EXCERPTS FROM WOMEN BORN WITH FUR: A BIOGRAPHY

Def­i­n­i­tions

Hyper­tri­chosis: An exces­sive growth of hair on the body, pos­si­bly as a result of
endocrine dys­func­tion, as in the hir­sutism accom­pa­ny­ing exces­sive adrenocortical
function.

Hyper­tri­chosis: specif­i­cal­ly refers to hair den­si­ty or length beyond the accept­ed lim­its of
nor­mal for a par­tic­u­lar age, race, or sex, and may be gen­er­al­ized or local­ized, and may be
lanu­go, vel­lus, or ter­mi­nal hair.

Hyper­tri­chosis: Exces­sive hair growth at inap­pro­pri­ate loca­tions, such as on the
extrem­i­ties, the head, and the back. It is caused by genet­ic or acquired fac­tors, and is an
andro­gen-inde­pen­dent process. This con­cept does not include hir­sutism, which is an
andro­gen-depen­dent excess hair growth in women and children.

Hyper­tri­chosis: Growth of hair in excess of the normal.

Hyper­tri­chosis: A girl is born with hair, no, fur cov­er­ing her entire body, every­where but
her palms and the bot­toms of her feet. Every­one calls it hair, but she knows it is fur. The
doc­tor calls it hair and says it will fall out when she is old­er, but she refus­es to believe
him. Fur and hair are not the same things. She is only a child, but even she knows this.

Fur: 1. The thick coat of soft hair cov­er­ing the skin of a mam­mal, such as a fox or beaver.
2. The hair-cov­ered, dressed pelt of such a mam­mal, used in the mak­ing of gar­ments and
as trim­ming or decoration.
3. A gar­ment made of or lined with the dressed pelt of a mammal.
4. A coat­ing sim­i­lar to the pelt of a mammal.

Fur: 1. A piece of the dressed pelt of an ani­mal used to make, trim, or line wearing
apparel.
2. An arti­cle of cloth­ing made of or with fur.
3. The hairy coat of a mam­mal espe­cial­ly when fine, soft, and thick; also: such a coat
with the skin.
4. A coat­ing resem­bling fur: as a: a coat of ephithe­lial debris on the tongue. b: the thick
pile of a fab­ric (as chenille)

Fur: 1. The soft, thick hair cov­er­ing the body of many mammals.
2. The skin bear­ing such hair, when stripped and processed for mak­ing, lin­ing, or
trim­ming gar­ments; dressed pelt.
3. Any gar­ment, neck­piece, trim­ming, etc. made of such skins.
4. Any fur­like or fuzzy coat­ing, as dis­eased mat­ter on the tongue in illness.

Fur: 1. The short, fine, soft hair of cer­tain ani­mals, grow­ing thick on the skin, and
dis­tin­guished from the hair, which is longer and coarser.
2. The skins of cer­tain wild ani­mals with the fur; pel­try; as, a car­go of furs.
3. Strips of dressed skins with fur, used on gar­ments for warmth or for ornament.
4. Arti­cles of cloth­ing made of fur; as, a set of furs for a lady (a col­lar, tip­pet, or cape,
muff, etc.).
5. Any coat­ing con­sid­ered as resem­bling fur; as: a coat of mor­bid mat­ter col­lect­ed on the
tongue in per­sons affect­ed with fever.

Fur: There have been many women born with fur.
 
 
Richie

He isn’t in love with her. How could he be in love with a girl like that? Richie is
attrac­tive, a tall, wiry boy with strong arms and legs, blue eyes all the girls call
“pierc­ing.” He is smart, but he doesn’t like to show it, and when he sits in class with his
arms fold­ed, base­ball cap pulled down over his eyes, he won­ders what his life would be
like if he decid­ed to try, if he raised his hand or both­ered to do his home­work. He’ll never
do it, but some­times he wants to. Some­times he thinks he’ll get out of this town, but
fif­teen years will go by, twen­ty, then thir­ty, and he’ll still be here.

He isn’t in love with Mary, he couldn’t be, but he dreams about her. He imagines
them stand­ing side by side, her small hand in his large one. He’ll imag­ine what she looks
like under the fur, like it is a sweater she can take off, and he imag­ines touch­ing her on
her shoul­der, her side, the small of her back. When he is fif­teen and los­es his vir­gin­i­ty to
the school’s head cheer­leader, he imag­ines he is on top of Mary instead, and this
fright­ens him. He can’t stop think­ing about it, not even after he has slept with ten of the
cheer­lead­ers (the pret­ty ones), the girls’ gym­nas­tics team, and his 11th grade English
teacher. Ms. Fuller is tall and red haired, and Richie’s friends all fan­ta­size about her.
They look down her shirt when she leans over them to explain pas­sages in Mac­beth and
watch her ass move from side to side as she eras­es the board. After she has sex with
Richie in the back­seat of her car, she resigns from her job and moves away. Richie
doesn’t tell any­one what hap­pened between them, doesn’t tell any­one that he ran his
hands through her long red hair and imag­ined it was fur, that he bit her lips and begged
her to bite him back, to make his mouth bleed.
 
 
Leav­ing Home

Mary leaves home for the first time at nine­teen, because she is sick of her father’s house,
sick of watch­ing tele­vi­sion every night and lis­ten­ing to her sis­ters argue on the phone
with their boyfriends. She has no oth­er rea­sons for going, no plans. She decides to hitch
hike across the Mid­west to Cal­i­for­nia, or at least Col­orado. As she packs her duf­fel bag,
she imag­ines meet­ing a man to trav­el with, one who tells her sto­ries about the peo­ple he
knows, ones she reminds him of, a man who will stroke her face and head to help her fall
asleep and will buy her French vanil­la cof­fees and can­dy bars from gas sta­tions while she
waits in the car. She thinks about mak­ing it to a small town near the coast and work­ing in
an ice cream shop, of buy­ing a tiny house that smells like old books and salt. Mary’s first
night on the road no one stops for her, so she walks until she can’t any­more and then she
sleeps in someone’s yard. A dog wakes her up the next day by lick­ing her hand, and it
lets her pet it until its own­ers call it inside.
 
 
Leav­ing Home

(Mary leaves home for the first time at nine­teen, because of the book. It’s a small book,
thin, almost like a pam­phlet. She finds it in the mail­box wrapped in brown paper with no
return address, but it smells like her mother’s per­fume, like what Mary imag­ines her
mother’s bed­room smells like. Julia Pas­trana, the cov­er says, and Mary doesn’t know if
this is the author’s name or the title of the book. She learns that it’s the title, and that the
book is about a woman named Julia who was also cov­ered in fur. The author calls it
“hair,” not fur, but Mary can tell from the pic­tures that she and Julia are alike, and so
Julia has fur. It makes a dif­fer­ence to her. She reads the book in an hour, sit­ting at the
kitchen table with a cup of tea that gets cold, lis­ten­ing to rain on the roof. Julia lived in
Eng­land in the 1800s, was a cir­cus per­former. Her man­ag­er mar­ried her, and when she
died, he had her and her dead baby (also fur­ry) stuffed and car­ried them on dis­play all
around the world. Now she’s in a muse­um some­where, or a hos­pi­tal, some­where in
Europe. The author didn’t know where, but spec­u­lat­ed Oslo.

Mary thinks about the stuffed ani­mals her father used to bring down in garbage
bags from the attic—some were miss­ing eyes or limbs, with saw dust and cot­ton stuffing
falling out of the holes that mice had chewed in them. He would put them on the floor in
the liv­ing room and tell Mary and her sis­ters to look through them and make sure they
didn’t want to keep any of them before he brought them to Good­will or threw them out.
“We need to start get­ting rid of some of this stuff,” he’d say. Lula made Mel dig in the
bags for her. She said the toys were filthy and she hat­ed the way they felt on her hands.
She made Mel pick out stuffed ani­mals one by one, to hold them up and show them to her
like she was try­ing to sell them, and nev­er decid­ed to keep any­thing. Their father would
take the garbage bags into the garage, and they would sit there until he brought them back
up into the attic. A few months lat­er, he would bring down the same bags and tell the
girls again to look through them in case there was any­thing they want­ed. Mary nev­er took
things from the bags while her sis­ters were watch­ing, but some­times she would go into
the garage and look through them her­self, hold­ing stuffed rab­bits and hors­es and frogs in
her lap, bring­ing them up to her nose and breath­ing in the smell of mildew and sawdust,
and then return­ing them to the bags. She buried a stuffed sheep once, because she
couldn’t stand the idea of putting it back in plastic.)
 
 
Chil­dren

Mary gets a job at a library shelv­ing books five hours a day. She doesn’t talk to people,
and some­times she sits on the floor between the book­shelves and reads until she hears
some­one mov­ing near­by, and then she jumps up and push­es the book cart down a row or
two. She reads Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About Sex, but were Afraid to Ask
and makes notes in the margins.

One after­noon, when it’s near­ly time for sto­ry hour, the children’s librar­i­an gets
sick. Mary watch­es her run to the bath­room, hears her gag and vom­it into the toi­let. She
comes out wip­ing her mouth, and tells Mary that she’ll have to fill in for her. “There
shouldn’t be too many kids today,” she says, and hands Mary a large, glossy copy of
Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood. “Good luck.” Mary can smell the barf on her breath.

The chil­dren begin to file into the library, and Mary sits down in the small chair in
front of a large rug cov­ered in bright­ly col­ored ABCs. She holds the book open and looks
at the pic­tures, at Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood’s long blonde hair peek­ing out from under her
hood, at the bas­ket she clutch­es in a del­i­cate pink fist. The wolf is large and gray with
unkempt fur, and he leers at Red and bares his teeth menacingly.

When the chil­dren see Mary, some of them begin to cry. They run back to their
par­ents and cling to their legs, say they want to go home. The braver ones stare at her and
ask her why she looks so strange. “What are you?” they ask, and reach their hands toward
her fur. “Be qui­et,” Mary tells them, open­ing the book to the first page, “it’s time for the
sto­ry.” The chil­dren calm down as she begins to read to them, and by the end of the book
they are star­ing at her with wide eyes. “And so the wolf ate Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood up,”
Mary says, smil­ing at them, “and no one ever saw her again.”
 
 
In the Library

(What real­ly hap­pens in the library is that the children’s librar­i­an throws up and then asks
Mary to take over sto­ry time. “We’re read­ing Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood,” she says, and
hands Mary a large, bright copy of the book. “It’s most­ly pic­tures,” she says, and smiles.
“The kids love them.” Mary sits in a chair in front of the ABC rug and reads to the
chil­dren, who are polite and qui­et. She growls like the wolf and says “Grand­moth­er, why
are your teeth so big” in a high, sweet voice, and the chil­dren stare at her, rapt. No one
asks about her fur or says any­thing that could be con­sid­ered rude in any way, but when
she’s fin­ished with the book, they gath­er around her and try to sit in her lap. They put
their arms around her neck and bury their faces in her chest and gig­gle when the fur
tick­les their noses. They look at her like she is beau­ti­ful, like she is some­thing they are
imag­in­ing instead of seeing.)
 
 
Sto­ry Hour

(The children’s librar­i­an throws up, but says she doesn’t need to go home. She is
preg­nant, and is used to throw­ing up by now. She asks Mary to stand by in case she needs
her, but that she can read the sto­ry to the kids. “Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood,” she says, and
smiles weak­ly. “My favorite. I always loved the wolf, even though my mom said that was
weird.” “I loved the grand­moth­er,” Mary says, and the children’s librar­i­an laughs. The
chil­dren lis­ten atten­tive­ly to the sto­ry and cheer when Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood pops out of
the wolf’s stom­ach, clean and neat, not a hair on her head harmed. Smiling.)
 
 
Cor­re­spon­dence

Mary writes let­ters to her sis­ters and mails them from mail­box­es in neigh­bor­hoods she
pass­es along her way. Dear Lula, she writes, have you talked to Dad recent­ly? Are you
mar­ried yet? And Dear Mel, I passed a build­ing on fire yes­ter­day. The smell reminded
me of you. Her sis­ters nev­er write her back, but Mary tells her­self it’s because she’s
always on the move and they can’t find her. Some­times she sends them packages—
pho­tographs of side­walks and street ven­dors, post­cards, bits of tree bark and ballpoint
pens, and she always includes a card that says Love, Mary. Mary doesn’t remem­ber what
her sis­ters look like, but she sees their faces in all the women she passes.
 
 
Cor­re­spon­dence

(Mary writes let­ters to her sis­ters and mails them from mail­box­es in neigh­bor­hoods she
pass­es along the way.

“Dear Mel,” she writes,

“Do you remem­ber when we were kids and you used to hold me on your lap? I was too
big for you, but you always tried. Lula made fun of you for it, but you did it any­way, and
I nev­er thanked you. I passed a burn­ing build­ing the oth­er day and thought about our
house, that stu­pid gas fire with the fake logs. I thought about you, how I’m not sure I’d
rec­og­nize your face if I saw you, but I swear for just a sec­ond that every woman I pass is
you. Give my love to Lula. Mary.”

And

“Dear Lula,

I made this col­lage for you from note­book paper and mag­a­zine pic­tures. The girl
in the mid­dle (she is miss­ing a head) is you. She’s miss­ing a heart, too, but you can’t see

                                                                          Love,
                                                                          Mary”)

Correspondence—Dead Let­ter

Dear Mary,

I know you prob­a­bly don’t want to hear from me (I wouldn’t if I were you), but
I’ve been look­ing for you for a long time now. Your father told me you move around a
lot, so I hope this gets to you. I think of you often, all the time, and I won­der how you
are. There is a lot to say, but I don’t even know if you’ll get this, so I’ll wait to hear back
from you before I say any more. If you don’t want to write back, I under­stand. But I hope
you will.

                                                                           Love,
                                                                           Mom

p.s. Here is a pho­to­graph I took in Hawaii of a vol­cano just start­ing to erupt. It reminds
me of you.
 
 
Correspondence—Dead Let­ter

Dear Mary,

You must not be get­ting my let­ters, or else you don’t want to hear from me. I
hope it’s not the lat­ter. I wish I could sit down with you and explain why I left—I just
can’t write it in a let­ter. I’ve tried, and it always comes out sound­ing so stu­pid. What I
can say is this: I want­ed to take you with me and have always regret­ted not doing it. I
thought about com­ing back so many times, just to get you. You would have been
unhap­py, though, at least this is what I tell myself. I’ve moved around a lot—all over the
coun­try, and even to Scot­land for a few years, and then to Cana­da. I think my next stop
might be South Africa. I think there’s a coun­try song that says some­thing like “I wasn’t
born for set­tling down,” and it’s a cliché but in my case it’s true. It sounds like it might
be true for you, too. I don’t regret mar­ry­ing your father and hav­ing kids, but I wish I had
done some trav­el­ing first. Might have made it eas­i­er on every­one. If you get this, please
write back, even if it’s just to tell me to piss off.

                                                                           Love,
                                                                           Mom

p.s. Some­times I do regret hav­ing Lula.
 
 
Correspondence—Dead Let­ter

Dear Mary,

I wish you would come home. It’s bor­ing here and I can’t tor­ment Mel and Dad
the way I liked to tor­ment you. It just isn’t the same. Where are you these days? Have
you joined the cir­cus yet?

                                                                          Love,
                                                                           Lula
 
 
Fourth Love

A few weeks after Truck and the girl in the Stet­son leave, Mary and the giant end up
sleep­ing togeth­er, and then they are togeth­er every day. They move into an apartment,
and then rent a house in a small town in Indi­ana where the giant used to have fam­i­ly. It
hap­pens so quick­ly, and Mary didn’t expect it (she still thinks about Truck’s heavy legs
wrapped around her own and the way she smells, her breath), but she is hap­py. They
drink wine in bed, and he tells her she is more beau­ti­ful than any woman he’s seen.
“You’re an idiot,” Mary tells him, but he swears it’s true.

The giant is nei­ther too heavy nor too light on her body, and she loves the way her
fur feels against his skin, almost like it is absorb­ing him. She tries to tell the giant this,
but he doesn’t under­stand. “It doesn’t mat­ter,” she says. They whis­per “I love you” to
each oth­er over and over until Mary doesn’t know what the words mean any­more; she
just likes the sounds and the way they feel on her tongue.
 
 
Flight

It is time. Mary has been in con­tact with the cura­tor of a muse­um in Nor­way, and Julia is
there. When she tells the giant she’s found her, he kiss­es her and says “of course you
have” like he always believed she would. They makes plane reser­va­tions for the trip to
Oslo, and the giant says it can be their hon­ey­moon, but Mary isn’t lis­ten­ing to him. Her
body feels heavy now, and all she wants to do is sleep. She’s found Julia. She could have
found her months ago, but she is almost glad she wait­ed so long. Now that the time has
final­ly come, she is ter­ri­fied. What will she do with her? Why did she want her so badly
in the first place? You’re trav­el­ing to Nor­way to bring a dead body home with you, she
says to her­self. She has nev­er thought about how strange of an idea it is, and now that she
does, it seems impos­si­bly strange. The giant books first class tick­ets, a suite in the Grand
Hotel. “This is the first time we’ll real­ly get to be alone togeth­er,” he says. Mary is sitting
on the bed, and he jumps on it and drops down next to her. “Aren’t you excited?”

“Yes, but we real­ly won’t be alone togeth­er,” Mary says. “We’ll have Julia with
us.”
 
 
Bright Hous­es

Oslo is a city of bright­ly paint­ed hous­es. Elec­tric blues and reds and yel­lows. They look
like they’ve been col­ored with crayons. Most of them are strung with Christ­mas lights,
even though Christ­mas isn’t for months yet. The city is so dark, their cab­driv­er says, that
peo­ple are obsessed with light. They burn can­dles in their hous­es all the time, cov­er every
open sur­face with lamps. “Every once in a while, we get a let­ter from the pub­lic works
say­ing we need to cool it with using so much elec­tric­i­ty,” he says, “but no one listens.”
The giant takes pho­to­graph after pho­to­graph of the hous­es, of all the build­ings they pass.
He thinks they’re beau­ti­ful, but Mary thinks the city is tacky, like a minia­ture city in a toy
train set. “It’s like it’s try­ing to be beau­ti­ful,” she says, but she feels bad after say­ing it.
The giant just frowns and takes more pic­tures. Most of them turn out bad­ly, just smears
of col­ored light and inde­ter­mi­nate shapes, but Mary loves them. She can’t take her eyes
off of them. “This is the real city,” she says, “you’ve cap­tured it.”
 
 
Bright Hous­es

(The giant loves Oslo. He asks Mary how she would feel about mov­ing there one day,
and shows her pho­tographs he took in the cab and on the train. The hous­es are painted
bright blue and red and yel­low, and they have Christ­mas lights strung over their windows
and eaves, even though Christ­mas is still months away. The pho­tographs come out
badly—just smears of red and green and pink light over shadow—but Mary says they’re
beau­ti­ful. She tells the giant that when they get home she is going to print them out and
frame them. She wants to hang them in Julia’s room.)
 
 
City of Bright Houses

(The cit­i­zens of Oslo are obsessed with light. They burn can­dles in their win­dows and
keep Christ­mas lights hang­ing from their roofs even in sum­mer. Most of the streetlights
are always burn­ing, even in the morn­ing and after­noon. “It is because there is so little
nat­ur­al light,” the cab dri­ver tells Mary. “Most of us suf­fer from vit­a­min D deficiencies
because the city is so dark.” Mary tells him he should take vit­a­mins, and he pulls a bottle
out of the glove­box and shakes them at her. “Every day,” he says.)

Beth Cou­ture’s work can be found in a num­ber of jour­nals and antholo­gies, includ­ing Gar­goyle, Drunk­en Boat, The South­east Review, The Yalobusha Review, Ragazine, and Thir­ty Under Thir­ty from Starcherone Books. She is an assis­tant edi­tor with Sun­dress Pub­li­ca­tions, and teach­es com­po­si­tion at Blooms­burg Uni­ver­si­ty in Blooms­burg, PA.