flnlfTER WlfDomfinifT~R wifDom 12
A Journal of Words and Pictures for the Lesbian
Imagination in All Women
Winter 1980
rounders and publishers : Harriet Desmoines & Catherine Nicholson
Editors : C. Colette, Harriet Desmoines, Catherine Nicholson, Carolyn Shafer
Poetry Editor : Susan Leigh Star
Review Editor : Julia Penelope
Contributing Editors:

Sarah Hoagland, Beth Hodges, Mab Segrest

Cover D.esign by Beth Hodges
Cover photographs by J .Z. Grover
Staff: Edy Ambroz , C. Colette, Lynda Koolish, Cheryl Long,
Vicki Nogle , Julia Penelope, Donna Saunders, Moni Usasz
Printed by Iowa City Women's Press

Sinister Wisdom 12 was funded, in part, by a grant from the Coordinating
Council of Literary Magazines, with funds CCLM has received from the
National Endowment for the Arts.

ISSN: 0196-1853

Copyright © Sinister Wisdom, 1980. All rights reserved to individual authors and artists.
Published quarterly
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Address: SINISTER WISDOM, Box 30541, Lincoln, Nebraska 68503

CONTENTS
Photographs by 1. Z. Grover

2, 2 1 , 6j) , 79, 99 .

THEORY:
Cosmic Anarchism
Peggy Komegger
Judith Niemi
Photograph
On Running
Pat Hynes
Amazon Etymology
Susan 1. Wolfe

3
13
13
15

FICTION :Osceola and Daly
Linda 1. Brown
The LoPresto Traveling Magic Show
Beverly Lynch
Shell Woman
Linda Marie
The Blue Coat
Maricla Moyano
Signs of Birth, poem
Peggy Komegger
More of the Same
Anne LeeYour Place or Mine
Anne Lee
DRAMA :An Oral Herstory of Lesbianism
10 Goodwin
Photographs
I Know a Hundred Ways to Die

22
27
38
42
48

49
55

Terry Wolverton & Co.

61

Maureen Brady

62
67

POETRY:
Lise Iwon
P. L. Press
kmc rninns
Kim Vaeth
Claudia Scott
Susan Wood-Thompson
Rachel deVries
Ruth A. Rouff

79

80
80
81
82
84

86
87

REVIEWS:
Gail Runte Piland
Pen and ink drawing
Listen., There's a Story .. .
10anna Russ
To Know Each Other . . .
Susan Wood-Thompson
Contributors' Notes
A-Mazing Word Search

88

89
93

100
Julia Penelope

101

SEE PAGE 103 FOR A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTTHEORY

Peggy Kornegger

COSMIC ANARCHISM: Lesbians in the Sky with Diamonds

Take Back the Night
Tonight, walking together, we will proclaim to the rapists and pornographers
and woman-batterers that their days are numbered and our time has come .
. . . The truth is that we have to take back the night every night , or the night
will never be ours. And once we have conquered the dark , we have to reachfor the light, to take the day and make it ours.l- Andrea Dworkin
Duality, no matter which opposite is preferred, gives us only two choices .
. . . Women have the ability , despite our programming, to think in ways thatnegate dualities . . . to move between and amid opposites, to feel gradations
and complexities .2- Barbara Starrett
On November 18, 1978 , the women of San Francisco took to the streets
for a Take Back the Night march as part of the Feminist Perspectives on
Pornography Conference. Thousands of women literally shut down Broadway(the city's main thoroughfare for strip shows and porn shops) while Holly
Near sang "Fight Back" and a huge float symbolizing woman's sexual oppression was pulled through the crowd with accompanying theater action. The
feeling seemed to be one of great excitement at our collective womanstrengthand energy: we were all together, completely blocking off the streets.
It was immediately after the singing and theater that some division began
to appear in the crowd: The organizers and monitors were clearly into moving
everyone on toward the park a few blocks away where a celebration/meditation
was to take place. And , of course , they had police cooperation in this; thiswas all part of what had been planned for and accepted as part of a "peacefuldemonstration ." Most women started walking toward the park ; yet voices
could be heard protesting, " Is this all we 're going to do? Look at all that pornjust sitting there!" And , undeniably , there sat everything- books , photos, strip
shows-just as before the march . Barkers and male patrons stared , snarled orlaughed at the women demonstrators passing by , but their "pleasures" werestill available to them. I personally felt very frustrated that with thousandsof us out there marching , we did not do something more specifically aimed3

at destroying some of that smut. Yet, it would have to have been carefullyplanned and executed, to prevent any of us from getting trapped in the storesby police or male customers . Still, I felt something more could (indeed , neededto) have been done. We were too much the "good girls ," well-behaved, following the rules.
When we arrived at the park , I felt even more jarred by the contrast between the events there and those in the streets. A small stage was set up,
candles flickered , and wind chimes tinkled gently as one woman led a "meditation": "Feel your body , close your eyes , and link arms with the woman
beside you; feel your collective energy ; feel how you've been changed by
tonight's march." The effect was almost sleep-inducing. I felt as if someone
were handing me sleeping tablets after an attack by a rapist. It seemed inappropriate; not wrong or bad per se, just somehow inappropriate to thetime and place . As I turned to leave, a group of women at the edge of thecrowd started shouting angrily , ''We're not mystics-we want armed struggle!!"And I thought , "Here it is again-the same old split-spirituality versus politics ."The events of that evening came to symbolize for me the spiritual/politicaldivision within the women's movement and also made obvious to me my own
inability to choose either. I'm not interested in meditating during a demonstration; nor do I wish to copy male wargames with "armed struggle." So
where does that leave me, and others like me , who feel split by these polarities?
Hopefully, it places us in the position of choosing something altogether different, not an either/or but a both/and. And I don 't mean scotchtaping meditation and armed struggle together like the old masculine/feminine androgyny
trap . Both/and means to me something entirely New; it means avoiding all
closed systems (and other patriarchal traps) and weaving from many open
visions a multidimensional tapestry which combines action/thought/being/
becoming and allows for individual transformation process as well as for collective growth and insight. This is a Dream, right? Yes, most definitely. And
it is Reality too. But Dreams, Realities-in the plural, meaning outside oflinear , one.<fimensional options . To take back the night and the day ; to choose
many voices, faces, ways of being. For me , this means movement with/in thevisions that are : anarchism, nonviolence, lesbianism, and feminist spirituality,
which, when overlapped and intertwined, share an openendedness allowing
for future leaps of consciousness. These four visions also share a common
invisibility and/or denigration in prevailing patriarchal systems (straight- as
well as counter-culture). This is significant, I think, in that often those things
most hated/feared by male culture are also those most deeply revolutionary
for women's lives . Reclamation is part of the re/vision of our past with/inthe present and toward the future.
Why do I choose these particular four areas to context my vision of utopiantransformation? Aren 't even these words/names limiting in some way? Not ,I think, if we see each as integrally connected to the others; not if we remember to see words (and language itself) as metaphor. The more visions we collect , the more words we invent to describe/symbolize our experience, themore open we become to creating a future unlimited by categorization andrestriction . Thought hierarchy is as dangerous as political hierarchy ; indeed ,4they feed into each other. So when I identify myself as a lesbian or an anarchist , I use those words as metaphors, as directional indicators pointing theway toward a revolving sphere of ideas that make up my own personal visiun .
of what the future can be. I feel that visional sphere constantly overlappingwith other women's spheres, and in writing this now , I am attempting tovisualize those overlaps (for myself and others) in order to help us all out of
the traps of either/or dialectics. I am also trying to write in an antilinear way ,meaning that each part of this article should be seen as connected to thewhole , a multidimensional whole, which continues to spin beyond the words
I use to describe it. Ideally , there is no beginning or end to this article - but
rather an ever-expanding Center. Writing it is a centering process for me.
Women and Nonviolence-An Anarchist Perspective
Today is the parent of tomorrow . . .. No revolution can ever succeed asa factor of liberation unless the means used to achieve it be identical in spirit
and tendency with the purposes to be achieved .3-Emma Goldman
The feminist vision . . . abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts
a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition : naming behavior that is oppressive , naming abuse of power that is held unfairly and must be destroyed , butnaming no one person whom we are willing to destroy .4-Barbara Deming
Nonviolence , sometimes called "pacifism ," has a bad reputation on theleft. Somehow it's gotten identified with nonresistance or pacifity, or else
. it's been used by those in power to defend property rights. Women, in particular , feel a lot of confusion over nonviolence since fighting back has beensomething that we have needed to develop for our own survival, and to remain passive would be to accept our victimization. But nonviolence is not in
opposition to direct action and can in fact be used in conjunction with it.
To define terms , I would call violence "the intent to kill or physicallyviolate (as in rape)." I would not call destruction of property violence. And ,for me the term antiviolent resistance more closely approximates what I mean
by nonviolence. This means, for women specifically, learning self-defense,
learning to fight back, but without intent to kill. Admittedly someone could
get killed anyway (when you're fighting for your life in the street, necessity
is the final decisionmaker) , but the chances of death would be less, I think ,if the intent is not to kill. The important thing then would be to prepare
oneself by learning the most effective nonviolent resistant tactics possible.
And to me , learning to use guns for "armed struggle" is assuming an intent
to kill. I find the thought of women using guns (as policewomen or as guerillafighters) very upsetting. It 's the same old male cops and robbers game , andwomen keep getting sucked into it. And when it's in the name of revolution ,the guilt trip is really heavy, i.e., nonviolence is for armchair liberals and otherbourgeois individualists afraid to dirty their lily-white hands. (For years I
guiltily hid my deep emotional commitment to nonviolence for fear of being
thought "middle class" or "unrealistic.")
Of course , nonviolence often is advocated from the safety of middle-class5

armchairs, but we must not confuse phony liberalism with revolution . And
where the revolutionary part comes in is the linlcing up of nonviolence withanarchism, anarchism meaning the struggle for a nonhierarchical, antiauthoritarian society based on belief in spontaneity/organization, direct action, collectivi ty /individ uali ty, and equal, powerfree relationships. 5 In anarchist theory,the means create the ends . Thus, if one wants a nonviolent society, one must
act in a way to achieve that-not only without violence but against violence .
If one kills, one is perpetuating a killer society. So, if we believe this, how do
we, as women, fight back effectively without using violence?
There are a myriad of ways that women are already using-martial arts
skills, for self.·defense against rape and other forms of male violence; antiviolent resistance techniques learned in workshops for strikes or demonstrations, particularly those being developed in the antinuke movement (continuing
a long tradition of nonviolence in this country-from woman's suffrage up
through the civil rights and peace movements); underground direct actions
like spray painting, ripping off or destroying pornography , public exposureof rapists, street theater; and the more long-range revolutionary preparatory
work, i.e., creating alternatives now and sharing skills and visions with as many
people as possible (through talking, writing, support groups, etc.). This last is
an extremely crucial area because it emphasizes an area of revolution that has
been denigrated by men in favor of the more flamboyant us-against-them, killthe-oppressor tactics. But look where it has gotten them: in no country onearth has there been a successful revolution-meaning the creation of a truly
egalitarian, powerfree society. And, if we leave it to the men (and male ideology),
that's exactly the way it will remain.
We need womanvision to pull all the parts together, to see the importanceof all parts to the whole . Not surprisingly, it was Emma Goldman who , after
two terrible years in Russia trying to believe in the Bolshevik Revolution, wrote:
My Russian experience has made me see what I did not before, namely theimperative necessity of intensive educational work which would help emancipate people from their deep-rooted fetishes and superstitions. With many
revolutionists I foolishly believed that the principal thing is to get people torise against the oppressive institutions and that everything would take careof itself. ... But I have come to the conclusion that the amount of violencein any revolution will depend entirely upon the amount ... of inner preparation . . . the growth out of old habits and ideas. I know that this is a difficult
process, and yet people will have to realize the process and will have to bewilling to go through it, if revolutions are not to end, as they have in the past,
in a new despotism which out-tyrannizes the 01d. 6
And that's what the current women's movement has been working on for
more than a decade now-that "growth out of old habits and ideas" - particularly all the old patriarchal traps of thinking and behavior based on hierarchy,
submission to authority , and subject/object relationships . We are not going tosink slowly to our deaths with men leading the way. It is time we claimed
with pride our commitment to nonviolence and "inner preparation" which
will create a woman's revolution beyond all the old male definitions andaborted attempts . Women have new words , new visions , new ways of being
in the world . In turning away from violence and polarity , we affirm life andopen ourselves to new understanding of our own living consciousness.

6

Spiritual Dimensions-Life, Death, Dreams, and Other Realities
Our culture gives official recognition only to experiences that ieinforce its
own belief structures ... . we're taught from childhood to respect authority
and to look to others to confirm our perceptions of reality , which is basedon certain agreements as to what is real and what is not. ... The aspects ofthe psyche must be squeezed to fit the cultural medium?
-Jane Roberts
Sisterhood as cosmic covenant means beginning to re-name the cosmos. B-Mary Daly
I am a woman, a part of and the whole of the first circle , the circle thattranscends space and time, the circle of women jOined. 9-Ann Valiant
We live in a materialistically defined world . We are surrounded by linear,
one-dimensional explanations of the universe and of our place in it. Westernscience and technology reign supreme, and religion (east or west) is shackled
by convention , narrowmindedness , hierarchy , and woman hatred. Man stands
at the center of his world and , quite literally , looks down on all that is aroundhim. He can see nothing except in relation to himself: even his gods reflect
his own self-importance. Living in this world , women must either worship His
image or risk repudiation , ostracism, or death by fire . You either believe or
you are an unbeliever , an outcast , a pagan , a witch. From time immemorial,
women have been denied the validity of our own perceptions, our own intuitive wisdom. We have been outcasts, unable even in our own minds to throw
off entirely the umbrella of patriarchal thought.
Growing up in middle America, I thought my spiritual choices were either
religion or atheism. My own parents were agnostics, and raised me without
any formal religious training. At about six years of age , I developed a terrorof death and infinity, which would come to me each night before sleep. Tearfully , I would try to explain the fear to my mother, "The world just goeson forever and ever." It was that eternal nothingness , void of meaning, whichscared me so .
As I grew older, I learned ways to block the fear , to distract myself before
sleep . By the time I was in college , I called myself an agnostic (''you can't
ever know") but was still troubled off and on by those nighttime death/infinity
fears. Eventually, these fears invaded my days too , and for one long periodof my college years I was paralyzed by despair-both at the political/physicalreality of racist , wartorn America and at the metaphysical inevitability ofdeath . And it was the latter, spiritual hopelessness, which gnawed away atwhatever political visions I gradually came to believe in. Always at the backof my head was the thought : What do Utopian dreams matter if we're all
going to die anyway? When I actually thought about it , the only two options
I could imagine were eternal life or eternal death (nonexistence) , both ofwhich frightened me. Then , one day , a friend said to me, "Maybe there's
something else, different ·from either of those , something you can't even imagine now." It was the first time r had even conSidered. such a possibility.
Looking back now, I feel real anger that I was robbed of all those otheroptions, robbed of my intuitive expansion and spiritual imagination . Not angry
7

at my parents, for they also were robbed, but at this society which posits
everything in either/or, one-dimensional terms . I am angry that I was robbed
of a pride in woman's wisdom through the ages: in healing; in psychic communication; in astrology, dreams, the occult; in all nonverbal, nonmaterial
ways of being with/in the world. For years, I thought all those things weresilly- because I was trained to believe that. Uniquely female abilities and knowledge have always been denigrated as have all other things female . It was onlyin learning to love myself as a woman and other women-loving women that
I broke through all my own prejudices against woman's spirituality. I say
woman s spirituality deliberately because I believe patriarchal spirituality to
be more of the same old male power trips. It is the linking of spiritUality withradical feminism that points to revolutionary transformation .
Six years ago, I participated in a weekend workshop in Womancraft (thedevelopment of psychic skills) and read The Seth Material by Jane Roberts
and Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly. Those three experiences started
reverberations within me that changed entirely my way of seeing the universe .
The Seth books knocked the life/death polarity out of my head , opened me
to seeing death as something other than terrifying, and helped me understandhow authoritarian politics also oppresses the psyche. Mary Daly made thecrucial connection between the women's movement and spiritual revolution.
And the womancraft experience put me in touch with my own psychic potential. These were major breakthroughs, and they didn't occur instantaneously,
but rather slowly, over time, through space. Many other voices, from books
and from friendships, added further visions to my own searching process.
I learned to record my dreams, to see them as possible other realities, asother parts of myself, as symbols/stories giving me wisdom/information about
my life and life itself. I learned to see that this particular phYSical reality inwhich we exist is not necessarily the only one, that there may be innumerable
others running parallel to our own, that we can open to these parallel universes
through our dreams, through developing our psychic abilities. I learned to seetime as not necessarily sequential, but simultaneous-it is we who move throughtime and space in our lives. I learned that if the past/present/future are seen
as simultaneous, then it makes sense that we can time-travel with relative easein our dreams-a more open state of consciousness. I also learned to develop
my own precognitive sense, to alter my habitual state of consciousness, andto open to long-distance communication through dreams. I came to understand that my physical self is not all there is to my being, that reincarnationand other parallel selves are also possible. And, most important to me, I
learned to see that death can be seen as transition, not extinction, that thetransformations of consciousness are limitless-way, way beyond our sense ofthem in this physical dimension bound by laws and logic.
It was with women that I discovered these things, and this is not, I believe,
coincidental. Women hold the keys to open doors yet undreamed of, and itis through our dreams and visions that we will fmd the doors and open them,our own voices guiding us throughout.
This article is a statement of open celebration of feminist spiritUality-asa revolutionary lifeforce and political energizer. It is also an attempt to sidestep the doublebind of materialism (''we are body, period; revolution = changes
in concrete, material conditions") versus blissed-out spiritualism ("we are soul,8period; in the cosmic view , all events are appropriate") . These choices aretraps. For one thing, they keep us in the patriarchal either/or framework,and for another, they obliterate all the connection s between things which ,once seen , transcend the necessity of opposites and categorization . Women
see these connections when they turn their backs on the old male skeletonsof politics and spirituality and move into their own visions of being and becoming. Women understand that changes in consciousness (and in perceptionsof consciousness) are at the core of revolutionary change and that those deep,soulshaking, transformations are also the most profo und energy sustainers. It
is the spirit of hope within us that will keep us going when all else fails. To
see being as indestructible energy , death as continuation not obliteration , andrevolution as psychic as well as political movement is the vision of feminist
spiri tuali ty .
It is change and growth on all levels simultaneously that I am talking about
here. If I change the way I think/feel/perceive, I change the world as much
as when I change my physical behavior (and each supports the other). The
key idea of psychic politics is that we can develop our mental skills to havean even greater effect on the world around us. The way people see society
does have an effect on how they play out reality day to day. Racism, sexism,
ageism, classism, etc. are not just logical outcomes of economic conditions;they also come from a way of looking at the world - from the authoritarian
mentality that posits top/bottom necessity, whether it be god, king, president,
dictatorship of the proletariat , or father/boss/policeman . The bias (straightwhite-male-middle-class-adults) is obvious; what is not as clear is that a gayblack-female-working-class-adolescent would be no different if the notion ofhierarchical necessity is not totally abolished. This is important , for it stresses
the absolute necessity of changing belief systems , of opening to Circular/spiralvision rather than linear , reductionist thought. For what we believe does shape
our lives, all of us. It is our belief in the need for authority in our lives thatkeeps us prisoners as much as the external authority figures who oppress us
in our daily lives. We have been systematically robbed of our ability to makedecisions for ourselves, to know what is right for us, so much so that we nolonger even know what freedom is. In this country, people think it is in giving
away their decision-making to a "representative" who will vote in our bestinterests. This is no more than the old belief in a benevolent dictator , thekindly patriarch in the sky who will lead us by the noses through eternity .
It is time women recognized these lies for what they are. It is time welooked within ourselves and to each other for the models for social processes
that_ ~o not oppress, for relationships that are not based in power , and forpolitical/spiritual visions that are open/ing and multidimensionally expansive.
We will find there a circle of sisters who have been struggling through endlessdark ages of male history to create a new kind of reality and to make it both
visible and viable to others. That circle is ever growing.
Zone of the Free Radicals- Lesbian Out-Laws
I think men mostly have to learn to be anarchists. Women don't have tolearn .lO
- Ursula K. LeGuin
C)Lesbian feminism is created as an altered state o(consciousness ... by women
who are willing to question the perceptual bases of our worlds. l l-Susan Leigh Star... the matrices we weave
web upon web, delicate rafters
flung in audacity to the prairie skies
nets of telepathy contrived
to outlast the iron roadlaid out in blood across the land ... 12-Adrienne Rich
I am an anarchist. I am also a lesbian. I see a connection there. To me,
lesbians have the potential of being the truly dis-possessed, the wild, cosmic
anarchists. First, our spirituality is moving away from the old patriarchal
hierarchies. Our direction is toward fuller awareness of and connection withthe many levels and forms of consciousness; we do not seek labels such as
God or even Goddess. We do not look for an ultimate Authority, a Final
Answer to all questions. Rather, it is the process of expansion we desire, thejourney itself, without beginning or end . Second, we see that the means are
the ends ; the way we live together now, as peaceful women-loving women inequal relation to one another, is the future as much as it is the present. We
see the simultaneity of time, the relationship between being and becoming.
We also know the importance of the part and the whole, the individual andthe collective, that ultimately we are all connected, that beyond life/deathpolarity is cosmic continuity in which individual and collective consciousness
is experienced as one. For, indeed , feminist revolution is based in the connections between womenfriends, networks which span miles and years andtouch the deepest , most complex layers of our being.
I sit here alone writing this in a small apartment in Berkeley; yet I feelwith me the presence of countless womenfriends, from childhood right up
to the moment. The women I lived with and worked with during the years
my home was in Boston are as present to me as my high school "best friends"of fifteen years ago in Illinois or my California friends now. For me, that
network of women is very much alive, as each day I move through the past,present, and future in my mental and physical activities. Consciousness is
not restricted by time or space. I may meet my friends repeatedly in memory
or dreams. Recently, I've learned to be more observant, as well as validating,of these experiences, particularly because of my work with dream recall. The
underside of consciousness is knowable; we can learn to explore and expand
it and share our voyages with one another. And, yes , these explorations areimportant, not frivolous or weird, as many would have us believe.
The male world has neglected to develop a language to describe such
experiences. Indeed ; the lack of words has often left women completely invalidated, even robbed of the experience itself (for if you can't describe it
in words , it can't be real, right?)'. An underground of wisewomen, witches ,and psychics has always existed , but those who found this kind of support
were among the fortunate few. Yet , now r believe this is changing. More andmore , women are discovering in themselves and each other a new spirituality ,unlike any we grew up believing (or not believing) in . And I think the women 's
10movement is largely responsible . For when women come together and share
our lives, we find validation for experiences that we thought were unique.
Alone, we are crazy ; together, we are mad (in the best sense of the word) .
What was taken from us is reclaimed . What was lost in loneliness is rediscovered in community.
When I look back on my friendships with women , what stands out in mymind is the excitement of sharing, of deep communication, both verbal andnonverbal. In one of my favorite childhood books, Anne of Green Gables,
Anne was always searching for a "kindred spirit." She found one in her bestfriend, Diana . Anne and Diana shared all the secrets of their inner and outer
lives, and at night they would send messages to each other across the fields
by lighting candles in their bedroom windows. That nightly ritual and theidea of "kindred spirits" have stayed with me ~ll these years ; somehow theydescribe what happens between women, whether or not they call their relationships "lesbian ." And I believe all women have that woman-loving self
somewhere inside them. 13 It is a love for communication, for sharing, forgentleness, trust and vulnerability, a love for openness , for loving itself. Womencome to each other as equals , not to dominate but to share. Women are
natural anarchists, as well as natural antiviolent, spiritual, woman-loving beings.
Still, not all women use these words to describe themselves. What of them?
The label is not all. I'm talking about potential, about aspects of our lives.
None of us is Whole; we are all healing , slowly and against great odds. And
we all derive womanenergy from those women close to us , regardless of theirself-definition.
On the other hand , to choose to be a lesbian feminist is to open oneself
to radical transformation. Lesbian feminism brings together all the fragmentsof what women have shared underground over the centuries and helps tocreate a whole , healed consciousness . As lesbians, we choose this altered stateof consciousness , which is outside of all patriarchal States and subject to no
male law , as our own center where all connections become clear, and all sisters
clasp hands . We lesbian out-laws have exploded the (normal) State of consciousness and moved into outer space/time . We are in the "Zone of the Free
Radicals ." A friend shared this term from physics with me a couple of years
ago ; she in turn had heard of it from another womanfriend .
The Zone of the Free Radicals is an area that is formed when matter andantimatter come together. A terrific explosion of energy occurs and because
the charges of these two fields (matter and antimatter) are opposite, a barrier
or Zone is built up between them. Frequently , particles escape into this Zone
which have a charge that cannot be explained in terms of the polarities of
the two fields from which they have escaped ; these particles are called theFree Radicals . Their colors are brilliant , their energy highly intense .14 For me,
the Zone of the Free Radicals is an incredibly perfect metaphor for the spacebeyond polarities in which lesbians are creating a multicolored, multidimensional
consciousness and life-energy. It is also the dream layer between one reality
and another , the invisible area between white and black holes in space , thefilament of consciousness between warps in time/space , and the psychic realm
where all the threads of lesbianism , feminism , anarchism, nonviolence andspirituality merge and e-merge in joyous res/rev-olution.
II

The Zone is real. Each day we create it, with our lives, with our connections .
The energy within us and between us is multiplying, and our "nets of telepathy"
and nightcandles stand out against the sky like diamo nds . Taking back thenight is just the beginning.
NOTES
I . Andrea Dworkin , speech for Take Back the Night march in San F ran cisco, California,
as reprinted in Off 01lr Backs, Vol. IX, no. I, p. 5.
2. Barbara Starrett, " I Dream in Female: The Metaphors of Evolu tio n ," Amazon Quarterly ,Vol. 3 , no. I, pp . 20, 25.
3. Emm a Goldm an, Afterword to "My DisiUusionment in Russ ia," Red Emma Speaks,
Vint age Books, New York, 1972, pp. 356-7.
4 . Barbara Deming, quoted in The Power of fh e People, Active Nonviolence in th e Un ited
Slates , Peace Press, Culver City, Califo rnia, 1977 , p. 2 12.
5. For a more detailed expla nat ion of anarchism , see Peggy Kornegger, "Anarchism: The
Femi nist Connect ion ," Second Wa ve, Vol. 4, no. I ; also avai lable as a booklet fro m Come!
Unity Press, 13 E. 17St.,NewYork,NY 10003 .
6. Emm a Goldma n, Nowhere af Home. Letters from Exile of Emma Goldma n and A lexallder Berkmall. Schocken Books, New York , 1975, p. 69 .
7. Jane Robe rt s, Psychic Polifics, Prent ice-Hall , Englewood Cl iffs, N.J. , 19 76, pp. 291-2.
8. Mary Daly , Beyolld God the Father, Beacon Press, Bosto n , 197 3, p. 159.
9. Womancraft sta tement from workshop given by Ann Valiant, 1974 .
10. Ursula K. LeG uin , Th e' Dispossessed, Avon Books, New Yo rk , 197 4 , p. 43 .
II. Susa n Leigh Star, "Lesbian Feminism as an Altered S tate of Conscio usness,"
Silliste'r Wisdom, Issue 5, p. 87.
12. Adrienne Rich, "For Julia in Nebraska," Sinister Wisdom, Issue 10, p. 63.
13. Sillister Wisdom has offered a heal ing fo r yet another polarity - Iesbian/straight by printing in each issue that SW is for the " Lesbian Im agi natio n in All Women."
14. Many thanks to Leigh Star for this description of the Zone of th e Free Radicals .

12

ON RUNNING, WOMEN, AND THERMODYNAMICSbyPat Hynes

The instructor defined work as "raising a weight ," "stretching a wire ,""moving any particles in a magnetic field "; a "transien! phenomenon, perceptible at boundaries ." He elaborated on its similarities to heat , both being
forms of energy , its differences from temperature and pressure . While hesearched for qualifying distinctions on the thermodynamics of work , heatand energy , sharp clear images of women moving, stretching, running in undulating waves through Central Park, New York , flooded my mind.
Two days ago , Saturday, June 2, 1979 , I ran in the eighth annual 6.2
mile/l0 kilometer women 's race through Central Park . This is the largest
women's athletic event in the world : 4 ,]00 women and girls entered. I ran
with my sister Veronica. Two other sisters , Mary and Monica , started justallead of us . Our youngest sister Margie , a promising marathoner, placed herself in front of us to move out quickly .
In defi ance of the First Law of Thermodynanlics which presumes that theenergy of the universe is neither created nor destroyed but is conserved. I
found myself after the race not tired nor depleted from the exertion ofstretching and raising arms and legs for six miles. but exhilarated and expanded by the sight of young girls running together in teams. mothers anddaughters, older women, toned female bodies . and heavy. hard-breat hing.
13

but determined bodies. Be it that this collective image re-called a past female primacy, be it that it conjured up a present/future power, I felt agroundswell of new primal energy released by this event. In defiance of theSecond Law of Thermodynamics, which posits a tendency towards randomness and disorder in the universe , there was in this event a brief dramatic reordering of the universe. On the streets , in the park, on skates, on bikes, inwheelchairs, watching , monitoring, photographing, shouting, yelling were
women. The sounds, the sights, the sweaty smells, the action, the energy
were female. A few men were in quiet attendance , offering water, watching
impassively.
During the race I stayed with Veronica for the companionship. She developed a slight abdominal pain at mile two, so we took it easy. Not having
to run for time gave us the leisure to savor the next four miles. Going up
each hill we would pass a woman in a wheelchair , only to have her whiz by
us on the downgrade calling "wheelchair" to warn runners to move aside. I
recognized women I had met in a former race by their t-shirts which say inbold-faced letters AAU - Agile Amazons United . Veronica noticed a woman
wearing a shirt that said "Jessica's Mom ." At the 4 .5 mile were Jan and Susan
calling to us. Susan was thanked by at least six women after the race (strangers
to her) for her cheers and encouragement. Jan , poised for this moment, focused
the camera and caught us in triumphant gesture of hands raised in solidarity .
At the 5.5 mile , another woman stood aside the running path on a large rockyelling to the crowds of runners, "Come on women , you look beautiful ...
only 0- mile more ... you can do it."Sometime during the race Veronica discussed an article she had read in a
psychology journal psychoanalyzing running as a denial of death and a quest
for immortality. I knew as I lifted one foot past the other that that is not true
for me nor for her. I am immortal ; I live in the divine spark of Be-ing. I run
to tone my body , I run to feel wind and mist in my hair and face , to hear the
Sawmill Stream and see soil horizons , pastures and wildflowers. She runs because at 33, she is thrilled to be athletic for the first time in her life. She runs
because it is the only hour taken for herself in an otherwise preempted day ofnurturing four children and a husband. We, all five of us, have trained since
February to run in this race together, impelled by some wild desire to seize a
day from this year and make it ours. Instinctively we wished to symbolize ourbonds with each other and chose to do so within the largest women's athletic
event in history .

Photograph by Judith Niemi, of the October 1977 women ~ marathon in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
14

Susan J. Wolfe

AMAZON ETYMOLOGY:ROOTING FOR THE MATRIARCHY*

Their origin and their history patriarchal
scholarship their origin and their history.
Patriarchal Scholarship makes no mistake .
Patriarchal Scholarship is the same as
Patriotic Scholarship is the same as patriarchal
scholarship is the same as patriarchal poetry.
Patriarchal scholarship is the same.
-Mary Daly (1979, after Gertrude
Stein), Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethicsof Radical Feminism
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The purposes are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
-Adrienne Rich (1973), "Diving into
the Wreck"
Nine years of formal training in patriarchal academia made me a historicallinguist, qualified to discuss the processes by which languages change. Twoyears later, I began to question everything I had "learned." Only now do I
understand how thoroughly I was indoctrinated to accept unquestioningly
the assumptions upon which patriarchal (historical) linguistics is based.
Catherine Nicholson has asked me to "come out" as a historical linguist, andthe only way I can manage that is by means of a contrast between the "findings" of the European male tradition in historical linguistics and the dis-coveries
I have begun to make using its methodology.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the systematic study oflanguage for the purpose of discovering a European "mother-tongue" began.
*1 must confess to having a feeling of schizophrenia in writing this. I use the singularpronoun throughout because Catherine has asked me to explain how I came to be doing
this kind of work. Yet some of the research discussed here is the product of my collaboration
with Juli a Penelope (Stanley). Thus, I ask readers to imagine that I am speaking, to borrowa phrase from Adrienne Rich, "with voices." A different version wiII be published in the
Wom en's Studies International Quarterly (Summer 1980) , in an article which Julia and I
co-au tho red .

15

According to Leon Poliakov (1977), the men who began the search for a prehistoric European language did so for the purpose of tracing their genealogicalroots back to a nation that was not Semitic. Thus , the earliest beginnings of"linguistic science" sprang from nationalistic fervor combined with anti-Semitism,a desire to identify the "Aryan" heritage of the Indo-European peoples.!
Through cross-linguistic comparison of the written records of ancient languages, the patriarchs of western Europe soon determined the extent of thelanguages they termed "Indo-European" or "Indo-Germanic": they were andare spoken across continental Europe , from Great Britain to Russia and south
into northern India. Confusing language with race and with culture , early
linguists contended that the speakers of the hypothetical proto-language they
had reconstructed were their progenitors, and used the reconstructed vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European to make confident pronouncements about thenature of prehistoric European culture. 2
Not surprisingly, they found that culture to have been patriarchal too ; inother words, to have had patrilocal institutionalized marriage, patrilineal inheritance from father to son, and patrifocal worship of a chief male deity.
They' found what they were looking for.
Calvert Watkins' (1969 , pp. 1496-98) introduction to the use of comparative reconstruction shows how effectively linguists have buried their cultural
assumptions within the discipline itself, so that they scarcely have to makeassertions about proto-culture:
A number of Indo-European languages show a similar word for the kinshipterm 'daughter-in-law': Sanskrit snu~a, Old English snoru, Old Church Slavonicsnukha (Russian snokhiI) , Latin nurus, Greek nubs, and Armenia nu. Albanian
has nuse in the meaning 'bride,' a meaning shared by the Armenian form : ina patrilocal and patriar.fhal society, where the bride went to live in her husband's father's house, 'daughter-in-law' and 'bride' were equivalent.
All of these forms, spoken ot as cognates, provide evidence fo·r the phonetic shape of the prehistoric Indo-European word for 'daughter-in-law' thatis their common ancestor. Sanskrit , Germanic , and Slavic agree in showing
an Indo-European word that began with sn - . We know that an Indo-Europeans was lost before n in other words in Latin, Greek, Armenian, and Albanian,so we can confidently assume that Latin nurus, Greek nuos, Armenian nu,~nd Albanian nuse go back to an Indo-European *sn-. (Compare Latin nix[stem niv-] , 'snow' with English SNOW, preserving the s.) This principle isspoken of as the regularity of sound correspondences; it is basic to the sciencesof etymology and comparative linguistics ... the full form of the word for'daughter-in-Iaw'in Indo-European is *snusos.
It is noteworthy that no single language in the family preserved this word
intact. In every language, in every tradition in the Indo-European language
family, the word has been somehow altered from its original shape . It is thecomparative method that permits us to explain the different forms in thisvariety of languages , by the reconstruction of a unitary common prototype ,a common ancestor. 3
Watkins ' choice of the cognate which allegedly meant 'daughter-in-law' some3500 years ago is clearly based on his own desire to show that his culturalancestry is both patriarchal and heterosex ual. (He could have discussed words
for 'snow.') He maintains that the meaning of *snusos remained stable during
16

centuries of social and semantic change, shifting only slightly to the meaning'bride' in Armenian and Albanian .
In the same article, Watkins, a renowned Indo-Europeanist, states quite
explicitly that both Indo-European religion and society were patriarchal, on
the basis of the terms which appear for 'god' in Indo-European:
Yet for the Indo-European-speaking society we can reconstruct with certainty
the word for 'god,' *deiw-os, and the two-word name of the chief deity ofthe pantheon, *dyeu-pater- (Latin Jupiter, Greek Zeus pater, Sanskrit Dyaus
pitar, and Luvian Talis Tiwaz). The forms *dyeu- and *deiw-os are both derivatives of a root *deiw-, meaning 'to shine,' and appearing in the word for'day' in numerous languages (Latin dies; but English DAY is not related).
The notion of deity was therefore linked to the notion of the bright sky.
The second element of the name of the chief god, *dyeu-~ter-, is thegeneral Indo-European word for FAT HER . But this word did not refer here
to the physical sense of father as parent, but to the social sense of the adultmale who is head of the household , the sense of Latin pater familias. For the
Indo-Europeans , the society of gods was conceived , in the image of theirown society , as patriarchal. The reconstructed words *deiw-os and *dyeupater- alone tell us more about the conceptual world of the Indo-Europeans
than a roomful of graven images. 4
In a 1932 doctoral dissertation which Watkins and his fellow linguists
manage to ignore, Grace S. Hopkins argues that the term *deiw-os was associated with dark, stormy skies and thunderstorms. Her depiction of thethundergod of the Greeks and the Romans bears a striking resemblance toMerlin Stone's (1976) description of the patriarchal god of the later Indo. Europeans. Furthermore, Watkins' own evidence shows the primacy of themale deity to be a late development , since the older languages (Greek andSanskrit) use a compound term to name him , while the fused form appears
only in the later Latin form, Jupiter. The name of Demeter, the goddess ofcrops, must be older, on the other hand, since her name is fused even in the
Greek.
The research which I have done, alone and in collaboration with Julia
Penelope (Stanley), easily proves that male contentions of our patriarchal
origins are little more than fantasy. Though his-storical linguists of Watkins'
persuasion maintain that early European culture was patriarchal, with a father
as married. head of the household, their own evidence points in the otherdirection. I'll offer a few examples of anomalies in their findings (linguistic
phallacies) before moving on to the kind of dis-coveries which Amazon linguists can make using the same data.
First, male studies of Indo-European kinship terminology have consistently
focussed on terms for 'in-laws,' or the 'husband's relatives.' All of these aresaid to end in -er and -ter, the Indo-European kinship suffix par excellence.
Yet no one has been successful in reconstructing cognates meaning 'husband,''wife,' or 'marriage.' Instead , the terms for 'husband' and 'wife' differ fromlanguage to language, in each of which they are identical with terms meaning
either 'man' and 'woman' or 'master' and 'mistress of the household.'
I was taught that there exists a principle for reconstructing culture throughvocabulary: if there are no terms in a semantic field representing a practiceor institution, then the practice or institution did not exist. In patriarchal
scholarship , however, the linguist must assume the eternal dominance of thefather. As a result, kinship terms for 'in-laws' are claimed to be of great antiquity, though they are probably late developments, and the absence of terms
for spouses and marriage itself is said to be an accident. Or worse, one malelinguist has claimed that the lack of cognate terms for 'marriage' is proof of
the inequality between the sexes, because the term *wedh ('lead') has givenrise to terms for marriage, or 'leading a woman to one's house.' If we accept
the premise, on the other hand, that patriarchal invaders attacked and carried
off women from matriarchal clans, then the resemblance between related
terms for 'wed' and those for 'widow' is not coincidental: to 'wed' a woman
was to carry her off, to remove her from her clan mothers and sisters.
Second, most linguists adhering firmly to the patriarchal line of inquiry
insist that kinship terms are so ancient that they cannot be analyzed-except
for the term *swesor, from which Modern English sister and its cognates
descend. They also gloss all indo-European kinship terms as their Modern
English, French, or German equivalents, implying or arguing that no shift inmeaning has ever occurred. This is patently ridiculous.
Yet *sunus, the apparent source of most modern terms meaning 'son,'lacks the characteristic kinship suffix (-er I-ter) . Moreover, its cognates do
not appear throughout Europe ; the Latin filius is unrelated, and it means'suckling,' not 'male offspring.' In fact, the word * sunus itself is derived froma root meaning 'to give birth,' so its original sense probably had nothing to
do with male children either. Furthermore , terms for 'brother' are related tomembership in a phratry or to uterine kinship (Greek adelph6s and adelphi
are obviously related to delphus, the Greek term for 'womb') and cannot beshown-even by the most determined of patriarchs-to demonstrate the importance of male descent and confraternity to the early Europeans. These
terms, in fact, suggest a gradual shift from matriliny to patriliny (perhaps bymeans of the stages proposed by Evelyn Reed in Women~ Evolution, 1975)
but only after the violent patriarchal invasions of southern and western Europe
and India.
Terms for 'sister,' descended from Proto-indo-European *swesor, point toa matrifocal culture, although male his-storicallinguists steadfastly deny this.
*Swe, derived from * seu, is related to third person pronouns , and terms forthe extended social group, the *swe. It is connected to Germanic *sibja-,
meaning 'blood relation' or 'one's own,' and it is also the linguistic ancestorof 'self.' The suffix -sor is a feminine suffix. Thus, following the analyses
provided by patriarchal linguists, *swesor means literally 'female who is amember of the clan,' 'she who is one of us.' Though the connection between*sunus, derived from a root they have labeled seu 3 , and * swesor, derived
from seu 2 , revealed itself instantly to Julia and to me, traditional his-storicallinguistics separates the two roots. Both are separated from seu 4 , said to giverise to Modern English 'suck.' Yet all are logically connected, originating in
the act of giving suck and of taking it-the original act of nurturance. Whatbetter source for a term meaning 'sister'?
To perceive such semantic relationships endangers patriarchy ; hence , thisform of linguistic analysis is usually dismissed by his-storical linguists as'fanciful.' Although they readily see a connection between the concept ofmale divinity and 'brightness,' they are blind to possible links to matriarchy .
While working within a patriarchal mindset , 1 dismissed Julia's belief that the18

Amazons had existed on the European continent. She contended that male
his-storians relegated Amazons to mythical status to conceal the fact thatpowerful women warriors could exist; I decided she was suffering from paranoid delusions.
But careful historical linguistics supports her hypothesis, as I realized during
the 1977 Winter Solstice . Speculating on the specialization of the word girlfrom its original sense ('a child of either sex'), I recalled that maiden, Old
English maegden, was the term originally used for 'young woman.' Maeg is
the Old English word for 'blood relative,' however. In Old English dictionaries
these are separated from the verb magan, 'to be able,' its present tense form
maeg, and its past tense miht (from which Modern English might, with thesenses 'power' and 'is probable,' has developed). Wondering why the two roots
were seen as unconnected, I began the research upon which this paper is based.
The American Heritage Dictionary lists two Indo-European *magh roots.
Magh-l is connected with power and might, and is listed as the source ofmagus, Old Persian for 'member of a priestly caste,' magi, and magic as well.
Magh-2 has the sense of 'to figllt,' appears in Old Persian as *ha-maz-an, 'thewarrior,' and is the source of Greek Amazon. The connection between power
and warfare ought to have been obv·ous to linguists, because the Indo-Europeans have been described as a war-like people (the 'Ax people ') belonging toa culture with a warrior caste . They swept across the European continent,
leaving few unrelated languages in their wake, and few Amazons in historicaltimes. The only explanation for their failing to connect *magh- 1 with *magh- 2
is that the reconciliation of these terms would connect the word Amazon to. terms for kinship and clan membership as well as to terms for power. As Julia
and I have pointed out (1980 , to appear) , the term maegden, usually translated as 'young woman, virgin,' is never connected to Amazon by patriarchal
linguists-but if maegden meant 'free woman, woman unattached to a man'(as we believe virgin once did), their interconnection is only too apparent.
In a nineteenth-century Indo-European grammar, August Schleicher (1877,
p. 222) analyzed Indo-European *mater as a compound, derived from original*-tar, an agentive suffix, and the root *ma, meaning 'make, produce.' Subjected to such an analysis , the term *mater meant initially 'one who brings
forth , one who produces ' and is related to our Modern English verb make.
His analysis relates the term *bhrdter, usually glossed (over) as 'brother,' tothe verb * bher ('bear' [as in 'bear offspring']) . In 1978 , Julia and I suggested
such a derivation before I had read Schleicher. But we further suggested thatall kinship terms may have developed from terms denoting the activities ofwomen and their interrelationships in matrifocal clans, rather than kinshi!'l
within patriarchal , patrilineal families .
I am now firmly convinced that the rationale underlying patriarchal separations of such roots , as well as the insistence of his-storical linguists thatkinship terms cannot be analyzed into components, is a willful refusal to discover matriarchy. Amazon etymological studies can provide evidence in support of archeological findings and myths which suggest that our European
ancestors were matriarchal in vast areas of Europe, and worshipped a powerful ,primal female . Two centuries of so-called 'scholarship' remain to be overturned
19

by women who can turn the methodology of historical linguistics to nonhis-storical purposes .
Recent 'research' published in the Journal of Indo-European Studies indicates to me that the patriarchs are becoming his-sterical as a result of promatriarchal findings . Two articles frantically deny that the existence of a term
for 'maternal uncle' (,mother's brother ') in Latin (avunculus) , which is derived from a word meaning 'grandfather' (avus), points to matriliny . Instead ,they contend that avunculus refers to a pleasant relationship between a maternal uncle and a nephew because the father was so powerful in Indo-European
society . Perhaps , to borrow a phrase from Julia, our findings have 'scared acouple of pigs out of the bushes.' If two or three Amazons are this effectivein the field (of historical linguistics), I believe an army of etymologists cannot
fail. It is time we began to find the roots of female poWer in our 'mother-tongue.'Notes and References
I . As Poliakov points out, the term 'Aryan' was originally used by certain linguists andan thropologists to refer to the Indo-Iranian peoples as well as their language, the allegedsources of the Indo-Europeans and their language. The findings of the early linguists wereused to bolster patriarchal nationalists' contentions that their ethnic and national roots
were racially pure and culturally superior.
2. Roz Frank , a Basque and Spanish scholar at the University of Iowa, states that theBasque language, spoken in the western Pyrenees of Spain and France, is probably excluded
by his-storicallinguists from the Indo-European language family because Basque culture stillcontains matriarchal elements and because the indigenous Basque religion is matrifocal.
(Personal communication.)
3. The use of the asterisk (*) denotes a reconstructed form.
4. Here Watkins, like many other Indo-Europeanists, denies the validity of the extensive
archeological discoveries of Marija Gimbutas ( 1970, 1978). These point to a matrifocal
culture worshipping a primordial goddess in a European region around the Mediterranean,
Aegean, and Adriatic Seas - an advanced culture violently disrupted by the invasions ofpatriarchal, pastoral nomads from a region north of the Black Sea. She believes the invaders
to have been the original Indo-Europeans. Merlin Stone (1976), on the other hand, identifies
northern Europe as the source of Indo-European pa triarchy . Both overlook the fact that ,because our written evidence for Indo-European was produced thousands of years after the
first patriarchal incursions into the motherland , matriarchal customs and vocabulary had
centuries to influence the invaders. Some matriarchal terms must have been absorbed into
their lexicon, and meanings altered by men from an alien culture.
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (1969) . Boston : Houghton Mifflin.
Cardona , George ; Henry M. Hoenigswald ; and Alfred Senn, eds. (1970) . Indo-European andthe Indo-Europeans. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Daly, Mary. (1979) . Gyn/Ecology : The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston: Beacon.
Gimbutas , Marija . (1970) . Proto-Indo-European cui ture : the Kurgan culture during thefifth, fourth , and third millenia, B.C. In Cardon , Hoenigswald, and Senn (1970) , 155-97.
----------. (1978). Quoted in article in Human Behavior (1978 :50-51).
Hopkins , Grace Sturtevant. (1932). Indo-European *Deiwos and Related Words. Language
Dissertations , No. 12. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America.
Poliakov, Leon . (1977). The Aryan Myth : A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas inEurope. New York : New American Library.
Reed , Evelyn . (1975). Woman 's Evolution. New York : Pa thfinder Press.
Rich , Adrienne. (1973). Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972. New York: W. W. Norton .
Schleicher, August. (1877). A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the IndoEuropean, Sanskri t, Greek , and Latin Languages. 2 vols . London : Trnbner.
Stone , Merlin. (1976). When God Was a Wom an. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Watkins, Calvert. (1969) . Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. In The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language . Boston : Houghton Mifflin , 1946-1502.
Wolfe , Susan J . and Julia Penelope Stanley. (1980, to appear). Linguistic problems withpatriarchal reconstruc tions of Indo-European culture: a little more than kin , a little lessthan kind . Women 's S tudies International Quarterly.

20

FICTION

11

Linda J. Brown

OSCEOLA AND DALY
To hreak her midnight fast, Osceola ate: a soft egg and the ground-up
shell; a fat peach with brown spots; two pieces of hard, crisp baby toast; alarge mug of cold water.
She contemplated going outside that day, and decided it was time to try
again . Carefully, she chose her clothing: ''Must be sure to pick the right colors,
the right textures. Must be sure to feel comfortable and protected or I'll never
get to the corner this time." She settled on a brown piece of cloth, wrapping
in it from her head to just below the calves; her bare, brown legs covered byhair and sandal rope. She chose the onyx ring, placing it on her left, middle
fmger. Then she gathered her bags and closed the door softly behind her.
Never once looking back.
The street was steaming , though morning; reeking of summer smells. The
avenue was crow.ded with trucks and cars with fuming engines and trails of
smoke mysteriously rising from their parts.
Osceola pass~d an odd man who went through many motions and changes
to greet her as his sister. But , when she started to explain to him why thatwasn't so, he changed his words and began asking her to his bed . He wouldn't
see her plainly, although who she was, was as plain as her answer, "no." Shegave up trying to explain. He didn't care about her words. His eyes ran,hungrily, over her body ; looking for a curve or a bit of softness to betraythemselves. But , the garment was wrapped securely around her and didn't
betray . She was able to glide past him there on the street , as if her feet had
wings. He began to run after her ; grabbing at the air.
Osceola would call him Tomas, as she knew she 'd probably see him again
in many men's faces on as many streets. And she needed to recognize him
every time.
***
Osceola saw Daly, though she didn't know her name , on days and nightsthat were warm enough for Daly to raise her curtains. Their kitchen windows
shared a courtyard.
Daly took great pains to dress, and often succeeded in transforming herself
into someone who looked like a stranger. Osceola wondered what Daly thought
when she looked in her mirrors and saw the man 's face. Did she know it wasn't
really her- but something borrowed from a stranger?
Daly puzzled Osceola for quite awhile, and then she realized something about
her: Daly only had the man's face when she was going out into the street. Not
at all, when she was in her kitchen, washing greens in the sink, or looking up
at the sky in the morning ; her neck arched and glistening in the sun. Not at
all , when she brought the womon to her house , late at night; both of themgiddy and unsteady from drinking wine. They'd stand naked in cand le darkness;kissing each other deep on the mouth and fondling their bodies so tenderly
it made Osceola cry - sometimes- reach in to the air around her , longing to touch22someone as beautifully. The womon would put out the candle by first, licking
her fingers-then touching the flame in one quick motion. Daly would close
the window and take the womon's hand, leading her around to her bed at theother side of the house where Osceola couldn't see. She imagined the love.
they shared. Not at all, at those times, did Daly have the man's face. Not atall. At all.
Daly knew Osceola watched her, but Osceola would hardly let herself beseen . Daly would look up from some task or other and suddenly smile in the
direction of Osceola's window. Osceola would squat to the floor ; wrapping
around herself; rocking on bare feet, gently .
Today, she met Daly's smile with her own, then turned quickly away ; putting
the things from the stores on the shelf. The two wimmin worked in their kitchens, side by side, but separated by a long , hollow courtyard-and fifty feetall afternoon.
At dusk, Osceola was the first to light a candle. Daly began dressing , choosing
her clothes, carefully; changing her face; planning to go out into the street.

***
Osceola awakened early, to see the sunrise. Then , she ran water for herbath and soaked in the tub for nearly an hour . When she stepped out of thewater, she rubbed salt vigorously into her skin. She then stepped under anicy cold shower-spray. She wrapped in a towel and sat, looking out over the
early morning summer street. It was empty and shimmering under the sun's
glaze .
Her sleep had been fitful and semi-<:onscious. Twice, she had awakened on. the very edge of her bed, entangled in sheets and images. It was then that theplan had come clear to her mind-the plan, the problem, the cause.
Osceola stood now, naked and new, in front of her kitchen window . Hereyes were closed as if she were meditating, or sleeping; standing upright. "It
has only been an hour ," she thought. "She will be awake soon, because it's
impossible to sleep any later in this heat. That will be the time ."She stood perfectly still for another hour: until the curtains across thecourtyard opened and Daly's form appeared . Daly, tall and long-limbed, strongthighed; in short cotton pants. Muscled and flexing in striped summer shirt.
Daly, watering window boxes of greenery from a large, bent tin can. Daly,
sleepy-eyed; focusing across the fifty feet directly in front of her-to Osceola:vulnerable and quiet; bare and beautiful in the great, glass window .
Osceola looked up and smiled at Daly, after a while.
Daly, cautiously, almost timidly-out of character-smiled back.
Osceola forced herself to turn around - about face-and walk out of sight
into the other room.
Daly stayed at the window most of the day- finding little things to do forwhich she needed either the light or the air. Her eyes waited for Osceola toreturn ; but Osceola was asleep. She awoke at sun setting, and decided it was
alright to love Daly from afar. She put on a shirt and went back to the window
to search for her.
She took her tobacco tin and emptied the sweet smelling leaves onto thewooden table in a pile. Next, taking a piece of rice paper- rolling paper- she
scratched on it with her red quill : "I am Osceola and I am prepared to love
you entirely , spiritually, from here at my window to there at yours . Do you
23accept me? I await your answer."
She threw the can-with the paper now inside; with one eye closed- directly
through Daly's open bottom window . The noise caused a dog to bark and an
old womon's voice to curse and rise .
Daly retrieved the package and first shook it, lest it explode ; then, opened
the lid. She took out the paper and read each word carefully . She folded it
into small pieces, and put it into her pocket. Shaking her head, Daly opened
her front door and was down the five flights of stairs and into the street inno time.
''This calls for a drink! This sure calls for a drink! That womon is crazy!!
I always knew she was." Daly spoke out loud to no one, as she made her way
down the street, around the corner, into the bar.
There was nobody there she knew, so she ordered and concentrated on her
drink. She read Osceola's letter again and again. She studied the curves of theletters and the spacing between them. She folded and unfolded the paperstuffmg it in her pocket , then fishing it out to reread.
Later, when people started to drift in and Daly had told the story andshowed the evidence countless times-people gave advice :"Just crazy is all . Lots of that g·oin' 'round these days ~;-; "See what else
she means . Never look a gift horse in the mouth. She might give it up if you
play your cards right." "Give me her name and address ." ''Who is she!!? You
said I was the only one in your life!!"
To the last voice, Daly made a move . She bent down, kissed the womon
firmly on the mouth and led her onto the small dance floor. Their bodies
pressed together under the single red light. The slow steady beat of the jukebox music guided them around the room in sensual steps. Daly whispered in
the womon's ear and the womon moved closer to Daly , encircling her neckwith long, bird-like arms.
The liquor and the music, the dancing, went on all night. Near dawn, Daly
led the womon up the street, around the corner, up the stairs and into her
bed. They loved passionately, exhaustingly: falling asleep en twined in eachother's arms.
***
The next day was rainy and cold. Daly and the womon stayed in bed all
day ; alternately dozing , drinking wine, making love .
That night Daly sent the womon home. Shortly after that there was athunderstorm.
Osceola spent the day threading beads ; boiling soup; reading stories; weeping.
That night, she sat , dressed in black, in the middle of the kitchen in a straightbacked chair. She let the electricity from the storm pass through her body andhair, unchanged. The storm's light reflected in her eyes; alternately lighting thehouse .
Daly watched Osceola from her own window . She took small sips of icedwater to counteract the hangover she had from drinking wine all day in bed.
She watched Osceola and hungered for her ; a deep, consuming hunger.
At midnight, they both went to their separate beds and had dreams of
madness throughout the night.

***
The next gray, wet morning found each standing on her own stoop; looking
into. the other's eyes, afraid to speak.

Osceola had her straw shopping basket in hand. Daly had a giant , red umbrella in hers. She raised it over her head and crossed to Osceola's side ; taking
the basket on her arm and Osceola's hand in her other hand. They headed
towards the avenue in the direction of the stores. They bought fresh parsley;garlic; green beans; plum tomatoes ; red onions; lemons; black bread. Dalybought a bottle of clear , white wine ; promising Osceola a taste. Osceola held
tightly to Daly's hand as if to let go would mean slipping back to death . They
walked, Daly talked.
They passed Tomas, who was in some other womon's business. Osceola
turned clear around to watch him. She walked backwards and watched him
for as long as she could see him.
Back in Osceola's kitchen, Daly strung the beans and peeled the onions .
Osceola squeezed the lemons, adding cold water and honey to the juice. They
cooked everything on the small stove in a big, iron pot and ate .hungrily until
it had all disappeared into their mouths.
Daly took the wine bottle from the refrigerator. She took a glass and filled
it with ice . She sat in Osceola's straight-backed chair, turned sideways, with
Osceola in her lap . They sipped the cool wine and Daly told stories, wruspering
in Osceola's ears .
Osceola turned her face to Daly and their lips met. Daly put her tongue inside of Osceola's mouth, searching for the other. Osceola gently sucked Daly's
tongue and darted between Daly's teeth with her own sweet, endless kisses.
After more hours, Osceola went , barefoot and without undergarments, with
Daly to her house . Once up the long, winding stairs and inside the door , Dalypulled Osceola's long dress over her head and took her around the corner toher bed. Osceola peeled Daly's body out of the short , tight cotton pants andput her two hands up under Daly's shirt ; first clutching her around the waist,
then cupping her breasts with her hands .
Daly turned down the sheets and Osceola crawled between them, laying
back on the plump goose-feathered pillows. Daly lay herself on top of Osceola.
Their flesh melted together. They shut out the world; the sounds of the rainrunning down the building's side into the courtyard . Osceola found all thesecrets of Daly and Daly took all the gifts Osceola offered to her. They rocked
themselves in a nighttime lullaby .

***The next morning Osceola said , "Don't tell anyone I love you and you'll
stay safe from danger."
Daly said she lived on· the edge of danger all the time. That she liked it.
Couldn't do without it.
Osceola said, "You will make me weep for you some day ."***"You're a witch! A root womon or something!!" Daly screamed at Osceola.
"How can I believe you care for me when I know you can control my every
thought and action!??"Osceola remained silent and still- wrapped in her black robes and the smellof roses. Every word Daly flung wounded her in another place. She flinchedfrom their acidity; ducked from the savageness of the blows.
"Answer me, womon!" Daly demanded. "Speak to me- tell me what happened to the womon last night! Tell me what these powders are!!"25

Osceola looked up into Daly's eyes and spoke very quietly ...
"The womon wanted to leave . She didn't know I knew you. She told me
she wouldn't share you with me. She said she didn't know you had a thing
for crazy wimmin. She left. She slammed the door so hard it hurt my headand ears. I could hear the sound of her footsteps clear to the bottom landing.
She seemed to be stamping out the memory of you .
My powders are for cooking, for bathing, for loving. They come from theearth, like you and me. I would never harm you . I love you. If you think you
cannot trust me, you had better go. You had better never look on me again ."Daly sat down slowly and ran her hands through her hair. After a longwhile she began . . .
"You see , baby, I am not a one womon womon . I can't get jammed up
like that. Can't be controlled, used . The womon don't really matter to me,
but you do, an' that scares me plenty. I don't mean you're no witch. I justfeel you got power over me, is all. Because, I guess I love you. Because I
think you'd tie me to you- have my babies to do it, if I was a man. Wimmin
operate that way . . . "Osceola said more quietly than before, "But you are a womon too ... you
know what we do ... "Daly cut her off, " ... Aw, baby, you know what I mean."
Osceola: "I know what you say ."Daly turned , kissing Osceola's hand; avoiding a touch of any other kind .
"I got to go . Got to be by myself for a while. I'll call you. OK?"
Osceola announced , eyes on Daly's feet, "Do you know you've hurt me?"Her voice was pinched and tiny .
Daly nodded and pushed past her out of the door.
Osceola listened until Daly's feet had touched the bottom step and she
had opened and shut the creaky front door. She pulled the wooden shade ather kitchen window all the way down ; making the house dark. She sunk into
her bed, pulling the covers over her head . Osceola lay there, foolishly waiting
to smother.

***
Daly holed up in the hall of her building. She pressed her head against thecool, dirty concrete wall and sobbed. Her cries brought people to their front
doors. They dared not approach her or reach out. They closed their doors on
her pain. She stayed there until dark-now silent-not wanting to look up, lest
any spectator be left. She crawled up the stairs on her hands and knees . And
into her apartment. Once inside, she took the wine bottle from the shelf andturned it up to her mouth; but not drinking. Instead, she poured the liquid
over her head, letting it spill down her body. When the bottle was empty,
Daly blew notes into it, like she had done countless times as a little girl. She
imagined herself to be a player in a jazz band: well-known and liked, with amoustache and a fine talent. She tried to see the beautiful wimmin who wouldfind her interesting and offer their favors.
But the fantasy wouldn't work this time.
She stood up from the floor and walked to the mirror on the wall. She
saw her blood-red eyes and wine-soaked body inside the glass. She saw dawn
rising over her left shoulder.
It was the first time Daly had been out in the world without the stranger's
face. It was the first time she had come near to showing all of her own.

Beverly Lynch

THE LOPRESTO TRAVELING MAGIC SHOWThe summer seemed to fade behind the train as the city landscape shrunk
to trees and lawns and long, flat beaches . That trainride, that trainride every
summer to Aunt Terry's, seemed to let me shrug the heat off my body, shake
my brothers and sisters like itchy drops of sweat from my hair, until I could
whirl in my head in the new free space I found away from home .
Not that Aunt Terry's trailer was palatial. With her and me and Molly
bumping around in the twelve-foot by fifty-two-foot tin box, as they called
it, there was probably less room than at home. But it was different. Maybebecause I didn't have to weave through the living room set. Or because Terryand Molly didn't have a TV to bump into or fancy ceramic figures dancing
on tiny tables. Nothing was breakable there or so sacred you couldn't knock
it over. Even their beers were always replaceable, and the poor smooth rug
was soaked in them so regularly they called it their beer-rug .
It just felt bigger at Aunt Terry's when I woke in the morning and squeezed
my way in and out of the bathroom , walked the few steps to the front door·of the trailer and stepped down , barefoot , to the damp brown ground. There
were no elevators or long flights of stairs to the earth there. Just a small child's
step out and down. Aunt Terry let me play alone outside in my pajamas evenwhen I was very young , because she and Molly needed to sleep off the night
before in the only closed room there, and knew I valued my visits with them
too much to wander into trouble.
I'd sit for a long while on a milk crate just outside the door, watching thestrange neighborhood wake up and start its day . The trailer across from Aunt
Terry's was a mirror reflection of hers except for the little entranceway theneighbors had built on their door to keep the heat inside in winter. With
time the tiny space it created filled with such a jumble of brooms and tools
and boots and slicke~s that I was glad I didn't have to find my way throughit quietly in the mornings. But inside, where I had once been, the walls werecovered with imitation wood paneling and the furniture fit like pieces in a
jigsaw puzzle . The old couple who lived there were handier than Aunt Terryand Molly, and you could tell they spent almost no time at Gaffney's , therestaurant and bar next door to the trailer park , which so many residents
treated like an extension of their tiny living rooms.
Despite the similarity of the trailers, their proximity , and their numbers,
the scene was so different from the city where I lived, I used to just watch
them all sit there without a pattern and I'd try to make some sense of theirplacement. At home the apartment buildings lined the blocks side by side, up
the street and down the street. At Aunt Terry 's some trailers were side byside ..some end to end, some jammed between others so that only an end
27

stuck in or peeked out, and a few stood in the middle of an invisible circle
which could almost be called a yard and was certainly used as one. When I
got older, Janis Joplin's voice would always bring back to me that earlymorning scene of ragged community living when she sang, "Freedom's justanother word for nothing left to lose." Not because Aunt Terry's trailer park
was as desolate a place as it looked. Simply because it and its residents' lives
had been stripped of the excesses of living. Here there were no frills, no money
thrown about, no airs or unnecessary clutter . The ground bred no grass because it was too well used; the homes carried spots of rust and old old paintbecause there was not the money to fix those things until absolutely necessary.
There were no patios or gardens because leisure there was either nonexistentor spent in the easier comfort of Gaffney's. Yet it was the most comfortableand un threatening place I have ever been, and I wish now as I did then that
Twelve Elms Trailer Park could have been my home more than two weeks ayear.
Eventually Molly would come to the trailer door and call me back fromwhichever comer I'd strayed into. Sometimes I'd be visiting with one of themany cats or dogs of the park ; sometimes I'd get all the way over to theminiature-golf course and driving range out back that was run by the park's
owner. On a weekend morning her call might have found me halfway" out thedriving range, gingerly still barefoot on that huge expanse of grass, my pajamas
wet from rolling in the dew. Once back at the trailer, there was Aunt Molly's
breakfast for the three of us. They always had lemons, and before eating
breakfast Aunt Terry would cut one in quarters and bite into its pulp, shaking
her head with the rind against her lips like a sunny yellow smile, eyes tearing
above it. "When you're old enough to get hung over, Princess," as she called
me, "don't forget your Aunt Terry's cure. If you survive the shock, you're
ready for a new day!" Then she'd lift her juice mug and toast Molly silently .
Aunt Terry was quite a woman. I sensed it then and I know it now. Those
breakfast feasts were a statement: Whatever happened to her the night before,
she was always very alive come daylight. Of course, I had not shared the nightlife they led until that trip. I knew they went over to Gaffney's where Molly
was a cook. I knew they drank every night as much as my parents drank ina year. I knew they had friends my father would not approve. My parents did
not even know that Molly worked nights in a bar or that Aunt Terry had
been through several jobs since I'd ~egun visiting. One of her problems wasthat she wanted at least one month off every summer. And she took it. "Twoweeks for my Princess," she'd say, "and two for old Mol' ." It seemed like a
good system to me because I had exclusive rights to Aunt Terry most of the
day and did not have to feel bad about Molly because her two weeks werecoming. Besides, though Molly worked long steady hours at Gaffney's, she
worked them at night when Aunt Terry would be there with all their friends.
My parents thought Aunt Terry was the cook and that she worked daysin a restaurant that closed down two weeks each summer. They believed thatthe way the whole family believed anything about Aunt Terry since she left
home. I knew that Nonno LoPresto , my father 's and Aunt Terry's father , had
kicked her out for some reason, but no one ever talked about it. When Aunt
Terry, on a Christmas visit, first asked if they'd like to send one of the.ir kids,28

me for instance , up to see her that summer , my parents jumped at the idea.
To get one kid out of that apartment for almost nothing they would haveforgotten anything they'd ever heard about Aunt Terry anyway . Especiallysince they couldn 't believe there was anything "wrong" with someone in theirfamily .
I was seven the first year and twelve the year it all happened , so I knew ,or thought I knew , everything and everyone up there pretty well. Terry
LoPresto was a feisty, short, skinny Italian daughter who the family saidshould have been a son. She had muscles on her upper arms , and I used tocompare mine to hers at the breakfast table with Molly laughing at us andcalling us both juvenile delinquents from the Bronx. And I felt as if we were
just that, because Aunt Terry acted so young . "Never took any responsibility,"
my mother said about her when Nonno loPresto died , and maybe she wasright, or maybe Aunt Terry only took the responsibilities she was needed for.
In either case her forty-three years had left her looking a lot more than ten
years younger than her brother, my poor p"ale shrunken father who , if he had
a muscle, sure never let us see it. It was just his choice in life , I know , to getmarried and strap himself down to supporting six kids on a clerk's salary . It
must have shrunken his soul , too , because that showed no resemblance to
Aunt Terry's either. She had an energetic exuberance about her that madeher leap around like she was my age. Her tight wavy hair was as short as she
could get it, and her clothes, dungarees or chinos with flannel shirts or sweatshirts , required as little care as her hair. She worked hard every year, most of
the year, at whatever job she could get. One of my favorite years she worked
for the lumber store and got wood and materials free to make a lean-to next
to the trailer. She waited until I came up to build it , and that was practicallyall we did those two weeks. I was nine and had never been prouder in mylife than when we finished that little storage shed. Aunt Terry called it myroom and said she was going to build a special bed in it so they could rent
it out to me when I grew up. I knew it wasn't big enough, but it was mydreamhouse all the next year back in the city.
Molly was what people call the motherly type. She was short like Terryand had short grey h~r, but hers was straight and cut a little longer so it
looked soft and the wind would muss it up. She wore pants all the time , too,
but they were different, more like ladies' pants in dark greens and navy blues.
She mostly seemed to let Aunt Terry take the initiative in things , but hers
was the restraining hand when Aunt Terry started to get into fights and the
comforting hand when one of us was sick. And it was Molly who had initiatedmy visits. She was the one who believed in keeping up family ties and saw
that Aunt Terry had something to give my father 's children no one else in
the family could offer.
Over the years I met their small, odd circle of friends . Big slow Bozo told
stories of his several years in traveling circuses but was a sad person , resigned
to the decreased demand for clowns who "wasn't the best." Bozo 's best friend
was Ed , his next-door neighbor . Ed was waiting for his wife to come backand had been waiting since I met him. He introduced visitors in his trailer toa gold-framed picture of a teased-haired , bleached-blonde woman in a whiteangora sweater as if it were his wife in person. Bozo and Ed were both lucky
29

enough to work for the town steadily and could only complain that they had
to get up too early in the morning. They were on the sanitation crew andbragged of making the town fit to live in.
Minnie and Lester were a retired couple who were ' ~ust full of it," as Molly
described them . He was the practical joker of the group and big Minnie was
the flirt. They always had jokes and cracks to make about everything andkept the others laughing . The whole group generally gathered, with a few
drifters, at Gaffney's every night to down pitchers of beer.
One of my favorite memories must have happened the first year I was up
there because I remember Aunt. Terry piggy-backing me into the restaurant
in my pajamas to quickly peck the cheeks of the whole gang before being
put to sleep in the trailer. And I remember falling asleep, even alone in thedark as I was , full of a feeling of warmth and security as I pictured them in
my mind. They were all in a booth, squeezed together , smiling and laughing,spilling and shouting , smoking and pleased as they could be that this little
child was theirs to love for two weeks . I can still see the wooden booth, dark
and carved with initials , the table between them overflowing with ashtrays
and glasses and empty pitchers . They were against an inside wall where thebrightest light came from a tiny lamp hung under a dim shade. The shade
was decorated with horses jumping over hedges and red-suited men riding thehorses. It all gave my seven-year-old mind a sense of adventure and excitement
and specialness and danger like a fairy tale.
So each summer I left the Bronx with anxiety and anticipation all squeezed
together in my stomach. This particular summer was worse because as I
stepped on the train I knew I'd gotten my period for the third time in mylife. I found my seat and sat frozen until the train moved out of the station .
Then I ran to the bathroom and, over Harlem , threw up what seemed thesum of all that past horrible year of puberty. I raised my head briefly andsaw the long narrow streets of the ghetto, the ripped-out walls, the halfsmashed windows, the boys roaming in packs, and was sick again. All thatyear I had felt prey to the terrors of the city. Vulnerable now to men , I had
feared them . Unable to compete with those girls on my block who had an
aptitude for dressing , walking, and talking correctly , I had feared their remarks
and my inadequacy , and did not understand why I should be like them. And
when my period had come , I was ashamed . My closest companion that year
was the tree outside my window which , stunted, still survived to live surrounded by trash cans in our alleyway. In the summer the smell of garbage
rose to our sixth-floor windows and smelled as it must have smelled to mytree all the time. Our only release , mine and the tree's, came on trash days
when still it was torture to be awakened at 4 a.m. to hear the dragging ,scraping sounds of trash collection and the rough heavy voices of the men
who threw the cans back at the tree as if with a vengeance.
A scorned garbage tree , I felt , the second girl after three boys. My femaleness was not special as it had been for my older sister , but had become familiar
enough for my brothers to taunt me about it. That older sister, one of the
popular girls, scorned my embarrassment and wore her femininity like a flag.
For me , the last three months had been colored by hot painful cramps andshame. Now here I was, the only one on the train having to face this ordeal ,alon e and wi th no pre para tion .

Like my little garbage tree though , I adapted , made what repairs I could ,and skulked back to my window seat to be lulled , finally , into the familiar
release that came to me every year on the train. I was glad to see poor bowlegged Lester at the station. He was beaming up at me through a window . He
had no teeth and his shrunken cheeks were covered with short white bristles .
Even on that hot summer day he wore the navy-blue watch cap I'd never seen
him without, but Minnie had pressed his black chinos until they were shiny,
and his boney wrists were a welcome support as I saw them emerge from his
sweatshirt to lift me, suitcase and all , off the steps almost before the train
could stop. Lester drove a cab to supplement his Social Security and sped me
in it as I sat importantly in the front seat, gaining a little confidence , to Twelve
Elms . He tried to give me the year's news in the ten-minute ride along theblessedly familiar Post Road, and by the time we arrived I didn't even cry
when I confessed to Molly what my needs were. She smiled and nodded andsent me into their tiny bedroom to change while she rustled through her
things to find the right supplies. Then we sat at the pull-down kitchen table ,and Molly told me what she had gone through at my age. When Aunt Terry
arrived after shopping, I was laughing and telling- Molly how I wished I could
transplant my garbage tree to Twelve Elms where I knew it could grow better.
Aunt Terry gave me an affectionate punch in the arm and yelled for lunch.
Molly got up to fix it while Aunt Terry and I walked around the park, Aunt
Terry showing me all the small changes since last year , the new important
people, the new drifters. We got to the edge of Twelve Elms and Aunt Terry.pointed to some activity at the far end of the driving range.
"Carnival coming in ," she told me .
"Here?" I asked, excited.
"Sure is . That's why we changed the week you were coming, to give youa surprise. The owner's having trouble making anything off of this golf thing,so he's rent it out to the church people . Going to be a big one, too , by thelooks of it. Bozo's taking his vacation p.ow . Going to be a clown the whole
weekend ."I was too excited about it all to answer, but Aunt Terry looked over atme, then leaned over and gave me a hug, a rare thing for her to do. I could
feel she was as excited as me . A carnival in our own back yard!
When the trucks began sporadically arriving that night, I could hear as I
writhed on my cot, fighting the cramps as Molly had told me to, by relaxing .
Images of the city came to me in my sleep, but I woke and was comforted
in the knowledge that the trucks brought carnival people, not garbage men.
I imagined people pitching tents, setting up a gypsylike camp , rolling therides into place . 1 learned better the next morning when I ran to the driving
range and saw not dozens, but maybe five or six dumb , unadorned tractor
trailers sleeping on the field.
By early Thursday morning , though , the driving range looked different .
The tractor trailers had been driven into a circle, as in a wagon train. andtheir cabs driven off to rest on another part of the range . The circle was open
on one end where an admission booth had been half-assembled . Cautiously.
remembering stories of circus-gypsy kidnappings, I walked between two of
the trailers and stood just inside the circle . Overnight. a merry-go-round and31other rides had appeared in the center of the circle, and as I stood silent andobservant their stillness revealed them to me. I could see the machinery bywhich they ran and the grease and stains of their traveling and their carelessuse . I saw those vehicles of adventure as if they were naked, out of costume,
without the motion which gave them their magic. Around them the trailers
stood , the counters built into their sides closed, their seams suggesting thehawkers who would later lean across them, loudly seducing the crowds totheir games and shabby prizes.
When I turned back to the trailer park , it looked like another sleeping
carnival : shoddy , used -looking, sad and disappointing. The sun broke out andlit up two pots of red tulips outside a trailer , and I realized it was a cloudy
day . I wondered if the carnival could start if it rained. I decided it did not
matter anyway and walked through the trailers feeling very alone and sad .
I had lost something I'd always had. In a book I knew it would be calledgrowing pains , but it did not satisfy me to define my feelings. I wanted everything to be exciting again. I wished I was back in the Bronx with my tree,
dreaming of a better place . I wished there were tulips everywhere. I wishedthe gypsies would come and take me. Then, kicking a cinderblock planter
painted a garish purple, I reminded myself there were no gypsies either. Just
workmen I could by now hear revving trucks and slamming things behind me .
As I approached Aunt Terry's trailer, she was just stepping down from thedoor, pulling a long black robe around her shoulder . She saw me and grinned
shyly , "I got picked.""For what?""To be the vampire!" she answered, swinging the robe across her face andleaping at me.
I couldn't help but laugh through my depression and asked , "What vampire?""I'm only kidding, Princess. They want a magician, the people who areplanning this. And theirs disappeared . I don't blame him. I wish I knew how,"
she sighed.
"But you can't be a magician," I protested , remembering the few awkward
tricks Aunt Terry had amused me with on rainy days. "You can't do any real
tricks .""That's what I said, Princess. But no. Your Aunt Terry is the sucker."
We both sat on milkcrates gazing toward the carnival site. It did not lookas stark from that distance, with the ferris wheel poking over the trucks andanother ride's rockets looking poised to take off. "Besides," Aunt Terry
explained, "they told me it's not what you do so much as how you do it.
Look." She pulled a deck of cards out of her shirt pocket as she talked about
how she had been railroaded into the job and how she had been practicing a
few tricks that she'd learned a long time ago from an old friend when she'd
lived around the country before she'd met Molly. As she talked I realized,
first, that I knew nothing of Aunt Terry's life before Molly except family
stories- and not many of them - and, second, that she had performed two
card tricks in front of me before I even noticed .
"That's magic!" I said and then got embarrassed as she winked at me . "Imean , [ know it's supposed to be, but you really did it!""That's why I got picked. Cause I can make it look like magic. I don't

32

know how, but that's really the only thing I ever learned to do good enoughI was proud of it. Not that I can make money at it, but I can do it.""I bet you could make money . I bet you're really good ," I remember saying in my childish faith that Aunt Terry could do anything.
"Maybe, but the only way they let ladies practice magic is in a long-sleevedgown with gobs of makeup. That's what Dusty was like - my friend whotaught me what I know. But she played second to a man magician and that's
as far as she could go. Not for me, Princess."
Of course I had never really thought of magic or any other profession as
realistically as Aunt Terry had, so I accepted what she said without too much
thOUght while wondering about the romantic figure of Dusty and how Aunt
Terry had ever met someone like that. It wasn't until we'd gone in for the
early breakfast Molly had prepared for the practice session (which would lastoff and on until Saturday with hardly a beer in between) that I realized mysadness and disillusionment had disappeared : I was again looking forward to
the Carnival.
Now when I think back to that Saturday , it's all a whirl of activities I
can hardly separate. Molly and Ed and Lester and I had made a little platform
for Aunt Terry with a draped table and a sign that read "The LoPresto Traveling Magic Show" which we thought was very clever. Aunt Terry was nervous ,crumpling empty pack after pack of those short Pall Malls she loved until
Molly made her have a drink over Aunt Terry's protests that it would ruin
her reflexes. There was an excited spirit of cooperation among everyone in
the group except Bozo, who kept pulling people out to help him rehearse hisclowning .
We'd all been to the carnival as customers Thursday and Friday nights
when Aunt Terry and Bozo were not performing, so we'd had our fill ofcotton candy and rides. Molly and I were free Saturday and Sunday to runback and forth between Aunt Terry and the wandering clowns (Ed and Lester
had fmally volunteered to clown with Bozo) and our trailer. We carried cold
drinks and bandaids and supplies for Minnie to repair makeup when the heatof the day rolled it off the men's faces. Aunt Terry ne~ded very little attention and kept playing magician to crowd after crowd of kids and adults . She
just stood there in her cape, her black jeans , a shiny red shirt we'd found at
Goodwill, and, of course, a tall black hat that fit perfectly over her short
hair. As I remember her now , she was a perfect magician . She seemed talland imposing over all those little kids' heads, composed and graceful on her
little stage. Even the show she did Saturday night was a success , despite theolder , rougher crowd. There was just something about her, I guess you'd callit her own magic, that kept them fascinated . Even when one particularly
obnoxious man demanded a rabbit out of a hat, she pulled it off with Lester
supplying a stuffed rabbit he 'd won for Minnie at one of the prize booths .
The crowd roared, and Aunt Terry, for those two days and forever after inmy mind, became a real magician.
When it was all over Sunday night, the bar was already closed so everyone
piled into Aunt Terry and MoUy's trailer. They were so exhausted one beer
was all most of them could down to celebrate the show, and the next day
was spent resting , slowly falling from the weekend high of activity. We got

33

a little restless toward the end of the day, so Aunt Terry decided to take me
and Molly to the movies to thank us for our assistance. She borrowed Ed's
old Bonneville so we could go to the drive·in where a Katherine Hepburnshow was playing. Aunt Terry was so impressed with Katherine Hepburn she
did not pay any attention to which movie we were seeing; it wasn 't until we
got there that we learned it would be "Suddenly Last Summer." It was thefirst Tennessee Williams film I had ever seen, and I sat transfixed by thepower of the story and the acting and the more painful scenes. I did lookaway finally so as not to see the sand alive with baby turtles and their de·
struction by hungry creatures otherwise so innocent and beautiful. I sat be·
tween Molly and Aunt Terry for most of it and noticed their frequent looks
over my head , but I didn't understand so much of the fllm I knew theyneedn't worry that they had been wrong to take me .
As we drove out of the theatre lot on our way to take Molly to work at
Gaffney's , I climbed into the back seat. I felt unsettled , as if I was about toget my period again. The movie had really upset me. I didn't feel like crying,but I couldn't talk about it either. I felt as if I were on the edge of something ,as if Tennessee Williams had been speaking to me , as if he'd wanted to tellme something that had to do with all the puzzling I was doing . Cramps;
the garbage men hurting my helpless tree ; growing pains ; the carnival's secretmachinery; excitement ; Aunt Terry , the handsome magician ; fear ; the hand·some man in the fllm-so many images hurtling around the small space of
my mind.
"That was a pretty weird movie , huh Princess? " Aunt Terry finally asked
over the front seat.
I must have mumbled something and I saw Aunt Terry glance again at
Molly . "I just don't understand!" I wanted to yell as I worked hard to figure
it out. I thought it might be the cannibalism that was upsetting me, but I
knew it wasn't just that. It had something to do with the handsome man
who was sometimes not like a man - at least, not like Bozo or my father. I
remember feeling the sensuality of the fIlm , the sexuality surrounding thebeautiful, magical figure . It was wrong , something that he was doing was
wrong . More wrong than the murderous little boys or the birds. But he wasbeautiful. The boys just wanted part of that beauty.·No , they hated it, wanted
to destroy it. I didn 't hate it. I never wanted him hurt. I wished I could erasethat destructive scene . And the scene with the turtles. Oh, what if the children
had turned on Aunt Terry , I thought tiredly as I drifted into fantasy in theback seat. I remember shuddering as the cool of the night came in throughthe windows . Briefly , I strayed into a more comforting vision of Molly rocking
me while I cried.
" Listen , after that , Princess , I think maybe you don 't want to be alone .
What do you think , Mol? Want to take the kid to work? "I came back to the world quickly and sat up straight. Scared , but hoping
Molly would think it was a good idea. "Sure ," she answered . "Let's all gotonight. It won't be busy on a Monday."34

''We'll sit near the kitchen , Princess. If a cop chances by , you scoot inand be hanging around Mol. Okay by you?""Yes!" I answered enthusiastically .
"But don't you tell your father or that will be the end of your summer
camp.""I don't tell him nothing," I answered truthfully.
The scene as we arrived at the bar will be with me forever , like the night
I was carried over in my pajamas. Minnie and Lester were at the ~able with
Bozo and Ed . They had made a ring of the night'sJong-necked beer bottles
and pitchers, which Aunt Terry and Molly surveyed with a look of mock awe.
Ed ducked his head and smoothed his already flat, unwashed hair in embarrassment as he slid further into the booth to make room. It didn't help much,since Ed was as short as Aunt Terry and Molly and as stout as both of them
together. Next to Ed was Minnie, whose red shiny face got misty at the sightof me, her "adopted daughter.""In her cups ," Lester explained, as he moved over from his side of thebooth to sit next to Minnie. Minnie smiled and squeezed toward Ed. Her pinkbeads pulled over one of the bottles on the way. "Ooo!" she cried as thebeer fell into her lap. She sat there very still , staring at the small puddle that
had formed in the slack of her skirt where it hung between her heavy legs.
When Lester jumped to avoid the spill , Aunt Terry hauled Minnie out of thebooth as if by habit and took her off toward the bathroom, Molly in tow.
"Take care of Princess, guys," Molly called . ''We'll be out in a jiff."
Bozo, playing the gentleman, had risen and guided me into the booth ,·sliding in after me. He was huge and red-faced and smelled bad , but I associated him with the wonderful clown of the carnival and beamed at him.
"It's the little Princess, is it?" he smiled across at Ed, leaning his heavy
arm across my shoulders. ''Well, what do you think, Ed? Ain't she turningout grand? Who'd of thought old Terry'd have a good looker in the family?"
Ed looked embarrassed again, smoothed down his hair till it stuck out
straight over both ears, and took a long gulp of beer.
''What do you mean?" Molly challenged Bozo jokingly as she returned tothe table and sat next to Lester. "Nothing wrong with Terry you could complain about.""Ah, only kiddin'," he answered, lowering his head and squeezing me tohim. "It's just that," and he turned to look at me, his warm breath smellinggarbagey, full of garlic and beer, "well, a guy like me don't spend much timewith pretty young girls, you know, Princess?""Hey, Boz," Ed suggested as he cracked all his knuckles, "leave the poor
kid alone, you're strangling her there.""Oh, sorry, Princess," he said, and I thought he meant it. poor big guy
not knowing how to play anything but rough . He slid his hand, which I remember thinking was as big as a beer pitcher, across my shoulders and onto
the edge of the table. As they began to talk of other things, I felt bad that
I had shuddered again like I had when I was thinking about the movie. Bozo
meant no harm. The motion of the turtles writhing in the sand under the
shadow of the approaching birds tlashed irrationally across my mind , making
me writhe. I felt overwhelmed by Bozo's big, dumb , helpless bulk leaning
35

over me and did not want to be sitting next to him any longer. I wanted to
be stepping out of the trailer in pajamas onto the cool damp dirt in the earlymorning . He put his hand on my thigh, and I jumped and looked up , andthere , like magic , was Aunt Terry glaring at Bozo , asking what he was doing.
"Nothing, Terry. Just keeping the kid company until you got back."" Move it on out ," Terry ordered , motioning with her head for him to
get up .
"Pull up a chair, Terry. Let me stay with the Princess a little longer ," hewhined goodnaturedly. I just stared at Aunt Terry , scared that she didn't
want Bozo there either or want him to touch me , for he was just a little
drunk and too friendly . I was scared because Aunt Terry was scared too . And
I was wishing I was not there, but scared to say that. Knowing somehow it
would be bad for Aunt Terry if I said it or if I removed Bozo's hand .
"Get your hands off her , Bozo ," Aunt Terry said quietly . And flashingagain through my mind the beautiful man attacked by the children . And also
flashing across my mind perfectly clearly, unsaid : Aunt Terry it's okay he's
just jealous you're the magician and he's only a clown .
I have to stop here , I always have to stop here and picture the terrified ,panicked little kid I was, not even knowing the source of my terror. I was
perched on a precipice . Did Eve feel like that discovering sin? Does every
discovery of beauty and the things that go into the making of beauty haveto be accompanied by an equal exposure to ugliness? Is pain the result when
we first open our eyes? I feel myself rocking even now like Aunt Terry's
little Princess did as I began to feel myself falling , crazy with fear , but every
sense open to the revelation I sought. I was being violated on the one sideby that big paw , not knowing that was the source of my pain, and I wasbeing summoned by a magician from the other, not knowing what she offered
to me or refused for me.
And Bozo asked slowly, "Why, Terry , do you want her for yourself? Do
you want her to be queer like you? "I was paralyzed. We all were. Innocence had become malevolence. Comraderie , jealousy. Stupidity , cunning. Aunt Terry looked as if a wounded
beast had turned and shot her. Molly for once could not help. Ed lookedback and forth between Aunt Terry and Bozo and his face showed horror.
Then I sprang, it seems in retrospect, straight up , walked as hard as I could
over Bozo's two huge legs, and jumped out beside Aunt Terry . Molly reachedover, smiling in a strained way , and patted Bozo's arm , saying , "Always
clowning, ain 't you, Bozo? Can't leave a night alone without some clowning,
can he, Ed?"
Ed 's face relaxed , "Hey , Boz, you drink enough yet? Gloria ," he yelled
to the waitress, "get us another round!" His voice made us all aware thatthe rumble from the other tables went on, that our moment of wrath andtruth could , indeed , have been a joke, had lasted no longer than a jest , could
be made as insignificant as a simple magic trick .
Minnie weaved back from the bathroom . " Taking the Princess home , Ter?"
Minnie asked. "God, we could get arrested for lettin' her breathe the sameair as us , we 're so polluted ."36

"Yeah. Yeah, Minnie, guess I will," Aunt Terry finally answered. "I guess
it's time . If I don ' t come back , Mol' , I'll see you at the traHer.""Okay, Terry. Looks like I just have to help clean up tonight," Molly
answered as Gloria arrived with the round, pushing between Aunt Terry andme and the table . Aunt Terry took my hand as if I was a little girl still andturned me toward the door, then suddenly pulled away from me, "Let's go ,Princess," she said , pushing my shoulder roughly as she went ahead of me tolead the way.
She waited for me on the stoop outside , looking along the empty road .
I pushed the door shut behind me and felt the cool , smokeless night air on
my face, and I realized I had a huge relieved smile waiting in the taut musclesof my face . Aunt Terry turned away from the road and hesitated as I joined
her. I put my hand in hers as we stepped off the stoop onto the hard cold
ground. She looked at me with a great hurt question pulling all her featuresout of whack. I let that big waiting smile spill all over my face . The tension
made me feel every inch of its slow spread , and I watched it spread beyondme all over my Aunt Terry's fine gay face .

~~~CPEMINAl{YA

FEMINIST

JOUR.,NAL

FOR
THE
SOUTH
Emphasizing the Lesbian Visionpublished 3 times a year
Subs: $5 for Individuals$10 for i nstitutions
P.O . Box 954, Chapel Hili, N.C. 27514

37

Linda MarieSHELL WOMAN

The sun keeps the earth at this point unbearably hot. J am in Kanya
Kumari which is located at the southernmost tip of India. After dropping
my one small bag of clothes in my hotel room I will leave in search of afriend I'd made some twelve years ago. I am not sure I will recognize her
after so much time has passed . I ask a smaIl boy and girl who are selling shells
in front of the hotel if they had heard of Antonia who lived over there- I
pointed toward a Catholic mission . The boy understood a little English andtold me to walk around a wall and kept asking "You friend?" I didn't think
he knew her and so walked away from him, drowning in miserable imaginings
about Antonia.
Maybe I never really met her- it was a beautiful dream, the dances with
seaweed, her holding my hand and leading me across the red and black sands
to her woven house. Then I became frightened. What if something happened
to her? Maybe she got leprosy and is decaying in a colony or she starved todeath in a famine - was she buried alive in a cyclone!
It is November 1978 and so far my travels in India have yet to show theextreme poverty I saw in 1966. Of course India had a powerful woman forprime minister and the patriarchal news media most likely destroyed her.
What can be wrong when masses of starving people are now being fed? I ask
myself this and bump into a squeaking pig.
I look behind me toward the ocean to a wide hilly area with grass thathas been eaten by wild pigs , goats , cows and chickens that are meandering
here and there as though Kanya Kumari were a large farm fenced in on threesides by ocean .
Some children are calling me from behind a rock , "Madam ! Madam!"
They want me to follow them. I'm hot and thirsty plus I feel silly and I
think they are laughing at me-I'm the English lady I've read about in novels
who is plump, wears grey slacks and after administering medication tries toconvert the pagans.
A tiny little girl in a raggedy dress keeps poking her finger into the freckles
on my arm. Some other children ask in the only English they know, "Whatis your name?" Then look confused when I tell them and ask them for theirname.
We are at the village. Many little mud huts- a number of them are close
together- then open space, then one here and another hut there, then a lineof huts in a row. There is a well in what seems to be the center of the villageperhaps it was simply a convenient place for a well. Then, a row of huts-somehemp-spun cots with dogs that are first resting then when they see us beganbarking nervously. Thatch roofs rustle in the breeze. Some of the small children
38around me are carrying babies. I was led to a newly built hut with whitewashedwalls that nearly blinded me.
Then I saw her! I pressed my palms together in greeting. "Antonia I am so·glad to see you once again," I said . She spoke in the same tone in her language.
Her face! Her face! She had become fuller as I had . We did not take our eyes
off of one another. She grabbed my shoulders and pulled me behind a partition where her husband was napping- he rushed out like a frightened rat would
have from behind a grain bin. A crowd gathered outside the hut and on theother side of the stone partition. Antonia and I squatted together never taking
our eyes from the other's face . Were her cheekbones always so high? Herlashes so long? There were new lines in her face as there are in mine. She
asked me in Tamil if I want to eat. I understand and say "Illae," no. She
ignores me and brings all the food she has and sits it at my feet and addresses
me in the most respectful way one woman, regardless of age, can show another-she addresses me as Mother. I am so honored and wonder if I would
have a way in my culture of showing the same respect for her.
Antonia sells shells that are strung as necklaces by her daughter. I work
as a maid in a motel but I don't know how to explain to her. She refers to
her work of selling shells as her "Business." There were baskets of shells in
the comer. I ate a little of the food she gave me and drank some water froma silver tumbler.
By this .time we'd moved into the main part of the hut. Antonia's sisterfrom the next hut had a radio blaring a south Indian cinema song. I ask
Antonia what happened to her other house and drew a picture of it with astick in the dirt floor. The women pointed to a heap of grey woven leaves
outside the hut. "Ah old house!" One of the children understood and when
she translated, Antonia's second to eldest sister laughed. When I tried to pairthe children up with relatives I found it was difficult in this village. I could
have adopted a child or maybe more for the entire time I was there andnever have known who the parents were.
Antonia and I were sitting next to one another in a circle of women andchildren . The earth floor was cool and the room was nicely ventilated. I
looked outside and saw two dogs jump on a cot and stretch out. The people
inside were slapping their knees and singing with the music. Antonia grabbed
my chin in a powerful grip and pointed to her mouth in a way that demanded
I should sing like her. When I tried everyone laughed playfully.
When it was time for Antonia to do her "Business" she balanced a basketof shells on her head as did other women and headed for the rocks at theshore. I took the basket from her head and tried to walk like the other womenwith my hands flying this way and that as 1 spoke. The basket kept slippingfrom my head. How did they do it? The women all patted my back as thoughsaying "Good try!"
We comfortably positioned ourselves on the sand with our backs against
the rocks. Antonia was picking lice from my hair. Her sister was picking licefrom an adolescent woman's hair. I ask the young woman if she wore a halfsari , by crossing myself from shoulder to shoulder. She was wearing a longskirt and blouse. If she had already begun menstruating she would have beenwearing a cross between a sari and what she had on . She flushed shyly when39I ask - the other women answered for her teasing her as they did, "Ah halfsari!" They told me she refused to wear it. Maybe she didn 't want to growup . I didn ' t either. I gestured pointing to her , then to my long pants and out
beyond the ocean . "America," I said. She nodded her head excitedly in agreement. I tried to picture her in jeans and a little tee shirt.
An older woman with yellowing hair joined us. She was coughing andmumbling to herself. This is Antonia's eldest sister. Antonia told her sisterto lay down in the sand then An tonia made circling and criss-cross gestures
on her temples and across her abdomen while muttering something. I thought
eldest sister must have TB . I have never known anyone with TB so how can
I know for sure?
The sun is nearer the water. Off in one direction is a Catholic church inanother direction is a Hindu temple and in front of that is a Gandhi memorialbuilding. Out on a rock in the ocean is a recently built temple. People camefrom all over the world to see it. Tourist buses were lined up in a market
place . Boats at a dock were crowded with people going and returning fromthe rock temple . The two small children from the hotel when I first arrived
stood in front of me. The little girl has dimples like Shirley Temple . They
are both holding shell necklaces in their hands. Although they are exactly
like the ones the adults sell , the children sell them for much less.
Tourists are waiting huddled on the rocks for the sun to set. I am watching
Antonia and the others selling their shells. Some people buy them and others
push the shell people rudely away. I sit far away. The sun sinks in to the ocean
and is swallowed up by waves . Everyone is standing and applaUding. Whatwould happen if the sun never set, I thOUght, wiping the perspiration frommy forehead - I stood and applauded.
The next morning I brought saris for Antonia and her daughters and sisters.
Then I brought her to my hotel room and ask her to stay with me until I
leave . I do this by pointing to the floor then the two beds and then to her
and me. She agrees and we put tlle mattresses on the floor next to one another.
In a while we are bathing . She fills a bucket with water and pours a dipperof water over me then over her. She's upset because I have pubic hair andruns her hand straight across my pubic bone and says in English "Blade." Iknow as many words in Tamil as she does in English. Our communicationmust come from other sources than the spoken word. She has never gone toschool and cannot write her name.
When we dress she says again " Blade" and disappears into the night. I
think she said she was coming back but I don't know. I can hear the people
in the kitchen banging pots and talking loudly and rapidly . A young couple
across the hall are arguing and a baby is crying somewhere.
She was disgusted because I have pubic hair. Outside my window thequarter moon is lighting a Line of yellow across tlle water. LittLe lizards thatmake a clicking noise crawl up and down the walls.
"Madam! Madam!" It's Antonia calling me from the window . She hasbrought a blade so I undress again.
I am standing with my legs apart and she is bending down and I can hear
the blade scratching the hair. I am very nervous- she pats me on the leg a
few times to make me relax .

40

After all my body hair from my neck down has been removed , we sit ona quilt on the mattresses. With pen and paper r am showing her how many
years old I am. She knows how to count to five in English. Two rupees madam
four ruR,ees sir (for a string. of shells). She .also knows ~e wo~d christJ?as. I
draw straight lines-one christmas , two christmases- until I arrive at thirty-fivechristmases- she is also thirty-five christmases old. r learned many things fromher those few sunrises we had together. Her mother died when she was verysmall; before she died she had a hex sign tattooed on Antonia's arm. She remembered it hurt. Her first child died as an infant. Her son was twelve andher daughter eighteen. She did not like carbonated water and was gettingbored with the shell-selling business. When she had her period she tied herpetticoat up between her legs under her sari.
She gave me something to chew - betel nut leaf and tobacco dipped insomething. Minutes after chewing she twirled her finger over her head androlled her eyes - "Oh y-e-a-h!" I realized I was floating. She was laughing. I
flew across the mattress to check her teeth. They were perfect except for
the red stains from the betel nut. Although she was full build there was not
an ounce of flabby tissue on her. She was the color of warm chocolate milk
on a cool evening and as sweet as coconut oil and I drank her up .
Sometime during the night she wrapped her arms around my head andwhispered "sister sister!" in my ear. She had chosen me as her sister. We weretwins sharing the same womb and our life experience only began then.
There was a knock at the door. A turbaned man brought our breakfast. scrambled eggs, toast , rice, tea for her, coffee for me. We had both bathed
before eating. I opened the curtain and we sat on chairs at a table under thewindow watching the seagulls circling over foamy breakers. We giggled oversilly things-the fork neither of us used , the sari that I didn't wrap properly.
Then she taught me what two turbans together was in Tamil. Another word
for two saris together. As for a sari and a turban I had to say the word in anear whisper several times and she would bite her lip and blush. Two turbans
and two saris was something she didn't seem to mind my repeating out loud .
So r surmise from this (mind you this is my own assumption) a sari and aturban together is a dirty word.
Since the written word and the spoken were limited in our communicating
I was only able to create an ancient Matriarchal village in my imagination
where Antonia and I must first have met each other.
The few sunrises with Antonia went by much too quickly. During ourtime together we went to the market place, I learned to clean my teeth withmy fingers , we took a boat ride to the rock temple and took a bus to thenearest town and made friends with a woman who only spoke Hindi andwas on vacation and had twelve children in northern India. We collected sea
shells from the rocks and shared so many things that people share when they
understand that real wealth cannot be hoarded.

41

Maricla Moyano

THE BLUE COAT

None of the students at school knew my father had died. I didn't tell anyone . My teacher , Mr. Nichols , knew because my mother had told him. But henever talked about it. I didn't want to talk to anyone at school about it. Even
my mother's family didn 't talk to me about it. American are embarrassed bygrief. I only got one letter , from a cousin's grandmother in New Orleans, say ing how sorry she was at the news. I kept that letter very carefully in my top
dresser drawer, under my socks . Very quiet, I carried the pain like a lead weightin my chest all the time. On any blank piece of paper, I would write, "My
father is dead. My father is dead. My father is dead ," once even writing it on
the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.
The sight of my mother 's new-born baby , my half-brother born three days
before Father died, gave me relief. He was a beautiful gurgling baby, fat andblond, and watching him , taking care of him , made me feel better. When he wasborn , I had sent a telegram to my sisters back in Argentina , "Mother had a boy.
Both fine." Sometimes I wondered if Father had opened the telegram and it
upset him so he had the accident.
The days were very gray: January in New York. I would walk to school
every morning ten blocks downtown beneath the tracks of the Third Avenue
El, bums staggering drunk on the sidewalks or curled up helpless in doorways,
their feet bare , scabbed , calloused a deep yellow .
Mr. Nichols taught the seventh and eighth grades in one classroom and hedecided I would do both in one year and graduate that June. It was a "progressive" school I went to , so that I could do that. I was there on a scholarship. Most of the students were Jewish and their parents Leftists and some of
the teachers even belonged to the Communist Party . There was an uproar later
when the school was investigated by Senator Joe McCarthy. A Black girl named
Leslie and I were the only Christians in the class . Being so outnumbered reinforced my faith so that I even wore a crucifix to school.
I sat next to a boy named Earl who had huge feet. He liked me and always
asked me to dance when we had square dancing . I had shed my jeans and wore
skirts to school all the time and for square dancing I would wear full ones withpetticoats. Many of the boys liked me. But Earl was the one to ask me on myfirst date . His family gave a picnic for the class out at their country place andhe asked me to stay later and go to the movies with him . We went to see "TheThing ," about a monster , and sat in a deserted theatre in Leonia, New Jersey,side by side, rigid and silent with shyness .
After semester break, in February of 1952 , there was a new girl in theclass. Her name was Sally. She was shiningly pretty , with long curly dark hairand lively brown eyes . She took ballet lessons and bounced when she walked,
42

so that her hair, too, bounced up and down on her back . At first we stayed
away from each other, watching each other. She sat next to the Black girlin the class, Leslie, and became best friends with Leslie, who had been mybest friend. Once, when everyone else was out of the room I saw a note on
her desk between her and Leslie about me, and I read it. On the note , Sally
asked, ''What is Calvert like?" And Leslie answered, "Calvert's a flirt , but
she's more of a boy." That hurt me, because I had stopped wearing pants
and given up my tomboy ways except during sports. I was captain of thesoftball team when we played by the East River.
Sally came from Hollywood, California , where her father was a movie
producer. But her parents were divorced and she had just come from spending a year in Europe with her mother and stepfather. Now she lived withthem on Central Park West. I learned all that listening to her talk with theother girls when we would walk up and down by the East River near theplaygrounds. We didn't talk to each other directly.
I felt close to her because her parents were divorced, like mine , and because she knew Italy and France , knew more than New York or the repetitious landscapes of America with its sterile Main Streets and its little uniform towns, the way I did, coming from Argentina . I felt we shared knowledge of other ways to live, more pleasing, Latin ways.
I had learned that being "Spanish" or Puerto Rican in New York was
looked down on, the way Negroes and Mexican migrant workers were looked
down on in the South. My grandfather had had some Mexican field handson his plantation in Mississippi , and they were treated as badly as the Negroes
and looked as ragged and had the same burning hurt look in their black eyes.
I didn't want Sally to look down on me. I wanted her to know I was white,as white as any European, so whenever the conversation veered anywhere
relevant, I would explain how most Puerto Ricans were a mixture of Spanish
and Indian, that the Spanish were white Europeans (I had found most Americans so ignorant of geography that some thought Argentina was near Albania) who had crossed the Atlantic. I drew a map in the dirt once to get thatacross. And I would tell the girls how my father's family was of pure Spanish descent, and how my mother was of English descent, so that there could
be no question of my whiteness . Of course, I knew that by not being Jewish
I was one up on Sally in religious pecking orders. I had learned that already,back in Argentina,which was drenched in anti-Semitism and its own brandof racism. The signals were confusing, but one thing was clear to me by thirteen: the only really correct thing to be in the U.S.A. was a White, AngloSaxon Protestant, preferably Episcopalian. That's what my mother was. But
I wasn't.
At Recess time a bus would take us to the East River playgrounds. If wedidn't play sports, we would walk up and down by the East River, six girls
abreast, another girl or two always between Sally and me. There were fourother girls in the class but the boys really only liked Sally and me. They
would tease Sally on the bus rides back to school from the playground , pull
her long hair and tell her it was like Brillo .
The boys expected that Sally and I would dislike each other and be jealous of each other over them. But one day Mr. Nichols asked us all to write
43

down on a piece of paper who we liked best in the class and would like tosit next to. I wrote down Sally. After he collected all the answers, Mr. Nichols read the results of his poll aloud . And it turned out that Sally had written my name. I was speechless and shy with delight. We moved the two blue
tables that were our desks together. From then on we were inseparable .
Sally wore a blue wool coat. The coat racks were outside our schoolroom,in the hall . Every morning when I came to school, I would check to see if
her coat were there . Ail life would quicken for me at the glad sight of thatblue coat, but if it weren 't there , my heart sank and the day without her
was long and pointless.
Sally was fascinated by how much I read. I was reading Anna Karenina
that spring, and every morning she would ask me how many pages I had
progressed. In a way , I didn 't like that, because it made me self-conscious
about my reading, conscious every time I turned a page. But I liked her admiration. She was very bright and soon Mr. Nichols had her , too , doing seventh and eighth grades together , so that she would also graduate that June .
We sat side by side in the bright classroom all day , doing our work. Outside the windows we could see the spire of st. Mark's in the Bowery andthe old churchyard. I painted that view in Art class and a teacher from another class saw it and wanted to buy it. I sold it to her for fifteen dollars. I
was enormously proud. But I wasn 't at all sure I wanted to become a painter. Sally and I would talk about what we would be. She took ballet lessons
and her father was a Hollywood producer. He had something to do with"Singin' in the Rain ." Her stepfather was an actor, so dance or theatre or
movies were in her background and were all possibilities for her . She also
played the piano . Whatever we would become , we thought it would be something artistic .
After school, at home , my mind would be flooded with thoughts of Sally ,so that I began to write about her in my diary : "there are so many things
that I want to say to her , but I can't seem to be able to say anything. She
probably thinks I'm very dull and uninteresting .... Yet I like Sally terribly,
perhaps just for that qUality. We have the effect of making the other pickcarefully for thoughts to speak out."
We went through every school day that spring side by side: to sing inchorus , down to the basement for lunch , to Art , everywhere . And we began
to notice two boys who were also inseparable . But we noticed that they sometimes held hands . We knew there was something wrong about that. Sally
would prod me with her elbow during Chorus and whisper , " Look at them ,they 're holding hands again ." There was something about them that made us
uneasy with each other. The two boys weren't "sissies." There was no word
for whatever it was that was wrong , no real concept.
That spring the class took a trip to the ,country for a few days. We leftby bus , all of us excited and talking away so loudly that Mr. Nichols kept
clapping his hands to demand quiet. Fo r some reason , Sally and [ didn't sit
side by side , but one behind the other. She turned to me , talking , her browneyes alight , and 1 had my bare arms stretched out on her seat ahead of me .
As sh e talked , she stroked my arms for a while with her h and. As I sat there,44

looking at her, the blood rushed to my head and I felt my face all hot andred. It was awkward. I didn't know why I was so embarrassed , and we wen t
on talking quickly to cover it all up and forget it.
It was beautiful in the country , tender spring leaves on the trees upstate.
It was now May , so all the landscape was a light new green . We stayed at a
farmhouse big enough to put up all fourteen students plus Mr. Nichols andthe driver. Sally and I slept in a small attic bedroom , along with Leslie , inthree separate beds all in a row .
Sally and I both loved the country so that I told her about my grandparents' farm in Virginia, "Lower Bremo," and invited her to come down
there for a while with me. I would write my grandmother for permission .
Sally said..she 'd love to come. It became my dream , my obsession , for Sally
to go to "Lower Bremo" with me, and I had visions of us riding horseback
there together and swimming in the lake .
When we got back to the city, I broached the question of Sally's going
to "Lower Bremo" to my mother. She was pessimistic, didn't think my grandmother would say yes. That night I wrote down in my diary , "Mother is jealous of Sally."
That spring I would make my First Communion in the Roman Catholic Church. My mother had become a devout Episcopalian in the last few
years and I usually went with her to her church, but out of love and loyalty to my dead father and my lost homeland I had decided that I not only
wanted to be called by the nickname he had called me , I also wanted to remain a Roman Catholic . It didn't matter to me that Father had never goneto Mass and was staunchly anti-clerical .
I studied the Catechism after school at a convent on Stuyvesant Squarewith an old nun named Sister Patrick. The convent always smelled of foodcooking and I would sit there, my stomach churning with hunger, while
Sister Patrick drilled me. She found me such an apt student that she put me
to teaching the Catechism in Spanish to some Puerto Rican children.
The day came when I had to make my first confession. I was to receive
my First Communion the next day . Sister Patrick went with me , taking me
to a church in the neighborhood. She had rehearsed me in what to say:"Bless me Father, for I have sinned." Still , I was nervous. When I went into
the little dark booth I could see through the screen enough to make out afat, bloated-looking priest. I had to tell him all my sins for the thirteen yearsof my life: lying, how I used to steal money , books , and toys when I was
little , anger, how I masturbated . At that point he spoke up and asked mefor details : how often and how long I masturbated , where I did it. He hada low sensual voice. His whispering sounded obscene. It was very hard forme to talk. He disgusted me. He upset me so much that I hurried throughthe rest of the confession so as to leave.
Once outside I remembered some venial sins I had meant to confess . I
thought I couldn't receive Holy Communion still in a sinful state, so 1 went
to another church , confessed to another, easier priest and finally considered
myself fully absolved.
The next morning we went to the convent with my mother and stepfather , taking a taxi five blocks through the pouring rain so that my white dress

45

wouldn't get drenched. With a whole flock of little girls much younger thanI, all of us in white dresses, I received my first communion. I was terriftedof biting the wafer so I waited carefully for it all to disintegrate in my mouth
before swallowing it. When I got home, I wrote down in my diary: "I felt
very well . I think God really came into me ."My mother, stepfather, baby half-brother, his Uruguayan nurse and I all
lived in a small four-room apartment on Eighteenth Street, off Third Avenue,
near Gramercy Park. We sublet it furnished, and so had to keep on the walls
the paintings executed by the owner. They were all lush tropical scenes, verystrong green against the pink walls. But it was sunny and airy, all the windows
overlooking yards with trees and flowers. I had my own little bedroom that
I loved. Sometimes 1 would sit and read there with my baby half-brother andmy dachshund dog "Leibe" lying on my bed in the spring sunlight. But I knewthat Sally's apartment was much grander so I never asked her, or anyone elsefrom school, to come home with me.
As the end of school and graduation approached, an urgency developedin me. I wanted to see Sally all the time , after school , too. She asked me to
go to her ballet class one day and I was delighted watching her, her bodytaut and strong, beautiful, erect. Her legs were very full and muscular, likea dancer's , unlike mine , which were skinnier. Sally would glance at me every
so often, her face very serious. I knew she wanted me to be impressed, andI was. But I also knew she wasn't the best. The teacher kept correcting theway she moved her back and stomach. I suffered for Sally then.
Afterwards we went to Schrafft's with her mother and stepfather for 'icecream. I was excited to meet them, to know more about her life , to be closer. Sally's mother was slender and good-looking, very direct and open, asking
me about my life, interested, so I felt quite at ease and liked them both.
They talked about their plans. They didn't know whether they'd move backto California. Neither Sally nor I knew where we'd be going to school nextyear.
I would ask Sally to do different things with me, go to see Jean Renoir's
movie, "The River," and she would always accept, but then would break a
lot of our dates. I knew that she had a friend named Liz who went to another school, and I thought she probably did a lot of things with her, and I
was jealous.
A few days after graduation, Sally asked me to come to her house fordinner and to stay overnight. I accepted, trying to keep my joy calm andmy voice from trembling on the phone. When I arrived, she showed me around the big apartment on Central Park West. She had a big bedroom with
twin beds, where we would sleep . In the living room, she had her own grandpiano, a Steinway. She played on it for me a while, scores from Hollywood
and Broadway musicals. Then we helped her mother cook dinner in the kitchen, all talking. They told me about their life in Italy and France, about aboy who had been Sally's love there. I told them about Argentina and mycousin Raul, who had been my love.
After dinner, when we were going to sleep, we lay in bed, still talking to
her mother, who sat on Sally's bed. We told her about the two boys at school46

who held hands . Sally asked her, "Are they what's called homosexuals? What's
wrong with them?""There's nothing wrong with them," her mother said. "Nothing. They 'll
just outgrow it in time. It's nothing to worry about," she looked very directly at Sally. Sally's eyes looked very bright and intense.
After her mother left, Sally turned off the light. We lay there in the dark.
Suddenly, Sally said, "See .. . it's nothing to worry about." I didn't reply. We
didn't talk any further. Soon, we were both asleep.
We spent the whole next day together, going first down to our school,
where all the girls in the class were supposed to meet. But no one was there ,so we walked from East Eleventh Street across to Greenwich Village. Around
Washington Square, we strolled in the sunlight, looking at the annual outdoor
exhibition. We thought most of the paintings corny. We sat on the fountain,
eating ice cream and talking about how nice it was to be exactly the sameheight. We were both still growing, though, so were afraid we might not staythe same. After we had coffee at "The Peacock," we dropped in on a pianist
friend of my family's, then on a painter friend of Sally's family . Still , wedidn't want to separate , so I asked Sally to come with me to my aunt Kitty's
uptown. My aunt was rich and had a big apartment on the Upper East Side.
My mother and baby half-brother were up there spending the day. We stayed
there all afternoon . After Sally left, my mother and aunt said that Sally was
charming. "She has a very feminine charm," my aunt said. "I think she's agood influence on you." I thought my aunt must be referring to the factthat all my school friends before Sally had been fellow-tomboys.
After that day together , I wrote in my diary: "As our nurse in Argentina
used to say to me, when I love somebody , I kill them with love. I want to
see Sally so much that I hope she's not tired of me."I had written my grandmother long ago for permission to take Sally down
to Virginia with me, but still hadn't received a reply. A week went by without our seeing each other. Finally, Sally called one day and said she could
go out to Long Island with us to visit some family friends out there . They
had a baby girl a little older than my half-brother. Like my family, they werevery religious, and I wondered how Sally would take to them . But it turned
out we all went on a picnic, so while the grown-ups talked about Evelyn
Underhill , Simone Weil, and Teilhard de Chardin, Sally and I talked mostly
to each other and played with the two babies in the grass. She looked so
pretty to me, I watched her all the time, her sparkly eyes, the soft down on
her cheeks. I told her I still hadn 't heard from my grandmother. She sat therewith her skirt tucked neatly under her legs, suddenly looking very somber. ''We
might move back to California," she said. Then we looked in each other's eyes along time , silent. I wanted to touch her , her hand, but didn 't dare .
Atter a while, we went for a walk in tlle nearby woods. As we moved along under the lush June foliage, Sally suddenly took my hand and held it
firmly. "It's all right," she said . "It's nothing to worry about." We walked
on together, holding hands . I could feel my heart throbbing in my throat.
We said nothing more. When we got back to the picnic, we resumed playing
with the babies . There were long evening shadows on the grass by then .
Soon, we started off for home.
47

After that picnic , two weeks went by with still no word from my grandmother. Every time I called Sally, she had other plans, sometimes with Liz ,and couldn't see me . One day I wrote in my diary , "I am not quite as obsessed with Sally as I have been the last few days. I believe it is healthier. I
love her very much always, though."
Finally, I accepted an invitation to Massachusetts to visit family friends
who had a girl my age. I had a miserable time , longing for Sally , all I could
do all day to comfort myself was read Charles Morgan's The Voyage. Conversation seemed false and trite and the hostility between the girl, Rita , and me
grew until finally we had a fight. She told me I was a boring bookworm . I
told her she was boring , too , stupid and silly . Mercifully , I left the next day.
When I got home , my mother told me that Sally had called while I wasin Massachusetts to say they were leaving for California . She had left the
day before I got home, with her mother , stepfather , and my arch rival ,. her
friend Liz. I was stunned , speechless .
My mother handed me my mail. There were letters from my sisters in Ar. gentina and a letter from my grandmother. In it, she said she'd be happy tohave Sally and me come down to "Lower Bremo ," that she was delighted I
had such a good friend that I loved , the first friend I had wanted to bring
down there with me , and that Sally could stay two weeks or more if she
wanted . I sat on the couch in my bedroom reading the letter and tears poured slowly down my cheeks.

SIGNS OF BIRTH : CHANGINGThe crabsidles slowly
sidewaysinto experience ,overshell protecting
soft underflesh,slit eyes
concealing
the gleam of risk .
Still , cusps and zodiacs
are not determinant.
The unexpected ,unpredictable
dolphin leaps of faithcan be performed
as wellby creaturesof the sandand earth .

- Peggy Kornegger
48

Anne Lee

MORE OF THE SAME

1 begin this now , and here , and in pencil , largely because I have no illusions,or not many, at any rate, and certainly none having to do with timelessness or
the prospect of posterity. Not I. Not possibly. 1 begin in pencil because nothob gob lined by consistency , foolish or otherwise , there will be things, no doubt,
I will wish to erase in the interest of accuracy or of other, less noble motives .
1 will want to erase , no doubt , and yet , I begin. Albeit in pencil, I do , at least
begin.
Listen. I am nearly thirty two. For the first two thirds of my life, I was
republican and chaste. I attended church, and flossed after meals. Since then1 have married and had a child and married again . Details bore me. I have abandoned flossing.
I have no illusions- or precious few . This is a document , nothing more. A
document , because that is what remains when the winnowing is done , when therhetoric is removed. There is little excitement here , no neatly plotted twists .
Do not expect , therefore, to be entertained . I have been nowhere and murdered no one , but I have switched to ink ; to amuse myself, I suppose.
It doesn't matter. The details of my life bore even me. Especially me. The
husbands and lovers and atrocities and meals , the wounds and stitches collected randomly, at random , without sense or purpose , senselessly in fact, sothat they are blurred somehow by both proximity and time . The details of
my life are bOring, or their repetition leaves much to be desired. They seemed
important at the time, as this does not, now that my illusions are purged atlast.
It was not easy. Nor is this. The risk is awful ; I persevere. It scarcely matters. It matters not at all. 1 drive no ambulance in war. I will not be bronzed
for this, (in the event that I survive ,) nor will any of my comrades, sisters , wecall them. Sisters . We have abandoned the brotherhood of man, and the causesof war and peace , as surely as we (I) have abandoned flOSSing , and we callourselves sisters, and arm ourselves as best we can .
The decision to become a revolutionary is more painful perhaps than thereality of the trenches. There is a moment always , however brief, when one
believes there is a choice , some liberty, some deliberation to be got through,some middle ground between the dilemma's horns . The illusion , again , offreedom; of choice or rational thought ; of reasonable , rational commitment. Ibalk at torture. I prefer to live . I even abhor violence, both in theory and inpractice .
Spouseless, she watched the sunset , with the ferocious concentration usuaUy reserved for vehicular assembly and faulty plumbing. She had missed yearsof sunsets, weeping over meatloaves and stove top stuffing, running baths, tidy-49

ing up. Just the usual. Her door was framed in metal, and the peeling stuccoof the porch obscured all but sky and sun and treetops and utility poles , somehow arranged in such a way as to give the illusion of ships in port , arrived
somehow without benefit of wind or sail. The mizzin mast.
Her childhood, such as it was , had been fairly evenly divided between Little
Women , Bomba the Jungle Boy, and Because of the Lockwoods, the three
scripts , like multiple vitamins, providing in concert all she needed to survive.
I cannot wait for the interruptions to cease in order to begin. There is no
one left whom I can bludgeon ; forging (hacking) my way through his-her presence ,I persevere .
I was talking about interruptions.
But listen . I have seasonal changes . From the first of October until the middle of February, I am as manic as I'll ever be. The rest of the time I'm depressed ,except for the month of July and the last day of school , and the first day of school
and the purchase of school supplies , and as many religious holidays as I can muster. Fall and Winter, then, are my rewards for surviving the rest of the year.
How can this be but disjointed?
In the spirit of unity , in the interest of sense , you must supply tlle details yourself. For me, the details are without interest. Our lives are all thesame , the crises , the maintenance , the intermittent anguish, the occasionalrush of power, are all the same , and easy enough to supply.
I nibble the conflicts like gingerbread , fearful of discovery , but my enthusiasm is engaged elsewhere .
It is morning now, and I am nearly thirty-two . I have cats, I have a child.
My principal recreation is reading . My favorite color is yellow, followed by
red and rust and purple and mauve and gray . I have .a fondness for dancing
bears and camels and ducks and pigs , and also enjoy rabbits , though they areperhaps less interesting than one would suppose.
I have never been a whiner , nor is whining a quality I admire in others .
Born and bred in stoicism, my pain and anger have frolicked silently on thehead of a pin. Like numbered jokes , they are familiar ; like dough rising, they
resist the ultimate compression. I will not refer to them again .
Compare me to myself. I have no body here. r have always been a body.
r have better things to do.
I am at my best in restaurants. When he lives with his father , I will eat inrestaurants with my book. Untrammeled , I will mine each nugget in thestream , and eavesdrop shamelessly. The book will be my cover.
It will be a change. A chance to see families : repeating themselves end lessly even unto the third and fourth generation.
In forty years , my family produced a rapist , a sadist , a setter of fires , a
piano salesperson, a ministerial student, a father of four (and parent of none),and an agnostic feminist socialist lesbian separatist revolutionary witch. I
have one brother, and I am , as I may have mentioned, almost thirty-two.
When she returned from England , she found the shower had been installed
as promised, and none of her plants had died .
It is not the labels which upset me.
Fear of the marketplace. Which just about covers it. I have a friend who
has to lie down in the back seat of the car to keep from screaming. Sometimes I scream on the freeway . I have another friend who screams too. Some-50

times we scream on purpose, and sometimes it just happens when we're especially tired.
Maybe twice a day I think I can't move/go on, and I have to sit there until I can move again. He understands that now , and wai ts for me, and it ismuch easier than when he was a baby because now he can open the cans .
He will be the world's best-read capitalist. And I will be his mother.
Today I bought a radio, its antennae superfluous and phallic as a summer's
day. I have yet to extend it, but the reception is excellent, nonetheless. I
will listen to music of the Renaissance.
The worst rapes are the ones in which the victim is tied up. That is thefirst thing we tell them in self defense. We say : "Never let anybody tie youup ." It is a good rule.
When she returned from England, the shower was already installed andnone of her plants had died.
I must work quickly, while there is. still time. Last night I sat with mynew radio . I sat in my chair and held it in my lap, and it was like a miracle.
I am not foolish. I do not expect to rest. There is none here, and precious little there either, as far as I can tell. No rest. No peace. Only the medicinal agonies of regimental bliss , only the pain of early risings and takingsof air: The punishment for bungled escapes, a fate next which all others
pale-dragged back screaming and clapped into irons, into chronological rigidity, the imagination flayed past bearing. I am not foolish . I balk at torture.
I prefer to live .
The odds were impossible, worse than ever, and still they left in droves.
Taking their children with them, they sorted themselves into apartments andhotel rooms and carports and tents , jettisoning toys and clothes and appliances (major and minor) and whatever badges of respectability could not be
reduced to the size of a rain bonnet or converted into ready cash, and they
hesitated not at all over their choices ; they had been planning this for years.
At first, no one noticed: Their husbands, least of all. A moment's irritation, a couple of Saturdays with the kids, and the men relaxed into indifference, and remarried quickly , dependent on their prey.
My cats sleep in the daytime, and protect me at night. In the daytime , I
mostly protect myself.
This is all true. I want you to know that. This is not the entrails of a million fortune cookies laid end to end, this is all true.
Already, this is too long. It twitches away from me, or leaps from thearms of my chair and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I am vagueiy embarrassed by all of this , as you must surely know. In the absence of detail,there is only more of the same, and I do not expect rest or justice (I am notfoolish, after all), but more of the same is not a thought to cling to withanything approaching tenacity . More of the same , in short, is small comfort.
More of the same. More of the same. More of the same.
Chapter Two: The Wedding Night.
Compare me to myself.
I have scars on my back from fucking in wheatfields .
f often lie without meaning to. Sometimes lying is merely (simply) a matter of completing one's sentences when one has not been sure where they51
were going.

My mother , who has never for a moment considered suicide , has recently
taken to putting stickers on her letters . The latest says: " Do not be worried
and upset...believe in God ."And there you have it.
1 am nouveau poor. 1 have used my leisure to think and to fall apart. I
oppress millions daily, just by continuing to live and eat and breathe.
My coffee is picked by children , and I have never held you, except inparting.
1 am better today .
You have been warned to expect no excitement, but an occasional anecdote may not be counted amiss , and may actually serve to lighten an otherwise dismal narrative .
Listen. 1 could write about myself forever. Everyone does, after all. Or
has . And one sees the little broken off bits and chips and shards and scrapsof the author, (and what queer fancies they have after all), and over andover, and one thing at a time, one tries to get at the meaning, to make senseof it all, and there is nothing, nothing. Cruel hints only. Like innumerable
clumps of nitrogen clinging to our literary roots, the connections of one individual to another are every bit as difficult to fathom as anything else .
One reads , and the mind races ahead , grasping at straws and rearranging
them, forming patterns which will inevitably be destroyed before the bottomof the page . Nothing sits still for a moment. There is always the past to beconsidered , and the future , and the mind races on ahead , or rumbles along
behind, and the book is laid aside in the excitement.
Stripped of all metaphor, it is cold here, also.
Cheap chivalry and sloth aside, I am daily bound to you in ways proclaiming your status as exception .
And 1 have never held you except in parting .
Tied up as a child , I flirt with freedom , triggered by buildings and offramps and guard rails and walls . For years, I have been alive, when what I
wanted was to be deaL and I have never regretted my repeated attempts atlongevity . Like axe-murderers , 1 regret nothing .
This is all so slight , and plotless and boring. We've heard it all in the deadof night, and there's nothing really to be said. Only the little things. A hand book. A guidebook. An unrecorded dial-a-prayer for times of stress. One
fears , of course, to call, unless one has a plan. One hates, even then, to bethought frivolous, I suppose. I know it for a fact. And one calls, of course ,to be talked out of it, which is the real reason for my reluctance. I wantsomeone who will talk me into it, someone to say oh absolutely , what agood idea, just put down the phone and do it now and 111 wait right here.
What a good idea.
The appeal of earthquake is that the instructions are so easy to follow.
Stay where you are. (The catatonic's dream.) None of this running off toshelters or moving to basements or southwest corners or higher ground. Stay
where you are. Naked , at the first tremor , my lover puts on her pants. I
laugh . Shirtless and frightened , she is , and lovely . I stay where I am.
This is not intended to depress. 1 am alive , after all. I am writing this down.
After all, I am alive, and 1 would not depress either of us for the world. I

52

would like to help you, as others have helped me , as I have been helped by
my child and my cats and the morning mail , by grass and mountains andpigeons and plants . I would like to help you as others have helped me , as I
have been helped , but it is not easy. I write this down. It is my job , after
all . My job is to stay alive as long as I possibly can , and with as much graceas I can muster. I have no time for hobbies .
Sometimes I lie without meaning to, and sometimes I merely lie.
Chapter Three: My Life is Over.
I do not have altars at my weddings.
The warning is clear enough. Self-absorption is to be avoided at any cost.
Self-absorption is easy . Anybody can do it. Even women. Especially women ,say the folk who tell us it is to be avoided at any cost. Say the folk who
dismiss our writers as "feminine ," and our geniuses as "androgynous." Less
than human. Less than men. But I digress , and you must humor me , because
it is the only way either of us will survive.
You must humor me , but you must be patient , too . The events of mylife are not yet mine. I have moved often, and am widely known. I would
tell you if I could, but since they are not yet mine, they seem unreal , evento me . We've been through all this before . I have explained it already , andyet you fidget. Listen . Your life is exactly like mine .
When we were married , then , we felt what? Resignation and disbelief,
mostly (my life is over) and the weight , of course , of the guest list, and then ,at bottom , we felt : If it doesn't work out there's always divorce . And wewere right , of course , and we spent our days in school at the office scrubbing floors having babies , and our nights trying to remember the simple solution we had so successfully repressed since our wedding day .
But enough of that. You know the chorus. Your experience has beenvalidated . You are not alone . There are others, and if that ·doesn't comfort
you in your hour of need , then all I can say is that you're probably just resentful and bitter as hell and withering away like crazy out there in yourslum , and probabiy never liked men anyway , and what makes you think theworld owes you a living. The world doesn't owe you shit, lady .
Pick out the ones with children.
But enough of that. The secret of overcoming one's fears and coping withlife Uollying oneself along), is to stop oneself whenever one thinks an un pleasant thought , or hears, as it were , a discouraging word , and to substitutea pleasant thought, a delightful image , or some other form of gratification.
My own personal favorites are England , seat belts , and folded clothes.
Self-absorption is when you are so intimate nobody knows what you'retalking about, or cares , either , and it is to be avoided at all costs. But I'mreal enough, whether you like it or not. Self-absorption and femininity aside ,I'm real enough. Real as a Shakespearian Jew.
I'm lining you up now , all of you , like the woman on Romper Room ,with her magic mirror, and I can see the way your hair curls or doesn't andI see yo ur shoes and your children and I know where you live.
Even in California , there are prob lems .
We love and hate ourselves and them and us, and locked in private struggles , emerge as groups and groups and groups, like waves or shingles or almonds on a cake.
53

I distrust images, even this, (as the saying goes), but what else do I have,after all. What else can I present as proof or visual aid? And must we go
through it all again? Who can be blamed for clinging to Heidi or Gone With
the Wind? They're by women after all . And barring that, we've had hundreds of years of literary pain. Do we need all that again? Can we examine it
without succumbing to it? It hasn't gone away. We fill our notebooks now;we write it down. A million monkeys, writing ourselves into corners and out
again. Because it's there .
I began life screaming.
Chapter Four: My Life Begins.
She found salvation everywhere. Even when she was not looking for it.
Especially then.
When I am better, I can stop writing this. I will write something else entirely, when I am better and can stop writing this. Chockful of spaniels andasphodels, perhaps, but something different, something else. Something different. I am learning the names of the flowers against the day when I will
be able to use them, when I can put them in something. I am learning thenames of the flowers as fast as I can. Do I bore you? Do you have lapels?
Can I hold you here?
I have scars on my back from fucking in wheatfields, and the blood rushes
to all of my wounds, the moment I pick up a pen . You are real to me now,and it is difficult to let you go for that reason . You have been real to me,
and I reiterate our touchings like a trail of crumbs. For years, I have mademessages with the bowl of my spoon, idly, at first, and fmally, with conviction, and even at this distance, you are heart-breaking.
I think now, of green, and the milking of goats, and my work is cut out
for me. I am a reader, as I have perhaps m~ntioned, and my list is exponential and infinite and a solace always, and will see me through as many lifetimes as there are.
My first lover, my first almost lover, the one I loved, who was older, andhad already invented Shakespeare and probably the Bible, by the time hewas twenty-two, was made entirely of scraps of twine, tied endlessly together and wound and wound. I decorated him like an Xmas tree . He lived in abasement.
I have not found it necessary to decorate my friends. I have married often and for the usual reasons, and I remain naive. Out of bed, for instance,
I am intolerant and appalled, enraged by my fascism and theirs, and occasionally unutterably bored. I am a good listener. Predictability distresses me, orpredictability in the repetitive sense.
But this is not important. What is important, is that I persevere, that I
participate in the little acts of faith which pass for maintenance. That I buy
food as though I'll be here to eat it, and books as though to read them;that I make plans in all sincerity, expecting them to be fulfilled.
I persevere, and if I sometimes hide things, close off, shut down, withdraw, it is simply that my plans are smaller , that my plan is survival, survival first, survival most of all. It is a pleasure now, to make those tiny plans,
to hear my tiny voice, determined now, giving the order to stay alive. No
biggie, as they say . Just the usual. Stay alive . More of the same.

S4

Anne LeeYOUR PLACE OR MINE

"I've got a ride," she said into the phone. "As far as Denver. Will you
come?"
There was a silence, and a crackle, and finally the voice of her friend,from the depths of another phone booth, two thousand miles away . "When?
Yes. How long can you stay?"
Strange to hear the voice again. Distant, unreal, to be expected . Their
voices pressed flat against the window of their excitement. Normal... Exactly normal.
She went back to the house , and began at once to pack, unable to sit
still, the mixture of her joy and fear translating itself to movement. Seven
years. Christ.
Two pairs of jeans. Four T-shirts. Underwear. Toothbrush. Hairbrush.
Mail-order bride.
She twisted her hair into a knot on top of her head, and secured it witha piece of leather and an orange stick. She had not been sure how she would
feel about it , not sure how either of them would feel , and her nervousness
was its own answer. She was not going to visit an old friend-she was meeting a lover.
She had left her husband almost as soon as she was sure of her directionas soon as she was reasonably sure that whatever support or hope or love
there was for her would come from women. As soon as she was sure shewanted to live with those things , and not without them. She had gone as far
as this house full of women, and no farther. Until now.
There were times when the fact of her celibacy amused her, but sometimes, she felt it as a reproach , a giant inconsistency which mocked both
politics and need. Her transitions were all in her mind . She lived and worked
with women , and with their children , as well as her own , and accepted theirstrength and friendship , envying the lovers , even as she held herself back.
There was plenty of time , they said . Everybody's different. Plenty of time.
But the envy had turned to longing , and friendship was not enough. She
wanted more than that now. She needed more than that , and she wanted itfrom her friend .
She tried now , to smooth her excitement, to arrange her expectations as
modestly as possible , lest she be crushed by the weight of rejection, andstill the joy bubbled its way beyond her fear , and she was impatient to beoff.
Denver. Going to Denver. She repeated the words softly to herself as she
carried her suitcase out to the car and put it carefully into the back seat.
" ['m going ," she said. " I'm really going ."They drove straight through, coaxing the battered Toyota over the rough55

spots, Katherine's hands clenched on the steering wheel, knuckles gleaming
whitely, as her companion slept. Crossing the desert, there were stars, andseeing them, she struggled to remember the freckled constellations of Lydia's
skin, the outlines of her face, her hair.
They went back a long way, she and Lydia. They had met in a logic
class, which they had barely passed, even with tutoring, and in the years
since , had made their way through four husbands and three children , andhalf a dozen more or less academic institutions, scattering themselves as far
east as Vermont , and as far west as California, in their respective searches
for the American Dream . They had slung hash, and sold encyclopedias, andperformed abortions, and washed cars, and counseled draft resisters, andcared for their children, and occasionally for themselves, and while they
were not quite thirty , they were aging fast.
Katherine smiled. Birthdays. For years, she had been sending Lydia's
birthday presents in the middle of summer, although her birthday was not
until November , because Lydia herself made every effort to ignore the occasion, insisting that birthdays were "little deaths ," and refusing absolutely tocooperate for purposes of celebration.
At first , Katherine had sent packages in summer and at Christmas, withperhaps a book or two in between, but in the last year or so, she had foundherself haunting the souvenir counters , loitering by racks of postcards andmonogrammed toothbrushes and socks, on her rare excursions to Disneyland
or Chinatown , seeking new outlets for the rush of feelings Lydia had arousedin her , wanting to communicate her love in as many ways as possible , without disrupting the life of her friend .
She was embarrassed sometimes , by her own effusiveness - by the profusion of little gifts which she continued to wrap and mail , in spite of herselfsharing things and impressions , and feelings as well as she could at such a
distance , when what she wanted to share was the events themselves.
There had been no single moment in their relationship to which Katherine could point , as the line between friendship and love- no single letter, orday , or time , when she had realized with any certainty what she wanted.
She had been slow to recognize what would have been obvious to anyone
reading their correspondence, and slower still , to admit it to herself. And
that done , it had taken her weeks to broach the subject with Lydia. Loving
women .
They had never, ever, lived together, even in the days when both of themwere in the same place, when neither of them had husbands or lovers , tospeak of, when living together would have been eminently practical. Katherine had suggested it once , and Lydia had said oh-no-I-could-never-live-withyou-we're-too -much-alike-it-would-never-work-out , or words to that effect ,and Katherine had not understood , and had been hurt out of all proportion
to the words themselves , and she had not understood her own hurt , and Lydia was her friend, and Katherine didn't understand , and it became anotherin the series of events which they had made themselves forget.
Seeing her. The mountains . Walking in the woods. Not touching, even
now , their voices falling softly around them , and still it wasn ' t time .
56

"Do you remember ," Lydia asked her, "that time we decided to live together, and then didn't? "- Katherine nodded.
"I was afraid of you-afraid to get that close . I've never told you any ofthis , ha~e I?""No .""I ran straight to my shrink, and started babbling, dumping all this vague
amorphous stuff in his lap- all these incredible things I was feeling about youexpecting him to tell me what to do. Dreams and things, I don't know .
Scared the bejesus out of me. As it were ."''What did he say?""He asked me if I thought I could ever be a lesbian, and I thought I wasgoing to be sick allover his desk . I tried to explain to him that one time ,and I never went back after that.""I thought it must be my fault ," Katherine said , "that I'd done something,or that something was wrong with me; that I must be a terrible person ifeven my best friend couldn't live with me. I don't remember the details any
more , but I remember how much it hurt , and how unexpected it was when
you said you didn 't think it would work. It was like being hit hard in thestomach for no apparent reason , and I couldn't understand what was happening.""I have· scars on my back," Lydia said , "from fucking in wheat fields .""I'd certainly like to see them , sometime ," Katherine said .
"I know.""I'm not as patient as I thought I'd be ," Katherine said. "I thought itwould just happen , somehow . I didn't think about needing a place to begin.
I didn't count on both of us being this shy. Certainly not at the same time."
Lydia laughed .
''We're still avoiding it ," Katherine said , ''you know we are. We've beenwalking for days , avoiding it. Walking so we don't have to sit down , except
at mealtimes , with a table between us . Can't we touch each other, without
leaping into bed ? Can't we try it at least , without a big production? My god ,Lydi , even strangers shake hands ." Katherine turned to face her , stoppingin the middle of the path, and Lydia stood still. Katherine put her hand on
Lydia 's cheek, and then moved it gently to the back of her neck , and upwards to the base of her skull , moving towards her until their bodies were
nearly touching . "I've never seen your ears ," she said softly . "Never , ever,seen your ears." She felt Lydia tensing , and took her hand away. Lydia did
not like to be touched. Even as a preliminary to se x. Especially then.
Katherine knew all that , because Lydia had told her. It was nothing personal , it was merely the last line of defense , but Katherine did not knowwhat to do . Tllis was something separate from their feelings for each other,some childhood relic , some emotional baggage from another time ...
And there , the fantasy broke down , each of them retrenching , returning
to work and home and children , asserting their independence by planting
flowers and buying books , digging in . Here , and there , the two of them surviving , going on ; writing letters or not writing letters. Going on .

57

But for Katherine, at least , nothing was ever again quite the same . The longing persisted , and she fell in and out of love a dozen times in the next two
years before she knew what was happening . There were days when she
thought it had been a dream , or when she thought she had really recovered ;days , even , when she could harden herself against the letters , against Lydia
herself, and the memory of her.
Things continued to happen . Lydia found an apartment and moved out
for the summer , leaving her husband whom she described as a cipher, andmoving in again, before the ink was dry on her change-of-'address forms. Her
husband moved out and in again, and fmally out , taking the TV with him, andthat, at least , was a blessing, and there were lovers, and her work was going
well.
Katherine left the collective, and found an apartment , settled, almost incidentally, into celibacy , and began again to correspond . And slowly, theirseparate wounds began to heal. They had in common not only their scattered pasts , but somehow, each other. In evolving, they had coalesced, andtheir letters were full of common ground.
Their letters. There were times when Katherine could not write at all, when
the act of writing was too painful, when the only way she could survive at
all was by blocking everything . She was enraged. Outwardly, she took it all
in stride , mentioning Lydia casually now and then, but never talking about
it really . Knowing , with the obscure romantic certainty of the cynic, that she
would always love Lydia ; that there was no help for it, that as long as she
lived , there would be this love, this bond, this monstrous attachment , thischilling fear.
She was not , by nature , a morbid person . She was not a dweller upon misfortune. She felt deeply , or not at all , and this was what frightened her.
It was, she knew , her fear and her pride which kept her glued to thecoast , in the little house two blocks from the fault line - her fear and her
pride , the latter so recently acquired, which separated her from what she
wanted.
She had followed her husbands automatically, as if asleep, as she had done
everything else in those years, and it had been important to her to start again .
She had never consciously chosen to live anywhere, and to move to the provinces to be with Lydia seemed like a sure admission of defeat. A giving in .
Not meeting someone halfway, but saying I can't live without you, so here I
am. Surely an unfortunate phrase. Unfortunate and untrue. She could live without Lydia. She'd been doing it for years.
But what sense did that make , she wondered, brushing at the first of hertears, angry now, and impatient. What sense did it make to be here? She hadfriends, of course, and there was the city and the ocean, but there was also
the noise and the dirt and the violence and the insanity of the p~ople who
lived in it, and she was happy here, except for Lydia , and she had survived ,and could continue to survive if she had to, but what was the point. What
was the point.
I'm afraid, she said aloud . ['m afraid if I go I'll ruin it. That she won 't loveme any more , or that I won't love her. That I will have destroyed something
splendid because it's too soon or too late , or something . That we'll wear it out
or destroy each other .

S8And the mixture of pride and fear , what was that? Duels began and ended,
strangers married , fodder was found for the cannons because saying no was n.o teasy, and dreams were continually dessicated because saying yes was just as
hard. Saying anything at all was the problem. Deciding.
She had been trained to morality and ethics and justice, and understood
good and bad and greater good and greater bad, and was untroubled by thenecessity of making moral decisions , but she had not been trained to thinkof herself, of what she wanted or needed or desired . Her decisions had been
made for her by others , or largely by default : her husbands , her alma maters ,her child. The divorces had been her choice, but by the time it had occurredto her, it was not so much an option as an imperative . But still , she had chosen some things. Little things , at first.
She had been through this before. She had chosen again and again in thelast ten years, and each choice had brought her closer to the person she now
was, and her choices had made her stronger and less afraid. Her choices had
led her away from the world of men, and into the arms of women, and thewomen had made her stronger and less afraid, and had led her again to Lydia,
who had loved her always, since the days when Lydia was always ahead ofher. More sophisticated, worldly, articulate : divorced and degreed. Always alittle ahead. And at first there had been the awe of her, and then the catchingup, the understanding , the knowledge of her fallibility, the knowledge of thetender places of her heart , revealed, but never probed. So Lydia was human
after all, was human and afraid and loved her. Was afraid and human andafraid .
It wo uld be enough, Katherine thought, to be with her.
There had been no single moment in their relationship , to which Katherine could point, as the line between .friendship and love-no single letter , orday, or time, when she had realized with any certainty what she wanted .
She had been thro ugh this before , and there was no single moment inwhich her decision was made, and there was no clap of thunder , no flashing of lights, no sigh, even, of peace or resolution as she sat in her chair by
the phone.

S9

DRAMA

Terry Wolverton & Co.

AN ORAL HERSTORY OF LESBIANISMAn Oral Herstory of Lesbianism is an experimental theater project about
lesbian culture and experience, which was conceived and produced by Terry
Wolverton at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles in May 1979. It was collaboratively written, directed, and performed by thirteen lesbians: Jerry Allyn,
Nancy Angelo, Leslie Belt, Cheri Gaulke, Chutney Gunderson, Brook Hallok,
Sue Maberry, Louise Moore, Arlene Raven, Catherine Stifter, Cheryl Swannack,Christine Wong, and Terry Wolverton.

My vision of An Oral Herstory of Lesbianism was to gather lesbians together
to create theater about our own lives, as lesbians. I chose to call it An Oral Herstory
and not The Oral Herstory; I didn't want to make a definitive statement thatsaid all lesbians are this or that, but to say this is who we are. This play is only
one beginning in the creation of our lesbian herstory and mythology.
My primary source of inspiration was my work with Arlene Raven in the
Lesbian Art Project. As co-directors of LAP, we had been concerned with the
exploration of lesbian art and lesbian sensibility, and, with the development of
our working community. Our methods of "researching" relied heavily on an
examination of our own feelings and experiences as a basis for understanding
lesbianism as a mythic identity. Other inspiration came from the community of
the Woman's Building, a public center for women's culture, and from my own
work since 1973 in experimental collaborative feminist theater .
.
I began by advertising for participants, though many women heard about the
project by word of mouth. Contrary to the normal audition process, I wanted
the group to be self-selected. I was willing to work with any woman who was
willing to sign the contract I had prepared. This contract was eight pages long;it outlined the vision, structure, an~ schedule of the project, as well as fInancial
and copyright agreements. The contract articulated the mutual commitments
which formed the basis of our group trust. Whenever disagreements-either personal or work-related-arose, we could refer to our commitments as a way toresolve those problems.
Twelve women contracted to participate in all workshop processes, to create
the material for the play and to perform in it. Additionally, each of the thirteenof us contributed $100 or more to the production fund. This money paid forrehearsal space, about half of the production expenses, and a small salary to me
for facilitating the workshops . A number of other lesbians contributed time,money, materials, skills, and feedback to the project. Over fIfty lesbians were
responsible for creating Oral.
I was blessed to have twelve such talented collaborators: all self-defIned lesbians
active in the women's and lesbian movements, all self-identifIed as artists andcreators in a wide variety of fields. These women shared a genuine investment in
the project, a strong desire to produce work of excellence, and a deep commitment
to communicating their lesbian vision.
61

top: Terry Wolverton,
giving cast feedback atrehearsal.
bottom: "Standards/
Acceptance. " Front,
center: Leslie Belt;
left to right: Arlene
Raven, Brook Hal/ok,
Catherine Stifter,
Nancy Angelo, andCheri Gaulke.
photographs by
Jo Goodwin

62

Our process of creating the play began with ten workshops , in which I combined
techniques and exercises gathered from theater , feminist education , body therapies,
women's spirituality , and childhood games . These included C-R, role-playing, .
journal writing, psychic meditation , improvisational acting, and sound and movement games . In these workshops we explored such topics as: coming out ; relationships; mothers; body and self image ; separatism; homophobia; stereotypes; roles ;and sexuality . In addition to generating material for the performance, these workshops provided an opportunity for personal growth , and a feeling of trust andsharing within the group.
At the end of these sessions, it was our responsibility to decide the content,
form , and style of our performance , and to create it. We became a collaborative
group, each contributing writing , direction , and performance . Some women also
devoted energy to various aspects of the production , including sets , sound , andlighting .
.
This collaboration was a difficult and challenging process. We brought to theproject different beliefs, experiences , skills, and aesthetics , as well as divergent
styles, tastes , and artistic goals. It was not easy to reach consensus. My own
difficulties focussed on being able to maintain my investment, responsibility ,and leadership, while being able to share all of those things with the other women .
Divergent viewpoints seemed threatening to me- I had to learn to expand mytrust that other ideas, other styles would work.
We had made a commitment to honor our diversity, and we tried to proceedwith a policy of inclusion and constructive criticism. That meant that everyone
worked vigorously to improve each piece , rather than cutting it out of the show.
The challenge for all of us was to honor other women's work as much as ourown , and to each take individual responsibility to be satisfied with the whole
performance.
The impact of group process on each piece is immeasurable: although specificwomen are credited with the authorship of individual scenes , all have received
input from the entire group, including rewriting , characterization , and staging
suggestions . The result is a blend of styles, viewpoints, and emotions, which
hopefully reflects the diversity and depth of lesbian sensibility.
Our audiences consisted of women only , and ranged between 20-60 on eachof the thirteen performance nights . We deliberately kept the audience limited , tocreate a real intimacy between us. The response of those who saw the play was
overwhelmingly positive and supportive . Women were touched by the honesty ofthe stories, and identified with them.An Oral Herstory of Lesbianism has become
part of our community mythology , extending beyond those of us who created it ,and those of us who viewed it. Claiming our herstory is a step toward creating
our future.
- Terry Wolverton

An Oral Herstory of Lesbianism
copyright 1979 Terry Wolver\on
Right of copy on individual works belong to their author(s) .

63

TWO SCENES FROMAN ORAL HERSTORY OF LESBIANISMST ANDARDS/ ACCEPTANCE
written by Terry Wolverton and performed by Leslie Belt , Arlene Raven'
Brook Hallok , Catherine Stifter , Nancy Angelo, and Cheri Gaulke.
::Standards/Acceptance" grew o~t of ~ workshop ex ercise where we answered th e question,
Wh.a t do.! wantln e~d from lesbians? In my own answer, I first enacted my need to havelesb/Ons give up patriarchal behaviors ("Don 't eat meat don 't watch TV don 't have men
friends ") . .Th e,! I went to each woman in t~ e group, asking her to accept me, even though"!y behaVior ~iffered from her standards ( even though I have long hair, " "even though I
l!~ten to Stevie Wonder records "). During group feedback time, we discussed this contradlct/on, and how our lesbian "standards " hinder our accep~an ce of one another.

Th e previous scene is Th e Journ ey into Lesbian Consciousness, a humorous scene
in which each woman moves through a "birth canal. " As Leslie completes her trip, shefalls , and th e rest of the women surround her, support her to stand, and lo vingly comfort her. Leslie triumphantly proclaims, "It didn 't hurt a bit!" and begins to stand on
her own. Th e others begin to mo ve back from her, forming a loose semi-circle aroundand behind her.

Leslie: Well , I finally made it! I'm a lesbian! Really , I'm a dy ke! (She struts
around, enjoying the feeling).
Arlene, leans toward her, shaking a finger: Uh Uh Uh! A Lesbian should
never eat meat!
Leslie: Whaddaya mean? Fried chicken is my favorite food!
Arlene : Men oppress animals the same way they oppress women!
Leslie: Well , I guess that makes sense . Ok , no meat! I'm gonna be a good
lesbian!
Brook: A Lesbian must never relate to men. They are the enemy!
Leslie: Aww , but you can't mean Rick! I've known him for five years . He's
not my enemy.
.
Nancy: And a Lesbian must give up television and punk rock. Male culture
exploits women and poisons our consciousness .
Leslie: But- I Love " Lucy " !
Catherine: (All take one step towards L eslie, menacingly) A Lesbian mustnot be classist , racist , sexist , looksist , thinnist , capitalist ...
Cheri: (All step forward again. Leslie reacts to each step with her body , more"hemmed in. ") A Lesbian must be out of the closet to everyone , all of the time!
Arlene: A Lesbian must not use drugs or alcohol!
Brook: A Lesbian must always wear short hair and blue jeans!
Nancy: And A Lesbian must give up Twinkies , Dingdongs , machaca burritos,
Oreos , all processed foods , coffee , sugar . ..
Leslie : (Interrupting- this is the last straw) Just wait a minute! I never thOUght
being a lesbian meant there 'd be so many things to reconsider. No one ever toldme I might have to give up dessert! I can 't give up everything at once and still
live in this world! I guess my journey into lesbian consciousness is gonna takelonger than r thought. (She is discouraged.)

64

The others begin moving offstage, some still spurning Leslie, others offering
support. Catherine pats her on the back, says, "Hey, Leslie, don't worry aboutit. " When everyone else leaves, Brook approaches Leslie.
Brook: Hey, Leslie, you got a cigarette?
Leslie: Oh sure-hey, I thought you quit? (Brook smiles and shrugs.) You
know, you really oUght to! See, men and cigarettes oppress women just likeanimals ... (Arm in arm, the two exit as the lights fade to blackout.)

JUMP ROPE/INCEST
written and choreographed by Leslie Belt, Jeri Allyn, Cheri Gaulke, Chutney
Gunderson, and Christine Wong.
In creating "Jump Rope/Incest," Leslie Belt wanted to share her experience of being
molested as a child, but was afraid she would validate the stereotype that incest "caused"
her lesbianism. Instead, by using a playground setting, where the other "children" chanted
lesbian nursery rhymes, she shows how her women's community gives her the support andcouraKe to talk about and heal from that experience.

Lights up. A long rope is tossed onstage. Cheri enters, walking it.
Cheri: Thin lines require careful consideration to maintain. You must watch
carefully each and every step or else you might (she teeters, then regains balance)
TRIP! Or what usually happens is that you get so tired of being careful, that you
jump (she does) . .. and everything changes!
Chris, Jerri, Chutney, and Leslie run onstage as children, yelling and playing.
Two women pick up the ends of the rope and begin twirling it as a jump rope.
Cheri jumps in.
Cheri:
I love coffee, and I love tea.
I love Sue
And she loves me! (She jumps out, takes J em ~ end.)
Jerri,jumps in: Sue and Cheri, sitting in a tree,
K -I -S-S-I -N -G, and S-I -N -G-I -N-G
and L-I-C-K-I-N-G! (Others hoot and tease her, she jumps out.)
Chutney,jumps in: I love coffee, and I love tea
And I love Jerri and Terry and Bia and Chris and Sue and ...
(Others yell 'Chutney!' She exits, takes Chris's end.)
Chris,jumps in: Some girls are lovers
And some girls are friends
But every girl's got a story
About where she's been.
Tell us girl, where've you been?
Leslie! (She jumps out.)
As Leslie begins jumping, the mood changes from pure fun to something
more ominous. The lights dim.
Leslie:When I was five I found outthat the men you gotta trust
are the men you better doubt.
My grandfather was a child molester
until the day he died
I was first molested by him
at the age of five.

Chut and Cheri (rope turners) : Eevy , iivy over (singsong)
Leslie:And over and over and over againnight after night for the next two years
until we moved ·away from him .
Chut and Cheri : Not last night but the night before
24 robbers came knocking at my door
As I ran out (Leslie jumps out.) They run inLeslie: (standing downstage) And then it only happened
Every now and then.
I didn 't tell my daddy cuz I was afraid of what he'd do
I didn't tell my grandpa , cuz he already knew
I didn't tell my Mama cuz she'd be so sad
I didn't tell anyone-I thought I was bad . (She turns and runs backthrough the still-turning jumprope. Stands with back to audience, others.)
Chut and Cheri (singing but oftkey): A little girl went to school , school, school,
to learn all of the rules, rules , rules ,but all she did was cry and she wouldn't say why
so everyone thought she was a fool, fool, fool.
No I'm not! Wait, I'll play . (Jumps in) Do you know Cinderella
Leslie :Cinderella kissed a fella?
Chut and Cheri (chanting quietly through segment): Cinderella kissed a fella ,Cinderella kissed a fell aLeslie:Cinderella kissed a fella in the dark of night
He took off her clothes, said No one must know
And he touched her til it grew light
Chut and Cheri: What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Leslie (jumps out, comes to audience): Sugar and spice and other people's lies
That's what little. girls are made of
Chut and Cheri: Upstairs , downstairs , all around the housethe little girl was quiet , quiet as a mouse
Ollie , Ollie Oxen , Free, Free , Free (this is repeated softly by all on
stage. Lights brighten up as in beginning)
Jerri (jumps in): I love coffee, and I love tea
I love Leslie , and she loves me!
Leslie (jumps in and jumps with Jerri):
I've got friends now who listen to me
And they will on any day
But is there a little girl on your street
who's got something to say?
I was twenty years old wh~n my grandpa died
And I like him better de.ad than alive
I'd like to believe every little girl 's free
But how many child molesters live on your street?
The jumpers begin doing "hot peppers "-jumping as fast as they can, counting"One, two, three, four, five . . . "As soon as someone misses, the rope is thrown
down in anger, and all exit. Blackout.

66

Maureen Brady

I KNOW A HUNDRED WAYS TO DIE
A One-Act PlayA bedroom in a modest apartment in New York City. The furnishings are old andsimple. Min occupies a double bed. She is propped by pillows in a semi-sitting positionon the left side of the bed. Next to her stands a card table, very neatly arranged witha telephone, a note pad, two pencils, three pens, her checkbook, her glasses case in thefirst row. Behind these items-two post cards, a note card propped open, a small Indian
doll on a base, a vase of fresh flowers. There is a bedside table at the head of the bed,
and carefully placed on this table are beautifully bound copies of The Odyssey and The
Iliad. In the wall to Min's right is a large window. Henrietta sits on a rocking chair in anarrow space between the window and Min 's bed, engaged in doing the New YorkTimes daily crossword puzzle. Min is seventy-eight. She has rosy cheeks, straight thinwhite hair. Henrietta is sixty, large boned, vigorous, almost looming in presence. Th erocking chair is not large enough for her.
Min is wearing a light blue cotton nightgown and a worn, pink bed jacket. She wears
a wrist watch. It is three oclock on a week day afternoon. Henrietta is immersed in her
newspaper.

SCENE 1
Min, smoothing the covers on her bed, making a neat border with the sheet:
She 'll be arriving soon.
Henrietta: Yes, I suppose so .
A long silence during which Min watches Henrietta but Henrietta never looks up.
Min: Henrietta . I wish you wouldn 't do that crossword puzzle. We're expecting
company.
Henrietta: Well, she's not here yet. Glancing up for a second.
Min: Don't tell me the obvious.
Henrietta: You asked for it.
Min sticks her lower lip out at Henrietta, holds this pouting gesture until Henrietta looks up and sees.
Henrietta: Does it make you nervous that she's corning?
Min: Me? Why do you say that?
Henrietta: You're excited ... and a little cross. A cross between ...
Min: Hen, stop . This is no time for being clever.
Henrietta: Well, are you going to be cooperative?
Min: Do I have a choice?
Henrietta: Evidently you do. She seems very democratic . Remember last week
when she came she asked you about your goals.
Min: Oh, yes. What would you like to be doing , said she, that you can't do now.
Dear me, I replied. Everything.
Could you be more specific, said she.
Henrietta: Have you been thinking about it like you were supposed to this week?
Min: Oh, Hen, of course not. I'm too old to make lists. I don't think I'll talk to
her at all today. I think I'll just do as she says with the exercises. I'll say I'm too
tired to talk . You can tell her what I want. You don't have to tell her I don't
believe in having serious conversation with anyone under forty.
67

Henrietta: Dare I remind you that you were the chair of the Classics Departmentof the Barney School for twenty-five years , during which time you communed
daily with fifteen and sixteen year olds to say nothing of your beloved seniorseminar seventeen year olds.
Min: It's not the same. They were children. She's in between. Besides , this is
my . . . is it my thirteenth year of retirement? Am I seventy-seven or seventyeight?
Henrietta: Seven ty -eigh t.
Min,pleading: Oh, dear. Doesn't that sound too old for me, Hen?
Henrietta: You don 't look it.
Min, patting her legs through the covers and smiling: It's nice of you to say so .
After a pause: I didn't finish. I meant to say it's you who communes daily withthe fifteen and sixteen year olds at the Barney School while I commune withthe border of my sheet and with you. So since you are in such good form, you
may converse with my therapist.
Henrietta: Miss Heart .
Min: Yes , Miss Heart or Vivian?
Henrietta: Well, she 's your therapist. What do you prefer? Shall we call her
Vivian?
Min, impatiently: You decide.
Henrietta: Very well, I shall call her Miss Heart.
Min: I was sure that was what you would choose. I have always loved you foryour formality, Henrietta .
Henrietta: Instructed by yourself, of course. I suppose it was a great stroke of
fortune for me that you spoke to me during my in between years.
Min, chuckling: But dear, you were exceptional. However, notice that I didn't
invite you to live with me until you were forty-two . .. for good measure. Now
I don't know what I'd do . . .
Hellrietta: You'd probably be willing to talk to Miss Heart.
Min, stubbornly: I don't think so . She looks around at the order of the room andfondles various objects with her eyes. She appears very satisfied with everything.
Min: Hen, do you think she's one of our kind?
Henrietta: What do you mean?
Min: Miss Heart.
Henrietta: Have you forgotten that you are Mrs?
Min: Of course , I forgot years ago ... but you know what I mean.
Henrietta: I suppose I do. Henrietta looks out the window and Min stares at her
for a full minute waiting for her to speculate.
Min, annoyed: What are you looking at?
Henrietta: The bulldozer.
Min: What 's it doing?
Henrietta: Making a pile of dirt.
Min: Well, what do you think?
Henrietta: How would I know?
Min: You go to a psychiatrist. Doesn't she teach you how to read people's minds?
Henrietta, looking out the window, does not answer. There is much tension between them in the silence that follows this remark.

68

Min, quietly: I'm sorry, Hen . I'll sit here and be quiet and behave myself. She
rests her head back and closes her eyes and Henrietta picks up the pencil andcrossword puzzle from the window sill and begins doing it again. Min speaks
without opening her eyes.
Min: She did seem to take our life together with equanimity, unlike most of
those ninnies we met when I was in the hospital. Henrietta waits until Min appears to be dozing, then puts the paper down, studies Min's face and smiles.
Min is startled awake by the ringing of the doorbell. She sits up excitedly.
Min: It must be her.
Henrietta: It must. She rises slowly.
Min: Hurry, Hen. She might think we're not home.
Henrietta: Wherever would she think we'd have gone?
She exits. Min makes a face at her back, rearranges the covers again, dusts lint
off her bed jacket, and takes on a look of great impatience as the voices of Vivian
and Henrietta can be heard in the background but not loudly enough to understand what they are saying. Min has an ear cocked toward the door. She changes
to a look of disinterest as she hears them coming down the hall. Vivian enters.
Henrietta right behind her gestures broadly with her arms that she is turning herover to Min. Min continues to appear remote. Vivian is an attractive young woman,
about 30, simply dressed. She is smaller than Min, has an athletic appearance. Hereyes are very attentive and have taken in the room but most of the time stay
directly on Min. During the ensuing coversation, Henrietta returns to her chairand puzzle.
Vivian: Hello.
Min: Good afternoon.
Vivian: How are you feeling?
Min: As usual.
Vivian: I'm not sure I know how you usually feel.
Min: Of course you don't. Smiling: Henrietta can tell you. Vivian looks to Henrietta
who hasn't been listening.
Min: Hen.
Henrietta: What?
Min: Tell Miss Heart how I usually feel.
Henrietta: Well, Miss Heart. She usually feels cross when I am trying to do mypuzzle . I would defmitely interpret it as a sign of ill health if she were not crossduring such a time.
Min, in a whisper audible to all: I abhor crossword puzzles . Don't you?
Vivian: No.
Min, disappointed: Well, at least you're honest.
Vivian, indicating the table: Can I move this?
Min: You may. Just as long as you don't disturb the arrangement of my things.
Vivian: I'll just slide it back here.
Min: Henrietta, where's Miss Heart going to sit?
Henrietta, indicating the chair by the dresser: That chair's just fine. Move it
wherever you need it.
. Vivian, arranging herself alongside Min's legs: How about some exercise?
Min: I suppose I must.
Vivian: How did you do with those exercises I gave you last week?

69

~m, with an impish grin: Hen. How did I do with those exercises?

Henrietta: Oh. Min didn't do too well with those exercises .
Vivian: What was the problem?
Min: I forgot.
Vivian: Oh, that's okay. I'll go over them again with you.
Min: That's very generous of you, but I'm afraid you don't understand. It's
not that I forgot how to do them.
Vivian: Oh, you mean yqu forgot to do them. Min looks very sheepish.
Henrietta: Yes, Miss Heart, that's what she means . Vivian takes the covers off
Min's left leg and instructs her in the exercise by demonstrating how to movethe leg up and down.
Vivian: Do you not like to do the exercises?
Min, cheerfully: I don't mind. 1 just forgot.
Vivian: You're in bed all day, right?
Min: Yes .
Vivian, moving Min's leg up to her chest and back down while quietly repeating
the commands-lift, push: Lift . .. : What do you do with your time?
Min: Hen . .. tell Miss Heart what I do with my time.
Henrietta, pleasantly: You tell her.
Min, in an aside to Henrietta: You're supposed to do the talking.
Henrietta: But you're doing so well. There is a silence except for Vivian
continuing the commands. Min puts her thumbs in her ears and wiggles her
fingers at Henrietta. Vivian chuckles gently at the gesture.
Vivian: Lift . .. push . . .lift ... push . .. lift ... push ... lift ... push ...
okay, rest. Min drops her leg on the bed as if it:SO very heavy.
Min: Miss Heart, I believe you are wearing me out.
Vivian: Please, call me Vivian.
Min: I'll try, but Henrietta and I come from a very formal tradition .
Vivian: So . . . are you going to tell me what you do with your time?
Min: Let's see. I play with my memory .
Vivian, seriously: Do you have trouble with your memory?
Min: Perhaps, from your point of view .
Vivian, puzzled: I don't get it.
Min: Well, I forgot to do my exercises , didn't I? Otherwise my memory is
about all I have. I can't read. My eyes are no good . I can't walk. My legs are
no good.
Henrietta, clucking: Poor dear.
Min: I can always be cross with Henrietta when she's home .
Vivian: And when she isn't?
Min: That's when I recite my verses .
Vivian: Push your leg out to the side now. Really? Poetry?
Min: Of course .
Vivian: You know it by heart?
Min: Selected poems, yes. Do you know any poetry?
Vivian: Not by heart .. . but I like poetry .
Min: Perhaps you should commit your favorites now so that should you
become my age and have a tumor on your spinal cord and your legs turnfeeble with paralysis, you'll be able to have your poets at your bedside.
70Vivian: Push your leg again. I think it's wonderful that you do that.
Min: You don't mind that I forgot mv exercises .
Vivian: No, but I don't think you 're going to be able to improve your strength
by just doing these once a week with me .
Min: Well, I've never wanted to play tennis.
Vivian: Push .. .
Min. studying Vivian who is intent on· the exercise: How strong do you think
I could become?
Vivian : Pull . . . I can't say for sure . Maybe strong enough to walk aroundyour apartment. You said you'd think about goals this week . What did youcome up with?
Min, turning to Henrietta and speaking playfully : Hen , did you hear that? She
asked . . . just like you said she was going to .
Henrietta: Yes, Min. She did.
Vivian: Well?
Min: What is it that you want to know?
Vivian: What things you 'd like to do that you can't do .
Min,slightly embarrassed: Well . . . y ou're a woman . You know . I'd probably
like to do the same things you'd like to do .
Vivian, stopping the exercise and sitting up straight: I could assume but I
might assume wrong . . .
Min: I would be the first to tell you. Hen , tell Miss Heart, I mean Vivian . . .
please assure Vivian that I will not hesitate to speak up if she goes wrong.
Henrietta: Min is not known for mincing words .
Vivian, looking a bit worried: Look , I would think one of the most important
things for your comfort would be to be able to get yourself out of bed andwalk with the walker into the bathroom and use the toilet.
Min twiddles her thumbs and does not speak.
Vivian: Well? Wouldn't you like to be able to do that?
Min: Frankly , dear, you should ask Henrietta because I'm sure she would
love it. As for myself, I don't find it a worthy goal . She crosses her arms onher chest, stubbornly.
Vivian: You don't mind the bed pan?
Min: Actually . . . no. It required a certain adjustment at first , but once one
has adjusted , one might even consider it a luxury .
Henrietta: Presuming one is the one confined to bed . Vivian is being quitesensible , and after all you've instructed her to decide for you so I think
you should take Mr more seriously , Min.
Min, looking at Henrietta: I am perfectly serious . Turning to Vivian: She's
only being a bad sport. If she were the one confined , I would be perfectly
pleasant about serving her the bed pan . Henrietta rolls her eyes up in disbelief
Vivian looks uncomfortable about starting a fight between them.
Vivian: Okay , let's do some exercises with the other leg. She brings it out
from under the covers and drapes the left leg: Now lift up ... push . . . lift
. . . how about the kitchen?
Min: What about the kitchen?
Vivian: Would you like to be able to go out to the kitchen?
Min : What on earth for?
Vivian : I don't know . Do you like to cook?
Min: I ab ·hor cooking .
71

Vivian: Oh ... Lift ... push ...
Min: One of the very few rewards of my confme!TIent is the fact that I don't
have to cook ... ever again .
Vivian: But I expect you'll be able to recover enough strength ...
Min: To cook? I certainly hope not.
Vivian, looking confused: But . ..
Min: What's the matter?
Henrietta: Her business is rehabilitation.
Min: Oh, but you won't stop coming, will you?
Vivian, slightly irritated: I expect to come next week, but at some point I feel
we need to establish some mutual goals for what I'm doing with you.
Min: Well, there's more to life than the bathroom and the kitchen, is there
not? I hope you don't mind that I don't care for the mundane.
Vivian, covering for being caught in short thinking: Indeed, there must be
more. So far I'm not doing so well at guessing for you. Why don't you justtell me?
Min, consoling: Now, now, dear Miss Heart. We've having a grand time. I'mquite pleased with you. It's much more fun this way. Sitting back: Proceed,dear heart.
Vivian: For the time being I'd settle for your taking a walk with me.
Min, astonished: But I can't walk. My legs are rubbery.
Vivian: I don't mean on your own. We'll use the walker and I'll help you
support yourself.
Min: That's not what I call walking.
Vivian: Okay ... whatever you want to call it, let's get you up and see what
you can do.
Min: Henrietta, did you hear? She wants me to get out of bed . Tell her I can't.
Tell her how feeble I am.
Henrietta, quietly spiteful: She's tested your muscles, Min, and she seems toknow her busin~ss.
Min, to Vivian: She's sore about the bed pan. Vivian watches Min wrinkle up
her nose at Henrietta and waits for her. Next week. I have to have time to think
about this. Vivian nods assent. Min breathes a large sigh of relief
Min: Where would we walk to anyway?
Vivian: Well ... certainly not the bathroom or the kitchen. They both laugh.
Min: Certainly not.
Vivian: Perhaps the living room .
Min: It seems so far.
Vivian: We'll see. To prepare yourself I want you to sit up on the edge of the
bed with your feet on the floor at least once a day for fifteen or twenty minutes.
Min: Did you hear, Henrietta?
Henrietta: Yes, I think we can manage tha-t.
Min: Should I get dressed for the occasion?
Vivian: If you like .. . but it's not necessary.
Min, with jollity: You won't mind accompanying me with my bed clothes?
Vivian: Not at all.
Min: Henrietta, she's quite nice. Don't you think so? I think we're-iucky to havefound Miss Heart.
72Henrietta: Yes, I think she's doing an admirable job of getting on with you. If
you recall what you said just before she came . . .
Min: Don't tell. That wouldn't be nice at all.
Vivian: What? What were you saying?
Min: Oh, it was nothing. Henrietta and I were just discussing our maturity andthe lack of appreciation for our wisdom in the general population . Vivian co vers
Min's legs and straightens the bed. Min leans back and relaxes.
Min, reciting:I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind ...
Vivian: What is that?
Min: The beginning of a sonnet which ends:... Let me make it plain :I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Min appears to be deep in reverie.
Henrietta, quietly, as ifnot to disturb Min: I'm not sure which one of us sheplans not to speak to again, but perhaps we can resume next week, Miss Heart.
I believe Min is quite tired now .
Vivian: Yes, of course. She puts her chair back and rearranges Min's table by
the bed. Min has closed her eyes. Vivian touches Min's hand as she begins toleave.
Vivian: See you next week .
Min opens her eyes and raises her hand for a childish wave.
'SCENE II

Same room. Min and Henrietta are arranged as they were at the same time theprevious week.
Henrietta: Have you been thinking about your walk?
Min: Oh, Hen. You don't think she's really serious, do you? I can't walk. Even
with her holding me up. She's not that big.
Henrietta: Nevertheless, she's the therapist.
Min: My therapist.
Henrietta: Very well. Your therapist.
Min : Well, you have your own.
Henrietta: I do?
Min: Your psychiatrist. Good old Miss Twist.
Henrietta: All right. Henrietta's voice tries to caution Min to leave this subject
alone.
Min: You'll never find me talking to one of those therapists.
Henrietta: Nor would I want you to.
Min, after a moment's silence: What kind of a life do you think she has?
Henrietta: Who?
Min: My Miss Heart.
Henrietta: I don't know.
Min: Well, what do you imagine?
Henrietta: I haven't tried to imagine .
Min: Let's do . What do we know?
Henrietta: She has brown hair. blue eyes. strong arms .

73

Min: Lovely brown hair ... she likes a little poetry, but she hasn't tried to
discipline her memory.
I
Henrietta: She's very democratic. She wants to know what you want.
Min: Yes, she's quite direct.
Henrietta: She hasn't let you get away with too much, yet.
Min: ... didn't mind that I forgot my exercises .
Henrietta: She minded a little.
Min: Now, let's imagine what we don't know.
Henrietta: Why?
Min: Because we like her .
Henrietta: Whatever it is that you want to know , I suggest that you simply ask
her. She'll be here in a minute .
Min: But Hen, that would be rude. We are not exactly on intimate terms withMiss Heart.
Henrietta: That's all right. Miss Turner says people are waiting for an invitation
to disclose their lives .
Min, squinching her mouth up: Pooh on Miss Twist-Turner. She's not of mygeneration nor is she even of yours. I hope you don't allow her to be rude to
you by asking of our life .
Henrietta: She's quite charming , not rude at all ... and I don't care to have any
further discussion about her.
Min: Humph . She crosses her arms on her chest and looks away from Henrietta

who looks out the window. They sneak lateral glances at each other from time
to time. Min looks at her watch, then at the ceilillg. The doorbell rings andHenrietta begins to move very slowly to get up and answer the door.
Min, pleading: Please, Hen.l doubt that Miss Heart cares for waiting in the hallso long.
Henrietta: I'm going . I'm sure she'll wait.
Henrietta and Vivian enter.
Vivian: Hello.
Min: Hello. Do move the table and pull up your chair.
Vivian: How are you?
present. Looking to Henrietta
Min: Fine. Your promptness is appreciated bywith a plea for a truce: Isn't that so, Henrietta?
Henrietta: Yes, I suppose so.
Vivian moves the card table back from the bed, then reaches the walker whichis standing bf!hind a variety of sickroom items including a commode chair a'1d
a wheelchair which sit unused. She stands the walker beside Min's bed.
Vivian: I thought we'd start with our walk first today rather than tiring you .
with the exercises .
Min: But you just got here. Please" sit down for a min.u te , and catch your br·e ath.
Vivian, standing with one foot on the rung of the walker: Oh , I'm fine. Did you
decide not to get dressed?
Min: I did not give the idea further consideration once you expressed willingness
to take me as I am. What would I wear , anyway? I'm sure I've outgrown all of
my clothes ... don't you think so , Hen?
Henrietta: I'll be glad to help you try some on, if you like.
Min: I've grown quite plump in this time of lollygagging in bed. She pats her
belly. If I don't die soon, I'll require a specia l coffin.
Vivian: I don't think you should plan on dying soon .

allMin: Well, what do you suggest then?
Vivian: A diet, if you really want your old shape back .
Min: Dreadful idea ... Henrietta. Min looks to Henrietta and finds her not
looking up from the puzzle. Please, Miss Heart and I are trying to have a conversation with you about clothing. Would you mind putting aside that crossword puzzle?
Henrietta: I do mind, but I shall do so. Placing it on the window sill, she shifts
to direct her attention to Min.
Min: Now, the question is: Do you think myoid shape is worth striving for?
Henrietta : I think your old shape was admirable, but I doubt you ",ould be
willing to give up your current indulgences to regain it.
Min, chuckling: Oh Hen, you do think of everything. And of course you areright. It has been such a long time since I've been strapped into one of those
restricting undergarments.
Vivian: What do you mean?
Min: A brassiere . Actually it's quite a nice word for such a horrid contraption .
Vivian: You could go without one.
Min, amused: I would be ... flopsy.
Vivian: So what.
Min: So what. Hen, Vivian says so what if I'm flopsy . She doesn't mind.
Vivian: Let's get ready for your walk . Let's sit you up with your feet over theside of the bed here. Vivian puts an arm around Min's shoulders and helps her
to the full sitting position: Bring your legs over. She helps her lefls.
Min, to Henrietta: She's quite bossy. To Vivian: There's no rush . I'll just sit
here a minute.
Vivian: Have you been doing that every day?
Min: Yes, I think we did it every day.
Vivian: Did you get dizzy?
Min: No. Was I supposed to?
Vivian: Not necessarily. I thought you might because your circulation is not
used to having your legs down.
Min: Does that mean I have good circulation?
Vivian: Yes, your circulation's fine. In fact I think, generally, you have a strong
constitution.
Min, smiling, pleased with the compliment: Thank you, Vivian.
Vivian: You're welcome ... What shoes are you going to wear?
Min: Henrietta ,.what do you think? Do I have any shoes I can wear?
Henrietta, going to the closet: I'll get your slippers. They're quite sturdy. She
brings them out and holds them up for Vivian to evaluate. Are they suitable?
Vivian: They1l do just fine.
Min: I feel that my feet are about to suffer a loss of freedom , but at least not toshoes. Vivian leans over and puts them on Min's feet.
Vivian: Okay?
Min: I suppose .
Vivian: I guess we're ready to go. She places the walker in front of Min.
Min, nervously: I don't think I can. Perhaps we should just do the exercises.
Vivian : No , let's give it a try. You won't fall. I'll support you .
Min, with her back to Henrietta: Hen, are you prepared to watch me walk withthis thing?

Henrietta: Yes, Min. I am ready to give you my full attention and to help MissHeart, if necessary.
Vivian ,going to Min s side and putting an arm under hers and the other aroundher back: Now bend forward so your weight is over your knees and then straighten
up.
Min, remaining in the same position: But dear, my knees are not so good. I
don't think I'll be able to do this . 1 am Miss Weak Knees.
Vivian: Just try. You can push with your arms on the walker at the same time.
Min moves slightly forward. Okay. Let's go on three . One ... two . . . up. Theyboth struggle and gradually Min comes to her full height.
Vivian: Wow, you're tall.
Min: You 're a shrimp.
Vivian: How do you feel?
Min: Silly. Why should this seem such a radically different perspective? I'm
not sure I like it. Henrietta comes around to look at Min from the front. How
do you like me standing up, Hen?
Henrietta: You look as if you are surprising yourself, my dear.
Min ,frigh telled, to Vivian: I don't know why I've agreed to this. I'd make aterrible mess on the floor. You'd have to get that bulldozer to scoop me up
and drop me back in bed.
Vivian, calmly: You 're doing just fine. Now move the walker a little ahead,then step up to it. She tries to help Min move the walker but nothing happens.
Min: I'm stuck. It doesn 't go.
Vivian: You have to take your weight off it. Balance on your legs. Then lift it.
Min: Oh . Testing, she lifts the walker for a brief second and puts it back in thesame place: Gads , this is worse than infancy.
Vivian: That's right. Next time move it forward . Min does so and follows with

two steps.
Vivian: Excellen t.
Min: Can I rest now?
Vivian: [t would take you too much effort to get back up again. Let's just go
forward.
Min: Have we decided where I'm going?
Vivian: Onward as far as you can.
Min: But [ ought to have a destination, don't you think?
Henrietta, watching with hands on hips, indulging Min with her voice: If you
wish one, [ think you should choose it.
Min: Thank you , [ will. Let's aim for the living room.
Vivian: Fine . I can bring the wheelchair to you if you tire anywhere along theway . Lift the walker ... that's right. Min advances slowly forward , her fullconcentration on the mechanics involved, Henrietta backs down the hall withher eyes on Min. As they enter the living room, Min stops and surveys the room.

Tears form in her eyes.
Min, to Henrietta : [ thOUght you might have changed it around.
Henrietta: Without your permission'1
Min: I had never exactly expected to return to this room in my lifetime.
Vivian: Why not?
Min: Because I don't think I1l be around much longer. Explosively: At least I
should hope not ... Affectionately: And because r hadn't anticipated havingsuch a bossy therapist.

Vivian: I don't understand why you keep thinking you're going to die.
Min: We all must, eventually , you know.
Vivian: Of course ... but I'll bet you've got a good ten years ahead of you.
Min: Easy for you to say ... at your age. I would rather just get it over with.
I'm tired.
Vivian: Where do you want to sit?
Henrietta, standing behind a wingback chair which has a small hassock at its side:This is Min's chair.
Min: Yes , that was my chair.
Vivian: Okay , let's walk straight across to there.
Min: Would you mind if I pass by the poets on the way . .. just over there. She
indicates a bookcase with her head. The bookcase is on a long wall lined withbooks from the floor to shoulder height.
Vivian: All right. To Henrietta: Would you mind moving that rug?
Henrietta, rolling up the braided rug: Surely.
Min begins to walk and again there is silence while all concentrate on her steps.
When they reach the bookcase, she bends over and scans the shelves, turning
her head slowly back and forth.
Min, to Vivian: See?
Vivian: Yes. It's a lovely collection.
Min, blowing on the bindings nearest her: My poets are dusty.
Vivian: Yes.
Min: Guess what?
Vivian : What?
Min: Miss Weak Knees is about to drop.
Vivian: Let's head for the chair. Can you make it to the chair? Min struggles andgrunts but does not answer. She reaches the chair.
Vivian: Go a little past. That's right. Now , turn so your legs are up against thechair. Min maneuvers. Good . Now you're going to reach back with that armand hold the arm of the chair, then bend at the waist. Min starts to follow instructions, then buckles and drops into the chair.
Min: Whew. She puts her head back and closes her eyes. Vivian moves the walker
away, returns and takes Min 's pulse. Henrietta stands, looking down on Min
proudly.
Henrietta: I believe this calls for a celebration.
Min, still slightly out of breath: Oh, do you really think so, Hen. I agree. Do
you, Vivian?
Vivian: Absolutely.
Min, triumphantly: Then you'll have a drink with us?
Vivian, obviously conflicted: What kind of a drink?
Min: We do not offer a great deal of choice. We drink rye and water.
Vivian: Well , I really shouldn't drink when I'm working. I'll be glad to havesoda or even just water while you have your drink .
Min, disappointed: I wish you would join us . We can't have a proper celebration
without everyone's full cooperation.
Vivian: ALI right ... a short one.
Min, perking up: We always have short ones. Smiling at Henrietta: Did you hear.
Hen? She'll have one. It will be our pleasure , will it not ?
Henrietta: Indeed it wi.lI . I'll make the drinks. She goes to the cliilla cahillet
for three glasses, thell off to the kitchell.

Min, indicating the settee opposite her chair: You sit right over there , Vivian .
Vivian sits and they look at each other and both smile shyly in the silence.
Min: So, Vivian ... you think that i shall live.
Vivian: Yes , Min.
Min: Do you know the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay?
Vivian: No.
Min: Perhaps you would enjoy them if you did . Reciting:
I know a hundred ways to die.
I've often thought I'd try one :Lie down beneath a motor truck
Some day when standing by one .
Or throw myself from off a bridgeExcept such things must be
So hard upon the scavengers
And men that clean the sea
I know some poison I could drink .
I've often thought I'd taste it.
But mother bought it for the sink ,And drinking it would waste it.
Vivian, smiling: I enjoyed that.
Henrietta, entering with the drinks on a tray and a small bowl of peanuts, goesfirst to Min: My dear.
Min : Oh , no, let's serve our Miss Heart first. She's company . Henrietta goes to
Vivian with the tray, hands her a drink and places a coaster on the table besideher.
Vivian: Thank you.
Henrietta : You're most welcome . She returns to Min and hands her a drink andcoaster, then places the third coaster on a table beside her chair and leaves her
drink there while returning to the kitchen with the tray. Vivian begins to bringher drink to her mouth but Min stops her by clucking.
Min: We shall commence as soon as Henrietta returns.
Vivian, embarrassed: Of course.
Henrietta, taking her seat and raising her glass: What shall we toast, Min?
Min, raising her glass with gaiety: To my hearty constitution . Vivian says I haveone .
Henrietta: I think Vivian is quite right. To your hearty constitution.
Vivian: And to your fille memory .
Min: And to my therapist who is slightly dismayed at the idea that I don't mind
the bed pan .
Henrietta, withdrawing her glass from the toast: Enough . They all drink. Min
sighs deeply and rests back in the chair.
Min: So tell me, Vivian .. . what would you like to be doing that you aren't
able to do now?
Vivian, looks to Henrietta for protection or help. Henrietta has about her alook of satisfaction, awaits Vivian's answer with interest: With my life?
Min : Yes, of course .

78

POETRYOUTSIDE/INSIDE

we've flattened
grasses by hundreds;
holding blanket, bottle, the weightof weeks apartwe knew what we'd comefor; still in jeans
we've clutched & rubbed &hadn't asked the landscape ;but we've also rolled
in side,unexpectedly naked ,surprised to find ourselves
where sweet stems risefrom hardwood,a kind of gardeningthat c0!TIpensates- Lise Iwoll

7C)

THIS IS MY IMAGINA nON
This is my imagination
Women who very simply want each other,both walk with hands in pockets.
Both are thinspare women who very simply
very simply want their eyes toward their own knees while they walk.
They talk with such little guard as boys about Japan.
When one speaks to the otherwistful she asks Do you remember Do you remember
an old and celebrated crone
walking to one woman who loves her all the same.
Morning water gathers on their shoes
coloring them a shade grayer, no darker.
An old and celebrated crone Dawn is grayer than the prayer of two
thin women. The prayer of two thin women
who walk and walk and they are not about to break.
Hear the birds begin to clatter
The prayer of two thin women is pale gray.

- Po L. Press

HIKE

Ou.t
on the trail the second morning
we come to fresh droppings
olack turds coiled in the sun
I bend downsquintinginto the eyes of the children
wanting them to pierce
the riddle, readthe trailof whateverhas walked here before them.
"It looks like . . .""It looks like . .. "flO

"It looks like shit," they say
and move up the pathwondering
what it was
I wanted to tellthem.
·kmc minns

STARTING TO REMEMBER
Last night
I dreamed thatyou .lnd I had
words: Cyprian- Sappho

On Tuesdaynight at the same moment, sitting
in different cities at different desks
we wrotelong letters to each other in the same
tongue . A common understandingwords, paragraphs, syntax
knowledge imparted and received . We
interface, a living
and triumphant dialogue composed
instantaneously.
I dream us attempting thisbefore our human languages
were learned and possessed foreverin that neural cavity
using something older
more valuable with which to lightthe first light feelthe first pleasure.
The two of us before language
or without language
having just been born
the small beginning.
In the huge beginning before
my English. Before your Greek .
I dream us searching for words
we haven't learned, feelings
we only dream · together. I dream
it is you who feels that firstquick pleasure with me.
I dream you writing to me inearly, pre-Sapphic Greek. I dream
I understand or started toremember.

- Kim Vaeth

81

JUST GOOD FRIENDS

Kay was waiting for the bus
her suitcase a week early going homeand Donna is explaining
covering this break in their behavior''Kay's not socially secure
she doesn't meet new people easily
but I do and when she hangs
onto me , it's awkward
I get irritable
I got angry
she decided it would be best to go home"
she was leaving
I stopped , utterly surprised
they'd quarreled, I knew thatbut days ago

they had come in together to the nrst classwearing corduroys and wool shirt-jackets
not defmitive, but promising
I watched
they were always together
I ate dinner with themheard about their husbands , children
time they spent and trips
they took together, frequently
I tried to get to know them
they knew each other so wellin their conversation there were layers
of private meanings which Kay
would dismiss , explain away
I could make no defensible assumptions
they were just always together
they announced together they had quarreled
to all appearances the clash
had been resolved, routines continued
Kay was waiting for the bus

82was saying''both strong personalities
amazing to have stayed friends for three years
we have recurrent conflicts, they blow overthis should too if I go home , don't worry
we'll still be good friends"
be just good friends
though clearly those words are not adequate
cannot be trusted to maintain when Kay
and Donna are not physically together
the relationship that seems so
obvious when they are
they quarreled again
up against it- there are words
that could have carried
that would have acknowledged
conveyed the significancethey even know the words
but that those words more accurately
describe their situation , that this tensionthat explodes in intimate violence oversome excuse is not appropriate ·if you 're truly just good friends
it's not safe even to think of such things
they have interpreted , explained .
the quarrel away as a familiar
clash of personalities between friends- Claudia Scott83

TALKING TO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT HERE
I. THERAPY

you don't trust me enoughYou snapped off the lights
handed me coffeeand settled into your leather chairgiving me your profile
trying to watch by acting
indifferent .

there is no evidence
your mother ever loved you
I covered my legs with my skirt
so you would not notice I had skinwould not guess it was warm,that I breathed , had any
particular name. I did not liketo weight the air with words
in the carefully dimmed
place where silence listened
for me.

I told your parents
what you said about your bodyIn the years since thenI have heard the absence
in afternoons, my head shaping
the air around it, my eyes looking
into sky, ears hearing until
I shout Get away you bastard!
at words you left coming
to life.

what you learn here will talkto you through the years
So you still sit somewhere
in a dim cube with a woman
who will not lie down
and close her eyes
who does not tell her namewhom you do not trust
enough .

- Susan Wood-Thompson

FEVER
A girl of six, drenched, throws the covers off.
Her parents, old and country, pack them backaround her. Feebly in the evening she plays
cards with her aunt, waiting for the little
red marks to go .
Hearts and diamonds fade,tonight she cannot read the cards, tonight
she learns silence, what it looks like foreverbehind her head.
Crafty-eared, she hears
her mother cry, head in apron in the kitchen,crying out the child who has stopped stirring in her,
whose eyes burned out. Crying guilt that has no origin,no name.
The child knows. Because the old man
used to come and touch her with that thinginside her pants, inside her brain, to tellher forever she's a bad girl: Good girls
don't have that happen to them . Good girls don't
go blind.
The child knows God sees everything.

-Susan Wood-Thompson

LIVING TILL NINETY
Leslie Robillard , May 31 , 1887 -June 1, 1977

For Leslie Robillard whom I
never knew except in the distantlast day of her life . I adjusted
her in that bed , rub bed her backsaw the folds of all her skinrumpled like a tired accordion.
During the bath she lay curiously
exposed, vulnerable to my whimsto the very air cut off from herby the pale green oxygen mask.
The IV in her arm , the feeding tube
in her nose dripped sustenance.
A foley catheter drained dark amberurine , the bag warm as a cow 's fulludder, holding her life 's final
expression . At 12 :40 she ceased
to breathe her face turned upward .
Her death happened without obvious
drama and her sister told me
she had wanted only
to live to ninety.
Leslie Robillard whom I
never knew had been unconscious for weeks
of days passing of handsthat felt her body bathed
the warm s~n , dryas an old apple ,inserted tubes in every orifice,ran IV's as a matter of course. Who
never spoke a word , only breathed
as best she could until the 90th
year passed like a cloud over her bed.
Who knew, whose body knewof her coming of age like a cloudthat parted to the distant air.
- Rachel , de Vries

86

unawareTHE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HATE AND LOVEThe real difference between hate and love islove is when they love you back hate is when
you think they should but they don't ever
heard of the phrase killer queer? A woman
I know (rather hard) has a fondness forother sweet young women but she usuallytreats them like shit because she
thinks they won't love her back she feels
betrayed by her own vulnerability her
weakness toward the fair sex thoseboy crazy tramps.
So I told her I strutted my stuff
let it all hang out until she got the
picture (fmally) Baby if you want me
I'm yours she was so surprised
she nearly bit through her cigarette(Salem lights) no one I suppose had
ever responded before what deprivationand yet people (women) must go
through it every day dying by turns
like a chicken on a grill atHorn and Hardart's take out.
She was so surprised as I stood there
lean and cool and ready it was likea lightbulb popped on over her head.
Really! She just had to consider as I
rustled through her desk drawer looking.
for staples. Well it took her a day
or two to respond but respond she
did giving it to me with those slinky
green eyes of hers the arching brows oh
I love her so I just had to laughwith joy it was a beginning wellat least she knows now the difference
between hate and love .
Hate is when you would love to love
love is when youCan.

- Ruth A. Routt

87

REVIEWS

Drawing by Gail Runte Piland

88Joanna Russ

"LISTEN, THERE'S A STORY FOR YOU . .. "A review of Retreat as It Was by Donna J. Young, The Naiad Press, 7800 West·side Dr., Weatherby Lake, Missouri, 64152, 120 pp ., $5 .00 (+ $1 postage).
In Literary Women Ellen Moers notes that nineteenth-century women
writers' insistent presentation of public acclaim for female genius in theirfiction is due to "the impossibility of ever having" [it] "in real life" andthat the embarrassingly "raw fantasy" of such scenes comes from having been
been "starved for centuries."lRetreat: As It Was! by Donna 1. Young is a heartbreaking non-book, although with training-especially someone to stand over her, yelling "Details!"
every time she drifts into summary-she might eventually become some sortof writer. Retreat was written out of sheer starvation, published ditto (unless
we're to believe that Naiad is simply being opportunistic), and will be readfor no other reason, if it's read at all .
. Ostensibly science fiction, Retreat's science comes from incoherently bad
television; it's a mixture of faster-than-light communications and spacedrive,
inexplicably endless sources of light and power, and no other method oftransporting the wounded from a grounded spaceship to a provincial settlement than "pack animals" (with "spines" but otherwise undescribed), a grueling six-or-seven-day, hypothermia-inducing journey which looks bafflingly
like a rather Darwinian version of triage. Since the wounded receive onlypsionic healing (the women disdaining such primitive devices as bandages,
food, water, antibiotics, etc.), why not send the healers to the ship'! But
Retreat mystifies all its technology. Here are the book's only descriptions oftechnological activity, quoted entire :The room she entered contrasted to [sic] the rustic simplicity of thepost. Instead of cave-like walls and fur-lined floors ,2 there were gadgets
and square corners, levers and dials, hard stone underfoot. Uta , Tulla, Ain ,and a few others were gathered around a console , making calculations. [12]They turned and began the process of tuning the complicated machineryto the biological rhythms that were Ria's alone. First Uta placed her handon a yellow, translucent square . She brushed her other hand over a seriesof colored plates to the left of the yellow square. Ria laid her hand downon the square next to Uta's and pressed the same plates in reverse order toLita's . Uta then removed both hands from the console. [14]The walls of the central room had been energized into multi-dimensional[sic] representations of various sec.tors of the known universe. Women werebusy entering data, making changes in this diagram or that , running multitudes of machines and equipment. [76189And here is Retreat's description of the cosmic disaster that ruins thewomen's sophisticated technology, leaves theT!1 vulnerable to the new cropof (mutation-induced) male children, transforms the fourth planet into theasteroid belt (I think) and proves that we've been on earth all the time, thus
validating that '~aguar" on page 1 (the book otherwise refers vaguely only
to " large predatory beasts") :.. . they were thrown to the ground. The earth shivered beneath them androared in agony . The force of the vibrations rolled Ria and Mar across theopen space , into each other and finally against another boulder. The buildings
collapsed . The pyramid shook. Women inside the buildings screamed in panic.
The quake died down, but another rolled in right behind it. Ria tried toregain her feet and fell again. The second shock ended soon, but the pyramidsuffered more damage. Finally, only small vibrations rattled through the
Post and Ria could stand . [90-91]
If I quote from Retreat at such length it's because I want to convey as
forcefully as possible the absolute , limp, thinness of the book ; not only isthere no science, no government, and no economics here, as well as barely
any visualizable scenery or people characterologically distinguishable fromone another, but Young's avoidance of concrete detail seems at times toamount to deliberate policy. Thus we have such annoying vaguenesses as"refreshments" [73] , "a steaming herb drink" [71], "nutrient cubes" [98] ,and "small portions of various foods" [39] , plus "a richly aromatic mug ofliquid" [87] -I suspect the author means that the liquid is aromatic, not themug, but that still doesn't tell us what the stuff tastes like. Young's ear isso leaden that she can flood Retreat with saidbookisms (like" 'Ha-ha-ha-haho,' Ain laughed"- p. 42) and barbarisms like "younglings" (children) and"the Mystery of Parthenogen" (pregnancy) or indicate one educated Sister's
provinciality by having her say "I dunno" [62] and the other's sophisticatedease by "I wouldn't want to enslave a sister to an unhealthy emotional attachment" [63]. But these remarks aren't characterizations since everybody on
Retreat is like everyone else, totally Good, Harmonious, Loving, and Nonerotic save for two who fall in love at first sight but don't get it on until
they want to reproduce (or at all thereafter), a piece of Christian-Fundamentalist prudery of which the author seems unaware.
What is the book about? Hugging, I think. Thirty-nine (non-erotic) hugs
and seventeen incidents of weeping occur in one hundred and six pages,
which averages out to one hug per 2 .7 pages, one weep every 9.4 pages, andone of either (if you're not picky) every 1.9 pa~s. Unhappily visible under
the surface of this story is an all-female commune in which everyone lives
on welfare or child-support , in which there is a little child-care (but no messy
diapers), a little herbal medicine , a little massage, a little yoga , no sex unless
you are In Love , and a lot of that amorphous, judgment-less, uncritical, andultimately meaningless "emotional support" which all too often passes among
women for real love or real respect. And of course nobody shops , cooks ,cleans, earns money , or has any idea of the enormous and complicated organism that is the modern industrial world, or ever quarrels , including the children , who always play "quietly and gently " [I9]. Seldom have traditional
female limitations been so painfully insisted upon in a piece of fiction. Naiad
90

has done neither Young nor us a favor by printing R etreat. I can't imagine
any positive reaction to the book from any reader whatever except a sob bysentimental high followed by an equally slumpy anger against one's bedmates ,housemates, and workmates for failing to live up to the book 's saccharine
ideality . Young (bemusedly , in her nightgown) has wandered out in the woods
to toast endless , gluey marshmallows over the same fire that good-humored ,shrewd Sally Gearhart , author of Wanderground 3 (in her L. L. Bean bootsand down jacket) is using to heat her can of Trail Mix-supposed to be goodfor you but people really like it because it's full of sweet stuff like raisinsand coconut. I am one of Wanderground 's godmothers and thus entitled tocall Gearhart the Edgar Rice Burroughs of Lesbian Feminism (tr.us implyingthat she has both the defects and the considerable virtues of the creator ofJohn Carter of Mars) , but at least Wanderground has individualized charactersand a sharp sense of the various kinds of hell nature can throw at you when
she's in the mood .
But who is this on the third side of the fire-this noonday to Gearhart's
sturdy Eveready flashlight and Young's druggy candle-this giant who is using
the fire not to ruin our taste buds or distract our desperate minds with magicalimpossibilities but to hammer out tools for the future : ploughshares, hunting
knives-and look , there's even a mold for a telescope mirror in the center of
the ashes!
The Titan with the forge is Motherlines, by Suzy McKee Charnas,4 a bookthat sank like a stone in hard-cover publication a year ago (where were youall! Asleep? On Mars? Oh, woe!) and is now out in Berkeley paperback witha cover as unjustly dull as Tee Corinne's cover for Retreat is unjustly seductive.
Charnas knows exactly what her characters eat and wear and use and what
they have to do to get it and what happens to them if they don't , and that's
rock-bottom political awareness if any ever existed . From the East Coast stateof Holdfast (after World War Three) in which all women are the chattel slavesof all men , the runner Alldera escapes , to be rescued by the free Amazons ,the Riding Women of the plains . There are also the Free Ferns, a communityof other escaped slaves , and all Chamas' people are unforgettable , from pretty
Daya (a "pet fern" until a master skewered her cheeks with a hot stick) who
makes stories and trouble out of the same imaginative hunger , to wise , wealthy,
tongueless Elnoa, boss of the Free Ferns, too fat to leave the wicker wagons
the ferns pull, endlessly keeping "her accounts" (as they think) until she tells
Daya in sign language-in one of the book's most moving scenes- that she iswriting history because the world must never forget what they suffered, tothe eccentric loner-artist Fedaka, healer and c1oth-dyer, whose only lover isthe Ferns' god, Moonwoman. Among the parthenogenetic Riding Women are
graceful, black, wise, quarrel-solving Nenisi Conor, who spends half her life
in sullen fury because "My horse-farting teeth hurt!" and loud , crude , redfaced, dumb Barvaran , whose death is the great grief of the book, and crazy
Grays Omelly who senses the collision of values the Free Ferns bring before
anyone else and so stands on one leg within strange rings of objects for hours"to keep things in their place."
Charnas doesn't tell you ; she shows you, from the authentic eeriness of
the Moonwoman legends to Alldera 's becoming the reluctant George Washington
91

of her people, capitulating to others' logic ("It [the Holdfast] was built on
our backs") , leading sixty armed women back to the Holdfast, where men
may still rule:"Listen , here 's a story for you :" [says Daya] "we are a small, grim army
drawn up on some high path on the far side of the mountains, looking out
in silence ... over our country, green to the horizon line of the sea .... " [251]And here is the Ferns' bitter "self-song":"Wash all clean, black sea, roll stones,
Break walls, salt sand , spare none .. .
We breathed earth all our generations.
We can breathe an ocean of dead men and not care." [233]
Listen, there's a story for you ... . A real one.
Read it.
NOTES

1. Ellen Moers, Literary Women, Anchor Press/Doubleday Garden City NY 1977
p.278.
', . .,,
2. No one does any house-lceeping in this book, even where details like furry floors
suggest a lot of potential for mess.
3. Sally Gearhart, Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women, Persephone Press, Watertown, Mass., 1978.
4. ~uzy McKee Charnas, Motherlines, Berkeley , N.Y., 1979.

conditions: ,fivethe black women s issue
Available August, 1979

Conditions is a magazine of women's writing with an emphasis on writing by lesbians.
Conditiolls : Five is an issue devoted entirely to writing by Black women, guest edited
by Lorraine Bet.hel and Barbara Smith.
.
SUBSCRIPT,ON RATES (three issues): regular, $8; students and unemployed, $6;
supporting subscriptions, $IS, $20, $2S; institUtional, $IS; single issue, $3. Overseas
air-mail, add $4.80/subscription, $1.60/single issue. Back issues still available.
CONDITIONS, P.O. Box S6, Van Brunt Station, Brooklyn, NY 1121S.

92

Susan Wood-Thompson"TO KNOW EACH OTHER AND BE KNOWN"

A review of To Know Each Other and Be Known: Women's Writing Workshops by Beverly Tanenhaus; Out & Out Books, 70pp. (Order from: The
Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY 14886, $3 .50 + 75t postage); Notes of a Daughter
from the Old Country by Melanie Perish, Motheroot Publications, 214 Dewey St.,
Pittsburgh, PA 15218, 14pp., $1 .75; Speaking in Sign: Poems by Terri Anderson,
West End Press, Box 697, Cambridge, MA 02139; 32pp., write for price.
From June 1976 to June 1977 three women met in conservative, insular
Williamsburg, Virginia to talk feminist politics and poetry. As I slogged
through the rain to these meetings, I felt exploratory and frightened. Afterwards, I walked home hearing and re-hearing in exhilaration the most compelling words we had said and written. Together we forged a path, random
and sure . When the year ended, I began a year of no paid work, writing inSouth Carolina . But before going, I took off for Oneonta, New York, having answered an ad for members for Beverly Tanenhaus' Women's Writing
Workshop . I drove to the mountains in deadly earnest, in the faith that I
could wrest from this workshop the women's writing community I knew I
had to have much more of, and figured to exist somewhere. For two weeks
I had daily two-hour criticism classes, another meeting with fewer women,
where we criticized writing by each daily, and in the evenings women gave
informal readings. It was a wonderful springboard for a year working alonebut not quite alone because a number of us exchanged poems by mail during the next year, and generated the surest sense of feminist writing community and audience I have ever known. Among these women were Beverly Tanenhaus, Melanie Perish, and Terri Anderson. In the last two years, each has
published her first book.
My lasting impression of Beverly's To Know Each Other and Be Known:
Women's Writing Workshops is the articulateness of its prinCipal author. (Isay "principal" because Beverly "collaborates" by quoting extensively thepoems and comments of workshop participants and guest writers.) Beverly
is a poet, critic; teacher, and in the workshop these roles coalesce . She ishands-down the· best classroom critic I have seen. She writes, "My contribution is not to tell a woman everything I know about her work, but to figureout what I know about her work that she can use." Beverly succeeds in eliciting the same useful criticism from workshop members. Her combinationof sensitivity toward and respect for each writer is powerful. The sensitivity,
as Beverly speaks for all women:
Being candid and a woman involves risk. At the very least, I may be met
with disbelief or plain confusion . At the worst, I may be punished for myinsight. Because of fear of retaliation or estrangement from people I love,
perhaps I will limit my perceptions; I will not let myself know as much as
I might under more supportive circumstances. Our community may very 93
well determine the parameters of our wisdom .

To help the workshop community stretch the parameters of each member's
wisdom, Beverly runs a feminist classroom that includes these signs of respect, culled from the many which her book elucidates :- Every woman determined for herself what work she would present tothe class; as a teacher, I'm comfortable dealing with any piece that thewriter takes seriously .
- No one was allowed to state a one-dimensional pejorative reaction to work,
since 'I hate it' or even 'I love it' would leave the writer helpless to evaluate
response . Each critical comment had to be supported by specific reasoning.
-The writer agreed to remain silent until we had fmished our critique ofher work ....This method allowed us to explore multiple perspectives without being short-circuited by the author's explanations .
These strategies promot.e constructive ways for authors to learn about theirwork. As a member of Beverly's class , I was most impressed by the explorationof "multiple perspectives" mentioned above. For instance, Beverly might ask
the group to identify the literal setting in the first stanza of a woman:s poem.
If four different interpretations were forthcoming , the author would learn as
painlessly as possible that her stanza was ambiguous , and could decide to use
or eliminate the ambiguity .
I am moved by Beverly's insights into the women she works with , and into herself. (In fact, my only problem in reading the book lies in the occasional redundancy between her own and collaborators' comments , and an occasional proliferation of collaborators' comments to the extent of breaking thefast pace and sure direction of Beverly 's insights.) Some of her remarks especially reflect honesty and willingness to "be known " in the book. She describes, for example , one complexity she and every creative writing teacher I
know struggles with : " If, as the teacher , I emerged as an expert in taking
other people's writing perhaps more seriously than my own , I too flourishedin the community's powerful affirmation of me as an individual ."It is difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to criticize the book without criticizing the workshops-to attend one is to feel strongly about it. Each workshop lasts two weeks and refracts the personalities and writing skills of thewomen there . Fortunately, women tend to come when ready to change to afuller commitment in their writing-this is exciting to be in on. A generosityof give-and-take moves among the women . In experiencing the serious attention her work receives from the others, each learns how to take it more seriously for herself. Many then publish as they never have before. I am no longer surprised, but always happy, to open a feminist journal and find writing
by one, two, or three workshop women. Best of all has been the appearanceof Beverly's book, and the chapbooks by two poets who were already writing very strong poetry at the 1977 workshop , and before.
Melanie Perish's Notes of a Daughter from the Old Country gives an overall impression of decorum : each aspect matches some other. The first andlast poems , for instance , frame the book by describing the generations of
Yugoslavian women in the speaker's mother's family. This is especially fitting in a book where every poem deals, one way or another , with a woman 's
reflection - in her ancestors , students , or even in her choice of possessions .
The two middle poems take place in the immediate family home on "Satur94

day Morning" and ,"Sunday Afternoon." This sense of order pervades all aspects of the book.
The first poem begins with the oval image of the poet's fingernails , andthe last oval shapes of the great-great-grandmother's body. In this last poem
the reader's familiarity with each woman is created from a set of related
shapes: ovals for the first woman , braids and ropes for the second , followedby knots and tangles for the third. A passage from this poem illustrates Melanie's gift for delineating textures, here heightened by particularly fme contrasts and an involvement of all five senses:
Practiced fingers
cut the cord with a clean fish knife ,knotted it tight with waxed string
before she bathed the small body ,wrapped it in cloth soft from boiling.
("Notes of a Daughter from the Old Country")
Melanie's clarity of image is reflexive in this description of a friend 's possessions:Thin fall lightmakes sharp shadows under her things,
a blue glass pitcher,a wheel-thrown bowl ,vessels that fIll and keep and pour.
("Rooms")
A variation on reverberation among images and in relation to theme isclearly present in the last two lines of this section from "Kinship," a poem
dedicated to Beverly :When you talk of anger
plough down castles,
turn over the prince ,the princess dead in her sleep ,the Russian mothers before you
become your bones, your eyes,
your black hair.
I see you planting,breaking ground.
The only poem in which I do not find this effect is "Saturday Morning,"
and this is the only poem in the book that I do not fmd transcending its
subject matter. But in her characteristically strong similes and metaphorsthat usually become evident or gain impact at the end of a poem - Melanie
has discovered , and developed to distinction , a feature of her own perception.
Melanie's subjects suddenly gain dimensions when she practices what I find
to be her dominant approach to the poems in this book .
One of the most skillful instances of this technique occurs in "For theYoung Women ," a lovely lesbian poem , in which the speaker recalls herself
as a young woman filled with longing. In describing her beach-pl ayas in95

fused with a quest to fulfill strong needs for as yet unnamed satisfaction,
she implicitly clarifies the nature of what she wants :At fifteen, sixteen
I ate and lay and ran with themdown to the tongue of the sea
the white shoulders of her beachlooking for names.
Finally, I want to point out that images of a poet's mother give a glimpseof early nourishment of this book 's roots . For example, in "To Look at My
Hands and See ,"I knew only the fingers
that touched my back as I studied ,held the books she read to me ,that carefully turned the pagesof everything I wrote .
This beautifully patterned book focuses my attention on the concisionand control of art. Subject matter, tone, and technique are well-defined andharmonious among themselves. Melanie lives in Manhattan , a concentrated
geographic area, and in this book with a geographic emphasis , I wonder about
the relation of where she lives to the distinct shape of what she writes .
This particularly occurs to me in contrasting her work with Terri Anderson's Speaking in Sign , in which geography is also important. Terri has lived
all her life in the Midwest and Southwest , and her poems emphasize diffusion made concrete in nature 's wildness : wild weeds , fine dust , leaping pointsof fire. Like the amorphous borders of the Midwest, her book borders abroad range of subjects : desolation at the loss of family members, politicaloutrage , sexual love for women and men , the Virgin Mary , celebration ofstrong women, surrealistic fantasies , the poet 's role , and far more. Terri 's
poetic approaches are likewise varied , but many poems and the book as awhole transmit a strong sense of the tenuousness of emotional orientationin the flux , particularly the harsh demands , of nature . Here , in the opening
and ending of "Our People" I find the fierce grip that the punishing, pungent countryside has on its inhabitants :For more years than I can remember,the crops have failed
in this land where rain is a fugitive ;and the people in my blood have
lived in houses cut from the earth.
Yet we have been more than survivors ;all the best I will ever belies rooted in the earth
where my grandmother sleeps,
on a prairie swept clean of trees ,under a harsh, cloudless sky,
where wheat flows in waves

96over the first sod houses,
and the dust of the deadsings under the blade of the plow.
Terri is a good observer with a range of ways to tell her stories and share
her landscapes , but on rare occasions she uses a trite phrase (e.g. ending apoem with the line , "that is so good!") or burdens a description with redundant or otherwise lifeless adjectives (as in "intricate web") . These are, however, not characteristic, and usually the impression is of a mingling of sensations, some heard with a third ear, as in "the last long sigh of willows ," andsome achieved by association :Your body was always a housefreely offering its fragranceof wild mint and moss.
("October")Taken a bit further, the combination of nature with feelings about experiences with another person take a surreal form :How many times did we find thatplace of tangled vines where
our footsteps touched the earth,and in their wake grew thelong, bending stalks of glass bells?
Walking under the moon then,our bodies were curving strands oflight visible only to the hundredeyes flashing in the branches overhead.
("The Distant Light")
The unusual versatility of Terri 's verse also includes public political events,
as in "The Siege of the International Hotel," which documents the police's
forcing Felix Ayson and others from the home they had worked hard to
save. In one of her strongest endings , Terri concludes:
Before the demolition crews
arrive in the morning,
the children come backto stare at empty windows and doors
barred by uniformed guards;
somber and dark-eyed children
who speak only in whispers
and forget nothing at all.
In another poem about freedom, "Songs of the Deviant Sisters," Terricasts into words the opposition between those who uphold the patriarchy at
all costs, and the women who turn backs on it :We inject our hollow words
with honey and liquid lead ,but the weight of what
remains unsaid falls throughgaping wounds to thecenter of the earth
where everything ismolten and without form.
("Where the False Word Ends")

97 .

Whatever subject Terri chooses, her poems are forceful, and her tone conveys particular authority when she describes the connections between people
and an unyielding land, between people and the difficulty of establishing
their freedom.
I have found that a good book, like a good poem, teaches me how toread it. All three books reviewed here benefit in this respect from the articulate, well-defined, and bold language the authors use. These are first books
by women who have written steadily, learned a great deal about their writing, and who strengthen the women's community by publishing these books.

WOMEN'S WRITING WORKSHOPS: Poetry, Fiction, Playwriting
Beverly Tanenhaus, Director
2 Sessions: June 29-July 13 andJuly 27-Aug. 10, 1980

Staff: Joan Larkin, Sherry Redding.
Guest Writers & Editors include: Judy Grahn, Adrienne Rich,
Celeste West, and Elaine Gill
For more information write:

PROGRAM OFFICE,
Hartwick College
Oneonta, New York 13820

The National Women's Studies Association will hold its annual convention atIndiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, from May 16-20, 1980. The planned program will include panels, seminars, and papers in feminist educationand presentations in the arts. Participants can look forwarq to discussions of
Women's Studies Programs in academic institutions and of feminist alternatives
to traditional education. For further information, contact Elaine Reuben, Coordinator, NWSA, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

98

ETC.

•

CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES
Maureen Brady is the author of Give Me Your Good Ear and a cofounder of Spinsters, Ink .
Linda J . Brown: "I am: Black lesbian-feminist , an editor of A zalea: a magazine by 3rdWorld Lesbians, city witch-womon, member of the Jemima Writers' Collective."
Rachel deVries helped form a new feminist press in Cazenovia, NY called The Wild Goose
Press. They published her book, An Arc of Light. Her poems have appeared as well inseveral small magazines.
J.Z. Grover: "I started the series Bad Attitude because I was trying to sort out what there
is about a woman's physical presentation that announces her as a dyke. Since I didn't
want to involve myself with the whole question of what faces communicate, I thought I
would photograph as many dyke-backs as I could to see what, if anything, they seemed tohave in common."Pat Hynes is an environmental engineer and a founder of Bread and Roses Restaurant.
Lise Iwon lives in Madison , Wisconsin, and teaches at a daycare center and an alternative
high school.
Peggy Komegger is a San Francisco writer and an associate editor of the new Journal ofSocial Anarchism from Baltimore.
Anne Lee lives in Pasadena , California.
Beverly Lynch was a frequent contributor to The Ladder in its last years. She is still trying
to tell stories that make us cry and smile about ourselves.
Linda Marie is the author of I Must Not Rock (Daughters, 1977) and is working on a playadapted from Barbara Deming's Prison Notes.
kmc minns lives in Los Angeles.
Maricla Moyano lives in New York City. Her first book is titled, appropriately enough, The
Beginning Book (Print Center, 1973). She is working on another (to be called Middle Book).
Several of her articles have appeared in Tribad.
Gail Runte Piland i~ a prOfessional artist, illustrator, and educator, now living in the mountains of North Carolina .
P.L. Press lives in San Francisco.
Ruth A. Rouff: "I am currently a prisoner of the corporation (doing clerical work in a
CBS affiliate) and enjoying it less. I attended Vassar College for three years before dropping out to write. I have no regrets."
Joanna Russ is the author of several science fiction novels, including The Female Man .
A new novel, On Strike Against God. will be published by Out and Out Books this year.
Claudia Scott died in late 1979. The editors of SW will miss her poems and her letters,
which often pointed out our shortcomings, but which were always witty, and always verymuch Claudia. Several women in Philadelphia are exploring ways to publish her second
volume of poetry.
Kim Vaeth lives in Fairfax, California .
Terry Wolverton is a lesbian artist whose work includes writing, theater , education, magic,
and community organizing. She is currently involved with two large projects: the Incest
Awareness Project, and The Great American Lesbian Art Show (GALAS).
Susan Wood-Thompson: "I teach writing workshops in Washington , DC on poetic structures, revision, and long poems. My book of poems , Ligh t through the Door , will be published in Spring, 1980."
Susan J . Wolfe teaches at the University of South Dakota, in Vermillion.
Judith Niemi teaches a course on women & wilderness in Minneapolis and is a partner in
Woodswoman , leading women un canoeing trips in the north woods.

100A-MAZING WORDSEARCH II: THE LESBIAN BODY

created by Julia Penelope
Based on Monique Wittig's The Lesbian Body, this puzzle contains 44 words that referto the Lesbian anatomy. The words are listed below, and the first word, SPINE, has already been circled to get you started. As you find each word in the diagram, circle it andcross it out in the list.

D A E V H X R 0

FDA E HER 0o S L RIG N U K U N S JHKFB Z S ZIVZSESPANYSLSEKY E R B E C C

I V 0 Q NET E 0 T

OETVUUCEBR SALOIN SCHLNGP LGRTHAPBRLS
CCTBNULYWAEP P L IANIYUOOTHA IRWL IASMOPET N T W G Z BRA INN T P I
UEYRAMMAM IKYAHHE TTOSEK JAXOGAVPUELEESYESLMRWREMSABVRMNSTINDFOYYO I K L I C
PWTPTZ I JWLOUONOSELTSUVNAAMLRTJ EOXSEAAYGMAWBVEHGEDRZSEEEAOVWQVTEBWSQKWRILT LMHEAET

A

JT HY

ASBAERUIEXRSPUBSDAN IGAVTXC SNOB C P K

L G G OCS:p I N E} Y B M H S E 0 T"""Spin&-...
urea
secretions
sweat
lymph
tonguefingersnails
templesthe bloods
forehead
mouth
lips
teeth
cunt
navel
legs
occiput

cervixmaw
vagina
vulva
jaw
nose
womb
Labia majora
Labia minora

cheekspubis. elbow
hair
knee
toes
eyes
loins
aorta
viscerasynapses
nipplesbreastspubis
mammaIY
brain
pelvis101

FOR HANDICAPPED READERS:

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102

COMING - - - in

SINISTER WISDOM

2 Special Issues
SW 13 -LESBIAN PUBLISHING & WRITING. Guest edited by
Beth Hodges. Interviews, Reviews, and Theory . Send submissions with SASE to Beth Hodges
64R Sacramento Street
Tel.: 617-547-0704
Cambridge, MA02138
DEADLINE: March 15, 1980

SW 15 - LESBIANS AND PORNOGRAPHY. Guest edited by
Julia Penelope. We are seeking poems, articles, and short stories
that deal with any of the issues of pornography and violence and theways in which these facets of pa triarchal culture affect Lesbian lives,
the way we defme ourselves, our sexuality , our relationships withother wimJTlin, racism and pornography, class ism and pornography,
incest as a specific form of sexual violence in the lives of Lesbians, the"compromise" distinction between "pornography" and "erotica," theuse of pseudo-Lesbian imagery in advertising (to whom do such ads
appeal?) . Also of interest, in contrast, would be articles and fiction that
explore Lesbian sensuality as it is evolving now.

Address all correspondence and manuscripts (include an SASE)
toJulia Penelope
box 30541
DEADLINE: September 1, 1980
Lincoln, NE68503

Subscribers, please read: If you move, please send us your address change
as soon as possible. The post office will not forward your magazine . If
you have moved recently and think you may have missed an issue, it wasprobably mailed to your old address and then returned to us . In that case,
we ask that you send $1.00 to partially cover the cost of remailing it.

NOTIFY US OF YOUR CHANGE OF ADDRESSRENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION

103

SUBMISSIONS
Sinister Wisdom welcomes submissions from black and Third World Lesbians.
Sinister Wisdom welcomes unsolicited manuscripts and art work. Please type(double-spaced) all written work. Reviews should be no longer than 3500
words; articles no longer than 5000 words. Enclose self-addressed, stamped
envelope and a 2-3 line description of yourself. At this time, we can pay
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except poetry to SW, Box 30541, Lincoln, Nebraska 68503 .
Sinister Wisdom will not be accepting poetry manuscripts again until after
March 1, 1980. After that time, send poetry to Susan Leigh Star, poetry editor,
52 Mars Street , San Francisco, California 94114.

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plus 50 cents to cover mailing costs. (They make nice gifts for friends, too ;bulk rates available .)Send $3.50 per poster to: Sinister Wisdom, Box 30541, Lincoln, Ne . 68503.
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Sinister Wisdom
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I would like to subscribe to Sinister Wisdom .
_____ Enclosed is $7.50 for one year (4 issues), beginning with issue 13_____ Enclosed is $13.00 for 8 issues, beginning with issue 13
NAME ______________________________________________ _ADDRESS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ZIP - - -- - - - - -- - Enclosed is ________ . Please send SW to my friend .
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BACK ISSUES, WHILE THEY LAST
Issue 4 (Fall 1977): stories of mothers and daughters and witches and lovers;
Joanna Russ's tale for the girlchild in all of us; Lesbian separatism from theinside ; photo-essay; interview; reviews, letters and poetry. 96 pp. , $2 .25.
Issue 5 (Winter 1978): Susan Leigh Star, "Lesbian Feminism as an Altered
State of Consciousness"; Judith Schwarz, "Researching Lesbian History";
Michelle Cliff on speechlessness; Lesbian Day speech by Barbara Grier; fiction ;poetry ; photo-essay; reviews ; interview . 104 pp ., $2.25.
Issue 6 (Summer 1978): Julia Stanley , Mary Daly, Audre Lorde, Judith
McDaniel, Adrienne Rich on language and silence ; Marilyn Frye on separatism and power; fiction by Sandy Boucher, Thyme Seagull; poetry; interviews; essays by Sarah Hoagland and Peggy Holland ; drawings and photos.
104 pp., $2.50 .
Issue 7 (Fall 1978) : myths, monsters , teeth, etc. Jane Caputi on patriarchal
fish stories; Judith Schwarz on being physically different ; self-portraits inprose and poetry by Alice Bloch and Susan Wood-Thompson ; feminist musings by Melanie Kaye ; plus a wealth of fiction, poetry , reviews , drawings, andphotographs. 104 pp., $2.50
Issue 8 (Winter 1979): "did you say lu-uv?"; storytelling by Sherry Thomasand Audre Lorde; photographs by Deborah Snow ; poetry by Judy Grahn ;notes on deafness; essay on "that place where nothing is"; interview ; reviews ;"Scrambled Eggs"; and much more poetry and fiction . 104 pp. $2 .50.

theIssue 9 (Spring 1979): JR Roberts on
history of dyke, Michelle Cliff onanonymity, Melanie Kaye on violence, Susan Cavin on Lesbian origins, Bertha
Harris, Harriet Desmoines, and Irena Klepfisz on Lesbian literature ; fiction by
Becky Birtha, Jan Clausen, Linda Marie, Kathryn Missett, Ann Shockley, Pearl
Time'sChild ; an outpouring of rme poetry ; photography ; reviews ; and a puzzle.
104 pp. $2.50.
Issue 10 (Summer 1979): Special issue on being old and age , guest-edited by
Susan Leigh Star. Includes Barbara Macdonald and Baba Copper on their 65th
and 59th year , respectively ; Audre Lorde on surviving cancer; interview with
Mabel Hampton ; essays on nursing home women, the time trip, being under21; poetry ; photo-essay; fiction. 104 pp . $2 .50.
Issue 11 (Fall 1979): Inside the Lesbian Herstory Archives ; fantasy and true
story ; Susan Yarbrough on lesbian celibacy ; Andree Collard on victimization ;Joyce Trebilcot , "Conceiving Women "; responses ; reviews ; poetry. 104 pp . $2 .50.
(Add 60 cents postage for every 1-2 copies ordered)no. 12 wi nte..r 1980

2.50