Bearded Women (17 page)

When I cried that my flaps hurt because I raised my arm too high, stretched the skin, my mother pulled me beside her on the couch, gave me a tissue and a cookie.

“You’re beautiful,” she said. “I’ve never created anything quite as lovely as you.”

I chewed my cookie and stopped crying for a little bit, stopped asking my mother if I could get the flaps taken off. I liked that I could soar off the back of the slide, even though my mother threatened to take away my allowance if I kept doing it.

My father sent gifts at my birthday and Christmas until I was eleven years old. Then the presents stopped. He had moved across the country to Oregon, had another family, another wife, another set of kids. Kids without flaps.

“Boring,” said my mother. She let me draw on my flaps with nontoxic markers so I could look even more like a butterfly. “See how pretty they can be?” my mother said.

I nodded but wished I could wear normal jeans and shorts like other kids, not just the caftans my mother sewed.

I started sitting on the roof when I was twelve years old, in junior high. I got home before my mother, who was usually at school until five. Our house was two storeys high. The roof sloped gently so I had to be cautious, but it was easy to go out through my bedroom window and hang my legs over the edge of the roof, over the gutter. I faced the backyard and a field of clover and Queen Anne’s lace, often lost track of time and was still sitting there when my mother got home.

“No desserts for a week if you don’t go back through the window,” she yelled. Or no allowance. Or no TV. I jumped anyway. My mother gasped. I knew she was afraid I’d fall by accident, not be able to spread out my arms. I didn’t understand why she wanted me to keep the flaps, told me to have pride in them, but never let me do fun things.

When I began having periods, I had to start wearing underwear. My mother bought extra-extra-extra-large satin panties, helped me put them on and pull my extra skin over the waistband. Skin bunched against my body, drooped like angel wings or dead flower petals.

“I want to get the flaps cut off,” I said to my mother while standing naked in the bathroom, save a pair of pink panties designed for old women who weighed three hundred pounds.

“Honey,” my mother said and hugged me tight, “just try this for a while. Soon I‘ll show you how to wear tampons.”

I gritted my teeth. I had to wait until my period was over before I could resume flying, before the flaps were worth the hurt.

When I was in tenth grade my mother was diagnosed with diabetes. She had always been a large woman, rounded and imposing, but she shuddered in the doctor’s office when the nurse explained how she’d need to give herself finger sticks every morning to test her blood sugar level. My mother and I sipped diet soda in the hospital cafeteria. I patted her arm and felt the pull on my flap.

“It will be okay,” I said, “you just have to be more careful now.”

“Careful not to lose toes,” said my mother, glancing down at her feet. “Careful not to have a heart attack.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “You’ll stay healthy.”

“I thought I was,” said my mother. “I want a sweet roll.”

“You can’t have one. You know that.”

“This isn’t going to be a good life,” she said.

“They make sugar free everything now,” I said. “All kinds of sweets.”

“Not a good life,” said my mother, shaking her head.

In high school I dated boys who read sci-fi and fantasy novels and were entranced by my flaps. When we went to my house after school I showed them how I could fly. A couple of them wanted to jump off the roof with me. I told them they were crazy, but the boys were insistent. Two of them broke their ankles and I had to call an ambulance.

“You always have to show off,” my mother muttered as she sat beside me in the emergency room. “Boys will date land-bound girls, too.”

“I tell them not to jump,” I said. “Boys never listen.”

My mother sighed. “Stress like this makes me want chocolate.”

I gave her a couple of the sugar-free chocolate buttons I kept in my purse.

“Not as good as the real thing,” she said.

“What was your blood sugar this morning?” I said.

“I’m still alive and kicking,” she said.

I knew she cheated sometimes, ate sweets and took extra insulin.

“I worry about you,” I muttered.

My mother put her hand on my knee and grimaced.

“You can’t keep injuring your boyfriends,” she said. “The guy you marry will be in a full body cast by the wedding.”

No boys liked me enough to date me more than a month, but I didn’t tell my mom that. I had a reputation as being hazardous. Sometimes I kind of liked it. Other times it was annoying. Not much different than the flaps.

I went to college to get a degree in education and become a first grade teacher. Much of children’s literature was based on fantasy, things that were special and out of the ordinary, so when I explained to my students that I was a butterfly woman, the kids smiled and nodded. They liked the big colourful caftans I wore, the way that fabric flowed around my body.

I got the first tattoo on my flap when I was twenty-three. A Renaissance angel with a sword under my left elbow. My mother cheerfully paid for half of the cost. I think she hoped I’d quit flying once I’d found another use for my flaps.

I bought a house in the country, only one storey high so it wasn’t as good for flying, but on breezy days I could jump from the roof and float several feet before touching the ground. I added more small tattoos—hummingbirds, cardinals, a griffon, a phoenix, and a gargoyle with tiny wings.

I was by myself a lot in the evenings, but I didn’t mind the quiet after being around little kids all day. I dated a few guys, mostly teachers and librarians, but no one who I wanted to marry. My mother kept asking if I had a special friend.

“Not many guys know what to make of me,” I said.

“You’re lovely,” she said. “Anyone can see that.”

I didn’t feel like explaining the full dating logistics because she was my mother. The extra skin made sex problematic—I had to be on top, and my partner had to watch his elbows and knees. Part of me was afraid of having children. I worried they would have flaps, too. I couldn’t explain the fear to my mother, since she thought the flaps were great. At least that’s what she told me.

My teacher friends admired the flaps, but it was hard for anyone to understand what it was like to live with them every day. Sometimes I dreamed of myself without flaps. I saw them hanging in my living room like two big canvases, covered with tattoos of winged dragons and seraphim and parrots. I dreamed myself wearing normal clothes, having normal sex, shelving high books without that constant pull on my arms. I woke up after the terrible dream-realisation that I was grounded.

When I visited home I showed my mother the latest tattoos. I added a peacock by my right ankle, a lovebird by my left, and a Pegasus next to my right wrist. My mother fingered the tattoos carefully, smiled and nodded, said I had good taste.

“You’ve made your skin so beautiful,” she said.

“The flaps decide a lot of things for me,” I said, grazing the peacock with my fingertips.

My mother chose to ignore this comment.

She drove to the store to buy groceries for dinner. I went out my old bedroom window to sit on the roof, smell cut grass and clover. The field behind the house was purple with them. I thought about my father, wondered what he was doing, if he ever thought of me and felt sorry. My mother said the flaps weren’t the reason he left, but I didn’t believe her. Since he divorced my mother when I was five, I found myself trapped in self-centred childhood logic. Of course I was to blame for the divorce. Of course it was my fault.

I felt the wind catch under my flaps, the slight ballooning of skin. My attitude about my flaps changed from day to day. Sometimes they were the most fun things in the world. Sometimes I hated them. But even then I knew that if I got them cut off it would be an impulsive act, one I didn’t let myself consider too hard.

My mother came home before I expected her, marched outside with her hands on her hips. For a moment she looked exactly like she did when I was twelve.

“Hey you,” my mother yelled. “That’s dangerous. Go back through the window.”

“Mama,” I called down, “I’m fine. I’ve done this a million times.”

“And scared me every time,” said my mother. “Someday you’re going to land wrong on your ankle and then you won’t be fine.”

“I’m careful,” I yelled.

“That‘s what Auntie Bernice said before she got pregnant with Doug,” said my mother.

I jumped, spread my arms, and spent five midair seconds watching my mother gape. I landed a little hard and twisted my ankle, walked back inside without wincing but took a glass of ice water to my room while my mother read in the living room. I dumped the water in the upstairs bathroom sink and put the ice in a washcloth to make a cold pack for my ankle.

At dinner my mother asked how my ankle was doing.

“They’re both fine,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” said my mother, smiling slightly.

That night she checked her blood sugar and frowned at the reading on the meter.

“Too high?” I said.

“I’m fine,” said my mother.

She had a folder crammed with pamphlets about the effects of diabetes, ways the body could deteriorate. She could lose her sight to retinopathy. Lose her feet to poor circulation. Have tiny heart attacks she might not feel because of nerve damage in her chest. My mother didn’t like having to be careful about what she ate, railed about her numerous medications.

“I’m obeying the rules because I want to be alive to see my grandchildren,” she muttered.

I didn’t know if I wanted to have children, especially because I had thirty new ones in my classroom every year. When I got home I only wanted to speak with another adult, if I talked to anyone at all. But it was easier to nod at my mother’s comment than say anything in response. I wanted her to stay healthy.

When my mother turned sixty-six she retired from being an elementary school principal and moved to an assisted living facility because of her diabetes. The disease aged her too quickly. Her doctor whispered to me that she hadn’t been checking her blood sugar carefully. She was getting neuropathy and sometimes her hands and feet felt numb, made her afraid of falling.

After the move my mother and I sat in her new kitchen, drank coffee and ate whole wheat crackers.

“I was getting lonely anyway,” she said. “This is better.”

“I want to get the flaps taken off,” I said, mostly because I wanted to see her reaction.

“I’ll write you out of the will,” she said. My mother took another sip of coffee. For a moment I thought she was joking. Then I wasn’t sure.

Six months later my mother called to say she might be developing retinopathy of diabetes in her left eye, losing her sight.

“I’ll need to have surgery,” said my mother.

“Oh Lord,” I said.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “Fairly routine. That’s what the doctor told me.”

“Make sure the rest of you stays healthy.”

“I wish my body would cooperate,” said my mother.

“I’ll visit this weekend,” I said.

I couldn’t concentrate at school. What if my mother couldn’t see me anymore? She refused to admit she had the disease, ignored the diabetes so it was killing her faster. What if she’d already had a couple of little heart attacks that she wasn’t able to feel? What if she had a big one?

I told my students a story about a butterfly woman who worked in a sideshow. Her act was to jump from ladder to ladder fifteen feet up, leap to the next as the first came crashing down. She didn’t have flaps of skin, just an airy costume and a lot of balance. I said the sideshow butterfly woman was magic, and children should never try to jump off a ladder. My students asked if I was magic, too. I told them no.

That evening before I left for my mother’s apartment, my period started. I grumbled and yanked on a pair of baggy underwear that confined my flaps and made it difficult to drive because of the pull on my arms. When my mother reached out to hug me, I wrapped my flaps around her body so tight the skin hurt more.

We drank tea in the kitchen. She discussed the dining room set and the good china and how much they should be worth because they were antiques.

“You might want to keep them and see if they gain value after I’m gone,” said my mother. “Or you could sell them if you need the money.”

“Are you dying?” I said.

“These are things we’ll have to discuss eventually.”

“I can’t keep the flaps after you go.”

“Don’t be silly,” said my mother. “It shouldn’t matter if I’m here or not. They’re yours. Now the pitcher and basin set on the dresser over there is at least one hundred and fifty years old so it should be worth a fair amount of money.”

“This is all you’re really going to leave me,” I said, grabbing the edge of my left flap and shaking it. “Wings. You wanted me to keep the flaps and you’ve never wanted me to fly. What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”

“They’re beautiful,” my mother yelled back. “I want you to keep them. But I don’t want you to get hurt because of them. And I don’t want you to lose them when I’m gone.”

I stood up so fast my chair fell back on the floor. I stomped down the hall to the bathroom but tripped on a throw rug and twisted my ankle which was already temperamental from too many hard landings. The fall pulled hard at my flaps, stretched them, and I was sure the skin was torn. I sat on the floor and cried until my head stopped hurting.

I peered into my sleeves. No blood. I padded back to the kitchen, limping slightly. My mother sat at the table, pinching the skin between her fingers, pulling it tight.

Breakfast with my sister is a disaster. She wants to make muffins, but I have to crack the eggs and measure spices and hold the bowl while she stirs. She can only use her right hand since the stroke, and the work I can do versus the work she can do leaves her frowning. I’m wearing a short-sleeved shirt so my tattoos show, which further annoys her. She doesn't like being reminded of them. When my sister spreads jam on her muffin, the knife slips and falls onto her white pants. I help her change. She grumps around afterwards, but there’s not much either of us can do.