Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Voice”

[Gentle waves background noise]

In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wished I hadn’t. I’ll make no excuses; I was a grown woman when it happened to me.

I was standing in the market the day I saw him.

He was as strange to me as satin to sackcloth, feathers to lead, a heron to a herring.

Up to that day I must have been happy. Happy enough, at least, never to wonder whether I was or not.

The morning after I saw this man in the marketplace I woke up sick to my stomach and decided I was in love.

[Thunder cracking background noise]

So I went to the witch, as desperate girls do.

They said so many things about her, they couldn’t all be true. Girls in trouble were not put off by stories.

Make me better. Make me right. Make me like a woman he could love.

She knotted her hands in her frayed shawl.

What’s wrong with you, girl, that you would make yourself over again?

Everything.

Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.

It’ll cost you your voice,

she said.

I stared at her.

You won’t be able to laugh or answer a question, to shout when something spills on you or cry out with delight at the full moon. You will neither be able to speak you love or sing it with that famous voice of yours.

But-

But you will have him. Also,

she said, while I was still taking a breath,

there will be pain.

Pain?

Like a sword cutting you in half. You will bleed for this man.

Yes,

I said all in a rush, before my other selves could stop me.

[Trains and cities background noise]

Men who passed me on the road turned their heads to stare. It was all true, the witch had done what she promised.

Power was ringing through my lovely body: what need had I of words?

He was sure he’d seen me somewhere before. I was a puzzle to him. After a few days he began to call me his little foundling; how the words were sweet to my ear. He didn’t seem to mind that I answered all his questions with kisses.

At night, following his whispers in the darkness, I began to learn about pleasure. Every day I woke up a little altered.

After a while I would have liked to ask when we were going to be married. My eyes put the question, but all he did was kiss them shut. That was the first time I felt the loss of my voice.

When I found him on his back

I couldn’t see which girl was on top of him:

Some nights he came home, some nights not. On one of the nights he lay beside me, sleeping like a child, it occurred to me to kill him.

I stole away before morning.

After a week without food I began to follow the only trade open to a wordless girl.

I stayed through the winter, long enough to fill a jar with my tears.

I didn’t know how to send a message: all I knew was the way home. The days of walking were like knives under my feet.

[Thunder cracking background noise]

I made straight for the witch’s cave,

She came a few steps closer.

I don’t have your voice, you know,

she said softly.

You do.

The flints were digging into the insides of my fists.

Your songs are still out there on the clifftop, hanging in the air for you when you want them.

She paused, searching my face.

Wish to speak and you will speak, girl. Wish to die and you can do it. Wish to live and here you are.

I don’t understand,

I croaked at last. My throat hurt.

[Gentle waves background noise]

I would never again leave this harbor that smelt like home. At the end of a week my feet had healed.

Yet another year went by, and I married a fisherman with green eyes who liked to hear me sing, but preferred to hear me talk.