The Wives of Bath (14 page)

“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.

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?

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.

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.