The Wall (on Which She Hangs)

Will Spires

Fall 2009

Deep in the Gallery of Women, down through the Blue and Purple Rooms, there was the White Room, and that is where Jenny was. Like the other girls, she was nude, her body placed upright on the wall, black straps around her wrists and ankles, invisible plastic holding her across the waist and breasts. If she was not comfortable, she never let on. Her feet were about five yards off the floor, so that all of the men that came to see her had to look up. Sometimes I would come and watch her sleep. It was indescribable how beautiful she looked.

I visited her frequently. Usually at night, so we could be alone. The other women on the walls did not distract me. She was the one I came for.

“How’s it going?” I’d ask.

“Good, Peter.” At night her voice had a way of carrying, as if it were the only sound in the world.

The Gallery of Women was a great gift, an institution. Women would volunteer from all over the world to be hung. Each room had its own color—Green, Yellow, or White like Jenny’s—and the walls would be filled with nude women, hung for men to come and admire, ponder. Men would come to talk with the girls, look at them, or just spend time with them, waiting for the odd moments of discontinuity, like when the women cried or pissed and streaks of urine would stream down the wall.

“I’ve missed you, Jenny,” I said that night. “A great deal.” I first met her three months earlier, just before she decided to join the women in the Gallery. We had spoken frequently, and made love, but she was not happy with life—miserable, in fact—and her dissatisfaction caused her to leave. She liked it better on the wall, where she could look down at men and feel them loving her with their eyes.

She did not respond. Most nights she wouldn’t. I never knew if she was happy to see me there.

“I’ve brought you a gift,” I called to her. I held up a wonderful necklace, and held it high so she could see it. It had a golden band and a large white pearl. “I’ve spoken with the guards. They’re going to allow me to place it on you.”

She looked at the necklace but did not smile. I could tell there was something wrong from the furrow in her brow.

“I don’t understand,” I said. Her unhappiness puzzled me. She had become one of the most precious commodities in the gallery. Most days dozens, if not hundreds, of men could be found standing by her feet, gazing upon her. She was envied. Considered perfect. Loved.

She still did not speak. I sat for about forty minutes, waiting for her to divulge.

Finally, her mouth opened and she began to talk.

“It’s all gone wrong, Peter,” she said.

I did not know what she meant. I waited for her to continue.

“I can feel it, Peter. I know it’s there.”

She didn’t speak again for some time, and in those moments, I began to realize what she meant. She had been on the wall for two months. It was possible, I understood with horror, that we had conceived a child, and its presence was what had darkened her countenance.

“Is it...” I stared, my lips quivering.

Her eyes were closed.

“Yes.”

I felt my fingers stiffen. I knew what would happen, had seen it before. A pregnant woman is disgraceful, especially in the Gallery, and she would be ridiculed, jeered, hissed at. I imagined her stomach growing, looming large, casting a shadow upon the men gathered underneath her.

“Oh dear,” I muttered.

“I will be hideous,” she said, and began crying. I stood by her feet, letting her tears drip from her chins and splash down upon my face.

I shared her sorrow.

My eyes cast down to the necklace I held in my hands. The fluorescent lights above shined spectacular off its golden skin. I imagined how it would be but a mockery, a gild upon her distorted body.

When she stopped crying, my hair was soaked from her teardrops. Time had passed, and I went to the guard and showed him the necklace in my hand. He brought the Great Ladder over to where Jenny hung, allowed me to scale it. I was at her level now, and I touched her cheek. I cast my eyes down and slid the gold necklace up under her chin, the white pearl resting firm in the center of her throat.

I leaned over and kissed her soft blonde hair.

There was a time when she was man’s perfect image. The Gallery had never seen a woman with a finer aesthetic.

I pulled the chain of the necklace tightly. I heard her throat contract, her breathing become strained. I pulled tighter, tighter.

In short time Jenny’s body would be taken from the wall. For a matter of hours, the wall would be empty, and men would weep for her. But soon she would be replaced, and the men would gaze admiringly upon the new woman, her eyes bright as jewels, her body thin and clean.

As I write this, I look around my cell. The walls are dark and solid, made of stone. The ghost of her is there, watching me every day.

This is the wall, now, on which she hangs. A memory. Fair, bright, and lovely.