My Female Honor Is of a Type

I did some V last night of a kind I have not done before. I gave myself permission. I said to myself calmly in my mind—on this occasion I will give you permission to do the following—listen carefully to yourself: you are allowed to cut up your husband’s money which is on his bureau top, just the single bills, there are not too many of them; cut up his business card which is in his card case, and then cut up a folded piece of paper—you do not know what it is. There, you are cutting paper.

He gave me permission when he saw me, even, even when he saw me leafing through big bills with the scissors and the card case, flipping to choose, and sort­ing the paper, the opportunity for cutting.

The occasion for this V which I permitted and which my husband permitted was anger of a type.

I said to her, “You should fear for your life!” Tonight I said, “Tell them you feared for it!” Whereas my husband would have left. He would have walked out mildly and back to home.

They say so, and then their head is in your vision, only their spooky eyes, or their bony nose shaking, not even their mouth is in your vision because you are too close, maybe some of this someone’s platinum hairs mixed up with silver and brown and white, and pale pale yellow hairs, antiseptic hairs is what I call it, clean out of grease or refuse.

But not the hairs on her head, not the crisply cut card with the credentials she put for me to see, hairy letters on a hairy card, the card of someone who ran the whole show, that I could not even see the name, because of hair, nor did I want to.

“You’ve got what you wanted!” she said, so that all the hairs were not enough hairs, or the telephone in the bag she gave me, the black phone. All the hairs were not like the hairs on her head which she pinned up or she pulled down which she waved, which she lustered fully out. All the little rings on the black cord to put your finger in, to hold your finger, all the little rings that stretch to ringlets, all the twirlies.

We left. It was between her and her. The husband and the mild-mannered boy behind her, and the hus­band did not play key roles. We ran the show and when I left something did die, a little something, and later on she will know something teeny keeled. I took that teeny thing, and the fat phone in the fat bag. I took the teeny tiny pathetic, that can climb in between hairs all by itself, that can lay down their eggs to hatch.

I would not do murder for a phone. I would do it for hair.