AMY BOBEDA / A MUTE WOMAN IS NOTHING ORIGINAL
A MUTE WOMAN IS NOTHING ORIGINAL
On the fifth day of the fifth month, I read The Six Swans. I grow a wing a beak a feather on my breast. Just yesterday, I found a grey feather I imagined came from a small ostrich or emu the color of a women’s skirt-suit. I held it to my hip and grew myself a skirt so long no one could comment on my hem length. I grew a skirt so long I grew a tail.
In The Six Swans, a king is lost in a forest made of red tape. The government searches the forest for documents hidden deep in another king’s home in the mythic kingdom of Florida. Their bodies are so redacted they turn skirt-suit grey. When is a document so full of ink, it becomes a black swan?
The king meets a witch. They marry deep in the forest and for a moment there’s concern that’s where this story will end. I pass the grey feather nine times before picking it up with my left hand, reciting a wash your hands song, as I grow it into a skirt so strong it kills all the germs and all the pedantic bills on the legislative floor. The king and the witch have many healthy children: six sons and one daughter.
The king meets a witch deep in the forest. He’s lost and tired and concerned for his health because he’s a single parent of his six sons and one daughter who live in the castle all alone. The witch marries her daughter to the king and she becomes the world’s first stepmother. The forest opens its mouth with a growl and spits the king and his wife back into the kingdom. In January of 2023, the Missouri state legislature voted to update their dress code, only for women.
The king is worried the Republican-led legislation designed to hide a woman’s arms is “sexist and pointless,” according to The New York Times. The king hides his children from the world’s first step-mother not because she is evil, but because he doesn’t know what to do. He’s afraid she’s the one who proposed “Proper attire for women shall be business attire, including jackets worn with dresses, skirts, or slacks, and dress shoes or boots.” Maybe, she was tired of men looking at her shirt and wondering if it was appropriate enough to be there. Maybe she doesn’t like kids. Maybe the king lied and said he had no children. Maybe she is barren and mothering someone else’s kids will just be too depressing.
The king hides his children because he is afraid they will be cruel to his new wife, no matter what she is wearing. Sometimes, a king can almost be kind. The only way to find his children is to follow a white thread deep into the forest.
In a patriarchy, even queens get jealous of king and of one another. The queen follows the thread into the forest and tosses her laundry onto the sons. Shirts become feathers become beaks become necks and before she knows it the six sons are swans. “We don’t want anyone to have to be the clothing police,” one of the lady legislators says.
In the Everglades redacted pages and cast-off sweaters fester in the belly of a gator in the mouth of a panther, a python, and a wood stork who is also a son transformed into a bird. When a boy becomes a bird and back again, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss reminds us “Animals are good to think with.” When a boy becomes a bird and back again, no legislator asks, “Is his clothing appropriate?”
In order to save her brothers, the sister must sew them each a shirt from star-flowers and not speak for 6 years. Representative Anne Kelly says she wasted no time introducing the amendment because she spoke for less than five minutes. Her mouth extends a golden thread spinning sleeves, pinning skirt hems. In Montana, the State Representative dress code says, women legislators “Should be sensitive to skirt lengths and necklines.” What may seem like a difficult task, in a patriarchy is rather easy; it was rare anyone in a house of 7 men listen to the silent sewing sister, but they can’t resist glancing at her sleeves and hems. She redacts her mouth with a needle and white thread. In a tree, she sits and sews petals together. The Justice Department sews together redacted pages from 13 boxes—over 100 documents, one-by-one they seam rip the former king’s mouth open and out fly 100 crows who begin to laugh until the moon is laughing too. The sister, however, remains mute, threading together each petal of aster—one for wisdom, one for valor, one for faith, she sews them, knits them like chainmail made of daisies.
The Justice Department may never do anything. They’ve been too busy closing down pirate libraries where graduate students—mute for six years—sew citations into dissertations, hoping to free themselves into tenure. They’re too busy judging their coworkers’ skirts and arms to bother with redacted paperwork. The shredders are all broken. In her fourth year, a king from a neighboring kingdom finds the mute girl in a tree sewing. Despite his mother’s wishes, he marry a woman who speaks and wears appropriate sleeves, the king weds her and beds her and she births two sons. If you’re keeping track, there are now: 6 swans who are men, two kings who are men, two babies who are boys, a witch, a mother-in-law, and a mute seamstress queen. There are 116 men and 41 women in the Missouri House of Representatives. When a kingdom is too full of men, it’s easy to pit women against each other. Particularly when one wears a blue skirt-suit and the other wears red. The mother-in-law steals the children and claims the mute is a witch. Like all the other witches, she’s sent to be burnt, while all the corrupt kings sit in the castles and stare at her bare arms.
The day of her execution the dress code for men doesn’t change. The day of her execution is the day her muteness runs out. She throws the six shirts sewn from purple petals into the air and out of her mouth her brothers fly, first as swans and then as men who defend her honor. In the end, her mother-in-law is burned at the stake. They say Justice is blind but she’s just a mute girl waiting for the 6th year that may never come because everyone’s too worried about her sleeves.
Amy Bobeda directs the writing center at Naropa University and teaches pedagogy and process-based arts. Author of Red Memory, What Bird Are You?, mi sin manitos, and a forthcoming project with Sputen Duyvil, Amy writes about menstruation, folklore, and public policy. Find Amy on Substack at Every Story is a Menstrual Story.