Tin Man

by Sarah Winman

I took off my clothes and put on a skirt first, then a blouse, a cardigan, and slowly I became her in miniature. She’d taken her good shoes, so I slipped on a pair of mid-height heels many sizes too big, of course, and placed a handbag on my arm. I stood in front of the mirror, and saw the infinite possibilities of play. I strutted, I pouted, the satin lining of the skirt clinging to my skin, electrifying the fine hairs on my legs. What the fuck d’you think you’re doing? said my father. I hadn’t heard him come in. He repeated the question. Playing, I said. Get that stuff off and go to your room. I began to undress, burning with shame and humiliation. And the skirt, said my father. The skirt slid to the floor, exposing my nakedness. My father looked away in disgust. I want to keep this, I said, holding up the handbag. No. Just to put my pencils in. If you ever take it out of this fucking house— I waited for the conclusion of this threat but it never came. My father disappeared downstairs and out of the front door, leaving me naked, bewildered, orphaned before time. I was too young, too confused to understand fully what happened in that room. That my father had said so little had been the wound, though. For him there was nothing to discuss because discussion would have made the moment real, just as my mother’s departure had been so real. Instead, I was swept under the carpet to join her. I see how decisions are made, in moments like that, that change the trajectory of one’s ...