Listen to the author reading this story:
Seánie’s taking me to Paris.
Would we find an audience there, and them Europeans so used to people like me?
Oh yes, he says. They never seen the likes of you.
So we set out with the bright of dawn, Daddy hunched over the jockey box like a weary sailor, Seánie next to him, me in the hold with our few things, poking a fuzz of head out through the little window. Inside is cool and dark, away from the wet heat of August.
Daddy tugs the reins and Clip sets out south. That bothers me. Ain’t New York, Boston, them cities where we might catch a steamer, east?
But Daddy just says, Woolly, shut that evil out your mouth.
So I keep my silence as we leave the lumber yards of Minnesota behind, Daddy and Seánie gabbing away in Gaelic. They use it when they want me scarce, them sounds like they’re hocking up a piece of meat. I hate it. But I’ve words enough to know they’re on about Paris, and me. A show.
Seánie used to say not everything that passed between the mouths of men was becoming of a young woman. And he’d get me blushing, really blushing, because Daddy had never called me that, nor “girl” nor any human thing, in my twenty-two years. “Alice” is the most I can expect, but that’s Mammy’s name, not his. Usually it’s “Woolly”.
What show? I say.
My mind swirls with dancing men in gibuses, women doing the can-can. The whole gay pageant of the Old World.
Just you wait, says Seánie.
We keep south, past miles of shadowy pines. The ALICE sign Seánie painted is roped to the back of the wagon, and word travels. Sometimes folks ask can they see me. The dog girl, or the monkey girl. We never use such expressions — Seánie says they’re unkind. To me it’s just plain truth, though what I am exactly Dr. Mason never determined. I was the only creature of my kind in all these United States, perhaps in all the world, he said, though there were many of my race who had something of the ape in them. He ran his cold doctor hands under my armpits, down my legs, to confirm what he could plainly see, and concluded: Hirsutism. With emphasis on the “hir”. But no need to worry. Past the neck, and inside my body, I was no different than any other girl.
And that’s lucky, Alice, he said, because most young ladies with this condition cannot bear children.
We drive and drive, until the trundle of the wagon wheels coaxes me to sleep. In my dream is the same voice as always, a woman’s, ragged but full of love: Ó a stór, a stór mo chroí, ó a stór, a stór mo chroí.
I wake in the late afternoon, feeling hot and wet. The voice is still ringing in my head, but not the rest of the dream: that I always forget. My chest is sore, and I smell iron. I open my eyes: a flash of scarlet blood running down my right leg. Outside, boots beat on dust. The owners of the boots are shouting, and drinking too, judging by the din they’re making.
I fetch a cloth and make myself presentable. When I get my monthlies, I want nothing more than to sit in the grassfield behind Mamó’s and listen to the buzz of the factory saws. But we’re here, wherever here is.
Beyond the window, a group is following us with leering eyes. At the first sight of me, one of the men reaches up, pulling his tar mouth close. Tugs at my hair and my beard. I yell, trying to pull away but can’t: he has a whole clump of hair in the grip of his dirty hand. And then he’s yanking my clothes, as to see if I’m like that all over, his friends guffawing behind him. One of them tells him to be careful — them freaks’re strong.
I grab the sanitary cloth and shove it into his face. He spits a big wet one right into it, howling: You bitch! You harlot! I look to the crowd desperately and all I see are clamouring, laughing faces, their mouths opening and closing like ventriloquist dummies. Only one is standing aloof. A man in a long black cape watching from where the dirt road becomes field. My eyes meet his, send him a silent plea.
He pushes through the crowd to the front of the wagon with soft excuse mes. And then Seánie is pulling the other guy off me, saying: You pay money, good money, to do that or you ain’t do it at all. The clamourers shrink back. Seánie cuts me a foul look and tells me to say out of sight.
The wagon screeches to a stop. I put the cloth back on, for wet as it is it’s all I have, and wrap my head in my knees. I don’t know why we’re stopped but I wish we could just get out of here, make camp for the night.
The man with the cape is still up front, and I hear him say he would be most intrigued to see the young lady. Seánie pokes his head in.
This one’s got money, he says. And the boat’ll be dear.
I say, All right then. But just him.
And make yourself decent.
Seánie beckons him into the hold. He’s a little older than me, clean-shaven and kind of sadly handsome, like women do be sometimes. He has to stoop to get in, bunching up the folds of his long, black cape.
You must be the famous Alice, he says, his puce lips playing a smile.
I shrink into a corner of the wagon and nod. Daddy don’t permit me to speak to men. He answers all of Dr. Mason’s questions himself, even about my monthlies, and even though my English is better than his.
What has a big star like you visiting us?
He keeps his hands in his pockets, but he strikes me as agile. He could spring on me in a flash of a second if he wanted to.
I respect women, Alice, he says, as if he can read my thoughts.
I fetch the picture book I’d brought and flip to the painting of the Eiffel Tower.
Paris? Well, I wouldn’t start from here! he says, his grin all teeth. He has an accent like Daddy’s, but smoother, chocolate milk smooth.
Unless you mean Paris, Missouri. That’s no insignificant journey either.
A spark blazes in me. Of course they meant Paris, Missouri. Stupid to think otherwise. Stupid Woolly, stupid beast…
I claw at my arm like whatever creature I am might do. He pulls me from myself and holds me trembling. He smells like silage and that’s the smell of home: a good smell.
Hey, now. You’re right to be upset. A girl like you deserves the real Paris.
I nod. He pulls away, content he’s quenched the fire.
Tell me, Alice. Do you like this work?
Does a bird like to fly? A fish to swim? Liking don’t come into it. Daddy didn’t send me to school, so I can’t read nor write, except my name on Seánie’s sign.
I like seeing new places, sir, I whisper.
But you could do without the crowds, right? The poking and prodding?
It’ll be like that wherever I go.
Seánie raps on the wagon bed.
I’m staying at the Comber Inn. You’re most welcome to join me after supper tonight, he says.
Then he’s gone, slipping a fat bill into Seánie’s palm.
We camp near the town. The moon hangs in the sky like a dinner plate, and a cool wind is bringing fall.
Seánie skins a rabbit and we make soup. I can’t much eat the days before a show. Daddy don’t let me cut my hair, except if someone wants a lock for good luck, so it does be always in the way: a fuzz over my eyes, my mouth. I prod the wet flesh with my spoon, then feed the rest to Clip.
Daddy falls straight to snoozing. Seánie rattles the keys to the wagon and says, Hurry up. He’s going seeing the elephant, which means chasing girls, and what a fright they’d get if they saw me prowling round, and you them, Alice. Ain’t it on account of your own safety I have to lock you up.
But he has me in such a rage with his talk of Paris. All I can think of is the man with the cape. Maybe he can show me the real Paris. Maybe he can show me a world that isn’t this sodden, spiritless wandering, the dirty hands of strangers. Or maybe he’s found in me a brief trifle, like all the rest of them, the only difference being his approach. But I can’t stand knowing he’s sitting there waiting for me while I’m pawing at that silly old picture book.
I hold the lie in my mouth and the taste of the rabbit flesh melts away.
I’ve gotta go, I say.
You went before we left.
It’s the other kind.
He sighs, and looks to the big clump of bushes where the hill folds into the town.
Alice, play pretend, all right? You won’t be causing a scene again. And hurry up.
So I go inside the wagon and switch my petticoat for knickerbockers, wrap my coat around my head like a shawl, so as no one will see me in the hazy gas light. I wander into the bushes and tiptoe down the hill into the town before he cops I’m gone.
The Comber Inn is stale with the sweat of men, every surface tacked with drink. Loggers and farmhands with big red faces beaten by work shuffle cards. Maybe I smell like them too, for they take me for one of their own and ask would I have a drink, sir. The man with the cape is sitting legs akimbo at the bar — he’s shorter than his stooping suggested — and says he will cover any tab. So I say I’ll take a whiskey, not knowing any other drinks but what Seánie makes a habit of. He answers he will have the same.
He takes our whiskies and situates us at a table hidden by a partial wall. My face is hot, and I keep thinking about the cloth all sodden.
The man with the cape sups from his glass with the air of one used to liquor, and says, Your father’s taking you to a curiosity show, Alice. They’ll put you on display and charge folks a dime to get up close. Extra for photography. You’ll meet other people like you, which will delight you at first, and you’ll be fed and watered.
His voice is high and clear. It reminds me of the one I’d heard in the dream earlier, though I still can’t recall what it was about.
Will I ever see Paris?
No. You’ll stay on the road, and die out in Louisiana, or Florida, or some place where it doesn’t snow in winter.
And it’s a good living, sir?
Ranchers make a good living. Do their cattle?
Sure, but look at me.
Laughter snarls from the far end of the inn. I look over. Faces from earlier. A fire roars in my head. There’s no way out except through them.
Listen. Your father will tell you you’re animal. Your brother will tell you you’re animal. But if they could turn themselves inside out, you betcha they’d find a monkey’s liver or an ass’ spleen. And not just them. We’re all animal, in our best and basest forms. That’s your truth, and that’s why they laugh at you.
The men are on us now. They’re gathered round the table, their eyes laughing, pointing. One of them pulls the coat off my head.
You a missie or a mister?
Wanna show us?
They’ll paw at me and not a penny I’ll get off them. Daddy would call that a waste, Woolly, and what else do you have to offer someone, a óinseach?
Come on, Alice!
The man with the cape grabs my wrist and pulls me out, but he don’t need to, because I want the night, I want away, from eyes, and eyes, and eyes, from Daddy and Seánie, from a world where I’m the only one.
We run out the town and into the black cornfields. We run and run until the blood in our legs hisses like music and the cries of the Comber Inn fade on the wind.
At the first little grove, we stop to catch our breaths.
The man leans against a spruce, withdrawing a pipe from the folds of his cape.
You smoke, Alice?
I shake my head.
What’s your name? I ask.
Jonathan, he says. It means God has given.
And what’s God given you?
He laughs, the teeth in his mouth bone white.
Not that name, anyway.
He unclasps the button on his cape. His clothes rest on a body curved like a woman’s.
I was born in-between, he says. My parents decided to make a freak outta me. More money in that, given I’d never marry. But I had no knack for it, and I was clever. So I snuck out one night, and they never did bother trying to find me. There were better acts.
Hazy lights are bobbing on the horizon. Someone shouts, and someone else joins them, shouts ugly and discordant like an untuned fiddle.
The dream from earlier lights up my mind. Mammy was trying to soothe me while she lay blanched in her sick bed. Ó a stór, a stór mo chroí. And Daddy was shouting, his eyes bloated with rage, ‘cause he had no English to tell the doctors to save her, not me, not this creature of the Otherworld. Daddy didn’t like the name Alice because I was animal, and I had killed her — not in the way of a bear or a wolf, but with a spirit that was too much, that had clung too ferociously to life while the flesh fled Mammy’s bones. And that was why I owed him and the entire Donovan family, and he’d make sure I knew it.
Daddy’s looking for me, I say.
Jonathan holds out his hand.
Alice. They put you in that cage again, you’re never getting out.
He’s right, the fool. Only the inside of me knows it but the outside don’t, and I the fool too, stuck in place like a naughty mule. I think of Paris again, and all the bright, gay places I’ll never see. And the pain of it fills me up until it’s all overflowing, and I claw at my hair and my beard and the whole hateful artifice of me, wishing myself away, wishing myself nothing.
Jonathan only waits. And we sit with no words between us until the lights quench and the shouts silence, and the dawn rises defiant over the grey heads of the pines.
Let’s go, I say, and take his hand.
Katie Canning is a writer from Dublin. She recently returned to Ireland after a decade in Sweden and lives in Galway, where she works in video games. Her work explores liminal and marginal identities, language and its limits, and the strange intersection of myth, power, and gender. Her short fiction has appeared in Sparks, and her interactive fiction work Alltarach made the 2024 Nebula Reading List.