A rag and the west road

The light goes in a dirty way, not a clean bell. Someone in the cottage slams a pot for real this time, and the older man swears and works the knots with fingers that are not trying to be kind. The cap cuts your rope with a knife that nicks your wrist. You come out of the hole on legs that do not belong to the height you woke up with, cum already drying on the inside of your thigh, and you would fall if the wall was not there.

They do not linger. The older one slaps the posted woman’s hip like a job done and walks off toward the houses. The cap looks at you once more, at the same face as hers, and laughs under his breath.

"Don't stand in my way tomorrow if you're still here."

Then he is gone down the path, and it is you and her and the pile by the bucket.

She gets her own ropes off with her teeth and a thumb, which she has clearly done before. She pulls her shift down over her hips as if that makes her decent and she limps to her wash first, not to you. Dress, shift, drawers from the dirt — she shakes them off and holds the dress away from her nose when she finds the smear you left on the hem. She takes the band and the stockings off the line too, that you skipped wearing.

"Thief," she says, but quieter than before.

You stand there naked in her body with your hands covering nothing useful. The breasts sit heavy and cool now that the sun is off them. You start to talk and her voice comes out of you and you hate that all over again.

"I didn't know it would — I took them off. I thought that would put me back."

She looks at you properly then. Same face looking at the same face. She is tired and used and angry, and there is a thin bit of pity in it anyway, like she has seen worse luck than a fool.

"You put my clothes on and you were me," she says. "You took them off and you stayed me. That is not something people do. That is a curse, or you stole my shape with the cloth. I don't know the difference and I don't want it in my yard."

"I was a man this morning. Charlie. I woke up with nothing on and the line was there."

"I believe you were a man. I had your cock in me before you put the dress on, so I am not confused about that part." She dumps the drawers into the bucket and points her chin at the cottage. "Stay there. If you come inside my house with my face I will scream."

She goes in. The door does not latch well. You hear a chest scrape and a drawer slam. When she comes back she has a rag of a dress over her arm that was not on the line.

It is old. Thin at the seams. The neck is cut so low that when she shakes it out you can see the whole idea of it, and the hem is not trying to find anyone's knees. There are stains on the front and on the skirt that have been washed and have not come out, pale and set, the kind you do not ask about if you have been at a wall all afternoon.

"I was going to tear it for rags," she says. "Put it on. You are not walking out of my village with my tits out. People will think I came off the wall and went for a stroll."

You take it. Your hands shake. The cloth smells like a chest that was closed too long and like her anyway, old sweat under the dust. You drop it over your head and the neckline falls off your chest until you hitch it, and even then there is a lot of you in the air. The hem sits high on your thighs. When you bend for nothing the stains across the skirt pull tight. You are covered and you are not decent.

She watches you tug at the hem and does not help.

"Listen to me, Charlie, or whatever you are. Cloth did that. My cloth. You wear a woman and you become the woman. You take it off and the woman stays. If that is a gift, it is a rotten one. If you put on someone else's dress in the next place you land, I would not bet you keep this face. I would not bet you get your old one back either. Taking off didn't fix, you already tried that."

"Is there someone who can fix it?"

"In the village? No. We have a wall and a well and we post who the village says to post. We do not keep a curse-woman on a stool." She glances at the cream stripe on the post and sighs. "The town is west. An hour if you walk like you mean it. Bigger wall. People who write names down. People who sell cloth that doesn't trigger whatever you have, if you have coin, which you probably don't." As she glances down at your figure.
"Maybe a stall that reads what is on you if you put copper on a stone. I have heard that. I haven't the need to pay for it."

A voice calls from two houses over, curious, not close yet. A door opens somewhere. She flinches the same time you do, because it's her face they will see twice if they come around the fence.

"That is why you leave now," she says. "Before someone asks why there are two of me and which one belongs on the wall tomorrow."

"What's your name?"

She almost does not give it. Then she does, like a shove.

"Lenna. Don't use it in town like you are me. I still live here. I still have a line to hang."

She puts her own work dress over the shift without putting you back in it and she points you at the gap in the fence that is not the path the men used.

"Green Road west. If a cart stops, you think hard before you get on it looking like that, or don't. ...its 50 50 these days how good people are. If you sleep in the dirt, the road charges for it. I am not walking you there. I have to wash my hem."

You go. The rag rides up when you walk and you have to keep a hand on it. No shoes. Dirt and last light and the stains on the skirt catching what is left of the sky. Behind you she is already at the bucket with her real wash, and she does not watch you out of sight.

The village drops away after the third fence. The road is just a road, packed dirt, trees on both sides, Wellmark somewhere ahead in the dark if that is the name of the town she meant. Your chest bounces when you walk too fast. You can still feel the cap in you when you take a long step. You are Lenna from the neck down and the neck up, and Charlie only in the part that is panicking behind her eyes.

A cart-bell sounds far up the west track, not close. Closer than that, something moves in the ditch grass and then goes still.