Colonel Bloodworth leaned forward, just slightly. He brought his hand up from beneath the table, and he reached out for the bell box.
The other men didn’t notice because at that moment Bremen came through again, growling through Opal’s stiff mouth, shaking the chair so mightily now that Opal thought she might very well tip over and crash to the floor. “Charles, you rotten egg. You cockroach. You pinheaded pig. You were nothing without me. Without my daughter. Not a penny to your name, you ungrateful bilker. You embarrass me, all of you. She’s only a woman,” Bremen said.
At that moment, the Colonel’s finger fell down upon the bell in a smooth, quick flick. Before the rest of the committee could turn, he’d withdrawn his hand to his lap. Now, they were looking at the bell box,which still seemed to vibrate, even though the sound had dislodged itself and faded to silence.
“She did it,” Jenkins whispered.
Tuttle stood, grabbed his hat, and marched out, forgetting his overcoat. The other men stood slowly, muttering among themselves. Bloodworth picked up Tuttle’s coat from the back of the chair.
As they were walking out the door, Jenkins turned to face her, lifted his instrument to eye level. Before she realized what he was doing, she heard the whirr and the snap. The smell of flash powder, then a burst of light, bright as an exploding star.
Photography seemed to her a bit like dark magic: her image was now contained to Jenkins’s camera, but it’d emerge again, another self, uncontrolled, even by her. She’d read that when inventors first dabbled in the field of photography, they could easily capture an image. It came down to the simple science of lenses and light. The biggest challenge to the field of photography was permanence, getting the image to remain on photographic paper without fading. This had more to do with chemistry—the correct compound of chemicals.
Opal herself felt chemically altered, unsteady. She recalled the evening as though through intoxication, how she so often felt on Jagr’s tonics and elixirs. And what of the Colonel and his tear-shaped scar? What of the tap of his index finger that had rung that bell? The men had left the bell box behind. She rang the bell freely now. Ding. Ding.
She didn’t need clairvoyance to know this: The relationship between men and women was always transactional. The Colonel would call on her again.
January 23, 1986
Interview with Jane Doe No. 27
ByThe Cincinnati Inquisitor
CI:How often did you use Earthshine Soap?
JANE DOE NO. 27:Almost every single day for sixteen years. When I was a kid, I wanted to be the Earthshine Girl. She was so funny in those ads. I liked the lady plumber one the best where she wore those overalls.
CI:And how would you say the soap affected your life?
JANE DOE NO. 27:I loved the soap. Worked great. Smelled great. You could use it on anything. They called it “The Soap for Women,” but maybe I wasn’t woman enough.
CI:Why do you say that?
JANE DOE NO. 27:I don’t know. I guess I just always felt different than others, set apart in the things I liked, the way I dressed. As a kid, I was a tomboy. I didn’t want to be a plumber, but I liked working with my hands. I liked overalls, too. [Laughs] I grew out of that, then. I guess you could say I grew into my body. Breasts. Hips. Curves. You can’t very well be a tomboy like that. I got married like I was supposed to do. But I was plagued with miscarriages. Seven. I never made it past eighteen weeks. I hate the wordmiscarry, like I’m the one doing it wrong, like I’m the one at fault. It wasn’t me. I didn’t carry anything wrong. It was the soap.
CI:Did your doctor tell you that?
JANE DOE NO. 27:My doctor didn’t tell me anything.
1986
Queen of the laundry.
—JAS. S. KIRK & CO. SOAP MAKERS
Once you play a role, that character becomes part of you, that character is you, a you who is multiplied, like light through a prism. In this way, I don’t agree with my old acting professors. You don’t lose yourself—not at all. Instead, you expand, you multiply, you become only possibility. I was the Earthshine Girl and Stella. I was a Christmas fund drive host and Audrey and a deviated septum patient and Les Nessman’s copilot. I was a daughter. I was a woman whose laundry machine was haunted. I was Wyatt’s wife. I was a cheater. I was Halley’s friend.
But if I stripped myself of all my titles, all the roles I played, what would remain of me? Who would I be? My acting teachers and directors had spoken of channeling the essence of a character, but what was the essence of me? That was the real question. If I were a character playing Nona Dixon, I’d have to ask: What did I want? What was I willing to do to get it? An audience won’t root for a passive character.
The deposition was a week away. What did I want? I wanted the truth, I could say. That’d be true enough, given the vantage point of time. But in the moment, I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew what I felt in my body: a tightness like invisible hands were gripping my shoulders. A fist in my stomach. An aching at my jaw where I’d been clenching my teeth. My therapist has since told me that one must listen to her body, ask: What is my body telling me? What is the message from my deepest self?
My deepest self seemed to be saying this: fuck it.
The three-hour drive to Gallipolis took me four because of snow. I followed the Ohio River, its murky brown water a familiar marker until the road gave way to large houses, a tiny downtown still decorated for Christmas.
Gallipolis had a population of three thousand—the kind of town that was friendly but suspicious of outsiders. An old woman wearing a Sherpa hat stopped me almost as soon as I arrived. “You lost?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said. I had that old gray journal in my car, but now I hardly thought it could be of use. “I’m looking for someone,” I said.
