Tony’s mother stood at the top of the hill, staring down, holding the toboggan by its rope as if restraining it. “There,” she said. “Isn’t that nice?” She was pleating her lips, the way she did when she put on lipstick, and Tony could tell that the scene before her was not exactly what she’d had in mind. She was wearing her downtown coat and hat, and nylon stockings and little boots with high heels and fur tops. She didn’t have slacks or a ski suit or a Hudson’s Bay coat and earmuffs like the other adults there, and it occurred to Tony that her mother expected her to go down the hill on the toboggan all by herself.

Tony felt an urgent need to pee. She knew how difficult this would be, considering her clumsy two-piece snowsuit with the elastic braces over the shoulders, and what annoyance it would cause her mother—there was not a washroom in sight—so she said nothing about it. Instead she said, “I don’t want to.” She knew that if she ever went down that hill she would flip over, she would crash into something, she would be crushed. One small child was being led up the hill, howling, with blood running from its nose.

Tony’s mother hated having her scenarios foiled. People should enjoy themselves when she wanted them to. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll give you a push. It’ll be lovely!”

Tony sat down on the ground, which was her habitual means of protest. Crying did not work, not with her mother. It was likely to produce a slap, or at best a shake. She had never been much of a crier.

Her mother glanced down at her with disgust. “I’ll show you how!” she said. Her eyes were sparkling, her teeth were set: it was the look she got when she was willing herself to be brave, when she was refusing to be defeated. Before Tony knew

‘ what was happening her mother had picked up the toboggan and run with it to the brink of the hill. There she threw it onto the—snow and hurled herself on top of it, and went whizzing down, flat on her belly, with her beige legs in their nylons and her fur-topped boots sticking straight up behind her. Almost immediately her hat came off.

She went at an astonishing speed. As she diminished down the slope, into the dusk, Tony clambered to her feet. Her mother was going away from her, she was vanishing, and Tony wbuld be left alone on the cold hill.

“No! No!” she screamed. (Unusual for her to have screamed: she must have been terrified.) But inside herself she could hear another voice, also hers, which was shouting, fearlessly and with ferocious delight:

On! On!

As a child, Tony kept a diary. Every January she would write her name in the front of it, in block letters:

Tony Fremont

Then under it she would write her other name: TNOMERFYNOT

This name had a Russian or Martian sound to it, which pleased her. It was the name of an alien, or a spy. Sometimes it was the name of a twin, an invisible twin; and when Tony grew up and learned more about left-handedness she was faced with the possibility that she might in fact have been a twin, the left-handed half of a divided egg, the other half of which had died. But when she was little her twin was merely an invention, the incarnation of her sense that part of her was missing. Although she was a twin, Tnomerf Ynot was a good deal taller than Tony herself. Taller, stronger, more daring.

Tony wrote her outer name with her right hand and her other name, her inner one, with her left; although, officially, she was forbidden to write with her left hand, or to do anything else of importance with it. Nobody had told her why. About the closest she’d come to an explanation was a speech of Anthea’s—of her mother’s—in which she’d said that the world was not constructed for the left-handed. She also said that Tony would understand better when she grew up, which was just another of Anthea’s assurances that failed to come true.

When Tony was younger the teachers at school would slap her left hand or hit it with rufers, as ifshe’d been caught picking her nose with it. One teacher tied it to the side of her desk. The other children might have teased her about this, but they didn’t. They couldn’t see the logic of it, any more than she could.

That was a school Tony got yanked out of quickly. Usually it took Anthea eight months or more before she got fed up with a school. It was true that Tony couldn’t spell very well, or not according to the teachers. They said she reversed letters. They said she had trouble with numbers. They would say this to Anthea, and Anthea would say that Tony was gifted, and then Tony would know it would soon be time for a change because very shortly now Anthea would lose her temper and start insulting the teachers. Nincompoops was one of the nicer names she called them. She wanted Tdny changed, fixed, turned right side up, and she wanted it to happen overnight.

Tony could do things easily with her left hand, things her right hand would stumble over. In her right-handed life she was awkward, and her handwriting was lumpish and clumsy. But that made no difference: despite its good performance her left hand was scorned, but her right hand was bribed and encouraged. It wasn’t fair, but Anthea said that life wasn’t fair.

Secretly Tony continued to write left-handed; but she felt guilty about it. She knew there must be something shameful about her left hand or it would not have been humiliated like that. It was the hand she loved best, all the same.

It’s November, and the afternoon is already darkening. Earlier there was a dusting of snow, but now it’s drizzling. The drizzle runs down the living-room windows in icy, sinuous trickles; a few brown leaves are stuck to the outside of the glass like leather tongues.

Tony kneels on the chesterfield with her nose pressed against the window,., making fog patches with her breath. When the patch is big enough she writes on it, squeakily, with her index finger. Then she rubs out the words. Kcuf, she writes. This is a word too bad even for her diary. Tihs. She writes these words with fear and awe, but alto with’a superstitious relish. They are Tnomerf Ynot words. They make her feel powerful, in charge of something.

She breathes and writes and rubs out, breathes and writes. The air is unfresh, filled with the dry, burnt smell of the chintz curtains. All the time she’s writing, she’s listening to the silence of the house behind her. She’s used to silences: she can distinguish between full silences and empty ones, between those that come before and those that come after. Just because there’s a silence it doesn’t mean that nothing is going on.

Tony kneels at the window as long as she dares. At last she sees her mother walking quickly along the street from the corner, head down against the drizzle, her fur collar turned up, her face hidden by her maroon hat. She’s carrying a wrapped package.

Probably it’s a dress, because clothes are a solace for Anthea; when she’s feeling “blue,” as she calls it, she goes shopping. Tony has been dragged downtown on these expeditions many times, when Anthea couldn’t figure out where else to stash her. She’s waited outside change rooms, sweating in her winter coat, while Anthea has tried things on and then more things, and has come out in her stocking feet and done a pirouette in front of the full-length mirror, smoothing the cloth down over her hips. Anthea doesn’t often buy clothes for Tony; she sa~s she could dress Tony in a potato sack and Tony wouldn’t notice. But Tony does notice, she notices a great deal, She just doesn’t think it would make any difference whether she wore a potato sack or not. Any difference to Anthea, that is.

Tony gets up from the chesterfield and begins her piano practice. Playing the piano is supposed to strengthen her right hand, though everyone including Tony knows that Tony isn’t musical and that these lessons will lead nowhere. How could they? Tony, with her little rodent paws, can’t even span an octave.