The Room

Either it's her sister or an apparition, and she hopes

it's the latter, but expects it's her sister pretending

to be invisible, since she recognizes her sister's

red socks and slippers. Otherwise the figure is naked

except for the white towel draped over one shoulder.

Kneeling by the fireplace, the girl is torn between speaking

or continuing to read her book. If she speaks, she must deal

with her sister's petulant sense of failure, yet if she

keeps quiet she must endure her sister's boasting after

parading about in a state of false invisibility.

So, despite the red socks, the girl decides it must be

an apparition, and since she has been reading about Rome

she decides the figure is an androgynous Roman

who has arrived to address the Senate on the fate of

hermaphrodites everywhere. From her place on the rug,

the girl finds androgyny more interesting than the phony

invisibility of her sister who is a year older and on the edge

of becoming a woman. The girl hasn't decided what she

thinks of becoming a woman, but knows androgyny and

invisibility are poor second choices. What she feels,

almost without knowing it, is that her own choices

have become fewer. It seems not long before that

the world around her-animals, weather, even the people

on city streets who shove and bump one another-

that every waking hour offered limitless opportunity.

But now she speculates on a future in which each year

the world resumes possession of all she has borrowed,

takes back blessings she thought were hers to keep,

until she too becomes an apparition, less than invisible,

without book or Roman Senate or young sister to amuse her.