Zebra Suit

Zebra Suit


By Robin Kozloff

I call it my zebra suit because that’s what it is: a black and cream, zebra-striped, long-sleeved, loose-fitting, jumpsuit out of heavy soft cotton jersey, like a little kid’s sleeper without the feet. The stripes are not evenly spaced but are varied in width and jagged-edged just like a zebra’s. It has black buttons down the front, a tidy black collar at the neck and solid black cuffs at the wrists. My eagle eyes spied it from barely inside the door of the thrift store as it hung unaware among the pale flannels and terrycloths of the lingerie rack. I crouched, sprang, and pounced. It was a sixty-second kill. I trotted home with it in my teeth, gloating and triumphant. 

When I wear it belted, the top half blouses out but the bottom half gathers in sleekly, leaving my haunches long and lean. Without a belt, it’s a baggy, shapeless, comfy retreat.
I wear it to amuse my nephew at Thanksgiving family reunions when everyone stays over, sleeping on couches and air mattresses. I wear it to read the paper on cold, gray Sunday mornings when I can’t bear to get dressed in real clothes. I wore it once for Halloween with a black stocking for a tail and a mask made from a paper plate. And I wore it the night of our mother’s first surgery, when we all just waited at her house, and my brother found me hiding, curled face down on the bed. He sat down next to me patting my back and the kindness made me cry. I wore it rollerblading one fine, clear midnight, on a smooth dark road under a starry sky, swinging my arms, humming along, until some jackass grabbed my butt from a passing car window, nearly making me fall and filling me with a spitting, useless rage as the red tail lights faded into the distance.
Thinking it silly looking and sexless, I once put it on to discourage the advances of an overnight visitor, but before the night was over I shed my zebra skin.