Sinister Wisdom 40
Spring 1990
Editor and publisher: Elana Dykewomon

Editorial readers and advisors: Betty Dudley, Caryatis Cardea, CathThompson, DeeAnne Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, Jasmine Marah, Lisa Carlin,
Marlane Cook, Naja Sorella, Susanjill Kahn, Susan Levinkind, Valerie Stoehr,
Winn Gilmore
Contributing editors: Gloria Anzaldua, Irena Klepfisz, Melanie Kayel
Kantrowitz
Typists and proofreaders: Caryatis Cardea, DeeAnne Davis, Marlane Cook,
Susan Goldberg, Susan Levinkind, Valerie Stoehr
Office help, correspondence, ads and accounting: Caryatis Cardea, Cindy
Cooper, SJ Kahn, Susan Levinkind, Casey Fisher
Thanks to Bobby Rothschild and Rebecca Kutlin of Tamed Technology
Distribution and mailing: Cindy Cooper, Debbie Fier, Dolphin Zelda
Waletzky, Jasmine Marah, Kim Swineheart, Marlane Cook, Susan Goldberg,
Susanjill Kahn, Susan Levinkind
Reader for the Womyn's Braille Press: Judy Freespirit
Cover art: Friends on Park Bench by Terry Hauptman
Cover design: Bridget Boylan

SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers: Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-83)
Michaele Uccella (1983-84)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-87)
Copyright © 1990 Sinister Wisdom. All rights reserved to individual artists and authors.

ISSN: 0196-1853

Sinister Wisdom· PO Box 3252 • Berkeley CA 94703 • US

A Journal for the Lesbian Imaginationin the Arts and Politics__________________ Contents
3
9
10
15
17

Elana Dykewomon • Notes for a Magazine
Notes on the Themes (upcoming issues)
Mary Carol Randall • Commitment (poem)
Loretta Johnson • In a Penal Colony (narrative)
Sinister Wisdom Friendship Discussion 12/5/89

§§§
36
38
40
48
61

Jan Hardy • small acts (poem)
Terri de la Perra • Palabras (narrative)
Mary A. White • Sarah (fiction)
Gila Svirsky • How I Get Started in a Life of Crime (fiction)
Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall • Hospital Poems (poems)

§§§
64
72
76
78
79
82

Pamela Gray • excerpts from A Sacred Time: Journal
Entries (journal)
Sandra Lambert • Lunar Eclipse 1989 (narrative)
Beth Karbe • for joan, in 1967 (prose/poem)
Susan Stinson • Band Class Collaboration (poem)
Nina Crow Newington • excerpts from Harvest of Ghosts(fiction)
Emily Levy • the revenge of chunky beef (fiction)

§§§
89
91
94
96
99
101
102

Susan Dambroff • For Kimi (poem)
Anne Mi Ok Bruining • Stones in Somerville (poem)
Cath Thompson • Recently, It Has Occurred to Me (poem)
Elizabeth Clare • Friends, Lovers and Passion (essay)
Anne Corey • Plain Geometry (poem)
Joan Schuman • Friendly Definitions (poem)
Penelope J. Engelbrecht • Never Jerk Your Hand Away
(fiction)§§§

Sinister Wisdom 40
Spring 1990
Editor and publisher: Elana Dykewomon

Editorial readers and advisors: Betty Dudley, Caryatis Cardea, CathThompson, DeeAnne Davis, Gloria Anzaldua, Jasmine Marah, Lisa Carlin,
Marlane Cook, Naja Sorella, Susanjill Kahn, Susan Levinkind, Valerie Stoehr,
Winn Gilmore
Contributing editors: Gloria Anzaldua, Irena Klepfisz, Melanie Kayel
Kantrowitz
Typists and proofreaders: Caryatis Cardea, DeeAnne Davis, Marlane Cook,
Susan Goldberg, Susan Levinkind, Valerie Stoehr
Office help, correspondence, ads and accounting: Caryatis Cardea, Cindy
Cooper, SJ Kahn, Susan Levinkind, Casey Fisher
Thanks to Bobby Rothschild and Rebecca Kutlin of Tamed Technology
Distribution and mailing: Cindy Cooper, Debbie Fier, Dolphin Zelda
Waletzky, Jasmine Marah, Kim Swineheart, Marlane Cook, Susan Goldberg,
Susanjill Kahn, Susan Levinkind
Reader for the Womyn's Braille Press: Judy Freespirit
Cover art: Friends on Park Bench by Terry Hauptman
Cover design: Bridget Boylan

SlNlSTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers: Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-83)
Michaele Uccella (1983-84)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-87)
Copyright © 1990 Sinister Wisdom. All rights reserved to individual artists and authors.

ISSN: 0196-1853

Sinister Wisdom· PO Box 3252 • Berkeley CA 94703 • US

A Journal for the Lesbian Imaginationin the Arts and Politics__________________ Contents
3
9
10
15
17

Elana Dykewomon • Notes for a Magazine
Notes on the Themes (upcoming issues)
Mary Carol Randall • Commitment (poem)
Loretta Johnson • In a Penal Colony (narrative)
Sinister Wisdom Friendship Discussion 12/5/89

§§§
36
38
40
48
61

Jan Hardy • small acts (poem)
Terri de la Pefia • Palabras (narrative)
Mary A. White • Sarah (fiction)
Gila Svirsky • How I Get Started in a Life of Crime (fiction)
Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall • Hospital Poems (poems)

§§§
64
72
76
78
79
82

Pamela Gray • excerpts from A Sacred Time: Journal
Entries (journal)
Sandra Lambert • Lunar Eclipse 1989 (narrative)
Beth Karbe • for joan, in 1967 (prose / poem)
Susan Stinson • Band Class Collaboration (poem)
Nina Crow Newington • excerpts from Harvest of Ghosts(fiction)
Emily Levy • the revenge of chunky beef (fiction)

§§§
89
91
94
96
99
101
102

Susan Dambroff • For Kimi (poem)
Anne Mi Ok Bruining • Stones in Somerville (poem)
Cath Thompson • Recently, It Has Occurred to Me (poem)
Elizabeth Clare • Friends, Lovers and Passion (essay)
Anne Corey • Plain Geometry (poem)
Joan Schuman • Friendly Definitions (poem)
Penelope J. Engelbrecht • Never Jerk Your Hand Away
(fiction)§§§unconditional love. That your friends are there for you in an
emergency and when it's time to party. That a friend is a lesbianwith whom you can be as honest as you are with yourself.
Our friendships inspire us, give us the room to bask in thepleasure of being, touch our wonder at the infinite variety of
personal expression, prod us into imagining a world that's safefor the womyn we care about, goad us into change.
But they're hard to talk about. We know what they are when
we have them, but everyone thinks of them a little differently;
talking about them makes us feel vulnerable, perhaps a little
dippy. Like talking about happiness or the beauty of the world,
we have little practice in describing, in our own words, the things
we love about each other. And there may be an ingrained fear,likethe fear of the "evil eye" - if we show we care too much, it willseem as if we're boasting, and somehow our friendships will betaken away.
Friendship mundane: the morning gossips, the womyn who
share the little details of their days, the accumulation of habits too ordinary for dramatic writing.
Friendship sweet: a quality bordering on the precious, too
cloying, too self-congratulatory to bear analysis.
Friendship intimate: where the secrets find voice, where you
open up your contradictions and longings, where you're silly andplayful - the private self that exists only for your friends .
How will we share what we learn in those places?
Friendship: The Book Review
One of the things that helped me gather my thoughts about
this issue was Jan Raymond's book, A Passion for Friends: Towarda Philosophy of Female Affection' (Beacon, 1986). I regretthat we
don't have a couple of reviews on it in this issue, since it deserves
to be widely used to start discussions and arguments.
* While there was much I found valuable in A Passion for Friends, I also foundserious flaws: the way Raymond keeps switching who she's talking to (The New
York Times, her tenure review committee, straight women or lesbians?), and theoccasional tangent where she surreptitiously tries to have the last word in oldarguments were among the most annoying; the assertion towards the end thatyour lover should be your best friend was the most puzzling.
4Raymond suggests that friendship starts with befriending theself in order to move from a pre-programmed woman's waiting
state of being into a self-realizing adventuresome frame. Friendship between womyn involves thoughtfulness, passion, insight,
vision, discernment, habit through time, worldliness and happiness. And friendship is the place in which we can locate ourselvesin the world. That is, it is through friendships that we get a toehold, a reference / starting point in material reality, and fromwhich we can act.
Raymond also writes about the obstacles to female friendship, the ways we disappoint each other and the ways we canrecover from that: "The safest victims of our disappointment andrage are those of our own sex. It is simple to negate the values offeminism and of female friendship that were formerly held. It ismuch more difficult to confront the disillusionment and make up
one's mind and heart to once more choose for women." (p. 199)
A Passion for Friends is ultimately optimistic: "Gyn/ affection
has the power to help tie women's lives together, to make connections that have not been made, and to provide a unifying anddirecting influence in all other areas of female existence in thisworld. Female friendship creates a network of meaning thattranscends women's past, our ordinary lives, and our present."(p. 213)

An adventuresome frame

I have been jealous of men's chronicles of mobility and options for as long as I can remember: from the Epic of Gilgamesh to
Moby Dick to On the Road, men made friends and adventured. In
their adventures, the world was made.' Cities and highways werebuilt, trade routes plied, wars of course, wars, dying nobly besideeach other, tremendous risks, character flaws and self-centeredness elevated to universal tragedy, the full staring down of death,the great griefs, and all the while a friend around to help in a jam,
to reminisce with around the fire at night.
At home the womyn are left to each other. We are supposed
to infer that if men's friendships make the world, women's
friendships make the home, and women should know their place .
• Susanjill says, "and what a sloppy job they did!"5

Women's civilizing aspect (that which provides justification foreverything that men do as well as the space to bring up the next
generation of workers) is what women get as consolation for thefact that we aren't supposed to hitchhike, or ride our pickup
trucks out into the mountain wilderness with our women friends,
build ships together and set sail, or start politieal partie~, spending our nights playing cards and strategizing.
If we stop waiting for someone else to come and make ourlives interesting, we can be-friend ourselves, as Jan Raymond
writes, and start to adventure. Once you can adventure, you canshare the ad venture and be flexible enough to join other womyn' s
adventures as a pal. From river rafting to overthrowing thepatriarchy, there's lots of adventures left, ain't there, friends?
Friends, lovers and community
My friend Susanjill goes over my notes for this with red ink,
as she usually does. I want to write about the differences between
being friends and being lovers; I keep wanting to say something
like lovers comfort us, friends challenge us; and I get lost trying
to untangle lover from friend. I long for a clear distinction: friends
are x, lovers, q. And clear equations: the value of friends is x 10
while the value of lovers is q5 + x3 •Susanjill inks in: why bother making this distinction? Friendship is valuable in its own right, free from competitiveness ofdefinition; friendship without comparison to other types of relationships can stand on its own merit.
But among us lesbians, definition of relationship is a major
problem. We often feel we live in a fishbowl where everything we
do is the subject of comment and speculation. It may be wescrutinize each other so because we have very few ways to really
understand, or perceive our own patterns of behavior. Scientists
study dolphin communities at sea for years,' for instance, making
careful notes on types and duration of physical proximity inorder to determine social structure. Our social structures are
created by our friendship and lover networks, and they are
extremely mutable .
• A job I've always coveted, despite my tendency towards terminal sea-sickness.

6

We often make friends with our lovers and ex-lovers, with
our lovers' ex-lovers and friends, and their lovers. We tend to
make friends with those who are familiar to us, whose ideas arefamiliar, whose work moves us, whose energy compels us. From
time to time we make friends who are very different from us andyet our friendship makes us compafieras, challenges our world
views, excites and teaches us; and sometimes our friendships
offer sustaining and creative energy and we become carnalas, as
Gloria says, we share the substance of life between us.
Recently there was a Lesbian Dynamics of Color conferencein San Francisco: The process of making the conference mademany lesbians friends, and the process of attending the conference together gave many a sense of possibility in their communities, if only the possibility for continuing arguments . This is aform of friendship: that we show up for each other, that we takeeach other's different struggles seriously, that we get ourselves
educated and we work wherever we can to increase everywomon' s
mobility in the world: our actual ability to do what we want,when we want to, with whom. To extend that desire is an act offriendship, is the politics of friendship, is the open-hearted wish
we hope to engender with our dreaming, envisioning, utopian,hard-headed, hard-working, demanding selves.
Yet political community and friendship are not the same. It is
possible to live and act in community without intimate relationships. But I believe it's impossible to have intentional communities without friendship clusters - intimate connections where
we tell our histories, get feedback, learn how our actions affectothers.
Maybe my desire for clear definition is wrong-headed. Unfluid . We are all water and breath, after all, we have currents andtidal motion, we flow in and out of each other; it may not be
important to keep a clear boundary between lover and friend andcolleague. It may, in fact, be something that comes to us throughthe dictates of heterosexual ownership needs, it may all be connected to property and inheritance .

• Honori]lg Diversity - The Dynamics of Color Lesbian Conference on Racism,building a stronger lesbian community, Nov. 1989.

7

On a very real level, we are our friends - we become something more and other than our individual selves by the transformative power of the energy we give off and absorb. This is thegreat adventure of our lives: to love ourselves enough to be open
to where our friendships take us. To experiences ourselves withother womyn as active and creative beings whose hearts are
moved by the world, whose world is changed by our hearts.

Queer among Queers
Just before you get this issue, Out/Look magazine will haveheld its conference for lesbian and gay writers (Out Write '90) in
San Francisco. Well into the organizing, we were invited toparticipate, but declined when we found out there would be no
womyn-only workshops to address lesbian and women's concerns. No mention was made in advance advertising that there
would be no womyn-only space available.
The requirement that all workshops be co-facilitated by lesbians and gay men is clearly absurd when gay men want to have asex-writing workshop or dykes want to discuss the literature ofchildhood sexual abuse. But more than absurd, it is a form ofcompulsory heterosexuality.
Once again those of us who choose to live our lives as muchas we can among womyn are shut out. A slick advertising
campaign proclaiming Out Write the first national lesbian andgay writers conference (ignoring the national lesbian writers'
conferences that Marie Kuda organized in Chicago in the '70s)
insures that those writers who get excluded "don't count." Thisis coalition politics at its worst: coalition that refuses to honor theautonomy of the movements that make it possible. We are forced
to either include men in our most intimate discussions of ourwork and communities or be silenced.
8

- - - - - - - -_ _ _ Notes on the Themes
The next issue of Sinister Wisdom, the Italian-American Issue,
is being guest-edited by Janet Capone and Denise Leto, who havedone a tremendous amount of work and consciousness-raising in
the last year. We hope you look forward to #41 as much as we do.
In the meantime, the irregular gang who usually brings you
SW will start work on issue #42, an open issue (deadline June15th). We also hope to clear up unfinished business and submission correspondence while Janet and Denise work on #41 - thisis a good time to nudge us if we owe you a letter.
In 1991 (our 15th anniversary) we are planning a double issue(either #43/44 or 44/45) collection of the editors' choice from thefirst fifteen years, so we will be reading manuscripts for only one
other issue in 1991 (theme to be announced) . Send us your best
work, and remember to follow the guidelines on the back cover.

__________ Apologies & Corrections
In "Resources of Interest to Lesbians with Disabilities" in thelast issue (#39), we incorrectly listed the wonderful publication
Hikane: The Capable Woman, misspelling its name, and printing
the wrong institutional subscription rate. The institutional sub
rate is $24 ($14 individual, sliding scale available, free to womyn
in prison). Hikane is also available on tape. We encourage all
dykes to read / listen and subscribe to this important disabled
wimmin's newsletter for lesbians and our wimmin friends. PO
Box C9, Hillsdale, NY 12529.
In the same resource list, we incorrectly wrote that the Disabled
Artists' Network sponsors thematic shows. DAN does not mountshows, but is a unique support network/ information exchange /bulletin board for self-identified disabled artists, whose members
are prImarily women. Please be sure to include SASE when you
write: PO Box 20781, NYC, NY 10025.
9

Mary Carol Randall

Commitment
I
When I was six
my best friend
believed in witches, magic
we meditated, and cast spells
between us
we shared a locket, lone pine tree
by a dusk blue lake, a violet sky
set in silver
it was our pledge.
We passed it
back and forthonce every six months
neither
could own it alone.
II

This year July
was the month for
lesbian weddings, long tablesof flowers and fruits
and other good foods
laid out beneath redwoods.
We invoked the four directions:
Mother earth to ground us, water to move us,
air for lightness of speech, fireto honor the passionof the couple before us, we drankapple and grape
to their union, we witnessed
their pledges
we danced
and made music10

honoring themand ourselves
and our neednot to hide
any longer.
III

This is anotherstory I likethe IS-year celebrationof two friends, special dinner, recognition
two women
together.
And this: two lovers,
eight years in love, but living
separately, one
alone, onewith friends, and the five-year anniversaryof that household.
IV
When I was 18
I knew a woman
with a four-year-old
disableddaughter. I cared forthe child while her motherworked. When I moved
out of state, no one else
could be foundto do that: "put the child
away," they said, "put her
awayfrom yougo on, justgoonwith yourlife."
11

And where were the women
to honor her pledge
to her daughter, to standin the place
they'd determined
only a lover could fill?
V

When I sat with my mother dying
my best friend
sat there with us
held my hand
and wewere not lovers.
And on Mother's birthday
the year before
when we laughed
and wore silly hats
my friend brought the cakefrom a favorite bakery
forty miles away
and we were not lovers.
Women together, what are the waysof our loving?
Bright and manyas stars in the heart of a lake.
VI

What of women
who struggle politicallyin the same groups
year after year?
Who argue, go away,
come back,try again, risk arrest,build a clinic, a bookstore, a demonstration, a movement, a press
who change
12the shape of the world
with their visionand their work. Do they
pause
for celebration, or only buy gifts
for the couples, saying "hereis the realcommitment, growth, senseof solidness." Do they? Do we?
VII

Who do we honor? Who cares
for us, with whom
do we build our dreams
and our days?
VIII

July
was the monthfor lesbian weddings
and I was glad
to attend.
The tables
were lovely
bright with flowers
and I loved my friends
and wished them wellfor years to comeBut then I asked
where is the ritualthe calling of the goddess, the buying and wrappingof gifts in bright paper
the feasts
for these others
these women: "m others, sisters, daughters, friends,
aunts, nieces, comrades, friends again
who 19ve us
who laugh with us, who bring us gifts
13who teach and comfort
and challenge
who have promisedby their actions
to be there
in sickness and in healthin trouble and in joy?
Women together, what are the waysof our loving?
Bright and manyas starsin the heart of a lake.

Susan, Marjorie and Sarra, 1989
Beth Karbe
14

Loretta Johnson

In a Penal Colony
Friends, everybody needs them, so why is it that so few of us,
lesbian women in prison, have any?
To be friends in an American Penal Colony is to break one of
the major cardinal rules governing institutional life: "Thou shalt
not exhibit compassion, commiseration, or heartfelt understanding to a fellow inmate." This unwritten law of the land is reinforced by the constant reminders to "Do your own time," "Don't
get involved with another's problems," "All physical contact between prisoners is for purposes of sexual gratification; therefore,
no physical contact is allowed," "To witness a rule violation andnot report it makes you guilty of aiding and abetting said violation and punishable to the same degree as the violator - be asnitch or risk going to jail in jail, you are your sister's keeper,""Never trust another inmate's word." All these rules, remindersof rules, serve only to isolate and divide the prison population.
They breed distrust, suspicion and alienation. They de-socialize
by outlawing sharing, giving or exchanging any of your personalor state-issued property. They dehumanize by stultifying any
outward display of kinship or friendship. They atrophy the spiritof friendship, killing the humanity which constitutes one's soul.
To have a friend, one must be a friend and to be a friend in an
American Penal Colony, one must be courageous and strong.
One must be generous of spirit and love and twice as generous incommitting everyday revolutionary acts: to offer comfort intimes of bereavement, a sympathetic ear when things go illogically wrong, a bar of "free world soap" or an envelope given to
one in need with no thought to it being returned, or being asounding board keeping meddlesome good intentions to yourself, to assist another in writing a grievance when a guard
infringes on someone's "residual constitutional rights," to crywith someone in pain or rejoice at another's joy. These are all
everyday revolutionary acts in Penal Colony, U.S.A. and I am adedicated, committed revolutionary.
I am one of the fortunate few who has someone I know to be
my friend . Our friendship is one of sharing, not mainly material
things (even though on occasion we do) but we share a smile, a15

good book, points of view and philosophies, laughter, tears,
jokes, magazines, TV programs, knowledge, dreams, goals, hopes
and heartaches. Our friendship is for us a form of freedom,
freedom to be ourselves, to express our innermost thoughts
without fear of being judged or condemned, freedom to disagree
and know that our relationship is secure, the freedom to growinto all we aspire to be as human beings basking in the sunshineof a friend's smile. Our friendship has given Mary Francis and me
the ability to survive and retain our humanity in an American
Penal Colony.

this title keeps changing
birdelle (b.a. byrd)
16

Sinister Wisdom Friendship Discussion 12/5/89
Present: Elana, Susan, Val, Jasmine,
Caryatis, Cath, Susanjill (SJ), Naja (by phone)'
Elana: Let me look it up, the guidelines for this issue: "On
Friendship. 'Just' friends? 'Best' friends? 'Old' friends? 'Lifelong' friends? How do we befriend each other? What do we
expect from our friendships? What do we put into them? How do
we understand the complex differences (and similarities) between friend and lover? What about betrayals? Is friendship partof political movement? Are political movements possible without friendship? What's the difference between a 'clique' and a'network?' What kind of friendships do we make across race,class, cultural, ability, size, age differences? How do we sustain
and nurture our friendships through time?"
Jasmine: I was thinking about friendship, I think about it a lot. I
talk about it a lot, I work about it a lot, in my own self, and I havea lot of acquaintances that like me. But I don't really feel like I haveany friends .
Elana: What's the definition you're using for the difference
between an acquaintance and a friend?
Jasmine: An acquaintance is somebod y that I know - and I may
actually get to know her fairly well over a period of time - anda friend is someone who has a desire to spend time with me doing
things and hanging out. It doesn't mean that I haven't called ona number of people in this room for help. But still I consider
everyone here to be my acquaintance, rather than my friend .
It begins to occur to me that there's not a known way of being
friends that I can look at and see clearly, what I have observed inpeople who are friends with one another often seems to me to bepretty much like how straight people are friends with one another. There's a sort of parameter of rules that have come to us
from a system that we as lesbians don't really want to support.
• This is a condensed and edited conversation. About twenty minutes into it,
Susanjill had to take a phone call that lasted about twenty minutes. Val had toleave early, and Naja joined us by speaker-phone about two-thirds of the way
through. We were sitting together in a large living room on a sunny California
Sunday afternoon. For more information about who we are, check out the
Sinister Wisdom photos on pp. 124-127.

17

Elana: Like we often end up being in couple relationships thatmirror what our parents did or what they do on TV - we have aparallel struggle in developing our friendships?
Jasmine: Yes. We have a parallel struggle in developing ourfriendships .
Cath: Well, something you said leads me to believe that yourdefinition of friendship and mine are not the same. I tHink mydefinition of a friend is if I know, without question, they would
do whatever I asked, if they could.
Elana: Well, that's an issue of trust. And your desire for that
relationship. 'Cause you could believe that somebody else would,
for whatever reason, do whatever you asked them, and still notwant them to do it.
Caryatis: It would have to be someone that I would want to trust
like that, and who I would be willing to do for, also. So, it has tobe mutual, because you do meet people sometimes who would be
happy to devote themselves to you.
Cath: It's entirely having to do with trust, entirely. Because what
you're trusting is that you both know and understand eachother's boundaries.
Susanjil1: You were saying, Jasmine, what are the messages andthe rules about friendship and where do we get them?
Jasmine: Right.
Susan: And that they're no different from the culture that wegrew up in. You're saying that they are or are you asking if theyare?
Jasmine: I think that they're not.
Elana: But what are the images of friendship from the culture?
Really there are two distinct kinds of friendships. One is men's
friendships and one is women's friendships. And men's friendships, which are the source of most...
Susanjil1: ...movies .
Elana: Movies. Magazine articles.
Susanjil1: Billboards.
Elana: ... there are very few women's books that I can think ofabout women's friendships . Very few lesbian books about that.
Men have these books where they go off and they adventure
together. They do something, they raze / raise a city, they discover
the golden fleece, they climb a wall, or they fish.

18

Susan: That's why Steel Magnolias was such an attractive movie
in its way because it's about four women and their friendship.
Elana: Right, but those women don't do anything. I mean that's
the thing about women's friendships is they don't adventure
together, they don't...
Jasmine: But they build communities.
Cath: And that's adventure.
Jasmine: On the radio the other day, somebody did a long thing
about why women live longer than men. And their conclusion
was that women form community, and that men don't, and that
therefore, what keeps women living is community, is the fact thatthey can form communities.
I want you to know when I'm talking about just this word lovein this conversation, what I'm saying today, I mean not sex. I
mean, loving feeling toward another person. That's how I meanthat word. It's mostly about how to set boundaries, about how tokeep people in their place, make sure people know how little or
how much you think of them, about how to protect yourself,
about how to protect yourself, about how to protect yourself. A
thousand times. Every minute. And I think that those are thethings that our relationships are predicated on, about clashingwith one another, about how to clash in a most interesting way.
Susanjill: The heterosexual context I grew up with was friends
are what you have when (a) you don't have a boyfriend or (b)you've been abandoned by the men. It's like the women fall toeach other when they have no one else to be with. Women are thenet we catch each other in when we fall, and we don't fall becauseof ills done to each other by each other, but because of the men.
Caryatis: Well, except for it leaving us with no good short stories
for Sinister Wisdom, I don't worry about this business of lack ofadventure. You know, that women don't do anything together,and men do these active things, because these men aren't friends.
They're buddies, you know, they're pals, they're two guys who
do something together. Or two thousand guys who do something
together, it doesn't matter.
Cath: Men don' t know how to be intimate with one another.
Caryatis: They have no idea how to have anything, it's not even amatter of community, there's nothing between them. Women do,
and that is what life is about, not rafting in the Yukon, and notgetting the golden fleece. I watch some lesbians today doing this,building all their friendships around common activities. So they19

go skiing with this one, and go and do this activity with this one,and they have all these friends, and they have a really fullcalendar, and when they need something, there's nobody home.
There's nothing there. They don't know each other. You are neverwhole in yourself with any of them because each one is justsomebody with whom you perform certain activities. I watch
some of these folks with 20 and 30 friends, while I can only findthe energy for 2 or 3 - that is a full schedule, with everything it
takes to really have a friend .
Cath: I can think of 3 people that I truly call friends, who I know
well enough to call them friends. And three people is probably
the most I've ever had as friends at anyone time. That's not tomean that I don't value other people in my life, but that that levelof understanding between us is there to that extent.
Susan: Talking about the difference between straight women
who are friends together and lesbians who are friends together,
the way Susanjill was talking, that for straight women, a woman
friend is someone who will support you in your daily struggle tolive with people who tear you down. You know, that sort of place
you can go. The difference for lesbians is not being engaged inthat struggle all the time, that's a real difference that I feel in thelevel that lesbian friendships can develop. I'm experiencing an
intensified focus on the nature of my friendships now because I
just left Northampton where I lived as a lesbian for 8 years, andI'm realizing how there were dykes who I relied on although weonly saw each other on the street or at events, so I wasn't
conscious of how much they meant to me. And then there werea couple who were my intimates, and there were hours on thephone telling each other everything and we knew everything thatwas going on with each other all the time. And that is something
I miss, really miss now, and it takes a long time, in my experience,
to build that trust with someone.
Cath: You can't say, one morning, I want you as my friend, andsuddenly you are. It doesn't happen that way.
Val: I think it's interesting to hear you say, three, 'cause I haveone, one friend, that I consider really, that friend-friend, that kindof person where there's just all that intimacy and stuff. And I
always imagined that other lesbians have like 6 of those, or like 20of those, and I just have one.
Cath: And it's not to say that with those 3 people that I'mcompletely intimate with each of them. I'm not. There are pieces20

of me that each of them don't get to see. But among the three ofthem, I guess, most of me is there. So, there are boundaries, evenwith good friends .
Elana: All this about intimacy and trust may be why we got somany pieces about lovers. Because women who are straight
won't necessarily think of women they feel love for as potential
sexual partners, while I think that lesbians, as soon as you feel anemotion that is something like love, the first thing we think about- well, not the first, but somewhere in there - "I really feelwarmth and trust and intimacy and closeness for this womon,
then maybe I should kiss her. And if I like to kiss her, then ... "Cath: I'm very clear when the three people who I call my friends,
I guess maybe I should call them my intimates, that those people
are not lovers and they're not going to be lovers, ever. And I
would be quite distraught if such a thing were to occur.
Elana: It's one of the things that keeps us going forwards andbackwards and around in circles, this stuff about the boundaries
of intimacy. I was just thinking about how Jan Raymond waswriting about, in her book about friends, about the Chinese
marriage resisters in the last century. They were friends to eachother in a political context, they formed cooperatives, had houses,
and they controlled their economic reality together, and they didthat until the state came and crushed it. That's my fantasy oflesbian life, that we will have this friendship network that we'vebeen building for the last thirty years, thirty generations, andwe'll be able to somehow get beyond ourselves, our personal
stuff, our need to have that one-to-one stuff all the time, and beable to use our friendships to create an economic base, to actuallychange the reality of large groups of women. And I see that as afunction of friendship, but it never gets there. It goes back to, shebecame lovers with so-and-so, and if my best friend became
lovers with X, I can't talk to her any more and we don't do it.
Cath: And that behavior is what I think of as coming from thestraight world. That stuff about, if she's lovers with her, then I
can't be friends with her. You know, that's bulls hit. In some ways,
I think we're treating our lovers as if they were men, in thestraight world, as if we were straight and they were men.
Susan: So that we and our lover don't need friends, we don't need
the friends unless it breaks.
Cath: It's like we're still characterizing our entire lives as being in
relationship to our lovers. And the only times we have friends are21

when we don't have lovers, and when we have lovers we don't
have friends. And the things that will break our friendships up are
our lover relationships. And I think that's bullshit.
Val: I think that just the fact that we sleep together in itself
complicates it. Just the fact that we're going to have relationships
between, like me and my ex, that the two of us are in thiscommunity, just that in itself, seems to stand in the -way of us
having these wonderful economic realities together.
Cath: But recognizing that that situation is temporary may solve
some of that. Sure, you may not want to see this person for a while,
but are you going to not want to see this person forever?
Caryatis: I've got an ex I don't want to see again ever. There area lot of violent lesbians and a lot of dangerous ex-lovers andknowing that someone is relating to her does give me a different
opinion of that somebody. It does.
Val: We're getting onto that lover stuff again. I don't think it'snecessarily that heterosexual models get imposed on our friendships, it's that we have such deep stuff with each other. You
know, it's different from what happens in the straight world, andjust because I slept with my ex for nine years, that's just this wholeother thing that affects friendship ...
Susan: That you don't want to see her for a while may not comefrom heterosexual stuff but the way in which friends of a couple
will take sides really does come from heterosexuality. Not that
two women who are breaking up should have to be around eachother, but everybody else around them doesn't have to engage inthe pain of their breakup. When I was a lawyer, I did a lot ofdivorces for straight people, and the way in which everyone
around them would become like two armed camps was anamazing thing to watch. And to see it being done with lesbians is
discouraging.
Jasmine: I just think that sometimes we say things to one anotherthat have hurt people. But why do we relate to each other withthese hurtful things? Why? Isn't it because we learned to hurt one
another in the way that we grew up? It's like this line between
what people are kvetching about co-ing, I don't want to take careof you, I don't want to take care of you, but also, what's thedifference between co-ing and looking at what somebody else's
needs are for a minute and letting them have their needs. And
isn't that a way of being in a friendship, when you look past yourown needs and see what someone else's needs are and let them
have them.
22

Caryatis: How do you let someone have their needs? It assumes
they're yours to give.
Jasmine: Well, what if you know a person's needs are to have a
specific amount of feedback, or to be listened to, or have abirthday party, or to do something. And you do that for that
person. Not do it all, but you facilitate some part of them inmovement in the world in that way. Isn' tthat what friendship is?
Caryatis: That's not how I would define friendship.
Jasmine: What then?
Caryatis: I don't know how I would define it, I only know that's
one of the ways I wouldn't. I don't think we're here to fill eachother's needs. It's placing the definition of friendship outside of
the two women, again. It's saying that friendship is doing for eachother.
Cath: Well, it is.
Caryatis: I don't think it is.
Elana: Well, what do you think it is?
Caryatis: Being with each other. It can't be so focused -for me onoutside things, what you do or don't do for one another. Because
we all have so many different limitations, and if it's a matter ofgiving parties and fetching and carrying, what happens to poorand disabled people, who can't do all those things for someone?
They have no friendships? My friends' value to me is in who theyare. I can just sit in a room with them, sit in a park with them, I canknow they're somewhere in the world, they don't have to do forme.We're putting things too far outside of ourselves.
Cath: I didn't mean to give that impression. When you said you
think that the doing for one another has to be mutual, of course
it does. And that also takes into account the person's ability.
Jasmine: Do you have to give up the idea that in a friend,somebody is going to know that you value feedback or you valuesuch-and-such? Let's say feedback about how you write. You
don't give it to that person, does it have to mean, not a friend? If
one of the parameters that you started the friendship with wasthat there was writing, that you were both writers and you weregoing to give each other feedback about writing, and then she
doesn't. Then what?
Susan: Well, you're talking about a broken contract. I mean, likea broken promise that she was going to do this thing with you.
The shared activity is one thing, the feelings ...
23

Caryatis: If the friend doesn't share this feedback, what I hear you
saying is that that means she doesn't love you any more, or isn't
showing her love. And what I hear you saying is you don't love
her any more, because she's not doing that thing for you. And I
can't accept that kind of a basis for love or friendship. Some of mygreatest joy in my friends is just watching them be in the world,
watching them with each other.
Cath: In the last two years, I have lost two friends, women that I
considered family. One because she changed, and the otherbecause I changed. And it wasn't what we would or wouldn't dofor each other, or the consideration that we showed one another,
but what we meant to each other changed. Our limitations, ourboundaries changed. With one, I can no longer tolerate her inconsideration.
My other friend went straight. Her needing to be with men
was not what bothered me, but the way that she perceived it
bothered me. She defined intimacy as necessarily requiring men.
In other words, our relationship, in her definition, became incidental, was peripheral. So, it was our definitions of what we wereto each other that changed.
Elana: But if, for example, your friend did drugs, you would be
unhappy for her, but you would accept that she did drugs andhope that someday she would stop doing drugs, but you would
still be her friend.
Caryatis: To a point.
Susan: But it would be a point at which she disappeared.
Elana: We started out this conversation saying a friend wassomebody who would never say no to you. But I think, in fact,
when you're a friend to somebody, they're who you can say no to.
They're who you learn how to define values with, how to say, thisis what I need, or no you cannot call me up at 3 0' clock in themorning. Being engaged actively in tha t process over time is whatmakes friendship. And it can come to a point where the people
say, no, this isn't working, and then it stops. Or it changes - it's
not like you ever lose that sensation you had for ten years withyour friend, it's still inside of you, it's part of how you look at theworld, it's how you form your new friendships. But it stops withher, unless she ever finds a way to repair it. Which I assume isopen ... if you have a friend that you really love and something
goes wrong, there's a place that it can be fixed.
Cath: It's true. If my friend who went straight were to come back24

to me tomorrow and say, I was a jerk, you're absolutely right, men
are assholes, and I realize now that the loss of our friendshipmeans more to me than any person I could marry, that would be
like nothing had happened to us. I'm not, like, holding my breath.
But, that, I think, is repairable. On the other hand, the relationshipI cut off with my other friend is not repairable. Because it would
take a lot more than just saying, I was wrong. My standards havechanged. And I would have to see over a period of time whether
or not her standards had also changed. So sometimes friendships
are not repairable. But she had twelve years to do that.
Susanjill: Well, I think part of the problem for creating friendships is you need an arena to do it in. I have contacts in my lesbian
life that come much more readily to me than to straight women
I know. Partly because we all created something, even if we don't
agree about what it is, about how we have access to each other.
Elana: Well, this is the thing that I was just wanting to talk about,that other kind of friendship that you have in a political organization. Like, at the end of the anti-racism conference last month,
everybody made this circle. All the women of color made circles,
and then all the women who were not women of color made acircle around them, and then the people who had had them dothat said, "Now, look at all these faces, these are all the people
who are going to be watching your back." There was a sense of
warmth and comradeship. It was the women's movement that I
wanted 20 years ago. It felt a little late, but... [laughter ] ... I mean,these things build through our lifetimes, they're building much
more slowly than I ever hoped. But that sense of how we makefriends in a social context, where we build organizations that
actually change our lives, or change how we see each other, or
have access to information about women who aren't like ourselves - how do you get from the one-to-one to that which builds
community? This is a place where I feel all stirred up andmuddled. What's the meaning of this kind of friendship? You
know, what's the focus of it?
Susanjill: Part of the problem is we confuse romanticism withother things. I mean, that circle thing that we did at the conference, it was sort of a romantic gesture, it was very sweet, and it
was very moving, and it came out of a moment that we truly
shared, but it was more magic than real, given the context that wehave the rest of our life in. And that's too bad. And it's repairable.
Cath: But every time you do magic, it changes the universe.

25

Susan: We're talking about political friends, those people who
think enough like us so we realize we have enough in common so
we can work together.
Elana: Isn't that really what friendship is? I mean, at a community
level, isn't that what friendship is?
Val: To sing together?
Elana: To be able to. Right, at a community level, to have a feelingof real affection and love for other women, and to want to change
our lives. Because, really, the circumstances of women's lives are
horrible and isolated and it's the same for us as lesbians. It's not
like, we changed and our old age is secure and we're living insecure housing. It' s not fixed - we're still all one-to-one against
the world. To have that feeling that we want to change it is an actof communal friendship, and I feel sometimes like our one-to-one
friendships are what we settle for. Because we can't get out of ourlives in a way that makes us able to have a community-wide
friendship. Not like we don't need those friendships to nurture
our lives, but I feel like we really need something more.
Jasmine: Maybe it's because I feel like none of those friendshipsthat I've ever developed over the years have been friendships or
have lasted, that I felt the community can't be based on friendship. And that the community has to be based, rather, on space.
Susan: On what?
Jasmine: On space, on architecture, on form, both physical andlogical form. And friendships will fall into place after the community is there, but you can't base community on friendships. If
something hasn't worked up until today, change the something.
Cath: You're talking about creating a community of friendships
instead of, or in addition to, the close friends. I think we have it,
I think it's there.
Val: I think we don't value or know how to talk about and value
and that other difficult stuff. Like us, like the Sinister Wisdom
group, the other way that you can be friends.
Cath: I do value that. I think of it as an expanding set of concentric
circles.
Val: But we think of it with the important ones in the middle,
right? Maybe it doesn't have to be that model, where we have ourintimate friends in descending order of importance to our core.
Cath: Sure. And I don't think that's wrong. I don't see why you'dwant it to not be like that.
26

Elana: It's the feeling that we settle for intimacy, which sounds
strange. Intimacy is a wonderful thing and this tremendous gift
and blessing, certainly in my life, but I feel like it's a way that we
insulate ourselves from our disappointment and our ineffectiveness as women.We fill ourselves up with our intimacy because
it's the place where we do feel effective, or the place where we canfeel ourselves being felt. It's very hard for us to imagine owningten blocks of Oakland and having an expanding lesbian housingbase with community gardens and cottage industries or whatever. Every time we try to make that effective leap, something
stops us. Ourselves, our conditioning, the banks saying no, we're
not going to give you a loan, whatever it is, it gets stopped.
We use our friendship, or that thing around friendship, andthat's where friendship and lovership get joined, as a way ofabsorbing our attention and being the arena of our effectiveness.
Did that make any sense?
Susan: It's like, in order to succeed at that, we'd have to reverse
the Industrial Revolution [laughter] .. . We don't have a shared,
well, destiny is all I can think of. And it just disempowers us inthat way. Changing that would mean changing that whole wayof seeing ourselves as separate units, and seeing ourselves as
more shared, the community.
Elana: Right. And that's what is so exciting and disappointing
about the lesbian community, all at once. We have a vision that wemight share a common destiny, but in fact, we don't. We don'tcome from a common destiny and we haven't devised any way,
so far, to make it be that we do share a destiny. You know, in thatway of community, of politics and economic base, a sense of
relationship to each other that can't be broken up by ...
Susan: ... class. The things that divide us.
Elana: It is the things that divide us. But it's also that we're in
relation to the outside world. What were you going to say?
Jasmine: See, I'm caught. The way that I'm caught in this conversationis that I hear what you're saying and I feel like it's not jibingwith something that I know about how you live your life. So, thenI feel like I want to answer you on a personal level.
Elana: Uh-huh.
Jasmine: I feel like what stops you, or what stops not only you,
Elana, but what stops that kind of community from happening,is fear. It's not so much that you can't get a loan. I hear you, but
being in that business out there, and having gotten the loans, if I
27

could, you could. It's really being afraid, in my opinion, about
who you're going to let in. And that's what I think it is. It's not you
can't do it, but who are you going to keep out?
Cath: Well, the answer to that, in an ideal world, no one.
Elana: We don' t live in an ideal world.
Jasmine: What I hear Elana saying is is that, on~ you have
intimate relationships. Two is that sometimes you think that theenergy you put toward intimate relationships keeps you fromforming larger and wider communities, and solving some problems on a community level. And three is that there are otherproblems that are keeping you and the group that you know,
from solving those problems.
And what I'm saying is the main thing that keeps you fromsolving those problems is, in the wider group that you know,
you've got to pick and choose. In that wider group that you know,
picking and choosing who you want to keep out of the community is a big problem. And that's where friendship gets aborted .
Elana: Right. It becomes a really difficult problem. Well, go on
with this example. The smaller the scale, the more difficult the
problem becomes. But suppose we had, like, ten blocks of Oakland
and 300 housing units, and in that group we're all lesbians. Then
I would have to think about lesbians with boy children. You
know? I mean, that would be my fear, that some day ...
Susan: Well, that's what happened, actually, in a housing thing
like that in Canada, is that it went on for years and years andyears. And the boy children grew up, and then they had rights to
those houses, or they assumed rights, or their mothers wanted
them to have rights, and before you knew it, it was a lot of straightpeople living there. Over three generations it became a place
where a lot of lesbians lived, but they didn't have control. But
that's, I think, a failure of imagination, rather than a necessary
conclusion.
Elana: It's not a necessary conclusion, but it is what keeps, it is likea fear that keeps me stopped.
Susanjill: But see, I think there's more to who you keep out. Oneof the things you said that rings true to me around fear is that,when we talk about who we have affinity for, we often find those
who reflect our mirrors back to us, are the most comfortable, themost like us. So, I'm likely to have more friends who are dykes,
middle-class, Jewish, fat, than not, for example. It's not serving
me to continue to bond only from affinity, you know. So it's not28

just a question of, well, there's some lesbians who avoid children,
but there's also - you know, the lesbians at that conference who
we're able to hug are not women who necessarily can find affinity
in an easy way without making a very deliberate process of how
we interact in community, to confront and resolve racism ...
[phone rings, Naja joins discussion by speaker phone, Val leaves}
So Naja, we've been talking about friendship as it relates tocommunity, and what stops us ... I wondered if a way that wecreate friendship is too much from affinity, like who we're themost naturally comfortable with, without having to challenge
our basic assumptions. So that I might be more likely to findmyself with middle-class Jewish friends who are 40, than with anold or non-Jewish woman. That in order to create bonds that goas deeply and friendships that have as much sort of unspoken
understanding, that much more work and pushing through has
to happen. And then I questioned why I don't do that more, andthen what it is in me that keeps me from being desirable to thoseother people? As a friend? The other part of it is, in spite of mypolitics, over time, I've noticed that there's a way that I've madeexcuses to be more exclusive than inclusive, in ways that concern
me about how I go about making relationships.
Naja: Have other people already spoken on this? Like, am I
coming in at the end of this conversation, or is it just beginning?
Susan: Sort of two-thirds of the way through.
N aj a: I know for myself that I tend to have friendships that I guessare based on what SJ's calling affinity. I've been disabled, it'salmost seven years, so it's hard for me to remember what kind offriendships I had before that. Since I've been so disabled I do tend
to have friends that I can get support from around my illness. And
there are different reasons for that. Partly, because the illness I
have is very difficult for people who never experienced it tounderstand what it is. It's one of those illnesses that a lot of people
don't believe in.
Susanjill: Which makes you somebody who people don't see.
N aj a: Yeah. I've become pretty much homebound and bedboundand invisible in that way. Some of the people, I didn't want tohave to put up with their ableist attitudes. A lot of women don't
want to have to deal with how difficult my life is. Friends told me
directly that they don't want to hear about my illness because it's
not upbeat enough. I don't really have anything else to talk about.
I end up having mostly relationships over the phone, because I
29

don't really have, other than my lover, anyone who I would callan intimate friend who is not a chronically ill person. And I
wonder sometimes if I have allies or I have friends. There are
women who I dislike who I feel like I've been sewn into a circle
with, certainly because we all have this similar illness and we'repretty much the only people who can give each other support
around it. Sometimes I feel pressure from an attil.'tlde in thelesbian community, from lesbians who don't necessarily havethis illness, that we're all gonna be friends.
So, I think that sometimes when there's a particular issue
that's up in your life, like being this disabled, or I suppose it could
be the same for anyone, women of color or separatists or fat
women, when there's an issue like that, that it's so difficult to get
support from outside that community, you end up being in asmall community of your own. And I'm not sure, sometimes,
how much is being allies to each other and how much it's being
friends, and how much we'd choose to be with those same
women if this wasn't one of the few places where we could get
support.
It just doesn't become worth it on a lot of levels for me tostruggle. I don't know how that might be to women who havemore energy, I pretty much get one or two hours a day and that's
it. After a while, I became better at figuring out who was going to
be worth trying to deal with, and who wasn't. Five years ago, I
would have spent a lot more time trying to deal with a wider
variety of women in my life. I don't know if you'd call it a clique
or a support network, my own most intimate friendships are withother women with similar issues to mine.
Well, I don't know if I answered your question or not, or if anyof this makes any sense, but I think I'm done now.
Cath: It does make sense, Naja. As you were talking, I started
thinking about the issue of worth, and how much I'm willing to
struggle to be close to people, in general, to be close to any
particular person. The issue of worth, of whether or not it's worthit, hadn't occurred to me, but it is an issue.
Susan: The other part about having people who you relate to eventhough you don't care for them very much, because you shareneeds, that makes me think more about how lesbians withdifferent interests and needs can form community around a
purpose, the part they share, the need for a lesbian community,
the need for mutual support networks, the need for all those
things which may not come from a heart-to-heart but from a30different kind of love, a different kind of love and friendship, thepolitical love.
Susanjill: When you're dealing on a survival level and you makeyour connections based on common need, it is not necessarily
your option to base relationships as strongly on affection as
people with more privilege, access and mobility.
Elana: I have the opposite fear, which is that if you don't have theprivilege to come at it with affection, then the community can'tlast. Just on survival needs, unless the survival issue lasts forever.
Susan: But it doesn't always have to be on the edge. Survival canbe based on our doing better when we are together, and we haveclose relationships with some of the people in this thing, and wehave more distant relationships with others, but we share community for our greater good.
Caryatis: But community is not friendship. It's because everybody wants me to be friends with everybody that I cannot think
about ten-block communities.
Jasmine: Exactly.
Caryatis: Community is a project, like any other. Like Sinister
Wisdom, you know, we don't have to be one another's intimate
friends. Work is one thing and friendship is another. It doesn't
have to be first one, then the other. But, a community is larger thana friendship, it is going to be further from me. I can live in a tenblock radius from a lot of folks I'm not going to want to havedinner with twice a week. So, that has to be on a separate level. I
don't want to be intimate with everyone.
Susanjil1: Well, there's a quality, a presence to what intimacymeans that you can't have with a lot of people.
Caryatis: And it could be that friendship and community interfere, but I think it goes the opposite of what you're saying. I think
it's the urge to be friends in too many ways in too many places thatkeeps us from being able to build that community. If you don't
ask that of me, I can build the damn buildings, you know, I can golive there, if you don't make me have dinner with everybody. If
you separate them, I can do better, because community itself does
not interfere with. my friendships.
Jasmine: But friendships can interfere with community.
Caryatis: For me, it doesn't get in the way of this discussion to talkabout lovers and friends, like we were earlier, because we do messup oui" actual friendships right there, depending on whether we31do or do not have lovers, including when we do not. I think that's
when we fuck with our friends the most.
Susanji1l: What do you mean?
Caryatis: A lesbian has a lover. She also has, say, two friends, withwhom she's fairly close. She and the lover break up, she finds
herself with time on her hands. And instead of r~focusing on
whoever she is in the world, she starts spending more of thattime,and in a more intimate way, with the friends. This is fucking withthe friends, and it's fucking with the basis of the friendship. We
lie to our friends by giving them more of ourselves than wehonestly want them to have. It's our responsibility to watch what
we do give our friends, that it is what we honestly want for them,that it is the amount and quality of time we want to spend withthem. If I give you more friendship because I've broken up withmy lover, you are very likely going to give me more intimacy inreturn. And then, where does that go if I decide to run off withsomebody else? It means that I was lying to you all along.
Susanji1l: The initial experience I had was of losing friends tolovers, rather than getting friends back who have lost lovers, but
it definitely goes both ways. And I think you're right that thequality of whatever the connection is should be consistent regardless of what's spinning around.
Naja: Coming from the type of family background I came from,
where there really wasn't any type of emotional support there,
and there was a lot of abuse going on, I always looked to friends
to be my family. And I often feel that incredible stab in the heart
when women friends give me more intimacy when their lovers
are gone, and then they withdraw it when they have new lovers.
And I'm wondering if that comes from different women's definitions of friendshi p. 1'm looking to tha t person as part of my family
and she may have a totally different definition of friendship.
Friendship, to her, may not mean family.
Susan: Caryatis, I think I heard you saying that there's some kindof right, or right amount, to give a friend. And then when awoman breaks up with her lover, and she gives more to thatfriend, that that's somehow not appropriate, or suitable even, orright for that relationship with the friend.
Caryatis: I think it's dishonest.
Susan: So, what you're saying is it would be better if this woman
who breaks up with her lover just takes that energy that she hadwith the lover and do political work, or something. That is, not32

spend more time with her friends. But sometimes women feel likethey don't have enough time and energy to spend with theirfriends, and then when they have more time, they want to do that.
And that can happen from breaking up with a lover, from losing
a job, you know, different things happen.
Susanji1l: Well, we also don't usually have the dilemma of trying
to figure out on some hierarchical or value level whether ourfriends or our jobs are more important to us . With friends andlovers, I think we get confused about what and how we value
each. I mean, we've all gone through this together. We get realcaught up in this kind of hierarchical thing about, well, first
there's lovers, then there's friends, then there's acquaintances orcommunity or whatever this is. And that's not necessarily true,
and I don't know that we ever get clear about that.
Cath: Some of the biggest fights I've had with lovers have to dowith how much time I wanted to spend with my friends . So, I
guess that it works both ways.
Elana: Being consistent about the level of honesty, the value thatpeople have to you, the time you have for those relationships .
And neither your need to feel loved or lovable nor your need tofill up your time when you're lonely should ...
Susanji1l: ... is someone else's responsibility.
Elana: ... is somebody else's responsibility. Right.
Caryatis: Without regard to the cost to their emotions. When you
offer greater intimacy, you will often take greater intimacy, youwill get greater intimacy ...
Susanji1l: ... and then you'll eventually leave it.
Caryatis: Right. You're the one who's offered it on a false basis.
This really bothers me. And it bothers me that we're such poor
friends to ourselves. When somebody leaves my life, I may missher tremendously, but I didn't love her because she took up a lotof my time. It doesn't mean we can't seek support for lonelinessor loss or a difficult adjustment period. Yeah, you might spend alittle more time, or a different kind of time with your friends, or
one friend or lover, but that's a temporary thing and the person
understands the basis on which it was offered.
Cath: Well, then too, Caryatis, how temporary is temporary? I
mean, I haven't had a lover for six years. Am I going to sit there
twiddling my thumbs or close my door and be all by myself forsix years?
33

Elana: It's a hard thing to know - if you don't have a relationshipthat takes up that kind of lover time we think of, then do you go
into or continue in your friendships as if you were going to havea lover, when you may not have a lover for another six years? Or
do you say to your friends, I'm like this now, and I don't know
how I'll be when I have a lover again.
Caryatis: When somebody disappears on me, or is suddenly way
too present, expecting more of me than I thought was everpromised between us, or thought there was any reason for, I don't
like it. I don't trust it.
Susan: So, you feel it's dishonest. It's because you have more timeon your hands, it comes from your need and not from a greateraffinity for me.
Caryatis: Yeah. I don't think we're here to fill each other's needs.
I just don' t think that's what it's about.
Naja: But isn't that why we have connection with each other on
any level, is out of need? Whether we join political groups or havefriendships or lovers or whatever, it's all out of some need.
Caryatis: No.
Naja: I wanted to join Sinister Wisdom out of a particular need.
I didn't join Sinister Wisdom because I thought they needed help.
Being as isolated as I am in my home, this is a way for me to dosome political work and get some creative needs taken care of.
And it was out of a selfish need. And I have friends out of a selfish
need, because I need to have friends and I need to have connection and I need to have family. So I choose friends based on theemotional give and take I'm gonna have, if it's gonna be satisfying
for both of us. But, it's definitely comes out of a selfish need.
Caryatis: It may just be words, Naja. I would say that that's what
you want out of life, not what you need. I don't accept that kind of
responsibility. I don't work on Sinister Wisdom because anybody
else needs it to exist.
Elana: Well, there's a difference between want and need. I mean,
everybody needs to eat, to go to the bathroom, to have a home, tonot be cold. I want .. .
Susanjill: Yeah, I mean, the other thing is we also need quality in
our lives. But I think the issue is, who's responsible to get it to us?
Elana: Nobody's responsible to get it to us.
N aj a: Yeah, I agree with that point. I agree that nobod y' s responsible to get it to us. But I think that whatever we do, whether we34join political groups or have friendships or have lovers, we do it
because of our needs. I don't think we do it because we want totake care of the other person.
Susan jill: But there is a greater sense. I mean, I also do the work
because I need to see the world be different.
Susan: The question is whether that's a need or a want.
Susanjill: I need to! It's not a want.
Caryatis: I think it's an important distinction. We act like "want"
isn't a very strong word. You desire to see the w orld different. But
a need! To leave someone in desire of something is, like, not acrime on my part. But to leave someone needy places something
on other people around you.
Cath: It sounds like you're confusing the specific with the general. I need friends. I think everyone needs special friends and theconsequences to not having friends are people tend to be bitterand lonely. But they don't need particular people. Like, I needfriends. If you were my best friend it wouldn't mean that you
have to stay around forever.
Caryatis: I see.
Cath: Just like, I need to eat, you can cook. It doesn't mean you
have to cook for me
Susanjill: But she's just saying that she's not providing you withfriendship to fill your needs, she's being your friend because she
likes you.

;!

fe m in ist qu artl:rly

MultIcultura1 essay, creative prose, poetry and an
Rc!ceotbllue!l :In lI ooor of Mendel Le Sueur. Women an d War
Growing Up and Gl"CMing Old
Adornlng Our Bodi n

Subsc ription 510
207 U nd Hall, 207 Church St. S.E.• Minn<::;J poli s, MN 55455

Writing by ...,mon or .01.... wel.om".

35

Jan Hardy

small acts

this is a poem for you, ellenbecause i've seen you gaze beyond hundreds
cheering in a lesbian-gay parade,like a farm woman
looking over fields scarred by the plow, knowing
the ripening gold, the autumn sun
and in a smaller town, fifty of us
and fifty hecklers, gangly boysin lettermen jackets,leering and clutching their giggly girlfriends,"hey, let's see you do it"
you glared and walked through that crowd
and they parted
like weeds in a strong, clean wind
you tried to make them listen
i was barely brave enough to lookthis is a poem for you because
your eyes clouded
and your voice went small and tired
i comforted you in a public spacea very small act
my arm around your backand this poem is for you, ellen, because
your hair rippled softly on your shoulders
and i touched it a bit too much,your head on my shouldera moment too longsuddenly a voice .
above a white-shirted belly"girls, let's have the proper conduct
in a public restaurant,
we don't want children seeing that"36this poem is for you, ellen, because
you can see
the seeds pushing slowly out of this earth
this poem is for you because i know
you're tired of waiting
yet you can feel the earth turn slowly
to the growing season soon

untitled
Sudie Rakusin
37

Terri de la Pefia

Palabras*(For K.A.)

A letter surrounds the audio cassette, but I put it a~ide and slide
the cassette into place in the stereo. The advancing tape makes afaint whoosh when I adjust the volume. Her musical voice greetsme. I imagine her shy smile, her candid eyes.
She tells me about her job hunt, her short story's progress,
details of a women's conference. Her voice soothes and relaxes
me. I feel my end-of-the-week tension ebb.
Like her, I work for a living and write for pleasure. We arenatural recluses on weekends and evenings, creating charactersin our solitude. Pisceans, we are 13 months apart and live in coastal
communities on different ends of the state. I am more connected
to her than to my local friends. And to think, we met by fluke.

***

We both attended a writers' workshop in Oregon, and went
white-water rafting with thirteen other women. The photos show
us side by side, but we hardly spoke. The lone Chicana, I was
attracted to her tawny skin and dark hair; I also liked her quiet
manner. But I did not know how to approach her. She seemed so
self-contained, almost aloof.
One evening, she read a story - a western. It reminded me of
my teenaged cowboy yarns. I was captivated, not only by her
narrative, but also by her presentation. When one of her characters sang, her voice was lilting, magical. What had happened to
my silent rafting companion? She had become saucy Marie, hands
on her hips, warbling a tune for her lover. I was amazed by thetransforma tion.
In the dining hall the next day she seemed embarrassed by mycompliments, surprised that I had once written westerns. I confided my dream of eventually creating "southwesterns" - froma Chicana point of view. We were both intrigued by that prospect
before she hurried off to her fiction class.
By the river, I worked on my novel, but she did not leave mymind. When that week ended, we promised to keep in touch .
• Words (Spanish)

38

***

Listening to her, I ponder how words meld us. Four months
into our correspondence she sends a cassette, starting an oral
tradition. Hearing her voice again thrills me - she still sounds
shy but very pleased with herself for introducing a new aspect toour communication. I wonder if I can meet her challenge.
My first tape is self-conscious, filled with frantic starts andstops . Hours later, I carefully ink the date and "Palabras" on thelabel. Before long, we both have a pile of cassettes, dated andmarked "Palabras." We rarely speak by phone.

***In the summer, we again spend a week in Oregon, this timesharing a cabin with two other writers. Our mutual shyness vanishes; we greet each other like long-lost sisters, although I am
often jarred at seeing her rather than hearing her as a disembodied voice. We share long conversations, critique each other's manuscripts, write side by side far into the night. I cherish our closeness. Usually I work alone, but her nearness does not distract me;
it heightens my creativity. By week' s end, we reluctantly say goodbye and promise to meet in San Francisco in mid-October.

***

The evening news reports the Lorna Prieta earthquake. I panic,
wondering if she has survived. The broadcasters offer little about
her seaside community, but their graphics show its proximity to
the quake'S epicenter. For hours I unsuccessfully try to reach her
by phone.
In the morning I write, asking her to call collect. Meanwhile, I
continue trying to contact her. For days, I hear nothing. I feel
helpless, frustrated, unable to concentrate. On Friday I receive
her mailgram, and on Sunday morning she phones, sounding
tired but plucky, offering a personal perspective of the shattering
events.
Since then, I have received not only her letters, tapes, manuscripts, clippings and book reviews, but also her ongoing commentary about the rebuilding of the quake-damaged community: Her courage and resilience buoy me. And whenever I falter
from emotional upsets, I remind myself that our friendship, witha mutual love of palabras and writing as its foundation, has notallowed distance - nor even an earthquake - to topple it.
39

Mary A. WhiteSarah

I went to pick up my best friend Sarah at the airport on Saturday
morning. She lives in Brooklyn Heights and called this her first
Florida visit as a snow-bird. I live in Orlando now but we grew up
in Miami together, and it was late-summer, not winter.
Sarah appeared at the airport with chopsticks sticking out ofher long dreadlocks. "DeeDee, " she said. Her voice is loud.
"Have you lost weight, girl?""Not really," I said.
"You look skinny to me. Here's your little present." Shesearched in one of her bags, a colorful, weaved affair.
I said, "Don't give it to me now. Wait.""For what?""Til we get home. I can't open it now."
So Sarah put her arms around me. "Have you missed me,bighead?""Nope. Not at all," I laughed .
We went out for pad thai noodles that night. The restaurant has
a lot of fish mobiles, painted blue. Sarah loved it. She bought meround, yellow earrings.
"These might be too wild for you," she warned. I know shegives me jewelry with that hope.
She started her real antics Sunday. There's a laundromat
behind my apartment and we were washing the dirty clothes
she'd brought with her when two white men came in out of an old
blue pick-up truck. Both had brown hair. I stood, my arms folded,
watching our dryer. They couldn't see Sarah because she wasaround the corner, reading on a bench.
"Yep," one said. "You haven't heard about her?""No," the other replied with a laugh behind his voice. "Ihaven' t.""She used to come in. Right through that door. Open up yourwasher, take some of your clothes and leave. She took a shirt of
AI's.
"You gotta be kidding."

40

"Nope." He pushed his clothes deeper into the water.
"She might be retarded or something."
They left out the side door. I looked out of the window and saw
the back of their truck leaving. It wasn't completely night out yet,dusk. Sarah was at my side then, whispering.
"Let's do it," she said. "Let's be her."''What?''"Come on. Quick. Get my clothes." Sarah started to take herclothes out of the dryer.
I laughed. I whispered, "No.""Yes. Hurry."
I hopped from one foot to the other, while Sarah opened the
men's washer and took out a handful of their dripping clothes.
''Wait.'' Sarah was choking trying not to laugh. "Note. A note.
Let's leave a letter."
I was at the door. "Let's go. Now."
We left, walking quickly down the sidewalk. "Hurry up. I canbarely believe you," I said. "'That was dumb.""Let's write a note as soon as we get home.""No," I spelled. "N - 0.""Okay. Maype not."***I went to work on Monday but called Sarah during my breaks
and we met for lunch. She wanted directions to the library, andseemed a little restless but then she read me two chapters from
Nella Larsen that night.
I called her when I got in on Tuesday morning to tell her to put
the beans on. Then I called her on my morning break just to chat.
"Quit calling," Sarah said. "You should take a day off if you
want to talk so much."
She called me back in the afternoon. "Hey. What're you
doing?""Working.""Can you talk?""Nope.""DeeDee.
"Really. I'm busy. I'll have to call you back."
Bqt I didn't. Then I didn't say much at dinner either. She'd hurt41

my feelings. I cooked black bean soup. Her favorite with stewed
tomatoes.
"This place is a mess," I said later that night. "Could you put
those bottles away tomorrow? And fold your clothes."
Sarah brews her own hair things and she brought these hugeglass bottles of her oil and conditioner. It's all dark and these leaf
remnants cling to the inside belly of her jars. The oilltas a musky,
wet velvet scent. All the bottles lay on the floor in front of thecloset. One glinted in the light behind the door.
Sarah was in bed for the night. "Oh. Be quiet," she said.
"And keep your hair off my pillow," I told her.
She sighed and moved her head over. "It's not even overthere.""It is. And all this stuff really stinks.""It does not," Sarah's voice was rising.
"Yes, it does," I said. "It stinks.""It does not.""Yes it does. And they're everywhere.""No they're not. This is so dumb.""This is dumb," I agreed.
"You're dumb." Sarah turned over. "I don't even get to seeyou.""Child please." I got my pillow and took the blanket off thebed. In the living room, I turned the fan on, and made a bed on thefloor. Sarah came out.
"You're sleeping out here?""What do you think?"
She stood with her hands on her hips.
"You knew I had to work before you came," I said.
"You take the bed. I'll sleep out here.""No. It stinks in there."
Sarah sighed for my benefit then went back into the bedroom.

***

We went grocery shopping on Wednesday night and near the
produce section we saw this other black woman. She had a shortafro and she was dark, nearer Sarah' s complexion; banana after
you get it home brown. I noticed she wore white flats. I neverwear white shoes.
42

"There," Sarah whispered. "There's a sister. Go speak.""Don't even try it." I turned away.
But Sarah cautiously looked for the woman down our aisles.
We picked up bean curd, olives, salmon patties, and apple juice.
After we were outside, we saw the other woman getting into her
car.
"Hey!" Sarah handed me her bag and quickly walked over tothe woman. "Excuse me. Excuse me," Sarah said.
I unlocked the car door and put the bags in. I got in, and rolled
the window down because it was so hot out. The other woman sat
in her car, an old white Volvo, with one leg out the door. I watchedthem talk. Then Sarah pointed to me. The other woman leaned
out, shaded her eyes and smiled in my direction. I let go a deepsigh.
The woman waved as she drove away. Sarah practicallyhopped into my car. She laughed and squeezed my arm.
"She is fantastic. I told her we might stop by. Lettie. Her name'sLettie. Oh, Dee. And you will not believe. She's in this AfricanAmerican dance thing.""I will kill you," I said.
Sarah touched my arm. ''Dee. Dee.""I'm gonna kill you," I repeated.
"I'm doing this for you," she said. "You're the one down here
all lonely. You need the friends.""You are more than enough, Sarah," I said. "And is that how
you think I make my friends?""You don't have any now. I'm not here.""You should go visit your crummy mother.""You'd better watch your mouth. And don' ttell me whatto do.
"Yes.""And don't scream at me either," Sarah said.
At home, I picked up one of Sarah' s shirts. It has a print of somegreen, jungle pattern. I said, "I am kicking you out," and threw
the shirt out the front door. "I've had it with you," I told her.
Sarah said, "Stop, Dee."I went into· the bedroom and took Sarah's silver sandals,
another shirt and a pair of slacks from the closet. I threw themoutside. The sandals slapped against the front porch and theneighbor's Rottweiler started barking.
43

Sarah had gone into the kitchen and poured herself a glass ofwarm, red wine. "Leave my stuff alone," she said.
I threw her red suitcase out. I went into the bathroom andfound her earrings and her cowrie shell bracelets. So I put themout. It was still as hot as a baking oven in the early evening.
I sat down at the dining room table. "Pour me some, too."Sarah poured wine into my favorite white te~cup and placed
it on the table in front of me, then she opened the house door. I
watched her start to get her things.
"I'm still kicking you out," I said.
When she leaned over to pick up her shoes, some loose change
fell from her shirt pocket.
"I keep my change," I told her, "in my pants pocket." Sarah
didn't answer. She started picking up her coins and came closer
to the front door.
"Be careful," I said. "There's a black widow in that corner."
Sarah paused. The black widows, and there were at least two,
were there when I'd moved in. I thought it a good sign. One lived
on either side of my door way.
I yawned for Sarah's benefit; she's terrified of spiders. "Yeah.
Leave a penny for my black widow," I said.
Sarah put her change back in her shirt pocket. "What's she
gonna buy me?""Common sense." I had to laugh.

***

I tried to tie it all together. We'd fight as kids too . Fist fightsthen.
"We fight too much," I said. We were cooking dinner together.
"Sometimes," Sarah said.
"Should we even still be friends together?""Yeah. We've got to stay together." She asked, "Remember
you gave me that drink?""What?""That special drink, girl."
I laughed. In junior high school I made Sarah a tall glass ofwater, hot sauce, black pepper, and orange juice with dish soap
on top.
"You could've smelled it," I said.

44

"I trusted you. It was an immediate exercise of trust on mypart.""So now you're back to torment me."
"Yep. We got to stay together." She put her hand over mine.
"Wash those off.""You're not supposed to wash mushrooms. You brush them.""See. Stuff like that makes me mad.""You're just crazy.""You act like a know-it-all." I paused. "But you're the only
person I would've given that drink to.""Oh. So I was the target death.""That's not it."''Well that's why you shouldn't try to kill me, dumb dumb.
You should just love me."
"Yeah. I love me," I laughed. "I meant you. I love you.""Oh. My sweet pea," Sarah said. She held me. "I love YOu."''What a sap. But we fight so much.""If you knew how to act better we wouldn't," Sarah said,
cutting celery.
"If you knew how to act better we wouldn't," I said and kissed
her on the shoulder.

***I took Friday off. We rode around, thrift shopping. We got tiredof getting in and out of the hot car so we went into Disney Worldand ate lunch at an out-door Vienna cafe. We safely did somemore grocery shopping.
Before dinner Sarah said, "Let's call her. That woman I met."
I squeezed more lemon juice over our salad.
"I told her I would," Sarah said.
I curled my lips. "I don't care."Sarah called and we were invited over for later. The woman,
Lettie, gave long detailed directions to her house.
"How does she sound?" I asked.
"Nice," Sarah said. "She sounds nice." Nice is nearing the limitof her descriptive powers.
Lettie lived about twenty minutes northeast of downtown.
There were old-fashioned, dim and intimate street lamps by her
apa~tment. Lettie and Sarah hugged each other like old friends,

45

while I was introduced. Lots of cats seemed to be walking awayfrom the door.
'Welcome. Welcome," Lettie said.
She went to the refrigerator and got out a bowl of kiwi fruit,apples, and one grapefruit. We talked about the weather.
Lettie said she was a botanist. Her oleanders in the second
green house were acting funny. Sarah asked for a bowl to eat thegrapefruit, then talked about New York. Lettie remembered she
had good friends in Soho. She said she'd been married but now
her son lived with her ex-husband in New Jersey.
Later, she lead us through her house, room to room. She
showed us pictures of her friends, lakes. There were some of her
when she had long, permed hair. We all returned to our sameseats in the living room.
Sarah and Lettie laughed about meeting at the store. Lettie
owned that she'd wanted to ask Sarah about her dreads but was
too afraid. So they talked about their hair.
I could not believe we'd been there so long. They talked about
the dance troupe. I heard Sarah say, ''DeeDee is gonna love seeing
that." They exchanged addresses and promised to keep in touch.
Duke, the black and white cat, now jumped up on the table. He
leaned over my glass and drank the water. I stared at the big cat
on the coffee table.
"It's okay," Lettie said. "Is that okay with you? I let them dothat here.""Your cats are beautiful," Sarah said.
"And you're leaving Sunday?" Lettie asked her.
"Yeah. But my family's in Miami and my best friend's here, so
I'll be back," Sarah told her.
I yawned. I glanced at the door for Sarah's benefit.

***"Those animals are disgusting," I said in the car.
Sarah turned the radio on. "I like her."***

The night before she left Sarah said, "Hey. I want to show you
something. Do you have a flashlight?""No, I don't." I started to look anyway. I found a candle on themantelpiece. Sarah lit it.
46

"What are you doing?" I asked. It's okay, I thought. She'sleaving tomorrow.
Sarah smiled, excited. She said, "Shhhh." She started to whisper. "Nothing. Come with me."She walked to the front door and turned the porch light off.
"Come on," she whispered and motioned for me to follow heroutside.
We stood on the front porch. The night air felt cool. Sarah held
the candle near the left side of the door. A black widow lay there
in a web, belly up.
"Look at her middle," Sarah whispered. She pointed. ''There.
Can you see it?"I saw an orange, imperfect hourglass on the spider's roundmiddle. I turned away.
"What're you showing me that for?" I asked.
"I just wanted you to see it." Sarah blew the candle out. "I guess
I wanted to see it," she laughed.

***She left Orlando on Sunday afternoon. She said she'd callwhen she got in.
"Quit calling so much and learn how to write," I said.
"All right. You take care of yourself." Sarah cried.
"I will," I said and cried too. "I will."
We waved until she went into the open door.

47

Gila Svirsky

How I Get Started In A Life Of CrimeAll

my life my curly red hair has pressed me into predetermined patterns of behavior: rambunctious as a toddler, mischievous as a youth, revolutionary in my university years, a brief
respite of docility during an equally brief marriage, and finally,
today, open hostility. Longing towards anarchy and terrorism.
And I am mean, ornery, and bad-tempered. Nasty, if at all possible. Which I hope will stay with me until I die or am killed inopen combat with gynecologists.
Gynecologists? Who could have a hard word against this raceof Hippocratic saints? Just because, for example, I am sitting in
the large wai ting room of the Jerusalem Gyno Clinic with 30 other
women - all waiting for a 4:30 p.m. appointment with the same
doctor. Yes, typical. This is a Middle Eastern rite that famous
gynecologists have adopted to drive their patients into a frenzy.
You can well imagine what this situation - waiting with 30
others for a 4:30 appointment with the same gyno - would do toa woman like me. No damn good, I tell you. Makes me think ofgynocide. And so my mind is plotting a war against all licensed
gynecologists, and figuring out who in this room could join forces
with me, when a small and grave looking woman leans across theaisle and asks me if she can borrow the newspaper in my lap.
I give it to her with a grimace, and she smiles back, unwarranted. Not tough enough, no backbone, and I dismiss her as apotential hit woman. Now how about that huge Bedouin woman
across the room, the one in the embroidered black dress, squatting children at her feet, her face striated menacingly with blue
tattoos? My kind of soldier. Officer material, if ever there was.
And the teenager in jeans dragging long, devil-may-care drags
from her unfiltered cigarette? Another good soldier. Soon I pickout 10 or 12 women who can join the inner corps of this secretsociety and march with me down the hospital corridors, knocking down the doors of every gynecologist, wrapping them immobile in the waxy rolls of paper that they unravel on their cots,
ramming specula ria down their throats, and plunging a stirrup
rod deep into the heart of each. What an endearing thought.
And while thus pleasantly engaged, my newspaper is returned
to me by that sweet young thing in a sun-dress, batting her eyes at48

the world and saying in my general direction, "Awful how these
doctors think they're God Almighty, don't you think?"
I look at her and consider if powerful motivation is enough toovercome natural refinement. She looks right back at me andsmiles again, a pert and light smile that bares a set of straight andsharp white teeth.
"Good teeth," I say thoughtfully.
"Not very useful on the gynos," she says still smiling, "thoughdentists know better than to keep me waiting too long."
And she keeps smiling at me. And I am looking at her morethan mildly surprised, but not about to let on about the secretsociety until I have better evidence that she's not a mole.
"Come here a lot?" I finally ask.
"Once a month for hormone treatments," she says, and I lookat her well-shaped torso, wondering if she's trying to get pregnant or has had a transsexual operation, but then she adds, "I'm
65 years old and just had a hysterectomy, so I get hormone shots
because I don't get my period any more.""Uh-huh," I say and begin to search her pink face and breast
tops for wrinkles, even dropping my eyes hoping for a glimpse ofa varicose vein in her neatly tanned and folded legs. Finally I
check her long auburn hair for telltale roots, but none are visible.
"Impressive, isn't it?" she asks.
"Uh-huh," I say again, impressed, and continue to survey andadmire her hormones.
She picks up her bag and crosses the aisle to sit down next tome, to keep our conversation intimate. "And you?" she asks.
"Pap smear," I say, embarrassed that I wait on line to smear.
Now there's a silence between us that neither of us is prepared
for, she having moved across the aisle for more than two words
apiece. After a while she leans over and whispers into my ear,
"Fuck gynecologists.""No fun at all," I say from limited experience.
"Not surprising," she says to me, and we both frown.
It's quiet for a while and we watch the deadly action in the stark
green and grim waiting room. Kids are dragging things out of
purses, husbands are nodding off to sleep, and women are contemplating the,manifold ways to torture one's soul by way of thecervix. The only diversion is the steady stream of urine rendered
and duly labeled. Calling us all for 4:30 is an act of obscenity, andI can see the humiliation and anger creep under the pasty skm andint.o the eyes of the waiting women.

49"Gets me damn angry," the young-old lady says to me. I don't
even look up, knowing my eyes have developed the waitingroom glaze.
"Damn angry," she says again. "Why don't we do something
about this?" She turns to me grabbing my arm, and suddenly she
shakes my army into memory, blazing my anger anew.
"Get the fire hatchet," I hiss, my fever rising. "Break down the•
doors and bludgeon them all to death.""Withhold business, withdraw favors," she slyly whispers.
"Give them an enema through their mouths, an episiotomy intheir asses, shave their delicate parts, plunge a stirrup throughtheir hearts, crucify, crucify!" I am hissing and leering, but notincoherent.
"Good idea," she says. We fall silent, admiring our convictions.
"I tend more to the surreptitious," she finally says, and in amost ladylike voice. "Poisoning, arson, fraud - that sort of thing.""Uh-huh," I nod, but that sets me off thinking. It takes a while,
but finally I get off the question. "For hire?""Of course for hire," she says, her sharp little teeth smiling at
me persuasively. "Otherwise I just could not afford it, my dear."That makes sense, of course. I sit around and mull that over inmy mind, watch a few kids club each other to emergency room
status, and then allow myself to think out loud with her.
"Do you ever take on a project with someone else, just for the
fun of it, I mean not that making money couldn't be part of itbu t I mean do something together just for sharing the good time?""Oh, that would depend entirely on the nature of the work .. .
and the nature of the partner, of course.""Of course.""I think some jobs were meant to be done alone, but I'm not
opposed on principle" - here she blows her nose for effect andshifts her tan legs - "on principle I enjoy cooperation and teamspirit."We sit that way for a while, and I know this is my chance of alifetime. Will I blow it? From obscure, meaningless, relevantless
existence, to daring, bravado, a flying trapeze. Blow it? Not me. I
never lose anything by taking too long to decide.
"Let's do it," I say.
"Do what, my dear?" she asks mildly.
"Anything," I say.
"Perhaps banking?" she softly asks, the inquiry of a friendly
teller in her eyes.

50

"Banking," I smile in pleasure. "Yes, banking sounds just right.""Something along the lines of a little heist?" she sweetly asks,
holding up the robbery like a sheer negligee.
"Yes, yes!" I gasp, "That's it!"Her smile is meltingly sweet, but her soft hand shakes very
well indeed.

eee
Now neither Hasia nor I have any previous experience in thisfield of endeavor, which does not daunt either of us. Her background is rich in shoplifting, pilfering the petty cash box, andwalking off with the occasional collection plate from some yeshiva of whose politics she does not approve. She teaches me a
few techniques.
We board the bus No. 18 at the busy Jaffa Street station, Hasia
shoving the people ahead of her in line.
"Stop pushing!" she calls out annoyed to an imaginary youth
behind her. "These children!" she clucks to the woman in front
with the half-opened handbag, who no longer possesses her wallet. We get off the bus at the King David Hotel, take herbal tea inthe lobby as we carefully remove the bills, and turn in the billfold
at Lost and Found to prevent misuse of credit cards. Hasia puts
her arm through mine as we stroll out of the rococo entrance.

eee
Until now, Hasia had never planned a major crime, but took
advantage of situations that had fallen into her lap. Now she is
hard at work planning.
"A challenge," she clucks, "A bank is a real challenge to one's
mind." Hasia used to be Secretary to the Dean of Students at
Hebrew University, and I take encouragement from the educatedway she has of expressing herself. Me, I work at random jobs,
turning small businesses into non-profits. A real Robin Hood.
Temporarily unemployed. Now we spend a lot of time together,market surveying, as Hasia calls it.
We make trip after trip to all the banks downtown, and finallysettle on the Bialik Branch of the National Bank and Trust Company. A nice bank, named after a poet. It's modern, well-lit, polite- we are both turned on by the natural juice counter beside theliquid assets desk and best of all it is small and off the main street.
Their security guard is new and inexperienced, and a bus conveniently stops opposite the front door. We take the bus back to her
apa~tment where Hasia fixes us some camomile tea.
51

"What do you think?" I ask Hasia, as respectful of her brains as
I am of her good looks.
"Tough, very tough," she says screwing up her eyes and concentrating. "This operation will require resourcefulness, intelligence, and careful planning."
Her words start my blood flowing. Give me a hard job to get
my teeth into, let me utilize all these wiry, health-food muscles
that have been nourished all these years on yogurt and dal soup.
My lithe brown body longs to try its cobra position on bank clerks.
"Can you handle a weapon?" she asks, and saliva almost dribbles down my T-shirt.
"I can handle anything," I say with fervor and total faith.
"We may be able to do without," she says, 'but let's keep that
option open." She downs the tea like a shot of whiskey and again
I search her skin, her hair for telltale scars and roots. None visible.
I scan the contents of her two-room tenement for generation gap
clues.
"Your parents?" I ask of a yellowed couple decorating thecheap furniture in various poses.
"No. That's Jack and me before the operation," she says.
I am never overly polite, and I pick it up and study it closely.
"You were good looking," I say, 'but Jack wasn't anything towrite home about.""But devoted," says Hasia. "This hormone treatment was his
idea. And he was religious about getting me to take the pills. If I
miss even one day, it shows by evening. 'A young good-looking
wife,' he would say, 'nothing like it.'""And brainy too," I add.
"But he didn't know that," says Hasia, and I get angry at Jack
who only made love to her tits.
"You are a smashing lady, Hasia, and poor Jack could haveasked me for a lesson or two about the merchandise out there, andabout how you are real quality, at any age and from any point ofview, and the sonofabitch never knew it.""Now look here, Ella," says Hasia, and I am wondering what I
have said wrong. ''My body is beautiful, no doubt, and my mind
is a razor, that's clear, but we have to get one thing straight.
between us if we're going to become partners in crime.""What's that?" I ask, waiting for the worst.
''We're here in a business relationship. Rob the bank and thensee if we want to do another joint venture. But no getting involved
personally. 1'm not your mother and not your sister and not your52

friend. This is purely a business arrangement. Is that clear?"Oh, yes, Hasia, this helps me eliminate three things that you
are not to me. Not my mother, not my sister, not my friend. But
what are you to me, Hasia? "Yes," I say in my sly way, "1 completelyunderstand." Mmmmm, yes, I understand. "All you mean
to me is crime, Hasia." Mmmrn, just crime ...
This seems to satisfy her.
As the day of the heist approaches, Hasia and I work evenharder. We make many trips to the bank, carefully study its
layout and staff, examine the local bus schedule. Bus 22 doesn't
run often, but it does run on time. We put the final touches on thetools and equipment we will need, running through rehearsals
like opening night in Tel Aviv.
The more I see her style, her swift way with words, her carefulplanning, the more I admire her. Night after night we work late,
practicing line-delivery, movement, handling of the various personnel in the bank, client relations. We run through a number ofscenarios, based on security being alerted. We practice the getaway. Every detail Hasia likes settled in advance, and I really dig
the rehearsals.
"Well, time to hit the hay, Ella," says Hasia, with little appreciation of how my mind interprets those words.
"Hit the hay, Hasia," I repeat in full agreement. And thenHasia stands there, right in the middle of that cozy Talpiot tenement, her hands upon her hips, and tilts her head to one side,
waiting. Nice tilt.
"What's it gonna be, Ella," she asks me, "a long walk home or
the hard floor beside my bed?""1'11 start on the floor, Hasia," says I in my cool little style.
"Suit yourself," says Hasia and starts to fix herself for bed,
throwing a sleeping bag down on the floor beside her.
I take off my clothes and climb in. The cool nylon of the bag
tingles my warm body. I watch her adjust her night things, floss
her teeth, go to the shower, and come back, a few wisps of hairstuck piously to her temples.
"Long shower," I say, making conversation.
"You can take one, too," she says, and I feel that's got to besome sort of invitation.
I struggle to my feet in the sleeping bag and hop over to thedoor of the shower.
"Don't look," I say, in some agony, and leave her cackling as I
53

race into the shower. She is calmed down by the time I come out
wrapped into 3 towels .
"Now find a comfortable place to sleep and let's get some rest,"
she says.
What can I do? I know an invitation when I hear one. I hop into
her bed and pull the covers around me.
"Aaargh!" says Hasia, "aaargh!""Is that Celtic?" I ask, showing that I have completed someyears of schooling.
"It's international, Ella, and it means keep your hands where
they belong."
My plan now is to doze off deeply for 30 minutes, and then to
awaken fully and get to work. But it's too late; I fall asleep andawaken the next morning to the smell of hot oatmeal cooking
with brewer's yeast.
From the bed my farsighted eye watches her soft morning
contours as she stirs the porridge. My near sighted eye contemplates her empty pillow.
"I was going to tell you the story of my life," I say disappointed.
"Wait until I ask," says Hasia, adding raisins.
'i''i''i'

Finally the day of the heist. I wake up to clear crisp weather, aperfect day, the birds singing, only my stomach is feeling the
crunch. I put on my clean Rights for Women t-shirt, jeans andsneaks, and get to Hasia's at 10 o'clock. She opens the door andlooks smashing in an open tank top and slim pants on contoured
Birkenstock sandals.
"How you doing?" asks Hasia.
"Cool, real cool," I say, holding in my diarrhea. She looks at me
sharply. I walk in and sit down. "Get a good night's sleep?" I ask,
just to make conversation.
"Great," says Hasia. "But you don't look ready for the Olympics. You feeling okay?""A little stomach flu, maybe.""I have something for that," says Hasia, and walks over to her
ample shelf of pills. "Take this, it'll cheer you up in no time."
I swallow 1 green and 3 pink capsules, by Hasia's well-measured orders. I try to put together our tools and accessories, but mystomach is rebelling. My guess is that the root cause is higher up
than my bowels. I lie down on Hasia's bed and writhe around in
discomfort.
Hasia's heart finally softens and she comes over to the bed and54

sits down. She takes my hand, and that's already a ray of sunlight.
"I know how you're feeling, Ella.""How could you know, Hasia, you're all ice water and estrogen." I say this to hurt her. By her silence, I figure it worked. "I'msorry," I say, "I didn't mean it."
"No, you did mean it," says Hasia. "You're right, I don't allow
myself to feel enough.""Aw, you're okay, Hasia, nothing that won't mellow over theyears. Invite me back when you get into wrinkles again." Thatfeels lousy, but I guess I wanted to say it. This feels like Judgment
Day, and honesty does well. But now I feel double lousy, and I
turn my back to her and nurse my groaning interiors. I am thus
completely absorbed, when I feel a warm body move against me.
"Is that Hasia out there?" I whisper.
"Affirmative."
This is a new sensation. "Something special or just feel likehuman contact?""Something special," she says in a crooked voice.
"That's nice," I say.
"I have to ask you something serious, Ella," she says to me in atone I never heard before, and it makes my ears flair. ''Were you
serious when you said that about wrinkles and being mellow?
Don't you hate old age, Ella?"Oh, the mean and ornery in me is feeling like meltdown. I rollover and find myself suddenly right up against her pink face. It
looks at me like a moon, and I can't help but put my warm handon it. We lock eyes.
"Hasia, you were turning into a beautiful old lady. If you want
to be old again, I can dig it. I'd help you comb your hair and cut
your toenails. If you would have me."She looks me hard into the eyes. Waiting, weighing. ''We'll see
later," she finally says. ''By evening it will show.""Show what?" I ask.
''We'll talk about it later. There's time.""I'll cook dinner," I say. "Nothing fried or salted."
She searches my eyes with a little flicker of something like hopeor fear. It would be so nice to stay in bed today and fear together.
But Hasia is real goal-oriented. She gives me a quick hug andpulls me up. My stomach feels great. It's 11 and we are ready to
roll.
~~~

We arrive at the Bialik Branch of the National Bank and Trust
Company and glance up and down the road. No one near. Hasia

55

scotch-tapes to the door a neatly printed sign: "Security System
Being Tested. We apologize for the inconvenience." I glance
down at my watch. 11 :27. We enter the bank.
I walk over to the teller for foreign currency and ask to purchase dollars for 1,000 shekel. He sets the safe to open in 10
minutes. He motions me to the chair and I sit down. My head is
beginning to itch from the wig.
Hasia is on line for the mechanical teller. Through my own
dark glasses I can see her dark glasses covering her dark eyes. She
glances at me and moves her mouth slightly. I imagine that this isa smile, and I am grateful. When she reaches the computer, shetaps in a few numbers and waits for the response. She is ordering
the list of bargain savings accounts being offered this month.
When the printer spits up the paper, she puts it neatly into her
purse and comes over to sit down next to me.
10 minutes are up. 11:39. The teller nods me over. Hasia takes
her place near the security guard at the door. I walk over to theforeign currency teller, my heart somewhere behind my eyeballs,
and hand him my marketing basket.
"Fill her up," I say in my best imitation of anybody else.
He looks up, first with a question in his eyes, and then I blow
away the question by pointing to my pocket. My hand is inside,making a decent size bulge. "You don't want me to use this," I say
to him, "your children would never forgive you. Just fill this up
with all the little green bills you got inside that vault." He takes
the basket and proceeds to throw into it packets of green currency. Nobody has noticed us yet, not even security. He hands meback the basket and I thank him for it.
"You won' t get out of here," he says to me.
"No lip from you, Bialik capitalist," I reply and wink behind
my shades. Cool, Ella, cool! Just as I am congratulating myself
and backing away, the teller tells on me.
"Thief! Stop her! Robbery!" he shouts and ducks under thecounter. He has also tripped the alarm from somewhere out ofsight. His shouting and the alarm cause quite a stir.
There are only a few bank inhabitants, but they react at once invarious forms of panic. The tellers are pressing their buttons andclimbing under the tables. Two bank customers throw themselves on the floor, as well-trained soldiers often do. The president of the bank has come out of his cubicle and is shouting,"What' s the meaning of this? Where's the thief? I want a reportright now!" And the security guard, who has finally grasped the56meaning of it all, is helped by Hasia to remove the gun from his
holster, where Hasia promptly empties the shells onto the floor,
quite professionally, even from within her white kid gloves. Practice does make perfect.
This panic is contagious, and I am beginning to feel it come on
me like the flu. But then Hasia masterfully takes over.
"Everyone get down on the floor and close your eyes," shesays, loud and firm. "There's nothing to fear if you do as you'retold. Nobody move for 10 minutes. When the buzzer rings, you
can get up."
I grab the market basket and we walk out - slowly, deliberately - into the bright, sunny day. 11 :43. Sixteen minutes inside.
We cross the street and Bus 22 rolls up, right on schedule. Hasia
gets in and gives the driver 2 shekel and takes change. We go to
the back of the bus and sit down. I am still clutching the marketingbag, to my surprise. My heart is beating furiously, ripping apartthe inside of my brains. We don't say anything.
"How are you, Ella?" she finally asks.
"Nauseous," I say, betraying my self-image. "And you?"
There's a bit of a pause. "Tired," she finally says. "All this isvery taxing."
We get off on Jaffa Street and walk up toward the market place.
We cut behind the stalls and remove our jackets, wigs, and darkglasses, dumping them into the rotten produce bin under a bunchof dead bananas. Back in the market, we buy some lettuce andplace it over the currency in the bag.
"Want a bite?" I ask Hasia, my appetite returning as the victory
begins to sink in. "Fallafel? Humus? Spinach-burger?""Just home," says Hasia.
I look at her tired eyes and hail a cab.
At home, Hasia goes right over to her bed and lies down. No
discussion. No mulling over the heist. No remorse and no pride.
And no counting of bills. I know something is going on real deep
inside her but I can't guess what. I cover her with a blanket andnotice that my heart has regained its normal lurch in her presence.
I am worried about Hasia, but, frankly, yes that's me, no denying it, I am also trying to estimate our loot. Would it be polite tocount it before Hasia wakes up? I finally decide it would be - I
can always pretend that I haven't - and I remove the dirty lettuceand put it in the fridge. The bills come next.
I am counting: 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 ... 15 ,16, 17 ... 36, 37, 38.
Whoopie! 38,000 dollars!! Enough for a great trip to the Far East.

57

Enough for a nice car. A down payment on a new flat. No work for
another year. Whoopie!! I am celebrating, feeling elated, and it isquite surprising to me that Hasia, ice blood Hasia, finds this time
to take a nap.
I walk over to check if she's asleep. Wouldn't this be the righttime for tea together? Or even wine? Or - let's admit it- champagne?
I study her sleeping face. It looks tired, more fired than I haveever seen it. There are lines forming on her forehead that I havenot seen there before. Her skin looks pale, has lost its pink flush.
"Hasia, are you okay, Hasia?" I am gently nudging her. She
opens her eyes slowly, with effort. ''Who called this meeting?"
Then she smiles, and I know that something is okay but 1'm notsure what. "Wake me for supper," she says, and pulls the blanket
over her head.
~~~

It's not easy to make it to supper. I start cooking, which is as
good a way as any to pass the time. First I boil some eggs, then I
boil some potatoes, then I boil a pot of water and wonder what tothrow in. So I throw in onions, mushrooms, barley and call it
soup. No salt, I remember, and throw in too much pepper.
When all that is going, I get to listening to music. "Songs of the
Middle East" is what the announcer has said, and soon my bodyis making these funny movements like what I have seen in theCasbah at night. And in the middle of the trickiest turn of belly
and hips, just as the left pelvis becomes perpendicular to the rightpelvis, suddenly I am disa ppointed to hear the 6-beep news comeon. My lower torso is still turning, while I listen to the announcer
treating her wars and strikes with equal diction, until my attention is riveted by the words "bank robbery" ". .. In broad daylight, two young women, armed with .22
caliber pistols .. , apparent professionals .. . knocked unconscious
a security guard (the dork must have fainted!) ... getaway in awhite Mercedes ... city-wide net ... absconded with close to$100,000 ... " Sheesh! All that ballyhoo! I had forgotten about thecommotion we would be causing on the media and the like.
Hasia! Too bad she's sleeping. How she'd love to hear the respectthey treat us with. Professionals! We have to watch this on the tv
news tonight. Hasia! No need to wake herup for this now. Though
she'd surely love to hear this evaluation of her professionalism.
Hasia! Oh, why don't you wake up already, Hasia! Tell you thetruth, it's getting around suppertime, if you're not particular

58

about waiting for sunset.
"Hasia," I whisper softly into the layer of blankets covering herhead. "Hasia, it's almost time to get up." I can feel her stir underneath the mound of quilt. "Hasia, honey, time to see the world.
Time to count your blessings. Time to listen to how the wholeworld is singing about those two brave women who took on thebanking establishment and won."
Hasia puts her hand out to pull down the blanket. That's when
I see how wrinkled it looks. Is this Hasia's hand? For a moment I
believe that I have awakened the wrong person. A quick panicky
thought! But then the blanket comes down and I can see Hasia's
bun and its familiar brown barrette. Relief! Only thing is - Hasia's hair is brown, not white. It's then that Hasia turns toward me
and I am confronted with Hasia's mother, maybe, or her grandmother, more likely. The beautiful Hasia, her face lines deep anddefinite, her cheeks now soft and tender.
"Ohhhh," I say, drawing my breath in sharply. "Oh, jimminy,
are you alright?""Well," says Hasia, also noticing her new hand, thin and veiny.
She studies it carefully. "Is that what the rest of me looks like?""About the same," I say. ''Wanna mirror?"
She holds the mirror far from her face, to help her eyes focus
better.
"Are you okay, Hasia?" I ask again. ''What's this all about?""The magic hormone pills, Ella, the pills are over." Her voice isthin but strong. "This morning I threw them away. To test life
without it. To test myself without it. To test you without it. Well,
how does it feel?""Uh, well, you look so different, but nice, yes, definitely nice,Hasia, just so different. I gotta think, gotta get used to this, I needsome time to sort it out. Maybe just a walk - I'll be back later,
Hasia." And I escape into the late afternoon air.
'l'l'lIt's late when I come back. I knock quietly on the door and waita long time for Hasia to open it. When there's no answer, I push it
open and let myself in, locking the door behind me. I don't turn on
the light, but the moon is pouring into the window and my eyes
are used to the dark. I walk over to the bedroom and listen to
Hasia's soft sleep-time breathing.
I'm mighty hungry by then. I take the cold pot of soup andladle some of it into my mouth. Half comes slithering down myshirt. When I have satisfied some of the loud stomach groaning, I

59slump down into the over-stuffed chair and put my feet up. I'm
tired. Had a long day today. Had some diarrhea, went shopping,robbed a bank, got on the radio, took a long walk. No wonder I'mbushed. Hasia had the right idea, going to bed early. Sounds
damn tempting, I am thinking. The more I think about it, the more
I am tempted. Such a long ride home. Hate to waste the shekel on
the bus. Save me a trip back in the morning. And, mmmmmm,
Hasia's toasty warm bum. Gets my imagination crackling.
"Move over, honey," I say into the top of the quilt, "I'm back.""Turn off the front light?""Done.""Lock the door?""Done.""Put the soup away?""Ate it.""Oh," says Hasia, "no wonder your shirt is wet. Take it right off
if you intend to stay in this bed."
So I do. She turns her whole body to mine and Ifeel her warmthagainst my skin and inside my strong sinewy arms . Mmmmm,
this feels like home. I burrow my head down and find a soft place
to lay it. Mmmmm.
"Tomorrow we'll visit the gyno clinic and do a feasibility
study," says Hasia. "General arms control- specularia, stirrups,
forceps, IUD's, hormones - destroy or booby-trap them. Perhaps a small incendiary device when no one is around. We'll
check out all the options.""Mmmmmm.""You sure you're up to this, Ella?""Mmmmm, in the morning."
She's quiet for a minute, but then I feel her soft skin warming.
"Don't forget I'm not your mother and not your sister.""Mmmmmm.""More like friends, I would say.""Mmmmmm. More like that, yes. Friends, Hasia."
It's mighty soft where our new friendship begins to grow. And
the big moon purring against the window and trying to get in. I
can feel the dark getting stretched into a long, long night. I wrap
myself inside it and nestle, softly, in.

60

Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall

Hospital Poems
for VB.
Visiting Hours
Sometimes when we came we tried to be straightMiss Ray the last queen assorted butchesa room full of queers hightops and flat tops jean jackets
and t-shirts
we stood out funny the nurses stared
the walls were covered in greeting cards but
we were not a Hallmark family
flowers
paper hats
plastic leis
Groucho noses
I made you.1augh
it hurttoo hard
In the car that I borrowed from Susan, I
locked the doors against the rain the dark the parking lot
doubled over andI couldn't

cry

101 To San Mateo
Late night on the freeways I sang to myself
in the borrowed cars with
AM only Johnny Cash, Muzak or driving off the road
Miles and miles
a bridge
three exits
I drove alone watching strings of light reflect and flash
water on the road, the water on my face61

Bodily Functions
more intimate than lovers
they touched your body with cold metal and straps
I covered you with aloe
trying to make what they made meat
warm flesh
holding your breasts in my slippery hands
it was not erotic
I wanted you back
we looked for a nurse who knew how
to do your hair
"Girl- Vaseline'll take care of that ash."
I missed you

If Not Now When?

"You can't let yourself get so upset about this/I think you should
think about moving / you have to get some distance fromthe situation ...
said my straight friends to me. Because they were straight?
Because they were my friends?
You didn't count as real, I guesshousema te friend my colored sis ter in our political theories but
not realIt's not as if we were lovers, after all

After SurgerylEpilepsy Poem #430
The night the late shift nurse shone her light into yourtoo responsive eyes
was like too many others
all Vikki and I wanted was a pizza a movie a breakfrom urine ammonia florescent hospital smells
We dived for her
too late62

watched your body seize into inexorable convulsions
grim mockery of sex
Bandages crumpled your fragile spine
Eyes rolled up you
went somewhere else medics
came running with needles and drugs
you came and went like a drowning woman
Can you hear us Do you remember what just happened Can
you hear us
Can you hear us
The fifth time you stayed"They didn't write it on her chart" still echoes in my ears~'~Ethics~~""4l esbian

A forumforethicalissuesamong
lesbians.

Envisioning theWorld We Were All
Meant to Live In.
• ESSAYS• READERS FORUMS• REVIEWS/COMMENTARY

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63

Pamela Gray
excerpts from A Sacred Time: Journal Entries
Thursday, 1/7/88 11:15pm

Our breakfast together felt so much like old ti~es that it was

shocking to hear her talk about having 3-5 months left or less (" Ahundred days"), about "uncontrollable cancer." I'm still in suchdenial.

Wednesday, 2/3 2:15pm
I've decided to write something about Barbara in here every
day between now and the time she dies. I just stepped out of theshower and realized I need to do this - at least as a way to commit
to staying in touch with my feelings during this time.
Barbara said a few weeks ago that she felt as if she wereentering a sacred time, a holy time. Perhaps my decision to write
about her during these final weeks (days?) speaks to my sense that
I too am entering a different type of consciousness. I will functionin the world, in my daily life as I always do, but underneath, in a
deep part of me, my cells know that I am losing a dear friend, thatsomeone I love is dying and leaving my life. My life? Her life. My
life. Life.
In spite of the obvious physical deterioration she's undergone, what was most striking was the incredible state of acceptance and serenity she's in. She's ready to die. She's let go of mostof the things she might have regretted at one point. Her one remaining regret is that she let sexual passion take her off her path,lead her away from the individual work she needed to do in her
life. And I think that even though I keep telling her how blessed
she is that she found herself as a writer, and that she's been so
incredibly prolific in the past three years, she still feels regret thatshe didn' t know earlier that one could just write from the heart,"not just as a sociologist."
She's been studying Torah with the Rabbi at Sha'ar Zahav,
and told me about some of their discussions - the different interpretations of Jonah and the whale, the decision between cremation and burial. I sat there trying to detach myself from the full64

impact of what she was saying, and felt at one point like I justwanted to sink into the soft gray leather couch and never leave. I
felt myself wishing that Barbara would always be there, besideme, talking and laughing, gossiping and analyzing, schmoozing
and kibbitzing.

Friday,2/5 11:43pm
I called Barbara this morning and felt such relief to hear her
sounding like her "old self," saying she was doing good, writing
one of the letters to Asher when I called. We talked about some of
the things she's been writing about- types oflove, the difference
between playfulness and humor - and once again I felt pulled
into that strange pocket where Barbara is still Barbara and hercancer and imminent death are just a bad dream. It's like being
sucked into this illusionary feeling of relief - oh, she's still there,
it's not true - only to come out again on the other side of remembering it is true.
Sunday, 2/7 lO:48am
I called Barbara to find out about visiting her Tuesday andSandy picked up the phone as I was leaving my message. ''The
situation has changed," she said, "Barbara is too weak for visitors ... " My heart clenched like a fist; she said she does needpeople to stay with Barbara while she goes out, so I'm going overthere Tuesday for an hour. I asked if I could bring some food andshe said, ''Barbara doesn't eat anymore." At all? "Just a little
custard, pudding ... " I felt myself getting shaky and weak. "Yourvisit with her was too long, it really wiped her out. You are - andthis is a rare compliment - one of the most stimulating people inher life. She laughs, her mind works too quickly - she needs calmand quiet ... I don't mean this as a criticism .. ."I stare at the calendar thinking which day? Which is the day
when Barbara will die, a day that will pain me for the rest of mylife?
I feel so bonded to her now, so much love for her. I don' t want
her to leave. I don't want it to be true.
And there's another part, realizing that her own body is pushing her out, pushing her spirit to leave, and I want her to have that
freedom, want the pain to be over for her.

65

I've been trying to write a poem about the iris bulbs she gaveme when K. and I moved into the house, and how they didn't
bloom until we were breaking up ...
Monday, 2/8 3pm

I feel like the earth's going to open up and I'll fall in at any
moment. But no, it's not me falling in, it's Barbara and it hurts somuch, my heart is breaking.
Connie talked about that "funny thing your mind does" when
you're just wanting it to be over with, wanting the call already but really, you don't, and you find that out as soon as the real callcomes. Yes. I want to stop feeling like I'm on the edge of a cliff, butevery minute Barbara is still here is better than any minute without her.
I'm cooking chick peas to make hummus for Barbara andSandy, even though Sandy didn't want me to bring anything. It
reminds me of how I felt this urge to feed Andrea the day before
she went into labor, as if I wanted my nurturance, in the form of
mushroom-barley soup, to be inside her when she went throughthat experience.
I' m afraid tomorrow will be my last time seeing Barbara.
Wednesday, 2/10 5pm

Barbara was in bed when I got there, looking pretty weak andfrail. Big green oxygen tanks in the hallway, which Sandy showedme how to operate if she needed it. (She didn't.)
I walked beside an unsteady Barbara as she went into the
kitchen and fed her my rice pudding, which she mixed with Ben &Jerry' s chocolate ice cream. She couldn't eat anything with a sharp
taste, but Sandy was happy I brought the hummus.
"She's becoming less and less Barbara." That's what Sandy
said to me after, and those words have been haunting me. I saw
what she meant. Barbara seemed drugged, a little out of it, although she talked quite lucidly for most of the time. There was alabored quality to her speech; talking was an effort. She stopped
eating rather abruptly, and then lay on the couch where she spoke
about ''being in a decline," and how scary that was.
She said the most important thing for her right now wasstaying comfortable-and that took precedence over the writing.

66

I gave her my sonnet; she read it and a smile came over her; I
put my arm around her and she kissed me. "That's nice," she said.
"Periwinkle," she said, referring to the color of the iris I described.
I had a strange sensation of her simultaneously having taken it in,and having feelings about it, yet also the opposite-letting it flow
through her without really feeling much. That was O.K. with me- what was important was giving it to her. She had said earlier
that she wasn't feeling any strong emotions at this point, somesadness about remaining goodbyes to be said, but she was through,didn't want to see people, or talk on the phone. "I said my goodbyes already, I'm done. If people have things they want to say tome, they can send me a card."
Yet when I put her back into bed, she took the poem with her
and propped it up next to her lamp, "to have it near me." Therewas something so poignant and child-like about her yesterday,
her asking Sandy to bring her a cappucino or latte - "I would likethat very much" - her vulnerability as she got into bed with her
TV. changer - "I watch only the beginnings of things; I like
Disney cartoons" - drinking water from a baby bottle. A baby, achild, a woman, an old woman all at once.
Sandy told me there's going to be a funeral and a memorialservice, the latter to help those of us who wouldn't be comforted
by a traditional funeral. The Rabbi won't let Barbara's ashes be in
the temple but he'll officiate at the service. And the ashes? "In thegarden," Sandy said. "The one piece of the planet that was hers."

February 14 10pm Valentine's Day
Barbara died at noon today. Linda called at 7, just as I finishedmeditating. "I have some sad news ... " In spite of all the preparation, I felt shocked and disbelieving. It's so inconceivable that
she's no longer here. Someone who was here isn't here anymore.
Linda stressed that Barbara was ready, that it was very peaceful,that "she just drifted off," that Sandy, her sister Ruthie, her closefriend Stanley were all by her bedside. She said she saw her lastnight and it was clear she was ready.
Funeral Tuesday, memorial service Sunday, shiva in between.
When I got off the phone with Linda I started sobbing andthen the asthma came full force, a punch in my chest, burning
blows, then wheezing, gasping for breath. Asthma spray, grief,67

shock, lack of eating. I've been in an altered state all night. Making
phone calls to change my plans for tomorrow, to arrange to have
Andrew picked up at pre-school so I don't have to rush back fromthe funeral - but my speech felt thick and slurred, like I was
drunk.
Monday, 2/15 12:50pm

Sobbing in the shower, feeling like Glenn Close in The Big
Chill. Have I just seen too many movies or did that film capture atruth about showers being a place where we feel grief? The safetyof the water beating down - sobs echoing in the wet enclosed
space - the feel of water pouring over your naked body as thetears flow.
What I'm grateful for:I told her I loved her
I said goodbye
Tuesday,2/16 12:40pm

I feel like a grown-up in this dress and heels, an uncomfortable
one at that - pantyhose hopelessly too small, not used to walking
in these shoes. I miss my mother. I've never been to a funeral
without her; this is the first time someone who's a part of only mylife, not my family's, has died.
9:45pm"She loved you very much. You knew how to play with her the
best. You knew better than anyone how to meet her in that place."
Those were Sandy's words to me as we hugged in Sinai
Memorial Chapel. I'm sitting over the edge of my grief, my feetdangling, trying not to fall into it because I need a rest.
Thursday, 2/18 2:38am
The moon tonight was a thin Cheshire cat's smile. It made me
think of Barbara's wonderful smile.
Monday 2/22 4:43pm

The Memorial Service yesterday was so beautiful and so sad.
I was an usher, so I gave yahrzeit candles to everyone, and thesebeautiful cards that had in them the last line ofBarbara' s last letter68to us: ... It was a good life, it was a wonderful life and each of you whoreads this is a part of the fabric that made it wonderful, whole andmeaningful. I go in peace and calm. I shall miss you. I read it and felt
something grabbing at my heart.
I liked being an usher, seeing the face of each person who
walked in, reading their names as they signed the guest book,
finally seeing many of the people Barbara had talked about. I also
helped a little in the kitchen, when Leigh and Gail were setting up
the food - tons of delicious Jewish cakes and rugalach.
When it was time for Vermont College people to speak, I went
up with Leigh, Susan and Rochelle. I can't believe I was standing
there afraid that I didn't have a right to be up there. Barbara didn't
ask me to be up there, my name wasn't on the list, it was selfindulgent to read my poem, etc., etc. But another voice-Barbara's?
- was telling me that it was an honor to beup there and I deserved
it. So I went up to the podium, shaking, and said "Barbara was myboss. And she was my friend. Writing was a big part of ourrelationship, and I was blessed to see different pieces of Barbara' s
writing in their various drafts. I wrote Barbara a goodbye poem
and gave it to her a couple of weeks ago, the last time I saw her. I'dlike to read it."
Our yahrzeit candles were lit from Sandy's candle, and we
had a minute to sit with the candle and silently say what weneeded to say to Barbara, then each of us placed our candle on theledges until the whole temple was flickering and glowing with
our love for Barbara.
I went back to the house after - the last time the group of us
would be there together - and looked at pictures in albums . I wasjust there, in that house with her, that sacred special 40 minutes
together, the last 40 minutes. At one point I just wanted to weep,
but it seemed like the time for that had passed somehow. Not
really, of course, but people were more into reminiscing,laughing
over Barbara stories, drinking the wonderful wine she and Sandy
had picked out after they found out she was terminal. In one
picture, right before her surgery, she's sitting naked in a chair, andI just couldn't believe, looking at her, that her breast, her one rightbreast was the reason for all this. It seemed incomprehensible.

69

Sunday, February 28 11:25am
Happy Birthday to Me.
In Redwood Park where the mist is rising off the picnic tables
and the pear trees are dropping white blossoms and the birds are
singing and the trees are dripping. Talked to Barbara as I drove
here, told her I was still grieving and missing her but I've been ou t
of touch. I know it's still there.
2/29

Dream: 1'm with Barbara and she looks so good and has so much
more energy than she did towards the end. I keep telling her this, and I
think she's letting me know that she's still going to die. We're in her
kitchen and 1'm so happy to be telling her the things I didn't get to tell her.
I have a sense of having so much time, there's no hurry, I'll be able toreally say goodbye this time. 1'm telling her about the journal project 1'm
working on, and then she has the typed pages in her hand and she's giving
me feedback on them. 1'm so happy to be with her again.
Monday, 2/29 5:30ish At Willow
I want to spend the last of the daylight outside, even though
the chair is wet and air is cool.
I called Sandy today to see how she was. It was the first time I
called the house since Barbara died. I felt scared. Didn't want tohear the new message with its striking absence of Barbara' s name.
Was afraid I'd accidentally slip and say something on the message
to Barbara, or use the plural by mistake.
I remember the afternoon I visited her, first week of February,
the day after my script got rejected. As I drove home toward thebridge, I had this overwhelming sense of my aliveness and possibilities, realizing that I was reacting to the rejection as if it were mylast chance, when in fact, I had many more chances. Barbara was
the one who was out of chances. I remember looking around andfeeling gratitude for everything, realizing that even being able tosee the afternoon traffic, the smoggy skyline, was a gift. I thought
about the other gifts in my life: Andrew, my writing, the woods,
my cats, my friends - it was one of those profound moments
which came after being with Barbara, who was dying and about tolose all the gifts in her life.
I knew even then that it wouldn't be possible to always hold70

on to that vision, that I'd slip back into the trivialities, the wastingof time, the focusing on negative energy, the narrow view of mylife, my scarcity mentality. But what a gift I can give myself if I canreturn to that as often as possible, if that vision can be the one I
keep aspiring to. I want to live my life in a way that honors
Barbara's memory, that uses what I learned from her.
The moon just rose and the sky is still light. A chorus ofcrickets is singing, and birds are chirping in all directions. It's cold
and my tush is wet.

Late Irises: A Goodbye Sonnet
for Barbara Rosenblum
The iris bulbs you gave me never bloomedthat spring; I was sure I must have planted them
upside down, and flowers were growing underthe earth. Then suddenly one late Augustnight, a periwinkle iris appearedin the moonlight and the blooming began.
It was too late by then; I was leaving
my lover and ached to gather the irises
in my arms with my other belongings.
How unfair it seemed that your gift to me,
your flowers were blooming where I couldn't
see them. But now, as your spirit struggles
to free itself, it comforts me to knowthat in a garden in East Oakland, a partof you will continue to bloom and bloom.

71

Sandra Lambert

Lunar Eclipse, 1989
We've driven out onto a field in north Florida, pulling up to aclear view of the full moon, an hour or so high in the sky. On eitherside are the low silhouettes of young pines. Feral tells us a screech
owl was among them just before we came. Other cars pull in andsoon there are 10 of us, dykes laying on the ground, leaning oncars, walking around, and me sitting in my wheelchair. Carie
comes over and rubs on my shoulders and neck. I whisper to her,"be easy, careful." The shadow begins to stretch over the moon.
We talk individually and in groups, catch up on our day.
Conversations wander over and around each other and wemurmur into the night of dreams and headaches. We tell old talesof marijuana and speed and beer, talk of the tips we'd made thatday, the houses we'd cleaned, the patients on our wards, and oh,
isn't the moon intense. Discussions of Mexican food and orgasms
and fireflies somehow all fit together.
The smokers separate off, arrange themselves over the frontof a 1972 Chevy Impala, its broad hood stretched wider andlonger by the moonlight. Weed is on the roof her knees bent up,arms leaning over them, reaching out, relaxed. Lisa's half hitchedup onto the front of the car, foot casual on the bumper, leg bent,
elbow angled on its knee. The others lounge along the hoodleaning into the windshield as if it were the softest of pillows.
Their cigarettes glow in the steadily darkening moonlight. Carie
is braiding my hair and then loosening it and then braiding it
again. We tell the smokers how good they look.
Someone says, "Hey, next time we see this it will be 1996." I
try to pull my thoughts forward. What will my life be like then?
What do I want it to be? All that comes to mind is - will myshoulders still hurt? I don't say it aloud. I can't fit it in with talkof kids that will have left home, money that will be made, and the
girlfriends who will still be together. Through the binoculars the
shadowed half of the moon glows red.
I sit in one place and lesbians rearrange themselves aroundme, some laying on the ground, lovers kissing stretched out in the72space vacated by the smokers. Deb goes from group to groupwith scissors and bucket, collecting snips of hair. Lisa is behind
me now and begins to massage my shoulders and back and head
and then my face. For a moment I worry that her firmness will
hurt, but it doesn't and I lean back into her hands. The moon ismostly in the Earth's shadow now. Bulging out the side, asparkling sliver of light remains.
Someone sets fire to the hair and flames outline the bodies ofwomen. Soon an acrid smell reaches past them over to where I'msitting talking of writing and books as tears rise up inside. No
moonlight remains other than the faint corona, a reddish halo
giving depth and roundness to what usually seems flat. We are all
silent, watching, until some speak of how early they have to getup, others of how hungry they are, and who wants to stop at the
Waffle House by the freeway. We separate into our various carsand destinations. Weed, Carie and I share the front seat of the
Impala and I think of trying to explain with words what unconditional touch means to me. Instead I put my arm around Carieand stretch out my fingers so they lay on Weed's shoulder as she
drives. We head out towards the main road reviewing the Waffle
House menu.

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73

Feral and Sandra, 1989
Beth Karbe74

Judy, Lynda Lou and Marilyn, 1989
Beth Karbe
Judy, Lynda Lou and Marilyn have maintained a close and committed
friendship with one another for fifteen years. In the '70s, they worked anorganic watermelon farm together. They were straight back then andlived with men. But by 1980, all three of them had left the farm (and themen) and come out as lesbians. They all live in town now. There is stilla deepening, unusually intimate friendship between them. They dreamof returning to the land someday, this time with other lesbians.

75

Beth Karbefor joan, in 1967.

1 once had a friend who drove a schoolbus for a living,a woman well into her 40' s who wore her hair bleached abrassy red and tied back in a curly tail.
she wore eye makeup thick and heavy and white lipstick andtalked tough like new yorkers can talk tough and she smiled torock and folk and peace music in a way that others in their 40's
just didn't back then.
i once had a friend who saved my life, who drove that schoolbus
to my front door, every day of the last two years I enduredhigh school, stopping on the street in front of my house andrisking her job every time she did.
and she kept on doing it, driving that schoolbus right up to myhouse and honking, at 7 in the morning,
honking so anyone could hear and see that schoolbus she
drove right up to my house.
i once had a friend who saved my life, that schoolbus waiting
for me at 7 0 ' clock and the brassy redheaded
tough-talkin' woman who drove it, waiting for me to come outof my house, clutching books tight to my chest and the burdenof the day ahead. it was 7 o'clock
and the brassy redheaded tough-talkin' woman
talked softly to me, sitting in that big leather seat,smiling to the radio, to the rock and folk and peace musicin a way that others in their 40's just didn' t back then.
i once had a friend who saved my life, drove that schoolbus
right up to my house so i wouldn't have to wait on the corner
two blocks up, so i wouldn' t have to wait on the corner witha dozen or so other kids my age, wait for the schoolbus
among taunts and jeers and words like "queer" and "lezzie,"
clutching books tight to my chest and the burden of the day
ahead. that brassy redheaded tough-talkin' woman
drove that schoolbus and let me on before anyone else,
smiled at the radio and talked softly to me as i rode in the seat76

just behind her, that seat made for two that nobody else would
occupy even after the bus filled up with kids standing in the aisle.
i once had a friend who saved my life, smiled at the radio andtalked softly to me as i rode in the seat just behind her,
who never said the words"queer" or "lezzie" or let anyone else say them either.
in that seat just behind her, that seat made for two that nobody
else would occupy even after the bus filled up
with kids standing in the aisle,
i once had a friend.

dancing to the beat of a different drummer
birdelle (b.a. byrd)
77

Susan Stinson

Band Class Collaboration

She wets the reed .
I cover the holes.
Spit dribbles out
the silver-rimmed bell.
We are third clarinets
playing one instrument(she blows,
I finger).
The director's eyes bulge;
he' s a tall Don Knotts.
Wearegoofing the music.

78

Nina Crow Newington
excerpts from Harvest of Ghosts
Dave

Up in Helen's room I walk around. There isn't anything to lookat. Everything is square and white and clean.
She says, "Do you know Judo?""No," I say. I will never catch up.
Out of her closet Helen takes baggy white trousers and ajacket. I feel them and they are thick and soft.
"This is a ghee," she says. "Dad says it's part of our heritage."
I feel my face get red and shiny and like it is bigger than me.
I can't make the picture go away: the shiny pink sash and thewhite dress sticking out around my knees, Mrs. Hawkins' voice
going "gracefully, gracefully, girls" and then I am high in the
cassuerina tree in my jeans and then I am the tree, my skin all
scaly and brown. Afterwards my mother was late and I had tostand in the courtyard under the flame tree which had pink andwhite fluffy flowers and I wanted to kick it and kick it.
"My name is Jake," I say, "I am a marine."
Helen says, ''My name is Dave. It's a code name. I am a spy."
She sticks out her hand and I shake it hard.
"Will you teach me Judo?""Stand over here."
I go to the foot of the bed. She does something with her hands
and feet, slides one arm under my elbows and then I'm fallingover on the bed but I hold onto her and pull her down too andthen we are twisting and pushing and she gets her knee between
my legs. I start pushing down while I hold her arms down withmy hands. I just want to keep pushing, holding her leg tight withmy knees, and she is pushing too. My heart is beating very slowly
in my belly. Dave pulls her arms loose. She is pushing myshou!ders away. Her other leg comes around on the side of myleg and then she is sitting on top of me, my leg between her legs
and her hands on my shoulders and I can see the wind in her face
like sheis riding a horse in the desert. She is moving up and dow n
79

only it feels like water hitting the side of a boat and she is a sailor
looking far away at the sky. I get slower and slower like a longwave pulling up and up and then it is the wind tangling in mychest and a scream starting in my belly and like a hand inside mybody as big as my body clenching in a fist and I push her off of me.
I have to lie there very still until I get back inside me.
Dave says, "That wasn't Judo, that was wrestling.l nJudo you
know what you are going to do. You learn different moves."
I think I'm going to cry. I look at her very seriously. I say,"What happened to you when you were born?" She looks in myeyes. ''Who sat on your face?" I say. ''Who made it flat?"
She is still looking at me. She doesn't smile. "Say that again,"she says, "I'll sit on your face and I'll squash it good ."I look down. "Yeah," I say, "Yeah. Dave.""Jake," she says.

Helen
Now I have to go my mother and my father and my brotherand me we have to leave Nigeria and I have to leave Dave and I
don't want to go but I know it's best because I'm scared you'll
find out my lies and then you won't be my friend because I can't
remember what stories I've said I can't remember if they contradict and if I can't keep the threads in my hand you will find one
and pull like pulling a loose thread in the hem of a T-shirt and it
will all unravel and then you won't be my friend Dave Helenbecause I have lied because I don't remember I can't remember
what I said I don't remember what happened did I see a green
mamba waiting in the bamboo did it look and look at me did I
see a crocodile in the creek did I nearly drown did a snake cometo live in my house did Christine ever take me in her room andtell me stories feed me fufu with her fingers did I save her when
the soldiers came did I wade through the lagoon in the dark forhelp did I see a dead baby I don't remember the stories I told you
I wish I remembered I remember the words coming out of mymouth and being surprised how right they sounded and how
they wove together like a web, how they went round and roundand stuck to each other and now I can't untangle them and I don't
know what happened.
80

I remember the first day I came for lunch and your mother
who is so small and like a bird and still remembers Korea madeus rice and there was a big glass of milk. I took a mouthful andyou made me laugh and I sprayed it all over the tablecloth. I
wanted to crawl under the table. I remember us playing chinesechequers on the sofa when it rained and in the corner there wasa blue bag of golf clubs and your father took Jerry in the study andbeat him I don't remember what for but he did it every Friday
and upstairs in your room there are dirty marks on the wall
where we did push offs and we looked at pin ups we looked atthem naked women because we were sailors and you wereDave and I was Jake and we inspected our belts of tools ourpenknives and flashlights that we wore when we were spies andsailors out in the yard by the paw-paw tree and on the street
sometimes we teamed up against Jerry and Bill and we always
won and Caroline never played because she is a good girl and
now I'm going away and I have to be glad I'm going away
because I told so many stories I can't remember what I said andyou'll find ou t. It's better I go now. It's better I go now before youfind out I lied.

Deerwoman
Terry Hauptman
81Emily Levy

the revenge of chunky beef•

1knew my family would be having thanksgiving dinller withoutme again. they do it every year now, ever since i became a lesbian.
and ever since i came out to my mother, six years ago today, andtold her some things about lesbians that she didn't want to know,
she's basted her turkey with a spoon.
as far as they know, i'm not celebrating thanksgiving. between my politics and my vegetarianism, it's not my favorite
holiday. i've always made sure my family knows that. i'm thefamily trouble-maker, the one who always talks about my reasonsfor being a vegetarian when everyone else is eating steak and i'mcramming my mouth with mashed potatoes and no gravy. i used
to think there might be hope for joanne, one of my little sisters, toreject that old american standard of animal genocide. but she took
a lifelong vow of carnivorousness after she had the pleasure ofseeing my parents' wrath leveled at me.
my folks think of me as stodgy, in a weird way. tease me about
how predictable i am, and how they count on me to complain
about every racist remark they make. and, yes, certainly i ask
them why they bother making those remarks, ifthey know they'reracist. that's exactly the kind of moment when my parents show
off their uncanny ability to light cigarettes in unison.
i refuse to be entirely predictable, though. this year i'mcelebrating thanksgiving. not in the traditional way, to be sure, but
who knows? if my plans are successful, maybe this sort of celebration will become a tradition in my little subculture.
i have lit the candles on my altar. a yellow one for clarity, alavender one to summon the supportive energies of my sisters, a
black one for defiance, and a magenta for revenge. they sit on myaltar surrounding my amethyst sphere, the stone i think of as
representing my adult self which contains all of my child selves,as there are an infinite number of smaller spheres contained inevery large one. the image of the sphere is an important one for me
to keep with me today.
lil and rockwomon (keep your teeth in, it's a nickname) arrivewith the costumes, and we have a fine time dressing up. rock82

womon is to be a clown, and we overdo the greasepaint smile on
her to the point where we have very little room left on her face forthe traditional red circles on the cheeks. lil is a witch, because we
couldn't resist. pointy black hat, green rubber hands, stick-on
wart, the works.
i am a can of campbell's soup. the real reason is that it's
important to disguise my size and shape, but it could be said thati symbolize the children of america. in case you're interested, i am
chunky beef. lil and rockwomb have practiced calling me "c.b."for a week, so they won't slip and call me carla. my answeringmachine is totally confused.
fifty balloons rest solidly on the ceiling, reminding us that weare celebrating. i've snuck one black one and one lavender in withthe bunch of generic cheery brights. i have to have my symbols
everywhere.
a xeroxed message dangles from the string of each balloon.
i'm still uneasy about this part of the plan. what if the wind is sostrong that the balloons land in a neighborhood where no oneeven knows my father? on the other hand, what if my mother'sfriends find them on their front lawns? is that really what i want?
lil assures me that.we can decide whether or not to release theballoons at the last minute.
it's time for a final run through. lil gives us the cue on her
kazoo, and now that we are in costume we realize we've mixed
our metaphors. if a kazoo is going to be played, it's the clown andnot the witch who has to do it. out of team spirit rocky does notcomplain. still, i know she cringes every time anyone even refers toa kazoo as a musical instrument. rockwomon plays classical piano. (years ago, rachael refused the nickname "rachmaninov,"
not wanting to be named after a man. we joked about calling her"rock, womon of" instead. the name - and all its derivatives stuck.)the kazoo hurdle safely jumped, we find our performance isready. rockwomon briefly complains that my nasal humming
sounds more like creamed celery soup than chunky beef. what
can i say?
i grab a sack of tofu jerky and a bottle of pomegrana te juice andwe pile into my toyota. lil has to drive because the bottom rim of
my can gets hitched up around my waist when i sit, and there's noway i'H fit behind the wheel.
83the holiday crowds have thinned; the clear roads tell us thateveryone's in their houses eating, or wa tching football, or bea tingeach other up. even the highway traffic isn't bad. we pass a copwith a guy trying to walk a straight line. i want to take a picture of
him and send it to the newspaper. i get like this when i go to thesuburbs.
lil, ever the amateur therapist, says i'm being cynIcal to cover
up my fear, and that reminds me where we're going. okay, somaybe she' s right. but if somewhere inside me there's anywhere
as much fear as there is cynicism, it's a wonder i have any fingernails left at all. i prefer cynicism to fear, i prefer anger to fear, iprefer just about anything to fear. do you blame me? so far, i preferrevenge to fear. i wonder for a moment what the relationship is
between cynicism and revenge, and make a mental note to think
about it later.
lil slows down when i point out the house, but i urge her tokeep going. i don't want my car to be recognized. we drive a
couple blocks more, turn the corner, and park. my heart is pounding, "CHUNky-beef, CHUNky-beef, CHUNky-beef.""okay," i tell them, "our timing is perfect. i noticed the dining
room light is on, so it's for sure they're eating." it's almost uncanny (pun intended) how well i know my mother and how
distan t i feel from her at the same time. as if keeping the light off inthe dining room makes her annual holiday tablesetting a surprise.
shit, i think, maybe unveiling the table thatway is her only hope ofgetting any attention for all the work she does preparing, and istart remembering how she'd spend two days in the kitchen
before a holiday like this ... the thought of her basting the turkey
the old way, before she knew about donor insemination, brings
me back out of my little fantasy. no time to feel sorry for her now.
CHUNky-beef, CHUNky-beef.
"shit, we forgot the balloons!" i realize.
"you put them in the trunk," says rocky. "you okay, c.b .?"lil reaches over and pats my hand, which i'm resting on theback of the front seat, between my two pals. "it's no t too late toback out," she says.
somehow i find that ironic... three dykes in costume in thesuburbs on turksgiving. haven't we already crossed the line? ishake my head .
"believe me, we've got you covered." lil shows me a small
84

package wrapped in heavy brown paper. "we're prepared foranything.""what's that?""insurance," she says smugly, and tucks it back into her pocket.
"you two are the best," i say, "the absolute best. thanks." i pat
lil's hand, and lean over to kiss rockwomon. i knock her in the ear
with my top rim instead.
IiI and rock help me climb out of the car. they manage to get the
top of my can hitched up over my head and unroll the round pieceof fabric that's to become my lid . i pull my arms inside my costume; IiI velcroes the armholes shut. i thank her again for thisingenious design. dykes are truly amazing.
rockwomon and lil have to lead me down the street, which istricky since my love handles aren't available to hang onto. i cansee through the fabric just fine in a lighted room because my faceis positioned real close to the cloth. here, though, the street lightdoesn't suffice.
as we're walking up the block, witch and clown each with abunch of balloons in one hand and the other on my can, i hope tohell the whole neighborhood is eating turkey right now. sorry,turkeys, but i feel entirely vulnerable. it's hard to believe that noone can see through my costume from the outside. it feels likeanyone who looked could see all the way through to my brain,
could know exactly what i have planned for the evening. likewhen i first thought i might be a lesbian and was sure everyone
could tell by looking at me.
we make our way up the driveway. rockwomon informs methat another car has joined the line-up since we cruised by a little
while ago. the navy fiat she describes belongs to my older brotherjim and his pregnant spouse. late, as usual. jim and denise havethe classic "strong, gentle man / frail, shy woman" relationship.lil
hands the clown her balloons.
lil rings the bell. CHUNky-beef, CHUNky-beef, CHUNkybeef. shit. am i really going to do this? someone turns on the porchand driveway lights. i want to hang on tight to my friends, but myhands can't reach much besides the pockets of my 501's. at least
now i can see.
joanne answers the door. she's sixteen. told me last month that
she mentally packs her suitcases for college every night before she
falls asleep. she's a sweetheart, joanne. i wish she didn't have to behere to see this.

85

rocky and lil are on the ball. the minute the door opens,rockwomon says "a capella-gram," and lil puts her finger to hersmiling lips, hushing joanne into complicity. it works. joanne
stifles a giggle and leads us to the dining room.
the whole family looks up from their meal. dad faces us fromthe head of the table. he's clearly annoyed at what m}lst certainly
be a horde of filthy anarchists- who else would dare interrupt
the sanctity of the holiday? mom's hostess smile is only a little
more tentative than usual as she rises from her chair to greet
whomever we might be. i can see jim trying not to look surprised
as a witch, a clown, and a giant soup can interrupt his dinner.
denise looks puzzled, probably wondering if this is yet anothersims family tradition she's going to have to get used to. and kat,home from college, smiles broadly, ready to welcome this promise of gaiety into her already enchanted family.
rockwomon fishes the kazoo out of her clown-sized pocket
and toots. she and lil begin to sing. i hum along, careful to remember the nasal tone that's part of my disguise.
oh, give me a homewith a pushbutton phonewhere neighbors and siblings all playwhere seldom is heard
a discouraging word
because everyone's happy all day.
home, home with the range
where a turkey is cooking away
where you can be assured
we were sent by a bird
your thanksgiving feast to delay.
i take a breath between chorus and verse to look around.
they're all smiling now. dad has pushed his chair back and folded
his hands across his belly. his elbows rest on the arms of his chair.
mom has turned her chair a bit so she has a better view. jim's
trying to figure out who ordered this treat. no one is eating.
where the air is so pureand the ladies demure
where faces are freckled and whiteon this suburban street
86secrets are not all sweet
we' re here to uproot some tonight.
home, home can be strange
when families are not who they claim
the facade may be nicebut the kids pay the pricewhen they grow up with hearts full of shame.
i see confusion on their faces. i hear a little gasp, then a sniffle.
i feel tears running down the side of my nose. i must really be outof my body; i had no idea that sniffle was me. i'm thankful to havethis soup can to hide in. somehow i manage to continue.
you can all be surethat this literature
comes direct from your own dusty shelf
our song was composedby whom you suppose
if she could, she would be here herself.
from home, she feels estranged
it's at dad we aim our expose
martin sims, you have erred
your fate now is assured
your fish we're about to fillet.
the image makes me cringe. i swear i'm shaking. i can barely
hear rocky and liI. i feel like it's only me up here. my stomach is
churning. if i really were a can of soup, i'd have botulism by now
for sure.
somehow i manage to look out at them through both myemotional haze and the muslin one. everyone's sitting up straight
now. only the sims' resident "cheshire kat" still smiles. could shereally think we' re singing about fish fillets? maybe she could. dad
looks scared to death. i can see struggle on his face. should he takethis seriously? is he really in trouble? couldn't be. it's only somesilly women in costume. ha. he lights a cigarette. sure enough,mom is lighting one, too. nothing to do but hum.
how often at night
did your morals take flightand your toes tip to carla's bedside87

your sexual assaults
were not carla's fault
and the truth she can no longer hide.
dad's out of his chair, starting towards us. shit. i knew i'dmade the fucking song too long. now what do we do? i look overat rockwomon.
_
but it's lil who takes action first. suddenly she's cackling,raising her arms and pointing both green, knobby forefingers at
dad. steam rises from her hips and nearly engulfs her face. "halt!"
she screeches. everything freezes except kat's smile, which falls to
the floor.
rockwomon begins to sing:
this home, home needs to change
a process we hope will ensue
we wish you no harm
as we sound this alarm
we'll leave now, without further ado.
rocky turns and heads for the door, pausing only long enoughto let one balloon fly to the ceiling, its tag fluttering. lil grabs ahandful of my costume and pulls me. i hear a rip. i don't care.
we're smokin', headed for the door and out. "slam it!" i whisper,
and lil obliges. i hear bits of dry ice fall from her pocket as she runs.
when we're halfway down the drive, i hear the door open. thisis it. i know it. we're done for.
"wait!" we hear. there's no way in hell.
but lil stops and turns. i could kill her.
"it's joanne," she says.
joanne is pulling her coat on as she runs toward us. "i'mcoming with you guys. wait, ok? you gotta let me!""i don't know ... " says rockwomon.
"you sure?" says lil. "how come?""you've gotta take me to carla," says joanne, who has caught
up with us by now. "me and her have to talk."
rocky unleashes the balloons.

88Susan Dambroff

For Kimi

Our friendship has growninto a delicate garden

Beginning with fragile recognition
we found each otherentering the same buildings
a mutual fascination
with the screaming eyes of children
and relentless mothers
ironing against our skins
And opening every window
we found balconies of poems
and mirrored boxes
wind up toys and visions of serenity
like Alaska
You used words
to make ceremony
sometimes to a sparrow
sometimes to the passionate runof the salmon
I threaded a clotheslineof lost words
into gesture
Today we finish
the last load of laundrypicking the fox tails off
the wool blanket
And as you pack up. your hundreds of smock-like dresses
the elegant combs for your hair
I am already missing you

89Will you sing to me
from a Colorado telephone?
Make me letters from under a tree?
I will keep your journals
safely beneath my bed
write you passages
with my morning tea
watch for your wings
on a sparrow$14 / ycar . indIvIduals, $20 / ycar . institutIons. $16/ ycar . out of U.S .
SAMPLI!. COPY, $6.00/ $7.00.

TRIVIA P.O. Box 606 N. Amberst, MA 01059

90

Anne Mi Ok Bruining

Stones in Somerville
For Jeanne
Act I. Scene I:
You say, you know, the Irish
are being discriminated against, after
we walked past a younger-than-mostpanhandler, possibly Irish.
I retort, he can get a job - he's young
enough. Besides, he's whiteand male - privileged in mostsocieties, especially this one.
The "discrimination" against that man
with dull eyes and frayed edges has nothing
to do with the attacks I experienceand try to explain
to you and everyone else.
And when I tell you that hatred is alive
living in the infested guttersand the white-washed drivewaysof Boston, you look at me like
I am reciting a fairy tale.
Act II. Scene I:
Then when I choke out
an incident
in the white neighborhoodof Somerville where I was
living: a group of whitemale punks followed mefrom the "T" stop
91

late one night when I was alone
as I was unlocking my bicycle,
they threw stones at melaughing and shouting, "Hey chink!
Go back where you came from ... you oriental
bitch ... ha, ha!"I feel the white, ignorant knifeof denial and expression of disbelief
on your neatly powdered face slice
into my heart and pride.
Because you have not been chased,harassed, called ugly, hate-filled names,
I feel stones,
stones, bouldersof misunderstanding,invalidation bruise
the truth,
the reality of my experience
not all fairy tales end happily.
Act I. Scene II:

An open wound
eventually heals
but a deeply imbedded scar remains
in re-opening the wound,I see you differently, changed the warmth from your privileged,
not so neatly powdered faceturns cold,
hard, and oh so whitefeatures reflect the ignorance,
your refusal to see my pain
shifts into a familiar placeof former friendships, lost92

Act II. Scene II:

connections
to your own racisma refusal to acknowledge
your discrimination
your stone throwing
and I know.

'..'"' - ' < ,-. ,! .'"\-: Y'-

self-portrait
Anne Mi Ok Bruining
93

1Cath Thompson

Recently, It Has Occurred to MeWe
are friends .
I talk to you,
I listen to you,
I cook for you,
I play backgammon with you,
I read your books and loan you mine,
I wish for you a more satisfying life.
These are acts of friendship.
You accept them without question.
When we talk,we talk of our lives,of what we likeor don't like.
Of what we would change
and why;
We talk of work and play,friends and enemies,
lovers and sex.
When we talk,you talk about past lovers
and your anger at your father.
You talk about why you decided
SM wasn't good for you.
You talk about your attraction to a friend,and how hard it is to approach her.
You talk about your fear of pursuing
and your distaste for being pursued.
You talk about eschewing romantic love,and how, for you,sex is super-glue.
When we talk,I talk about being discounted
never considered a potential lover,being taken for granted as a friend,
because I am fat.
94

I talk about how many of my friends
assume I will be grateful for their friendship.
I talk about pretending that I have no needs,
so that my friends will not feel burdened.
I talk about my fear of having a lover
because I can never know that she
truly likes my fat body.
When we talk,once I tell you I love you.
once you tell me I am important to you.
These are all acts of friendship.
But,
recently, it has occurred to me
that I may not know what friendship is.
I have noticed something:
You say you are interested in seeing a movie.
I say I am too.
Would you like to go?
You become vague about your schedule.
A week later, you mention you saw the movie
with another friend.
I say I would like to go out to dinner this weekend.
Would you like to go with me?
You tell me I should know you can't plan
three days in advance.
Then a mutual friend says you and she went to dinnerlast weekend.
I call you up and say it's a beautiful day.
Come to the park with me for an hour or so.
You tell me you have to go running.
Recently, it has occurred to me
that I am not someone to be seen within public.
Recently, it has occurred to me
maybe
we are not friends .

95

Elizabeth Clare

Friends, Lovers and Passion
Last night I hung out at an old lover's house all ey ening, eating
pizza, telling stories, laughing, listening to the thunderstorm.
Adrianne and I ended up telling her new housemate about our
relationship, one story leading to another, stories interrupted by
the dog, the cat, the phone, until we had told her the whole thing.
We smiled and laughed at the familiar events: our three day affair
at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival; travelling the fourhours between Ann Arbor and Cleveland to see each other; what
ha ppened when her other lover returned from a year in Israel; mymove to Ann Arbor a year later. But I had trouble ending thestring of stories. The problem is we haven't broken up but are nolonger lovers, and I didn't quite know how to explain that.
The not breaking up part is clear enough; we just didn't. We
didn't stop talking to each other; we didn't fight; we didn't stop
touching, hugging, holding each other. What we did do was takea walk one day and realize we weren't lovers anymore. But not
being lovers is more vague. I still hang out, take walks, havedinner, go to Pickerel Lake with her. I have a key to her house as amatter-of-course. We hold hands as often as not; we sometimes
kiss; occasionally we've slept in the same bed . And yet we're notlovers. Part of it is about passion, the passion that had us scheming for rides between Cleveland and Ann Arbor, had us talking
on the phone once or twice a week when I lived at the Women's
Peace Camp, had us making love quietly in an empty room at theDC youth hostel after the National March on Washington for
Lesbian and Gay Rights. That kind of passion is gone.
But when I think of passion, I also think of women who I callfriends, women who are clearly not lovers. I think of Sarra. She
and I have spent hours working over my poetry, her songs,
working until we know the line breaks and near rhymes so welland the images begin to come clean. Marjorie has met my family,
stayed in the house I grew up in, walked the beaches I call home:
Battle Rock, Cape Blanco, Humbug, Paradise Point. We talk about
politics and oppression, talk about being a Jewish dyke and96

disabled dyke, about how to be allies. I think of Susan and a night
I came home from my inces t survivors support group. It had beena hard evening, lots of tears, and we sat in the kitchen talking andeating popcorn. Finally when I was ready to go to sleep, she
asked, "Can I come tuck you into bed?" Annette writes long
wonderful letters and still calls me "tentmate." We shared a
North Face dome across the country on a peace walk three years
ago, spent many nights laughing each other to sleep. One summer Mary and I lived together in Oakland. We would walkaround Lake Merritt at night, and she would recite" Alice's Restaurant." Afterwards we would steal peaches from the tree down
the street, sit on our front steps, and eat them. I have a kind of
passion with each of these women, not a sexual passion, butsomething that sustains us.
And there's more about passion that's not just about individual women. Last winter a friend died in a plane crash on her way
back from London. I met Liz on the Great Peace March; we wereboth part of the Wimmin's Collective, a group of women on the
Walk who camped together, sat in circles through full moon
rituals and meetings, talked and talked through the miles fromLA to DC. Each night as we burned candles over journals, books,
Tarot cards, hours of conversation, our tents would glow, a circleof translucent domes. And then at 6 am, I would listen as we wokeup, tents unzipping, "good mornings" spoken across the circle.
When Liz died, we crisscrossed the country by phone: fromNew York to Ann Arbor to Phoenix to Santa Cruz and back again.
We called to cry and laugh, to make our connections conscious
again. Through all the calls, I wanted to see these women, to holdthem as if to ward off another death, to fill the space between theplane crash and the last time I saw Liz. And so after days on thephone, we gathered in LA, to tell old stories, new stories, talkabout Liz, to hold each other through the memorial service: how
I moved from Judith to Cheryl to Tracy, looking up to see Annette
and Sarah holding each other, Marjorie behind me, arms aroundmy waist. The next day as we played at the Santa Monica Pier,
took long walks, thumbed through old photos of Liz, we heldeach other tighter. This passion feels inexplicable.
It makes me remember that what separates my lover relationship of a year ago from my friendship today with Adrianne is not97as simple as passion or lack of passion. Nor is it as simple as sex. I
never even kissed the woman who I call my first lover, and yet wewere lovers for awhile. I have the love poem she wrote me justbefore I left still tacked to my bedroom wall: "I hum corny songs /you know the kind/then become a Black Fred/or Ginger/leaping across a stage somewhere/you in my arms o(course." Thedifferences between friends and lovers are about many kinds ofpassion: passion like steady rain day after day until the trees, sky,hills, even the light, are saturated with water; like Midwest thunder storms, rain hard and fast, rain that washes the humidity
away, leaves the air sharp; like drops barely drops but fog spreading up a river valley at dusk.
But these words, the words for passion and the ways it enters
many different relationships, don't even exist. Several months
ago I needed to go to Toronto to support Sarra through some difficult medical testing. At that time I worked in City Hall, and mysick leave policy stated that an employee could use sick leave timein case of medical emergencies for immediate family. For lack ofmore accurate words, Sarra is immediate family to me in ways mybiological family will never be. We've lived together, moved together, shared our money, travelled together, been allies for eachother, talked about what we want when we die. And yet when I
went to my boss to claim my sick time, I was stuck without words,
told him my sister was sick, only to find that sisters don't evencount as immediate family. They mean husband, wife, biologicalchildren, father, mother.
That day I simply didn't have words to explain partly becauseof heterosexism, partly because they simply don't exist. Lover
implies sex and romantic entanglement, partner implies lover,friend implies a casualness and a lack of passion. There is a gap
here, the distance between lover and friend, and I want to fill thatgap with a language that sustains me as richly as all my relationships sustain me.

98Anne Corey

Plain Geometry

On the granite cliffs at Otter's Point
Nikon field glasses hung on your neckAs we stepped over rock solids
Gazed into many-sided tidal pools.
All day, small shapes held your attention:
the diagonal of a leaf
the arced tip of a butterfly's wing
the winged triangles that disappeared into thick Maine green
wild flowers in pyramids of color
the intermittent line of a bird's callthe angle of my wrist as you held it, suddenly.
Night gave us a circumference of darkness
Attended by hovering moths, khaki bodies falling on ourperimeters
and the red star Antares in my sign of Scorpio.
Looking up into a semi-obscured late July sky
I saw three stars
That's the Summer Triangle
you said
and then:
How good you are at spotting shapes
In the cool silent night
You do not know - I have seen this shape before
And not just in faraway objects sprinkling a midsummer nightsky My angle of vision is clear:
Your lover visiting friends on the Cape
Bisecting the space between us with her distance
I do not tell you that I learned this in high school,
This subject in which we will test each other.
As women, notoriously deficient in math,I can not count on us
To recognize the wrong answers.
99Under a half-moon haze-glowingYour shape and mine
Two fallen bodies
Beneath three stars
Of a summer triangle.

Spider Conch
Bettianne Shoney Sien
100

Joan SchumanFriendly Definitions
They say once a relationship is defined
it cannot venture into realms unknown.
But what about you dozing here beside me,
grains of sand like powdery silk between our toes,
crowding your horizontal mass beneath a too small
terrycloth blanket?
You quietly ooze into unconsciousness
as we celebrate a shared decadeof observation.
But does our connection change
as I watch you leave me
dreaming of others?
Strange men,old grandmothers call us
sisters.
"Family," they say, "is'a different kind of lovefrom that of lovers
or mere friends ."But there is no word,
no phraseology,
no all-encompassing termthat describes us or
our much-connected hearts.
Beating strong, warm, sure, there:
a love of knowing and being,with our own definition of
us.

101

Penelope J. Engelbrecht

Never Jerk Your Hand Away

S
zzwtt ... She flicked down the radio volume as she pulled into
the gravel parking lot, spraying dust behind the heavy car.
Couldn't stand the blast of instant noise when she started' er up
again at 3. Hard to believe, only 6:55 in the morning, and already84 fucking degrees out. Humidity must be 100%. She wondered
why the air wasn't just water, if it was a hundred percent.
The thought disappeared as she went in the door by theloading dock, as the cool, conditioned air oozed out past her.
Glanced at her watch and slowed down a bit. Punched in at thetime clock by the office entry, and then headed for the long tablein the middle of the bindery area. Half a dozen heads, mostgreying, cranked around at her approach - the machines werestill quiet. Various "hey"s and "g' morning"s greeted her as she
slipped a quarter in the slot and took the first heady slug of the
day's first Coke.
"Gonna rot cher gut with that crap, Marian," said one of thetightly curled grey perms, without even turning around to look at
her drinking.
"Yeah, like drinking two gallons of coffee a day would do me
better, hey?" She laughed as the blasted buzzer came on. Nobody
moved.
"Let's go, girls," Judith sighed as she pushed back her folding
chair and started for her little desk at the intersection of thebindery and the shipping department.
Marian took another drink of Coke and lit a Marlboro as sheheaded for her collator. Three years of BS from the foreman, who
was basically a nice guy even if incredibly sexist, and finally she'dgotten out of the bindery, away from the shit work. Her prestige
went up (if there was any to be had at Riverfront Forms), and thepay had about doubled. Course, she still made less per hour than
all but the newest guy working the collators, but she made morethan almost all the women, possibly excepting Judith and Felice,
who'd started at Riverfront the day god made the earth, the same
day the plant opened.
When the buzzer died out, the music kicked in from AI's
ghetto blaster, on his workbench behind hers. Marian rolled up
102her sleeves and inspected the day's work orders. She dropped thecigarette in the ashtray on her bench and turned to the spindles atthe back of the machine to see what sort of mess Jimmy had left
her this morning . Just' cause he was the manager's son, he thought
he owned the place.
Turkey shouldn't be able to get his hands on any collator more
complicated than a bottle of Elmer's Glue, she thought as she
flicked on the power switches. The steady hum of the moving
belts was interrupted by the faint strains of Felice whistling today, "Rum and CocaCola." Up on the running platform, Marian leaned around the head of the machine to grin at her catcher.
The stocky older woman had already made a couple of dozen
boxes and stacked them neatly at the end of the table off thedelivery.
'''Bout ready to roll?" Felice hated downtime.
"Yeah, just a sec," as she adjusted the perforation blades on
the big rotating cylindrical head. "OK, let's do it," Marian said as
the rolls at the rear of the collator started turning and an accordionof crisply folded, continuous forms began marching down theconveyor belt to Felice, who expertly monitored the counter,ripped, and swept each pile into a waiting cardboard box. She
plopped boxes into a row on the back of the skid behind her anddidn't even seem hurried.
"Should I crank 'er up a little bit, Felice?" Marian holleredover the mechanical clamor in the plant. She knew that Felice
would nod: she worked so hard, sometimes Marian - thirty
years her junior - got tired just watching.
"Marian, it' s not gluing between parts three and four," Feliceyelled.
"OK." She stepped to the glue mechanism. A quick appraisal
told her that Jimmy had done it - or NOT done it - again. "Gotta
shut down and fill the darn thing," she told Felice as she hit the
red stop button at her left.
Felice shook her head and spotted Evelyn, heading out fromthe office for the coffee maker. Felice ambled that way with her 2
pint mug, and picked up a chocolate frosted donut as Evelyn
lifted the spigot handle. "How are ya today, Evvie," she asked.
Evelyn sighed and waved her hand. "Oh, you know, same oldthing. John is at it again, got all the orders mixed for billing,
everything's late, the government's breathing down our necks
for that 3 million batch for the Navy - you know, the usualbaloney." Evelyn took a sip of coffee before returning to the office.
103

"Say, there's going to be a new girl in the bindery for a while,
starting today at 9, just to get that Navy order out. Give her a hand
if you can, Felice.""Sure thing," Felice said brightly as she rejoined Marian at thecollator. She was always friendly and gave good advice to the
new girls; what with all her years of experience, she could afford
to, avoiding the petty rivalries of theyounger,less-secure women.
Marian had stopped the collator to change over empty rolls
on one and four when Felice spied the new girl being introduced
to Judith by John, ever oily and self-important. She squinted overher half-lens glasses at the darkskinned young woman, little
taller than herself, and began to shake her head.
''Whatsa matter, Felice?" Marian asked as she idled up past
the workbench for a Marlboro. "Oh. Looks like another slave forthe fires, eh? You suppose she's one of those Indian refugees weheard about? Gotta heck of a suntan, being as it's only June.""Watch your mouth, Marian."''Well, pardon me.""Maybe. Evelyn told me to show her the ropes; she's going towork on that Navy mess.""Guess that means she'll have to learn how ta run the singlefolder, huh, Felice?""I'd say so," the woman replied. "Think she'll be able to lift
the rolls?"
Marian eyeballed the newcomer a little more critically. "Well,
she's kind a skinny, but she's got pretty wide shoulders - she'll
probably do OK if Harry leaves her alone to do it. He always tried
to make me chase down Al to do it for me when I had that schtick."
Felice nodded thoughtfully as Marian continued, "Her clothes
look sorta shabby, hey? At least she's not wearin' one of thoseIndian 'sairie' things. Don't think that'd work out for long! Probably only started her at three fifty, too. Damn shame John's such apenny-pincher.""Yeah, he sure is," Felice said, still watching as Judith led the
new woman over to the one idle singlefold machine and began toshow her the operation. "Sure is ... "When the buzzer rang for lunch, Marian and Felice had already run and boxed 62,000 forms, even though Marian spent a
good deal of the time standing on the platform and staring past
the foreman's cubicle at the single-folder area. When the newwoman noticed everyone heading for the fridge and the work104

table-soon-to-be-a-Iunchtable, she walked quickly to Judith's desk,
spoke to her for a moment, then turned and headed for theloading dock door. "Don't forget, back to work at 12:30," Judith
yelled after her. Marian saw her smile shyly as she respondedwith a nod. But amid the lunchtime gab, she almost forgot the
woman's face. The old ladies went quickly into a rabid consideration of the Catholic Church program for refugees, the presumed
difficulties this would cause in their cozy Midwestern community, and managed to pass along a hoard of misinformation
before anyone even remembered to ask Judith what the new one's
name was.
"Zha something or other.""Looks like a nice girl to me," Felice said, "at any rate.""Yeah," everyone agreed. Indeed, thought Marian to herself;
yes indeed.
When the buzzer sounded for back to work, Marian noticed
that Zha had already started up her machine and was clumsily
boxing the large green-printed forms as they flowed off the end of
the delivery. Gotta clue her in on that workaholic stuff, Marian
decided as she started up the collator.
The afternoon was a hell of clogged glue lines, blunt perf
blades, and poor press runs that wouldn't match up with theother three parts into even forms, so Marian hardly had a chance
to appraise Zha to her satisfaction. She was smoking the lastMarlboro in her pack, bulls hitting with the guys in the punchclock line when the 3 o'clock buzzer rang. She saw Zha turn off
the single-folder and walk toward the timeclock. Marian punched
her card and stepped for the door. She paused inside, looking at
the heat radiating off the blacktop entry road, eyeing the clouds ofdirt raised in the lot as the younger guys roared off in their
pickups.
Marian felt no great urge to go out the door, to leave theheavenly air-conditioning behind. She could see it was a killer
outside. "Gonna stand here gawking all night, or are you leaving?" She shrugged as Judith went past her and out. The surge of
steaming air felt like a hand on her chest, pushing her back in theplant, and she poked the door shut after Judith and took the next
to last hit off her cigarette.
. "Please pardon me," came the soft, swirling voice behind her.
Marian almost jumped as she turned aside. Zha stood politely
to her right, and Marian looked from her clasped, work-gloved
hands to the tiny floral pattern in the scarf that held her long,105

molasses-colored hair off her downturned face.
"Sure, sure, go right on," Marian said, a tadbit flustered, "hotout though.""That is no problem," the slight woman replied. "It is very hot
in parts of my homeland; I am used to it." She looked up at Marianand smiled brilliantly.
Marian took a quick breath, regained her composure, andopened the door for Zha with a slight flourish.
"Have a good first day?" she asked.
"I did indeed, thank you. But the forms seem almost alive,
they are so difficult to box .. . have a good evening.""That's true," Marian admitted, "yeah, they do seem almost
alive sometimes." She smiled and turned toward her beater,wishing she'd left the window open a crack in the morning. The
car's interior would be like an incinerator. But she'd handle thatwith a couple of beers at the Tap with the guys. Just before shereached the stop sign a t the end of the access road, she passed Zha,
who was walking lightly down the curb. Sure was a good-looking
woman. As she waved, she spied the gloves hanging from theback pocket of her jeans. No telling whether Zha had seen her
wave, and Marian centered her attention on getting up the hill toher bars tool. The Tap had air-conditioning.
Three weeks later, the tempera ture still averaged 95 O . Zha still
disappeared at noon, yet Marian hardly noticed, nursing a twoweek-long hangover. Zha kept to herself a bit more than mostfolks, but the old ladies liked her because she was a good listener.
Marian had tried to find out about Zha herself, only managing tolearn that she was living with the Brezinskis, she and her motherand an older brother, in the basement apartment their kids had
used. Her brother worked at the Shop 'n' Save. She hadn't offered
to explain the absence of a father to Marian, and Marian hadn't
pressed the point. She liked Zha, since she didn't pry into Marian's life, either. Truth was, Marian mostly liked to look at Zha
while she worked.
"You're gonna have to buy yourself an air-conditioner," Felice said one morning. ''I'm darn tired of watching you drag inhere every day looking like last night's hairballs." Felice had cats.
"It's enough to make me want to hide in the ladies' room, seeing
you coming.""Thanks a bunch, Felice.""Well, what's the hold-up? You can afford one. Then you
wouldn't have to spend every night in that den of iniquity. Be106

sides, you're getting a barroom crouch."
Marian frowned, merely shrugging in answer, as she slippeda roll of light blue paper onto the #2 spindle. Cripes, the thing
must weigh a hundred-twenty five. But she had to lift the rollscame with the job, and no way was she going to give Harry an opportunity to make "little lady" wisecracks.
As she strolled over to the Coke machine around 10:30, supposedly to give Felice a chance to slap shipping labels on thedozen or so unmarked cartons atop the skid, Marian scoped thebindery. Judith was bent over her desk, filling out a bill of lading;
the UPS driver sipped at his coffee and lolled against some crates,
waiting. Other women were shrinkwrapping, making boxes,
operating the cutter, and across the bindery, Marian spotted Zha
at the single-folder. Just as she looked, the fresh sheet billowed
wildly out of the folding mechanism, smooth, unfolded, and witha mind of its own. Zha threw up her arms in disgust, slammed thestop button, then disappeared behind the machine. Marian
grinned, shaking her head, as she dug in her Levis for a quarter.
Cold Coke bottle sweating in hand, she started back to the collator.
"Saw you getting a chuckle out of Zha's little mishap. Why
don't you give her some pointers about that old piece of junk?""Sure, Felice, maybe after lunch. Too frigging bad John thinks
he has to recycle everything until it explodes in your hand.""You just show Zha how to adjust the timing on that thing,OK?""1 said OK, Felice, OK?" The two laughed as Marian cranked
up their machine. When they worked well together, they reallymade hay, and with good numbers, they could afford to knock off
a few minutes early for lunch. Plus, time went fas ter when Marian
didn't have a chance to watch the clock.
Later, as she approached the single-fold, Marian wiped her
forehead with an inky blue bandana, replaced it in her backpocket, and wondered just how a woman as scrawny as Zha
could lift those heavy rolls even the six inches onto the spindle. It
took a lot of leverage to balance the weight while you slipped it
sidewise, all done bent double: hard as hell on the lower back. She
could see Zha's shoulder blades when she bent over to straighten
sqme forms at the bottom of the carton, and when she stood up,
Marian loudly said, "50 how's tricks over here?"
Zha glanced over her shoulder, and then quickly returned her
attention to the unwieldy row of forms. "Things aren't going107

badly," she said, "although this large form is quite hard to box
properly. They slip out of one's hands so easily.""Yeah, and they just barely fit the machine. Here, lemme giveya a hand, Zha," and Marian slowed the machine as she flicked
the forms still on the delivery back into a straight line with a suregesture. "Who adjusted this delivery for you? I saw the thingspewing all over this morning."_
Stuffing forms into the carton, Zha didn't look up as she said,"John adjusts the machinery each morning when he comes by tocheck. He is quite particular about it.""I'll bet he is," Marian grumbled. "Let's turn' er off for a sec so
I can fix this." Marian tightened the allen nut with a wrench she
pulled from her shirt pocket. "This ought to keep them fromcoming down the screws crooked -that's how they get off kilteron the delivery, you know." She turned to the smaller woman:"Actually, the forms would be easier to handle if you didn't wear
those heavy gloves."
Zha put her hands in her back pockets and shifted her gaze
toward the rolls near Marian's knees. "I must wear the gloves toprotect my hands.""How's that again?""It's nothing. I simply wish to avoid unnecessary papercuts,"
Zha said.
"Yeah, well, when you get used to the job, you don't get themso often." Marian admired the scarf holding Zha's thick, lustrous
hair. 'liS 'at scarf from India? Pretty color blue."
Hastily, a gloved finger poked a stray strand of hair behind acoffee-colored ear, back under the material. Zha laughed, "No,this is from my home, Pakistan. Do you like it? I used to weave
such things, in my uncle's shop.""Pretty fancy stuff," Marian noted, "all those colors, thoselittle threads.""Practice is the key to that sort of work, just as it seems to benecessary here!""That's unfortunately true, but eating doesn't take muchpractice," Marian added, "and it's about lunchtime. Ya gonna
have some lunch with us? Don't know why the devil you'd want
to go out when it's so damn hot."Zha just shook her head, then said so softly that Marian could
barely hear her even with the machines down, "The heat reminds
me of my obligations, so I walk. Thank you for your help, Marian." Marian nodded, as Zha turned toward the loading dock,108and she herself went toward the lunch-table.
Obligations? What the hell was she talking about? Zha's an
odd one, alright. Wonder if it's this hot in Pakistan. Marian picked
up her Coke from her workbench and handily caught the lunchbag Felice tossed her way as she neared the fridge.
That night, the crack of billiard balls and clunk of beer cans on
the bar at the Tap only aggravated the headache that had begun
pounding in Marian's skull shortly after lunch. She finished off
her seventh Pabst, said her goodbyes to Carol the bartender andto the regular gang, and went home to her cat. It was just getting
dark. The asphalt sucked at her sneakers as she crossed the parking lot to her apartment house entryway, then made sticky noises
as her shoes transferred the gook from the parking lot to the hall
stairs. "Shit," she muttered to herself, thinking it wouldn't be
hard for the landlord to figure out who tracked it in, since she wastrailing it to her own doorway. Tough. Not much she could do
about it, unless they laid out a red carpet for her.
Gotta get some aspirin, she decided, about five, to judge by
the hammering in her temples. She turned on the floor fan as she
went over to the tiny bathroom, dropping first her workshirt,then her shoes, then her bra, before she reached the cool tile andsat on the john to pull off her jeans and relieve herself of some of
the beer she'd drunk.
In the kitchen, she ran a glass of water, plunked in a couple ofice cubes and walked back across the living room to her double
bed next to the double windows, which she whipped up with adouble bang. She flopped on the bed, reached for the fan, andleaned back into the pillows with a groan. Soon enough, Catjumped up and began to knead her stomach, which reminded
Marian that she'd skipped supper - again. Oh well, too late. If
Zha could skip lunch every day, she could miss a supper or two.
She nudged the purring cat over to her side, where she curled up
possessively. "Little queenie, hey ... " Marian rubbed Cat' s ears as
she gazed out the windows, at the purpling evening clouds.
Strange one, that ZhaoWearing those goofy workgloves. Can't
handle pa per if you can't feel what you're doin' . Can't even adjust
the delivery if you can't fine tune. Look like baseball gloves at theend of her skinny little arms, anyway. Got broad shoulders though.
But hardly any meat on her. Oughta eat lunch. Hardly even notice
she's a girl, if it weren't for that gorgeous hair. Little tits don't
even show through her shirt ... Pretty eyes, though. When she's
not lookin' atcher feet. Talks good, for a foreigner. Wonder if she
109

went to an English school or somethin' ... Cat continued to purr as
Marian fell off to sleep, her hand still resting lightly on the furryhead.
In the morning, Marian woke groggily to the sun glaring
through the sheers, with the drone of the fan like an insect at theback of her head. She felt gummy with sweat, but her mouth wasdry. She gulped half of the stale water before she even tnought
about getting upright. Marian rubbed her temples and tried toremember what she'd been dreaming - seemed like she wassomeplace with Felice, who was shouting into her ear for a longtime, probably all night, like half of yesterday, and something
was wrong. Something was definitely wrong in the dream, but inthe irritation of another blazing summer morning, she couldn't
remember what it was. Something to do with webs, or - Aw,
fuck it. No use worrying about it.
She looked at the silent alarm clock: it was already 25 to 7,
which meant only 15 minutes to wash, dress, feed Cat, and makelunch, and still punch in on time. Tonight, she'd come home, skip
the brew, do the laundry, get a good night's sleep. No moreboozin' after work. That undoubtedly caused the lousy dreams;
maybe she'd pick up an air-conditioner for the front window thisweekend, Friday after she cashed her paycheck. She had a little
money stashed away, too. "See ya later, Cat," she said as she
closed and locked the door behind her and thudded down thesteps. Another scorcher. Another day. But only two days till theweekend. She'd manage. Maybe it'd rain.
But it didn't rain on Wednesday, and by lunchhour Thursday,
the sky was still the color of Marian' s favorite turquoise ring, narya cloud in sight. Even Felice was crabby. Marian mopped her
forehead clocklike every 15 minutes: it was actually hot in theplant, which was supposed to be climate-controlled for the sakeof the paper, an even 68° and virtually no humidity. She could tell
the humidity was rising by the way the paper behaved. Eachpressroll was a different length now, nothing matched up, nothing would run right. She could hear Al screaming at Sally,"Shuddup, will ya? Not a fuckin' thing I can do aboutthis shit-forpresswork!" Even John, who could sit out the heat in his cushy
office, had a go-round with Judith just before lunch. She saw
Judith stomp off to the restroom, leaving John red in the face andloosening his tie. He headed for the single-folder.
"Look at that, will ya?" she hollered at Felice. "John can't get
110enough satisfaction driving Judith to drink, he's gotta mess up
Zha's machine to boot.".
Felice spotted John rolling up his sleeves by the single-folder
and just shook her head. "Some folks don't know when to quit,
Marian. Hey - check the crimper on the left side, will you? It's
pretty loose, and we already threw out 50,000 on this job."
Sonavabitch. Why the hell doesn't it rain? So hot in here you
can't even think, much less do a decent day's work. Can't get thisfucking job to run right, and tight-ass John can't twist the thermostat and cool this place off. Creep.
"Should be OK for a while, Felice. Lemme know if it runs into
the pinholes again." It was a quarter to twelve, and not even time
for a smoke since 8 0' clock, things were going so badly.
Marian noticed that part four, a nice 15# peach-toned paper,
was actually running a little shorter than the other three humidity-lengthened parts. She spent five minutes adjusting the pins at
the back of the machine, just above the roll, trying to set themenough faster than the others to stretch the part forward a bit. She
checked the folded forms coming off the delivery, decided things
still weren't matching up close enough, and leaned over thecylinder head to inspect the main pins. Why bother to shut off thedamn machine? Only five minutes till lunch. She glanced at theclock as she reached into her back pocket for a screwdriver, andfelt the paper ride up off the pins under her fingertips - automatically, she pushed down and back on the moving sheets.
"SON OFA BI- "Felice looked up as Marian's eyes widened, as her arm jerked
up and back, away from the head with its razor-sharp perforating
blades. It was like watching a slo-mo replay on Monday Night
Football; the tanned arm rose in a smooth, lazy arc, and the bloodflew off on its own, slightly perpendicular arc, each drop glittering and distinct under the fluorescent glare. She saw Marian's
right hand come up to catch the left hand, saw the right hand dragthe left to her chest, saw Marian's mouth moving, wide open,
knew she was screaming, but didn't hear the sound.
As Felice slammed the emergency STOP button, halting thecollator, she saw Marian turn away from the cylinder, lose herbalance, and begin to fall toward the workbench in a third, crazyarc of movement. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught thebright bloodstains on the last two dozen folds of forms on thedelivery. She jumped around the side of the delivery, tried to
ca tch the falling woman, but she wasn't as quick as she used to be.
111

At las t her ears seemed to kick in - she heard the rotten fruit thudas Marian's head banged into the workbench. She hadn't even
tried to break her fall; she still clutched her left hand in the fist of
her right when she hit the floor, her forearms in a vee between her
breasts, like praying.
Cracking her shin on the steps of the platform, Felice swore,
then knelt by Marian on the cool concrete floor. By now, there wasblood all over the front of Marian's blue workshirt. She lay on herside, blood running out between her clenched fingers onto thedark grey cement, a small puddle already forming. Felice cradled
her head and bellowed up at AI, who was gaping stupidly over
the top of his still-running collator, "What the blazes are you
STARING at?? Get some help, you stupid jackass!"
Startled into action by Felice's shrillness, Al hit his stop andyelled over to the foreman, "Get the first aid, Harry! Emergency!"
Then he jumped down and followed Sal around the end of his
machine.
Sally moaned, clapped a hand over her mouth, and ran for the
restroom.
Girl never did have a stomach, Felice thought grimly as she
pushed Marian's damp hair offher forehead . The tears forming in
Felice's eyes slid unnoticed into the laugh lines, as if she were only
sweating. She could see that Marian had been knocked out, but a
twitch of her cheek signalled that she was coming around. One
less thing to really worry about. The girl had a hard head. As
Harry slid to a stop, first aid kit in hand, Felice gently tried to pry
Marian's hands apart to assess the injury. Al had stopped paying
attention and was staring again, this time under Marian's running platform. He took a couple steps in that direction.
"It's her fucking finger," Al said.
"No shit," Harry growled back.
"No, I mean it's her FINGER," Al repeated.
He pointed under the machine, and Harry groaned when herealized what Al meant. "Well, don't just stand there, pick it up
and wrap it in a clean shoprag."
Al did as he was told, and the lunchbuzzer rang. The mechanical background stilled, and the only sound was Felice's low
murmur as she rocked Marian in her arms, holding the woman's
face away as Harry wrapped a rubberband around the hemorrhaging knuckle.
"Tell Judith to call the paramedics," he told Al tersely.

112

"Goddammit, John, people can't work in a friggin' oven!"
Judith's chin was set hard, her arms crossed beneath herbreasts, the muscles in her forearm flexing, unflexing.
John looked passively out the window of his office, down
onto the floor. The workers were congregated in tense clusters at
the various worktables. No one seemed to be eating. The clock
registered 12:27.
" ...telling you, and if you don't there's gonna be hell to pay!"
Judith slammed the door open and crashed it closed behind her.
Wasn't his fault. Couldn't have the repairmen out to work on
the AC; it wasn't broken; it was just too hot to make a difference.
He shook his head and shuffled a pile of papers into his OUT
basket.
The paramedics had finally shown up at 12:17. They bundled
the shocked and shaking woman onto a stretcher, taking her
pulse as they moved rapidly toward the loading area. They'dpulled the medivan right up to the dock, slipping the stretcher inand roaring off through the noonhour heat waves, flashing red
and blue lights. Felice watched from near Judith's desk, Harry
beside her, her arms around herself to touch something solid.
Most of the other women, including Zha, stood uncertainly by the
Coke machine. Nobody talked.
Once the paramedics had disappeared from sight, Felice
walked slowly toward the ladies' room. She was covered withblood, and she knew she may as well pitch the blouse and slacks.
She didn't really care. As she went in the door marked "Ladies,"
one of the younger women stepped back, then went out. She
looks like the devil, thought Felice. Better get used to this. It'll
happen again before she's left here. She didn't look in the mirror,
just scrubbed her arms with gunk, wiped her face with wet
papertowels, then sat down on the cot to collect her thoughts.
The finger had been too badly mutilated to reattach. Really,
Marian thought as she lay staring at the mintgreen ceiling of thesemiprivate room, lucky to've only lost the one. And they probably had a hard time saving the little one. She closed her eyes andstrained back into the pillow, trying to push the pain out of her
consciousness. She only managed to bump her sore head against
the bed. Damn, what else? Can't believe how much it hurts,
probably the painkiller's wearing off. Wonder what time it is?
Looks dark out. At least it's cool in here.
She didn't want to consider her mistake, how dumb her
113reaction had been when she felt the cold metal of the cylinder
head. First fucking thing they tell you, when you start on themachine - never jerk your hand back if you feel it's gettingcaught. Hit the fucking stop button. Never jerk away. That's how
you get your fingers ripped off, when you jerk away ... She
banged her right fist into the bed beside her. Always did learn by
doing. Nobody to blame but herself, not paying attention; sheknew better, working next to the blades. Never take your eyes off
the machine. She remembered looking at the clock. Dumb mistake, Mar. Dumbshit.
She felt like punching herself out. So dumb. Of course, it could
have been worse. Half a ringfinger, some nasty cuts on the pinkie,
on her hand, lost a lot of blood, a slight concussion, according to
the duty nurse. She wasn' t sure how she hit her head - must've
fallen off the platform. All she could remember was the pain, theblood spreading on the canary part one, pulling her hand to herchest, trying to hold herself together. Could've been worse.
When she woke up the next morning, there was a note from
Felice on her nightstand, written on the back of a hospital form.
Marian automatically checked whether the form was centered,with even margins, and she squinted to read the microscopic
name of a rival printer at the bottom. Then she read the note:
Dear Marian Stopped and ate at the Comfy Cafe after work so I could
stop here to see how you're doing. But you're asleep. Look
like you need it kiddo. Spoke to the head nurse, she said they
operated on your hand but everything would be fine. She
said they are watching you because of the concussion. You
sure cracked your head a dandy!! on the bench.
Well sweetie, I've waited until 9 pm and kept you company, but you didn't wake up yet. Probably for the best.
Enjoy the cool in here, it's hotter than hades outside still.
Everybody said to tell you they're thinking of you. Judith
said Harry said you should take at least a week off, honey. So
just rest yourself and don't worry about a thing. You know
I'll miss you - call me when they let you out! Which thenurse said should be Saturday morning. I'd visit tomorrow
after work but I told my daughter-in-law that I'd help her
with Eddie's birthday party (7th) . I'll stop by the Opendoor
Tap and tell your friend Carol you're here on my way horne.
Just let the nurses and doctors take care of you Marianthey know best.
114

Marian rubbed her nose. The note was signed "Love you, honeybunch - Felice." She flipped the page over, as if expecting to
see more on the other side, and seeing the print again, realized
Felice had swiped her records chart. Nothing on it yet but her
name; the night nurse had probably just gotten another one.
Wonder if she missed this one, Marian snorted. Her hand hurt
like sin, but her head felt better.
Saturday morning, when Marian left the hospital, a large
gauze boxing glove where her left hand normally was, she remembered her car was still down at the plant. Carol had come byafter the early shift at the Tap Friday, and Marian had gotten her
to run by the apartment to feed Cat and to bring back some clean
clothes. She hadn't thought about the car. Oh well, only nine orten blocks to the plant. Time to meditate or something. Takes a bitof gettin' used to, being a nine-fingered dyke. Sort of like gettin'
castrated, she commented to a beagle tied up under a tree on
somebody's closely-clipped lawn. Could've been the NEXT finger- hell, could've been the RIGHT hand. There's some mercy.
Her thoughts continued down that morbid vein, and soon
enough, she stood outside the loading dock door. Hesitated. Get
a fuckin' grip on yourself, she whispered. It's all over. Wonder
what they did with the finger, she thought as she entered therelatively dark, cool plant. Probably out with the trash.
Only a few people were working Saturdays, to get the Navyjob out just a few weeks late. She saw John duck into his office,Judith at one of the single-folders. Then she saw Zha step from theside aisle down in the corner of the building, her arms laden withflat, unmade boxes. Zha's expression changed rapidly from noncommittal to a grin when she recognized Marian, and she leaned
back to wave. Still had on the silly gloves, Marian noticed as she
waved back with her free hand, the mummified one hanging
from a sling. She yelled, "Come down an' see you guys in aminute - gotta pick up my check."
Half an hour later, after a brusque exchange with John about
insurance, Marian exited the office, stopped to buy a Coke good thing her change was in her right pants pocket - andambled back to the rear of the bindery where Judith and Zha were
working. Judith watched her approach and turned off her machine when Marian neared it. "How ya doing, Marian?"
She nodded. "Could be worse. Got a little headache still, andof course, my hand is killing me, but I'm OK."
115

"Good. They couldn't save it, could they?""Nah. Like trying to turn hamburger into steak. But it'll be
OK, Judith." At least, I hope so, she added to herself.
Judith's face was a map of empathy. "I told John he'd better dosomething about the AC, or he'll be one sorry S.O.B.""Aw, don't blame him, Judy, it was my own fault for not
payin' close enough attention." She guzzled about half of the 10
oz. Coke.
"Huh."
Marian smiled, then gestured toward Zha, who was diligently stuffing the monstrous forms into an equally monstrous
carton as her folder rattled along. "How's she doin'?"
Judith cocked her head and looked soberly at Zhao "Youknow, I can't figure out how that woman puts out as many forms
as she does. She's inexperienced, she's got John on her tail, andshe's always wearing those clumsy gloves . But she averages
around 90,000 a day anyway.""That's pretty good for a greenhorn," Marian agreed. "Think
I'll go ask for her secret. I may need some tips!"
She stepped closer to the old single-folder. "How's it goin'?"she said to Zha, who hardly turned to acknowledge her.
"Things are fine for me," she replied over her shoulder, "buthow are you? I did not see your accident; I wanted to finish one
last carton before lunch, so I did not learn what had happened
until just before the ambulance arrived.""It's OK."
"I'll stop and talk in a moment," Zha said, glancing at theclock.
Marian involuntarily checked the time - 11 :57. Shit. Doubleshit, deja vu. "OK," she said, leaning against a full skid. "Norush." She gulped more Coke to settle her stomach.
Marian looked around the bindery, then gazed a moment at
her own machine. She turned quickly away. The mess had beencleaned off the machinery itself, but the bloods pattered forms
still lay on the delivery. She shook her head, half to conceal ashiver. The buzzer rang; the two single-folders stopped.
"That's it for today, Zha," Judith called as she went to punch
out.
"They never want to pay overtime, no matter how rushed thejob is," Marian noted.
"Apparently so," Zha replied, as she staple-gunned the lastbox shut.
116

"Wanna ride uptown? I came to pick up my car." Marian and
Zha were walking toward the timeclock. "It's cooler today, I
guess, but still pretty hot.""I would appreciate it. I would like to talk with you, anyway."
Marian moved to open the steel door, but Zha beat her to it.
"Please, allow me.""N 0 problem! Couldn't stop you if I wanted!" Laughing, theywent out into the sunlight.
Marian tossed Zha the keys to open her own car door, climbed
in herself and pulled the hardpack of Marlboros out from thepocket beneath the sling. Closed up for two days, the car reekedof stale smoke. As she slid onto the seat, Zha handed Marian the
keys. "It will be difficult to drive with only one hand.""Oh, I guess I'll manage, I think." She noticed Zha's gloved
hands lying in her lap. She glanced up at her face, in time to catchan odd look pass over it. "What's the matter?""It is nothing. I was just thinking of the past, which is notalways a pleasant occupation.""Yeah, I know JUST what you mean. My recent past is entirely
UNpleasant." Marian's joke met no laughter from the other
woman.
"My past is gone," Zha said firmly; "I left it behind me in
Karachi.""Where's that?" Marian touched the redhot lighter to the tipof the Marlboro.
Zha's eyelids flickered. "It is the main port of Pakistan, where
I boarded a ship which took me to Bombay.""Say, that's in India, isn't it?"
"It is, indeed."
Marian started the Chevy with a pump of the gas pedal, andput the gearshift into reverse before she grabbed the wheel again.
"I imagine you feel rather awkward," said Zha softly.
"Well, yeah, I guess so," Marian looked at Zha out of thecorner of her eye as she shifted into drive, "but the docs said oncethe bandage is off, it'll be no time till I get back to normal ...
whatever that is."Zha murmured her assent as the car rolled out of the lot,raising dust. Turning onto St. Mark, going up the hill from theriverfrop.t, Marian s"teadied the wheel with her bandaged hand
while she flipped on the radio and settled a baseball cap on her
short hair. She sidewise examined Zha, again admiring her long,dark hair. She felt another twinge in her gut as the picture of her
117hands running through hair like that exploded into the newimage of a mutilated hand, a half-digit short.
"Is something wrong, Marian? You don't look well-/I"I'm OK,/I too quickly.
"As I said earlier, perhaps you would like to talk ... Could wego for a drive, out among the fields? It has been so long since I saw
such farmland as there is here./I"Sure, we could go for a spin. Do you guys have farms inPakistan?/I
Zha giggled. "Of course! What do you think we eat, rocks?
Oh, I'm sorry; I did not mean to be offensive - /I"Nah, 's OK. It was a dumb question. Really, what do theygrow there?/I"In the northern plain, where I lived, the land is wide andgood for agriculture, much like the land here in the American
Midwest. There are wheat, rice, and of course, cotton./I Her voice
caught. "It is sometimes hard for me, to be so far away./I Zha
watched in silence as they drove past the village limits, onto a
blacktop road between a corn field and a soybean field.
"Corn's tall, but lookin' a little brownish,/I Marian commented.
"Too blasted dry for it this summer./I She, too, fell silent, and theydrove for a quarter of an hour, past fencerows and lone cribs
where farm houses had once stood alongside. An occasional
redwing blackbird rose from the tall grasses in the ditch to fly
purposefully across a field.
"Would it be possible to go for a short walk, perhaps there,
along that line of trees?/I
Marian nodded and parked the car off to the side of the gravel
road . "I don't think I should walk very far, though./I"No. I just wanted to find a peaceful place where we could sit
in the shade./I They skirted the barbwire fence to follow a line of
willows along a cut through the field, one lying fallow and grown
up with clover.
Marian's thoughts were jumbled up like Chiclets in a gumballmachine. If Zha were a lesbian, this excursion would've beenromantic. As it was, she felt almost hesitant, especially since Zha
had failed to mention a topic for their intended chat. Wonder
what she's got up her sleeve. Can't imagine. Marian tried to recall
whether she'd ever read anything about Pakistan in Newsweek, orseen anything on TV, but could only vaguely recollect something
about a coup, or a revolution. Figured. But no way Zha could havethat kind of crap on her mind, a beautiful day like today.
118

Following her, Marian contentedly observed how Zha' s short,lithe legs moved quietly through the greenery, now and thenstepping aside for a thistle. Her ass was tight, hips narrow, thesort Marian generally liked. She chastised herself silently. They
probably don't even HAVE lesbians in Pakistan anyhow. Specially not if they're all Moslems. Got enough problems without
that. Marian continued her perusal of the woman's back. Shoulder blades not quite so prominent any more, or maybe she's justworn a larger shirt. Hope she's putting on some weight. Zha had
let her hair free to enjoy the slight breeze that kept the afternoon
from becoming sweltering - at least, out in the country. And as
the woman's arms swung with her strides, Marian pursed herlips: still wearing those fucking canvas gloves! What the hell for?
Pretty unlikely she'd get any paper cuts out here in the boonies.
Their pace slowed, until Zha stopped to sit under an exceptionally large swamp willow, on an extraordinarily luscious patch oflong, silky grass .
"Better than a lawn, hey?" Marian suddenly felt the spacearound them like a weight on her head; it seemed she could hear
every bug for a mile. Uncomfortably, she broke the stillness in themost characteristic way she knew. "The day's almost as gorgeous
as you are, Zha."
For a minute, the Pakistani did not reply, just stared off toward the nearly invisible white water tower in town. Marian had
time to bite her tongue.
"So it was said, Marian. In Pakistan, several young men negotiated with my father for my marriage."
It was Marian's turn for silence. Zha had never mentioned herfather before. Family was probably Moslem, then; she recalled
reading something about fixed marriages. Zha sighed.
"But I did not ask you for this pleasant little trip to discuss
Pakistani social traditions. Nor did I seek to be provocative." Shesmiled at Marian's bewildered expression. "I know that you are ales bian, Marian. There are few secrets in a town this size - nor are
there many women as handsome as yourself."
Marian flushed with embarrassment.
"You see, I have travelled in Europe, both before and since myexile from my home. Indeed, my family's cosmopolitan character
ce'rtainly contributed to our position of danger during General
Zia's regime. We knew too many foreigners, too many liberals
within the country. Myundewas once a friend of Bhutto. Ah, thismust be confusing to you, this business of foreign politics. Ameri119

cans are lucky to be able to live such an insulated existence."
Marian didn't know whether to feel congratulated or criticized. She plucked a foxtail with her good hand and chewed on it
thoughtfully. Zha waited a moment, but when no response came,she continued.
"You are perhaps unfortunate that I am observant; I am
watchful, because one must learn the ways of one's hosts. I do notwish for you Americans to believe that we Pakistanis are barbaric
or unable to adapt to your culture."
Frowning, Marian blurted out a negative: "Why would I, I
mean we, think somethin' like that? That's ignerent."
Zha leaned back onto the grass. "Perhaps because we all areafraid of what's strange, Marian. The world is full of menacing
things, and one's own fears are perhaps the most terrifying of all."Her black eyes lent impact to her soft voice. "And it seems to me
now that you are very much afraid."
Marian jerked her head away. Swallow hard . Take time tobreathe. "Why wouldja think a goofy thing like that, Zha? Afterall, you don't hardly know me." When Marian turned back, Zha
saw how her face had hardened.
"Oh, Marian, don't be a fool. You are a lesbian in a small town
where all those who are foreign are suspect. Yet that's only a partof it."
Marian still couldn't meet Zha' s gaze. All she said was, ''Well,
what's your point?" She waited, watching two dragonflies joust
amid a clump of dried cattails.
"How do you feel about your accident, Marian?"
The question surprised her, and Marian felt as if the dragonflies had buzzed into her brain, filling her head with their dull,
stupefying roar. She shook her head, as much to shake out thedroning insects as to answer the question. She didn't know theanswer, so she waited. She was good at waiting; she often thought
she'd spent her whole life waiting, 31 years. The voice began
again:"I've noticed you noticing my gloves. Marian, I'm not afraidof papercuts. Do you truly wish to know the purpose of mygloves?" Zha paused, and when again no answer came, she
continued, "In a way, it is easier for me here than it was in London.
Here, at the factory, I have an excuse, a reason to wear the gloves.
Almost everyone is used to them, as if they are a part of me. I
suppose most of the others think that I am a snob, that I don't wish
to spoil my hands -"120"No way," Marian interrupted, ''We're not like that, at least
nobody's said anything like that to me." She shifted her position
uncomfortably.
"I'm glad," Zha's face neutral, "for that is far from the truth."
Marian cradled her gauze-wrapped left hand; the finger, or
something unseen, was beginning to throb. Though she wasalways soft-spoken, even overly polite, Zha now seemed particularly hesitant. This conversation was starting to make Marian feel
nervous, even a little afraid, unsure why, unsure what to say. She
listened to a far-off crow, an even more distant tractor. "What are
you trying to tell me, Zha?" she asked finally.
Marian sat with her back half-turned to the other woman, so
she heard, rather than saw, when Zha slid a few feet closer overthe grass. Marian felt a light touch on her left shoulder, a touchthat closed into a firmer grasp. She wished it would go away. Too
intense.
"Marian, are you listening?" She nodded. "What I must tell
you is very difficult for me, as well." She nodded again. Reassured, Zha went on. "They knew about us, about my father's
political views, about my uncle's friendship with Bhutto. They
followed us outside of Pakistan; they followed us secretly when
we went abroad on holiday. Zia' s men knew all there was to know
about us."
A blackbird swooped past, dipped, continued away.
"They knew that I loved to work at the weaving for my uncle.
They also knew that I was something of a problem to my father;
they knew that, nevertheless, he often confided in me. They knewthat I was a feminist, even that I was a lesbian. They knew
everything." Zha felt Marian's shoulder twitch slightly. "Marian,
Marian. Of course I knew immediately that you were a lesbian. I
have eyes," she laughed dryly. "At times, I wished that I wereblind, believe me. My uncle was killed by the military during
Zia's coup. Later, most of the men in my family were placed
under arrest. I, too, was detained, imprisoned. Do you knowwhat it is to lose your freedom, Marian?""I was in jail for a weekend once, after a barfight, if that's thesame."\ "Yes, more or less the same. I was not so lucky as some, luckier
than others." She stopped speaking, and her hand shifted awayfrom Marian's shoulder.
"What're you trying to say, Zha? It's OK, you know." Marianvacillated between curiosity and apprehension. Be patient, she121cautioned herself.
"As I said, they knew all about us, about me. The men of Islamcan be cruel, Marian. Even though they knew everything, already, they interrogated me daily, every night. I knew virtuallynothing, but they had means of stimulating one's creativity. I told
them lies, thousands of lies, anything to get them to leave me inpeace."•
What'd they do, Marian wondered as a sick feeling washedthrough her. Rape her? God only knows. She waited. Zha sighedagain, barely audibly, and Marian recognized the sound, saw
herself lying on the white hospital bed . A tremor shook her body.
"There is no way to make it easier, Marian. You must sim.Jly
look at my hands."
She felt Zha take hold of her shoulders again, and she didn't
resist being turned around to face her. The gloves lay beside themon the grass. Zha touched her cheek gently, fleetingly, as she
lifted her hands from Marian's shoulders.
"Look, Marian. This is what they did to the hands of a lesbian."
Marian frowned and looked down at the hands held before
her. She didn't, couldn't speak. What she saw was unspeakable.
When the hands began to shake, Marian raised her head, andwith one finger of her good hand pushed aside the tear that ran
along Zha's aquiline nose. Zha's eyes were closed.
Gut-wrenching pain arced through her left hand, down into
the finger that was not a finger any more. What could she say?
How could they have done this? How could she stand the pain?
Almost whispering, as if reading her mind, Zha was saying,"They told me that the hands which sought the fire of a woman,that which is Allah's gift to mankind, should take joy in the fire
Allah put in their hearts, should take joy in the fire."
It was just too fucking much. Shaking, Marian cried, covering
her face with her free hand.
"I know how hard it is to look upon, Marian; I know how
hard."Her hands had probably been strong. Now, the slender fingers were covered with angry red scars, the skin twisted, as if
trying to tear itself away from licking flames.
"It was not an accident, Marian; they were quite persuasive,
those who tortured the prisoners, so I did as they wished, and put
my hands into the fire. But I felt no joy in my hands, only in myheart. They did not have to force me to do this; I even laughed at122them. But I was afraid, and they knew that, too. Now, I am
ashamed."Marian shook her head emphatically.
"You see, you were fortunate, Marian. One can lose more thana finger. N ow, we are almos t the same ... our hands know the pain
and the pleasure as well. Do you understand?"
Marian nodded slowly, and offered her open hand to Zha,
who placed one of her own within it. They sat that way for a longtime; the dragonflies flew away.
"Fuck them," Marian said at last.
"I am forgetting them," Zha replied.
"It really hurts today," Marian whispered.
"It will heal," Zha replied.

~ ~ The radical feminisl magazine~

Strifei.:atWr4~

Strifeirmw~~

Strifeil~~tW~~

Strife~Strifeil~~tWr4

Rodlcalle minlst wit and wisdom published In the UK. written from a llover the world.
•••.

discussion, debole
reviews. Interviews
history, campaigns

aclion~... a fo rmidable femInistmagazine - nol lor the
faint· hearted." The Guardlon
Subs for one year (3 Issues):
Britain & N. Ireland .............. £7.50........ £20
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Trouble and Strife, c/o Women's Centre,
34 Exchange Street, Norwich, UK. NR2 lAX

123

The Sinister Wisdom Editorial Workers

JASMINE MARAH
Working on SW has shown me that
although friendship is not a requisite
for community, community is a good
soup for the development of friendship. Photographing the SW community has been very dear to me. The
wimmin are extraordinarily varied
and interesting to the photographer'seye. I give them thanks.

MARLANE COOK
A sober dyke separatist who as a
rookie "member" of SW has learned
that mailings are more fun than editorial gatherings because they get donein one afternoon, but either way tohang out with enlightened lesbians
that stimulate my head and my heart
is truly worth a motorcycle ride acrossthe bay.

WINN GILMORE
Exploring life's dykeotomies is powerful, and sometimes sinister, but and I believe you know it - neverboring. May the Orixas bring all good
to us all.

CARY ATIS CARDEAI am a working class lesbian separatist. I work on SW because.

124

DEEANNE DAVIS
I'm a native Iowan living in the East
Bay. As a writer and editor, I havebeen reading for SW to gain more
editing experience and to broaden myunderstanding of the lives womenlead through the many stories theytell with their words.

BETIY DUDLEY
I'm from Missouri. I came to San Francisco for the dykes. I work on Sinister
Wisdom for the same reason.

CATH THOMPSON
Cath's acid comments can eat throughsteel, but rarely through the opinionsof the other SW editorial readers. She
has little tolerance for obscure poetry
and obtuse people, and does not hesitate to comment on them-usually tosomeone's regret. Her saving grace isher certainty that she is a better editor
than a writer.

VALERIE STOEHR
I'm 28, grew up in Minnesota, and am
now living in Oakland, California. I
work on SW so I can read great Lesbian writing and discuss great Lesbian thoughts.

125

NAJA SORELLA
I'm 38, mostly home-bound/bedbound by chronic illness, going on 7
years. I have a wonderful lover ofnearly 6 years. Since I can't attend
writing classes, I joined SW as it allows me to read a variety of writings,
and hear other women's opinions onthem. I also like being part of a creative group that's committed to putting out a lesbian oriented politicallyaware journal.

SUSANJILL KAHN (SJ)
I joined SW two years ago when I
turned forty - seemed like a greatlace to have a mid -life crisis. Instead,found myself knee-deep in creativity, politics and dykes with warmthand wit. Oh yeah, and knee-deep indeadlines, xeroxes, endless meetingsand difficult decisions. It ain't all a
bed o'roses.

SUSAN LEVINKlND
Excuse me? Can I say hello to all myfriends in Northampton? Okay? Okay.
Hi everybody! I love you! Here I am in
California!

ELAN A DYKEWOMON
Sinister Wisdom is one long learning
curve that wrapped around my life
and turned it inside out. It's the most
fun you can have without making
money.

f

126

LISA CARLIN
Commie, Jew, Dyke. Blue-collar bad
attitude. Poet trickster. Works on Sinister Wisdom to slip something by
Elana.

JUDY FREESPIRIT
Taping SW for Women's Braille Press
allows me, as a disabled lesbian, to dowork consistent with my politics without ever having to attend a meeting
and at the same time give vent to mylife-long desire to be a performer froma vantage point safe from flying eggs
and rotten tomatoes. What could be
more perfect?

After putting out eight issues, we thought it was time for you to get a
glimpse of who we are. The photos above, by Jasmine Marah, are of thecurrent, regular editorial and production group. Dykes who joined formore than two issues since we moved to California, but have since
moved on, include: Heidi Henken, Lisa Gerick, Laura Israel, Laura Post,
Samantha Elin, Joan Drury and Ariban.
~~~

Friends who regularly help us with kibbitzing, suggestions, mailings,
proofreading and the like: Gloria Anzaldua, Dolphin Zelda Waletzky,
Barbara Ruth, Kit Quan, Cindy Cooper, Susan Goldberg, Debbie Fier,
Elizabe.th Fides, Kim Swineheart, Anita Schriver, Tavie Tipton, Casey
Fisher, Louise Rafkin. You can often find their names on the inside front
cover, but we wanted to thank them again. And thanks to all the dykes
who've volunteered for an issue, or a mailing or to type a story, over thelast three and a half years- we couldn't have done it without any of you!

127

Letter __________________
Montreal, December 9, 1989

Violence and Terror"Madman shoots 14 women," screams the headline of Montreal's La
Presse on December 7,1989, the day after the killing of 14 young womenat the Ecole poly technique de Montreal.
Everyone is eager to label the killer a "sick" and "insane" person. Yet,in the Dec. 8 La Pressel journalists state that the murderer, Marc Lepine,"seems to have led a relatively uneventful existence. He did not drink or
smoke, was most likely not a drug user." He was not known to beaggressive toward women. Jean-Pierre Trudel wrote in Le Journal deMontreal on Dec. 8, "there was nothing that led to believe he could havecommitted the demented act last Wednesday." So why insist, after thefact, on inventing a psychological profile that the killer did not seem tohave? To reduce the killer to a case of deviant psychological makeup
with no "scientific" facts to backitupseems a bit suspicious. To treat him
as an individual case of psychological deviancy is to deny that he is asocial being. This minimizes the impact and the meaning of his action.
In some cases, the social meaning of the massacre of 14 women ishesi tantl y broached. According to Montreal mayor Jean Dore, the killing"is the work of a madman, but it's also a sign that some men haven't yet
accepted ... equality between men and women." Should we conclude
that all men who haven't accepted equality between men and women,
and there are a lot of them, are mad?
The murderer, Marc Lepine, revealed the political and social meaning of his action in a letter found on his body after the massacre: "I hate
feminists/' he wrote. That is why he killed 14 women. His action was
motivated and premeditated. As well, he had a "hit list" of 19 other targets, all influential and successful women. His action was, in fact, aterrorist campaign directed against women and lesbians.
Let's pretend for a moment that Marc Lepine was in fact mad, as
everyone seems to want to believe. If this is true, why exactly was hemad? Simply because hewent to extremes in his violenceagainstwomen,
by killing 14 of them at once. Every day, the Montreal newspapers andnewspapers all over the world report the murder of women by men.
Montreal's mass murderer is no different, in our opinion, from those
who made the front page of newspapers after murdering their wives
while out on bail, or dismembering 13-year-old girls or perpetrating all
those other crimes against women that are conveniently dismissed as"family tragedies."
128

In fact, by committing such extreme woman-hating actions, these
men's only crime was attracting public attention on what must remain
secret and hidden: the day-to-day oppression of women by men, in every
way, shape and form. By being so careless in their action, they commi tted
an unforgivable error: to risk blowing the cover on the ways in which theclass of men ensures, holds and maintains the power of life and deathover the class of women as a whole.
These men are no different from those who "manhandle," rape or
threaten their wives, girlfriends, neighbors, strangers, co-workers, daughters, nieces, sisters and their friends' daughters; those who force theirsexual fantasies or pornographic material on their partners, who force
them to bear unwanted children; those who harass women with theirsexual and other degrading jokes, their lecherous looks, sexual innuendo and disrespectful comments; or those who, either jokingly or deadserious, deplore that the killer didn't kill more of those "feminists."
It is only a question of degree and conspicuousness. In cases ofextreme violence that are brought to public attention through the media,
the class of men is quick to disown, for appearances' sake, the individual
member who has gone too far in acting on his hatred of women. The
greater the risk of revealing the workings of the social system of oppression of women by men, the more extreme the method of dealing with theindividual who has transgressed this unspoken rule: the class of men
throws one of its members of the wol ves in order to protect the rest of thepack. If they don't commit suicide, mass murderers are either shot down
by police marksmen or lynched by other prison inmates. The result is theelimination of the careless member, who endangers the right to continue
to exert individual and collective power over all women and to maintain, in doing so, the individual and collective appropriation of the classof women by the class of men. This is the technique used in the case of the"madman" of the Montreal Polytechnic School. In the case of the murderers of women, the class of men makes an example of the man who has
killed one woman, or fourteen women, in order that all other men may
quietly continue to kill by inches the women they live, work or are incontact with, by the most ingenious, varied and subtle means.
In fact, it's a case where you can't see the forest for the trees.

Jan S., Celine L., Danielle C , Francine M., Christiane A., Helene M., JeanneMance P., Louise T.,Patrizia T., Elise D., Diane H., Julie P., Dyane C, Ginette
B., Daniele T., Dominique M. , Daniele C, Constance D., Johanne C , PascaleN., Gerry R., Suzanne V., Montreal, Quebec.
For political reasons, we have not given our surnames.

129

Revievv______________________________________The Other Sappho * a novel by Ellen Frye. (1989, $8.95.
fFirebrand Books, 141 The Commons, Ithaca, NY 14850)
Sappho I leave you against my willI answered, go happily
and remember me,
you know how we cared for you,
if not, let me remind you ...
we did have good times.
- Sappho of Lesbos
Age only makes her stronger. The small, dark lover of women
who gave us our name, poet unsurpassed whose haunting stanzas have resisted censorship for 26 hundred years, now laughs,
presides, rants, trembles and beguiles in the pages of Ellen Frye's
novel, The Other Sappho.
Ellen further advances the legend by introducing Sappho's
companion Lykaina, an illiterate, equally gifted composer whorecites in an oral, improvisational style.
Since the third century b.c., rumors about "another Sappho"
have persisted in folklore and scholarly discourse. Surely, in thewords of Carol Seajay, "if there was one 'Sappho' whose work has
survived all these centuries, then there must have been others likeher."
The story of this "otherSappho," as envisioned by Frye, is thatof a baby with a twisted foot, left in the hills to die, found andadopted, then sold into slavery by her foster-brother; a talented
singer who runs away from her comfortable but unfree life in
Sparta to find her way to Lesbos and apprentice herself to "theTenth Muse," as Sappho was called. Along the way she forms
unconventional friendships with a fast-talking peddler, a prostitute, a little rich girl, a so-called "madwoman" and a deaf slave.
And then she meets Sappho ...
. The Other Sappho is Ellen Frey's second novel; her first, Look Under the Hawthorne,
published in 1987 by New Victoria, tells the story of a Vermont bardyke whoquits her job and goes 10 qkin g for the daughter she gave up for adoption 32 years
ago.

130

Ellen Frye does the story justice. Fluent in Greek, author of

The Marble Threshing Floor (a collection of 110 Greek folksongs recorded as she traveled from village to village), Ellen uses her feelfor Greek rhythms and imagery in a way that pulls the reader into
this long-ago and faraway world. Surviving fragments of Sappho's poetry have been woven into the dialogue, and Lykaina's
wild, unschooled lyrics are equally enchanting.
Besides enchant, this story asks intelligent, crucial questions.
Can a woman of privilege and a woman from the school of hard
knocks live as lovers without infringing on each other? How do
we protect ourselves from male intrusion, how restore what men
have violated? And what hope is there for reconciling after thepain we cause each other?
- Kon~ Archer- - - - - - - - - - - - - - B o o k s Received
Below are brief descriptions of books we've received for review in thelast four months. We have limited space forreviews, yet the books below
deserve your attention. We list books from women's presses, and books
by lesbians, or by women and of interest to lesbians, from alternative andmainstream presses. We encourage our readers to support womyn'sbookstores in their areas. If you order from this list, be sure to add
postage to the list price of the books ($1.25 for the first book, at least 50~
for each additional book from the same press). We particularly urge you
to support womyn's presses: the possibility of getting our work to eachother depends on their survival.
Desert Years: Undreaming The American Dream - an account of moving from Cambridge to a desert county park community of old people,
mostly women, as an effort to provide "a small base of hope" to those
ready to cast off consumerism and patriarchal culture - by Cynthia
Rich, 1989, $7.95, Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, PO Box 410687, SF, CA 94141.
Coz, a metaphysical thriller about the old woman who controls the place
where life and death meet, by Mary Pjerrou, 1989, $9.95, Spinsters / Aunt
Lute Press.

131

Thirteen Steps - An Empowerment Process for Women, a non-linear,
non-hierarchical approach to transformation and change by Bonita L.
Swan, 1989, $8.95, Spinsters/ Aunt Lute Press.
Spirited Lesbians - Lesbian Desire As Social Action, a spectrum of
essays by Nett Hart, 1989, $9.95, Word Weavers, PO Box 8742, Minneapolis, MN 55408-0742.
Bubbe Meisehs by Shayneh Maidelehs: An Anthology of Poefry by
Jewish Granddaughters About Our Grandmothers, edited by Leslea
Newman, 1989, $8, HerBooks, PO Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA 95061.
A Lesbian Love Advisor - The Sweet and Savory Arts of Lesbian
Courtship includes a full spectrum of serious and thoughtful advice byCeles te West, 1989, $9.95, Cleis Press, PO Box 8933, Pi tts burgh, P A 15221.
Eye of a Hurricane, thirteen stories in which women ride out their own
storms, by Ruthann Robson, 1989, $8.95, Firebrand Books, 141 The
Commons, Ithaca, NY 14850.
Humid Pitch, a third book of Black narrative poetry from Cheryl Clarke,
1989, $8.95, Firebrand Books.
The Other Sappho, a novel about Sappho's contemporary, Lykaina, by
Ellen Frye, 1989, $8.95, Firebrand Books.
Sans Soucie, short stories about Black women in Trinidad and Toronto,
by Dionne Brand, 1989, $8.95, Firebrand Books.
Liquid Lovers, paintings by Sandra J. Taylor and poems by Esthere K.
Heggie, 1989, $8.95, Shu Publishing, PO Box 779, West Side Station,
Worcester, MA 01602.
Between Us (1989) and Mountain Singing (1986), two books of poems by
Sharon Davenport, $5 ea., Eggs Press, Berkeley, CA.
After the Fire, a novel of loss and new beginnings on a Canadian Island,the 12th book from Jane Rule, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press, PO Box
10543, Tallahassee, FL 32302.
Sue Slate: Private Eye, in which a kitty sleuth enters the dyke detective
genre, by Lee Lynch, 1989, $8.95, Naiad Press.
There's Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You -26 stories in which
lesbian and gay parents corne out to their children, edited by Loralee
MacPike, 1989, $9.95, Naiad Press.
Rose Penski, a novel about a loving lesbian relationship and dealing
with fear, by Roz Perry, 1989, $8.95, Naiad Press.
Lifting Belly, Gertrude Stein's great erotic experiment finally republished with an introduction by editor Rebecca Mark, 1989 Corig. pub. in
1953), $8.95, Naiad Press.

132

The Beverly Malibu, third in the Kate Delafield mysteries series byKatherine V. Forrest, 1989, $16.95 (cloth only), Naiad Press.
Voyages Out 1 - a showcase short story collection by two lesbians,
Paula Martinac and Carla Tomaso, 1989, $8.95, The Seal Press, 3131
Western Ave. #410, Seattle, WA 98121-9952.
Good Vibrations - The Complete Guide to Vibrators is exactly what itsays, by Joani Blank, updated 3rd Edition, 1989, $5.50, Down There
Press, PO Box 2086, Burlingame, CA 94011-2086.
Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers essays by Afro-American feminist scholar Barbara Christian, 1985,$16.95, Athene Series, Pergamon Press, Maxwell House, Fairview Park,
Elmsford, NY 10523.
Women, Power and PoliCl}: Toward the year 2000, Second Edition,
essays edited by Ellen Boneparth and EmilyStoper, 1988, $17.50, Athene
Series, Pergamon Press.
Inspiring Women: Reimaging the Muse, essays on poetry and womyn
poets by MarkK Deshazer, 1986,$13.95,Athene Series,PergamonPress.
Radical Voices:A Decade of Feminist Resistance from Women's Studies
International Forum edited by Renate D. Klein and Deborah Lynn
Steinberg, 1989, $14.50, Athene Series, Pergamon Press.
Taking Our Time: Feminist Perspectives on Temporality, essays andpoetry edited by Frieda Johles Forman with Caoran Sow ton, 1989,$14.95, Athene Series, Pergamon Press.
Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, the 1982 classic revised, expanded and updated, edited by Evelyn Torton Beck, 1989 (3rd ed.),$12.95, Beacon Press, 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108.
Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian, Gay, and Jewish, a new anthology
proposing an integration of these realities, edited by Christie Balka andAndy Rose, 1989, $24.95 (cloth), Beacon Press.
A Noise from the Woodshed, a collection of lyrical, vivid stories from the
Irish lesbian poet Mary Dorcey, 1989, £4.95, Onlywomen Press, 38
Mount Pleasant, London WC1X OAP, England.
Passion is EvenJwhere Appropriate, lesbian feminist poetry by Caroline
Griffin, 1989, £3.95, Onlywomen Press.
Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America, starting with theNative American women and ending in the '80s, bySaraM. Evans, 1989,$24.95 .(cloth), Macmillian Publishing Co., Front and Brown Streets,
Riverside, NJ 08075.
Significant Differences - Feminism in Psychology, analysis of theinterconnections and differences between feminist theory and tradi-133

tional psychology by British author Corinne Squire, 1989, $12.95, Routledge, 29 W. 35th St., NYC, NY 10001.
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, a critique ofthe notion of fixed gender, by Judith Butler, 1990, $12.95, Routledge.
Heather Has Two Mommies, a large-format children's book, by Leslea
Newman, illus. by Diana Souza, 1989,$6.95,InOtherWords Publishing,
351 Pleasant Street, Suite 233, Northampton, MA 01060.
Menopause- a self-care manual, orig. pub. in 1980, now revised withresources, by Judy Costlow, Marfa Cristina Lopez, Mara Taub, 1989, $5,
Santa Fe Health Education Project, PO Box 577, Santa Fe, New Mexico
87504.
Dark Horse, a novel with an out lesbian running for mayor in a New
England city by Frances Lucas, 1989, $8.95,New Victoria Publishers, Box
27, Norwich, VT 05055.
Cut Ups and Cut Outs, an over-size dyke volume of puzzles, astrology,
paper dolls and party games by Elizabeth Dean, Linda Wells, Andrea
Curran, 1989, $8.95, New Victoria.
Kicking the Habit: A Lesbian Nun Story, an autobiographical novel byJeanne Cordova, 1990, $9.95, Multiple Dimensions, 1604 Vista del Mar
Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90028.
Wise Woman Herbal: Healing Wise, an examination of healing traditions and deep specifics on a handful of herbs, by Susun Weed, 1989,$11.95, Ash Tree Publishing, PO Box 64, Woodstock, NY 12498.
Enter Password: Recovery - new writing on identity, transformation,
abuse, friendship, dyke life, motherhood, Radical Jews by Elly Bulkin,
1990, $7.95, Turtle Books, PO Box 9141, Albany, NY 12209-0141.
The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by
Carol J. Adams. 1990, $22.95 (hardcover), Crossroad/Continuum, 370
Lexington Ave., NYC, NY 10017.

134

_____________Contributors' Notes
Kore Archer is a 44-year-old white lesbian feminist who grew up
on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and now lives in Santa Cruz, California. She is a bicycle commuter, a civil servant, an earthquake
survivor and an unabashed lover of chocolate.
birdelle (b.a. byrd): i am jewish. w /0 prIvileges. i live a life of
constant juggling - my art reflects this act. often i do not explain
my art, nor myself. interpret as you like for you will anyhow. / /now though i want to say / scream that i am looking at what being"in love" means - really means. with myself, my lover, mychildren and my family of birth. questions of trust.
Elizabeth Clare: I am a white, middle class, disabled dyke who
has lived in innumerable places since leaving Port Orford, Oregon when I was 17. I currently find myself living in Ann Arborwhere I write poetry and essays, take long walks wheneverpossible, and organize against violence against women. I may bemoving on soon to go to graduate school.
Anne Corey is a 42-year-old poet, playwright and teacher living
in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her lover and four cats. Her work
has appeared in We're Working on It, Love Bytes, Bubbe Meisehs andSinister Wisdom.
Susan Dambroff is a poet, performer and teacher of autistic
children living in S.F. Her book of poems, Memory in Bone, waspublished in 1984 by Black Oyster Press. Other poems have appeared in the anthologies Ghosts of the Holocaust and Of Shadows
Emerging: An Anthology of Bay Area Women Poets. Her one-woman
show, Wind, Shoes and a Paper House was produced in S.F. in 1989.
Terri de la Pena is a Chicana fiction writer. A fifth-generation
Californian, she has been published in the anthologies Finding
Courage: Stories by Women, Intricate Passions, and The One You Call
Sister.
Pen Engelbrecht: 29, white, financially stagnant, homegrown (ILnative) : lives w / 3 cats in Chicago, loves Barb and Coca-Cola,
hates hypocrites, plays b-ball w / the boys, and scares her compstudents. She is being pursued by a PhD in medieval English,
worries at lesbian/feminist theory, and occasionally writes
something publishable.
135Pamela Gray is a 34-year-old Jewish lesbian poet and playwrightliving in Oakland. She is the co-author of the play "Healin' Dirt
Diner," which was produced at Theatre Rhino in San Francisco.
Her work appears in several anthologies, including Bubbe Meisehs
by Shayneh Maidelehs, Naming the Waves : Contemporary Lesbian
Poetry and Politics of the Heart.
Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall is an over-educated alienated island
girl who is finding her ohana in the most unlikely women andmen.
Jan Hardy: I'm 33, white, Lesbian Separatist, poet, author of out
here flying, currently editing Wanting Women: An Anthology ofLesbian Love Poems. I'd rather be a tap dancer than a writer, but I
like my life.
Terry Hauptman is a painter/ poet, currently living in Minnesota. Joy Harjo says of her work, "burns, seethes, gives birth inheat/heart ... to create a city of flames." Recent publications include Ikon, Sing Heavenly Muse, Hurricane Alice, Caliban, Painted
Bride Quarterly, Crosscurrents, High Plains Literary Review, Heresies.
Loretta Johnson is in prison in Ohio. A friend of hers on theoutside sent this to us.
Beth Karbe: I've been a lesbian for as long as I can remember and,as a photographer, I make images of lesbians exclusively. My
desire is to assist our individual and collective healing by putting
to paper our beauty, our strength and our power as lesbians. (I'malso networking with other never-het dykes. My address is: 213
NW 4th Ave., Gainesville, FL 32601.)
Sandra Lambert is a dyke - white, disabled; an ex-feminist
bookstore lesbian learning to live on SSDI in Gainesville, FL.
Emily Levy: I often write in amusing ways about serious topics.
I learned this skill growing up Jewish. It's effective, but sometimes I fear it hides how deeply I grieve for the wounds of theearth, the elephants, the women, the kids.
Anne Mi Ok Bruining was born in the lunar year of the rat andadopted by a white family in 1966. She's lived in Rhode Island,
Virginia, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has recently returned
to New Jersey. When not dreaming of moving to San Francisco,
she writes poetry, practices sign language and speaks out on
adoption and Asian Pacific lesbian issues.
136

Nina Crow Newington's novel, Harvest of Ghosts (which her
agent says is not a novel), is in search of a publisher. She isworking on a second novel (or whatever) and on a collection ofpoems (ditto). She lives in rural Massachusetts.
Sudie Rakusin: I'm a lesbian and an artist, six planets in fire, livein the woods with my four dog companions doing some sort of art
every chance I get.
Mary Carol Randall lives in Oakland and is interested in honoring heart connections in different kinds of relationships.
Joan Schuman lives in Philadelphia. She is a community educator with Women Organized Against Rape, is active with thenational Campaign To End Homophobia, produces radio andwrites poetry. In her spare time she thinks . This is her firstpublished poem.
Bettianne Shoney Sien hopes people (that's lesbians) will readher book Lizards/Los Padres . She is currently co-editing a new
HerBooks anthology called CATS (and their Dykes) and the Lesbian
Ethics issue on class. In her spare time she is depressed about
being unemployed.
Susan Stinson's writing has appeared in numerous journals andanthologies, including Word of Mouth from Crossing Press. She iscompleting work on a novel, Chalcedony. She still gets politicalstimulus and chocolate kisses from women she went to highschool with.
Gila Svirsky: I was born in the States in 1946 and have lived in
Israel for the last 23 years . Some of that time I have shared withmy two daughters and with my special friend Miri. I am Director
in Israel of the New Israel Fund, a progressive organization
devoted to advancing civil rights (including women's and gay
rights), religious pluralism, and Jewish-Arab coexistence.
Cath Thompson is a survivor of her dysfunctional family. Occasionally, she manages to overcome this legacy long enough to see
reality and name it. She is not a poet and is somewhat impressedthat SW is publishing her poem.
Mary A. White: I'm originally from Florida. Now living in Arizona; I'm getting an MFA in Creative Writing and working on acollection of short stories.

137

Announcements and Classified A d s - - - - - PUBLICATIONSOUT/INSIDE, A Women's Newsjournal Focusing on LesbianPrisoners. Barbara Ruth, ed. $6/yr, $1.50 sample (+501t postage).
PO Box 2821, Oakland, CA 94609.
HIKANE: THE CAPABLE WOMON - disabled wimmin's newsletter for lesbians and our wimmin friends. Available in print or
cassette. $4 sample, $14 indiv. subscription, $24 inst., sliding scale
available, free to women in prison. Hikane, PO Box C-9, Hillsdale,
NY 12529.
CONNEXlONS - AN INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S QUARTERLY, individual subscriptions $15, institutions $24, Canada
and Mexico $16, other out of US $26 airmail, $16 surface. Connexions, 4228 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA 94609.

CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONCATHOLIC GIRLS - all forms for an anthology reflecting diversity of culture, ethnicity, age on the experience of Catholic
girlhood. Submit w /SASE: Patrice Vecchione/ Amber Coverdale
Sumrall, PO Box 61, Capitola, CA 95010. Deadline: Nov. I, 1990.
CATS (AND THEIR DYKES) will be an anthology - everythingfrom analysis to love stories, all forms, artwork and photos.
HerBooks, PO Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA. Deadline: May I, 1990.
LESBIAN LOVE STORIES II - all forms of narrative (no poetry)
considered for Crossing Press anthology. Send w / SASE to Irene
Zahava, 307 W . State St., Ithaca, NY 14850. Deadline: August I,
1990.
SEVERED TIES: LESBIANS LOSING FAMILY, LOSING FRIENDS- anthology of losses incurred by coming out. Send submissions
or queries to Lynne D'Orsay, PO Box 332, Portsmouth, NH 03801.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE BUTCH/FEMME - all forms and artwork for a lesbian anthology to be published by new gay andlesbian publishing house. Send submissions or queries to Multiple Dimensions, attn: Caryn Goldberg, 1604 Vista Del Mar Ave.,
Hollywood, CA 90028.

138

WORKSHOPSFLIGHT OF THE MIND - 7th annual writing workshop for
women in Oregon, July 29 to August 5,1990, with writers Ursula
LeGuin, Valerie Miner, Joy Harjo, Theresa Clark, Judith Barrington. Some scholarships. For a brochure, send 25¢ stamp (noenvelope) to: Flight of the Mind, 622 SE 29th, Portland, OR 97214.
FEMINIST WOMEN'S WRITING WORKSHOPS, INC. - 15th
annual, July 15-27, 1990, in upstate NY. Faculty: Rachel Guido
deVries, Judith McDaniel. Speakers: Lucille Clifton, Nancy Bereano. Scholarship deadline April 15th. SASE for brochure to: Mary
Gilliland, Director, FWWWInc., PO Box 6583, Ithaca, NY 14851.
CONFERENCES

NATIONAL LESBIAN CONFERENCE, by, for and about lesbians, open to all women, will be April 24 - 28, 1991 in Atlanta,
Georgia. Local organizing meetings are happening around the
U.S. now, next national meeting will be in Kansas City, MO in late
April. For more info, write: PO Box 3057, Albany, NY 12203.
IV INTERNATIONAL FEMINIST BOOKFAIR, Barcelona, Spain,
June 19-23, 1990. Exhibits, workshops, discussions in Catalan,
Spanish, English and French. For information, write IV International Feminist Bookfair, Valencia, 302/08009 Barcelona, Spain.
FEMINIST EDUCATION: CALLING THE QUESTION -1990
National Women's Studies Association Conference, June 20-24,
at the University of Akron, Ohio. Registration and inquiries to:
NWSA National Office, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD
20742-1325. NWSA also has several literary awards and scholarships / fellowships available. Write them for more information.
WOMEN'S WORLDS: REALITIES AND CHOICES - 4th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women at Hunter College in NYC. For registration and inquiries, write: Box 733 HN,
Hunter College, 695 Park Ave., NYC, NY 10021.
5th NATIONAL CATHOLIC LESBIAN CONFERENCE - May
25-28,1990, in Estes Park, Colorado. For more information, write:
Conf. Coordinatior, CCL, Inc., PO Box 436, Planetarium Station,
NY, NY 10024.

139

VIDEOCOUNSELLING THE SEXUAL ABUSE SURVIVOR - a series ofthree videos on childhood sexual abuse with a feminist focus.
Available in VHS or Beta, $150 + tax. For rental or more info.,
write: The Montreal New Film Group, 3603 boul. St.-Laurent,
Montreal H2X 2V5.
REQUEST FOR CORRESPONDENTS

I am a 15-year-old Lesbian serving time in a juvenile detention
center. The "counselors" here treat me like being Lesbian is thereason I'm locked up.
We can't get any reading material from outside, only what's in
the library here. But I can receive letters, and I need some. As
many as possible. I am very isolated and lonely, and I need the
support and love of other Lesbians, even if it can only be by mail.
I was hoping someone there might be interested in corresponding, or maybe could help me find someone who will be. It would
mean more to me than you can know.
Thank you for listening and for any help you can offer. Pleasewrite soon. Blessed Be. Your little Lesbian Sister,
Lin Elliott #68216, Arizona Prison Complex, PO Box B-68216,
Florence, AZ 85232.

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sinister wisdom
Current & Back Issues(partial list of contents)#39 / Special Focus on Disability. Testimony in all forms by disabled womyn.
• Freespirit, Winnow, Sorella, Edgington, Rome, Lauby, Folayan, Koolish, Cardea •#38 / Emphasis on Lesbian Relationships. Fiction and poetry.
• Jewell , Clarke, Anza ld ua, Gage, Schaffer, Spisak, Taraba, Devora, Louise, Knight •#37 / Emphasis on Lesbian Theory. With work on consumerism, spirituality,
political theory, children , racism, anti-Semitism, lesbians in prison.
• Lee, Tallen, Evans, Pratt, Robson, Quinlan, Livia, Hardy, Gray, Green, Justicz •#36 / Special Focus on Surviving Psychiatric Assault / Creating Emotional Well
Being in our Communities. Includes testimony, prose, poetry and essays on
getting locked up, getting out, community, therapy and therapism .
• Hope, Aal , Caicedo, thundercloud, Robson, Sien, Moran, Ward, NiHera, Willcox •#35 / Special Focus on Passing. Includes work on / by Black, Jewish , Native
American, Latina, Italian, White, disabled, working class, butch, fern lesbians.
• Jewell, Frye, Pratt, Rosales, Bogus, Ruth , Gage, Barrington, Davis, JEB, Romano •#34 / Special Focus on Lesbian Visions, Fantasy, SciFi. Includes work on Separatism, Disability, Building and Transformation.
• Katz, Ortiz Taylor, Hoagland, Allegra, Livia, Louise, Rios, Danaan, Marah •#33 / Special Focus on Wisdom. Lesbians of Color, Non-violence, War Stories,
Incest, Leaving a Will, Assimilation, Fat Poems, Coming to Terms.
• Anzald ua, Ruth, Rich, Chrystos, Kaye / Kantrowitz, Hardy, Gilmore, Brody, Rakusin •#32/Special Focus on Illness, Death, Mourning, Healing, the Disappeared,
Hunting Season, Dealing with Suicide, Cancer, New Ritual Observances.
• Maia, Allegra, Sears, McDonald, Waters, Hansell, Rosenb lum, Butler, Stinson •#3l/Special Focus on Sex and Fiction, Coming out in the South, Found Goddesses, Waiting, Bobe Mayse, Sex and Socialist Feminism.
• Smukler, Blackwomon, Romano, Davenport, Dykewomon, McNaron •#28 / Special Focus on Women & Work; Body Image, Size & Eating, Aging,
Comedy about Outlaw Lesbian Communities, Courage, PC / PI, Letter on #26.
• Clarke, Heather, Klepfisz, Sturgis, Gould, Boucher, Gomez, Sardella, Moran •#27 / Special Focus on Girlhood, Sexuality and Violence, Office Work , Navy
Dykes, White Trash, Women of Color / Women in Israel / Women in Lebanon.
• Adnan, Felman, Grahn, Schalet, Bogus, HaMa'avak Touch, Quintanales, Anzaldua •#26 / Special Issue: To Go To Berbir by Jill Drew, a book-length journal written
by an American nurse working in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion.
#25 / Butch / Fem in the 50's, Native American Roots of White Feminism, Haitian,
Palestinian, Puerto Rican Struggles, Jewish Radical Identity, Welfare Life.
• Allen, Cotrell , Root, Stecenko, Love, Paz, Smukler, Hall , Lipstadt, Brant •#24 / Violence Against Women & Resistance, Alcohol, Fighting Racism, Dyke
Culture, Black Lesbians, White Working Class Identity, Censorship.
• Harjo, Derricotte, Nestle, Lynch, Sylvester, Pratt Moirai, Parkerson •#2l/Separatism Revisited, Jewish Survival & Defiance, Black Lesbian Writing,
Photos of Dykes in Drag, Suicide, Bars, Letters a bout Anti-Semitism.
• Klepfisz, Arobateau, Segrest, Simpson, Tornes, Addison , justice, Foley, Crawford •Sinister Wisdom #1-19 are out of print. Photocopies can be provided-$5 for the
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