Bearded Women (2 page)

In the car I touch Doug’s hand and he doesn’t pull away. It is difficult to explain to him why I want a child of my own. It is difficult to explain it to myself, why I feel a need to grow round with the weight of an infant, why I want my body to create another body. I keep trying to come up with reasons but wonder why I have to explain myself to anybody. I always wanted to have a baby, and I wanted to be in my thirties when I did it, have a career and be able to take time off. Sometimes I think my drive to conceive has become stronger the more problems we have encountered, the more gynaecologists we have seen. My body should be able to reproduce. I have all the right equipment. Two sets in fact. But neither works.

By the time Doug and I get home, I’m confused and hungry and not a little cross. Bianca and my walking legs have the same menstrual cycle and it’s getting close to their time of the month. It’s crazy trying to change Bianca’s pad and my walking half’s pad in a little restroom stall, even when I use the wheelchair access ones. Doug and I eat cereal at eleven in the morning, too tired to make anything else for breakfast. I keep a little stool beside the kitchen table so I can rest Bianca while I eat. We need to catch a few hours’ rest, have to get up at eight in the evening, and by the time we’ve sorted through the mail and had our cereal it’s past noon. We’re both tired and irksome. The appointment, the infertility, the possibility of Bianca’s removal, is still on my mind. Even though I know it’s a bad idea, I want to have sex.

“Can I just do it with your extra parts?” Doug sighs.

“We have to use my walking legs,” I say.

“Too early in the morning for that,” he grumbles.

“Maybe this time it will work and the hormone shots will finally kick in.”

So we end up on the bed—me kneeling over Doug, Bianca arching her lower back and legs with her feet on the mattress, Doug grimacing up at me the whole time. It takes twice as long as usual before he comes. I fall off of him, to the side, hoping to catch it all and clamp it inside me. Become a baby, dammit. Bianca pulls at my side, her legs flailing in the air.

“Feel better now?” he says.

“Sure.” We go to sleep, get up at seven-thirty, later than we should, have just enough time to shower and dress and make dinner before heading off to work.

Doug and I met because we were nocturnal creatures. I was in college, a sophomore majoring in communications, and he worked at the all-night diner where I went to study. At first he gave me free coffee when he saw me sitting at the counter or alone at a table. That progressed to donuts, pie, milkshakes if I wanted them, then burgers and fries and even breakfast at five AM. In the meantime I was being prodded into a career in newscasting.

I always thought I’d like to work in television, but never pictured myself in front of the camera for obvious reasons. I figured I would do things behind the scenes, but ended up sitting at a news desk when no one else in my camera-shy television production class wanted to anchor the newscast for our campus station. It was only a half-hour broadcast, aired twice a week, and focused on local and university news. The other students convinced me it would be fine, Bianca would remain hidden, her feet balanced on a milk crate.

I worked for the campus station for five years, even after graduation. Viewership to our program increased tenfold and we expanded to a three-day-a-week and then a five-day-a-week show with me as the primary news anchor. I applied for my current job on a lark. They didn’t know about the extra body when I was hired because I sent broadcast demo tapes and did a phone interview. I figured only the upper half of my body would be important to them, anyway. I’ve had the job for twelve years now and think most viewers know about Bianca even though it’s just my upper half on the billboards all over town. Sometimes, though, when I’m at the grocery store or out to eat, someone smiles at me, gives a wave of recognition, and then her jaw drops when she sees Bianca.

The evening newscast is the same as usual—house fires, a gas station robbed, a dog that had twelve puppies and someone assumes it must be a county record. Overnight I’m working on more national and local news developments for the morning broadcast. During a coffee break at two AM, I make the mistake of telling Lottie, the night receptionist, that I’m considering having Bianca removed. She says her lips are sealed.

By five in the morning half the station knows. Lottie swears up and down she only told one other person. I want to strangle her. After my morning broadcast, the station program manager asks if they can do a special on the operation and my recovery.

“But this isn’t a done deal,” I say. “I don’t know if I’m getting the surgery.”

“Really?” He scratches his moustache. “I’d think an extra bottom half would be more trouble than it’s worth.”

“It’s dangerous to have it removed,” I say before marching out to the parking lot.

Everyone always asks why I don’t get Bianca cut off. I tell them our internal organs are mingled, which is true enough, but so many other things are mingled, too. I have always sensed her sexual desire. It is something instinctual, gut-level thinking. I don’t know how I would feel without her. Maybe lost. I’ve read about this happening with Siamese twins when they were separated, how they spent so long feeling what the other twin felt it was a near-devastating absence when that connection was gone. Bianca has always been more passionate than me. If I lost her, lost that, what else might change?

Beside my car in the parking lot I’m approached by a nice-looking man in a trench coat. He hands me a business card and asks if he can buy toenail clippings from Bianca.

“I’d pay a premium for them,” he whispers not unkindly. “More if I could watch you cut them, but just the toenails would be okay as well.” I stare at him. He smiles, tells me to think about it, touches the brim of his hat. I get into my car quickly and lock the door, sit in the driver’s seat for a moment. His business card says he’s an accountant. I wonder how he would know which body I sent the clippings from. If they were my toenails at all. There are always a few odd ducks wandering around the studio trying to catch a glimpse of me. There are often a few protestors, too, people who say the only reason I’ve had this job for twelve years is because of my body, because I am a secret spectacle.

If it were seventy years ago I could be exhibiting myself in a sideshow, painted larger-than-life on a poster on the side of a canvas tent. Freakish people used to be thought of as magical. Bianca could have been an economic asset. Now I’m just made to feel bad.

When Doug and I got married, both of our families were aghast. My mother did not want me to wed someone who planned on a career as a short-order cook, no matter how well-read I said he was. Doug’s mother was sure we were going to have kids with three arms. Doug and I had been dating for two years. Our parents met twice before the wedding to have dinner, meals that involved several pointed questions and long periods of silence. His mother asked my mother when I was going to get the extra bits removed. My mother asked his mother when Doug was going back to school. I will never be sure why we didn’t elope, why I let my mother insist on a church wedding. I don’t think anyone in his family said anything to anyone in my family the entire evening. But I loved Doug because he was a smart person, because we both liked travelling, because he was happy cooking and working nights and reading private eye novels. He didn’t mind that we would need to follow my news anchor career, go where I could find work, and he was proud that I had the confidence to keep Bianca. I’d known that I needed to marry a man who saw Bianca as a part of me, not something extra. And maybe that plan worked too well.

I was planning on going to the gym, and after the accountant incident I really need to work out, relieve some of the stress. They’re used to me at Perfect Body Gym, appreciate that I can bring people in at six-thirty in the morning. I have a free membership as long as I come in at least twice a week. They keep a little stool for Bianca behind the desk, one with a seat I can raise or lower depending on the equipment I’m using. I do some curls, work on my triceps, and do a few sets on the leg extension machine with my walking half. Then I take Bianca’s shoes off, place her bare feet against the wall, and lean all of my weight against her. I bend her knees and straighten them again. It’s kind of like doing sideways push-ups, keeps her legs and ass toned. Of course people are always looking at me, whispering behind my back, and over time I’ve learned to tell myself that I don’t care that much.

I get home at eight in the morning feeling tired but a bit better. Doug has been home for an hour at least, made us eggs and bacon and toast.

“The station manager called,” he says, squinting at me across the table. “It was about doing a show on you. Some sort of special. He wanted to talk to you about it.”

“I tell one person at work about the possibility of an operation and now it’s front page news.”I shake my head. “I’m still not sure about it.”

“You’re not?” he says.

“No. I don’t know. There’s the safety risk and . . . I don’t know.”

But that afternoon I call the gynaecologist, figure I might as well start going through pre-surgery procedures, just in case. I don’t even know which organs are connected where, how they would have to untwist my genitals from Bianca’s. While I am on the phone to the gynaecologist’s office I wonder how long Bianca could live on her own apart from me. Would it be seconds? Minutes? Hours? Nothing?

At dinner I tell Doug I decided to start preliminary testing but haven’t committed to anything. He’s mad anyway.

“They’re going to hook you,” he says. “Once you start down that road, even if you’re not sure, they’ll force you into it one way or another. Those doctors will lie, tell you it will be easy even if it won’t.”

“It’s still my decision,” I say, mad at him for thinking I can be forced into anything. “I can say no. It’s my body and I get to decide what to do with it.”

It’s my body that may conceive a baby. It’s my body to detach from Bianca if I so choose. Sometimes I get tired of making allowances for her. But when I lie awake at night I wonder what is mine and what is Bianca’s. Are my breasts her breasts? Is my head her head? Our head? How much does she exist as me and how much is she her own being? I know chickens are supposed to run around for a few minutes after they have their heads cut off. They say it’s a muscle reaction, but I’ve always thought the chicken was still bent on trying to get away. And what is the head on the chopping block thinking once it is independent of the chicken, watching its body in a futile sprint? If the body is still moving, what of the mind?

Doug and I barely talk for a week, just argue. He’s mad, says I’m going to needlessly put my life at risk, and he refuses to have sex with my walking half. He just wants Bianca.

“Those parts won’t be with us much longer.” He slathers his toast with strawberry jam. “Might as well make use of them while they’re here.”

“But it’s a waste of good sperm,” I say. “Until I get pregnant, it should all go into my walking half. The extra parts could stay if I conceived. And I’m still not sure if I’m going through with it.”

My argument fails to sway my husband and he sleeps on the couch for four nights. When he comes back to bed he’s still mad, but mad in a sex-deprived way. We try to figure out a truce—he can have sex with Bianca one night and my walking half the other night. Doug seems okay with this compromise but grimaces when he’s under me.

“You could at least look like you’re enjoying it,” I say.

He smiles a big fake smile.

I sigh because I’m not enjoying it, either.

When he has sex with Bianca it’s rougher than before. He thrusts harder, slaps her rear. I wince, tell him to slow down and be gentle. He kind of blushes. We change our strategy. Doug starts out with Bianca, enough to get him excited, then he lies down on the bed and I clamber on top of him while he struggles to hold the juice in. This works a couple times but involves a lot of bumped knees and shins. In the end he’s still more turned on by Bianca than my walking half, and this is hurtful though I don’t want to admit it.

When I go to have more tests, CAT scans and such, Doug shows his anger in other, smaller ways. He doesn’t always kiss me when we leave for work in the afternoon and get home in the morning. He starts doing overtime at the diner, working on weekends and ’til ten or eleven in the morning. He says if I want this surgery and we want a child, we need to save money. I bite my lip and nod.

Bianca’s wrath is an even bigger problem. She knows what I am considering, and during the eight weeks of pre-surgery testing I have two of the most painful periods ever. Bianca bloats and it’s hard to zip up her pants.

I try to reason with her.

“I’m just checking out options,” I say while driving to the hospital for another scan. “This is no done deal.” Her hips, her ovaries, her vagina are searing pain. I grit my teeth. All of Bianca hurts, even her knees and feet. I don’t know what to do. Part of me worries that even after she is removed the pain will still be there. I have heard stories of war veterans who lost hands and feet but could still feel pain in the absence. A phantom limb seems paltry compared to a phantom lower half.

Protestors are massed every day outside of the television station. They picket carrying signs with black outlines of people with four arms and three legs, say I shouldn’t be allowed to procreate at all, regardless of surgery. They believe the abnormalities are hereditary and I’ll only birth monsters. Of course I know it’s not true, but it hurts to know they think my body isn’t fit to produce another. Word also gets out to the local papers, and editorial page letters are devoted to me for three weeks. Some people say I should get the surgery. Some people say I shouldn’t get the surgery. The really whacked ones say I should have been killed at birth.

The station manger is mad is because I told him I wouldn’t do a television special, whether or not I get the surgery done. He thinks I should jump at the chance for local and national and even international press.

“Think of the fame you’d gain if the surgery were successful and you could conceive,” he says.