The Dominant Animal by Kathryn Scanlan

Author:Kathryn Scanlan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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I stand behind a woman much shorter than I am. The top of the back of her head reaches my collarbone, though I’m not tall. I’m of an average height. She has a lot of hair, voluminous and curly. Even oiled with some product to cohere it, her hair takes up so much room that I keep an extra foot between us out of respect. Sometimes when I ride the bus or train and I’m wearing my hair down, the person in the seat behind me touches or pulls it, by accident or not, when placing his hands on the handle on the back of my seat. When this happens I feel as though my hair should be tied up and netted instead of floating around for anyone to grab. So I keep my distance between myself and this woman’s hair, but she keeps turning around to talk to a friend of hers behind me in line, and her hair brushes my forearm every time, soft and tickling like a hovering mosquito. When she turns the third time, I read her shirt. She’s wide, with breasts that probably give her backaches, and stretched taut across them, in yellow letters: Prepare to defend your chicken. I glance back at the woman’s friend and the steadily lengthening line. Behind me, a man with firmly folded arms, hands fisted into his armpits, lifts his chin for a better look. A little girl leans against a large box on the ground next to him, her shoulders limp, her face turned to her feet, one hand bunching and twisting the hem of her dress. The man glances sideways at the girl. I turn forward again. He says, Huh? No, says the little girl. No? he says. Yes, she says. No, she says. Yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no.

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