Hidden Parts / kelsie qua

Hidden Parts

You were thirteen when your wings started to grow out. At first you were proud. You showed your mother, your sister, and all your aunts. “Guess who’s finally a little woman now?” they said among themselves, smiling a little sadly at how time had passed them by since their own becoming. You bragged at school with your friends, complaining about the binders you were forced to wear so you wouldn’t distract the boys. As if the boys didn’t notice, anyway. As if they didn’t stare at your hidden parts while they sat behind you in class, awed by the strange magic of female bodies, hidden from them by little more than taut, taunting bands of fabric.

Some of your classmates were ashamed when their transformations started. Ella needed a back brace because her tiny frame could barely support her giant wingspan. Jane, the perennial tomboy, was found in her bed one morning surrounded by bloody feathers, because she didn’t want to become anything other than what she already was.

You were different. Every night after you locked your door and closed the curtains you studied yourself in the mirror. The strange little puffs near your shoulder blades, the silver feathers at the tips that had the shape and shine of steak knives. You loved everything about your wings, especially how broad they were. When you spread them fully they couldn’t even fit in your bedroom mirror. This is how big I am, you’d think. I’m bigger than anybody knows, but me.

You were fourteen the first time you heard about sky swimming. One of the other girls at a slumber party had done it on a visit to her parents’ homeland. She said there were places across the ocean where women flew straight up into the night, only to race down like shooting stars. The thought both frightened and excited you. There was no sky swimming where you grew up. Only reports of men casting nets to catch young girls brave and foolish enough to flaunt their bodies. You’d seen pictures on true crime shows of their mangled forms tangled in webs of rope. Their wings hacked off, their limbs drooping like wilted flower petals.

You tried to imagine a place where that didn’t happen. A place where you would be safe and free to fly. Whenever you fell asleep after that night, you’d take in the soft, strange texture of your feathers with your fingertips, and try to conjure such a place, but it never seemed quite real.

You were fifteen when your first classmate began to molt. Her name was Abigail. Both her parents worked full time and neither explained the precautions she needed to take, or the special binders she needed to wear. Little tufts of feather seemed to trail after her for the better part of a month. Health education classes mandated by the superintendent followed. Humiliating hours were spent severed off from the boys talking about feminine hygiene, and looking at disgusting pictures of half-molted women.

You noticed the graffiti soon after. Sarah is a vulture. Elly is a cuckoo. Annie is a chick. The words seemed to appear everywhere: on television, on the radio, in the books you read. One day in a fight with your father you slammed the door and heard him outside muttering birdbrained bitch. You didn’t think he meant for you to hear.

You were sixteen when you met Jacob. He was a friend’s older brother. You flirted at parties, and sometimes you’d find a quiet place on a back porch or down a hill to share his set of earbuds and listen to a new song together. That was as close as your life ever felt to a movie. Even slapping at mosquitoes seemed romantic when you were looking out at the fireflies against the dark fabric of the woods, and his fingers dared to brush against yours.

He asked about your wings near the end of August, his voice stumbling enough to betray the blush you would’ve seen in better light. You were surprised by his boldness, and a little embarrassed when he said the word aloud.

He wanted to know what they felt like.

You tried to describe it—like bird feathers, sort of, but softer, more like liquid, more like darkness. He didn’t understand. You tried to find the words, but knew they didn’t exist, so you took his hand in yours, and guided it beneath your binder. His fingers laid cool and clammy against your feathers, not daring to pet or feel. His face contorted in an expression you didn’t comprehend. It was only later, when you returned to the house, that you understood. He scrubbed his hands beneath the garden hose spigot for a full minute before returning to the party, and wouldn’t look you in the eye again.

You were seventeen when your friends started getting their wings clipped. Most claimed it was for hygienic reasons, although a few said it was for convenience.

Designers always used models with clipped wings. Binders made clothes fit funny. That wasn’t even getting into the irritation of molting.

You hesitated to get it done yourself. It wasn’t because you disagreed on principle. It was because of the place across the ocean, that magical place you first heard about as a girl at a slumber party. The place you visited over and over in your dreams.

You told a friend your dream one day, and she laughed. “A place where women fly freely?” she said. “You’ve always had such a strong imagination, haven’t you?”

You were eighteen the first time you showed a boy your wings. He had a silver tongue and a golden body, a quick laugh and a penetrating gaze. On late night phone calls he told you, in vivid detail, the dreams he had where you were flying. He described what your feathers looked like beneath the light of the moon, how they felt beneath his fingertips. You’d never known a man so comfortable with your body’s strangeness, so perfectly at ease with your differences.

You finally showed him on a Thursday night, in his cramped studio apartment when his roommate was out of town. You had to be careful not to knock over coffee cups left on bookshelves, or stacks of paper by the TV. You wished you could shrink down into something smaller and more convenient. An apology played on your tongue, but you didn’t voice it. You were afraid of ruining the mood, which quickly dissolved of its own accord because he wanted pictures.

You said no immediately and firmly, but slowly his disappointment won you over. You tried to smile, but your mouth twitched and hardened when you tried. After he got what he wanted, he grew apathetic and withdrawn.

In the morning, you went looking for your shoes beneath the coffee table and found other polaroids. Bashful, smiling women, dozens of them, with wings that made yours melt into obscurity.

You left your own photograph, but took the other girls’ with you when you went home. You wanted him to remember you. You wanted him to be ashamed.

You were nineteen when you caved. You’d told yourself you wouldn’t answer if he called again, and you didn’t. Not the first time, nor the second, nor the third. But you couldn’t forget that night. The good parts of it: when he’d run his fingers so softly through your feathers, and placed kisses upon your shoulder

blades, right above where the wings connected. You couldn’t forget the sweet nothings he’d whispered in your ear. How he’d called you angel.

When you finally dialed his number, drunk and despondent, neither of you discussed the photographs of the other girls. He told you he missed you. He told you how much he thought about that night. About how sorry he was.

When you showed up at his apartment, he asked if you wanted to go to the roof. “Tell me you haven’t always wanted to try,” he said. “Tell me you don’t ever think about it.”

Your palm was wet against the cool metal railing as you walked up the cement stairs. You’d never wanted something so badly, but you were terrified. He had his hand on your back, rubbing slow circles. You couldn’t tell whether it was there to soothe you or to push you.

The city lights made everything too visible. You felt like you were standing beneath a spotlight on a stage. When you peered over the railing, the ground seemed miles away. He started to undo your binder and you began to cry.

He didn’t comfort you. He laughed and called you a tease.

You were twenty when you read about new laws passed across the sea, banning sky swimming so women would no longer be tempted to put their safety at risk. You became aware of your wings as little more than a weight upon your shoulders that made your back ache, and men whistle.

“It doesn’t really hurt that much,” Margot said, when you asked about the procedure.

“It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” Abigail told you.

“I got so high before I went that I thought the doctor was God,” Judy admitted.

You made the appointment on a Tuesday afternoon, right after you called about getting your teeth cleaned.

You had the procedure on your twenty-first birthday. The scheduling was coincidental. They asked if you were certain you wanted it done, and you asked if

you could keep the remnants, once they were clipped off.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said, “we’re really not supposed to let you have them.”

You remember the mask, the way they asked you to count backward from ten, and then nothing.

Nothing until you walked home from the hospital, your body aching but light, as if there were nothing left of you at all.