—And yet I am so small. How changed and grown from the white girl?... The door to the loft factory stood a steel barrier to the day. Within: musty heat air full of the stale traceries of wistful hands sewing at steel machines. She went in....
Above the whirr of Fanny’s work there was a voice speaking. Under the blanket of Fanny’s sleep there was a voice speaking. Across her words in meeting men and women, across the words of men and women meeting her, there was a voice speaking. It was one, and it was Fanny.
She knew at times. At times she did not hear it. She would emerge from the thick inattention ... sleep or fever or work or even fun ... and she would know it had spoken. It ran through the heavy years that were now hers like a thin Light moving along the bottom of a Sea that had no sun, moon, star....
—Girl. Perfect girl! I am not tall, but my body is tight. And my mind is taller than all these minds about me. It reaches higher than yours, slow brother, yours, Annie, yours, Delia. It is faster too. It moves very fast, it can skip ahead of your thoughts, it can turn about and wait and squat there grinning, till your thoughts catch up. And it is white and clean. I am fearless. I think that is purity ... don’t you, Jesus up there? You weren’t afraid and that is why you were pure. My mind is white and sound like my body leaping, skipping where it wills, over low stones, over low mud. What have I to fear? I am I....
—I walk the street under magnolia blooms between the proud old houses.... That’s Fanny Dirk: queer girl! I am simply myself. When Annie begins to squint at me I know what she’s thinking about, I know what’s troubled her last night. I can feel sorry for you, Annie. My figure is rather roundish, but the men are just where I want them. I have eyes and lips and a mind to spit them on. This mouse-blue frock is lovely even so, as I walk dangling my parasol through the sun-splotched magnolia way. This cream-dim ruching at my neck shows the olive note of my skin. And that means there is blood flowing very close.... And the white stockings are sharp between the bias skirt and the black slippers.... I walk fearless. I’ll do what I will.... I am surrounded by children.
—This dingy stair ... the factory girls ... you are a factory woman!... O for them true: this horror for them is true. For me? this horror is a tale. It is the words of a song. There is a music ... music. For you and for you and for you, grey shadows dripping from the sun through the encaverned stairs, it is true Horror. It should not be: for it is. For me, it is well.... Fanny Dirk with blue prim frock and the olive throb of my throat ... for it is something else.
—My room, so small, is the casing of my body. Shouldn’t it fit? It must fit to keep me whole. Those gloves that were so much too big, how I froze in them last Winter: how the Winter came in to my fingers as I walked, till I had money to buy another pair. Bargain-counter gloves ... the right size-mark ... that girl with eyes like panthers who dared not take them back, that man with eyes like dead fish, who would not! If my room is too big the world will come in like Winter to those gloves: and freeze me and burn me. Dear bare tight room! So much holier and tighter than the one of the Church: that was so big Jonathan could come in. Lies ... drugs ... came in. Here no one. You are my skin. No one dare touch my skin....
Her eyes went up and down about her room: her eyes stood upon its cot, upon its whitewashed walls, upon the paintless table, like the eyes of Fanny Dirk standing within her mirror.
—I do look well in black. My face is white and colors on me need just that touch of plumpness I have lost. Black eats away the hollow of my memory of plumpness. My breasts droop: the curve of my thigh is not so lovely now. Black covers me, I used to be gay almost like naked in the blue and the rose. Black wears. My body does not wear. I am wearing out. I don’t know what I’d do without you, mirror! Your brightness is the only laughter in the room. Sometimes your laugh is a mocking. Never mind. I find when I look in your laughter, even if it is a mocking, that I find myself. She laughed aloud.—See what I do when I see myself? Well, friend ... why such a crusty room to case the body of Fanny?... There were soft casings once: little gabled house, garden so brave above the dull black earth, Harry, Edith ... you were all softness Edith my child! Soft hands upon my arms, soft lips upon my mouth biting me with such savage softness. Edith? O my soft love whom I held all about me ... who held me all. You are gone. This hard sharp room that holds me like an iron glove—now I have you alone ... and the mirror that is laughter.