls laugh, and Miss Vaughan is laughing, too, as if she didn’t realize the girls thought the same thing about her.
In a row against the north wall sit the grade thirteens and the prefects in their yellow knotted belts. The teachers sit in a row against the south wall. Every old biddy has her ankles crossed, her hands cupped in her lap. We’re supposed to sit like that, too. If our deportment isn’t good, we let down the reputation of the school. Queen Elizabeth’s portrait is hung on the wall behind the lectern. She has nicer hair than Miss Vaughan, better makeup, and she has a
husband
.
At least I know the names of all the teachers now. And, more important, the names the girls call them behind their backs. The Virgin is the nickname for our headmistress, Miss Vaughan. She’s called the Virgin because she is untouched by the male hand. The girls here say they wear their virginity pins in her name. These are circular silver pins that everybody wears on their clothes when they aren’t in uniform. Miss Charlotte Ibister, our gym mistress, is called Hammerhead, because she looks like a shark and has very big thighs. Hammerhead makes the fat girls cry when they can’t do the splits over the horse. Mrs. Peddie is called Lola the Les, because she’s in love with the Virgin, who arranged for her to have quarters near her in the boarding school. Mrs. Peddie teaches English plus sex and scripture. Because she is a divorcée, some of the teachers think she’s a loose woman. (Not me. A man would have to be crazy to ask out somebody who looked like her.) She smiles so hard you can see her gums, and she wears tight wool sweaters when her breasts are way too big. They look like torpedoes about to burst out of her brassiere. Everybody giggles when she and the Virgin
walk together down the corridor. They both have big, fat bodies that jiggle when they move, and it doesn’t seem to bother them one bit. The big difference between them is in their height. Mrs. Peddie is short and always smiles, and the Virgin is tall and scowls. They’re like the figures in a Swiss cuckoo clock: one predicts sunshine, and the other, showers.
I know I shouldn’t be so familiar with you, when you are a high official of the land, Mr. President, but do you think I’ll turn into an old hag if I stay here? A few years in this dump and you don’t notice you’re wearing the same stupid shirtwaist you wore to prayers twenty years before. There are no men to say you look nice, so you forget you have a body and face which the world sees. (Nobody, of course, except another les.)
The matrons in the boarding school are dogs, too. Miss Phillips, or Phooey Phillips, doesn’t use underarm deodorant. She uses lamp oil to clean the spots off her dresses because she’s too cheap to send them to the cleaners. I hate her because she gets the rules mixed up and doesn’t let us go to the bathroom after lights out. So you see, Mr. Kennedy, I’m getting to be an old hand. I don’t know the names of the girls yet. They all look the same to me in the school uniform.
Warmest regards,
Mouse Bradford
September 26, 1963
Dear Mr. Kennedy,
Morley’s a writer, too, by the way. He hasn’t had two books published like you. (I know, for instance, you published
Why England Slept
when you were only twenty-three—ten years older than me!) Morley publishes every week in the Madoc’s Landing
Bulletin
. His column is called “Bedside Manner.” Example:
Despite claims of chiropractors and osteopaths to the contrary, there’s no reason to ascertain, from the evidence at hand, that few doctors take these quacks I have mentioned seriously.
Morley’s sentence structure gets a little tangled. You, Mr. President, write more rhythmically. Example:
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
I notice you like using the principle of parallel sentence structure. You use balance to create a sense of reason and fairness. It’s the trick of a good rhetorician. I can’t say the same for Morley, but he’s not in your line of work. He has to get people’s heart rates lower. So a lot of jumbled words make them slow down, if you see what I mean. They have to stop and think about what he’s saying, don’t they? So for a doctor, Morley writes just fine. On the other hand, he could try a parallel sentence or two, and maybe you could vary your sentence length, if you don’t mind my saying so.
The worst thing about Morley being a writer is that he never writes me. Well, c’est la vie.
Luff,
M.B.
P.S. Other parallels between you and Morley. In the hero department. Morley won the Intercollegiate Football Championship for Varsity against McGill. With only two minutes to go in the game, he kicked the winning three-point field goal from 43 yards out. Morley saved the day. Just like you did when you towed one of your men away from the sinking P.T. boat, a rope between your teeth.