The One Trick Pony

“Feet,” she whispered at the two silver hooves at the ends of her legs, “I would’ve looked great in feet.” Reaching down under the bed she picked up the bottle of nail polish she kept hidden along with the newspaper clippings of girls in strappy sandals and open-toed pumps. She painted five red toenails on the front of her left hoof and held a terrycloth slipper under it. She wrapped her right leg in sheets and set it to the side. “You’ll just have to wait your turn,” she told the hoof, and clenched her eyelids shut. She imagined what it’d be like to have arches and heels, pads that molded to any surface; she imagined stomping her feet when she got angry, and walking away whenever she felt like it. She imagined a life where balance didn’t take constant effort, where fleshy soles matched fleshy hands, where a girl could look in a mirror and say to herself “Damn, I look human!” She imagined a body wrapped top to bottom in skin like wrapping paper, like a little gift box that introduced its contents and said “Happy Birthday. Enjoy your fully completed, made-to-order, one hundred percent synthesized woman.” She imagined a finished female body, all done, top to bottom, walking around like it was second nature, and then she wobbled and fell on her side. The very thought of two feet firmly planted could topple her over if she got carried away. I’d dance, she told herself, and her eyes burst open, as if the very thought of dancing was trying to escape out her eyes. I’d samba and waltz and can-can over my head. They’d toss me up in the air and I’d land flat on feet. She looked over to her sleeping lover, his breath soft and peaceful, and hissed under her breath, “You never take me out dancing.”

She sat on the bed with her hooves in her hands, tired with disappointment. After weeks of scrubbing with pumice, filing and sculpting, they still looked like hooves, but worse; smaller, warped, homemade hooves. She’d known she couldn’t change completely, but she made the valiant effort for toes anyway, gritting her teeth and slicing through bone with a nail file, but at best they looked like metallic teeth. Exhausted, she considered telling him she’d been born with clubbed feet, which she figured could explain everything. ,

She knew how she would say it. Honey, I was born with clubbed feet and that should explain everything. It explained why she was so anxious about taking her shoes off, why she limped when she walked and why she always fell asleep after him. She’d find a way to fit in the sleep part; maybe she had to soak them in hot water to relax them before bed or massage them because they hurt so much from walking on them all day. She knew how she would fit it in. Honey, I was born with clubbed feet and every night after you fall asleep I soak them in hot water and massage them because it is so painful to be crippled like I am. She thought “crippled” would garner sympathy and make him feel bad about ever pushing her to take her shoes off or trying to slip his fingers under the elastic in her socks. He seemed to like the rest of her, he liked the human skin, the big blue people eyes, and especially the woman’s breasts she’d modeled after the girl on the soap opera. Maybe a little disfigurement would be a nice change of pace, as long as it looked human. Even then, she’d still have to show him clubbed feet and then he’d have to help out, massaging or soaking them himself. She thought of what was wrong with a life of eating dandelions and chasing squirrels. The feeling of fresh grass pressed against her hooves sure beat the boiling heat of a soldering iron. That had been a life of stability, a life with all four feet on the ground. Four legs had been more than a reassurance; they were something a girl could rely on. She thought of why change had seemed such a novel idea and whether it would have been better to stick to the old adage of letting the boy chase you. That would’ve been easy, she thought; then he never would’ve caught me. Instead, she’d gotten all caught up with her vague notions of love and being human, and before she knew it she was sawing off her horn in exchange for a forehead. She thought of being honest, of telling him straight out and not giving a moment’s thought to how he reacted to it. Honey, before I met you I was a unicorn, just like you see in the movies or illustrated children’s books. I ate dandelions and chased squirrels and then I saw you and loved you and wanted to be right for you. It’s just taking a lot longer than I’d expected.

That seemed to be the worst idea so far. That would only bring up more questions, more doubt. After all the effort and pain she’d already put into herself; shaving her mane, slicing and stitching, grinding and carving herself like a sculpture, she couldn’t just give up and come clean at feet. She’d had to leave something for last, and feet, being so low on her body, seemed the obvious choice. She’d turned hooves into hands without having hands to do it with, so there was no reason she could think of to tell him the truth simply because of feet. That would be giving up, she thought, and I’ve come this far, and so she turned to him in bed and whispered, “You’ll have your feet soon honey, I promise” and kissed him on the forehead, where his horn should have been.

“I have to finish them soon” she thought, “feet or no feet, I have to show him something.” She remembered how easy life had been before, as a unicorn, when hiding was second nature. She missed the time when she could just as easily hide in the brush or in fountains when she spotted men who’d lost their way, she missed myth and anonymity, but hiding was all in the past. Then, she’d had legs galore, and she could run or jump or make love barehooved and nobody asked her for feet. Now she just answered questions, over coffee, over soup, watching TV, and buying clothes. The pendant? A gift from an old boyfriend. How many old boyfriends? She didn’t remember. Why didn’t she remember? Drugs. What drugs? Feet drugs. That sounded good, drugs that make you grow feet.

In the morning, he made coffee, and asked “Feet today?”

“Just wait, I’m not ready. I need a little time and then I promise, I’ll take off my shoes.”

“And your socks?”

“We’re not there yet.”

Which was true, she thought, sipping at her coffee and watching his reaction from over the mug. She’d stenciled an outline of some feet she’d seen in ads for shoe sales and discounted pedicures and medicated anti-fungal creams. Even that had taken almost a week. Now, if she kept sanding and chiseling at least three hours a night while he slept, she’d at best have a prototype, no detail, just form. Form was something he could feel under socks if she let him, but soon she’d need a finished product, buffed and polished, with toenails.

“Give me some time before I take off my socks,” she requested.

“Why not,” he replied smugly, “we have all the time in the world.”

She knew he’d already spent a lot of time considering what she must’ve been like before him. He must’ve thought that lovers before him had gotten to see feet, but that they’d been careless, stepping on toes or playing footsy to hard. He always wanted to know because there were always questions she wouldn’t answer, so he asked them, and he kept asking until she was blue in the face, and then he asked why she was so pale all the time.

“I can’t help it, I have light skin,” she told him. She’d wanted to say “purity,” she’d wanted to hold his mouth shut and pull his ears open and yell “It’s because I’m very, very pure!” She’d wanted to tell him to look beyond the blonde hair and fair complexion, that she was white everywhere someone could be white, places he couldn’t see, just touch, and feel white. She wanted him to feel her deep inside, with more care and consideration than the rushed pace of foreplay he was used to. That just once he could sink his fingertips inside her and press into bleached curves, milky smooth curves he’d never taken the time to notice. She’d wanted to slide his fingers down her ivory body and ask him the questions. What’s wrong with white? What have you ever given up? And what did you think unicorns would look like?

She’d tried that once, but his hands had gotten lost around her chest and he’d never made it down far down enough to check anything out for himself. For a moment there had been a lovely silence, as if he’d had some profound realization that she’d been waiting for him to have, but he’d ruined all that with more talking and he made love to her on the floor while he asked her about politics. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he told her afterwards as he lay beside her, fondling her ankles with his toes, “I’m going to find out what it is.”

He probably would, she thought. All the work she’d done for him, and only a couple of warped hooves to show for it. She figured she’d stay up all night for nights on end, making perfect feet for his enjoyment, and then when he asked her for feet the next morning, she’d shove her two little stumps in his face and say “See!” She wanted tell him how every question, lectures, talk and discussion dove into her body through her ears and lodged itself deep inside her brain and now she was so filled up with words that new ones couldn’t find a way in. She wanted to tell him how she was so filled up with his words that she had to stop making her own words and that every time a new one got stuffed up inside her, something else would have to come out.

It started by coming out of her head. She only noticed it after he asked her about it.

“Are you alright?” He asked, and he knew that she wasn’t because the spot on her forehead, larger than a pimple, softer than a scab, had started to loosen up and break apart from the edges. As the days went on it only opened up more, and the more it opened up, the more it itched. She knew she shouldn’t scratch it because it might spread like a rash, but it itched so badly that only scratching made it stop. She decided scratching might even help whatever it was along, so she pressed down into her forehead, piercing through the waxy veneer and squashing deep down into muscle, layers of jelly flesh blanketing her finger as it slipped in. She stirred the pulp with her fingernail, scratching and stirring and finding nothing. Then, she moved a millimeter or so in towards the center, making little concentric circles.

“Gross,” she whispered to herself with her finger still stuck in her forehead, “absolutely gross.”

Sharper than a migraine, the pain in her head was alive, pumping and twisting, searching for a way out before deciding that the best route was straight through the skull. She went to the hospital where the doctor told her it was “menopause.” She considered the word “menopause,” and how peaceful it sounded and then she imagined hormones trying to escape through her body, bubbling up into wrinkles or leaking through pores during hot flashes. “It isn’t menopause,” she told him, but signed the hospital bill anyway.

When she arrived home he was full of questions.

“Where were you?”

“The hospital.”

“What for?”

“My head.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“To get some rest, and it’d go away.”

“Did you get a second opinion?”

She didn’t need one. She knew what it was, her horn growing back, forced out from inside where she’d become too clogged for anything else to stay inside. She could feel it deep down inside her, she could almost get her fingers in far enough to touch it, to push it back inside her and make it stay there. She lay down on the bed with a fistful of aspirin and thought of when Pinnochio first realized his nose was growing and why he didn’t do something about it.

He crouched down next to her and asked if there was anything he could do and she said “No.” He asked if he could feel her forehead to see if she was warm and she said “Absolutely no.” He asked if she wanted him to leave her alone and she felt guilty because he was only trying to help, so she said “No,” then he asked if she still loved him and she said “Of course, why would you even ask that?” He asked her if she’d feel better if she took her shoes off and she said “Probably,” and he went to untie them and she said “No.” He asked her what was really going on and she said “I’m a unicorn.” He laughed and asked “What?” and she said “I’ll explain it later.” He asked what was coming out of her forehead and she said “A horn,” and she stood up to look in the mirror.

The long slice of spirally ivory continued to stab its way out of her head, fast and faster, until it was nearly a foot and half, about the same length as when she’d first cut it off.

He saw the shimmering coat rise out of her skin and he asked what was happening to her body and she said “Hair.” She watched a gleaming white mane make its way out of her scalp and poured out down to her hips, and he asked her to make it stop and she said “I can’t.” And her tail popped out and slung to the ground.

She toppled and asked him to catch her, but he stood, paralyzed, his eyes wide in disbelief as steel-colored bone wrapped around her hands, and she fell forward on them. She felt an overpowering release as she opened her mouth and seemed to free everything inside her with one giant sigh. The only thing left inside were wants and regrets. She was sad to see her human body escape in a breath of air, and wanted to go back and spend a last moment holding him in a parallel form. She was sad to have made such a mess during her transformation, and wanted him to at least try and see if there wasn’t a unicorn somewhere inside him. Most of all, she wanted him to realize what it had been like for her, that she hadn’t wanted it this way, but those questions jamming into her and cramming their way inside, what had he expected? In an instant she was filled with the urge to ram her horn into him and show him what it had felt like to be her. Just this one time, just this one horn, she thought. She wanted him to feel that horn like she had, shoved inside, still and unmoving, stuck where he didn’t want it to be. She held herself back with all her might. “Why? ” he asked softly as he traced her new body with his eyes, and she could barely hold her tears inside her as she galloped out the doorway.