The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan

Author:Susan Swan [Swan, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-36358-9
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2001-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

So much for Karen Horney and breast envy. Or womb envy. As for me, I wanted something more grand than a penis. I wanted what my hero, President Kennedy, had: courage, individual style, a life of action, and an intellect. Was I asking too much for a Mouse?

24

The day I was to achieve mastery over the female sex, I awoke late and caught Ismay in the act of putting on her merry widow. I’d only seen corsets like that in the Frederick’s of Hollywood ads in American movie magazines. Sal wore a Maidenform girdle, because a lady had to hide her bum crack. (Her rule didn’t apply to me—a white cotton garter belt was all she figured I needed around my skinny pelvis.)

So the merry widow, with its flecking of puckered daisies, was a revelation. I hid under my covers and watched in awe as Ismay hoisted it up over her knees and leaned against the wall, panting and grunting. She appeared to be stuck in the tight, elasticized material, which squeezed her blubbery thighs together like breasts. A gross kind of leg cleavage, you could say.

I sunk deeper under the sheets so she wouldn’t notice me watching. I found Ismay’s body morbidly compelling. No matter how many Oreos I ate, I stayed scrawny; my ribs showed and my hip bones stuck out. But Ismay, like the Virgin Mary, seemed designed for one use—to get knocked up, as they say in the Landing. Some girls just had no luck.

When I peeped out again, she was yanking it up with the look of a real, honest-to-God martyr going to her execution. And then the corset settled into place around her heart-shaped hips, and she leaned over and very niftily swung her breasts like bell clappers until they snuggled into the sculptured cups. Now Ismay could stand without the support of the wall. She saw me watching and made a prissy, exasperated sound, then turned her back so I couldn’t see her struggle into her nylons.

I didn’t want to think mean thoughts about anyone on my day of trial and tribulation, so I rolled out of bed and dressed like I always did, in one of the bathroom cubicles so the other girls wouldn’t see Alice. A few of them were dressing in cubicles, too. The noise of flushing toilets was the only way I could tell the other girls were there. None of us walked around naked anyhow. It was considered showing off, like admitting you thought your old bod (as Tory called it) was hot stuff.

When I came back into the bedroom Ismay smiled at me, as if she’d forgotten I’d witnessed the war of the corset. Slowly, she pivoted for me on high-heeled black patent pumps. She wore a white polo-neck blouse and a short plaid skirt that accentuated her hips. All the girls wore them, the tall girls wore short ones, and the short girls wore long ones for no good reason that I could see.

If Sal was

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