When we lost our heads, p.28
When We Lost Our Heads, page 28
George could not bring herself to let Sadie languish in prison for even a few days. She knew Sadie didn’t have a notebook, and she needed to write every day.
She had had a meeting with political men. It had been a humiliating experience for her. When men saw her for the first time, they were always upset. She knew they wanted to shake her and tell her even if she wasn’t ugly, she should at the very least try to look feminine. She did not make any effort to appeal to their gaze. They had refused to listen to her.
Then George heard Sadie was miraculously out of jail, so she hurried home to the brothel to see her. On the way, George stopped at the carpenter’s to pick up a dildo she had ordered. She wanted a dildo that was bigger than the penis of any of the men Sadie had been with. She carried it under her arm as though it were a magic wand. She thought of it as belonging to her. As being part of her body.
George loved when Sadie did things to her that a woman might traditionally do to a man. It thrilled her. Sadie came up to her and fastened the ascot around her neck. She felt such a sense of belonging. Another time Sadie leaned forward and used the hem of her sleeve to wipe a chocolate mustache off her top lip. George blushed with delight. Sadie was stepping down off a flight of stairs. She inadvertently put her arm out for George to hold her. And George never wanted to let go.
Whenever they made love, Sadie asked George to put the dildo on. She clearly liked to be penetrated. Once, Sadie requested she get a larger dildo. This was a request that would break the ego of many a man. But George merely had to go down to see the carpenter and have him fix this problem for her. The artisan told George the size she was asking for was far too big. But George told him to go ahead with it.
* * *
George bumped into Marie as she was leaving the building. Marie was confused by this young man. She usually felt her body tense up and become defensive whenever she was in the presence of a man, but she didn’t feel that now. She was looking at a peculiar creature. She knew Sadie might be infatuated with this personality. Whoever they were, she wanted to get this peculiar being out of her way.
George stepped to the right as Marie simultaneously stepped to the left. George moved quickly to her left and Marie stepped to her right. George stepped to her right and Marie stepped to her left. This either went on for a few seconds or it went on for an eternity. And somewhere in an alternate reality, Marie and George were facing off against each other forever.
They both stopped finally and looked up at each other. George stepped to the side and lowered her head like a gentleman and allowed Marie to pass by.
Marie thought she should have reminded the person of how her name was on every sugar bag in the city. And everyone in the whole city was stirring a small scoop of her into their teacup. And they were drinking a little bit of her sweetness. Then she moved past as though George were a pesky, fleeting thought Marie was brushing out of her head.
But George immediately went from being irritated to being devastated. She was seized by loss and disbelief when she saw Sadie step out of the brothel wearing her cloak and carrying a portmanteau in her hand. It was partway open and she could see Sadie had all her writing materials inside. But why? She always knew Sadie came back home to her stacks of writing. Why was she taking her writing material with her? Was she planning to be gone for a day or two?
George couldn’t bring herself to ask, in case the answer was yes. But she didn’t have to because Marie’s footman stepped out of the brothel carrying a trunk filled with Sadie’s books, followed by a twelve-year-old prostitute carrying a box filled with Sadie’s clothes and a stack of Sadie’s hats on her head.
“George, darling. I’m going to go spend some time with Marie. We have so much catching up to do.”
“You’re taking all your things.”
“Yes, of course. But I need a change of scenery. It’s too difficult for me to be here. The police might barge in any day. I can’t go through that again.”
But she could tell by Sadie’s demeanor she wasn’t leaving because she was frightened. She was animated and excited. It was the first time she had seen Sadie giddy and enraptured by someone. She had assumed Sadie was incapable of these types of feelings. But now she knew better, and it broke her heart. She was capable of feeling these things. Just not for her.
“I thought you hated the Golden Mile,” George said timidly.
“I do. I’m not going to the Golden Mile, really. I’m going to Marie’s mansion. It’s a world unto itself. I’ll come see you again soon. I’ll have a new draft of a book we can edit together.”
George winced at this. She wished Sadie had said she would come back to visit or hold her. But she would come back for something self-serving and practical.
“Anyhow,” Sadie said, “if I stay here, I’ll wake up to an army of Marys trying to slit my throat.”
George heard Marie’s peal of laughter from inside the carriage. Obviously this statement had been made for Marie and not her, as George had no idea what it could mean. And then Sadie climbed into the carriage without even looking back at her.
The twelve-year-old was still on top of the carriage fastening the trunks as it began to drive off. Who knows how far it went before she was able to jump off.
George stood outside the brothel for a few moments after Sadie left. She realized it was Marie who had gotten Sadie out of prison, and this meant the two women were in each other’s lives again. She would never be able to compete against Marie’s power and charm. George’s eyes were watery. As though the surface of a very still pool had been disturbed by a single stone.
* * *
George went to her room. She sat on the bed next to the box. She opened the lid of the box and then closed it quickly. She found she couldn’t look at it. Who was she to think she could ever have any use for a dildo that big? It had nothing to do with her. She was ashamed of it. She sat with her sexual organs in a little box. As though she were something you ordered from the store and you were meant to put together on your own.
She wondered whether Sadie preferred Marie because she was more typically a young woman. She loved the way Sadie described the female body in her books. But how did her body fit into this narrative? She did not see herself anywhere in fiction. And she did not see herself in Sadie’s books either. They were a celebration of the female body, but they were not a celebration of hers.
There was a pile of new stockings lying on the floor like a group of condoms discarded after an orgy.
But Marie represented everything about the Golden Mile she hated, George thought with frustration to herself. George and Sadie were a team. Working and writing in the brothel had been what had inspired her novel. Why would she just drop it all? Hadn’t her home been a home to Sadie? Had she, all this time, been regarding this place as a run-down dump? She was just staying here as some sort of lark and experimentation. Until she had an opportunity to go back to the Golden Mile.
George looked around her room. It had seemed so cozy before. She had always loved her attic room. Now it looked like a dump. The carpet was threadbare. The windowsill was covered in bird droppings. The only really expensive and beautiful thing in the room was a pair of boots Sadie had left behind underneath the desk as though a ghost, naked except for a pair of boots, was sitting there writing.
George picked up a pair of stockings. She took off her own clothes and put on the stockings. Then she went over and pulled on Sadie’s shoes. She laced them up, then tottered over to the mirror. The high heels of the boots made her walk hesitantly, as though she were standing on thin ice that she might crash through at any minute. She looked in the full-length mirror to see if she looked feminine at all but found she rather looked as though she had been drawn by an artist with no skill and she was all awkward angles. She kicked off the boots.
What do you do when you are heartbroken? You feel terrified of your own emotions. George felt her emotions building above her like a storm cloud. The room was so filled with emotions it was as though it were filled with humidity. She had to get out of the room. She couldn’t bear to lie on the bed where she and Sadie had made love. She had spent her whole life as a bachelor and hadn’t minded it. But now the thought of having to spend the rest of her life alone was terrifying. It made her life seem so long and forlorn. She had been lucky enough to find someone she loved. But this person had chosen someone who didn’t resemble her at all—and was, in fact, quite the opposite. She wanted to be with someone buxom and blond. Someone who smelled like roses and did everything prettily. If Sadie had left her for a man, things might have been easier. But she had left her for another woman.
George put her suit back on and left the brothel.
* * *
George walked to a part of the river where men gathered to sunbathe. It was probably the last day of the year they were able to do it before it turned cold. She wanted to lie down on the sand next to all the naked men. Their penises all sleeping to one side or the other.
She had been surrounded by women her whole life. At the brothel the women had always said she dressed like a boy and looked like a boy. They were the ones who had pointed that out to her. She was only dressing the way she felt comfortable and at ease.
But when they talked about romancing men, they never spoke about her. They left her out of these conversations entirely. If they were only attracted to men, they were not attracted to her. There had been a woman who had fooled around with George for a year. But the minute a man had come along, she had abandoned George abruptly. And how could she not, when being aligned with a real man brought a woman so much social standing in the world?
George wondered whether teetering between the genders made her impossible for people to take seriously. Perhaps it was because she did not really identify as a man or a woman that others could not see her as a proper person who had feelings and dignity and as much need for love as anyone else did.
But what could she do? The way she carried herself and dressed was the only way she could feel truly in her own skin. Were she to grow her hair and wear a dress and take on the mannerisms of a woman, she would feel as though she were awkward and unhappy, and as though she were pretending to be someone she was not.
George thought perhaps she should call herself a man. She avoided men in general, especially unfamiliar ones. They were the ones who would yell in her face she was ugly and needed to put a dress on. But she would go join them. She would take off her clothes and even though they would see she had female genitalia, they would understand that, on the inside, she was the same as them.
And if she were naked, she could not be accused of trying to be anyone but herself.
She took off her clothes. She lifted up a rock to put on top of them. The small bugs under the stone squiggled this way and that. They were like the leftover nuts and bolts and screws from the creation of the world.
She lay down naked near the men. It wasn’t long before she found herself being dragged off by police for public indecency. The police officers put her in the back of their carriage. There was a beautiful man in the carriage as well. The man had rouge on his cheeks. He had a dress whose bodice was hanging too low on his body. His nipples were out. Anyone could see he had the nipples of a beautiful girl. She wondered whether they could switch body parts. If things could be that simple.
The next morning she was released with the young man she had been brought in with. George had spent the night in the women’s ward. And she was exhausted from a night of long contemplation about her identity. The beautiful man had spent the night in the men’s ward. His face was battered. His eyes were swollen shut like mussel shells that were impossible to open. His dress had been torn in several spots. He was no longer proud of it. He covered up the soiled dress with his cloak and hurried awkwardly down the street.
How tragic to be a man, George thought.
CHAPTER 39
Fifteen Minutes of Infamy
In the following days, George was filled with a rage she had never felt before. It sprouted thorny branches out of her heart. She had no idea rage was in the heart. She imagined it would be somewhere in the brain. She had felt many emotions in her stomach before. That was where sadness always seemed to be.
She had done everything she could to make Sadie’s life better. She had dragged her off the street from where she was about to be murdered. She had given her a home. She had given her a community. Marie had more power in society than any other woman she knew. She owned the largest factory in the city, one that employed so many young and vulnerable girls. Marie had the ability to do right by them. But, instead, she exploited them all. George was shocked that Sadie did not factor all these mistreated girls into her evaluation of Marie’s character.
Sadie had a grotesque and aristocratic taste.
George was reminded again that she didn’t belong to anyone. Madame was the one constant in her life. She knew it was a source of joy to Madame that she was still alive. That it was proof in itself of a certain genius in George as a child. Madame had had other children left with her. They never lasted long. One darted out into the street. One managed to drown himself in a spaghetti pot of water. One never came home and remained a mystery to everyone. According to Madame, it was always a small mercy when they died.
She always believed it was George’s ugliness that allowed her to survive. It’s always a mistake to live off your looks. It was like eating nothing but sweets your whole life. Eventually it begins to rot your smile. George’s ugliness made her clever. Madame believed that staying alive always involved a level of spitefulness. But Madame’s joy and delight in her existence didn’t exactly equate to love, did it?
George never longed for a mother so when she was little. In general, mothers were terrible people. She saw mothers allow their daughters to become prostitutes at eleven years old. They took their frustration out on their children. They beat them over the head with slippers. Generally, children put up with more abuse from their mothers than from anybody else in the world. Ordinarily if someone were to hit you with a shoe, you would either run away or try to defend yourself. But when a mother did it, the appropriate response was to cower. And ask her how she was feeling. And tell her not to feel bad for beating you.
Whenever George did something stupid as a child, she sat by herself and contemplated her actions. She berated herself for her stupidity. She made herself feel worse and worse as a form of punishment. Often in these moments, she isolated herself from all the other children. She sometimes took a chair to the corner and sat in it, facing the wall. She had no idea when she was supposed to get up from the wall since it was a mother who always determined whether you had stayed there long enough.
* * *
George realized that to be able to reject Sadie, she would have to become a writer herself. She had taken so much joy working on Sadie’s projects. She was not prepared to give up on the literary arts even if she had been abandoned. It was now time to find her own subject matter.
George began to write about Marie. Her quill moved furiously, like the tail of a fox that was halfway down a rabbit hole murdering a family. George took the same subject as Sadie, ironically, but her approach was different. She wrote a pamphlet about the shocking expenditures Marie had made on a single afternoon. She thought the world had a right to know this young woman had purchased every variety of stocking in the shop. That she had purchased forty stockings at once. She said Marie’s carriage was filled with similar purchases she had made throughout the day. That this was only one of her many stops, that the carriage was filled with fur coats. George naturally embellished the story a little. There was a rare white monkey she had purchased as a pet that was rummaging through a box of jewels.
Since the only establishment George had specified was the stocking shop, if anyone went there to check its veracity, the whole of her story would be certified true. She considered this to be fine journalism. It was certainly a cut above what any of her gentleman peers were doing. George left out Sadie from the spending spree. She wanted to destroy Marie and bring her down in the eyes of the world, and perhaps Sadie’s as well.
Hyperbole was a necessary part of belles lettres. It wasn’t really lying. Everything needed to be exaggerated in print to capture the emotions evoked in real life. That was why there were so many murders and high-stakes adventures with pirates in books. Otherwise, how else would you be able to convey the emotions that went on in a girl’s head from the time she woke up in the morning until the time she went to bed?
When she was done, George looked at the letters on the page. They seemed to twitch like limbs that had recently been torn off insects.
* * *
George had never acted in a spiteful and malicious way before. But George had also never been heartbroken before. She knew there was a benefit for working-class people to learn how radically different the lifestyles of the upper class were from their own. That while the workers toiled and toiled away at the factories, achieving a bare level of sustenance, the owners were squandering the fortunes built on their backs in extremely lavish ways. Although she could justify her action by all these political reasons, she knew her motives were pettiness and jealousy. She knew she had to make a strike against Sadie or she would feel destroyed by her. She had to hurt Sadie so she could feel like a person again.
George set off down the street in her top hat. It joined the other top hats moving down the street, and they all looked like a group of chimneys on rooftops against the sky.
* * *
George brought her writing to the printers of broadsides on Saint Jacques Street. The man behind the desk looked her up and down dubiously, prepared to reject her efforts outright.
