This story is from DIG ME OUT, my first story collection. Want the full book?
On the nights Mrs. Wallace is a man, she holds her bourbon in her right hand. Bootlegged, that bourbon. We worry, before these nights of Mrs. Wallace’s parties, that her connections on the North side won’t deliver the stuff that fills hands so surely. But Mrs. Wallace gets what she wants, even in this prohibition year of nineteen hundred and twenty four.
We bring Mrs. Wallace her bourbon when we rouse her from her evening nap, necessary for stamina on the nights she is a man. She is nearly seventy years of age, and we ask her how she feels upon waking.
“I woke up in my own bed, and not in a heaven or hell,” she says. “That feels quite nice.”
We nod our assent and relief.
We help Mrs. Wallace dress in her white tuxedo with tails that trail her calves, and a rectangular hat over slicked back gray hair. This, we think, this man’s uniform, this will be the clothing of the future for women. Now that we women, even we working women, can lawfully vote.
“No need any more for all the bondage of our clothing,” Mrs. Wallace says as we right her bow tie. “All the skirts and trussing that impede our work.”
We nod our agreement, thrilling to the scent of scandal in her sentiment.
The white of the tux is a striking contrast to the deep black of Mrs. Wallace’s skin. This color delights us, we who had only known people of money to be white, we who had often only known white people. We help Mrs. Wallace apply a dark kohl pencil above her lip, creating a thin smart mustache. We are taller than our employer, and lean down over her during this process.
“All you young folk, taller and bigger,” she says. “All these giants we’re breeding. Maybe people will one day grow tall enough to surpass all the shit we step in.”
On the nights in which Mrs. Wallace is a man, she steps lighter, stands taller. We watch her gaze at her reflection in the tall looking glass in her room, place her hands in her pockets and breathe deep.
“Pockets, ladies. Places for money, notes, keys. Men can carry their entire person upon themselves at all times. No wonder they have such confidence. Pockets will be our next push.”
Mrs. Wallace, on the nights she is a man, has the kind of self-assurance that is nurtured and built, puffed like the bellows in a fireplace. It is infectious, and we feel ourselves royal like her.
On the days she is a woman, Mrs. Wallace holds her tea in her left hand. Prim and watered-down, the tea.
She stands before the portrait above the fireplace, curled and gnarled as a tree root, and her lips move.
We breathe rougher, our chests tight.
But on the nights she is a man, the grand Bronzeville brownstone on the south side of Chicago is filled with life and color. Mrs. Wallace hosts her salon every month, welcoming people we had never before seen in our tenements and towns across the seas.
“I welcome the artists here, the beautiful and the ugly, the talented and the merely persistent, the oddities and the unfit,” Mrs. Wallace tells us. “All the people that live unbound.”
Mrs. Wallace describes her guests to us before they arrive, so that we might provide a more intimate greeting. She quizzes us, so that without fail we may identify the players on sight. And they nearly all arrive at once, so that there is a bustle of hats and furs, pocketbooks and cigarettes, all of us in motion as we collect the things people own, and name the figures we see.
There is Charlie Whitaker, a slight icy blonde man who takes flight on the ballet stage. There is Hume Roberts, with oiled black hair, long in front and shaved on the sides to show his egg-colored skull. There is Susie Sweetcheeks, burlesque dancer, wearing feathery scarves and dangling sequins across brown skin. There is Theodora O’Malley, dressed somewhere in between man and woman, in a pageboy cap and suspenders, demonizing Trotsky, lionizing Lenin, at top volume. There is S.S. Shepard, the poet, holding her cigarette cheek high. Made for the cinema, with boyishly-short and smooth black hair, sharp angles and deep shadows about her.
Two dozen men and women in this grand parlor, in all manner of dress and undress, a cloud of smoke above their heads and illegal liquor on their lips. Mrs. Wallace, standing hands on hips, framed in her bay window overlooking Cottage Grove Avenue, assesses the bunch.
“My licentious lords and literary ladies. Pauper princes and prostitute princesses. Artistic attendants and suffragette squires. My people.”
The crowd calls her King, addresses her as Your Majesty. We wonder at these Americans calling a negress a king, but also understand it.
The subjects call out at the same moment each night, call for a story, and each night Mrs. Wallace manufactures the surprise that satisfies them.
On the days Mrs. Wallace is a woman, she crafts these stories. We watch her, bring her tea and lemon, as she wears her pencils down to shavings, wears a path of wood creaks and groans, whispers to herself. We visit her sitting room that smells of wood and sweat and something sweet that reminds us of grandmothers gone. We inform her of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bring her food on silver trays when she ignores us. We remind her of the need for sleep, and guide her to her sleigh bed when it is long night outside her windows.
On some days, at increasing frequency, Mrs. Wallace receives her doctor, who asks her how she feels.
“I find I am now bound by an older woman’s body. Meanwhile, my mind resides elsewhere, unencumbered by physicality. It’s quite confusing.”
The doctor, a kind man with whiskers and white ear hair, smiles at Mrs. Wallace like he might a child, advises her to rest, to receive fewer visitors, to reap the reward of her seventy-some years. He leaves, and Mrs. Wallace disappears for a time. We often find her in her tux, even if it is not a night for visitors. We help her dress for bed. She tells us the same thing each time, pinching her arm and ours, in the fleshy part under the elbow.
“Doctors care about the meat. Men care about the shape. Whites care about the color. It’s the body for women, even when we’re old. No thought or care to what animates it.”
But on the nights Mrs. Wallace is a man, she is revered rightfully as royalty, begged to tell her tales, and we watch her ritual call and response.
“And what story would you have?”
Someone in the crowd always squeals for a fair princess.
“Far too many of those. And we all know what happens to the princesses once they find their Prince Charmings. Buggered in the ass.”
Laughs ripple through the crowd. Someone, usually one of the men, asks for a wicked queen.
“You’ll know more about queening than I.”
No doubt she is right. Finally, someone asks for a tale of the future.
“You want to hear of justice. Titans of industry thrown down, the meatpackers rising up. Our Chicago as the new Bolshevik paradise. All of us outcasts placed where we should be. But I have no such stories.”
Mrs. Wallace, even as a man, is a realist.
“I will tell a tale of true future. What awaits us all, if we are so lucky. Will you hear it?”
Her subjects shout aye, and we fill their glasses with more bourbon.
“But beware. My tales are of truth, which is not the same as happiness. Prepare yourselves for a story of horror. I will tell a story of a woman grown old.”
Much laughter comes, each and every night Mrs. Wallace is a man.
The stories vary but are themed. Mrs. Wallace tells of an old woman who falls down the stairs, only to use her resulting leg cast to cart contraband. Or an old woman who watches as her children quibble over her fortune, revealing herself as a witch only when they reveal themselves as demons.
Once Mrs. Wallace has performed, others follow. Miss Shepard reads a handful of odes to physical love, and her listeners fan themselves and sigh. Mr. Roberts monologues from his plays of tortured souls leading double lives, to shouts of bravo. Miss O’Malley stumps for the workers party, to polite applause and yawns. Mr. Whitaker and Miss Sweetcheeks dance a duet, both wearing too many clothes to dance free but blotted enough not to care.
Mrs. Wallace surveys her subjects, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a grimace that tries to be more. She ends the performances with the same requiem each time.
“Who sings songs of us, friends? And the bravery of living each day? No one but us.”
On the days Mrs. Wallace is a woman, we cook, bring her food, clean her cabinets and cupboards, polish her silver, dust her décor. We—Irish and Polish and Czech and Italian—chatter to ourselves in our own languages, and to each other in thick English words accented on the wrong syllables.
We picture our futures. We think of homes of our own, with American husbands and American children. Our own kingdoms, where we may do as Mrs. Wallace does. Where we have solved the mystery of how to obtain what we wish.
On most nights, after most of her guests leave, Mrs. Wallace slips upstairs to find Miss Shepard waiting. We are instructed not to wake them in the morning.
We servants come from rules, by men and God. We come from stern taskmaster mothers and severe mistresses and scornful masters. We find respite in Mrs. Wallace’s kindness. Yet she sins so fully, so clearly. It is on these nights we struggle, pray harder on our knees, will the sin to leave this house.
But sometimes, Miss Shepard leaves with the rest, and we are happy. Mrs. Wallace sits downstairs in her tux, slumped with fatigue yet breathing hard with excitement. She watches while we scurry about, cleaning up the detritus of her court.
“Shall I tell you girls a story?”
We stop our efforts, knowing that this means we will sleep less in order to finish later. But we stop.
“I tell that crowd tales of old women. But I don’t talk of what makes us old.”
We sink to our knees easily, willingly.
Mrs. Wallace talks of slaves then, two who ran away to the north. We know a bit about this, small nuggets of this country’s history. We also know other tales, from our own families and our own lives, pogroms and feudal landowners and war, always war. Mrs. Wallace talks of the child they have, who runs away from bondage as her parents did. We think of our own running, the creaking, nauseous ships that carried us, the cold but female statue that greeted us, the rattling, shrieking train that shuttled us across the country and into this city. We think also of Mrs. Wallace, of this house, of the people she consorts with, and we construct our own stories for her running.
Mrs. Wallace talks of the man above the fireplace, and we look up from our seats on the oak floor to the stone fireplace, the wall-size photograph propped on the mantle. Mr. Wallace was a big bear of a man, wearing what appears to be a white tux with tails. He smiles, ignoring the standard of solemnity. Mrs. Wallace tells stories of her husband, the man who married her knowing who she was, the man who loved other men, the man who gave her this house before he died.
We struggle again, thinking of the prayers we will whisper on our knees, fierce.
Mrs. Wallace pauses for some time.
“When we traveled, through the three decades of our marriage, Mr. Wallace and I heard stories everywhere. We learned other languages tell stories in words that are divided. In Spain, la montana means the mountain. A feminine word, for something that was part of creation, and will be here long after us. But the future is el futuro. A masculine word. It would always make me cry, thinking about that.”
It is on these nights, the nights Mrs. Wallace is a man, when she speaks to us without shame, that we are brave. We do more than simply nod and be kind, as the help must do. We are women, dreamers.
“Mrs. Wallace…”
We stumble over our tongues, the syllables that sound different in our home languages. We try to translate what is in our heads and hearts. We try to believe that this woman will understand dreaming, even from the help. We try to ignore the voice of our rules and mothers, who speak only of shame. When words fail us, we simply look at our Mrs. Wallace and pray that she is the magic that we see.
But she smiles and shakes her head, at we silly girls who don’t listen to the story.
On the mornings Mrs. Wallace is a woman, we hold our breath before we open her chamber door. We think of what Mrs. Wallace says on the nights she is a man.
“Remember how the world sees the future.”
So we hold our breath, hoping to find the woman breathes freely.
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