When We Lost Our Heads

by Heather O'Neill

She had always thought deer were among the most beautiful animals. They were like horses in a ballet.

Her whole body felt like a Champagne bottle that had been shaken and was waiting to explode.

When they are full of life and arrogant, they do very well for themselves.”

Looking at the cakes made odd, hidden parts of themselves come to light. One wondered why, at sixty-five, he was suddenly so drawn to a cake with pink icing and a cherry on top. Why did he feel like a shy little child at a birthday party?

Everyone in the Squalid Mile was too busy, their lives too frenetic, for them to indulge in these leisure moments. If they managed to have a day off, they would drink themselves into a stupor and messily try to have sex before passing out.

She wanted them to know about withdrawal and contraception. If women could not control their reproductive organs, they could not be free. There was no use fighting for any other rights if these were not secured. They were prisoners to their own children. They simply could not take up any space in culture. They could not be scientists. They could not be politicians. They could not be artists.

“We don’t have to prove our humanity to the upper classes. We need to terrorize them. Only then will they set us free. We need to be vicious.”

She wanted to go up to each one of them and tell them they were wonderful. And plant a dozen kisses on their faces. She wished she could give them each a portmanteau with an embroidered green rose on it filled with money and tell them all their dreams could come true. She wanted to babysit their children so they could go dancing all night. She wanted to put them on a train and tell them to see more than this mile of rotten houses they had been born into. She wanted to sit next to them on a beach while their hair dried, and feed them cake and tell them they were beautiful even if nobody else thought they were.