Helen Oyeyemi: Mr. Fox

It was half past eight when I left the bar. The night was very stark, alternate streams of town cars and chequered taxicabs, blaring horns busily staking claims — here is the road and here is the sidewalk. But the road looked so much livelier, what if I tried the road?

I often think it would be such luxury to go mad, and not have to worry about anything. Others would have to worry for me, about me. There would be some sort of doctor there to tell me: “Don’t worry, Mary, it’s just that you are mad. Now, be quiet and take this pill.” And I would think, So that’s all it is, and I would be so glad. But aloud I would say, “What? I’m perfectly sane! You’re mad. . ” Only mildly, though; just for show, really.

November 1st, 1936

St. John Fox

177 West 77th Street, Apartment 25

New York City

Abominable Mr. Fox,

Contemptible Mr. Fox,

Nefarious Mr. Fox,

Vile Mr. Fox,

Loathsome Mr. Fox

Putrid Mr. Fox,

I closed my thesaurus and pulled the letter out of the typewriter with such haste that it tore; half of it was left in the scroll above the type bar. When I touched the two halves together they didn’t even fit anymore.

Katherine was on my bed, reading a book I hadn’t set her. She looked up when I crushed the letter to Mr. Fox in my hand — that’s Katherine for you, she’d hardly blinked while I was pounding the typewriter keys, but the moment I quietly made something smaller between my fingers, she was all interest.

I asked her what she was reading.

She shrugged. “Some book.”

“So you’ve already finished reading the books I set you, have you?”

She turned a page. “Not yet, I’m getting to it.”

“I shall tell your mother that you’re not applying yourself.”

Katherine seemed intrigued. I had never threatened her before.

“You probably should. After all, it’s my education that’s at stake. Maybe I need a new teacher or something. You missing London?”

I laughed at her indifference, the way she’d spoken without even bothering to inject a nasty insinuating tone into her words.

“Katherine, I could die horribly here in this chair, and my blood could spray all over the room and cover the pages of that fascinating book you’re reading, and I believe, I really do believe, that you’d just wipe the worst away and keep going.”

Katherine stretched her legs. “That’s a pretty gruesome thing to say, Mary.” She shook her head. “Pretty gruesome.”

She left the room, and I picked up the book she’d been reading. On the cover was an illustration of a steamboat. I glanced at the back. Vampires in the Deep South.

Katherine returned with The Woman in White and settled in the chair before my typewriter. “Happy now?” she asked. I said I was happy. I had gone from standing by my bed to lying on it. I had been quite tired the past few days: sleeping longer than usual, feeling the shock of waking throughout my body, as if I had been flung against a wall. Katherine started typing. I didn’t open my eyes (when had I closed them?), but I said, “Hands off my typewriter, Katherine.”

She didn’t stop. I hadn’t really expected her to. I like to hear the marching of typewriter keys, the shudder of the space bar, the metallic ding at the end of a line. Those sounds are encouraging, sounds made by someone who is interested in you and in what you’re saying, someone who understands exactly what you’re getting at. “Hmm,” the typewriter says. And “Mmmm. I-see-I-see-I-see.” And sometimes it chuckles. .

When I woke up my bedroom door was closed.

“Katherine,” I called.

“What?” she called back. So she had not absconded. I relaxed somewhat. She would not have to be collected from a police station at a quarter to midnight, as she had on the Coles’ London trip. Katherine had given Hester, her previous companion, the slip in Covent Garden in order to engage in a vigorous bout of shoplifting. Having deemed Hester unable to cope with Katherine, the Coles had sacked her, then advertised for an immediate replacement. They hadn’t employed an English companion before and wanted someone well spoken and unapproachable, as if these traits could cow their daughter.

I looked inside my typewriter. There’s a city in there. Black and grey columns and no inhabitants.

“I’ve done all my algebra. And I’m on page two hundred and goddamn five of this book you’re making me read,” Katherine announced.

“Don’t say ‘goddamn,’”I replied. “Walkies now!”

She barked quite realistically.

One evening I encountered Mr. Cole alone in the kitchen, bending over the toaster, using it to light his cigar. “Couldn’t find my matches,” he said when he straightened up. I said, “Ah,” and began going away again. My cup of tea could wait. But he reached out — not very far; he is built quite powerfully, and I’m like a doll beside him — and grabbed my hand. He twirled me around the room, propped me up with my back against the counter, then took a puff on his cigar (he had not troubled himself to put it out the entire time). He leant so close to me that I could very clearly see the roots of hairs that had escaped his razor. I looked at his mouth because I thought he was going to kiss me and I hoped that if I paid attention he would not kiss me. That would have been my first kiss and it would have tasted of ash.

He didn’t kiss me, but he put his hand on my breast. He continued to smoke whilst squeezing my breast through my brassiere and dress. I know I should have felt angry or violated, and I did try to, but his expression was distracted, as if he was doodling on a pad whilst mulling over another thing. Mainly I felt very confused. He had been looking at my forehead, but as he squeezed for the third time, he looked into my eyes. And let go immediately. “Places to go, people to see, Mary.” He walked backwards to the door, removing his cigar from his mouth for long enough to place a finger over his lips and wink. I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.

Mr. Cole was at home when Katherine and I returned from our walk, sitting in an armchair with Mitzi on his lap. Mitzi opened her arms to Katherine, inviting her to join the tableau. Katherine regarded her parents with frozen eyes and swerved around them, opting for the dining room, where a coloured maid in a white cap stood beside a stacked trolley, covering the table with trays full of vol-au-vents that no one would eat.

“How much time do I have to get away before the ladies descend?” Mr. Cole asked. He seemed genuinely worried. Mitzi squeezed his neck and cooed that he was a grumpy bear, wasn’t he, wasn’t he.

Mitzi hosted her women’s club only once a month, so it was tolerable. The wives of her husband’s colleagues would gather at the Coles’ apartment and fill it with cigarette smoke. Nothing was consumed but cocktails and crudités; everyone was trying to reduce. They’d go around in a circle, these women, each telling the others what she’d been reading, what she’d seen at the theatre or at the pictures, which art exhibition was most divine. Katherine and I would barricade ourselves into my room or hers, with a chair against the door in case Mitzi had too much to drink and was suddenly possessed with a desire to display her offspring. We sprawled in a nest of our own laps and legs, reading and crunching animal crackers. Katherine swore she wouldn’t have anything to do with any goddamn women’s club when she grew up. My only reply was, “ Don’t say ‘goddamn.’” Sooner or later Katherine will be expected to contribute to her mother’s gatherings, and having endured it once, the next time will be easier, and so on until this brief moment when Katherine and I are in perfect agreement is lost, and it’ll be strange to both of us to remember that we ever understood each other. Katherine is completely different from me, and it’s more than just the fact that her father’s money will erode her until she is no longer abrasive to the rest of her social set, until she is able to mingle and marry amongst them quite contentedly. It’s also that she’s already very pretty. A little long in the nose, but on the whole, very pretty. After a while it will seem odd that she has these looks and makes no attempt to use them. Why doesn’t she smile and bat her eyelashes, the way her mother must have practically from birth? I wanted to tell her. Don’t look at people so strongly, Katherine Cole. Let your gaze swoon a little. Don’t speak so firmly; falter. Lisp, even. Your failure to do these things made me mistake you for someone like me.