Her name was Donkey-Skin. I can’t remember when she came to me, only that she was always there. My only companion, born of imagination and loneliness, which is a hectic brew for a child. What did it signify if no one else could see her? I liked it so. She was mine and mine alone.
I did not want to share her with another soul, so I kept our conversations whispered, our games quiet. When Mama asked me whom I was talking to, I said, ‘No one!’ in my most innocent voice. She took it for another sign of my strangeness and it was not long before she ignored my chattering. Donkey-Skin wove herself from all the things I hid from my mother, knitting herself from the truths Mama would not tell me but I found out anyway.
Donkey-Skin was ugly: even uglier than me, which was quite something. If I was hairy, then she was as furry as a cave full of bears. If I was a freak, she was a cursed abomination in the sight of God. If I was lonely, she was abandoned on a hillside for wolves to devour. She was different because she did not care. Her life’s work was to teach me not to care either.
When we were alone she murmured, Kitten, kitten, my very own pet. Her lullabies rang over the terrifying stretches of the night as I rested my cheek on her breast, safe under the press of her arm. She loved me because of my thick pelt of fur rather than despite it. Only she could sort my tangles. I purred beneath her gentle comb as she groomed my baby hair.
Of course, Mama was having none of that. Every day she reminded me that God made me foul-featured for a reason: punishment for a sin I could not remember and she never revealed. It could have been so much worse, she said. I was lucky, she said. Was I beaten? No. Was I fed? Yes. I had a roof over my head; I had a mother who was respectable. I should bow my head, keep my eyes down, keep the peace, be sweet, be grateful that someone cared enough to put bread in my mouth. I could have been sold to trim fur collars or made into a muff. I could have been tied in a bag and dropped in the Fleet.
My earliest memory is of Mama shaving me. She sat me upon the table and I kicked out my heels. She caught my foot and kissed the only part of me that was smooth and counted out my toes: ‘This little piggy went to market, this little piggy got shaved.’ Or was it ‘saved’? I do not remember. Her songs were hopeful spells to make the fairies take pity and return the pretty pink and white babe they’d stolen from her womb. There was no escaping the truth of it. I was a changeling and as furry as a cat.
She doesn’t want a baby, Donkey-Skin whispered in my ear. She wants a piglet.
I giggled.
A naked pink wobble of a thing, with that sore scalded look of them, tiptoeing as though the ground hurts and makes them screw up their eyes.
You are not a piglet, said Donkey-Skin. Don’t be one, not for anyone.
Donkey-Skin was right; I did not want to be a piglet. Piglets grew into pigs, fat overblown pillows slathering in their own muck. Pigs were dinner. I had no wish to be sliced, smoked, fried, salted, stewed or pickled.
Mama grasped the kettle and heaved it from the mouth of the range, poured a bowlful and soaked the dishcloth. A cowlick of steam curled off the face of the liquid. She folded the rag in half and hung its hot wet curtain across my face.
‘Mama?’ I whimpered. ‘Mama?’
‘Is it too hot, little one?’ she said.
She pulled the flannel away and I tingled with the sudden cold. I grabbed at it, but my reach was far too short. She picked up a jug, took the brush, dipped in the bristles and swiped foam across my cheek. I giggled and wiped it away, slapping the white mess on to the floor.
‘No,’ she said and sopped my other cheek.
I wiped that away also, squeaking with delight.
‘Stop it,’ she said, louder, and I squealed louder, to match her.
She aimed quick blobs at my chin, my cheek, my forehead. I could not get enough of this new game. Even when she held my wrists with one hand and soaped my face with the other, I wriggled free.
‘I am making you beautiful,’ she snapped, and started to cry. ‘I’m doing this because I love you.’
Then she smacked me. I had been stung far harder in the past, and deserved it too. This small slap spelled me into stone.
‘Stay very, very still.’
I sat obediently and let her lather up my whole face and neck. She unfolded the razor, stropped it keen and laid it on my forehead. I quivered under its chilly stroke, stranger than the licking of a cat. The blade came away loaded with scum, and more. With each scrape the water grew dirtier, clogged with brown silky threads which collected in thick clots. I grew cold. When she finished, she kissed me and tickled my hairless chin.
‘Now you’re my pretty girl, my real girl, the girl I should have got, the one who loves her mama and will never leave her side.’
That night, Donkey-Skin visited me as I undressed for sleep.
‘Mama’s made me pretty,’ I sang, spinning in a circle to show off my new nakedness.
Pretty? she snorted. She’s made you ordinary.
‘Mama told me I am a real girl now. It must be true.’
You look like all the rest of them: simpering, feeble, wet-wristed, snickery-whickery, snappy-snippy little girls made of milk and money.
‘Then what is a real girl, Donkey-Skin?’
It’s a long story. I have plenty of answers. We have time.
Every week Mama shaved me. When I was old enough, I said no. She did it anyway. I grew and still she shaved me naked, until I was tall enough to smack the razor from her hand.
‘You’ll look like an animal,’ she wept. ‘Is that what you want?’
I stood in front of the looking-glass and admired myself. My moustache wormed across my lip, the tips lost in the crease behind my ears. My eyebrows met over the bridge of my nose and spread like wings up the side of my forehead. My chin sprouted a beard the colour of combed flax, reaching to my little breasts.
You are my very own princess stuck in the tower, whispered Donkey-Skin.
I laughed. ‘A very small tower!’
Donkey-Skin tugged my moustache.
I will spin you into gold. Weave a happy ending with a handsome prince …
‘I will weave my own story,’ I replied, and she smiled.
‘Listen to you talking to yourself!’ cried Mama. She wiped her nose. ‘Look at you,’ she sneered. ‘You’re not even human.’
I stuck out my chin and my beard swung backwards and forwards.
‘I know that I am different. How could I not? If God intended me to be this hairy, I shall find out the reason, however long it takes me.’
‘Do you think this is a game? You’re only safe out there on the streets because I make you look like a real girl.’
I crossed
