Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

late.
    The man I had married was a woman. They came to burn her. I killed her with a single blow to the head before they reached the gates, and fled that place, and am come here now.
    I still have a coil of her hair.

    We had been married a few years when a man came to the door selling brushes. My husband was at work so I let the man into our kitchen and gave him something to eat. I asked him to show me his bag and he spread out, as you would imagine, a layer of polishing cloths, a pile of round soaps, combs for the hair, combs for the beard of a billy goat, ordinary household things. I bought one or two useful pieces, then I asked him what he had in his other bag, the one he hadn't opened.
    'What was it you wanted?' he asked.
    'Poison...'
    'Yes, for the rats.'
    'No, for my husband.'
    He seemed unsurprised by my intention to murder and opened the other bag. I looked inside. It was full of little jars and sealed bags.
    'Is your husband a big man?'
    'Very. He is very, very fat. He is the fattest man in the village.
    He has always been fat. He has eleven brothers, all of whom are as slender as spring com. Every day he eats one cow followed by one pig.'
    'You are right to kill him,' said the man. 'Put this in his milk at bedtime.'
    Bedtime came and I stirred my husband's vat of milk and put in the powder as directed. My husband came crashing over to the stove and gulped the milk in one draught. As soon as he had finished he began to swell up. He swelled out of the house, cracking the roof, and within a few moments had exploded. Out of his belly came a herd of cattle and a fleet of pigs, all blinking in the light and covered in milk.
    He had always complained about his digestion.
    I rounded them up and set off to find my sisters. I prefer farming to cookery.

    He called me Jess because that is the name of the hood which restrains the falcon.
    I was his falcon. I hung on his arm and fed at his hand. said my nose was sharp and cruel and that my eyes had He said my nose was sharp and cruel and that my eyes had madness in them. He said I would tear him to pieces if he dealt softly with me.
    At night, if he was away, he had me chained to our bed. It was a long chain, long enough for me to use the chamber pot or to stand at the window and wait for the late owls. I love to hear the owls. I love to see the sudden glide of wings spread out for prey, and then the dip and the noise like a lover in pain.
    He used the chain when we went riding together. I had a horse as strong as his, and he'd whip the horse from behind and send it charging through the trees, and he'd follow, half a head behind, pulling on the chain and asking me how I liked my ride.
    His game was to have me sit astride him when we made love and hold me tight in the small of my back. He said he had to have me above him, in case I picked his eyes out in the faltering candlelight.
    I was none of these things, but I became them.
    At night, in June I think, I flew off his wrist and tore his liver from his body, and bit my chain in pieces and left him on the bed with his eyes open.
    He looked surprised, I don't know why. As your lover describes you, so you are.

    When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me.
    He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me.
    It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left.
    As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about building a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it.
    Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For