The Private Parts of Women by Lesley Glaister Read Free Book Online

babies grow in their mothers’ wombs. That a womb is like an upside-down draw-string bag inside the mother and when the baby is ready the string loosens and it comes out. The bag is full of water in which the baby swims like a fish. After that, I had dreams about the boy and me. I saw us swimming in a tank in our coats and shoes, tiny children in Sunday hats with bubbles streaming from our mouths. That was a happy dream but another was terrible. It was a dark, cramped, slippery dream of slithering limbs and a struggle in which I killed Benjamin Charles who was not separate at all but was another part of me. I knew, even when I was a little girl, that I could never ever have a baby. That I could not be trusted with a baby.
    Father’s punishment. He stripped me of my clothes. Hard and rough, his face a blank, his fingers cold as metal fingers. He stared at me as if he hated me, looking at my shivery body. Then he made me dress in boy’s clothes: underwear, buttoned shirt, trousers, jacket, woollen socks. My fingers fumbled with the buttons. He stood over me watching every move. And when I was dressed he would look at me with tears standing in his eyes, and a white tremble in a muscle by his mouth.
    â€˜Boy,’ he would say. And then he would open the wardrobe door and push me in and lock it behind me. The lock had a tickly curved sound like a silver S. Then I would hear the bedroom door slam, then silence. Almost silence. I’d have my face pressed into the folds of Mother’s dresses and coats, silk, velvet, fur. Sometimes my mouth filled up with fur. She had a beaded dress that rattled softly when I moved. There was a choking smell of camphor and stale perfume. There was no light, not the merest chink round the door.
    I thought I would choke to death in the folds of the clothes, the stiff, scratchy and soft fabrics against my face, the beads so smoothly cold they felt wet. My legs would tire and I’d sink down among the lumps of shoes and other things on the bottom of the wardrobe. Once I put my hand by accident into the pocket of a fur coat and I pulled out something hairy, sticky, an old peppermint sweet that I sucked.
    I did not fight or scream because I thought I would suffocate. There was no air only cloth and fur. Perhaps I slept because I never remember coming out of the wardrobe, only going in.

BOY
    Couldn’t Father see me?
    When I stood in front of him
    Me
    He only saw Trixie
    I was out and I did bad things for him
    To show him
    But he looked at me and saw Trixie
    He wanted not her but me
    I made Trixie let me do things
    Steal things, eat things, spoil things
    Run and climb and hurt
    I was strong then
    I am strong now and I am awake
    Why can’t I get out?
    I am getting stronger
    I am moving in her and shouting

BONNY
    Our kitchen windows face each other over the fence so we could smile at each other, Trixie and I, as we stand at our sinks, but we don’t. We preserve the pretence of privacy. There is a Venetian blind pulled up above the sink with a greasy black knotted string but it is too disgusting to use. I let it down once and bits of God-knows-what fell out from between its slats so I pulled it quickly back up and left it. I considered getting a new one but it would seem rude to stop pretending not to see and put a real one up.
    It might be nice to have a pet. Maybe I should get myself a dog, a puppy. For what? To clutter up and complicate my life. Why can’t I just be . Anyway it would seem disloyal to Bonny, my dog-sister I used to call her as a child.
    Before my parents went away, Bonny had been ill. I thought she’d seemed better during the holiday but when they didn’t return she got worse. My parents’ house was sold very quickly and I went to live with my aunt in Colchester. I was rich for a young girl, but useless. I was a few weeks off starting my teaching degree. I should have been looking for somewhere of my own but I couldn’t do it. My aunt,