Sinister Wisdom 38
Summer I Fall 1989
Editor and publisher: Elana Dykewomon

Editorial readers and advisors: Barbara Ruth, DeeAnne Davis, Betty Dudley,
Caryatis Cardea, Cath Thompson, Gloria Anzaldua, Jasmine Marah, Lisa
Carlin, Naja Sorella, Susanjill Kahn, Valerie Stoehr, Winn Gilmore~ontributing editors: Gloria Anzaldua, Irena Klepfisz, Melanie Kayel
Kantrowitz
Typists and proofreaders: Cath Thompson, DeeAnne Davis, Rhea, Susan
Levinkind, Valerie Stoehr
Office help, correspondence, ads and accounting: Cindy Cooper, Joan
Drury, Marlane Cook, Nina Wouk, Toni Langfield
Thanks to Bobby Rothschild and Rebecca Kutlin of Tamed Technology
pi!!tribution and mailing: Anita Schriver, Barb Voss, Caryatis Cardea, CathThompson, Cindy Cooper, Dolphin Zelda Waletzky, Jasmine Marah, Kim
Swineheart, Leslie Baker, Leslie Levy, Lisa Carlin, Susan Goldberg, Susanjill
Kilul( Susan Levinkind, Tavie Tipton, Toni Langfield, Valerie Stoehr
Reader for the Womyn's Braille Press: Judy Freespirit
Cover d~sign: Louise Rafkin
Cover art: Juana Maria de la Caridad, Las Amigas (woodcut)

SINISIER WISOOM, founded 1976
Fonner editors and publishers:

Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Midlelle Oiff and Adrienne Rim (1981-83)
Michaele Uccella (1983-84)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-87)

Copyright © 1989 Sinister Wisdom. All rights reserved to individual artists and authors.

lSSN: 0196-1853

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

A Journal for the Lesbian Imaginationin the Arts and Politics_________________ Contents
3
6
8
10
1i
30

Elana Dykewomon • Notes for a Magazine
Notes on the Themes (upcoming issues)
Terri L. Jewell • Face of Africa (poem)
Terri L. Jewell • Basketeer (poem)
D.E. Clarke • Moving Expenses (narrative)
M. S. Taraba • Private Transportation (prose)§§§
32 Jill Spisak • Taking Rachel Home (poem)
33 Catherine Reid • The Fox (narrative)
45 Diane Blyler • Preparations For The Life Ahead (poem)
47 Natalie Devora • Dye (narrative)
53 . Lisa Carlin • As Love Is A House (poem)

§§§
55
58
60
67
68

Gloria Anzaldua • Nightvoice (poem)
Lisa Morphew • The Moth (prose/poem)
Carolyn Gage • Confessions of a Lesbian Groupie(narrative)
Lisa Marie Bronson • Untitled (poem)
Rozanne· Dangerous Dancing (narrative)

§§§
79
81
83
85
87

Beth Houston • Jungle of My Body (prose/poem)
Marilyn R. Mumford • Anniversary Poem (poem)
Pamela Pratt • Up Close (narrative)
Karen Elias • Sharp Turning (poems)
Teya Schaffer • Judith & Sabrina (narrative)

§§§

97
98
100
106
108
109
119

Donna Steiner • Chambers of the Heart (prose/poem)
Anne B. Dalton • An Unsent Letter to Emily:
Constellations of Desire (poem)
Paula Martinac • Mineola, Mineola (narrative)
tova. mrs. tuccie and the car (narrative)
Sondra Knight • sable (poem)
Vivienne Louise • Invisible Woman (narrative)
Anne B. Dalton • The Woman Whose Garden Becomes
the Whole World (poem)
§§§

121
132
134
l38

Barbara Ruth • Lesbian Ethics - Taking Our Lives
Seriously (review)
Books Received
Contributors' Notes
Announcements and Classified Ads§§§
ART
Cover Juana Maria de la Caridad • Las Amigas (woodcut)
9 Sudie Rakusin • from Dreams and Shadows (drawing)
54 Jasmine Marah • "there is a window of joy that has yourface in it" Lisa Carlin, from the poem "As Love Is A House"
59
78
80

99

(photograph)
Myra Fourwinds • Untitled (photograph)
Linda Marie Nolte • Untitled (drawing)b. ann • "Thief! how did you crawl into, crawl down alone

into the death I wanted so badly and for so long, ... " Anne
Sexton from the poem "Sylvia's Death" (mixed media)
b. ann • "Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet."
Sylvia Plath, from the poem "Lesbos" (mixed media)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Notes for a Magazine

Did you say love?*
TIle emphasis of this "open" issue is on relationships and per$onal writing (personal as opposed to expository or theoretical).
The work we've included covers a wide range of relationships lover (at various stages), political, friendship, familial, adversarial, social. We're a couple weeks late getting to you because I fellin love, and it always takes time to get up again and incorporate
new love into daily life. But since I'm inclined to give "falling inlove" as a reason why it was hard to sit at my computer and edit;
and since the issue is about relationships, it seems an appropriate
moment to talk about love.
My friends ask me if I still believe what I wrote in the introduction to issue #36, "that womyn will never begin to be free until wegive up on romantic love ... " Absolutely. By romantic love I
meant then, as now, the belief - wish - obsession - that individual love will save us or cure us, will give us a central purpose
around which to build our lives. The fear that as one we arealmost invisible, powerless, particularly as womyn, but as two,
it's me and you, babe, against the world and we can do it. The
desire to ha ve a fixed set of rules for how to relate that are covered
4nder ''being in love" - rules like: my lover always comes first,
I always sit next to my lover, my lover will take care of me if I'msick, I have a permanent date for Saturday night, my friends will
understand if I don't call them for a month. While sometimes wewqnt, or depend, on those (and other) "certainties," one of thegreat things about being a lesbian is that the ambiguous nature ofm.any of our relationships pushes us to keep questioning therules. We need order and regularity in our lives, and we need
constant examination as well.
I know we've all been brainwashed - it's on the radio every
day, the songs, advertisements, TV shows selling "love." Of*This is a line from one of Willie Tyson's early songs. Sinister Wisdom will givea one year subscription to the first reader who sends in the full name ofthe song,lyriCS, album and year the album was released.

3

course they're selling heterosexual love, and I'm fond of theobserv(ltion that if it were so natural for women and men to be
together it wouldn't need all this hype. But as lesbians, we often
take that same hype and rewrite the scripts just enough to accommodate us. We all do it, we have no idea what "love" would look
like among lesbians who had never been subject to this coercive
mass conditioning.
But we keep trying to imagine - and reinvent it. .We all live
here, doing the best we can with what we've got. It's not simply
that we're all duped. We live with honest conflicts about ourpriorities, our personal, social and political needs. We struggle
with the contradictions between the ways we love and the ways
we think we ought to. That's why it's important to talk about it to do what we have been accused of doing for centuries - gossip.
Analyze, discuss, dissect - talk and read about each other's
relationships, question each other, demand the best, want themost, not let each other disappear from the interactions whichmake up lesbian community by virtue of coupling.
We don't need romantic love, love that we can use as an excuse
for inertia, love that becomes our entire emotional/intellectual
focus. Love that isolates and privatizes experience. But of course
we need love - to care and be cared about, to rub and be rubbed,
to feel met, challenged and encouraged. Having lovers and intimate pairings is a continual source of learning and wonder. And
we also need romance - the sensation that we are on incredible
fldventures together, a desire for gentle, thoughtful gestures,
fresh flowers, poetry, blue herons watching us from the river.
Being able to embrace "romance" is opening to the vibrancy of the
moment" , feeling a depth of contact that gives us joy in all thesmall acts that make up our days.
But we tend to romanticize only certain kinds of relationships,
primarily sexual. We have little cultural history for other kinds ofromance, from the romance of the self (the ability to claim ourselves as the heroes of our lives without needing another womon
to validate us), to the romance of working in groups. For instance,
I wa,s at a performance of Mothertongue Readers Theater, a•This phrase is Susanjill Kahn's, whose critical reading and enduring friendshipwere invaluable in writing these notes.
4loosely-knit association of over 90 women who come together insmall groups to work on particular scripts. In the discussion, theperformers described a "Mothertongue experience," where aftermonths of meeting to eat and talk, talk and eat, suddenly
womyn will come in with ten new pieces for a script. Clearly thewomyn in that group (as in many groups) have a fluid experienceof pleasure and creativity within the group process - yet werarely hold that up as "true love." I'd like to live in a community
where it would be as meaningful to say "I'm in love with mywriters group," "I fell in love with myself this month," "I'm inlove with Sinister Wisdom," "I'm in love with the redwoods," as
it is to say "I fell in love with a womon."One-on-one experience is crucial to our sense of self, but it's
not the only place where we form our selves. We don't need to bepaired in order to experience love, share strength and affection
with each other. It's that driven, desperate quest for the "perfectmate" that wastes our energy and minds, makes us overlook or
discount the love we get in our friendships, our political andsocial relations.
We need all possible relationships. Much of who we are is thequality and kind of our interactions. The work in this issue examines a host of intimate questions: what is recognition, what's
honesty, what's need, what's compassion, what's self-reliance,
how does the damage done show, how do we work throughincest and abuse in intimacies, what's grief, what's attraction,
what's sex, when is it lust, whose memory and history do webring forward, how do we deal with how we look to each other,
how do we cope with fear of death, of losing our beloved, how do
We maintain our sense of self under threat, how do we grapple
with our silences, with rejection, casual connection, what lasts
through time, how do we shape each other, affect each other'smobility, what is the nature of our resilience, how do we find thetools, pass them to each other, with which we will change
everything?

six

•••••

We get a lot of responses to SW - many at the bottom of
renewal forms (if there's a renewal form with your issue, please
send it back as soon as you can). Several womyn wrote to say that5

issue #36 changed or saved their lives. We don't usually print
these letters, and often don't have time to respond to them, butthey mean a lot to us. We take your feedback and criticism toh~art; when you let us know how Sinister Wisdom touched you,
you become part of the energy that makes the next issue possible.
Thanks.
Some dykes have asked why there has been work by straightwomen in some of the issues. The simplest answer is because theysubmit it, the editorial group likes it and feels it offers something
to lesbians. Since Sinister Wisdom is a lesbian space, we want ourreaders to assume that all work is by lesbians unless otherwise
stated, but it's often not until a woman sends us her contributor'spot~ that we know she's not a lesbian. Material by straight women
has been included in Sinister Wisdom from the first issue when
Harriet (Desmoines) Ellenberger wrote "Each woman represented in the magazine is moving outside patriarchal culture. All
are boundary dwellers ..." We will continue to publish work by
nOh-lesbian women when appropriate to an issue or theme, while
we continue to intensify our lesbian focus .
We need more artwork! We know there are lots of lesbianartists out there, and that getting a photo or stat of your work issometimes difficult. But find a way to send your work in - b&w
photos, high-quality xeroxes or stats. Submission guidelines areon the back cover. We welcome any suggestions on incorporating
more artwork in Sinister Wisdom.
Project in the works: we keep meaning to have a couple pagesof photos and bios of the Sinister Wisdom workers - the editorial
readers, mailing crews, proofreaders, kibitzers. While we're
working on it, remember all those dykes on the inside front covermake this possible. It wouldn't happen without them.

____________ Notes on the Themes#39. An issue on Physical Disability. Work from/about womyn
whose lives are seriously disrupted by long-term conditions.
Available December, 1989.
6

#40. On Friendship. "Just" friends? "Best" friends? "Old"friends? "Life-long" friends? How do we befriend each other?
What do we expect from our friendships? What do we put intothem? How do we understand the complex differences (andsimilarities) between friend and lover? What about betrayals? Isfriendship part of political movement? Are political movements
possible without friendship? What's the difference between a"clique" and a "network?" What kind of friendships do we makeCj.cross race, class, cultural, ability, size, age differences? How dovye sustain and nurture our friendships through time? We could
ask these questions for pages - we hope you have some answers.
(Deadline: October 15, 1989)# 41. The Italian-American Issue: Sinister Wisdom is currently
soliciting manuscripts and artwork from all women of Italiandescent, with a strong emphasis on work by Italian-American
lesbians. Issue #41 will be guest-edited by Janet Capone andDenise Leto. Some themes will include La Famiglia: What doesfamily mean to us? With each generation, how is our culture
being maintained or diluted? Lesbiche Italo-americane: What doesit mean to be an Italian-American lesbian? What factors havecontributed to a delayed understanding of our ethnic and cultural identity? Etnicita: Do we see ourselves as Italian, American,
pr Italian-American? What does it mean to be olive-skinned? La
Storia: What are the historical and economic differences between
Northern and Southern Italy? How were the wave of immigrants
from the South and Sicily pressured to assimilate once in America? Stereotipie Culturali: How has the image of the Italian as
criminal or Mafioso influenced actual historical events such as
the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 and the mass lynchingof Italians in New Orleans in 1891? La Spiritualita: What is our
spirituality? Was it Catholic? What is it now?
Deadline: February 15, 1990. Send submissions or requests
for further information and guidelines with SASE to Janet Capone & Denise Leto, Italian-American issue c/o Sinister Wisdom.

Rentember to check out the submission guidelines on the inside backcover before sending us your work. Thanks!

7

Terri L. Jewell

Face of Africa

The land spans broad as your nose
its loam soft skin from which sun rises
carrying sweet juice and stroked pulp.
Your earlobes arch into precious ores,
ivory penetrates lips full as blossom trees,dark eyes gaze wise to the ways of rivers
and your language is open-throated thunder,
promise and cassava root,sooted pot and aimed assagai.
Your face is woman
is Africa ishalf the world isseed in strong wind.

8© 1987 Sudie Rakusin

9

Terri L. Jewell

BasketeerYour black hands
split white pinesass blonde fibers
into composed laths.
Fold one, pull tight,
each splice a ditty
in a banjo chair.
Tuck there, weave fast
the baby's sleep,
her candied inquiries.
Cakewalk over the lattice
unfettered and full of hickory,
the fragrant slatsburned to bend
giving breath to vessels
for eggs and glass beads
spools of blue thread
and dandelion greens,jars of pinto beans
and thoughts in silence
while ginger-root fingers
cast the spellwork down.

10

D. A. Clarke

Moving Expenses

When she first told me, you see, I couldn't get a grip on thewords; I didn't like them, they sort of rolled off me. I didn't haveq corneback ready; I called the three in the corner pocket and put
it there. It was a nice shot if-I-do-say-so; it emboldened me to grin
up at her: "Ah come off it, you know people like that aren't
allowed to retire."
She twinkled at me behind the steel-rims and put the fourteen
9ft the cushion, in the side, and left the cue ball behind the eight;
and she made it look easy. Then she took a good swig of her
Guinness; when it came to looking cool, she had me beat all ways.
Principle aside, I had to admit my fruit soda lacked cinematic
impact.
"It all depends on who - whom you know," she said. "And
whqt favors you can call in."I thought she was joking, and I thought the joke was in pretty
bad taste. Still, two circumstances kept me from making an issue
of it; I was a guest in her house, and she was twice my age. I'dalready put my foot in it about the beer besides. I shut up andthought about that eight ball.
It was probably that night that I told Francie about my new
friend with the weird fantasy life; no doubt I made a comedy
routine of it. I would do a lot to hear her laugh.
If 1'd believed it then, you see, 1'd have kept my damn mouth
shut. And none of this would have happened.
''You never told me about them - about that." That was all
I could say; 1'd already said it three times.
Francie shrugged. ''What the hell could you have done about
it? You'd just have eaten your heart out over it to no purpose. I
know you."''But - I don't know - a confrontation - I would've helped. , ." Offering my pitiful resources. How could I compete?
11This WaS a new Francie; under the dark tangles of her hair hereyes were flat and distant. "Confront? I didn't want to confront
the fuckers . I wanted them dead."
She was trying to quit, and the smoke made me asthmatic andirritable; but where else can a dyke play pool? I never had
quarters for the laundry in those days, they all went for the table.
1'd get in early, right after dinner, and clean the table off once or
twice to warm up. Then it was me against the world until closing.
I never held the table long: there are some sharp players in
town. But I carne back with my quarters again and again, and you
know every game you lose teaches you twice as much as the one
you win.
It was sometime in December that she first showed up, and I
figured her for a school-teacher. She had that air of authority, andthat peculiar anonymity of middle-aged school-teachers. She had
the navy polyester pantsuit, the sensible shoes, the tightlyperined gray hair, the whole well-groomed undecorated respectability of your fourth-grade homeroom teacher. (Well, my fifth
ac-tually, old Miss Adams, the one we used to call 'Matron'
behind her back. But anyway.) When she carne up to the table I
expected her to tell me to take that gum out.
She put down her quarter and proceeded to blow me away.
I think I got in one shot before she ran the table, whistling between
her teeth. I spent the rest of the night trying to restore mywounded pride; and the Wednesday night after that, and theSaturday after that. It was February that she gave me a ride horne;
it was a tan Volvo station wagon, what else? I raved about bars,
smoke, and demon drink.
In late April she was regularly dropping me off at horne, longqfter I had the bike going again. I got in the habit of taking the bus
downtown. In May, I guess it was, she told me she'd bought apool table.

She was - pleasant. Relaxing. She made no demands andburdened you with no intimacies; her conversation was sparseand humorous, impersonal. I thought of her as 'my buddy that12

plays pool,' and all my friends at Our Place called her 'that oldschoolteacher.' I got to like her in the way I do tend to like older
people, with an aspiring friendliness. I get tired of my own
generation; I don't think much of our manners, what can I say?
It's nice to be polite to someone and be called 'kid' now and then.
I was beginning to wonder about that old Miss Adams too.
Did she shoot pool like a pro in some hole-and-corner sleaze-jointthat my parents had never (thank god) seen or imagined? Did she
drive with that subtle flashiness that marks the recovered roadracer (I should know)? Did old Miss Adams, debonair in burgundy knit, say "Allow me young lady" as she gave her chair toa nineteen-year-old femme on a crowded night? Did old Miss
Adams twinkle? I don't recall.
Funny, how an old schoolteacher in navy polyester turns into
ail older butch that you admire. I talked a lot on those drives
hOll1e. Now and then she would say, "Sleepy?", and (was I goingto say yes? are you kidding?) off we would go for a spin in thefoothills . I would roll the window down and hang my head out,
watching the treetops stencil themselves crazily against the dusty
sky. She never seemed to ask a lot of questions, but I did end up
talking.
The anonymity, the pleasantness, the way I talked a lot;professional assets I guess.

! had my head out the window, blowing the smoke out of myhClir. "Fresh air?" she said, and I groaned.
"I don't see why women put up with the - ""Tp be together/' she said quietly, stopping my nineteenth
why-are-there-bars lament. She took the next hairpin viciously,
which was uncharacteristic; except for that little touch of flash she
was usually steady as a bus driver. She handled the car and theroad with that detached, trancelike concentration that you see inprofessional drivers - welt there it is again.
Professional.
I coughed and let a mile go by. "Being together is hardly
worth getting lung cancer.""That's all you know, young lady." Young lady.was a deliberate cut; yvhen she liked me I was just 'kid.'13

I let another mile go by, thinking about The Well of Lonelinessand tragic lives lived in fear and deceit and all like that. I justabout had her cast as the hero of a melodrama when she said, "It'sthe damn noise I can't stand. Can't hear yourself think, let alone
carryon a conversation. What's the point?" We were heading
back to town.
"Tell you what, kid," she said as she pulled into my driveway,"1'11 get my own table and we'll play in peace and quiet.""Yeah right," I said. "and when I get a limousine I'll pay you
back for all these rides."You see? I always thought she was joking.

"So if you don't like being stared at," she said, "why the
crewcut?" She waved her beer in my general direction. "Look atyou. And you complain that they stare at you."
I was stung past politeness for once. ''Well, it beats being acloset case," I muttered, a la sulky adolescent. Then I laid down
my cue and faced her. "It beats playing along with the boys. For
every woman who passes for straight, it's harder for the rest of us.
Every woman who plays by the rules just strengthens the patriarchal-""Oh can it," she snapped; no twinkle, just blue coldness behind the big lenses. "I've done more damage to your old patriarchy in my time - in these clothes or others just like 'em - thanyou'll do if you live to be a hundred."
I stared. "Damage?" I said slowly. ''What do you call damage?"
She set down her beer thoughtfully. "Killing men," she said.
"I call that damage. Call your shot already.""Don't get me wrong, kid," she said one evening. I had helped
her with the yardwork all day: oh yes, you got it, proud to fetch
and carry and grunt and show off those muscles. She was easy towork with, easy to work for.
"Don't get me wrong," she said, resting her elbows on theyellow formica tabletop. There was a smudge of dirt across her
forehead, rubbed into the wrinkles. "Don't get me wrong. I think14

it's a fine thing you're dOing, the visibility, being right out there- I think it takes courage. I like your courage, kid."
It was, perhaps, just the sad sweet fatigue of a late summer
evening after hard work. Or perhaps the natural dramatic instinctof my youth. But I felt tragedy under her matter-of-factness.
Being me, I started loving her then.
Now you're going to get all confused and think I mean I had
a crush on her or wanted to be her lover. I know my 'friends' wereon my case whenever they remembered: "I hear she drives you
home after the bar, JJ." "You mean JJ lets someone else drive?""Whooee, JJ, must be some schoolteacher!" "Turning over a newleaf, JJ?" "Getting into older gals?" It gets old fast, and it's hardly
to the point.
The point is romantic love, all right, but it's that other kind,the kind I had for rock stars and Captain Kirk and D' Artagnan.
It's hero-worship I guess, but that's going to confuse you again;
I didn't even approve of her. It's that sharp hurtful liking forsomeone you're never going to know. It's that so-tenuous friendship with someone who has secrets and sorrows, and all of themright outside your whole domain and understanding. It's when
you always go away sad, because you're liking her and you can't
give her anything and you know you can't get close to her; it's thelove for someone who's always going to be a step beyond you. Fora teacher.
When someone like that says she likes your courage, you go
hQme happy for a change.
"Killing men," I said, leaning on my cue. I was stalling, theway you do when the lady on the bus bench starts telling you
about her private conversations with Jesus. 'With the Women's
Army, I suppose." But I guess she hadn't seen that movie.
"No," she said calmly. 'With the Company. The CIA. But I'm
retired now. Call your shot, kid.""Maybe it's true," said Francie.
'{Oh come on, they look into your past with a microscope.

And I know she's been queer forever."15

"So?""So she'd never have passed the first security check. And if
she managed that, how long would she have lasted?""So how do you keep your job, honey? Do the men there likelesbians?" She made a disgust-mouth at my blank look.
'We don't have clearances. And besides, I'm good, so they
just have to put up with it."
"Right," said Francie softly. She rolled out of my arms andlooked out the window for a while.
''You know what they say: all you have to do is be twice as
good as a man and you can get the job despite being a mere
woman.""Yeah," she said to the window. "And if you're twice as goodagain, you can come to work with a crewcut." She watched theguy across the street take four tries to parallel-park his VW van;th~t's all the excitement you get in my neighborhood on a Friday
night. "So you see," she said in that contented I-win voice.
"See what?" I watched the orange streetlight on her profile.
"She really could be one - an agent. All she has to be is fourtimes better than the equivalent male - "I sighed, or huffed rather, in exasperation.
" - which, if you are any indication, might be real common."She rolled back next to me before I realized it was a compliment;
1 was frowning into her flirting face, and she sighed (Francie
never huffed). ''You are really slow sometimes, JJ. Really slow."
It's true. I was.
"She's got a pool table at her house?"
Why did I have to mention it?
"Now wait a minute, you have to have a whole room-""It's a big house," I said.
"Must be nice to have rich friends," said Jade, with the audible
footnote that she herself would never dream of extending thehand of friendship to anyone polluted by Money. See, Jade's folks
were rolling in it, but when they found out about her, she was out
on the street just like that. So she has her opinions about richpeople; and the bitterness of knowing she'll never again be one,that too.
16

Sandy just looked at me, puzzled. "She has a whole room justfor a pool table?""Hey, get her to ask us all over!" But nobody laughed.
So we had one of those hurtful discussions, that no one reallyseems to want but that no one seems to be able to stop. Shouldn't
we be glad a dyke has some money? Not if she only spends it on
spiffy upholstery for her closet. Wouldn't you rather a woman
had it? Well, it all comes from men in the end. And so on.
''Yoti don't buy a house like that on a teacher's savings, notunless she was married she couldn't, and -""She's never been married," I said quickly.
"- then it's probably inheritance, or a lucky investment,"
said Jill - tidying it up.
"South African gold?" said Jade, deliberately mean. ''B of A
gilt-edged securities? Stock in GE and IBM?" Playing pool over thebodies of South African children, said her sideways look. She's never
liked me.
"Folks, we have a newsletter to put out," said Mary. "All thisis interesting gossip for sure, but it isn't getting the pages together." And as we collated and stapled and yelped over what we
missed in the proofreading session, I wondered. It hadn't occurred to me before, to wonder how she bought that house.
"How do we know she's a schoolteacher?" said Sandy doggedly (Jill sighed), "did she ever say she was?" I looked blank.
''We don't," said Jade, struck by a new idea. "For all you know
she's a retired executive from the board of Bell Tel. Or BechteL"
There was a chill in the room.
"I only killed men." she said softly.
I should have left half an hour ago, but I saw the newspaperon the table and got to telling her about Maria Gorton. You
remember (I hope); she shot her husband after twenty-five yearsof abuse, and the trial was hot news for a week or two.
"So we took up a collection for her legal expenses," I said.
After I went through the whole court case, I found myself
thumping on the table and running on about men and the thingstl).ey get away with. "If they convict her, we'll picket the damncourthouse all summer!"17

By "we," of course, I didn't mean the crowd I hung out withat Our Place, nor yet the "we" that I worked with forty hours aweek, but that other "we" of the interminable meetings.
I'Sometimes," I said, "I think we should just kill them all."Meaning which we, I wonder.
She lined the third bottle up with the first two, carefully, andshrl.lgged. That's when she said it. "I never took a job ona woman.
l only l<illed men."She's serious, I thought. Now I'm sure. She may be crazy, but
she's not kidding. "You can't expect me to believe that!" I said
suddenly. The silent spacious house, the lateness, it was getting
to me. "You're not the kind of person who would take money tokill people.""Men," she corrected me gently. "Men.""Why don't you just believe her?" Francie, sprawled on her
ratty black couch in a patch of evening sun: all gold, brown, warm
white shirt, wild dark hair, stunning. Sometimes I have a hardtime turning my eyes off so my ears will work.
"It's too bizarre/' I began. She waved a hand at me.
"JJ, your dad was a boring engineer and your mom stayedhome and did the dishes; and your brother gave up the literarycareer after one hungry summer, and now he's in real estate-""And I'm a boring engineer too, why don't you finish off thefamily?" I knew it sounded stupid, but I was hurt.
"No, wait. You're all nice people, sure, butJJ - if you weren't
a dyke, if you weren't a girl in the boys' club, you'd be so ordinary
you'd hardly leave a dent, you know?""I'm not getting it/' I said stubbornly. And I'm not sure I wantto.
"Take Sandy now, her dad was a stunt pilot. Right? Jade's
lllom owns six houses and wears diamonds every damn day ofher life, right? JoAnn's mom trains riding horses for a living. Your
buddy Jackie, her roommate what's-her-face turned out to berunning cocaine. And remember that guy you found on the porch
one morning, that had his bike stolen and got beat up by a gang.
What I'm saying, JL the world isn't just made of nine-to-five anddinner at six." She looked at me meaningfully, and I considered18

my toes. "And that's just people you personally happen to know.
1 mean, what's bizarre? Owning six houses without ever working
a stroke? Flying loop-de-Ioops for fun and profit? Working for theCIA?""I don't want to believe it," I said, and sat down on the floor.
Alll did was make a joke, and look where it got me. I didn't want
to argue; I wanted a hug and to hear her laugh. "I don't want tothink that she worked for the enemy.""The enemy." Francie pulled my hair gently. "Who pays you,sweet thing?""Welt yeah, but-""Well yeah, but, your boss pays you, and his company is a'wholly owned subsidiary of International Something or Other,and hell, who pays them? And besides, how much do you know
about your boss? Did he rape his kid sister? Does he beat his girlfriend? Are you working for the enemy, JJ?"
"You're a Jesuit," I protested. "It's different, there's degrees ofcompromise. You don't have to deliberately be the agent of thepolice state."
She had been idly fooling with my hair; now she took her
hand away. "I get so damn tired of your rhetoric, JJ." This very
quietly. It was one of those bad moments; you feel the warmth
drq.in out of the room, and the words hang there like neon. She
sighed. "Let's say you design a - I don't know - a-""An improved gate array," I suggested.
"And it gets used in a - a disk controller or something. And
then someone buys that card and uses it in-""Yeah, OK, they build a disk, and another OEM picks it up
and makes it Tempest and mil-spec, and they put in a bid and get
a DOD contract, and the disk assembly goes into a guidance subsystem, and my poor old gate array ends up on a submarine
menacing Russian civilians somewhere near Minsk. I mean, I get
it. But all Gutenberg did was make the press. It was someone else
who used it to print the Malleus Maleficarum." I leaned my headback hopefully.
She tugged on my hair again. "But you know. Gutenberg
didn't. So, are you the agent of the police state, JJ?"
"Damn it," I said, trying to laugh it off. "It's still different:
killing people, in person, for money. You've got· to see that."

19

She let it drop. But an hour or so later, after a long silence, she
murmured into my shoulder, "How many men do you suppose
there are, JJ, who don't deserve to die?""Twelve in the side," she said, chalking the cue. "How's thatgirlfriend of yours?""Oh, pretty good. She got promoted. Now she's in charge of
the whole buying end.""And she started out as a counter girl you said?""Five in the corner. - Yeah, she was a sales clerk. I guess that
wOl.l.ld be ten years ago." Ten years ago I was suffering throughhigh school; Francie was selling ladies' underwear nine hours a
di3.Y·She rested her cue on the edge of the table and smiled at me:that sudden surprising gold-flecked grin. "I like to see a gal work
hard and get ahead."''Yeah.'' I wasn't going to get into my reservations aboutFrancie's living: selling the clothes that men make their wives andgirlfriends wear, buying from the men who design them.
"Family business? Or is she just a hard worker?"
Family business, ha ha. I made a production out of the chalk,inspected my soda carefully before taking a sip, studied thelqyout on the table with a deep frown (as well I might) . I didn't
want to talk about Francie's family's business; it was her story,
and not mine to go telling people. "Nah," I said, and made a shaky
shot. "Damn. She works real hard.""Worked her way through college?""She never made it to college," I said.
She could have, though. If she'd kept to the family business.
"1 don't like that song," I said. "That bit about not calling thecops on her poppa."''Well, I can see it," she said. ''You don't bring in the enemy ona private fight. Remember who she's talking about. And when.""No, I still don't like it. There's too damn much of that. They
just put up with it - stand by your man and all that crap."
Francie shrugged. "Not everyone has the same options."
20

"But it's what the cops are there for," I said. "Hell, it's what
they're paid for.""You can see whoever you want to," I said tightly, "you know
that. But when it happens to be a friend of mine, I think you couldat least tell me."Francie shook her head, gave me that you're-awful-young-JJ
look, and cast her eyes heavenwards. "Sweet Mama," she muttered. "Look, I'm not trying to seduce your schoolmarm. It was abusiness lunch, OK?"
"Right, " I said. "I bet she has a whole lot of use for this Fall's
designer fashions."
She stared at me and burst into that long delightful laugh thatfirst made me walk up and ask her to dance. I never knew what
the hell all those lady-novelist types meant by a 'musical laugh,'
until I met Francie. I had to laugh myself, and the whole thing
blew over.
You're slow sometimes, JJ, real slow.
"So, JJ tells me you used to be a spy," said Francie brightly. I
choked on my root beer.
She looked at me for one split second like I imagine Jesus musthave looked at Judas when he saw those plumed helmets coming
closer through the trees. Right then was when I believed it all. No
one could look like that without the fear of death upon her. Then
she looked at Francie like she was setting up a flashy cushion shot,
but faster; I could hear the wheels screaming around, she had xray eyes.
Francie leaned forward. "It's all right," she said, laying a handon:my buddy's navy polyester knee. "Believe me, I'm not on that
payroll."
She took off the steel-rims and rubbed her eyes with the otherhand. I saw that it trembled a little. Without the glasses her face
was suddenly unfamiliar; her moment of mortal wearinessfrightened me. She snapped the glasses back on her nose, picked
Up her beer, and looked like she was going to send me to sixth
period detention for a week. "Congratulations, young lady," shesaid. "You have just given me the scare of my recent life."
21

"Hey," said Francie - still with the sweet sisterly hand on theknee. "Don't get her wrong. She didn't believe a word of it, or
she'd never have mentioned it. She's led a sheltered life."
They both smiled at the same moment; two women of theworld. Francie turned the conversation smoothly to perennial
borders and drip irrigation systems. I thought about becoming aliquid and dripping away through the couch quietly. I tried toimagh1e a schoolteacher with a gun. A rifle? A night-scope? Or
one of those little things James Bond always had, with the Italian
name?
At the door she twinkled at me, and my heart rose. "'Night,
kid," she said. '''Night, Francie." She paused a moment in the actof shaking Francie's hand. "Not a spy, really," she said softly.
(Just a humble assassin. Retired."Francie smiled politely and retrieved her hand. "'Night, it's
been nice meeting you."
But in the car: "See, JJ, I told you.""But if you do it after the original attack, it's vengeance andnot self defense. That's the law."'What's the law got to do with it? We're talking right andwrong here. And I think she's got every right - we've all got
every right to deal with any man that rapes or batters or kills awoman.""It's jus tice.""It's retribution.""It's common sense. It's the only way to make sure he neverdoes it again.""And you might not have a gun or whatever at the time.""But the point is, she waited till he was asleep and then shot
him; the prosecution says that's vengeance.""So what the hell do you want her to do, ask him outside tosettle it like gentlemen? He deserves to die, what does it matter
when it happens?""But handguns, you know. I mean, the non-violence people
are barely speaking to me 'cause my name was on that article-""To walk up and blow somebody away in cold blood-""They sit around with their buddies and plan rapes in cold22

blood; they lTIake their fucking snuff films in cold blood, and they
sit down and watch them in cold blood. We're talking warfare
here. You have to do it however you can. Do you trash the
Sandinistas for guerrilla tactics? Nope, you wish them the best ofluck; they have to do whatever works.""Still, to walk up to someone asleep and just-""I suppose you think she should have let him go on foranother twenty years, is that it?""Look, H, I know you hate men and all that, but they're
victims of the same system, and to go around saying 'just kill thebastards' is-"{'Look, folks, we do have a newsletter to produce ... ""She should never have used a gun. That was her big mistake."
I was drying out and reporting in; I doubt my blue fingers
eQuId have held a cue that night, after the long muddy vigil on the
Courthouse lawn. Picket signs don't stand up real well to steadyrain, and the candles go out, and people don't stop and listen.
Maria Gorton was in jail for life, and I was about ready to cry. "He
kept a gun in the house. It was what she had access to.""Guns are for soldiers/' she said with judicious scorn. "Andfor amateurs."''You've got to use what comes to hand," I said mechanically.
I was beginning to feel my toes again, and rather wishing I
couldn't.
"That's just what she didn't do," she said, with that measured
enthusiasm that Miss Adams used to display when she told us
about geometry. "That's just what she didn't do. Every house isfull of weapons, and most of them look like accidents. Or can bemade to do so."Now she was leaning forward and starting to sound like me
when I get onto new substrate technologies and superconductors. I started shivering again. She didn't seem to notice.
"A sharpened pencil now," she said, "in the solar plexus, or
through the eye into the brain. He's known to drink, he stumbles
and has a nasty accident with a common object; it happens all the
tilTIe. She screams for the neighbors and calls the cops, and every23

one thinks what a merciful delivery. People die of household
accidents a lot, you know. Mixed cleaning products. Carelessness
with cigarettes and candles. Mixed prescriptions. Electric shock."I was so tired I was half-dreaming. I saw a crowded bus
station, an anonymous man in a discreet three-piece suit hurrying
through the crowd; a slip, a stumble, a fall. A shriek, a horrified
elderly schoolteacher: "Oh dear, there's blood, there's blood, he's
hurt himself! Somebody get help!" Sympathetic officials leading
her away: "There's nothing you can do, ma'am, just go home.""A simple hypodermic," she was saying. "You don't needanything fancy in it, air will do the job if you know where to put
it. A cigarette and an open carburetor. Late-night carelessness
with a circuit breaker. People have the stupidest accidents; youshould spend a night at the emergency room sometime. It would
give you ideas.""I should be going," I said.
{'Sure," I said. "What for?"
There was a long pause. Too long.
''You don't have to tell me. How much?"
Another long pause, then: "A couple of grand?"I dropped the fork into the eggs. She wouldn't look up at me;
I went over behind her chair and put my hands on her shoulders,
but she shook them off. "Look, Francie, are you in trouble?" She
had health insurance, and her car was fine last time I looked at it.
"Pid your landlord kick you out?""I need to buy something," she said. "I can pay you backabout two hundred a month, I think.""You - this is big bucks, France. Is it legal?"She drew a pattern in the condensation on her glass of OJ.
"Not exactly.""Is it drugs?"
She stood up suddenly. "H, I'll get it some other way. I canalways make some quick money if I need to."I grabbed her by both arms. "If you mean you're going to go
back to - Francie, you can' t do that!""Hey, I did it for five years and I'm still alive," she said. "If you
want something badly enough, you'll do what you have to. Letgo."24

So I lent her two grand. She's still paying me back.
"It's not drugs," she said. "You know I wouldn't use yourtnoney for that.""1'11'). giving it to the Y," she said. It was dusk; the electricity
WClS off, and the gloom was getting thick. I was trying not to let on
how sad I really was. The big house was twice as cold andcClvernous now, with the heat off and everything in boxes. I
patted the corner pocket, and my eyes stung.
. "So, why Minneapolis?" I called.
"Oh, no reason. I've never been there." She came back to offerme the last beer out of the empty fridge. "They say there are some
nice women there."
I started to remind her how I felt about drinking, but then I
saw the twinkle. "You know, kid, you're the only guest I've ever
had who'd rather come over for an argument about a beer thancome over for a beer." She reached out and mussed up my hair:
the first time she ever touched me. "I'll miss you, kid."
I turned away and watched the view out the window getblurry.
"You go to the Y now and then and keep this table company,
kid," she said lightly. "Don't forget what I taught you.""I'll do that," I said, and blew my nose. "All this packing sureraises the dust."
She had a few boxes that she didn' t want the movers tohandle; I helped her carry them to the Volvo. There was something different about the Volvo, but I was too preoccupied tothink about it.
I dropped one of the boxes. Murphy's Law: the tape burst andall these papers were all over the sidewalk. She was beside me inno time, scooping them up, stuffing them back in. Thank goodness there was no wind. Made stupid by embarrassment, I foundmyself staring idly at a driver's license. Your friends' old licenses
are like school pictures: fascinating. It was her all right, but her
hair was dark brown then, so it was pretty old; it was a Michigan
license. I was about to ask when she had lived in Michigan (myfolks lived there for a while before I was born), but the words
stuck in my throat: the license was current. It expired two years
from now.

25

And the name was wrong. It was the wrong name.
She took it out of my hand. "Careful with that, kid," she said
gefltly. "I don't have a lot of those left, and you wouldn't believe
what they cost. Your tax dollars at work." She put it back in thebox.
She shook hands with me, there on the damp sidewalk,mussed up my hair again, gave me her best pool cue, and wasgone. Like that.
I watched the Volvo's taillights until they turned the corner,
and they were pretty blurry. A while later I was warming up thebike, and something came in late: her license was 116 ZAB, I
noticed it almost a year ago. But now it was something else. And
it wasn't a California plate any more.
Even if I would tell somebody, who the hell would I tell? She
knew I wouldn't. It was starting to drizzle; that suited me fine. I
drove dangerously all the way home.
In mid-paragraph I lost all momentum; the words lost all
meaning; I was staring, or glazing if you like, at a tangle of'patriarchy' and 'radical feminist' and 'systematic oppression'and 'human dignity' and 'violence against women' and none ofit made sense. I covered my face with both hands and groaned.
Trudy looked up from the light-table. "Major typo?" she said
sympathetically, and stretched as she walked towards me. "Let'ssee; maybe we can strip it in, or fake it out with Kroy-type, orsomething.""It's not that." I glanced at the desk clock and winced. Another groggy day tomorrow on coffee and six hours' sleep. "It'scrap, it's trash, it's drivel." I waved the proof sheet at her.
I've always liked Trudy, who has about twenty-five years on
the rest of us. She seems to have spent them consistently: printing
flyers, getting arrested, printing posters, getting arrested, and soforth. I liked her from the day I overheard her describe Jade as "aYoung Trotskyite born too late." I can't get away with that kindof crack, but Trudy has white hair and the magic touch: she canget people to laugh at themselves.
She skimmed over the text. "Nothing wrong with that. It's
clear and to the point. That's why they make you write this stuff,
26

H, YOli're good at it. It's informative and concise, and evenconvincing.""It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't do anything." I couldn't
begin to tell her: the grief, the rage, the howling tragedy of all
those centuries of women, bought and sold as livestock, beaten,
burnt, murdered; the accumulated terror and shame and painthat ought to crack the earth open. And me with these threeparagraphs of platitudes and generalities - ! Me with mycrummy three paragraphs, fully justified in fifteen-point Times
Roman with a thirty-point banner - when it needs to be written
in fire across the sky: MEN HATE LIFE.
"1 can't do this," I muttered. "I can't do this, I've got a job to
go to in the morning. I can't stay up past midnight playing
revolutionaries and writing this, this ineffectual boring crap thatno one will ever read." I started to fidget around with my coat andcarryall and keys.
Trudy laid the sheet carefully back on the table. "JJ," she said
softly, "were you born a feminist? Did they teach it in grade
school?"I kicked my chair into place and scowled at her across thescarred table. "You know damn well they didn't and they neverwill.""You learned it from books, JJ - from magazines and posters
and flyers. If you go back and read them now you'll get a shock:
yOU'll find timid wafflings and dry pontifications and starryeyed stupidities; and you'll find a lot of awful hack propaganda
and lousy journalism. But you read it and it changed you."
A ridiculous occasion for a speech, in an old print shop at
midnight to a sulky audience of one; but I might as well have beena packed auditorium. Even the straggle of white whiskers on her
chin seemed to bristle with the effort of getting me to get it. "It~hanged you, JJ. It brought you right here. All that hasty and often
mediocre writing, it changed the world.
"And some poor soul read proofs and moaned because it was
so mll~h less satisfactory than going out and Dying for the Truth_ I ' she grinned at me "and all the time she was doing it, she
WClS changing the world.""I'd like to believe you," I said. "The speeches, the pickets, thewhole trip. You think it stops anything? You think it saves anyone?"27

The desk clock hit midnight and all the little stencilled flaps
flipped over to 00:00. She sighed. I tried to imagine twenty-fiveyears of this. "I think it does. Very slowly, and with a staggering
amount of work, but I really think it does, I don't think an hourof your time has been wasted. It's the only way we've got.
"Oh, there's the other path: guns and high explosives. I can'ts~e it. I can't see that more violence is going to solve anything in
the end. I know you want to run out and shake the truth into them;
we all do. But you have to take the long view: we've just got tochange their hearts, all their hearts, our hearts too. That's what
we're after.""Well, it won't be in my lifetime," I said bitterly. "It seems likea hell of a lot of work for no visible result."
Trudy leaned on the table. I was embarrassed to see a tearbuilding in one of her eyes. "It costs a lot," she said slowly, "tothange the world."
1'd never seen her cry; her honey-brown eyes were red andswollen, and she twisted her fingers together over and over. I felt
like throwing up. Suddenly she shouted at me: "You goddamn
hypocrite, JJ! You're out there collecting money and getting
pneumonia to support your Mrs. Perfect Victim Maria Gortonyour feminist hero of the hour. You're writing little speeches
about Maria's case is every woman's cause. And now you look likeyou'd just as soon spit on me because I was smart enough not to
get busted.
"You think - because you don't see any marks on me-you
think I don't see them? You believed me when I said I never
dream, JJ? Did it ever occur to you for a minute I might not wantto tell you my dreams?" She grabbed her jacket off the chair, andfor a second I thought she was going to throw it at me. I don't
think I would have ducked. "The law says she waited ten hours
to waste him, and that's illegal, and they put her away. You say
they're full of shit. You said he deserved to die - I heard you say
that. I WC\S there, remember? You said he - he deserves to die,what does it matter when. I heard you, JJ. Now you sit there
looking like god almighty on the throne of fucking judgment I waited fifteen years, girl. Fifteen years, ten hours. What the hell
difference?"28

I sat there long after the door slammed. I just sat there.
I've always been a newspaper freak; I like the big ones, theChronicle and the New York Times. They're as addictive as TV:
I read everything but the Sports section. Sometimes I even readthe Births and Deaths, and squint my way through half of the
Clflssifieds.
I was reading the papers very thoroughly about that time, so
the name jumped out at me even from a back-page filler article;
but let's leave last names out of it. Francie's father and older
brother had both died in a freak fire at their nightclub in the City.
The reporter noted that "the owners have been cited and fined
more than once for health and safety violations," and listed thefive or six names under which they had operated the place. A
local Police Captain was quoted as "not sorry to see it out ofbusiness at last," and a grocer down the street said it had "a bad
reputation and attracted the wrong kind of people."
I don't know how she did it. I know Francie had about six
thousand in the bank, and she might have got a loan from thecredit union as well as the two grand from me; I doubt she had anyother friends who could have put up anything significant. So it
might have cost ten grand, at the most. It doesn't seem much doesit - not enough to buy a new Volvo. But it would cover themoving expenses.
I get a check from Francie once a month.

© 1988 D. A Oarke

29

M.s. Taraba

Private Transportation

Two women are traveling together without a destination. This is
the most important fact. Everything else depends on it.
Your eyelids were that pale, elusive shade of purple thatmeans you haven't been sleeping. There is no name for it. Not
violet, lavender or mauve, not amethyst, not heather, lilac or
periwinkle. It slips between words. It won't be identified. It'sa.lmost the color of seashell fragments worn smooth by the ocean,no~ q1.J.ite like the delicately veined petals of a wild iris, not exactly
the shade of the winter sky at twilight. A secret color, in the open,
but unfathomable. It's the color that makes me long to take you
somewhere safe and quiet so I can watch over you while you rest.
A color so tender it hurts. Someday I will wake up and know its
name.
Two women are walking together. Their stride is nearly synchronized. The place is New York. The time is now.
We stepped into the subway car, and found a vacant seat for
two in the corner. In spite of the filth, the nearly empty car had acertain splendor. All the graffiti seemed to be by one hand, or one
group of hands. Not a mark appeared random. Splashes andsquiggles covered every surface, forming arcane symbols, unreada.ble names. The interior of the car was spray-painted inevery shade of blue and purple; even the background had a lightwash of pinkish lavender, as though done in watercolor. It was
lovely like a bruise, a mysterious blotch of color so intricately
beautiful that you have to touch it, over and over, no matter how
shocking the pain. Here and there the paint had dripped in teary
trails, marking a path as familiar and as untraveled as the veinsin the back of your hand. The train left the station, isolating us on
separate islands of noise, drowning out conversation.
Two women are talking together. There is no topic. It is thecontinuous drone of daily living.
30

When the train emerged from underground, its dirty windows
framed the lingering colors of the sky after sunset. All possible
shades of atmospheric blue, pink and purple blended seamlessly
together. Wisps of smoky clouds curled around the tops of city
buildings, made delicate by the distance and the growing dusk.
I imagined I was about to cross a border into another land.
Two women are sleeping together. They are not touching.
They are breathing softly and steadily, side by side.
In the midst of the clatter, surrounded by the cityscape, you
dosed your eyes and, leaning back into the corner, let the movement of the train rock you lightly, gently to sleep. It was neither
Safe nor quiet, but I kept watch over you as you rested. I yearned
to curl up against you, to let myself be transported to the land
Where you lay sleeping. Instead, I stayed awake and watchedyou, memorizing the trusting color of your eyelids, the innocent
curve of your lashes, storing up images against the journey's end.
Two women are dreaming together. This is a private land. It is
the point of departure.

" \\TiliJlg II'bicb addresses Ibe roo/ ass /II}//Jllol/s . ..
I />(' 1'('r)'gl"OlIlId U II II'hiC/, // '(, 'r (' SIOlldill g , "RADICAL FEMINIST THEORY

Experimental Prose
Translations
Rl'vil'WS
I.ee Maracle · Moving OVl'r • Susanne de
Locblnlerc-lIarwood • I \nill' Lt' 130chUilltl~u:tI • je:wnctle C. Armstrong "CHllm.11

Ho hlwrr. III1!Wri:llisl11\hiet,,, of

N:n in,' '''h Ult," • Co nvers:ulons al IheBook full'" • I nh: r \'il-w<; wilh Lel' Maf:l c!l'and G lo ria AIl Z:d dll:l • Gloria Anzaldll3 .

Dmdt' r Crossi ng!l • Miche le Cau ssc • ( I:Il11ervk\\ • Ruthann Robson · N i ~ ht s h :ldl' .
Verena S t eran - lilL'r:lllr Drl.::lln ing •}cwcllc I.. Gomez · In Ih'vit'w: C hr\'51O<;'
Nm 1{W/I/I"',t: • !.Iud .., I.. Nell'on . ' Aflt'r
1h':" lill}.: C; lilri ,L /\II/,.hlll !" " IInrtl,' rfWllf,'.tI

rnJllit "'{/

. ou. 01 U.l.

31

Jill Spisak

Taking Rachel Home

We began in dangerously deep grief
like swimming in mud; and, in ecstasy
sitting in restaurants our hands
and mouths finding each otherover and over. Then again tears
then laughter smiles and hands
sleeping tangled, never moving
all night and back to our bodies
time and again resting from griefin love, protected by Rachel
her quiet face gesturing response
hands barely letting go
joining even our work. Rachel and work
were all the life in my life, her colors
embracing my dusk, with sunsets
holding us like people like friends.
No one but Rachel could hold me
the tears a drink she could swallow
a fountain of deep waters binding us
as sensuously as the salt warmth in which
I buried my face over and over.
And now, I haven't told you this,
Rachel is crying out among the white rocks
and my hands don't comfort her.

32

Catherine Reid

The Fox
The sharp coldness of the night solidifies my breath as soon as
I exhale it. My nostrils pinch on the inhale. I remember Marty's
line, ''You can tell how many degrees below zero it is by how longyour nose freezes shut." I wonder what her calculations would betonight. Snow squeaks under my boots, a squeak that shivers low
along the ground, held down by the cold and the tall spruces. The
noise holds me down, too, so I stop to listen. A warmth comes up
my collar from under the layers of shirt and sweaters, a warmththat should keep me separated from the slice of these bitter blasts.
I lean against a tree and look down towards the sea, trying to
ipiagine the cold that must be there, when a fox starts up the pathheading towards me. It's a friend coming to visit. It's anotherliving being in this frozen air. The wind is behind it, so it doesn't
smell me. It doesn't see me because I am as dark as the tree andI haven't moved. But suddenly it senses me, for it stops, does aslow 180, and disappears. Gone. This crazy wishful thinking; it'sanother dream I've created to deny loneliness, keeping myself
busy concentrating on a fleeting red fantasy rather than looking
at the accusations that have started to come at me from inside:
Drifter. Aimless wanderer. Isn't it time you settled on or withsomething? Someone?
To prove another something to myself, I walk down to wheref 111 sure there was a fox, and I can see the tracks. It walked up fromthe spore .. . and there the tracks end.
In the morning, I'm not sure just where I was in the night. Sleep
has me as much as waking; I'm somewhere in between, eventhough it might appear that I'm sitting in the chair and looking
out the window. I remember seeing a fox, and watching it
disappear. But faxes are like that. Their reputation for being
mag'icians goes back generations. Centuries. No sooner does that
fit together when, through the window, I see the fox again. It has
reappeared, right where it left off. I wonder if it took that long tofigure out how to undo the trick. I want to run up the road and tell
33

Marty. I want to yell out to Ethel next door. I want to go out andfollow the fox. Instead, I wait and watch, ready to be caught again.
I'm glad these days for the wind and bitter cold. As long as theblowing keeps up, Marty and I can't continue with our great
woodcutting venture: it's too dangerous to drop trees in galeforce winds. We can't do much of anything but put wood in thestoves and move around enough to keep the blood circulating. I
E;ee the fox again, maybe five dClYs after I first saw it. This time itruns right py my house, by Ethel's house, and on down the roadtowards Marty's. It's moving so fast, its tail flat out behind it, that
it looks like a red-brown pencil line, a streak slowly erasing itself.
I hear Pacer barking in the house next door. I make a note to tell
Ethel what went by, so she'll know why Pacer was excited. I try
to store the note near the front of my skull, so it won't get lost in
the ping-pong disorganization of shifting thoughts.
Another day I see it when I'm walking along the beach, the top
layer of skin on my face being roughed up by the ice in the winds.
The fox comes around the bluff, its nose following the high tidemark, searching for something to eat. This time I get a better lookat it, the small pOinted ears, the thick brush of tail, the black:;tockings. I watch the wind rippling its fur, little shimmers
slipping down its sides. I'm surprised that here, in the strong
midday sun, it looks so small. By night light it looks ever so muchbigger and infinitely more important.
I settle into being in this close little house that Marty convinced
me to rent. Meeting her was a fortuna te thing; somehow shesensed that a building this manageable was just what I was
needing - as well as a structure with walls thick enough to ward
off the coming frosts. And right off we both decided that despite
Ollr thirty year age difference we have a lot in common. We've
built on that foundation of sameness ever since I arrived.
I think a current of air gets trapped on my path to the shore, andis funnelled from the water towards my house. When it hits thisbarrier it whirls skyward, creating a spiral of wind. On these
violent days there's a percussion against the side of the house,
small hard sounds that must be gravel off the beach, sea remnants
being scattered over the island. Too, there are the gulls. They let
the wind fling them back from the water and into the narrow
funnel of air. Their shadows hit the window like projectiles and34

when I'm sitting here but somewhere else in my head, the spot
contacts glass and I'm back, sure the window's going to smash,and then the spot's gone and there' s just blue sky and more gulls
in the distance lining up for the next assault.
The suddenness scares me but I like the sound of the large
bitds' voices, talking it over, comparing flights. I like their noise
as !:puch as I like the smell of chainsaw oil that seems to havesoaked all my clothes. And I like thinking about this close world,
trees, gulls, Ethel in her house, Marty and Joan in theirs, and allof us with fires in our homes.
Which brings me to my relations with these neighbors. Just by
knowing them, I'm getting involved. It started at christmas when
we made each other family for a while. I gave Joan a bracelet I
c~rved out of a piece of lilac wood. I gave Marty a new chain forher saw, and I gave Ethel a box I made, a wooden base with slices
of deer antler embedded in the wooden sides. It took a long time
to make because the grooves had to be exact, but I was realpleased with it when it was done. They gave me a blue plaid wool
shirt that has some cotton in it and doesn't feel too itchy against
my bare skin. But I'm so desperate for a feeling of belonging that
I'll include deer or gulls in the count of recognizable, familial
fac~s . And now it's foxes.
From this chair, my attention centers ever more around thewindow. A noise, and I look for the fox. A dog barks, and I watch,
and wait. What else is worth waiting for besides ,an interruption
to the ever-present sameness? Even the color matters, signifying
something different amongst the grays and greens and blacks. It's
reaching the point of distortion so that I can barely remember atime that I wasn't. poised in waiting when Marty knocks at thedoor.
"So what are you doing?" Somehow my waiting hadn't prepared me for her appearance.
''Joan and I've got to do some errands up in Bangor today," shesays stomping snow off her boots, stomping in time with her
words. Her broad shoulders, beer belly and skinny hips are evenmore accentuated in her going-to-town hunter's jacket. "Youwant to come?""No." Not to do errands; and especially not as part of thisarrangement. If there were just two of us, yes. Three, no. I pause,

35

Clnd then expose myself: ('I thought you'd corne to watch the foxes
with me."Marty turns, her "are-you-kidding?" look corning at me
lengthwise. She taps out a cigarette and lights it, then she offers
me one as though to bridge a gap. I decline as always and settle
back into my chair. Whatever happens, happens. She opens thestove door a crack so the cigarette smoke will get sucked out of theroom. ('What's this about foxes?"''Marty, did you ever see a fox disappear? And then reappear
in the same place, only maybe about six hours later?"She shakes her head no, watching to see if I'm joking. "Iwouldn't put anything past them, though," she says, finally.
''They're quite the tricksters. Haven't you ever heard of the foxthat hypnotized a farmer by smiling at him every morning? And
then the fox would steal a chicken and run off, laughing?" She'slaughing now at me.
"Marty, this isn't an every-day-tricking fox. This one is different. You wait. You'll probably see it."
"Listen, Kid, I do believe you." I don't want to hear the rest; I
just want to hang onto the endearment in the name she has taken
to calling me. "I don't want to think about it now, you know what
I mean? We just bought all those rabbits, and they'll be multiplying soon, and I don't want to have to be defending them against
any foxes." That sounds final; I won't argue.
"Can we get you anything in the big city, if you're not going tocorne?" she asks, continuing with business. Probably it's good
we're not going to be together today. Our sentences are completely missing. According to the rules of geometry, that mustmean they're running on parallel courses so they'll never everintersect. A little like lives.
"No." And a point stands alone but can serve as the intersection for an infinite number of lines, or something like that.
She tosses the rest of her cigarette into the stove, slowly exhalesat the flames and then closes the door. ''Well, would you mind
checking on my mother this afternoon? I don't think we'll be backunn-Ilate, and the way this wind is, she's going through the woodpretty fast. You may not have to bring in any, just check to makesure she has enough for the evening. And tell her I'll be downaround ten."36

"Sure." So that's why she came down. I wonder what she
Would've done if I'd said yes, 1'd like to go. "Did you already load
the woodboxes this morning?"
She nods and heads out the door, grinning. "If you see any
more foxes, tell them they'd be smarter to stay away. I'm probably
a better shot than you know." Her grin stays for a long while after
she leaves.
I go to town for milk and eggs and on the way back pick up theman in the fluorescent orange hat and jacket who regularlyh.itchhikes up and down the road, mostly going and coming fromth.e small store that sells beer and Coke and chips. He's got a good
hold on his brown paper bag, but it looks like he's waiting to gethome to open it. When he's walking fairly straight, it's a sign that
he's sober; that's when I don't mind giving him a ride. His noseis running almost faster than his sleeve can keep up and we makecomments about the wind and the bitter cold. Then he tells me
about his friend "Sparky" - Ed Spears I think his name is - andhis trap line. So far this winter, and it's still early yet, he says he's
taken about ten fox and several beaver. I nod to say I've heard but
my stomach tightens. He better not try for this fox; I just don't
hqve P1uch else right now.
It's late in the afternoon when I carry an armload of wood into
Ethel's. She looks so little - especially when she doesn't know
someone is looking. The white of her abundant hair cascades
down her thin body. She's sitting with her eyes dosed, ensconced
in the white, and slipped way down inside her favorite armchair.
She's listening to an opera on the radio, but she shuts it off when
she finally hears me calling her name. Despite the abruptness of
my appearance, she looks like she not only recognizes me but
she's glad to see me. She asks if I'll stay for tea. She always calls
me ('Dear" because she can't ever remember my name, or why itis that I keep coming to her house - except that it has something
to do with an arrangement of Marty's. She seemed to make all theconnections at christmas, when I gave her the box, but that was at
Marty and Joan's house, and the context was different. Now, here
in her house, it's the first time she has offered to serve meanything, so I accept and say, "Sure."
It takes a long while for her to go through all the little steps,
finding tea bags, boiling the water, putting Pepperidge Farm37

cookies in a careful arrangement on a small plate. She doesn't
want me to help, so I stay out of the way and talk some more about
the wind and the cold. She's having to use all her attention totoncentrate, so it's a one way conversation at first. When we're
finally sitting down again, I tell her about the fox, and how it's thesaine fox, I'm sure, and how it seems to live right around here
somewhere. As I'm talking, I start imagining myself wandering
through the woods following its tracks, outsmarting its maze of
decoys and finding out where it lives.
Ethel laughs, at my seriousness, I think. Then she stands up.
''Did you ever see my book about faxes?""No."
She spends a lot of time in her studio, and then in a bookcase
in the front hall. I'm beginning to succumb to sleep in the heat
When finally she comes back with a children's book. She hands it
to me, and drops with a whoosh down into her chair.
There's a photograph of her on the back flap but she looks
much different than in her present wispy thinness; I might nothave recognized her if her name wasn't in print underneath it. I
go slowly through the illustrations, savoring this part of her
famous past. The fox looks identical to the one I've been watching. The drawings show it stalking a mouse, and walking arounda chicken barn, and standing outside a hole in the ground withseveral kits in a tangle of ears and paws next to it.
I read the pictures instead of the story, thinking about the
influences that reside in an area, and whether faxes have always
made an impression on whomever happened to be living here. I
wonder if it's just another stroke of belligerence on Marty's partthat she's refused to be impressed. And then I remember the otherinfluences operating here: shoot them, trap them, skin them.
stroke the cover of the book. "Ethel, this is wonderful," I say.
"It was a wonderful assignment." She echoes the tone of myvoice. ''My husband found a den that summer, and we spenthours watching them. We'd take chairs, and binoculars, and sit
and sketch them from a respectful distance. I think they grewquite accustomed to our being there."
When I'm in the presence of Ethel's elegance - when I hearwords like "respectful" - I want to be more careful. I want tohold my teacup firmly and deliberately between my thumb andr38

forefinger, my baby finger curving a small arc out of the air. I want

JIlY sentences to have proper beginnings and endings, and tocontain words that shape specific feelings. She brings it out in me.
She expects it.
For her, 1'd help put on an elegant tea party. For her, 1'd take
pff ll1Y scarred boots, find some appropriate shoes and borrow askirt to wear; 1'd scrub my fingernails and pass around delicate
china tea cups all afternoon. We'd use this same silver cream
pitcher, only 1'd polish it first. And we'd offer sugar cubes just likethese, with little violets on their sides. Maybe the cucumber andwatercress sandwiches that she once told me about. We would
tell sweet little stories and ask careful questions, and it would
appear that we did this every afternoon. 1'd willingly do that withher.
And Marty would laugh over it for weeks - about how I
suckered for her Mom's game. They're so different, it's hard tobelieve they're related.
Ethel looks happy wherever it is she's landed in her memories,and sOlriewhat tired from all this activity. I clear up the dishes andthank her for showing me the book. She looks like she's close to
sleep so I load up her stove and open the damper before I leave.
I want her to nap in comfort and not wake up because she's cold.
Later, I wake from a dream, sweaty and uncomfortable.
The fox was running up a far hill. I pOinted it out to a man who
was walking down the road. He was blind and felt the way withhis hands . The fox loped like a long white wolf. Then I was
holding the fox in my arms and it felt so vulnerable, so little. I
cradled it in my elbow like a baby. Then I saw it had mange andI got worried about its health, until I suddenly remembered thatit could be rabid. I hurried to put it down and it bit my hand. I tried
to back ;:lway from what was now this snarling, ferocious animal
lungipg at my neck and face. I almost fell trying to escape theattacks, and then I turned and raced down a hill. I found adriveway and ran on the frozen road until I came to a huge house.
They let me in with the words, "We don't need any help here.
We've already hired several people."''But I didn't come looking for work," I told them. I need a lift
to the hospital." Someone who looked like Joan offered to driveme and I was enormously relieved because I'd just gotten a39

glimpse of the Greta I'd loved, there in the room, sitting in the
middle of a circle of people, and she was just about to raise a finger
to point me out, accusingly.
In a panic, I went next door to my house, to look for a clean shirt
to wear. I was horrified by this pervasive putrid smell, and thenI discovered the source: it was a body, rotting. I was shocked thatit had just been left there for me to deal with. I woke in terror,
convipced that somehow I'm still responsible for the hurting, andknowing I'm probably going to get hurt again, and right now I
only want to escape and go outside.
i remember what Joan has said about the dreamer being
everything in the dream. I wonder if that means I'm the blind man
and the fox and the rotting body. This thought brings up too muchof my own past: the Greta-scenes I haven't been able to escape. I
was in love and she panicked at having me so close. She pushed
me away, said it was like reliving the abuse, pushed me and toldme I was a bad person to want to be sexual with her. I began tobelieve her. I felt bad. I acted bad; God, I acted bad. Grovelingly
bad. And then I scraped what little self respect I could get up off
the floor and fled and found myself near here. And then, a few
months later, there we were at the garage; I was trying to get mytruck inspected, Marty was buying tires.
I work to calm myself with thoughts of the safety of being here.
And why it is that I want to be by Marty's side. She radiates astrong safety and together, running our chainsaws, haulingbrush, stacking up the cordwood that will see us all throughAnother winter and provide a good source of cash as well, we've
become a kind of invincible that I had forgotten it was possible to
De. So why is a fox still going for my throat?
I decide to wait until sunrise to walk.
Marty is just leaving her regular morning visit with her motherwhen I wander back from the shore. "Hey, Kid," she calls out.
When! go over, she gives it to me straight off: "Your fox got oneof the rabbits last night./I"My fox./I She's right, I feel protective of this fox. I also feel likeI have a connection to it. After all, it bit me. Maybe I'm rabid, too.
Or maybe I'm just going to get more wild. I wait to hear what sheplans to do next.
"I've been trying to figure out how to trap it, you know, rig a40

string with a trap inside the bunny hutch. So when the fox goesin, which I think it's doing through the small space under thedoor, it trips the string, and this metal cage drops on it from up
q,bove./I
I know the small space she's referring to. It's too small for a fox
to get through. What's really happening is that this fox knows atrick that Marty will never catch on to. It dissolves itself outsideof the bunny hutch, and then rematerializes once it passes to theinside. It'll never trip a snare because that's not how it travels. But
Marty is still scheming.
/lAnd then what?/I I want to know.
"Well, that probably won't work./I She lights a cigarette bypulling out a handful of jacket as a screen against the wind. "I may
have to shoot it." Through the side of my face I can feel her
scrutinizing my reaction.
"From my den I can see the entrance to the bunny hutch. I'll put
a chair by the window, and I'll rig a string to the outside spotlight.
That way, I can turn on the light, paralyze the fox with the beam,and then put a bullet into its head before it ever knows what's
happening."
She could be saying this to shock me: Don't assume you've got
me figured out. Don't think that because I'm who you've got, thatI'm going to show any warmth or humanity.
Or she could be saying this because it's falling on her to be theprotective one. I bet she's wanted this role ever since her father
dieq, her brother left, and she divorced the husband she never
loved and "sent him skidding off on his ear." And now with Joan
too busy, and her mother starting to fade, and me often close totears . . .
She seems to be puffing up even as I imagine it. She sees
potential danger and she's going to arm herself and her charges
aga,inst it. After all, this fox might appear inside one of our houses.
Or in a bedroom, at night, when it's so dark we can't even see it.
Or it might succeed in turning our trust into suspicion, so that
we're always looking around with suspecting eyes, making us
ever more jumpy and ready to suspect each other.
Foxes can do that; they hang around the edges so that they're
weighted presences in the background. We can feel them, evenwhen we can't see them. They're patient until the right moment41

comes, and then they strike. And the chicken house has beenraid~d. Or the favorite cat is gone. Or some other insult is left
hanging in the air for everyone to see in the morning light.
But she's taking it on. I don't have to. "Good luck," I say,keeping my voice noncommittal and bowing myself out of any
more involvement with her plot.
Within two weeks, the fox has gotten three more rabbits andMarty has gotten more serious about doing it in. I don't argue
with her. I don't try any statements like, "yes, but .. ." I don't feel
1ike I have the strength or the wisdom to interfere on behalf of ananimal, or even of a person, for that matter. After all, who knows
what's best, or right? Besides, I've gotten used to watching.
And now more than ever it seems like everywhere I go, I see
foxes. Driving home from a friend's one night, a new friend who
doesn't ask me many questions so it's easy to be with her, I see a
fox tearing across a field. Then I see another fox iI). the headlights.
It feels like a challenge. A curse. It's suddenly a big thing that's
even got a name: Molehill Mountain. Do something, it says, orstop noticing. And now I don't know how not to get involved.
When it seems the most complicated, I go out into the nightand for a while it all smooths out. The world seems to be resting
again in the simple balance of stars and cold and the moon. If I just
had the stamina to keep walking.
I hear a tree pop as the sap freezes in it, and then I hear anothersound as well. Between where I stand and the water, somewhere
there in the woods, I hear the fox. Only it's not the usual highpitched yipping that is pretty common, that we nod at and say,"yup, a fox." This is distinctly different; it's impatient, a widening
spiral coming from deep inside the fox's chest. Again it cries, andagain. It sounds demanding. It sounds lonely. It sounds like avixen in heat. And it's too close to being 0f and in me.
I strain for more clues but now it's just the wind sifting throughthe stiff spruces. In the relief of silence, I think about living in thewoods again. Come spring, maybe I'll move back to the tent I
occupied before meeting Marty. Go and see how the deer are
doing; get a part-time job that pays more than woodcutting andhave the time to cook over a campfire again. Then I hear anotherfox, closer than the first. They call back and forth; it's insistent,ceaseless. It's a spiral that they share, this sound; it's a force that's
42speeding up, it's speeding into me, it's catching at me in my head,
my chest, my fists . I have to get out of here, out of this night thatnow feels like somebody else's. I never know quite what will getme until it does, and then usually it's too late. I stomp down witha loud resistance of sound, marking a noisy path as I hurry backto my small house.
In the morning, I've decided to make one attempt. I'll do one
thing with the fox in mind, and then I'm going to go on to otherthoughts. I decide to begin collecting pee. Every day for about aweek, I empty my chamber pot into a plastic milk jug. It's not sucha pleasant process, but I breathe through my mouth. I cut up
another jug to make a funnel, and I take my chamber pot outside
and use the funnel to pour it into the whole jug.
One evening, when the container's finally full, I carry it down
to the bunny hutch. No one is around and, very slowly, I walkaround the old building, carefully pouring out the liquid. I makecertain sure that I don't leave any spaces that would interrupt thecircle and leave an opening for the fox to slip through. "1 did mypart, now it's up to you."I throwaway the jug and wash my hands of all responsibility.
The days move on at an easy, enjoyable pace. Marty and I cutwood when the weather's good, which it mostly is now that theJanuary blasts are over. We keep working away at the clearing,burning all the tops as we go, and it's warm and sunny in the
opening. The new height of the sun in the sky is like an invisible
layer of clothing. But the best part is that the sun is on the tops ofour heads and no longer slicing Sideways through the treetops;
the low angle of early winter had us forever squinting, always
with the sun in our eyes. We grimaced at each other even when
we were in total agreement.
Except we did have one disagreement, though it was brief.
Marty had her sights on an old dead elm that she wanted to takedown. I was surprised. I thought everyone knew that an elm is themost graceful dead thing that exists, except perhaps for a deer
antler. And this particular elm, without its bark, and all its
secondary branches gone, had five long curving limbs reachingskywards. I thoughts we should leave it, and then I had a hardtime explaining why. Because it was so perfect, I said; it was akind of landmark, it was a form that could be anything we wanted43

it to be. My reasons didn't impress her. But I'd intervened once,
and thi:lt seemed enough for now. I let go and Marty took it down.
And then we're heading to the woods in the old Chevy, andMClrty begins laughing. It's a laugh I recognize as one of a goodfriend. r think I've stopped clinging so tight, stopped thinking
that being lovers always comes next. It's she and Joan, good andsolid. And I'm on the edge, getting better.
~'Do you know how many nights I spent watching for yourgoddamned fox?" She looks sideways at me, her face getting
redder as she smiles. "I'd sit with my drink, and wait, my gun all
loaded and ready. I was sure I was going to kill it. I even planned
to skin it and let you have the pelt. What do you think about that?"
I don't know. I might've liked a fox fur, though I'd really rather
not think about it. "I'm sure I could've thought of something to dowith it," I say with a shrug, knowing how tentative my voice
sQunds.
"But your damned fox never showed up," she tries to soundaccusing, "and I think you probably had something to do with it.
I haven't seen its tracks for weeks. You ever going to tell me how
you did it? Did you scare it away? Use a little magic that you
haven't told me about?"
I have to laugh with her now. I hope it doesn't sound too much
like relief. Could it have been that simple? If that's true, well, too
bad for the elm, but now there's no telling what I might do. I'm
definitely getting better.
"Marty," I allow, "if I knew for one minute that you weresitting with a gun, waiting for me, you can be sure I'd have foundq new neighborhood to live in."She backs the Chevy into the spot where she always parks.
Laughs that feel like they could be mine roll up easily from herb~lly as she climbs out. "You little weasel. You're the one who told
the fox, aren't you?"44Diane Blyler

Preparations For The Life Ahead
from An Honest AccountBecause the girl wants to remember the outlineof her face, the way her brown curls fallacross her neck, she plays the pianowith a mirror on the stand. Almost summer,
1923, and today her parents told her she'll go blind
before spring, before she's eighteen, blinded from her loveof a girl down the block. Watching her fingers reachfor the keys, she thinks of their bodies developing
the way she expects their lives will develop together
toward the future. But the girl believes her parents
and decides to prepare for the life ahead, begins
to teach herself to type and play the piano
blindfolded, not to watch the laces as she ties her shoes,
and vaguely wonders if anyone prints music in braille.
She's been playing for an hour. Already this section's
subtle and graceful, the same motions she imagines
her body might make if she were to dance
and not practice these notes. She pauses at the explosionof tulips by the window, then looks past
the garden to her lover's house, to the yellow kitchen
curtains that snap in the breeze. The girlwonders when the world will begin to fadeand fall away like a photo that first turns brown
and curls at the edges before it finally45

dissolves into nothing or dust, and she tries
to imagine the day her eyes open to a world
flat and black as a note. She doesn't yet know why
she's comforted by looking at the exterior of a room
she's never seen or that she'll become a novelist and tellthis story, that her life will contain no more darkness
than any other life. She sees only the walkthey took all afternoon in the park, the way~he sun sliced a tree in half and the buckles
on their shoes gleamed in the deep grass. It will be enough,the girl thinks, to remember the leaves, and she
begins to play her favorite waltz and sings.

~

.

~~

~lesbian.~ E t hie s

A forumforethicalissuesamong
lesbians.

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

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46

Natalie Devora

Dye
Mother came rushing in, hands full of bags, calling out myname. "Natalie! Natalie, come here! I have something for you." It
was Saturday, her shopping day. Though I hadn't expected
anything from this week's expedition, a part of me was curious
about what she could possibly have purchased for me. I put down
my book and magnifying glass and ran up the stairs to greet her.
There were bags all over the kitchen. Mother had been grocery shopping and from the look of it she'd stopped at Pay N'
Save, Macy's and Liberty House as well. I watched as she beganpulling things out of the more interesting bags while I put away
the groceries. By now my sister and younger brother had arrived
on the scene.
''Mama, did you get anything for me?" Clinton asked.
"Mother, what's in this bag?" Felecia asked while alreadypeeking into it.
"Give me that bag. No, put it in my room. After the food is put
away then I'll show all of you what I bought." Mother followed
after Felecia to make certain that she didn't look into the bags
further, which of course she tried to do.
Felecia returned to the kitchen visibly disappointed, hermouth forming into a pout. I could hear Mother pulling thingsout of bags in her bedroom. She was singing. I took that as a goodsign.
"Okay you guys, we're done." No sooner had I said thosewords than Felecia and Clinton ran from the kitchen, through thedirting room, into Mother'S bedroom. I felt too old, too sophisticated to admit to such excitement. For all I knew, Mother had
bought me underwear, appreciated of course, but not excitement
material. At thirteen, I was only impressed with new books,
clothes or shoes. None of which I was expecting.
I stood in the door frame watching as Mother carefully gave
Felecia and Clinton their new things. Everything was laid out inpiles, according to whom it was to be given.
47

"Thank you Mother for my new dress," Felecia said. The
dress was blue with little flowers sewn into it.
"Clinton, come here so mama can help you. Let's see if these
new shoes fit.""Mama, is this for something special?"''Well actually it is." She was smiling down at him. My ears
perked. What event were we going to? Did I have a new dress as
well? Despite myself I was getting interested in the goings on.
"These are for your birthdays," she told them. My sister andbrother were born five years and one day apart.
Oh, I thought. There probably won't be much for me then.
Birthdays in our home were important, especially for the one orin this case ones having the birthday. For the rest of us, my older
brother and myself, we were expected to be "adult" about it all.
So what did Mother have for me?
I watched my sister and brother model their new outfits, bothof which fit perfectly. They hugged and kissed Mother andhurried off to find Gregory to show him. He wasn't home, but I
did not bother to tell them that. At sixteen, he was rarely homeanymore.
"Come here and sit next to me. I have something special foryou." I walked from the doorway to the bed, all the while looking,taking inventory. I did not see a new dress or shoes. My heartsank. She couldn't see this though - I wouldn't let her.
''When I was in Pay N' Save today I saw this mother and herdaughter. They were both albino." I could tell that there was moreto this story. Mother opened the white bag with blue and green
stripes. She pulled out a box of q-tips and some Ultra Sheen andpaused, waiting for my response.
"Oh really, what did they look like?" I was curious because I'dnever met any other albinos. I thought t11at I was the only one,even though I'd heard that there were others like me in the world.
"Oh they were very pretty," she continued. Her voice betrayed the smile on her face. There was an implication that I was
not as pretty as the mother and daughter she'd seen. "They color
their hair.""They do what?""They were buying hair color. The woman explained to me
that by coloring their hair people couldn't tell that she and her
48

daughter were anything other than white.""Oh." I managed to say. The words repeated themselves
inside my head. "People couldn't tell that they were anythingother than white." I began shifting my weight on the bed. I felt
qncomfortable."
I watched as Mother continued to pull items out of the Pay N'
Save bag: a hair pick, a box with a picture of a woman with blondhair, cotton balls, makeup of some sort, rubber gloves. In the backof my mind I thought, oh, she's really serious.
I picked up the box of hair color and examined it. Unsure ofwhat I was supposed to say, I said nothing. Disagreeing with
Mother was not an option. I had to say something though. My
silence was even making me uncomfortable.
"But Mother, I'm not white. I don't think it's going to work theway it did for that woman and her daughter." I was hoping for anout.
"Oh honey, I think that you're wrong. You may not be whitebut I think that people will accept you more because you'll look
more like everyone else. You might even get a date or two.""I'll look strange. My friends already accept me for who I am.
I won't look like me." I felt my heart sinking. I did not believe her
and yet there was no way I could get Mother to understand that
I was afraid.
"Of course you will look like you. In fact you will look evenbetter, prettier." There was no persuading Mother. Her mind wasmade up. "Besides, there is something else." She looked a little
sheepish. I knew that she was withholding information. She
wanted to be asked. I sat there quietly, watching her, waiting.
"You also get to wear makeup."''Makeup! I thought you said that I had to be fifteen before I
could wear any makeup?" This part excited me. Makeup. Thatmagic word. The thing that separated the "in crowd" from othercrowds by my interpretation. Suddenly the idea of dying my hairbecame more appealing. As I sat thinking about how thrilling it
would be for me to wear makeup, Mother continued talking.
"We'll do your hair today. Take these things into the kitchen
and get a chair to sit in, a big towel, one of the old ones and acomb." She rose to change her clothes. I sat there for a moment,
still shocked. I was going to get to wear makeup.
49

I gathered all of the things that were needed and put them inthe kitchen. I began to feel excited about coloring my hair. Maybeit would make me look better, prettier.
I sat in the chair, towel draped around my neck waiting for
tnother to begin. She read the directions twice before mixing thetwo solutions, dye and peroxide, together. She parted my hairanq squirted the solution into my hair making sure that the roots
were sufficiently dyed first. Then she worked the rest of it into myhair.
''We have to make sure the roots are blond or else it won't look
good."
I tried not to think of what the end result would be, of how I
wou1d look. Yet that is exactly what my thoughts were filled with.
Am I going to look weird? Will my friends tease me even more?
How am I going to walk down the hall?
After Mother finished applying all the dye I had to let it sit for
fifteen minutes. I was tired of the smell and my head had begun
to burn. I told her this and she insisted that I only need to wait alittle longer.
I rose from my chair to stretch. I was afraid to look into themirror. I was worried that my sister and brothers would walk in.
How would I ever explain my new hair to them?
"Honey, let's go wash out the dye now," Mother said, breaking into my thoughts. What was she being so nice? What if I really
did look stupid? What if ...
The what ifs continued as Mother washed the excess dye frommy hair. I couldn't think of looking at myself. With the last of theshampoo rinsed out Mother wrapped a clean towel around myh~ad .

"It doesn't look like much now but it will look great after it's
dried, straightened and curled," she told me smiling.
What did she mean? I walked from the sink to the mirror. A
strand of brown hair met me face to face. Slowly I removed thetowel. My hair definitely was not white. It was, I thought,
somewhere between mousy blond and light brown. I wasn't sure.
I did not look like the me I'd awakened with that morning. I stoodthere combing the tangles out of my hair telling myself that what
I'd done was irreparable.
I sat on the floor on a pillow while Mother pressed my hair.

50She was going on and on about how nice my hair looked. I did not
believe her and tried not to listen to her monologue.
"You are going to look spectacular with your hair curled andYOll all made up. Your friends will not recognize you on Monday," Her cheery attitude was getting to me.
"That's true, they won't know what to say/' I mumbled.
"What did you say?""I said that my friends won't know what to say. How do you
think they will respond anyway?""Oh, they'll probably be jealous because their mothers won't
allow them to do the same to their hair."
They don't need to do anything to their hair or their skin.
None of them are albino, Mother! Thoughts unsaid. She had the
hot comb in her hand I didn't want to get burned. Even if itappeared accidentaIr it always seemed to happen.
"What happened to Natalie's hair marna?" Felecia approached us, curious but unsure.
"I dyed it/' I told her smiling. "I even get to wear makeup
now. Mother said so." I knew that she'd be envious and I wanted
her to be.
"Oh Marna, I mean, Mother, does that mean that I get to wear
makeup when I turn thirteen too?" She would want to, I thought
to myself. Fast.
"No, it does not. Your sister is special. She can't have light ash
blond hair and not wear cosmetics to make the look complete.
Now go away. Did you hang up your new dress? If I know you
it's laying on your bed." She dismissed my sister with one hand
while holding my head with the other.
She wasn't going to be the only cute one any more, I told
myself. I too was going to be pretty. Yes, finaHy I was going to bepretty.
After Mother finished curling my hair, I couldn't wait to go
gaz;e at myself in the mirror. I looked different, somehow older,
I told myself.
"Mother, can we put the makeup on now? I want to see what
all of me looks like. Please." I stood in front of the mirror
primping. I liked my new look. I would be even more stunningwith blush, mascara, eyebrow pencil and lipstick.
Mother and I sat in front of her mirrored dresser. She showed51

me how to apply everything from foundation to lipstick It
seemed so much easier when other women did it. It was hardly
easy for me. I couldn't see to get all the lines equal.
"You'll be able to do this in no time. All it takes is practice."''But how am I going to do it on Monday when I go to school?
t can' t do it by myself yet." There was panic in my voice. School.
How as I going to walk in there in two days without feeling evenmore visible? I couldn't even see well enough to put on my own
makeup.
"We'll do it before I leave for work and you will be able topractice the rest of this weekend. We'll go visit grandmothertomorrow so that she can see how new and different you look"
We both looked at Mother's finished product. Me. I wasbeautiful. I looked like, like someone out of Seventeen . I had lightqsh blond hair that was pressed and curled and hung down to myshoulders and my face. I was gorgeous. Mother had applied
everything, the foundation, which was a shade or so darker thanmy skin, the mascara and eyebrow pencil. For the first time I
could really tell that I had these things, eyelashes and eyebrows.
I liked being able to see my face. There was a little blush on mycheeks and lipstick of the same color, pale pink
I sat taking inventory. I was seeing myself it seemed, for the
first time. I had features . I wasn't just a white blob, bland in every
sense of the word. I was my Mother's image. Even though she hadhoney brown skin, I really did look like her. That meant that I
mtl.st look like the others as well, that I really belonged in thisfamily. I wasn't the adopted stray my older brother Gregory often
teased me of being.
I thanked Mother and ran off to show my sister and brothers.
Now I could prove once and for all I was one of them.

©1989, Natalie Devora

52

Lisa Carlin

As Love Is A House
you s~~uce me w~th the clarit~ of your mind
. as twilIght fades mto the rockmg
steady curve and lift of chair on floor
there is a window of joy that has your face in it
draw the blind
you say, in honest appraisal, not mocking
and my heart singing its quiet yeses
shuts fast sash against pane
we came together to this place:a horne without fixed address
the evening's chill a restlessness
until what was begun in thanks
in qnger heats this dwelling
this love is like a housethat has too little possibility for investment
the foundation gone, pipes burst, garden overrun
and yet what drew me here remains compellingI return to you as to a ruinbury the bones of loss in your yard, confident
that the seed in darkness would know to bloom and ripenthat the door of love would one day creak and open53

there is a window of joy that has your face in it
from "As Love Is A House" by Lisa Carlin

Jasmine Marah

54

Gloria AnzalduaNightvoice

When we met I fell
into her eyes
like falling into warm rockblurting
everything how my cousins
took turns at night
when I was five eight ten
her eyes asked for nothing
but I turned myself inside
out plucked my heartand offered it to her.
She looked away
I hated the coaxing in my voicethat bitch whine
and then she said buena justthis once
It rained hard that day and afterwards

she sat up and stretchedarms and bare back glistening.
The sounds of the ranas
entered the room with the night
both were drowning her.
I stood at the doorof the heaven I thought out of reach
When I touched her I could barely
breathe and the smell of her:toasted almonds and yeast.
I could never get near it enough55

the wanting making my arms weak
the taste of hereven now if I bring my fingers up to my noseI get a whiff of her.
Lightning scored the windowpanes
a brutal light hit my eyes
filling the room surprising
the shun in her face
she slid it back behind her eyes
but I'd seen it
and by the time thundershook the mirror
something else had entered the room
and I knew she would leave meparts of her were walking out
into the llovisna
toward the lightning piercing the horizon
She lay beachedon the white sandand before the sweat dried on her body
I knew she needn't
have done anything
one strokeof her hand on my belly
and I would have gone off again
but I lay on the white sheetmouth full of sandmy face shut like a door.
Somehow the thunder had gotten inside me
and I wanted to say I'm not your perraa cheap shot but it would havesoftened her mouthby then I wanted nothing from her
had turned away and lay listening
to the rain and the frogs.
The birds had stopped singing.

56

When her hand touched me
I almost screamed.
I pulled back into my self
made myself numbbut the cat her hand found me
and I the mouse had no moreholes to hide in
I came to lose myself
and for that I neverforgave her.

buena: all rightranas: frogs
llavisna: rain
pma: bitch as in female dog

57

Lisa Morphew

The Moth
For Marilyn

Fot months she lay in my bed watching moths fly into the light,
ctinging for each that did not, could not, fly out. Each night I
would reach for her, and she would turn as if my hands were
weapons. It was foreign war for me. Sleeping under my pillow toblock out her need for a night-light. I could only imagine her still
so full of her father's breath, his hands still riding her hips, his facea mask I am forced to wear. He took her night after night while hermother pretended sleep. He held her hips as he slipped his
tongue between her legs and sucked every ounce of trust fromher, replacing it with his hot breath. When she could not stand tosee another moth die, she turned off the light and said I trust you,
I want you. I heard her father laugh, felt his hands grip like claws
as I lay my hands on her pelvis and slipped my tongue between
her legs to suck him from her. She held my hair and screamed into
the night no, no, but she did not turn. I knew I had her father inme when I could not sleep.
l went to the window and blew the air from my lungs - myhands curled like claws. He had entered me in a desperateattempt to keep her his.
I sat on the edge of the bed, traced her spine with my fingers,
kissed her shoulder, put my head to her back and listened to herheart. She had her ear to the bed as if it were telling her a story. I
did not sleep that night but watched the moths flying the light,~ounted 20 that did not return before she turned to find me
awake. "Make love to me," she said, and she cupped my face inher hand, pulled me to her. I heard her father cry, saw him walkthrough the bedroom door into his own night alone.

58

Untitled
Myra Fourwinds

59

Carolyn Gage

Confessions of a Lesbian Groupie

I went backstage immediately after her number. I couldn't wait
for the rest of the show. Who wants to see a bunch of drag queens
anyway? But this woman ... well ... she had been something else.
When a woman wears male drag it's an entirely different thing.
It's not an impersonation of a man. Why would any lesbian want
to do that? It's a celebration of a third species, as Wittig calls us.
And I mean, she was another form of life. She wore rippedjeans, which looked like they'd been painted on. And she sangthis SO~lg, "1 Want Your Sex," like no man could every sing to
women. I mean, when a man says that to a woman, you knowwhat he means. If he's old-fashioned, it means he wants to stick
it in. If he's up on all the latest discoveries about women's bodies,it means he wants to show off what he's learned. But when this'Yoman looked at me and sang, "1 want your sex," I knew what
she meant and it had to do with celebrating me, and it didn't haveanything to do with that other shit.
And that's why I got up and went backstage so quick. I didn't
want to let the moment pass.
i had to wade through a lineup of drag queens backstage. This
was a lesbian/ gay prom night, and most of the entertainers were
the queens. In fact, Rusty was the only woman who had the nerve
to appear in male drag and do a number.
I found her dressing room. She was in it, flushed with excitement and covered with sweat. She looked pleased to see me. I told
her that I loved her act. She kept being flushed and distracted, andthanking me. She was taking off her makeup. I don't think she
was getting the message.
I kicked the door closed, and stood up. I decided to take a
blunt approach. "Look, Rusty, did you mean what you said when
you sang, 'I want your sex,' because I sure as hell want yours."
She stopped what she was doing. Maybe that was a little too
biunt, I thought. Now, I'm embarrassed. She's considering theoffer. Fortunately, she didn't have to think long. I mean, I'm older
60

than she is, but not bad looking. In fact, there's days when I think
I'm kind of too skinny, or a little too intense, but that's only when
it's rained all day.
''You wanna go somewhere?" she asks me.
''Yeah.''"I've got my truck.""l just live a few blocks from here."
ilOkay, let's do that.""Cqn you leave now?"(Well, I'm on again in an hour and a half, if tha t' s enough timefor you.""Sure." I smile. I'll probably corne when she takes my clothes
off. Or when I take hers off.
Well, I won't bore you with the details. We go to my studioapartment. I draw all the drapes. I mean, an hour and a half andwe've already lost fifteen minutes of it. Not a time to be coy. I
don't have a real bed, so I fold down the foam sofa.
"After you." I gesture to the foam. Rusty ignores the gesture.
Insteqd she moves close to me and positions one of her legs
between mine. Not aggressively. Just efficiently. And then she
unhl1.ttons the one button on my jacket and slides it off myshoulders. I realize the light's still on. I reach out a hand to turnit off.
('Pon't. I like to see," she says.
"Be1ieve it or not," I tell her, "I'm shy."
She laughs. I turn out the light. She's pressing her thigh into
my clit. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and I would
straddle the arms of the sofa to play horsey, and ride back andforth on my magic spot. Rusty's hands are gently stroking theskin on my upper arms, almost thoughtfully. I appreciate that she
doesn't just go for my breasts right off.
And then very slowly she leans in and kisses me. Her hands
are tau-ching my upper arms so lightly I can barely feel them. But
she's holding me just the same. And she kisses as slow and as lightall she touches. I think my heart's going to stop. I feel her lips on
my neck.
Catching my breath, I reach my hands around her waist,
touching her as gently as she touches me. I feel the folds of her tee
shirt above the jeans. I caress the fabric so lightly, I'm not even61

touching her body, but I can feel her respond. Her thigh istelegraphing to my clit. And we stand like that fora minute. And
then she begins to take off my shirt. It comes off over my head, so
she pushes it gently up over my breasts, careful not to touch them.
I raise my arms and she pulls it off over my head.
Now I feel very vulnerable. I'm glad it's dark. She reaches ahand towards my breast. I catch it. "Take yours off, too." Shehesitates for just a second, and then strips off her tee shirt. She
wqits for me to touch her. I appreciate that. She must understandsome things. Maybe they were done to her too.
I take my hand and center the palm over her nipple. Then very
slowly I press it towards her breast until my hand is cradling her
tender breast, as if it were a baby bird. I can feel her moan. She lets
me stroke her breast, until I lower my face to lick her breast, to pulldn the nipple with my lips, to brush my cheek against her lovelyskin.
As I bend to her, she spreads her fingers across my back,gently feeling and holding at the same time. I kiss my way softly
to 4er mouth. We kiss a little deeper now. And she touches mybreasts while we kiss.
"Let's lie down," she says pulling back from me, but taking
my hanas.
I don't say anything. I can't. We sink to the bed. Rusty lies tothe side and looks at me. It's dark, but I can feel her looking at me,
and I like it. The bed is always a hard part for me.
'We can just do this if you want to," she says. "I'm happy."
I take her hand and hold it to me face. I'm happy too.
With her other hand, she reaches over to stroke my arm. Shetalks about the sky. It's a clear night, and the stars are out. I movevery close to her. I feel her turn towards me. I can feel her breasts
qgainst my arm.
'Would you like to kiss again?" she asks. I'm smiling in thedark. I turn and kiss her. She keeps it very slow. I'm the one who
pushes for more. I move my face over her. She's lying backlooking at me now. I look at her too, for a long time. And then wekiss again.
"May I kiss your breasts?" she asks. I move over her so that
her mouth can reach them. Rusty's tongue is like some tenderbrush, painting love on my nipples. I feel her passion, but I feel62her restraining it. Because she knows I'm scared. ,Because there's
nothing more important than being there for YOllr partner. I likethis woman. I'm impressed. I take her hands while she sucks mybreasts. I pull her hands over her head and then I kiss her again.
I kiss her with all the passion I can see she's trying to control. She
lets me set the pace for us.
I sit qack and put my hands on her jeans, She settles her hips
and folds her arms behind her head. I smile again and unbutton
her jeans. She lifts her hips so I can slide her clothes down. Her
public hair is red. It's a quality you can almost see in the dark.
When I get her jeans down to the middle of her thigh I stop andlook at her. And then lightly, I brush my fingers through her
public hair. Getting acquainted. I smile at her. She's watching me.
My finger finds her clit and I trace around it so lightly she has
to press her hips up to meet my finger. I bend over and kiss herhair lightly. I nuzzle my nose up against her clit, and I hear her
take a breath, her bod y tense. She tries to open her legs for me, but
she can't because her pants are still around her thighs. I press mytonglle between her thighs, and I taste how wet and salty she is.
I feel her hands touching my head. She runs her fingers throughmy hair as she raises her pubis to my tongue.
Suddenly she's sitting up. She says, "I have to take my clothes
off. I want you to really eat me." I'm flattered. She strips off her
pants and wraps her legs around my body. We hold each other ina tight embrace. "Take off your pants," she whispers. "Or let metake them off."''You can undo them, but I want to take them off," I tell her.
She says all the right things.
Rusty rolls me gently over. She looks at me again. We smile.
She moves her hand over my clit. I can feel the warmth of her handeven through the denim. And then suddenly she slides herself
down between my legs. She's licking me and nudging me
through my jeans. I laugh. "Oh, did I forget something?" she asks.
I like this woman. I really like this woman.
With her cheek lying against my hip, to the side of the zipper,
she opens the top snap and begins to pull the zipper down soslowly it moves over one set of metal teeth at a time. She acts likethis is the most exciting part of the evening, like we have all night.
I'm self-conscious. I laugh and I reach down to unzip them63myself. She brushes my hand away and continues to undo thepants one millimeter at a time. I give up and lie back, smiling at
the ceiling. This woman is taking me somewhere I don't evenunderstflnd, but I want to go. Oh, do I want to go. Finally thezipper reaches the bottom. "You got any more zippers anywhere?"''No. That's it." I sit up and she rolls to my side again. I takeoff my pants quickly, self-consciously. I sit self-consciously,
cross-legged. Rusty rolls away from me. She hooks her arms
behind her head again, letting me know they're not going anywhere in my direction. She starts to talk about constellations. She
wants to rename them. It doesn't help. I'm sitting cross-legged.
Scared.
''You know, this is just fine," Rusty says. I start to cry.
Fortunately she can't see that's what I'm doing. ''You're here andI'm here and we're lying here and we can see the stars, and I can't
think of anything I'd like to do more.""I thought you wanted me to eat you," I say, trying to soundfunny about it.
"That was before I got to play with your zipper. Now, my life
is complete. I've known perfect bliss."''You're a liar."''Well, actually, you' re right. I'd like to hold your hand. I
know we just met, but could I?"
I laugh and I give her my hand. I appreciate what she's doing.
She holds it just for a minute. Then she holds it against her
fac~, the way I held hers earlier. And I can feel her pressing herlips against it. I get scared, and at that very second she stops.
"Carolyn, if you want to talk about anything, I'm here, you
know.""No. There's nothing to talk abou t. I just get scared.""So do L""Guess we ought to go find other people who aren't then.""No," she says. "No." And she takes my hand up to her faceagain and holds it very still. I can feel her breath on the back of myhand. I feel frozen in time.
"Guess you need to be getting back to do the second set.""Not yet.""I don't think I can do anything else."
64

"That was plenty for me.""Oh, sure."
There's nothing more to say. I feel miserable. And older andskinny, and it hasn't even rained all day. In a minute she's goingto get up and put her clothes back on, and I'll look somewhere else
while she does, and then we'll say some stupid things and then
she'll leave, and then as soon as she gets out the door, she's goingto shake her head and start thinking of how she's going todescribe me so that people will laugh when she tells this story
about her big groupie.
She lets go of my hand . I look away. I can hear her putting her
pa,nts on. I wish I knew what I was dOing, or who I was. At least
I don't fake it anymore.
She hands me my shirt. I reach out for it, not looking at her.
''Wait.'' She takes it back. "Let me dress you.""That's stupid. It's easier for me.""No, I mean it. I want to."I'm still looking away from her. I shrug. She takes my hand
anq threads it through one sleeve, and then she repeats it with theother. She's so careful and so serious about this, I start to smile.
And then she lifts my arms and pulls the shirt down over myhead .
"May I put your pants back on, too?" I turn my face away
again, but I'm smiling. This woman is really something else.
She's taken the underwear out of the mashed up jeans. She
threads my feet through as if they were made out of somethingthat would break. And then she begins to slide my underwear up
my legs. She has a look of concentration like she was figuring out
the wiring on the back of a stereo or something. '1 start to laugh.
She adjusts them over my hips.
"You know, you're really beautiful." She says it offhand, theway she made the remark about renaming the constellations.
I don't have to say anything, because she's already back at theend of the bed straightening out my jeans.
"Those are going to be harder," I tell her.
"Not harder," she says. "Just slower." She pauses for asecond. "There's a big difference." She throws that one away, too,so I don't have to react to it. I don't know what to say. This woman
is walking me through my nightmares.

65She's right. The jeans are slower. But not harder. I begin torelax. She gets them up over my thighs.
'Would you mind if I kissed your clit good night before I tuck
her in?" I laugh. She's so serious. "It's okay?""Yeah. I guess."
Rusty bends over me. She traces some light patterns with her
nose on my thighs. And then she opens her mouth wide andmoves it close up against my whole vulva, underwear and all,and she starts breathing out gently into the fabric. I feel a rush ofwarm air spreading all over my genitals. It just keeps getting
warmer and warmer. I laugh. And then she kisses me on the clit,
real quick, the way a kid would kiss her great aunt's cheek, if her
mother told her she had to. And then she pulls my jeans up. And
she zips them up and snaps them together.
"A job well done," I say.
"Anytime," she says.
"You mean that?" I ask.
"Yeah, I mean that. I'll even take them off if you want me to.
But putting them on is really my thing. Not too many people
specialize in that.""Rusty, thank you.""Thank you."
I put my arms around her. She holds me tight, but with all that
gentleness. I don't know how she does that, but it's perfect. I tellh~r.

She takes my face in her hands and kisses me again. It's very
different from the kiss a half hour ago. It' s light years different. It'sth~ kind of a kiss when you've been on a dangerous mission
together, and you didn't know if you'd both make it back again,
but here you are, and you did make it together, and you're bothso glad.
She stands up and pulls me up with her. "Let's go." She's
holding my hand and opening the door. I hadn't been planningon going back with her, but it suddenly seems like the mostnatural thing in the world. I grab my jacket and we're on our way.

66

Lisa Marie Bronson

Untitled
To Vetti and MariaI wanna meet some witch women
funky with braids and dreads
smelling of patchouli and pussy
and not afraid to sweat
I want to meet some glittering jewel-women
shining fine-like and warm with precious oils
scented woods are the walls of their chambers
I wanna meet some pretty women
wrapped in silk and many trinkets
bells on their ankles and toes
I need to meet some nappy-haired musicloving womenbending knee-deep, howling the blues out from their soull wanna meet some women like the woman
I need to be.

67

Rozanne

Dangerous Dancing

When all my friends were taking evening classes in plumbing,electrics or karate, I decided to learn bellydancing.
I needed the exercise. Felt like my body was just some excess
baggage I dragged behind me. But I refused to do anything boring, butch and respectable like weight-training. Just the thoughtof spending an afternoon in a gym (with my habits it wouldn't be
the morning) pushing and pulling a load of heavy metal objects
is enough to put me off the idea of physical fitness for life. I tried
swimming, but in the end that just meant laying in the sun at the
women's pond, reading, gossiping and watching all the othernaked women do the same things.
At the first class we went through the old go around in a circle
and say why we're here routine. A woman with long black hairand a graceful wide-hipped body spoke first. Her husband likes
to watch Arabic dancing and would like her to be able to do it forhim.
Everyone except me laughed in complicity. Other womensaid they wanted to lose weight. The woman with the long black
hair added that she needs to lose a lot of weight, and didn't pay
any notice when everyone rushed to assure her she was gorgeous
the way she was.
My turn. I wondered about making a quick trip to the 100 to
get out of it. This sort of thing always embarrassed me. But
everyone was looking at me.
"Well, I need the exercise. I always liked the music, and I sortof like watching it." I wondered to myself if that sounded weird... after all, that woman's husband liked watching it!
But it's different ... I thought about the time I saw live Arabic
dancing in a cabaret at a women's club, several years ago when I
was first coming out. The dancer first explained a little about thedance; how Westerners degraded it into a bump and grind, tits n'bum act without understanding the meaning and beauty of the68dance. She got interested in it herself because it originally was adance that women performed for each other.
I was so taken with the woman's dancing I wanted to talk to
her afterward. It took me awhile to find her. Out of costume she
was hard to recognize; her long hair was stuck up in a beret, shewore baggy jeans with a baseball jacket and strode around withhardly a hint of a swing to her hips or anything else.
When I tried talking to her she was caught up in an argumentwith a couple of women about whether dancing was politicallycorrect or not and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. In fact, my
ex recently told me she thought my interest in Arabic dancing
highly suspect. But I couldn't be bothered worrying about what
my ex-lover thought once the warm-up exercises began.
At the end of the class my muscles were aching, but as Iw",lked out of the building my whole body felt lighter, and I
couldn't keep my hips from swinging with a will of their own.
Very conveniently, a women's disco went on the same night andI went straight there so my hips could move as much as theywanted.
Well into the term a new woman called Theresa joins the class.
Round-faced, freckled, with bushy pink hair and a big smile,
there is something about her that makes me feel like smiling justas big.
Since the whole idea of the class is swinging our thing, I can't
help noticing her body. When she leans forward doing those wide
hip-circles, I wonder at the large mysterious movements beneathher loose t-shirt, the plump shoulder and arms. Her legs are
surprisingly muscular for such a soft, fleshly body. I see her as arelaxed, slow-moving woman who can spring into action when
she wants to.
We're doing this movement called "figure 8." A flowing
movement of the hips up and down, side to side. As if you're
drawing a figure 8 with them. As I try and do mine slow andsensuous as possible, I look at her and smile. But I get embarrassed and make like I'm watching the tutor instead. I feel like aright prat when I try to flirt!
"Rachel, keep your feet flat so you can emphasize the downward movement," the tutor suggests.
69

Theresa is cheating too by lifting her feet up. Yes, I can see it
isn't as smooth when it's done that way. But what do I care? To
me she's the best dancer in the class.
I'm going to ask Theresa if she wants to go to the disco after
the next class. Or maybe that's going too fast ... first suggest a cafe
for something to eat, all that exercise really works up an appetite.
Then, if things go OK I'll say I'm meeting some friends at the disco
and would she like to come.
But I don't know even if she's a dyke or not. Maybe she's
iearning Arabic dancing so she can entertain her boyfriend?
Well, maybe we can just be friends. I hope I can think ofint~resting things to say to her in the cafe is she does come.
The tutor points at a woman called Judy. Judy's an aspiring
tnodel. She talks a lot about the special costume that's being madefor her in Turkey and how she's going to make it big in the clubs.
She and the woman with the long black hair hang around
together, compare tummy sizes and figure 8's.
Judy starts going through her paces. The tutor laughs: "Verygood, Judy. But you look so bored! Look up and smile, just as if
you're performing!"
J).1dy flicks her long blonde fringe from her face. "I'll smilewhen I have a nice audience to smile at!""Huh? Who says we're not a nice audience? You couldn't get
ct nicer audience than us," a clear voice piped up. n was Theresa.
I laugh a,nd look at her, not feeling so embarrassed when I smile.
So now we're all dancing in a circle. We'd been doing~'Swerves" which are sort of like the twis t. "Pretend you're hitting

a drum with your hip as you step forward!" the tutor exhorts. I
swerve along, watching myself in the mirror on the other side of
the room. Since it's a fairly basic - if side-splitting - movement
I'm not doing too badly. I'm so intent watching myself that I
swerve into Theresa ahead of me, my right hip seemed to give her
a good chop in the bum. Shit, this isn't going to endear me to her,is it? "Oh, I'm sorry ... you OK?"
l'Oh, fine. Don't worry." She patted her bum. "There's
enough there to absorb any blow!"
Changing directions, we try the Egyptian walks. I'm very badwith the Egyptian walk. Just trying to keep the beat as I step down70

with one hip then the other flung, and I can never get it rightwhere the wiggle goes in between the steps.
After a while I stop and try to get in with the beat again.
Theresa crashes into me from behind, tits first. We apologize at
the same time. Though it's really my fault for stopping.
Because I'm so hopeless at keeping the beat on the Egyptian
walk, it happens again though not as drastic. Every time I falter
I feel her brush against me. On purpose? I turn round to smile
instead of saying I'm sorry for being such a clutz, but I see she's
busy watching the tutor.
I start looking at the clock now. Sometimes the end of the classis jtlst a matter of sheer endurance, especially if we've beenlean:ling new movements.
"Now, since this has been a very strenuous class today, we
should do a little massage before we go. Could you get into
twoS?" I make sure I'm partnered with Theresa, trying not to be
too obvious about it.
Theresa leans forward first while I knead along her back. Up
and down, feeling as much of her skin as I can beneath her shirt.
It feels lovely. She arches her back, throws back her head so shegazes at me slightly upside-down.
"Ah, that feels good. Last week I was a bundle of aches andpains.'f"Theresa, it's much more effective if you just lean on yourpartner's knee," the tutor interrupts. "Just relax your muscles,
you'll find your head leaning forward ."I place my hands on that soft area between the neck and theshoulders. But all the kneading I'm supposed to be doing turns
into caresses. I move my fingers in circular motions in the crookof ht=r neck and past. I could just keep on doing what I'm doing,
all over ...
I get jarred out of my daze when I realize everyone's getting
dressed and leaving. Theresa is still sitting there with her eyes
half closed like a cat. "You still at it?" asks the tutor laughing.
('And you, Rachel, haven't even had your turn for a massage!"
And I get dressed fast as I can, not bothering to get the seams
pn my tights straight. I'm desperate to get all my numerous layersback on before she leaves. Getting dressed is a much Simpler
71affair for her. She's already out the door while I'm struggling withmy second jumper.
I catch up though, trying not to seem too obvious. "You enjoy
the class?" I ask.
She says she enjoyed it though it was nackering. "Especiallysince I come from West London. I take a bus at my end, the tube,
and another bus to come here. Then I've got to rush back to myyVaitressing job. And I still have to get home to feed my cats before
then!"
As we get closer to my favourite cafe we talk about cats. Seems
we both love cats. She tells me she likes the way they dive under
her blq.nkets and cuddle up to her in bed.
I'm interested in this fact but I realize I better suggest a cuppa
before it's too late. "Oh," I interrupt, "I'm going to the cafe,"
pointing to the Tasty-Bite cafe over the road.
"I'd better catch my bus. See ya next week."
Sounds like she only shares her bed with her cats. Perhaps
there's some hope in that! Perhaps next week I can try and chat toher a little more while she runs for her bus, or perhaps I can find
01,lt which restaurant she works in, then wander in one evening
just by coincidence. I look forward to the next class.
But Theresa never turns up again. I finally ask the tutor if she
knows what happened to her. She says that Theresa had asked
her about Arabic dancing classes in West London, and decided toswitch to one of them.
I carryon with the classes. After class, I go to the women's
disco where I usually meet up with my friends. But the disco isgetting boring lately, more of a habit than a pleasure. Sometimes
this place is packed, but tonight it's a dismal, plush and velvet
tavern in its emptiness. A few dancing; and a few women, myself
inchlded, sitting glumly at the tables. I don't plan to stay longer
than my half pint lasts.
Shit, sometimes I wonder. Being a dyke was supposed to be
fun, remember? But tonight it's a bore.
It's strange the way a varied group of women manages to look
the same. Slicked back hair with a wedge in the back, or one ofthose modified pudding bowl do's from last year. Trousers withcreases, tailored blouses, or track suit bottoms for the more casual72

look. Nothing too bright, disorderly or soft seems acceptable here.
WOJ.llen arrange themselves carefully at the bar, looking at eachother or nothing at all with half-closed eyes. Even the ones talking
or dancing look like they've go their movements well-rehearsed.
Sometimes I think people who think they're too cool forwords should be boiled in oil. Why do they bother anyway, when
it's so deadly dull? The sort of woman who catches my eye is theone who sticks out like a sore thumb. Someone so uncool she's
hot!
Maybe there'll be someone I know in the other bar.
This room is always full of women hiding under tables toavoid their ex-lovers. Or trying to ignore their ex-lovers ignoring
them. Fortunately my ex-lover lives in another city so I don't haveto look at her ugly mug. Of course I considered her mug to be themost gorgeous mug on earth several months ago, but never mind
about that.
I try and case the joint without being too obvious about it,
which is difficult being short-sighted. I take a long look at thecorner where I usually sit with my friends ... maybe some of thegang rnight've turned up after all.
Women at that table stare when I sidle near to get a look.
Looks like I'll be gang-less tonight after all.
I decide to have another half pint because I'll sleep better
when I go horne.
Back in the other room I station myself in a corner behind apillar where I'll be unobtrusive and left alone by the "corne on
your own?" questioners. It' s not that I'm not happy to talk to newpeople. I appreciate it if a stranger says "hello" ... I'm too shy to
do it myself! But what's that got to do with who or what I carne
with? I'm old enough to walk around the corner - get on the tube
even! - on my own.
"Go on! Don't say hello to me then!" Who ...
"Theresa, from Arabic Dancing."
Ber deeply pink hair shows like a beacon under the strobe
lights, almost but not quite matched by her long clingy stretchy
pin!.< skirt. When she sits down and puts her feet up on the chairnext to me her skirt rides up and I notice her wooly tights haveholes in them, revealing fishnets underneath. They look like the73same tights she used to wear to class, plus a few extra holes. Her
hair is even bushier since the last time I saw her, lifted higher off
the face and barely restrained by a stripey headband. Shiny blackroots flash in the pink mass.
Very uncool. This woman definitely sticks out like a sore
thumb.
I wonder if she came on her own? But I won't ask.
She supplies the information. "I was supposed to meet afriend here, but I'm very late and I think she might've just pissed
off in disgust. Felt kind of funny being here on my own. I had tohide in the toilet for a while. I don't go to places like this too often.
punno if I like it. Everyone here's so cool and I don't feel like I fit
in.""Aw, don't worry about it. You're probably the most interesting of the lot here anyway."
I could shove my DM down my throat for that one. Fuck,
she'll think I'm chatting her up. Watch it, now she'll be saying 'oh
Igotta go catch a bus so I can go to work" even though it's 1:00 AM... and disappear. For all I know she might be straight. By "places
like this" she might've meant women-only discos.
But she just sort of smiles and suggests dancing. I agreed,
thollgh the music was really boring, the sort of thing you just end
up bending your knees to and talking about the weather.
''You still do Arabic dancing?" she asks.
''Yeah, every week. Then I come here.""I went to another class in Shepherd's Bush, but I haven't been
too regular about it. I still love the dancing though and I wish I
could do it. Sometimes when I'm just dancing at a party ofsomething, I start wanting to try out some of the movements. It'dgo alright with the reggae, I reckon.""I do if I'm pissed enough. But if I'm not pissed, I getembarrassed.""Eh, speaking of which, I brought a little bottle with me." Wego back to our corner, and she produces a bottle from her bag. A
friend brought it back from Portugal. It's called firewater. 50%
alcohol." I take a whiff of the stuff and feel light-headed already.
While I'm getting our glasses of orange juice at the bar a slow
sinuous reggae tune comes on. Have to get that firewater down,
quick!
II74

This is much better. Without thinking about it, I try a figure 8.
Sway the hip up, then down. Theresa grins and does the same,then frowns. "It doesn't feel right, still. I know, we need our
scarves!" When the class started the teacher said that the only
mandatory part of the costume was a scarf around the hips, itmade both you and the audience more aware of what you were
doing with them.
She disappears and comes back with both our wooly scarves.
I look doubtfully at my red and black checked scarf, "it's notreally the right kind though.""Who cares. Here, I'll do it for you." She carefully ties it roundmy hips, taking great care as she knots it, smooths it with her handfrom l1ip to hip. Then briskly puts her own on.
I move my hips slowly to the reggae, thinking about how her
l1and felt across my stomach. Somehow I was able to feel the lighttouch of her fingers even through my layers of winter clothing. I
finally stop looking down (where my thoughts seem to be) andlook at Theresa. She's swaying gently with a dreamy smile on her
face, watching me. Drawing closer, she says, "Ah yes, you have
improved!" pretending to be the tutor.
All I can think of doing to the next song is a shimmy. A
shimmy starts at the knee to shake what's above it. There's all
sorts of shimmies you can do - large voluptuous shakes tominute little tremors. You can add them to all the other movetrwnts too, but I'm not good enough to do that.
I sometimes used to feel turned on doing them, with thefeeling of the air going up my cotton skirt and my thighs slapping
together.
It feels the same as I do it now, except my heavy tights makemy thighs rub and slither instead of slap. We start shimmying allover the place. One minute on opposite sides of the room, thenclose together again. Theresa's scarf falls off. I find it and try
Plltting it back on her, but her jumper has got all bunched up andbulky.
"I might as well take that jumper off, I'm getting sort of hot
anyway," she suggests.
Back in our corner I take both of mine off. The air on mysweaty skin is a sweet sort of shock as I emerge freed of my layersof wool.

75

Theresa is still undoing the buttons on the cardy underneath.
I wish she'd hurry up. 'Where'd my scarf go?" she mutters. "I'm
starting to lose track of things."
I find it under the pile of all our coats and jumpers. As I tie itround for her in the back, she finally gets rid of her cardy. I start
thinking about stroking my hand up the valley made by her
backbone, exposed by her too short t-shirt. What it would be liketo keep stroking up that valley, between her shoulders, to thefront .. . What would it have been that time we were doing thatmassaging in class, if the classroom had just disappeared and wewere somewhere really comfy and it just went on and on?
I have a lump in my throat where my heart is beating fromimagining. I have to dance more, or touch her more, or both andeverything. Because I can't really speak I pull her back to the
qancing, with a brief stop at the DJ booth to croak out a request
fot more reggae.
But the DJ - bless her! - does even better. She puts on thisMiddle Eastern disco record that's really some sort of modern''belly-dance'' music.
We go wild doing hip circles, a movement like doing the hulahoop. In the big ones you're either bending forward or arching
backward as you do your circle. We add shakes and figure 8' sanda few things invented on the spot. I know for the first time what
my dancing is for, besides being an alternative to press-ups. The
sensual strength of moving and flowing to this music, and thedelight of watching and responding to her movements. She
radiptes a calm sensual ease in the way she dances; in the slow liftand drop of a hip, a shake of a bare shoulder where the t-shirt slid
down, lazy inviting hula hoop circles coming closer. I love theway her flesh ripples when she shakes, the movement of her
breasts as she leans forward and back, and the smiling warmth
shining in her face that I feel almost as a physical touch.
We circle around each other, closer and closer, hips andthighs and bums brushing. First time I feel just the fabric of her
skirt, then the warm impact of her body underneath. Again andI fe~l a steady returning pressure from her, and a shake rippling
against me. What could be chance brushings of hip against hip or
thigh against thigh become sustained, until there is no parting at
qll. Just surrounded with the curve of her stomach, her breasts
76

ilgainst mine, and her arms around me. My face against the backpf her neck, veiled by a soft fuzz of hair that has escaped theheadband.
As the dance floor gets more crowded and we get bumped
into several times, we back laughing and stumbling into the
cotner where we left our stuff. "Alright, now we can do ourshimmies undisturbed," I say, and kiss her.
"Shimmies it is then!" Standing close, we softly rub and shakeagainst each other. I draw my hand along the broad line of her
inner thigh, and up along the round undercurve of her breast over
the t-shirt fabric sticking to her skin. Lusciously we wiggle
against each other again, mouths connecting, sucking, exploring,
I touch her where and whenever our movements allow the space
between our bodies. Her hands surprise me, as they discreetly
press and stroke; here, and there. Our delicious dancing goes on
and on.
Until I start feeling like everything in me is liquid and soft, likeI don't have any bones left. I'm not sure if I can stand up anymore.
I have to wrap myself around her to keep from collapsing. For aw hile we hardly move at all, just pressing together in time to themusk. Such small movements, that set off such tremendous
Waves in me. Wondering, I touch the plump curve of Theresa'scheek, listen to the sighs and laughs that echo my own.
I don't think either of us can keep on our feet anymore. I am
feeling so wobbly I lean against the wall and she leans against me.
I puts her hands down the back of my skirt, rhythmically moves
them up and down my bum and the backs of my thighs. It's agood thing I didn't wear my too-tight mini-skirt tonight, or she
wouldn't have been able to get her little finger past the waistband!
I was pissed off w hen I found I couldn't fit into it anymore but it's
worked out for the best. And this is the best I've felt for a long timeas I lean back held by the firm strokings of her hands, gripping her
leg between mine.
I hug her tight and gather her against me. We are sort of doing
little hip circles, clinging together. Shaking, sliding, entwined,though I suppose it just looks like we're dancing. Her sighs andshudders become my own pleasure. I look at her and wonder
who she is, what brought her to being with me this way.
Softly buffeted and kneaded-hands, breasts, thighs between

77them I don't know the difference anymore. I am turning into
water, yet I am all flesh and can think only of hers. So muchsoftness 1'd forgotten I'd had moving and yearning against andwith her. I feel a hand clapping inside me, turning into a pleasure
opening between my legs that blows me inside out and almost
makes me cry.
I can't stand up anymore, even slumping against the wall. I
flop down in the nearest chair and bring her with me. I hold herround the waist, my face resting against her back. I didn't even
expect to see her again unless I went round looking for therestaurant where she worked.
Now it scares me though I don't know why. I put my hand up
her skirt and stroke her thigh, as I wonder why I should feelscared when it's so pleasurable.
"Alright?" she asks, when my strokes reach further up where
the fabric of her wooly tights feels much warmer and slightly
damp. Her smile is open, friendly, and mischievous, nothing tobe frightened of.
"Alright."
She strokes my hair. 'We haven't finished." What else could
she have in mind?
"You remember, after so much strenuous exe,rcise, it's best to
have a massage. I still owe you one, don't I?""Oh that!" I have to hug her. "Sure, let's have a massage. But
I think we better go to my place for that."

Linda Marie Nolte

78

Beth Houston

The Jungle of My Body

When I died you stuffed me in the refrigerator and left
for vacation. First the milk soured. Then the mushroom
slime oozed from the tear in the plastic bag into thevegetable bin where I lay rotting. In the cool darka shriveled carrot's tiny white roots nudged against me,
into me, its surrogate earth mother, and the sound ofits crown sprouting stirred a turnip into following suit,
aI1d a few sweet potatoes began to throb and soon theirvines cracked open the drawer, twined up out of the bin
and slipped over the black bananas and through the holesof moldy swiss cheese. Steadily seeds dropped from the
shriveled slice of watermelon down into its own juiceon the bottom shelf and slid over the edge of the opened
bin of my body. One watermelon grew so fat it shoved
open the door and splattered on the floor. In the blastof warmth and light, vegetable seeds found me and fruit
pits converted me into an orchard. The lush green rushed
over the linoleum, the stove and the sink, over the bottles
and cups, the bowl of rocks collected from national parks
and the shells from the Bahamas, into the silverware
and pots and pans - two zucchini vines raced toward thestale potato chips on the top shelf of the cabinet;
popcorn sprouted from under the burners, snap beans
dripped from the faucet, avocados dangled from theceiling, it was growing hot and humid when you enteredand my long tendrils coiled around your body. But you
broke away, returning with a machete and a large garbage
bag. But I kept growing and growing - I'd reached thedining room; one cucumber had claimed the TV. Still you
hacked away and I bled the color of water, I sufferedwith only the sound of wilting leaves, but I kept growing,79

I forced a clove of garlic in your ear, a plum pit in yournavel. Everywhere I planted into you, I rooted in the dirt
under your fingernails, I sucked the juices of your eyeballs,
and you struggled in vain, you yelled and yelled until
a grapefruit swelled in your mouth. But now you've
settled down, you're home again for good, and though
things will never be quite the same, like I always say,at least we're together.

Thief! how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death
I wanted so badly and for so long, ...
Anne Sexton from the poem "Sylvia's Death."
mixed media, 2'x2', 1987

b. ann80

Marilyn R. Mumford

Anniversary Poem

I want to wake you slowly,
with my head on your pillow as usual.
I go out while you sleep,
dig up two of the grape hyacinths,
brush off most of the dirt,
bring them to bed with the wetness still on .them.
But you hear me corne in.
Don't open your eyes yet, I say.
I want you to tell me what these are like
without opening your eyes.
Okay, you say, reaching out.
Soft.. .smooth ...wet. You smile
Petals curly, with rounded edges.
One bunch just fits in my hand.
Fragrance almost too strong,almost too sweet, but wonderful.
I can put my little finger in the center of a flower
and it seems to close around it and hang on ...
I'm getting all wet from this hyacinth, you say.
Never mind, I say, go on.
You bury your face in the flowers and nip one.
Well, they taste like .. .like something strong,
you say. I think they taste like beets.
Beets! I say. Beets! Beets aren't very romantic!
I can't help it, you say, that's what they taste like.
Young beets, though. Tiny ones. Just picked.
I think you're supposed to eat them with sour cream,
you say. You laugh.
Huh! I say. That's not so funny! Now it's my turn!
Hmmmm. It's like a bunch of things mixed together,
I say .. . this may take me awhile.
81You groan.
Serves you right I say.
Finally I decide the hyacinths taste like asparagus.
Asparagus! you say. That's not romantic either!
I know, I say, but I've sworn to be honestin this as in everything.
We kiss each other's hyacinths as a pledge of honesty.
Go on, I say, what else?
I can put my tongue in the center of this flower,
you say, and it seems to hold on.
I can run my tongue all the way down the stem
and it feels like the hyacinth is getting bigger.
Mine too, I say. Definitely .. .
when you taste them this way they seem bigger.
And then suddenly we are kissing each otherlike women who have been starving for centuries
who suddenly come upon the most delicious thing
they've ever seen or smelled or touched or tasted,
and we eat each other's hyacinths for hours
until we're both fulland we burst.

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82

.. .

_______ _.

Pamela Pratt

Up Close
We've come back, darling, finally.
the hotelkeepers think us quaint, spinsterish, until our coffee
grounds stop the toilet; until they smell gin on our breath before
dinner; until they find our beds pushed together. Then, I believe,
we become to them sin ridden hags.
00000

They arrange a lobster bake for all the guests, for the next
sunny day. Every day here is sunny. We wonder why they makethis provision, what cataclysm they are counting on. They ask everyone, and so must ask us. We dare not ask how much will be
added on to our bill for this adventure.
On the island we are told to explore while the lobsters bake.
We find a. small waterfall and wade in its pool. We puil off ourclothes discreetly, behind dense trees, though we are wearing ourold lpdy bathing suits underneath. We exhibit flabby, flagging
arms, and between our wrinkled thighs a few grey tendrils gently
curl out around the edges of our suits. Is this what thy are afraidof? (They keep their young girls away from us. "Rosalie," theycpil, "Jocelyn, come play on the beach.")We whoop and splash, and give in, doing wonderful, terrible
things with our bodies, our hands, together under the dense trees.
He has to make two trips to get everyone back to the mainland. On his return to the island for the two of us (everyone else
fit in the first boat) he runs out of gas and drifts for hours. Except
fOf the cold, we do not mind. They took the provisions back in thefirst boat.
Early morning, having returned for us again, in a sailboat thatfirst grounded itself on a ledge off the island, he shows us seals
bobbing in the water. Up close, we discover them to be logheads.
00000

Long, dusty walks. The bicycles have flat tires when we want
to use them.
83Hitchhiking eight miles to town for a soda. Anyone from thevillage (who hasn' t been told about us) will pick up two oldwomen on the road.
We came here to do nothing and are struggling doing it.
Like an oil slick, the sun-glinted coffee ripples against theedge of the styrafoam. The cup is too hot, the wind too cold. We
brave the pier for one afternoon, watching small boys catch small
fish with glee. Someone is happy here. We are pleased, rather
than encouraged, by this.
The restaurant has been bought and sold many times. It is not
as good as we remembered it, from twenty years ago. It is the only
alternative to the hotel diningroom. All the other hotels and guest
hous~s have been closed since we were here last. It seems colder,
qujeter, than when we were here last. So much has changed, we
begin to doubt our memories of this place.
00000

I meant to say, after the third day the maid stopped separating
our beds when she made them up in the morning.
00000

We have been here ten days. We have eleven days to go. We
are not going to make it. We have not yet admitted that to eachother. That would be failure, our not having a good time, notwanting to make something, anything, at this end of our lives,
last.
Separately, secretly, we take the hotelkeeper aside and question him about the bill. He will charge us for our full intended
st'lY, he says, and then reduce the bill by ten per cent: as muchincentive for us to leave, apparently, as he can afford. He throws
in a ride to the airport if we leave tomorrow, market day.
We approach each other, this decision, cautiously. It will be an~ct of faith to go home happy. It will require memory instantly
fickle to truth: not insurmountable odds, it seems, given that we
may have deceived ourselves about this place once before.
00000

Before we drive away, a photograph is taken: we are allstanding in front of the hotel, smiling. The children are before us,
and our stained hands, for one brief second, are allowed to rest on
their thin, unresisting shoulders.
84Karen Elias

Sharp Turning(A Crown of Sonnets in 4 Parts)

1.

We joke when he finds out I'm inEnglish; he tells me his first hard-wrought
paper was returned with only this thinlipped comment: It seems English is notyour native tongue. I say, sometimes it's
meant to be an initiation rite, designed
to hone us down to size. Like this:learning a speech I shrink from, whose signs calcification, biopsy - mean but one thing:cancer, a word I want to translate backinto my own domestic tongue, bringto heel, render obedient, colloquial, tractilble as a.ily well-trained dog. I've got, I tellhim, a deal: I'll do your write-ups, you make me well.

2.
"1'11 do your write-ups, you make me well!"
I'm not alone here. No one wants to face
the news I'm now compelled to tellover and over, that it's likely cancer's found a placein me to squat, to set up shop, to run
its numbers racket - and all without my say:otltrage against the self's belief that we're the sum
total of these our faultless parts. The day
after the tests I call relatives, friends to letthem know, insist they tell me troubles of their own,
. and so hear how ankles sprain, toilets
won't stop running, families bear downfrom all directions in this heat. 0 my friends,
I too want the simplest ills, the easiest to mend.

85

3.
I too want the simplest ills, the easiest to mend,
not this disease that eats away my flesh,invisible beneath the skin, while I pretend
to live. I turn to books for help, do stress
reduction twice a day, eat bran, run Ms. PacDyke* around my ducts to suck the cancer out
like hail-stones after summer storm. But the season's slack
and slow to turn. Something says to drag my sketchbook out
pnd stand undressed before the glass. I take my time,
shading every rounded place, and where the shadows fall,
Ull it takes shape beneath my hand. Mine,
this breast, and when I choose to claim her after all,she starts to talk, to tell me what she sees: my lifeat Cl crossroads: the still point, the sharpened knife.

4.
At crossroads, the still point, the sharpened knife,
the dream. I have taken a train to get here.
I stand now at the fork of the Y, my life
laid out as a choice before me, hands empty, fearin my pockets instead of change. I thought,
when I first heard of Ostra Brama, the black
virgin who stands in Vilnius above the wroughtiron city gate, that I would have to track
her down myself. Now she whose name means
Takes a Sharp Turn appears at my own
sharp turning, two roads crossed behind her. She leans
toward me, laughing, in one hand the blade grownkeen as eye of death, and in the otherher breast, undone and overflowing. Mother, I say. Mother .

.. my own version of the imagery suggested by the Simontons for use in
viSualizp.tion exercises in which leukocytes are imagined at the site of thedisease "gobbling up" the cells of the twnor.

86

Teya Schaffer

Judith & Sabrina
Part One:The Finite

JUdith drives an old car. It is known around town for its profusionof messages: Boycott, Support, Lesbians Ignite .... The roof is
peeling; black strips flap in the wind. She has confessed to Sabrinathat she cries while driving, brief anguished gushes controlled by
the necessities of the road. Crying has become difficult otherwise.
Writing this story is difficult, so she asks me, brings me her
notes. I held her hand in childhood, an invisible companion on
the walk to school and back. Now I hold her words. She says thetrue story is Sabrina's. The one I tell is Judith's.
This is not a suspense story, at least not intentionally so. If I
withhold information it is not to peak curiosity but rather that somuch is withheld from Judith, particularly the future; also thispresent, which is so different from our predictions.
Sabrina has cancer. There are thousands of microscopic cells
fighting against the survival of their host, heedless of the consequences for all involved. The dissolution of bones, the suffocation of lungs, these are possibilities, cathexia, pain, premature
death.
Judith feels the words in her bones; walking down the sidewall<, sandals flapping against her heels, cement vibrating up
tibia and femur: Can-cer Can-cer. Maybe repetition will convince
her of its truth. When she speaks the word aloud, writes it on thepage, she fears that she creates the future, brings her lover closer
to what should be unnameable. So I write this for her. I tell others
the parameters of disease. It is a betrayal: my hands upon a brick,their hands upon bricks, our conversations build fear and fatality
around Sabrina.
This story will not have dialogue. Only random quotations.
The protagonist's life is threatened by someone else's life-threatening disease.
Initial diagnosis (we are in the past, that first time when thecolors fell off the wall, the world shifting by one degree on its axis
87

permanently) ca rt b carcinoma of the right breast. Acquiring the
new language was easy. Axillary node dissection slice into thearmpit, pull out some lymph nodes, check for CA. Lumpectomy.
Judith and Sabrina become proficient in pronunciation and definition. Medical journals, textbooks, healthfood store flyers ... thewords form more than knowledge: they are access to the person
behind the doctor. Jargon keeps the professionals shielded, sothey use medical terms to impress on the doctors their common
class, the possibility that they sit at similar restaurants not slurping their soup, that their children could grow up and marry eachother. It works. "The advantages of this many rads versus thatmany, a study in the Journal suggests .... " In this way the radiation
treatment is tailored. Only because they present themselves as
nice middle class girls despite their perversion, only because they
use technical language to ask "whatever for?" when he wants toirradiate the armpit which no longer has potentially-cancercarrying lymph nodes (those healthy glands now lying in some
hospital dumpster awaiting what transformation before joining
the sea?), the doctor agrees to reconsider the protocol. He will
spare her the unnecessary radiation, but for the patients before
and after them there is only standard treatment. Anger is so easy
Judith could have written this herself.
Numerous and easy are the complaints. The nurses call
Sabrina ''Mrs.'' The doctors refer to Judith as "your friend" although Sabrina clearly prints her name under "spouse," having
created the category "spouse" on their forms. I accept the challepge of writing that Sabrina is thrown away. Bombarded by xrays to the breast, no one shields her thyroid, her abdomen. The
radiation is to keep her from dying but to them she is as good as
dead.
III hope," one doctor says, "you're not planning to do anything foolish. Like change your diet. Or take vitamins.""I have seen," says another, "the results of quackery: dehydrated patients on their deathbeds."
In their waitingrooms and on stretchers in the hall are someof their patients: hairless, emaciated, ulcerated . They can befound vomiting in the parking lot before and after treatments.
When the cancer reoccurs, Sabrina and Judith go searching forquacks.
88

Writing about chemotherapy and jerks is something Judith
could handle. She likes to articulate righteous anger and Sabrina
is riot yet a candida te for their poison. It is not being Sabrina, notpeillg "the one," which allows Judith to turn aside from allopathic
b!1rbarisms. She only fears standing by, choking on sympathetic
waves of nausea, while her beloved retches for twentyfour hours
on the bathroom floor. It is Sabrina who must turn the collected
knowledge into wisdom: what will keep this body alive?
She does research beyond Judith's capacity for research; she
tracks down rumors and health practitioners and others who livewith cancer. She does not leave rocks unturned. Mexico and New
York are visited; Germany is a possibility. Judith falls behind;
Sabrina feels deserted. Rising to the occasion means Judith must
confront the telephone and talking to strangers; she doesn't thinkcrisis is a good time for change. She wants to be more of who she
is and not who she is needed to be. Especially she wants Sabrina
not to need her to change. She wants her to go back and be well.
I feel kindly towards them both. They have been living withcancer for too long. They hope to live with it forever. For three
years each has been trying to form a pearl around this illness,something which contains the irritation and turns beautiful in theprocess. Not spiritually beautiful. Not, they affirm to each other,b!O!autiful with suffering or acceptance or love or whatever it isother people seem to be expecting of them, but only that theyshouldn't fail themselves, shouldn't cease in some way to be.
Judith writes essays; she is sincere in her anger, even if it iseasy, easier than grief. "Dutch Elms disease blights trees because
trees are physical entities subject to illness, decay and death, not
b!O!cause they have an unresolved emotion from their saplinghood, not because the seed from which they rose contained
karmic burdens which need the experience of Dutch Elms disease
for atonement. Those who bear possibly mortal illness are assaulted with the fantasies of other people's fear as if by a cutting
rain." Judith reads the Sunday paper to relax: the comics, Dear
Abby, an article on nude beaches. The author says that the oldpeople who are not ashamed to lie naked in the sun won't befound pushing walkers down supermarket aisles. As if thevictims of arthritis, osteroporosis, strokes, car accidents hadn't
laved their bodies well, could never be that author who so
89

~njoyed the view of what he assumed were "healthy bodies."

Sabrina's body has five scars: one from the lumpectomy, twofrom biopsies, one from the node dissection, one from theoophorectomy. Some of the lines are pale, others are still bright
red. She's lost a little weight -anxiety, a change in diet, surgery;there is cancer in the skeleton which supports her, the lungs
which process oxygen. Judith's hands no longer find flesh rolling
into th~ir palms; when Sabrina lays on her, she needn't shift
beneath her weight. At the nude beach a washcloth is draped over
the radiated breast because the sun too easily burns such flesh. At
home Judith gently makes love: to her survival, this breast not theenemy of her beloved but her beloved, not only pain to her but
here take it q light light touch on the nipple, find where it belongs
a,gain to your pleasure.
Things have changed. Their commitment, they used to joke,was "'til menopause." First cancer made such jokes insensitive;then the cancer spread and made the joke ironic. Sabrina has her
ovaries removed in order to deplete her estrogen supply, tostarve the malignant cells.
There is a decision to be made. Judith is the sparring partner,
the pacing horse. She prepares for the main event by learning all
she can. She thinks it over. She sleeps on it. There is a recurrent
fear that Sabrina will return from the doctors weaker, closer todying. Judith shies away from their invasions. Sabrina is frustrated by her predictability, can't she approach the decision with
an open mind? Judith sa ys she has taken years evolving a philosophy of healthcare, should she abandon it now? Every decision
Sabrina faces, Judith enters into but she does not make thedecision, never can, hasn't the right, gladly hasn't the responsibility. And yet it is her life. She cannot escape the ways Sabrina is herlife. Her armpit aches for weeks after Sabrina's first surgery; herbreast develops lumps. In grief, hair falls from her head. It would
have turned color overnight, Judith laughs, but she's alreadygray. They must decide: estrogen depletion via daily medicationor through surgery.
Time propels them forward, but I see the sequence of days
stop, roll backwards, lurch on again. I have read about Judith's
condition; the symptoms of grief include irritability, disorgan90

izeq thoughts, memory loss ... I can't find a description of visceralanguish.
Two years after the lumpectomy and radiation treatment
Sabrina finds a tumor near her breast; it is benign. She finds
another tumor, in her breast; it is malignant. For two years she has
asked each doctor - the radiologist, the surgeon, the oncologists- about the spot on her forehead, the area which grows as if
something were living in the skin or beneath it. They have sworn
it was nothing, like the original cancer she carried from office tooffice for years being told "It is nothing." Because of this newcancer in her breast, she has a bone scan. It reveals two "hot"spots: her femur, and her skull, a small area of the forehead. "Veryunusual," the doctors say.
And in her lungs. The x-ray shows it's in her lungs. How canthis be real? Judith pounds the words into her own bones as shewalks; pain makes everything true. It makes it possible to hold thereality of Sabrina strongly fleshed, breathing, and to cry. It makes
thoughts of surgery unbearable: losing Sabrina to the hospital,
the risks of anesthesia, the wound to an already-weak immune
system ....
They don't fight over the decision, just the process of deciding. Judith ke~ps saying "1 favor pills but you seem to prefer theother and you have to go by what feels right for you." And
Sabrina screams, "This is my life and death. 1 can't go by 'feelings.'
1 need to know!" They fight for one night. They can't afford to
spend any more time being estranged than that; there is a life tobe saved, there is time real, finite and losable.
And there is surgery. They go to pre-op: a large parkinglot ofa room, on the second floor but windowless, just rows of empty
gurnies. Sabrina is the last customer of the day. The orderly closes
a curtain around them. Judith packs the clothes as Sabrinachanges into hospital garb, lies down. From outside they catch
worried phrases; someone is muttering about "sterilization,""informed consent," "no paper with chart." Someone enters thecurtains, reads her blood pressure and temperature. He doesn't
ask about the missing paper, so they do not enlighten him. Laterthey exchange their opinions on patient invisibility, and how
much easier it is to say "oophorectomy" than "sterilization."
Judith and Sabrina have enough suspense in their lives, 1 will91

not add any here. Sabrina sails through her surgery. She recovers
quickly and welL The pre-op room haunts Judith.
The nurse comes forward again, "Something to make you
drowsy." Sabrina protests; in her last surgery she was alert until
the operation itself. "This is standard," he says. The Lv. is in herarm. He pushes in the morphine. Judith watches Sabrina's eyes
glaze; she raises her head, 'Wha? Wha?" and falls back against
the pillow, nodding out. One moment Sabrina was with her andthe next she was not. Judith is stunned beyond the power of her
mind to make it better. The nurse yanks back the curtain, as if withloss of consciousness went all right to privacy, as if Judith were
not awake. He fetches a liquid, "Hope she's not too far gone todrink." Judith helps prop her up. "Grotesque," Sabrina says of thetaste. Judith marvels at the word. They lay Sabrina back down.
In a space of time she comes more conscious, drifts with eyes
half-opened, tries to make reasonable the flavor in her mouth.
'!Morphine," she concludes. "No, something you drank for nausea,'" Judith corrects. "Grotesque," she offers, "when you drank
you said it tasted grotesque." Sabrina frowns; she doesn't remember.
When the surgeon arrives, her mind is clear to its intent, herwords are sloppy, slow, and sure. '''Member put ascorbate in the
drip; say positive things only." The doctor leaves; a nurse leaves
her flirtation with a male. Still glowing success, she gives Sabrina
her name. She is the escort. Sabrina smiles back to her. Purple eye
shadow glows on the nurse's lids. Sabrina goes with her. The
gurney wheels turn Judith's stomach. It will take time to recover.
Judith drives the car, listening to the same music her father'sradio had played. Sabrina knows a lot of dead people, eventhough she has only just turned forty. The people are of her age,men dead from AIDS, women from cancer. There is a quilt for themen. At the university, a portion of the AIDS memorial quilt anda model of the Vietnam War memorial are displayed the same
week. Judith reworks an old joke, something about if men menstru!1ted there'd be a monument to the rag. She tastes the namesof dead women, metallic and salty in her mouth.
Sabrina has a body. Judith's eyes close; as if this were a secret,she cannot write it. What requires the forced expulsion of air, alevitation of grief, that is my role. Sabrina is beautiful being this92

body. Her skull is round, very round and regular, cupped in
Judith's palm. Her hair is fine, surprising as spiders' web; itwaves; it is brown, medium brown. She wears eyeglasses, hereyebrows are perfect. Below them are large eyes, long eyes, blueeyes of the kind that change color with her clothes. She'd likedifferent teeth. Her lips form every sound Judith wants to hear.

Part Two: The Infinite
Open some windows; it is time to let the air flow back into thisstory. I have been amiss in the telling: two women, the medical
profession - Judith protests the narrow focus. In truth she is amother; all this time young arms have been encircling her.
Friends are prepared to catch her if she will let herself fall. And
Sabrina - her answering machine runneth over. Everyone wants
to know when she gets out of surgery, when she goes home.
At home, she heals. It's a full time job. Sabrina and Judith haveresearched the banned, the illegal, and the simply unaccepted.
They find a health practitioner knowledgeable enough to coordim~te their forays. Sabrina swallows eighty pills a day. Some ofthem she must encapsule herself. She drinks fresh juices, carrots
and greens. The vegetables require cleaning; the juicer needs assembling, running, and then disassembling for cleaning. There's
the medicinal tea to be brewed and drunk. The special diet tofollow. The yoga class, the acupuncture sessions, the daily walk,the visualizations. What would they do without friends and the
VCR?
Once upon a time Sabrina lugged her own laundry up anddown the apartment steps; now she has been diagnosed andbearing weight is too risky for her bones. For love of her, a dozen
WOlTlen and men gather each month to schedule their activities.
They do shopping, laundry and dinners, errand-running andhousecleaning; company-keeping. Sabrina breathes easily, herlegs carry her on long walks. The support group becomes physical evidence of her illness. They are welcomed with anxiety andgrqtitude.
The VCR is less complicated. Although it calls on resources
usually reserved for the car, the unit is finally connected to the93television and most systems are go. Judith likes musicals; Sabrinafavors Hitchcock. Simply listening to the music from a suspense
movie makes Judith's stomach queasy. Sabrina has never acc~pted the convention of people breaking into song and dance inthe middle of conversation. Their compromise is comedy. Sometimes they laugh so hard, they actually forget. It is a gift.
Gifts. I feel no compunction about using cliches; that timecomes to them wrapped in ribbons and bows is no secret. Judith
would still my hand. I want to write about lips, and the way it
feels to become the fusion of a kiss, all else fallen away. She knows
I will write about change.
Everyone but the doctors knows that removal of the ovaries
affects one's sexuality. They were not surprised when the surgeon said psychologically healthy women don't notice muchdifference; after all, the oncologist had said patients with good
attitudes don't get sick from chemo. They are afraid.
Five days after surgery Sabrina offers Judith a gift. She offers
her sex. Judith refuses. I think they both stopped breathing. ''You
don't want me." ''Your stitches are still raw." ''You made love tome after the lumpectomy." "That was higher up." Once upon atime Judith had joked that sex was eighty percent of a relationship. Sabrina has never believed she wasn't serious. Five days
after surgery rubbing her clit creates strain on the incision, shecannot attempt her own orgasm. Sex is something other thanprgasms, she wants that something with Judith.
Her body is changing. Judith listens to her discoveries, thedeep cold and the hot flashes, the vaginal dryness, the diminishedintensity of orgasms. And the tiredness: post-surgery tiredness,emotional exhaustion, cancer tiredness. She cannot imagine intruding her desire ... she fears Sabrina making love to her without
desire. They talk. Shyly, like new lovers, they name themselves.
Despite their talk, it is difficult. Despite their difficulty they do
turI1, one to the other, and make-love.
"Making love." Judith takes desire seriously. Crossing pathsin the kitchen, she moves up against Sabrina letting her feel theconnection of their flesh ... this is how she says "I love you." Shesays "I love" when her body warms to Sabrina's pleasure, whentouching Sabrina's vulva is like touching her own the excitement
so immediate; she says it when Sabrina takes her into her own
94body, teaches her exactly where she lives, all of Judith rushinghome inside Sabrina's touch. Having sex by herself does not takeher horne.
A. friend whose ovaries were shrunk by chemotherapy reports, "Sex is good - I just can't remember the last time we hadany." They have sex less often than before. Their loss is profoundand insignificant. Sabrina's life is riding on a gamble: two to one
odds that she's successfully traded her ovaries for more time,nine to one against a complete remission of illness. Into thestatistics is thrown the lucky horseshoe, her non-standard medicines. Passing Judith in the kitchen, Sabrina moves up against her,
wprming them both. There was a time when desire could be frustrated, when not being sexual was a rejection. Sabrina moves on
into the next room. Judith is left feeling pleasured and loved.
Judith is a character in an avant-garde play. She moves forward with her head turned back over one shoulder; her eyesstrain but she cannot see what lies ahead, at any moment she
might fall. A bell is set at irregular intervals, the intervals determined by medical practice - an x-ray this often, a bone scan that;the longer she walks the more her ears reach for its sound. Whenthe bell rings she will stumble - a rock or a chasm in her path or there will be no obstacle and her startled heart will resume its
normal rhythm. The first x-ray after surgery shows that thecancer has spread. There is a whole world going on in ignoranceof two women leaning on each other, walking out a door.
Four weeks later they return; wait their turn with the doctor.
How they lived that month .. . beyond the weeping of their hearts,
I hear nothing, see nothing. The memory will not be disturbed bypresent suggestions of fear, denial, and outraged hope. Once theworld had shifted on its axis, rocked by the first diagnosis; now
the world falls away, is in danger of disappearing altogether.
Four weeks pass and there is another x-ray. This one will namethe success or failure of Sabrina's treatment.
They watch from the hallway as her doctor moves in and outof rooms. Last time he was angry, rude and abrupt, bad news is
so difficult to tell. What is his mood today? "He doesn't lookhappy," Sabrina says. "I-lard to tell," Judith offers. They wait andwatch. He passes by them, turns back, "Did you have a test? I'll
go check it now." Okay, they say to each other, his face wasn't our95bad luck. They wait and watch. He returns flying, flapping a large
brown envelope like a wing. "It looks normal!" He grabs Sabrina
by the arm, "Normal." There is still another patient to be seen;
they are left alone in a room with two photographs of Sabrina's
lungs taken four weeks apart; one does not show cancer. The
future opens like a rosebud one could not fully trust to bloom.
Like a bushel of rosebuds. They lean on each other, they cry. The
future opens as it should: unpredictably. Sabrina says they must
prepare themselves for good news.
Judith drives an old car. It was her brother's, and before him,
their sister's; once their parents had owned it, brand-new. It
comes from New York same as Sabrina and Judith; they live in
California now.
I have done research into astronomy where time is neither
chronological nor real, but a dimension into which space expands. I have learned about stars, that those of equal mass pulleach other. They become partners, revolve around each other,dance in a pattern determined by their mutual attraction. In ourtime, we see paired stars orbit. Sometimes one of the stars loses
mass, must dance a little faster, loses more mass, can no longer
fuse protons. In our time we can no longer see it, there is no light,
only the movement of its partner describing still the other's
presence.
To Judith it is no comfort that in the fourth dimension she andSabrina still kiss for the first time, can be seen in the embrace they
will know tomorrow. So I hold the thought for her.

96

Donna Steiner

Chambers of the Heart

Understanding comes slowly, like saliva around a stone
in a dry lllouth, or a pulse from the neck of a child intrauma. Learning is a continuum, like a heartbeat;failure to learn, a kind of death. Far south, my father
casts his line into the sea, an aging fisherman who sees
waves as wrinkles, and waits for the day the sea is calm.
In the east, my mother continues to define insomnia, as
one who cannot sleep, one who holds her dreams at arms'
length, who lives on the edge of dark and darker. Eachday I wake to my lover's body; my hunger for peace spreads
through the room with morning light. I have read thatthe heart is the strongest muscle, that the elementsof the sea are identical to those of the heart's blood,
I've read the studies showing the heart beatsdifferently while dreaming. When the sun sets in the west
where I have no family, when it pulls with it the red sky
which looks like the sea, when night is the prelude to sleep
for children with mothers and without mothers, I hear
the wistful chant of the chambers of my heart: "all that
I am, and ever will be ... " The stone in my mouth is a pearl,my neck throbs like the jewel at my lovers throat.

97

Anne B. Dalton

An Unsent Letter to Emily:
Constellations of Desire
What remains unspoken, becomes unspeakable.
- Adrienne Rich

When you think of me,
do you not dare remember
how I would brush your hair
into waving magicsmooth as the darkest river
heavy, aromatic.
Your wilderness of birthmarks
became my constellations.
Andromeda and the seven sisters
graced your slender wrist.
At night you would tuck me incareful as the dearest mother:hug, kiss, smooth, rustle.
Your touch - perfect ripe gentle melon.
Could you have forgotten how
pale as milk, damp from bathing
skin luminous as the moon
you would lie down with me.
We slept coupled, inseparable:
mist within mist within mist.
You would rise before dawn, before all
and leave me solitary the bedroom air - a nurturing blanket smell of your sleep.

98For all the ways in which
we dared not speak, will not now name,touch, invent or risk
perhaps the greatest pain is thislonging does not wither,but persists.
Tell me, have you been successful
in your insistent forgetting?
Or do you dream of me with you
as I have dreamed of you with me?

Even in your Zen heaven we shan 't meet.
Sylvia Plath, from the poem "Lesbos"
mixed media, 24" x 18", 1987

b. ann99

Paula Martinac

Mineola, Mineola

In
Charleston, West Virginia, on Quarrier Street, there is a big oldhouse that used to belong to my great-grandmother Wycke. It
was built around 1905, when she and my great-granddaddy were
married. They had quite a lot of money then. My great-granddaddy was a lawyer, in a long line of lawyers, right on back to theAmerican Revolution. But he was kind of a rover, too, like the first
Wyckes who trudged across the Appalachians into western Virginia in the early 1800s. Great-granddaddy took off suddenly inthe 1920s for New York, because, he said, he just needed to try
something new. He took his secretary with him. He left greatgrandmother with three boys and the house on Quarrier Street.
Her family helped her out as long as they could, but then came theDepression and West Virginia was hit pretty badly. Great-grandmother sold the house to a politician. Now, over fifty years later,
the house has been divided into three apartments, one on eachfloor. When I first heard the story, I was just a kid and I would go
and stare at the house and fantasize that I lived there. It was years
before I found out that I was staring at the wrong house. One day
my daddy and I were driving along Quarrier Street on our way
downtown and I said, pointing to the house, "I just love that big
old house where your grandmother lived.""That's not the one," my daddy said. "It's a few doors down."
The real house was even bigger and grander, with a leaded glass
window over the door set in a sunrise pattern. In a few weeks, I
forget I'd ever stared at any other house.
So I guess I'm a bit of a dreamer, and that's why things have
happened to me the way they have. I've dreamed about living in
big houses and seeing the ocean and being a famous writer witha hit play on Broadway. But until I followed Leah to Mineola, I
had never been out of West Virginia, except once to visit mysecond cousins in Lexington, Kentucky, and that doesn't reallycount.
When I met her, Leah and her two friends were on their way
100back from a cross-country camping trip. They were getting tiredof their adventure and were stopping in cities, checking into
motels, looking up relatives so they wouldn't have to sleep
outside. One of the women had a cousin in Charleston, and they
were all staying with him for a few days. I met Leah by accident
in the express line at Kroger'S. I kept stealing glances at her overmy shoulder, because she had the shortest hair 1'd ever seen on awoman, misty grey eyes, and one silver earring in a design 1'd justbecome familiar with recently. She was definitely not from Charleston, I could tell that right away. When she noticed me looking
at her, she smiled and ran a hand across her hair.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" Then she blushed andlooked at her feet for a moment. "I know that sounds like a line,
but you look so familiar. Did you used to wait tables at Network,by any chance?""No," I said. "Is that in town?"
She blushed again. "No, that's a bar in New York City. You
look like one of the waitresses there, but your hairs a little
longer.""No," I said again, "I've never been to New York." Thecheckout person rang up my milk, hamburger buns and mustard.
'~ou from New York?" I asked to keep the conversation going.
"Yeah," she said, fingering a silver necklace that matched theearring. "I work in Manhattan, and I live out on Long Island.""Near the ocean?" I asked, picturing my great-grandmothershouse perched on a hill overlooking the raging Atlantic.
"Sort of," she smiled.
As the checker bagged my groceries, I decided to be bold andcomment on the earring. "I couldn't help noticing your earring.
It's real pretty." I picked up my bag but wasn't ready to leave yet.
I had taken a real chance, I thought, but what could I lose by being
forward with someone from out of town?
"Wait a minute," she said, as she paid for her orange juice. "I'llwalk out with you." I stood there obediently, my heart pounding
in my chest.
I remembered that Reva, my roommate, had a pair of sweat
socks with the same entwined women's symbols on them, meaning that she was gay. She'd gotten them through a mail-ordercatalog. I had wondered why she wanted to announce she was101

gay on her socks like that, and she said it was so other gay women
could spot her. Reva had said maybe that's why I wasn't getting
any action, because I wasn't making announcements. But mostly
I wasn't "getting any action" because I was scared. I'd never beenwith a woman before, though I'd been thinking about it since I
was in high school.
Now here I was walking out of Kroger's with a gay womanfrom New York City. "Are you from here?" she was asking me.
When I nodded, she continued, "Then you must know where thebars are. I'm here for a few days with friends, and we only found
one that was mostly men."
It was funny, I thought, how in one simple acknowledgementof her earring, she'd known I was gay. It was really a network, justlil<e Reva always said. Now it was going to be hard to follow up.
I had only been to the women's bar in Charleston a couple of times
but wanted to act like a seasoned regular.
''Yeah, it's over on Morris Street," I said. "I'll draw you a map,
if you've got a pen."''Better yet, maybe you could come with us," she smiled,opening up her orange juice carton and offering me some. "Myfriends and I wanted to go tonight. How about it?" She took a big
drink, and smiled embarrassedly. "Here I am, inviting you out
and you don't even know my name. I'm Leah Shane.""I'm Cass Wycke," I said, holding out my hand, which was
sweaty with nervousness.
I don't know how I got up the courage to ask her to leave thebar with me, but it probably had something to do with the three
gin-and-tonics I had. She was drinking beer and telling stories
about all the women they'd met going cross-country. Camping
cross-country seemed like the most romantic thing to do, and I
was already saying, "I'll have to try that sometime," forgettingthat my friends were not the camping type. Maybe it was the factthat she flirted outrageously with me and no one had ever reallydone that before. She rubbed her knee against mine under thetable, put her arm across the back of my chair, touched my arm
as she told a story. She wore a tight black t-shirt with the word
"Lesberado" across the front. And her eyes, which looked, I
thought, like the mist rising out of the ocean, were so penetrating
I felt a little hypnotized by them. She talked authoritatively about
102

New York and whispered encouragingly, "You really shouldcome to New York sometime. You'd love it. We could see a play
together. Have you seen 'La Cage aux Folles'? Then we could hit
the dance clubs." It seemed more like a proposal of marriage thanan invitation dropped casually in a bar. So when it looked likethey were getting ready to leave, and with them most of theexcitement 1'd known in the last few years, I leaned toward Leah's
ear and said, "Would you like to come back to my apartment? It's
not much, and I share it with a friend, but she'll be asleep."
I didn't have to ask twice. And I didn't mention that, eventhough I was twenty-one and had been on my own for two years,
1'd never had sex with anyone, man or woman. I hoped shewouldn't notice and that the drinks 1'd had would give me thenerve to tryout some of the things 1'd memorized from Reva' s Joyof Lesbian Sex book. I didn't have to worry too much. She was allover me, and I just followed her lead. Whatever she did to me, I
did to her, just changing it slightly so she wouldn't think I was
copying. It was better than I ever dreamed, sexier than the
pictures in Reva's book. I knew from the steamy novels I read asa kid that you were supposed to make lots of noise if you were
having a good time, and I did that, too. I don't think Leah guessed:my secret, because before we fell asleep, she said, "You Southerngirls sure are something else."
It makes me blush to think we stayed in bed for almost twodays, but we did. We got up to eat and take showers and thenwent :right back to bed. Reva winked at me once as I cut throughthe kitchen back to my room, but we didn't talk about it till later.
On Sunday afternoon, Leah got up and started to get dressed.
"This must be what they mean by a lost weekend," shesmiled, pulling on her jeans and t-shirt. She sat on the edge of the
bed to put on her sneakers. "So when are you coming to New
York?""Soon, I hope," I said, quietly realizing that she was leaving.
"Let me give you the number in Mineola," Leah offered,scouring the room for pen and paper. "If you ever make it up myway, you can give me a call."The leaving was not like I imagined. I thought she'd hug metightly and ask me to come along, say that she couldn't stand to
be one night without me. Instead she hugged me and brushed the103hair out of my eyes. "Here's looking at you, kid/' she said, but I
had never seen that movie, and Reva had to explain it to me later.
I got a postcard from her about ten days later as she wound
her way up the East Coast. It was Rehoboth Beach, which she said
was a little gay paradise. I figured out approximately when she
would be back in New York. Reva tried to talk me out of it, but I
decided to take a few extra days off from work in a couple ofweeks and go to New York over the Labor Day weekend, surprise
Le<lh. Then I thought I'd better not surprise her, in case she hadplans, and I sent her a postcard detailing my trip, saying I would
love to see "La Cage aux FolIes," if she could get tickets. I tried tocall her a couple of times before I left to confirm the plans, but she
wasn't home.
I guess it was crazy to go but I went anyway. I told Reva I wasgoing to visit my aunt in Beckley. I took the train, which was<llmost a fifteen-hour trip, induding transfers. Most of it was atnight, though, so it wasn't so bad. I did mind missing all thescenery, but I figured there would be plenty of time for that on theway back. And I knew that once I saw the Manhattan skyline,
once I'd breathed the ocean air on Long Island, once I saw Leah,
I wouldn't regret the trip one bit.
It was early on Saturday morning when I got on the Long
Island Railroad to Mineola. It was further from Manhattan than
Leah had let on, and I marveled at how she could make thecommute every day. I was used to the ten-minute walk from myapartment to the state office building where I was a word processor. I kept worrying that I would miss the stop, but the conductor
called "Mineola, Mineola" right in front of me, as if he'd read mymind.
At the station stop I called the number scratched in Leah's
unfamiliar hand onto a piece of notebook paper.
"Leah?" I asked breathlessly, looking around and wondering
where the ocean was exactly. All I could see were dismal row
houses against a heavy grey sky.
\ "No, she's not home right now. Who's this?"I hesitated, thrown by the fact that she lived with someone
and that she was not there to welcome me to New York. "This is
Cass Wycke, a friend of hers from West Virginia. I'm at the train
stati01,). ... "104

"Oh, yeah, Cass!" the woman said, cheerfully. "She left amessage for you. Hang on ... She got invited to Fire Island at thelast minute for the weekend and won't be around to see you. Says
she's sorry and hopes you have a good time."
I stared at the row houses beyond the station, wondering if I
had known this would happen all along. I couldn't even smell theocean, just a faint odor of car exhaust. Mineola, I decided then andthere, didn't look much more interesting than towns I'd seen inWest Virginia. "That's it?" I said.
"I guess so. I mean, yeah, that's all it says here," the woman
answered, unconvincingly fumbling over her words.
"Thanks," I said, hanging up. At least, I thought, she could
have left tickets for "La Cage aux Folles."I didn't start crying till I was back on the train to Manhattan.
If I'd known where Fire Island was, 1'd have followed her there
just to embarrass her, to demand an apology. But then, I thought,
an flpology for what? An apology, I guess, for not living up to my
expectations, for not having a house on the beach, for not equating sex with simple kindness and caring.
I intended to go right back home, I thought that would show
her. But when I stepped outside Pennsylvania Station and saw
Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, all the places
I'd heard about, I decided I might as well spend the day. I spent
too much for a hotel room and much too much for a ticket to "La
Cage aux Folles," which I liked pretty well. Then, to make theevening complete, I looked up "Network" under "Bars" in thephone book, but it wasn't listed, and I didn't know the names of~ny other women's clubs.
Just before I left in the morning, I wrote Leah a note on a hotel
postcard: "Mineola's not so hot, and neither are you." But I didn't
send it. I got to thinking about something Reva said once, after
she'd been dumped by this girl, Holly. They'd been going out fora whole year, and one day Holly announced she was in love withsomeone else. Reva took it pretty well. She went out a lot, and let
friends fix her up on dates. When I asked her if she wasn't hurt
and mad, she said, "Sure, but living well's the best revenge." Sowhen I thought about that, I decided I didn't want Leah to knowhow upset I was. All I wanted was to get on a train, go home, andtalk to Reva.

105

to vamrs. tucci and the cara fabletttle falls, new york. a town best known for its proximity toherkimer, new york, which is where herkimer diamonds arefound. 1931. mollie, hymie, and leah had the whole family fromthe city coming up to visit. uncle issie and aunt mirka and melvin,phillip, sophie, yeida, joe and fanny, the whole mispacha. uncle
issie and aunt merka were the last to arrive. uncle issie had his
new car and aunt mirka was showing off her newly found driving
skills. knowing they were late, aunt mirka drove with a fury right
into the driveway where she somehow managed to get the car
C~Ugt1t in the mesh fence. she tried moving the car forward andthen backward. then she tried moving the car forward thenbackwards again. back and forth, forth and back. it was definitely
stuck. uncle issie was screaming. aunt mirka was screaming. therest of the family came down to scream too. in turn, the men each
decided they could handle this situation, and in turn eachpushed, pulled, and maneuvered. it was still stuck. then all themen decided to make a collective effort to push, pull and maneuver. it was still stuck. everyone screamed some more. uncle issie
tried screaming the loudest, this being his new car and all.
now this whole time mrs. tucci stood on the porch quietly
watching and waiting. mrs. tucci lived upstairs from mollie,
hyn1ie, and leah. she was their italian landlady, in a town where
jewish and italian immigrants were two sides of the same coin,
and where mollie and mrs. tucci were two of many who formed
a mutual admiration society. "best landlady we ever had," mollie
would say, "and such a good person too. taught me everything iknow about baking." mrs. tucci stood on that porch watching thisscene with the car unfold, until she could watch no more. finally,
she walked over to the confused and screaming crowd. "moveaw~y," she said. "move away," she said more and more sternly,
and as she was a large woman with a rather imposing voice,106

everyone finally and quietly moved from the car. mrs. tucci
circled the car once and then circled it again. then she slowly
walked to the back corner that was stuck on the fence. she knelt
down till her knees were level with the bumper, took one longdeep breath, put both hands under that bumper and lifted the car
up and moved it away from the fence. "there" was all she had tosay and walked back to sit on the porch leaving everyone quietedin their own amazement.
brooklyn, new york. a town best known for being a boroughof "the" city. a small tenement kitchen. 1983. mollie is there withher granddaughter, who is still a tad unbelieving and incredibly
alllused at this at least 100th telling of the mrs. tucci and the carstory. "really, gramma. did it really happen that way?" "yes,bubula, as god is my witness, that's exactly what happened. she
picked up the car all by herself. ask your mother. she was there.
leah. leah, come here and tell her how mrs. tucci picked that car
up all by herself."

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107

Sondra Knight

sable

blistered sister better now.
big-hipped mama holding on.
bionomics at its best.
bleeding we-womb flowing free.
under / down/beneath it all.
burgeoning.
betrayed, bereaved.
be stilled/ the rage.
all passing now.
all whispers now.
all close. all touched.
all givings born.
blessed are the berries,
dark
and sweet.

108Vivienne Louise

Invisible Woman
Fay picks the most intruding weeds from the garden. It is time
to plan her winter crops, mustard greens, kale and tulip bulbs forthe spring. The autumn chill is damp but with the exception of her
hands, she is comfortably warm. Her hands grind through thebrown earth, almost becoming the earth as the colors in her hand
and the earth match. She digs determinedly and comes across asmall piece of metal. It's a bullet. Probably dropped by someone,
maybe even Ruby. Fay fingers the cold object, turning it over andover, trying to beat back the memories that it brings.
Ruby bought the gun years ago. She insisted they needed it toprotect themselves from the trifling no-accounts in the world.
There had been a rash of burglaries and physical attacks on neighbors and Ruby's brashness was really a cover-up for her own fear.
Fay objected, of course.
"A gun is dangerous. Someone could get hurt. We might evenhave an accident and shoot each other."But in the end the gun came into the house.
Ruby convinced Edith, Germaine and Tiehl to purchase guns.
Many Sunday afternoons were spent with the five of them at thefiring range shooting until their ears hurt from the noise. In spiteof herself, Fay learned how to shoot quite well, enjoying such a
precise skill. Detail work came easy to her, so the simple concentration necessary to shoot a gun accurately calmed her. Target
practice soon became her favorite past-time, and she relished thecontrolled release of aggression.
No one ever burglarized their home nor threatened them inany way, but their friends and co-workers were not so lucky, andRuby's and Fay's anger mounted at these unprovoked attacks.
Fay chuckles to herself as she remembers that they used tokeep the gun in the top drawer of the china cabinet, underneathher grandmother's mauve table linen. How impractical. How
were they ever going to get it from there if someone did come inand threaten them?
109

Fay finishes weeding and goes into the house. The hot air
from the furnace envelopes her in a sheet of warmth as she moves
to turn the thermostat down. Reaching for a sheet of note paperon the table, she begins a shopping list for plants from thenursery. Tunisia will be by later on and Fay will ask her to pick up
the plants.
Going up the stairs to get dressed for her poker game, she runs
her hand along the banister for support and catches a splinter in
her finger. The jagged area of exposed wood on the banister
stands out naked against the neighboring wood all sanded,
polished and shining. Fay grimaces at the pained finger and picks
at the splinter with her fingernails. It remains stubbornly embedded and she sits down on the step, determined to be spared theburden of finding a pair of tweezers.
Fay's granddaughter Tunisia begged Fay to have that sectionof the banister repaired. But Fay held out wanting, or maybe
needing, a reminder.
Ruby had been gone for maybe two years by that time. Fay's
heart still ached from longing, but she had learned to let go of theanger that death so deftly instills. Often she felt lonely, finding
friendships just not enough after so many years with a close lover.
It was while she was in a particularly gruesome funk that she
realized something was wrong. She had an eerie feeling of dread,and for the first time since living in her house, she felt fearful ofsome sort of attack. She interpreted this intuitive message as awarning that maybe some trifling no-accounts were going to
break in that night. Though she had no rational reason, shedecided preparation was the best medicine. So she cleaned thegun and just after sunset positioned herself in a rocking chair by
the stairway, facing the front door. Her plan was to shoot them as
they entered the house, picking them off one by one.
As she sat there rocking back and forth, fear mounting withevery second, she realized she hadn' t acted quite as wisely as she
thought. Why didn't she call someone and tell them of her feelings? Why hadn't she at least called Tunisia to let her in on thesituation? Why was she so sure she was going to be invaded anyway? It had never happened before-why should it happen now?
Just as she was about to reach for the light and use thetelephone, she heard someone jimmying her lock. In no time at110all, four strident males entered the house. The lights from thestreet lamps streamed into the room causing shadows to danceacross the wall and on the floor. The whole front area of the houseappeared as a dark landscape with deep black holes juxtaposed
against varying shades of grey figures . Before Fay could catch herbreath one of the men turned on the hall light. They were
evidently not afraid of being discovered by her or anyone else.
Their boldness surprised her, even with her knowledge of manyother similar situa tions.
As the hallway filled with light, the greys and blacks gave
way to stark outlines and clear, complete objects. The four noqccounts were standing in the hallway, talking among themseives. They paid no attention to her. She was plainly visible, withthe angular dark object resting neatly in her hand, and yet they
acted as though she wasn't there.
Fay then spoke, something between a normal speaking tone
and a shout. They didn't flinch a muscle, nor cast a nod in her
direction. She then got up and walked toward them with the gun
ready for firing. Again no response. Fay stood still, not three steps
from them. Her mind tumbled as pieces of a plaguing puzzle fell
together.
They didn't see her. And even more astounding, they didn't
hear her. They were not aware she was there. This realization
shocked her. If she was really invisible, that explained why she
was constantly overlooked at the meat counter, or passed over inlines at the post office, or unable to get decent service at certain
dress shops. These people simply didn't see her. They weren't
being rude. She was just invisible.
This clarity came to Fay in a few moments, and just as quickly,
she adopted survival mode. She remembered the assaults against
her friends and neighbors, pulling the rage from her visceraldepths. Visible or not, this was her house and they had invaded
it. She went to the front door and locked it. She then turned off thelight and shot the nearest no-account in the back of the head. The
sound of the gun shocked the other three and they turned too lateto see their companion fall. Before another breath was drawn Fay
moved to the next one and shot him through the heart.
By this time the other two were terrified and the necessity forescape had become apparent. One ran towards the living room,111

aiming for a window. Fay shot him in the leg and when he slowed
down, finished the job with a bullet in his brain.
The fourth, not thinking clearly, ran upstairs. Fay, not caring
to chase an agile young man, turned off the hallway light, sat
down in the rocker and waited. She made no sounds as she waitedfor him to descend. Eventually he did, and she sent him to his
maker with no hesitation. The bullet grazed the banister on theway to its host and left the splintered chips. Fay considered thisa baptism of sorts and still continues to refuse Tunisia's pleas torepair it.
Not sure what to do after such a grizzly task, Fay reverted
back to the posture of the obedient citizen and called the police.
She had to call five times before she got someone on the phone
who could hear her. Everyone else merely repeated their initial
salutation, "police department may I help you, police department may I help you." The woman who finally could hear her waspolite, concise and took the time to ask her if she was all right. She
said that she would send a squad car as soon as possible.
Fay then called Tunisia, needing a comforting, take-charge
woman. Tunisia arrived a few minutes after the police. Fay had
opened the door for the police but they didn't see her, so they
informed Tunisia that the door had been left open. They asked
Tunisia if she lived there and Tunisia told them that her grandmother lived alone. When asked where her grandmother was,Tunisia tartly replied that she was sitting on the sofa. The police
detective looked in the direction of the sofa, saw no one sitting
there, and stiffly told Tunisia that this was no laughing matterand she needed to stop playing games.
"Detective Thurman, my grandmother is sitting on that sofa
in plain view. If you want to talk to her, then go right ahead. I'msure she has an explanation. However, don't continue to be
insulting, insinuating that I don't want to cooperate."
Tunisia's very black eyes rolled in anger as she pursed her full
lips into a thin line of irritation. She folded her arms across her
ample bosom and paced back and forth. Tunisia was a striking
woman, having much of Ruby's personality. She was actually
Ruby's granddaughter. But Ruby and Fay had been together allof Tunisia's life, so she grew up regarding both of them as her
grandmothers. However, her impatient balderdash marked her
112

as a sure descendant of Ruby.
Detective Thurman snorted, shrugged, asked Tunisia a few
questions, vowed to check out her alibi and left. The other police
fiddled and searched and finally removed the bodies. It was
several hours before the house was cleared and Fay and Tunisia
were able to sit down and talk privately.
Fay told Tunisia what happened, including her realization ofinvisibility. Tunisia looked at her grandmother thoughtfully andcalmly replied, "Gran Fay, you aren't invisible. I can see you very
well. No, probably someone else killed these men and you just
don't remember what happened. Yes, that's it," replied Tunisia
confidently, gathering speed with each new assertion.
"Maybe these men were being chased, randomly picked yourhouse as a refuge only to be caught anyway. You must have left
the door unlocked." Then with condescending compassion, ''You
must be in shock and don't remember or realize what happened.
Gran Fay are you alright? Do you want me to spend the night? Or
would you rather spend the night with me? I'm worried aboutyou."
Tunisia's furrowed brow was set above dark eyes that probed
her grandmother's face for an entrance to intimate thoughts. No
entrance was found but Tunisia continued to study intently.
While Fay knew she had been invisible to those men, convincing Tunisia would be no less miraculous than stopping theflow of the ocean. "No dear I'll be all right. Go horne and call mein the morning. I'll drink something hot and go to bed," sighed
Fay, acquiescing to the familiar role of harmless old lady whoneeds to rest when there is too much excitement.
After everyone left, Fay found sleep entirely out of the question. She put down sheets on the carpet where blood was stained.
She washed down the walls and door as much as possible and she
sprayed air freshener and opened the windows to rid the room of
the aroma of death. Pleased with herself, she then baked achocolate cake with mocha frosting, her favorite.
The whole evening had been a series of surprises; the intuitive
dread, the now-deceased intruders and the invisibility. She wasan emblYo wrapped in a cocoon gradually unfolding into abutterfly. She felt exhilarated, happy, and, for once in her life,
powerful.
113

How the police finally resolved the case was unknown to Fay.
Although they searched her house they didn't find the gun as it
was on her, and of course they couldn't see her. They did watch
her house and follow Tunisia, but eventually gave up on finding
any leads. Tunisia received a few hate letters from members of thedeceased's family, but that never came to anything. In the meantime, Fay went about adjusting and changing her life to accommodate her new-found freedom.
That was four years ago.
Fay finally removes the splinter with a few good tugs. She
gets up and changes for her poker game. When she calls for a cab,she hopes one of the regulars will answer. Luck is not with her. A
young woman chants, "Confidence Cab." Fay swallows, states
her name and her desire for a taxicab. The new voice just continues to chant, "Confidence Cab may I help you. Is anyone there?
Confidence Cab." Just as the speaker is becoming exasperated
another female voice comes on the line.
"Ms. Wilson is that you?"''Yes, it's me. Thanks for picking it up. I would like a cab here
in about 20 minutes please.""Well we only have two new drivers available but I'll send
both of them. If it doesn't work out then call me again?""Thank you. I really appreciate your consideration."'We really appreciate your business. Now, they are both new
and we don't know them very well, but maybe it will be okay."
Fay hangs up the phone with a sigh. Confidence Cab is awoman-owned company that runs on a shoe string. She has been
dealing with them for four years and counts on them for a great
deal of her transportation needs. They hire only women and mostof the drivers have no trouble seeing her. Fay notes the ones that
do have trouble usually don't last very long.
When she first started dealing with Confidence Cab all of thedrivers were able to see her. It wasn't until about a year and a half
into their relationship that a problem arose. A driver came to herhouse, honked the horn and didn't see her approach the cab.
When Fay opened the back door the driver became alarmed andreached to pull the door shut. A minor tug of war ensued with Fay
being thrown off balance and falling in the street.
114

She called the company, complained and was immediately
sent another driver. The owner later stated that some of her
drivers were just not very polite and didn't want to deal withsenior citizens. Fay knew better, but kept her own counsel.
Fay had not learned to drive, at first stating that her reflexes
weren't sharp enough and then later crying poor eye sight. The
real reason was that she secretly liked being driven around. She
didn't want to be bothered with concentrating on traffic when it
was so much more amusing to look out the window and daydream. Ruby liked driving so this was not an issue between them.
And now most of Fay's friends drove so she could usually get aride. When it was inconvenient for her friends to pick her up, shecalled a cab.
After that fateful night when she realized she is invisible, shebegan to understand who can see her and who can't. Absolutely
no men cern see her. Some women can't see her either. But some
women, especially those in her type of circles, can. It is tricky
figuring out who can see what. But Fay has started to be able torecognize a certain posture, gleam in the eye, energy or feelingabout some women that make her visible to them.
Fay is drawn back to the present by the sound of a horn honk.
She makes a mental note to tell the company to train these newdrivers in taxicab etiquette, such as ringing doorbells. Fay locks
the front door and eyes the drivers as she walks briskly down the
walkway. The one in cab no. 9 will see her, she is sure of it. She isright. The driver looks her dead in the eye, speaks and simply
asks her destination. Fay notes the name of the cabbie - she'll
request her in the future.
Tiehl answers the door, wearing a red sweat suit and her
poker cap. Germaine and Edith are already sitting at the table
nervously shuffling the cards, prematurely counting their winnings no doubt. They greet Fay, giving her smiles, hugs and sweet
kisses. Judy and Carmen come in from the kitchen laden withtrays full of sandwiches, freshly baked cookies, potato chips andfruit. The coffee maker is already on the buffet and the smell offresh brew permeates the air. Lenore is the last to arrive, breezing
in with brisk excitement, wearing cool autumn colors matching
her latest hair tint.
''You'll never guess who I saw today," breathes Lenore.
115

Before anyone can reply she states, "Kitty. She was with her
husband and she all but tried to ignore me. But I wasn't having
any of that, no one ignores me! So I went right up to her and said
hello. She backed offlike I had something, but that didn't stop me.
I introduced myself to her husband and told her that we hadn't
seen her in a long time. Asked why she had been away so long. As
I moved on I could hear him asking her who I was and why hadn't
he met me before. I could also just imagine what she said."
Everyone laughs at this, but an undertone of sadness was
unmistakable. Kitty had been a friend for many years. Then she
started to change. Fay had been oblivious of the changes in Kitty
until one evening at Kitty's house. The poker game was over andeveryone had gone. Fay was putting on her sweater when shecaught Kitty looking at her through squinting eyes. Fay had seen
this expression often enough to know what it meant. The woman
was having trouble seeing her.
"Fay, you know maybe my eyesight is going but sometimes
I could swear that you are a ghost, or transparent or something
like that." Then shocked at the illogic of what she had said Kitty
hurriedly added, "Oh, but that must be nonsense. I mean you areflesh and blood just like me. Maybe I just need my eyes checked."
But she continued to look at Fay through squinting eyes. Fay
knew by the expressions on women's faces whether they saw her
or not. And Kitty sometimes didn't see her at all.
Undaunted by this situation Kitty caught herself asking theother players, "Where's Fay? She was just here a minute ago."
Then someone would look up from her cards, and absentmindedly reply that Fay was sitting right next to her or across thetable. Kitty would mask her shock by an over-jocular laugh, but
still, apparently, found Fay invisible.
Eventually Kitty stopped coming to the poker game. She
made excuses; no tin1e, illness, other commitments. But when
Kitty married a neighboring widower six months later, Fay knew
why she had become unable to see her.
The game is fun. Germaine and Edith do go away with the pot
but Judy's cookies sweeten the plight of the losers.
Fay gets a ride home w ith Carmen, and Tunisia drives up justas they arrive. When Fay gives Tunisia the nursery shopping list,
she asks if she wants to stay for dinner. Tunisia accepts and116

together they prepare a simple meal.
Tunisia is currently involved with another project to bring
down the system. A grad student at the university, she is responsible for establishing Adamu, a Black lesbian feminist organization on campus. Adamu is a name for the female principle ofmatter. It means red and represents the blood of the womb andmenstruation. This organization has been active in promoting
positive change around a myriad of discrimination issues on
campus. Adamu has protested the dismissal of a woman professor and launched a campaign to gain her tenure, contributed to
the Pan-African celebrations by bringing in Black lesbian poetsand musicians, and worked hard with other lesbian groups on
campus to institute a few lesbian culture classes. They are also
writing a guideline sheet for changing the language, moving
away from words that insult those who have been incarcerated inmental institutions.
To Fay, Tunisia and her organization seem indefatigable intheir relentless pursuit of justice from the system. Tunisia's
enthusiasm is inspiring and Fay enjoys her stories about tacticalencounters as well as the soap opera dynamics of sabotage andpower plays among the members. She is grateful that she isn't
involved, but is happy to know that the legacy of political action
continues.
Fay and Ruby were quite active in the civil rights movement
through their participation in various Negro women's clubs. She
did her share of marching, petitioning and door knocking when
she was younger. Now she reminisces the vibrancy of those times
through Tunisia's renditions.
Tunisia often invites Fay and her friends to Adamu's events,
such as speeches, readings, concerts and the like. Although
Tunisia introduces Fay to a wide variety of people only a selectfew actually see her. Tunisia is oblivious to this, however, andwhen by chance she does notice her grandmother being ignored
she chalks it up to the appropriate ism - ageism, racism, sexism- never discussing the situation with Fay.
At 7:30 p.m. Tunisia leaves, stating that she is late for ameeting. Fay settles in her favorite overstuffed chair with amystery while listening to jazz on the radio. It is a thrilling
whodunit and she wants to finish it tonight.
117

At 11 :00 p.m. she finds herself on the last page of the book.
Finishing with satisfied relish she gets up, goes to the closet andreaches for her plaid cape. This is her favorite part of the day, themidnight stroll.
Being invisible to all but a chose few has its drawbacks.
However, it does make it possible to walk in the moonlight,
carefree and unfettered. This one luxury is worth all the inconvenience that sometimes surrounds her daily life. She wraps ascarf around her neck, grabs her purse and leaves one lamp on
before walking into the chilled night air.
As she walks back home the silken rays of the moon soften herheart and she thinks of other walks taken with Ruby. She remembers when they were much younger and lived downtown. They
would walk at night, arm in arm, two maiden ladies out for a strollor going to one of the colored clubs. She could almost hear thedelicate strains of Ella, Sarah or Dinah as she noted the heavy
dampness of the air against her skin. Those were magical times;
feeling loved, building a business, constructing a life together
and feeling secure.
Of course, these are magical times too, she reminds herself,
reluctant to slip too deeply into the nostalgic repartee.
What would Ruby say now? Would she be invisible too?
Would I be invisible if Ruby was still alive? If I was invisible
would Ruby acknowledge it or would she simply dismiss it like
Tunisia?
Fay doesn't know why she is invisible or how she came to beinvisible. She quizzes herself daily with questions on this line, butwith no answers, the questions just float into the atmosphere.
Welcoming the warmth of her home Fay makes a cup of tea.
Tea helps her sleep after a busy day and insures a sound rest for
the next.

118

Anne B. Dalton

The Woman Whose Garden
Becomes the Whole World

They say my mother's gone insane.
She survived 30 years of marriage
with sayings neat and final as epitaphs:"Of course I'm happy, I don't complain.""I forgive but I never forget."Every week he cut the grass,mowing over her vegetables, shrubs and vines,
Dad called his tyranny "forgetfulness.""A woman has to keep the peace," she'd say,and after dinner, stacking the china without a clatter,
she'd leave the glasses too near
the edge; then picking up the shards
she'd smile, "Things always break, you know."
But now she sleeps with shears beneath her pillow,
and rises as dusk to sing her seeds to sleep.
At first she planted only moss and ferns
until the neighborhood women began to help.
They gather in the greenest corners,
and speak confidingly of lime, manure, rain and sun.
Mom says, "The soil is my best friend.
The stones share their secrets."
With her first crop, she fed the town.
The bordering junkyard she's reduced to compost.
Her magnolias bloom cream-colored against the snow.
At first I was afraid:
the melons large as era tes,
the earthworms murmuring my name.

119But now I begin to understand.
She said in five years
her garden will be everywhere,
and then she whispered,"Tend your window box.
You, too, can save the world.
And if I die before 1'm finished,
1'11 leave my seeds,
watering can and shears to you."120

--------------------------___________ Revievv
Lesbian Ethics, Toward New Value, by Sarah Lucia Hoagland.
(Institute of Lesbian Studies, PO Box 60424, Palo Alto, CA,1988,$14.95)

Taking Our Lives Seriously
It takes guts to write a book called Lesbian Ethics. For one
thing, it invites scrutiny of your past and future actions by otherlesbians, searching for instances of unethical behavior. Sarah
Hoagland wrote this book "in the hope that it will provoke
discussion which will take us beyond where we are in our
understanding and actions." Since I began reading Lesbian Ethics
I have thought about and frequently discussed the concerns it
raises. I have considered what Sarah Hoagland had to say when
faced with moral dilemmas in my own life. To that end, I find thebook completely successful. What follows are some of her major
points which moved my own thinking. It is the movement whichis essential and for which I thank her.

What Do We Mean By Lesbian Ethics?
Two obvious interpretations of the phrase "lesbian ethics"
come to mind: 1) ethics between and among lesbians, 2) ethical~oncerns of lesbians. She means the first, particularly lesbians in
voi1.mtary association. (She also includes relations with ourcompanion-animals.) I find this a limitation of the book. In my
experience lesbians are interested in a variety of ethical situ~tions, not all of which involve other lesbians.
Certainly she discusses in depth many issues which thelesbians I know are vitally concerned about. These include:
withdrawal; attending; blaming the victim and victimism; justice; accountability; being in and out of control; therapy; consciousness raising; the importance of lesbian friendship; lesbian
battering; racism, classisll1, ableism and ageism; and sexuality.
Other important issues which she discusses in passing are:implications of lesbian belief in karma; implications of large
numbers of lesbians turning themselves over to a higher power;
anarchism; sizism; and anti-Semitism.
12 1

Then there are issues she does not discuss at all, which I findpuzzling. But it is her book on lesbian ethics, not mine.
I am even more puzzled by concerns she raises which I don't
think are part of the conceptual framework of most lesbians I
know. These primarily stem from what she calls "traditional
ethics." (I would call it European male ethics.) In her preface
Sarah Hoagland tells us: "I have included some discussion of traditional material ... with which I find lesbians caught up; I thinkit important to know from where these ideas come and how thetradition functions among us." But are we really caught up with
the ideas of Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, Sartre? I am unconvinced.
Rather than a refutation of Kant's categorical imperative, I would
have preferred, for example, exploration of the philosophicalimplications of Hopi linguistics, mentioned in a tantalizing footnote. She does offer some concepts which I find extremely usefuladditions to ethical discourse among lesbians. These include:
moral agency under oppression, intelligibility, responsivenessand the suggestion of lesbian clowns as an alternative to judges.
Sarah Hoagland takes utterly seriously and playfully how
lesbians treat each other. One of my favorite aspects of this bookis the examples from the lives of real lesbians. This book is full of
the words of lesbians, what we've said and written in books,
letters, songs and conversations. Clearly she has been paying
attention.
I wish, however, she had listed more examples from her own
life. For instance, how does she think her job in the philosophy
department at the University of Illinois affects her work to create
lesbianism as the ground of be-ing? How has she resisted the
University's values? The only reference she has to any of this is atheoretical discussion of "freedom of speech" as it applies to nonconformist thinkers within the academy.
Where We Are Now
It seems to me Sarah Hoagland is frequently unnecessarily
pessimistic in her appraisal of what we have accomplished thus
far. She asserts: "Despite our best intentions our interactions witheach other failed more often than they did not." Is this true?
Compared to whom? Or is it that we perceive difficulties andhard times as failures because we care so much? Of course I think122there's much room for improvement in how lesbians behave
toward each other and in the world generally. But despite theheartaches and disappointments I've lived through in the 18
years I've named myself lesbian, I still believe our points ofintersection, sparking and weaving add up to more successes
than failures.
Elsewhere she maintains: "Up to now the power we havebeen using has involved strategies of control such that ourcollective resistance has been simply in our survivaL" The existence of this book is much more than mere survival. It is one ofmany examples of creativity, experimentation with different
ways of living and relating, theory, analysis.
She also tells us: "It is no t clear, with a few notable exceptions
since the onset of patriarchy, that women have resisted" (dominance and subordination between men and women). In a footnote she then lists European beguines and Chinese marriage
resisters as exceptions. Surely she could think of many more.
What about world-wide lesbianism as an example of resistance?
Later she says, "Significantly, even feminists and lesbian-feminists shun amazons, apparently for fear of appearing out of touchwith reality." In the next footnote she cites thirteen exceptions tothis statement. "We do not acknowledge the amazons even as
symbolic defenders of womanhood," she continues. The lesbians
I know still wear labryses, value resistance and speak positivelyof amazons.
As additional proof for the discrediting of amazons in current
lesbian-feminist culture she writes, "even radical feminists pushfor greater police and state protection." I find this a grave oversimplification of differences of opinion among radical feminists
about the use of the state to halt male violence, for instance, as it
applies to pornography. Or does she refer to the attempt tochange statute of limitation laws so that incest survivors can sue
their perpetrators many years after the event? These are strategies some radical feminists advocate and some reject. Probably
most radical feminists advocate some examples of "pushes for
greater police and state protection" and reject others. I don't thing
there's a clear connection between either position and being for oragainst amazons. Rather it's a particular tactic, under capitalist
patriarchy, which one might either oppose or use.
123

Sarah Hoagland asserts: "Because there is no mythological,
much less historical, memory of female resistance to male domination, isolated and individual acts of female resistance are also
rendered imperceptible as resistance." Generally, I agree withthis observation. But saying "no" instead of "little" or "suppressed" exacerbates the problem. I consider it the job of radical
feminist scholars to fight against erasure of female resistance, notperpetuate it. I do agree with her observation "within the confines of the feminine stereotype no behavior counts as resistanceto male domination." But memory is far deeper than any particular version of the feminine stereotype. For instance, early in 1989
archaeologists working in the rain forest area of the Amazon
basin in Brazil found many examples of female figures of a type
heretofore undiscovered by archaeologists. When they asked the
local indigenous people what they were, they answered, "Oh,those are the Morakiten, the female warriors who used to live
here." According to the news report from which I learned this,anthropologists are surprised, because they thought the Amazons of South America were mythological. But the people wholive there never thought that. Now the Morakiten has been
adopted as the symbol of those fighting to preserve the Amazon
rain forests. Memory persists and resurfaces.
A Moral Revolution
I join Sarah Hoagland in her desire for a moral revolution.
Now what exactly does that mean?

Language
As an artist whose medium is words, I appreciate her concern
for language. She takes language seriously and thoroughly attempts to apply the ethical concepts she deems important. For
instance, in her Introduction she critiques ableist, sizeist, racist
and sexist language; she then goes on to eradicate it from her
book. Nowhere was "see" used for "perceive," black equatedwith negative. Analysis of how everyday use of such metaphorsreinforces ableism, racism, etc., has been around for years. But I
still find their use entrenched in lesbian writing (including,occasionally, my own).
Sarah Hoagland is critical of debtor/creditor concepts of124relationships among us, and by extension, economic metaphorssuch as "investments" and "negotiations" which she thinks push
our relationships toward the mercantile. I think of negotiations as
willingness on the part of both (all) members to compromise, tomove - much like what Sarah Hoagland means by intelligibility.
I suggest that economic terms may have different meaning for
Jews, because of our history of persecution and being forced into
occupations that dealt with money. We do keep track of things.
Irena Klepfisz writes: "I am scrupulously accurate. I keep track ofall distinctions. Between past and present. Pain and pleasure.
Living and surviving. Resistance and capitulation. Will and circumstances. Between life and death. Yes, I am scrupulously
accurate. I have become a keeper of accounts."lMany of the terms Sarah Hoagland wants to eliminate should
also first be examined for their cultural meaning for lesbians fromvarious backgrounds.
She analyzes the word "woman" as a constructed category,pertaining to biological female in relationship to men. She maintains the word can connote neither lesbian bonding nor female
resistance. It surprises me, given this analysis, that she then goeson to use the words "woman" and "women" throughout thebook to mean females with agency, power, etc.
I'm also surprised she uses the words "appropriate" and"inappropriate" uncritically, since they are used by psychiatry
and its offshoots to prescribe norms of affect, behavior andfeelings. In general she is quite critical of this kind of social
control.
Lesbians from a variety of races, classes, cultures, ages, andabilities are included throughout the book. But I find it a problem
when the ethnicity or class of a lesbian is listed when a point is not
being made about racism or classism.
In one example Sarah Hoagland tells us: "a working classlesbian responds, for example, to her upper-class friend who isacutely and chronically ill by assuming her friend's mind is asdebilitated as her body, not realizing that her friend doesn't havethe energy to maintain and defend herself but still absorbs theenergy and games around her. Or a white middle-class lesbian
responds with incomprehension to a black working-class lesbian's lack of emotional display at some tragedy in her own life,125not realizing that, in her friend's life, expression of emotion
carries dangers of exposure."
Here's where the real problem comes. An example in whichclass/ ethnicity is germane directly follows one where (as far as I
can tell) it is not. If she is making a connection between class andeither chronic illness or insensitivity to chronic illness, this is very
serious and should be much more explicit.
Finally, some of her language I find inaccessible. The worst
example is her word autokoenony - "a self in community whois one among many." I have no problem with the concept. But
why coin a word so difficult to pronounce, the meaning of which(at least to me) is not apparent from its form?

Principles
Sarah Hoagland doesn't find principles useful. She says,"principles only work when they really aren't needed ... Actingfrom principle interferes with rather than enhances our ability tomake judgements."
I don't find this to be true. For instance Pauline Bart extrapolates from the common Jewish principle of asking "Is it good or
bad for the Jews?" to "Is it good or bad for women?"2 This seems
to me, while not infallible, certainly useful when considering aparticular act. Another principle, which I hope to get better atapplying as I grow in wisdom and consciousness, is the Cherokee
maxim to consider the effects of an act through seven generations. 3 More immediately useful in my life is to consider who islikely to benefit from and who may be hurt by a particular action.
Of course, there will always be questions in applying any
principle. They don't prevent me or anyone else from having tofigure out what to do in any given situation. But, both in thinking
about what to do and what I've done, I find these and otherprinciples useful.

Moral Agency Under Oppression
This is a central concept in Sarah Hoagland's work and one
which I endorse wholeheartedly. She defines it as: "developing
ability within a situation without claiming responsibility for thesituation ... resisting demoralization under oppression." Shegoes on to say, "While we don't control situations, we do affectthem."
126

While the words she employs are not in general use amonglesbians with whom I discuss ethical issues, I do not find thisconcept at odds with the frameworks we use. I agree with her that
"It is because we make choices, act in the face of limits ... that we
declare ourselves to be moral beings."
In another application of this concept she rejects both victimism4 and blaming the victim. Even in terrible situations,wimmin are moral agents. "A woman is a ... breathing, judging
being, acting in coerced and oppressive circumstances. Her
judgements and choices may be ineffective on any given occasion, or wrong, but they are decisions nevertheless."
Vulnerability
Sarah Hoagland criticizes lesbians who use vulnerability as aweapon. While I've known this to happen, I certainly wouldn't
want invulnerability to become more fashionable among lesbians. And I wouldn't want lesbians to feel they couldn't be present
in the community if their vulnerabilities were showing. I thinkshe exaggerates both the phenomenon and problems of vulnerability.
Praise and Blame
Sarah Hoagland does not find these concepts useful. According to her: ''When we praise someone we tend to worship her, tohave l.nuealistic expectations of her." I believe we can and do
acknowledge limitations as we praise. I think it's important toaffirm the positive effects of someone's actions. We want to knowwhat we do matters. I believe we really need each other's praise,to have our work acknowledged, to be affirmed, to express our
caring for each other.
Of blame, Sarah Hoagland says, "focusing on who is to blame
denies important aspects of the situation." I appreciate this,another example of her theory embracing the complexities of real
life. However, while I agree with her that blame can touch off
immobilizing guilt, it's still important to learn the consequencesof our actions. What I want, when someone criticizes me, is room
to move, not to feel backed into a corner.
I also want to affirm the right of abuse survivors to name theabuse and their abusers. Breaking silence about abuse must notstop because the abused don't want to blame the perpetrators.
127

Accountability vs. Intelligibility
Sarah Hoagland advocates replacing accountability withintelligibility. She considers intelligibility a two-way process andaccountability one way. (But why would I consider myself accountable to those who aren't accountable to me?) She defines
intelligibility: ''being able to offer explanations for our choices
and being able to assess the energy between us, including ourabilities, defenses, intentions, goals and needs . . . both of us trying
to reach the other, to connect, at some level . . . a presumption ofcooperation." While I still find the concept "accountable" useful,
this definition does offer a texture and complexity I appreciate.
She advocates "understanding other lesbians' choices, particularly choices we don't approve of. Understanding another's
choices includes understanding our part in them." I find her
discussion of this very helpful.
JusticeSarah Hoagland is critical of the concept of justice. In tracing
the history of justice she says, "The old testament 'an eye for aneye and a tooth for a tooth' and Solomon willing to cut a baby inhalf to determine the mother was about the extent of the biblicalconcept of justice."This seems entirely too simplistic, and an "injustice" to Jewish
history, which has always included concerns about justice, bothin the bible and elsewhere. Even these two examples are notadequately addressed in Sarah Hoagland's treatment of them.
The "eye for an eye" paradigm was actually a reform overexisting contemporary forms of punishment, which called fordeath for stealing, and other extremes. 5 And the judgement of
Solomon story demonstrates a woman's emotional logic sense in
the face of male rational violence.
Sarah Hoagland says that, "Justice ultimately is tied to punishment." I think of justice as having to do with restoring balance,
restitution, remedy, and stopping injustice.
Withdrawal and Ignorance
Sarah Hoagland focuses repeatedly on the strategy of withdrawal as a primary moral option in all circumstances. She posits
separation as central both as a political strategy and as a choice in128

individual relationships. She articulates a position held by many
lesbian separatists: "In certain respects to . .. attempt to change asystem through designated avenues of reform or rebel against it
through designated avenues of rebellion (act in ways named evil
or bad within the system) ... we are operating within the system's
parameters and are thus giving the system meaning."
This seems to me a limited way of regarding acts of resistance.
Plotting escape from genital mutilation, jail, or an incestuous
father will be "named evil or bad within the system" and the state
will try to return the colonized to her "rightful place." Working
for the liberation of wimmin, challenging what Sarah Hoaglandcalls the axis of the system, may be labeled either praiseworthy orcriminal by wha tever version of the patriarchy currently reigns.
It is imperative that we name our actions for ourselves.
Sarah Hoagland identifies ignorance or ignoring as the privilege of the privileged, an arrogant perception which doesn't haveto take the other into account. "A central part of working out of
oppression involves divesting ourselves of ignorance and its
effects." My concern is that withdrawal, by the privileged fromthe oppressed, can perpetuate this ignorance. I do agree with herthat withdrawal can often prevent further harm and must always
be considered a valid option.
Controlling, Attending and Intervention
Sarah Hoagland is critical of the desire to be in controL "I amasking us to question the heroine in us: our urge to find ouressential value in someone else needing us, being dependent onus." I think a distinction needs to be made between controlling asituation and improving a situation.
I believe I can make a difference, that (on good days) interactions with friends benefit both of us. Certainly issues of codependency enter into how we are with each other. But I've been
disturbed the last few years to find lesbians increasingly reluctant
to offer each other personal assistance because they are "working
on their co-ing issues."
She recommends "perceiving what she is experiencing,understanding her situation, making suggestions, but leaving
the choices to her." But how about increasing her options throughsharing our resources?
129

I agree with Sarah Hoagland that intervention is very serious.
But so is the decision not to intervene.
The kinds of situations in which she discusses intervention
are "battering relationships, seizures, arrests, and someone about
to step, unknowingly, into the middle of a busy street.
"Rather than explaining a decision not to intervene . . . wewould feel a need to explain our intervention."
If I am having a grande mal seizure in the presence of myfriend and she does nothing, or if I am arrested and my friends
know about it and make no attempt to find out what I want/needfrom them, I certainly want an explanation. Both action andinaction have consequences and I would want the person who
does either to "feel a need" to explain her choice.
Coming Out

Sarah Hoagland refers us to our corning out, to that initialenergy which moved us to declare ourselves lesbians and findothers who did likewise, as a source for where to go from here.
"There is something in each lesbian that questions the norm atsome level and starts us on our own path . .. a certain ability toresist and refocus." I agree that early energy and excitement was
precious. It's a good idea to hark back to the invocation of lesbian
desire as an act, a decision which affirmed our wholeness.

Lesbian Ethics is extensively footnoted; Sarah Hoagland has
been most conscientious in crediting her sources. I got so much
more out of the book the second time around I'm tempted tosuggest everyone read it twice. Conversely, a lesbian friend
who's very serious about ethical matters skipped the academic
first part of each chapter and also got a lot out of the book. Because
I've heard a number of lesbians say they had problems with thebook stylistically, I urge lesbians to try again, if they've not readthe book because something about the way it is written put themoff.
Lesbian Ethics is organized with a table of contents, good index
and margin notes; if you're only interested in reading what Sarah
Hoagland has to say about certain subjects, it's fairly easy to findwhat you're looking for. Best would be to read it with a friend and130talk about the issues as you go along. I am glad to say that in a
recent issue of the local lesbian/ gay paper, I saw an ad announcing the formation of a study group to discuss Lesbian Ethics. Who
knows, maybe there is a way for lesbians to get together in 1989
without 12 steps or a shrink. I thank Sarah Hoagland for her
efforts toward new values.
- Barbara Ruth
I wish to thank Adrienne Lauby for her incitejul analysis, magnificent
editing, delicious food and loving patience, all of which rnade this review
possible. I also want to thank Rebecca Riplet;, whose written reactions toLesbian Ethics moved my thinking on the book.

1. Irena Klepfisz, Different Enclosures, p. 169 (OnlywomenPress, London, England,1985).
2. Conversation, Pauline Bart. Also inher essay,"How A NiceJ ewish Girl Like
Me Could" in Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthologtj, ed. Evelyn Torton Beck
(Persephone Press, Watertown, MA, 1982; now published by The Crossing
Press, Freedom, CA).
3. I learned this from the teachings of Dhanyi Ywahoo, Cherokee medicine
woman.
4. This word is Kathleen Barry's.
5. Jano brought this to my attention.

131

Books Received ______________
History and Geography, the second book of wonderful poetry from
Judith Barrington, 1989, $7.95, The Eighth Mountain Press, 624 SE 29th
Avenue, Portland, OR 97214-3026.
Lesbian Bedtime Stories are 29 short stories with happy endings to give
us sweet dreams, gathered by Terry Woodrow, 1989, $9.95, Tough Dove
Books, POB 528, Little River, CA 95456.
Metamorphosis - Reflections on Recovery, poetry and essays byactivist Judith McDaniel, 1989, $7.95, Firebrand Books, 141 The Commons, Ithaca, NY 14850.
The Big Mama Stories from the Black small-town South of the early '60s,
the first collection from Shay Youngblood, 1989, $8.95, Firebrand Books.
Letting in the Night, a novel about women dealing with love and deathover time and distance by Joan Lindau, 1989, $8.95, Firebrand Books.
Don't-A Woman's Word, a personal chronicle of childhood incest andadult recovery by Elly Danica, 1989, $8.95, Cleis Press, PO Box 8933,
fittsburgh, PA 15221.
In a Different Light, an anthology of lesbian writers, edited by Carolyn
Weathers and Jenny Wrenn, 1989, $9.95, Clothespin Fever Press, 5529 N.
Figueroa St., LA, CA 90042.
Dyke Hands & Sufi-as Erotic & Lyric, poems and essays by SDiane
Bogus, 1988, $9, WIM Publications, 2215-R Market St., SF, CA 94114.
Lizards/Los Padres, dyke-ful short stories by Bettianne Shoney Sien,
1988, $7, HerBooks, PO Box 7467, Santa Cruz, CA 95061.
Woman Plus Woman, a reissue of the 1974 classic by Dolores Klaich,
1989, $9.95, The Naiad Press, PO Box 10543, Tallahassee, FL 32302.
South of the Line, a civil war white lesbian romance by Catherine Ennis,
1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
Slow Dancing at Miss Polly's, a first book of poetry from Sheila Ortiz
Taylor, author of Faultline, 1989, $7.95, The Naiad Press.
Clicking Stones, a fantasy moving from the present into the 21st century,by Nancy Tyler Glenn, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
Surviving Sisters, a complex lesbian novel dealing with the familial
aftermath of the Vietnam war, dead brothers, goddess research, by Gail
Pass (author of Zoe's Book), 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
Of Love and Glory, a romance set in England during WWII, by Evelyn
Kennedy, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
In Every Port, a steamy executive and her "little black book," set in theearly '70s, by Karin Kallmaker, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
Raging Mother Mountain a lesbian land group begins in Oregon with anunlikely band of women, Pat Emmerson, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
132

The Bee's Kiss, a romantic lesbian novel set in a '50s' closet outside
London by Shirley Verel, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
In The Blood, a future fantasy of a U.S. divided by biological warfare,and militia of womyn, doctors and lesbian groups struggling to survive,by Lauren Wright Douglas, 1989, $8.95, The Naiad Press.
Surviving Sexual Violence, a study based on sixty interviews covering a
range of sexual violence over women's lifetimes and the development ofstrategies to resist, cope and survive by Liz Kelley, 1989, $14.95, Univ. ofMinn. Press, 2037 Univ. Ave S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55414.
Lesbian Love Stories by 29 very different dykes, edited by Irene Zahava,
1989, The Crossing Press, $9.95, PO Box 1048, Freedom, CA 95019.
The Original Coming Out Stories, expanded from the 1980 Persephone
Press edition, with a new introduction, edited by Julia Penelope andSusan J. Wolfe, 1980 & 89, $10.95, The Crossing Press.
EvenJday Zen: Love & Work, a woman's perspective, by Charlotte Joko
J3ec).<, 1989, $9.95, Harper & Row.
The Woman in the Body, A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, an anthropological study of economy and alienation with women as a primary source, by Emily Martin, 1987, $11.95, Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St.,
Boston, MA 02108.
The Nonsexist Word Finder: A Dictionanj of Gender-Free Usage, withalternatives, explanations or definitions for over 5,000 sexist words andphrases, by Rosalie Maggio, 1989, $9.95, Beacon Press.
Visual and Other Pleasures, essays on cinema and visual art from the'70s and '80s by Laura Mulvey, 1989, $12.50, Indiana University Press,
10th & Morton Sts., Bloomington, IN 47405.
Healirlg Heart, Poems 1973-1988, by Black feminist scholar Gloria T.
Hull, 1989, $8.95, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, PO Box 908,
Latham, NY 12110.
The Pied Piper, an anthology of lesbian feminist fiction whose hallmark
is surprise and revelation edited by Lilian Mohin and Anna Livia, 1989,$8.95 (£4.95), OnlywomenPress, 38 Mount Pleasant, London WCIXOAP,England.
Panhandling Papers, a collection of articles/essays and drawings byKady, anti-patriarchal revolutionary Lesbian feminist who wrote theNotebooks That Emma Gave Me, 1989, $10 pp, Kay Vandeurs, PO Box 623,
Northampton, MA 01060.
Bittersweet, a lesbian "frontier" adventure set in the 1900s, with detaildrawn from women's diaries of the "Old West," by Nevada Barr, 1984
(paper, 1989), $9.95, Spinsters/ Aunt Lute, PO Box 410687, SF, CA 94141.
Singing So ftlyl Cantando Bajito, a novel of 3 generations of PuertoRican
women, told by the youngest, who finds a way home againthrough thetelling, by Carmen de Monteflores, 1989, $8.95, Spinsters/Aunt Lute.

133

Contributors' Notes _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __b. ann: almost 30. lots of scorpio. i come from a family ofcomplicated stories and beautiful faces. i have no degrees. i haveshown my art in a handful of private and public places. i live by
my wits, a staunchly independent poor woman misplaced somewhere in america. this published art is my partial legacy to mychilqren t. and banana peels. thanks to my family, and marion for
calling me so often, a.I. for your naked ways.
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua: I am a Chicana-tejana-Iesbianfeminist who loves to write. My problem is there are not enoughhours in the day. Right now, I'm soliciting material for Hacienda
Caras/Making Faces, Making Souls: Constructing Colored Selves, areader of creative and critical perspectives.
Diane Blyler: I am currently a graduate student at Goddard
College. I also have an MFA from Vermont College and havedone additional graduate work at Dalhousie University. I am
currently looking forward to returning to Vermont or moving toMaine in the fall with my lover, Julie, and our dog, Sugar.
Lisa Marie Bronson: I'm 22, a native Cincinattian, majoring intheater and Afro-American studies at Yale.
Juana Maria de la Caridad is a Cuban lesbian, artist, dancer,
traveler, and visionary. Her portraits explore issues of power,
passion and adventure in life and in art.
Lisa Carlin: commie-Jew dyke. blue collar. bad attitude. as her
friend Janet Capone says, "make what you need/take what you
need/ and value it ... "D.A. Clarke: I am not JJ! But I could have been. For a living, am
responsible for a lot of "serious" computers dedicated to astronomical science. In the vanishingly small remainder of my time,
pursue a passionate interest in Right and Wrong as understoodand practised by dykes; enjoy the sound of radical lesbian argument. Have published poetry, essays, music; this is my firstpublished fiction. Born 1958, British, immigrated 1962, mostly
but uneasily assimilated, live in CA: atheist, techno-puppy,
feminist, pessimist.
134

Anne Dalton is a feminist, poet, activist, and scholar currently
completing her PhD. in Literary and Feminist Studies at the
University of California at Davis. Poetry was one of her first loves
and has proven to be one of the most sustaining.
Natalie Devora: I am a 26-year-old Black Albino Lesbian living in
San Francisco I am currently working on a novel about my experiences as a Black Albino woman. I am interested in connectingwith other Albino women, especially third world and those ofcolor. Please write me at 355 Fulton St., Apt #39, SF, CA 94102.
Myra Fourwinds is a writer, photographer and videographer.
She believes that images using mythic archetypical symbols
speak to us on an unconscious level across time and cultural
boundaries. By finding these archetypes within ourselves andothers around us, we become aligned with the collective imagination and find access to the essence of life force.
Karen Elias is alive and well, teaching English and Women'sStudies at SUNY Oswego and practicing beginner's mind.
Carolyn Gage is a lesbian playwright who has recently moved tosouthern Oregon where she is producing lesbian theater. She is anincest survivor.
Terri L. Jewell: 34-yr-old Black Lesbian Feminist hypergraphic
who works everyday at making her own happiness her career.
Her poetry, book reviews, essays and profiles have appeared inmany Lesbian / Feminist publications. Soon, she will make thefirst step toward proclaiming profeSSionalism!
Sondra Knight: Self-defined; I am what I write.
Vivienne Louise has been writing in the lesbian-feminist media
for 11 years. As an African-American lesbian separatist I write ofancient lesbian cultural values in the present.
Beth Houston teaches creative writing at San Francisco State andhas had poems published recently in The Literary Review, Po.em,
Minnesota Review, Confrontation, Commonweal, Red Cedar ReVIew,
Descant, Magazine and Wind Chimes.
Jasmine Marah - enigmatic, eclectic, elastic, eccentric, enthusiashc, fat, forty, furious fotomaker.

135

Paula Martinac was born in Pittsburgh in 1954 and now lives in
Brooklyn. "Mineola, Mineola" is from a collection of her shortfiction, Voyages Out #1 (Seal Press, Fall 1989). She is on theeditorial collective of Conditions and the editor of The One You Call
Sister: New Women's Fiction (Cleis Press, 1989).
Lisa Morphew is a lesbian artist and writer who lives on a farmwith her lover of 12 years and her daughter.
Marilyn R. Mumford: I'm a feminist poet and teacher at Bucknell
University (PA) . I've published primarily in little magazines andjournals. My latest research project is on images of African
American children in children's books between 1850 and thepresent.
Linda Marie Nolte can be reached at PO Box 7061, Minneapolis,
MN 55407 and would like to hear from anybody who has seen
elves in Iceland.
Pamela Pratt: I'm living in New York, have just finished my firstnovel, have been previously published in Sinister Wisdom and The
New York Native.
Sudie Rakusin: I am a lesbian, and an artist, 6 planets in fire, livein the woods with my four dog companions doing some sort of art
every chance I get.
Barbara Ruth is 43 years old. She is of Potowatomee, Ashkenazic
Jewish, German, English and French descent. She was raised in alower-middle class, pass (for WASP) family and is currently poor(by US government standards). She is a fat, anarcha-feminist,
female-separatist, femme (though critical of feminity) dyke, withmultiple unstable disabilities, numerous writing projects and an
abiding love for women.
Catherine Reid: This story is a chapter from my first (unpublished) novel entitled ISLAND ASH. I'm still on the island andworking on novel #3.
Rozanne: I was born in the Bronx in 1957, emigrated to New
Jersey when I was 9. Went to Oberlin College, lived/worked in
N.J. (for as short a time as possible!) and San Francisco ... settled
in sunny South London for many years. Like a lot of women I'm
currently "unemployed" but very busy. I try my best to survive,136

be disruptive, and enjoy myself at the same time. I write, I workon a stroppy women's mag called Feminaxe and play bass in arude rowdy dyke band called the Sluts from Outer Space.
Teya Schaffer lives in the United States where one in three people
get cancer. It didn't used to be this bad. Write to the American
Cancer Society and tell them green vegetables aren't healthy ifthey're grown with pesticides, and aerobics won't help if the air
is toxic; suggest that they put their / our money into stopping thenuclear industry. It may be too late, but what if it isn't?

Jill Spisak lives in Atlanta with her lover of many years and theirthree cats. "Taking Rachel Home" is from her manuscript, RachelLives in the Heart, which is nearing completion and will be looking
for a publisher.
Donna Steiner: I'm originally from New Jersery. I've done a few
readings in Syracuse, NY, where I live now. I've conducted
poetry workshops for children and senior citizens, and I work as
an office manager for a criminal defense law firm. I got your callon my 30th birthday and this is my first actual publication.
M.S. Taraba, who answers to the name of "Suzy," moved from
Manhattan to Durham, North Carolina. Some days it seems likeshe never left.
tova is continuing to live.

BEYOND THE EAGLE
An Intervlbrat/onal Perspect/ve
on Woman's Spiritual Journey
by Ellen Chambers with Grace Walking StIck andSeven Other Women In Spirit
An exceptional woll< In which nine women of different vlbra·
ffons come together to tell thelrstortes and philosophies of sue·cessful spiritual travel. These women dare to speak what has
not been spoken. They take strong poslffons against accepted
splrttual thought and acffon. holding that much of It perpetu·
ates male Interests at the expense of women's growth.

Thll book II for /he woman who truly want. to grow andchange. and who know. .he delervM the enffre unlvetlel

Wild Via let Publishing
P.O. Box 1311. Hamilton. MT 59840(406) 363-2696 • Paperback. S12.95 plus S1.00 postage.

137

Announcements and Classified Ads _ _ _ _ __PUBLICATIONSHIKANE: THE CAPABLE WOMON - disabled wimmin's newsletter for lesbians and our wimmin friends. $4 sample (more if you
can/ less if you can't). Available in print or cassette. All wimmin
welcome to subscribe. Hikane, PO Box C-9, Hillsdale, NY 12529.

NEW PUBLICATION! Out/Inside, a Women's Newsjournal Focusing on Lesbian Prisoners. Barbara Ruth, Editor. $6/year, $1.50
sample (plus 501t postage). PO Box 2821, Oakland, CA 94609.
THE LESBIAN UNRAVELER is a new ''West Coast news service," publishing bi-monthly, $5-12 sliding scale/ year. For info:
The Unraveler, PO Box 1521, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 .
HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES, by Leslea Newman, with illus.
by Diana Souza, a picture book for ages 3 to 103. Out in fall, 1989.
To pre-order, send $10 to In Other Words Publishing, 11 Massasoit St., Northampton, MA 01060. Donations welcome.

CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONEROTIC LESBIAN POETRY needed for anthology. No s/ m, nopreviously published work. Deadline 9/ 30/ 89. Send with SASE
to Sidewalk Revolution Press, PO Box 9062, Pittsburgh, P A 15224.
WOMEN AND CANCER anthology, being edited by Judith
Brady for Cleis Press, is seeking submissions in all forms. Send
submissions (2 copies) or inquiries to Judith Brady, 62 Sussex St.,
SF, CA 94131. Deadline: December, 1989.
LA BELLA FIGURA - a literary journal for Italian-American
women, with a special welcome for lesbians. Send SASE for
guidelines and subscription info to Rose Romano, PO Box 411223,
SF, CA 94141-1223.

METIS-NATIVE AMERICAN? ATTENTION: half-quarter-othermixed breeds of Native American, Black or other races. Send yourthoughts, problems of being a mixed breed for an open forum. Lin
Craig, 7131 Owensmouth #22G, Canoga Park, CA 91303.
GALLERIE ANNUAL and magazine welcomes work fromwomen artists. Send 3-10 b&w photos, text, $5 entry fee for138

December 31st deadline to Caffyn Kelley, Ed., Box 2901 Panorama Drive, North Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6E 4H1
MENOPAUSE ANTHOLOGY seeking submissions reflecting
diversities of culture and sexuality on all aspects of menopause.
Editors: Amber Coverdale Sumrall and Dena Taylor. Deadline:
March 31, 1990. Send submissions, inquiries and SASE to Dena
Taylor, PO Box 334, Capitola, CA 95010.
JEWISH WOMEN as consumers or providers of feminist psychotherapy for a special issue of Women & Therapy Journal. Send 2
copies of 1 page abstract with SASE by September 1 to: Rachel
Josefowitz Siegel, 108 West Buffalo St., Ithaca, NY 14850.
LESBIAN IMMIGRANTS to the U.S., all submissions welcome,all held confidential. Send SASE for gUidelines: The Project, c/o
Lundy, 3 Madison St., Cambridge, MA 02138. Deadline: Sept. 30.
CONTESTSSPINSTERS/ AUNT LUTE LESBIAN LONG FICTION contest
offers $2,000 prize for novel-length, well-crafted fiction focusing
on the lives of lesbians. Contract given along with award. Manuscripts accepted between January 2 and February 28, 1990. Write
for rules: Spinsters/Aunt Lute, PO Box 410687, SF, CA 94141.
BY THE BAY AREA first-novel competition sponsored by
Alyson Publications and San Francisco's A Different Light Bookstore, $2500 advance and $2500 promo budget. Open between
June 1, 1989 and February 1, 1990. SASE for guidelines to A
Different Light, 489 Castro St., SF, CA 94114.
CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS
WEST COAST CELEBRATION II, a conference for old lesbians
60+, August 4-6, at the Conference Center at SF State University.
On-site registration available. Write PO Box 31787, SF, CA 94131
for info.
4th ANNUAL WOMYN AND WITCHCRAFT: DEVELOPINGDIANIC WICCA Conference, August 31-Sept. 3, in central
Wisconsin. Open to all womyn, specifically designed for Dianics
and/ or lesbian witches. Wheelchair accessible. Brochure: DDW4,
Box 6021, Madison, WI 53716.
139

LESBIAN AGENDA FOR ACTION CONFERENCE ON RACISM for Bay Area lesbians, fall 1989, write for info: Conf.
Planning Committee, 3543 18th St. #32, SF, CA 94110.
A NATIONAL LESBIAN CONFERENCE is in the works, tentatively planned for Spring, 1991 in Atlanta, GA. Local organizing
and national meetings are happening around the U.S. now. For
more information, write: PO Box 3057 Albany NY 12203.
FIRST NATIONAL ASIAN/PACFIC LESBIAN RETREAT, by
for and about Asian/Pacific lesbians, Labor Day weekend, Sept.
1-4, UC Santa Cruz, CA. Wheelchair accessible, sign language
and bi-lingual interpretation, sliding scale ($100-$150). Write fordetails, registration: PO Box 2594, Daly City, CA 94017.
GENERAL
N.C. COUNTRY LESBIANS: let's network! Write: Bold Moon
Farm, 5780 Plowfield Rd., McLeansville, NC 2730l.
LESBIAN PRISONER, 15, would like lesbian correspondents.
Letters only (no printed material) to: Lin Elliott #68216, ArizonaState Prison Complex, PO Box B-68216, Florence, AZ 85232.
JEWISH LESBIAN DAUGHTERS OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS (AND PARTNERS) meet semi-annually for a weekend of
discussion, support, and networking around issues faced bychildren of survivors. For information write Box 6194, Boston,
MA 02114, or call (617) 321-4254.

Dykes, Disability & Stuff'cause we always have stuff to share
BOSTON, MA 02114

P.O. BOX 6194

DD&S is a great place to celebrate our lives! We can look toward eachother for the radical solutions we need and for the unity to makechange happen. Our focus is on the "stuff' of disability in the lives of
lesbians. Subscriptions are $8.00-20 individual, (U.S. dollars, please!)
Contributions of art and writing are welcome.

140

Stories, journals, graphics, essays, humor, poetry,autobiography, and more .. .
The experiences and ideas of common Lesbians.
We print the work of Lesbians who have been
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LESBIAN ETHICS
Sarah Lucia Hoagland
INSTITUf[ or llSBIAN STUDllS

LESBIAN ETHICS U5('S lesbian experience as astarting point for redefining ethics. The overallthesis is that the values from anglo·european
ethical philosophy undermine rather thanpromote lesbian connection . Challenging control
in lesbian relationships. the book develops an
ethics relevant to lesbians under oppressionone which avoids both blaming the victim andvictimism. which embraces the spirit of lesbian
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ct yl(es.
Vivienne Lou isesinister wisdom
Current & Back Issues(partial list of contents)#37 / Emphasis on Lesbian Theory. With work on consumerism, spirituality,
political theory, children, racism, anti-Semitism, lesbians in prison• Lee, Tallen, Evans, Pratt, Robson, Quinlan, Livia, Hardy, Gray, Green, Justicz •#36 / Special Focus on Surviving Psychiatric Assault/Creating Emotional
Well Being in our Communities. Includes testimony, prose, poetry and essays
on getting locked up, getting out, community, therapy and therapism• Hope, Aal, Caicedo, thundercloud, Robson, Sien, Moran, Ward, NiHera, Willcox.

#35 / Special Focus on Passing. Includes work on / by Black, Jewish, Native
American, Latina, Italian, White, disabled, working class, butch, fern lesbians• Jewell, Frye, Pratt, Rosales, Bogus, Ruth, Gage, Barrington, Davis, JEB, Romano.

#34/Special Focus on Lesbian Visions, Fantasy, SciFi. Includes work on
Separatism, Disability, Building and Transformation• Katz, Ortiz Taylor, Hoagland, Allegra, Livia, Louise, Rios, Danaan, Marah •#33 / Special Focus on Wisdom, Lesbians of Color, Non-violence, War Stories,
Incest, Leaving a Will, Assimilation, Fat Poems, Coming to Terms• Anzaldua, Ruth, Rich, Chrystos, Kaye / Kantrowitz, Hardy, Gilmore, Brody, Rakusin •#32 / Special Focus on Illness, Death, Mourning, Healing, the Disappeared,
Hunting Season, Dealing with Suicide, Cancer, New Ritual Observances• Maia, Allegra, Sears, McDonald, Waters, Hansell, Rosenblum, Butler, Stinson •#31/Special Focus on Sex and Fiction, Coming out in the South, Found Goddesses, Waiting, Bobe Mayse, Sex and Socialist Feminism• Smukler, Blackwomon, Romano, Davenport, Dykewomon, McNaron •#28/ Special Focus on Women & Work; Body Image, Size & Eating, Aging,
Comedy about Outlaw Lesbian Communities, Courage, PC / PI, Letter on #26• Clarke, Heather, Klepfisz, Sturgis, Gould, Boucher, Gomez, Sardella, Moran •#27 / Special Focus on Girlhood, Sexuality and Violence, Office Work, Navy
Dykes, White Trash, Women of Color / Women in Israel/Women in Lebanon• Adnan, Felman, Grahn, Schalet, Bogus, HaMa'avak Touch, Quintanales, Anzaldua •#26 / Special Issue: To Go To Berbir by Jill Drew, a book-length journal written by an American nurse working in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion#25 / Butch / Fem in the 50's, Women's Peace Encampments, Erotic Satire,
Native American Roots of White Feminism, Palestinian, Haitian, Puerto
Rican Struggles, Jewish Radical Identity, Welfare Motherhood Sexuality, SciFi• Allen, Cotrell, Root, Stecenko, Love, Paz, Smukler, Hall, Lipstadt, Brant •#24/Violence Against Women & Resistance, Alcohol, Fighting Racism, Dyke
Culture, Black Lesbians, White Working Class Identity, Censorship• Harjo, Derricotte, Nestle, Lynch, Sylvester, Pratt Moirai, Parkerson •#2l/Separatism Revisited, Jewish Survival & Defiance, Black Lesbian
Writing, Photos of Dykes in Drag, Suicide, Bars, Letters about Anti-Semitism• Klepfisz, Arobateau, Segrest, Simpson, Tornes, Addison, justice, Foley, Crawford •Sinister Wisdom #1-20 are out of print . Photocopies of specific articles
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"Would you like to kissagain?" she asks.
I'm smiling in the dark.
I turn and kiss her.
She keeps it very slow.
I'm the one who pushes formore. I move my faceover her. She's lying backlooking at me now. I look at
her too, for a long time.
And then we kiss again.
from Confessions of a Lesbian Groupie-Carolyn Gage

Two women are
dreaming together.
This is a private land.
It is the pointof departure.
from Private Transportation-M.S. Taraba$5