Juniper & Thorn(57)
“Hm,” he said. “Your body temperature does not appear abnormal.”
“I think I’m very ordinary,” I said, with a nervous flutter of laughter. “Aside from being a witch.”
Dr. Bakay’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “I’ve met very many ordinary girls. I cannot say you are one of them.”
And then, I think, he asked me what I best liked to eat. I told him pork varenyky. He asked me did I like to cook or sew or play dominoes. He asked me if my sisters were kind or mean. He asked me what I thought of the new electric streetlamps, the trams, the art museum on Rybakov Street.
If Papa had been paying attention, Dr. Bakay’s questions would have enraged him; he would have chased the doctor from the house and that would have been the end of it all. But he was not paying attention and with each question I felt myself loosening like a knotted bow, undone and smoothed flat as Dr. Bakay spoke.
“Have you ever considered that your witchery is necessarily fixed to your womanhood?”
I must have blinked at him in awful confusion. My sisters were women, certainly, narrow waisted and wide hipped, their bodies growing to look more and more like our mother’s with each passing day. But I still felt mostly like a child, like a girl, only just beginning to fill out my dresses. Heat crawled over my cheeks as I replied, “I don’t know. I never thought very much of it.”
“Well, I would give the theory substantial weight. Phrenology tells us that men and women are of vastly different Minds . . . women’s fourteenth and eighteenth organs are much larger than men’s, indicating that they have much greater degrees of Veneration and Hope, and their fifteenth organs are positively tiny, suggesting very little propensity for Firmness. And so it must follow that we can map other Organs of the Body using similar methods. Perhaps most fruitful, I think, would be the Organs solely belonging to females.”
I hadn’t realized he had begun to unlace my corset. I was so shocked and all that came out of me was a little sound, not quite a gasp, just a chirp like a wind-buffeted sparrow. My loosened bodice sagged out in front of me and I quickly threw my arms around myself, covering my breasts. My throat was beginning to feel horribly tight, each breath hot and rough and short. I looked toward Papa.
My father was still reclining on the chaise longue, but his eyes had drifted back toward me. I searched his face for any indication of displeasure, any fledgling protest. His lower lip twitched; a muscle feathered in his jaw. His pocket was huge with Dr. Bakay’s rubles. And then he said, “Marlinchen, put your arms down.”
That was the moment I came untethered from myself, a horse cut from its hitching post. My body went through its motions, but my mind was jettisoned bulk, left to drift in dark and churning waters. I lowered my arms to my sides, fists curling, as Dr. Bakay moved his hand over my left breast. He squeezed it tenderly, then cupped it, as if judging its heft. With his forefinger and thumb, he pinched my nipple.
“Papa,” I said, my gaze clouding with tears.
“Quiet,” he said. “Let the doctor do his work. Ordinarily he charges dozens of rubles for these types of evaluations, and here he is paying us for the privilege. Isn’t that right?”
“Of course,” said Dr. Bakay. “I’m thankful to be able to test the methods of phrenology on a witch for the very first time. I’m sure there are quite a number of medical journals that would be happy to publish the findings.” But he had not been making any notes in his logbook or on his thick prescription pad.
From then on he spoke to Papa animatedly, about the particular color and size of my nipples, about the weight and shape of my breasts. He stroked my nipples to hardness and asked me to describe the sensation.
I do not remember what I told him. I was staring at the far wall, eyes fixed on the place where the damask paper was peeling away, exposing the yellowed plaster underneath. Finally, Dr. Bakay drew himself up to full height, narrow shoulders rolling.
“Thank you very much for the opportunity,” he said, and then Papa rose too. As I was pulling my corset back up over my breasts, Dr. Bakay shook Papa’s hand. He packed up his doctor’s bag, his tiny black vials of laudanum and pots of leeches, his arsenic in porcelain urns. Before he went through the door and out into the garden, he gave me a cheerful wave, winking one brown eye.
I stood in the foyer as the grandfather clock made its metered rotation, thinking of nothing but peeling wallpaper. The sun glanced off Dr. Bakay’s silver hair as he swung open the gate. I began to think about the bulge of fabric I had seen when I looked down, the swelling beneath the dark buttons of his trousers.
I should have known by the way Papa had fingered his rubles that he would happily welcome Dr. Bakay into our house again, and he did. Several weeks later the doctor was back with his black bag and more theories, a different prognosis, a new set of questions and an arsenal of clever methods.
For the first few times Papa sat in his chaise longue and looked idly on, chattering airily as Dr. Bakay jerked my corset open with surgical precision. Eventually he grew weary of talking and watching, and so Papa left the two of us alone in the sitting room with the door shut.
I memorized the wallpaper’s damask pattern, counting each whorl and flower while Dr. Bakay asked me whether there were any men that I had eyes for. I do not remember what I told him, only that it made him smile and thumb a gentle circle over my left nipple, as if it were an amulet to polish.