fHE liABDER JUNE/JULY, 1972 $1.25 THE LADDER, published by Lesbians and directed to ALL women seeking full human dignity, had its beginning in 1956. It was then the only Lesbian VOLUME 16, No. 9 and 10 publication in the U.S. It is now the only women’s magazine openly supporting JUNE/JULY, 1972 THE Lesbians, a forceful minority within the women’s liberation movement. LADDER Initially THE LADDER’S goal was limited to achieving the rights accorded heterosexual women, that is, full second-class citizenship. In the 1950’s women THE LADDER STAFF as a whole were as yet unaware of their oppression. The Lesbian knew. And she Editor ...... Gene Damon wondered silently when her sisters would realize that they too share many of the Production Editor ...... Hope Thompson Lesbian’s handicaps, those that pertained to being a woman. Circulation Manager ...... Ann P. Buck Production Assistants ...... Lyn Collins, Kim Stabinski, THE l a d d e r ’s purpose today is to raise all women to full human status, with Jan Watson, King Kelly, Ann Brady, all of the rights and responsibilities this entails; to include ALL women, whether j Phyllis Eakin, Robin Jordan Lesbian or heterosexual. Staff C artoonist...... Ev Künstler Art C olum nist...... Sarah Whitworth OCCUPATIONS have no sex and must be opened to all qualified Cross Currents Editor ...... Gail Hanson persons for the benefit of all.

LIFE STYLES must be as numerous as human beings require for their personal happiness and fulfillment.

ABILITY, AMBITION, TALENT - CONTENTS: THESE ARE HUMAN QUALITIES. Notes from a Summer Diary by Mickie Burns ...... 4 Highpockets by Jo Traherne...... 11 What’s Underground, Secret, Subversive, & On the THE LADDER is by subscription only Best Seller List? by Nila Bowman McCormack ...... 17 The Ladies of Llangollen, a Re-Review...... 19 IMO BULK RATES The Shade, Story by Beverly Lynch'...... 21 Journeys in Art by Sarah Whitworth ...... 24 This policy is necessitated by economics. A Life of Angels: Margaret Fuller’s World by Lynn Flood ...... 28 (Sample copies are available at $1.25 each) Poems by Mickie B u rn s...... 34 Lesbiana by Gene Damon ...... 35 BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE. WRITE FOR COST Poem by Lynn Strongin...... 37 Friends by Sarah Aldridge ...... 38 ADVERTISING RATES From a Soul Sister’s Notebook by Anita Cornwell ...... 43 A Very Special Case, Story by Bernice Balfour...... 44 Half Page ...... S45 Back C o v er...... $100 1 Couldn’t Say, I Really Couldn’t Say, Story by Carol Moran ...... ‘. . 47 Quarter P a g e ...... $25 Full Page ...... $ 80 Excerpts from a Life by Barbara L ip sch u tz...... • 49 The Bath by Lynn Michaels ...... 50 Repeated Advertisements at Reduced Rates COVER: Georgia 0'K.eeMe. Morning Glory with Black, c. 1926. Oil on canvas. The Cleveland Museum of Art, bequest of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Published bi-monthly at Box 5023, Washington Station, Reno, Nevada, 89503. All rights reserved. No part o f this periodical may be reproduced without the THIRD CLASS MAIL IS NOT FOR WARDABLE. written consent o f THE LADDER. When moving send us your old address and ZIP as well as new address and ZIP. 2 discrepancies, of talking to myself, of going several chief executives’ policies in the up to strange women and saying, “Don’t Vietnamese conflict. Indeed, my brother Notes from a Summer Diarq you see what they have done to you . . . knows nothing of communism (the most Don’t you see what they have done?” ostensible reason which seems to be given PUPPYDOG TAILS AND LIEUTENANT GALLEY “They,” a paranoid’s word, a dangerous for our engagement in Southeast Asia), word. You see, I am being very carefuL I By MICKIE BURNS except that it seems to embrace an ignor­ have not moved my eyelids in three days ance of football 1 would suppose my [ and if I can keep this up, I will be permitted brother is typical of the right-wing or what Marge Ferguson in my Sunday school to leave Obensburg and return to the city of reactionary portions of our nation’s popu­ “1 hear that Sue Jane Moorehouse is syphillitic feet. back here datin’ him again, datin’ him class said.” lation in that he does not know what the It grows difficult because they keep again. Datin’ that Rayburn boy aygeein! At that, I made a giant “X” of suntan terms right-wing or reactionary mean. He grease right across my stomach ending with going on and on, in that cant, in that would simply style himself politically as a That’s what Ah hear,” half-hillbilly cawing, carping, Kentucky At that, 1 squirted one worm of Bain de a flourish where the hipbones went into the “Normal American.” When he graduated cant. I am getting tired now but I want you Soliel suntan jelly horizontally across my bikini. from that good old Southern institution of to know I have gone great distances; I have forehead and then another, vertically down “You heard what 1 was just saying’ higher learning, the University of Kentucky, made great efforts to outrun that half- the bridge of my nose. Gertrude?” one of the women said to my he declared, over a pop-top Pabst Blue midwestern, half southern sound, that “Wall, mah Bill Joe was out at the mother as she reappeared through the back Ribbon, his intention never to read another sound of women talking. But everywhere, Bar-B-Cue place on Livermore Road the door with a tray of iced tea and glasses. “I book so long as he should live. It would other night and Bill Joe, he says to me he was just sayin’ to Mildred here I hear that in other accents that sound overtakes me. appear that his superior straight “C” minus In offices, in powder rooms, in department saw that Rayburn kid right back out there. little Sue Jane Moorehouse is back in town intelligence has been destined for higher Never missed a night. Why, Bill Joe he says now and datin’ the Rayburn boy again.” stores, in supermarkets, once in Gimbel’s things than being blown out on foreign soil to me Dr. Rayburn’s boy still hangs out Mother addressed the group encapsu­ basement, on the escalator at La Guardia, in Selfish interests aside, my brother seems to with all them other kids from Senior High lating the matter, “Well she’s just going to elevators. be vaguely aware that the reason we have to just lack he don’t have a care in the world. be old stuff to that boy now. The kids all “Why, that ought to take her down a stay in Viet Nam is in order to protect “our Bill Joe says Dr. Rayburn even went out are sayin’ he just takes her out to park in notch or two.” boys in Viet Nam who in turn have to and bought that John a brand new one of some cornfield when he wants himself a “ . . . thinks things are so free and easy.” remain in Viet Nam in order to protect our them little red farrin’ cars, and he done sure thing. Won’t even be seen with her in “Well, she’s just going to have to find boys who have to stay, who in turn . . .” wrecked it twicet. Eight hundred dollars public, kids say. Figures if he can get it out different.” And so on. worth damage, last time. And puked once, he can get it again, I reckon. Why he’s “Cut the wind out of her sails. ” bourbon all over the upholstery, all them going to be a doctor lack his daddy, sowin’ “. . .thinks she can just come and go Yesterday when the sun went down I kids that was with him.” a few wild oats, lack they say. Kids that age whenever she wants.” quit lying out in the back yard and started At thaL I made two diagonal lines along aren't about to go and get hanging around in my brother’s room, each of my cheekbones, being very careful themselves . . .” My brother is home. My brother is watching him put on hLs tic. He was going to keep my eyelids absolutely still through­ "Mother," 1 said, “will you please go almost two years younger than me, almost oul I was attempting to conduct some sort out Throughout, you hear. inside and get me some more iced tea?” twenty-four, out of the University of of conversation that I hoped would be “Wall, my girl says John Rayburn is “. . . all tied down.” Kentucky and finished with his two-year typical of a normal transaction of brotherly going out with a little gal fkom Catholic hitch in the Army, home again and enjoying and sisterly affection and in keeping with Higli, and she told me she saw them two a You see, I was being very careful You his bachelorhood, He had been stationed his the interests of a normal beer-consuming, drivin through the Dairy Drive In and see, I have seen people who are “street entire time in service at Fort Polk, burping good old Southern boy of good Frisch’s Burgers just the other night. And crazy” in New York, Pranged people who Louisiana, where he held some sort of troop (my mother’s own) breeding. You know, my Carol Jean says this little gal’s a stand on street corners and babble and processing and dispatching position, never some sort of hail-good-fellow-well-met cheerleader over at Catholic High and twitch and yell at phantom communists and leaving the United States and never, indolent passing the time of day remark. pretty as a picture. Long blonde hair. Carol scream about how rats are plotting to take therefore, seeing active duty. And, in out You know, a nice, sloppy been-gettin’-any- Jean says she never saw the like.” up the streets, people who go up to perfect ^ times, never going to Viet Nam. It happens lately agreeable sociable midwestern-red­ At that, 1 extended first one arm, then strangers and harangue them like mad \ that my brother, being a good old Southern neck sort of conversation. I was really going the other, making two more satisfying prophets. People whom even the beggars on boy, has been, in this respect, instrumental to the trouble; I was hanging around be­ squirts from each shoulder to fingertips. 34th Street shun as companions. Weirdos in providing for his own comfort, since his cause my mother always encourages me and “ Did you hear about that place they who drool in Bickford’s at dawn, senile hags duties at Fort Polk provided him with the my brother to “see more of each other sent her to?” and catatonics fresh from Bellevue, always convenient opportunity of being able to when you are home.” So I was in his room My eyelids didn’t twitch, you hear. with shopping bags of curious belongings, pull out other good old Southern boys messing around with a bottle of his after­ “Well, they tell me this fine older couple cryptic odds and ends, roaming the city passing through that he might have known shave lotion and I said, “Who all are you in Louisville adopted a child out of a with suppurating syphillitic feet. One at U.K, and being able to replace them on going out with tonight?” situation like thaL and they decided that wonders, were they ever once responsible his Nam-bound rosters with a few negligible My brother said, “Me and old John they have wanted to do something for other office workers, efficient housewives, de­ blacks and stray, baffled Puerto Ricans. Rayburn has us a double date with June young girls that has gone out and got pendable secretaries, perfectly calm human One must not gather from my brother’s and a cute little cousin of hers from theirselves into trouble. People say they beings who once, one day, on subway or efforts to avoid combat duty that my Henderson. They are kinda young, still have a real nice home up there for these bus had quite lost their tempers and never brother is some sort of pacifist or hippie seniors in high school, but hell everybody girls. Take round six girls every three quite again found them? I know how to war-protester, nor must one conclude that else worth going out with is married.” months into their very own home, that’s avoid such pitfalls. I am careful of public he in any way objects to any of our past Then he seemed to remember something 4 funny as he was examining his thick new center of the room or spray whipped cream lessly complex a.s fashion now seems, my but 1 have never heard (hem speak even I moustache and sideburns. He sort of in the “pig-girls" faces. brother manages with grace to remain in the once with any heat of what their husbands snorted in amusement and shook his head By contrast, I went to a Northern mainstream, his sideburns creep down, each do to them in bed, Once, my mother said admiringly. “I tell ya, sis, that John Ray­ university where fraternities (vestigal of the fraction precisely representing the exact that she was very glad of the invention of 1950’s innocence) had slipped out of style burn is a good o f boy. Him and me and Bill center of the trend in sideburn growth. Vaseline, but I do not know if she had any and given way to a student body who were Joe have sure raised us some hell together. “At this time,” my transistor happened idea of what she was telling me. Once, a for the most part into politics and en­ He’s a good o f boy, yes ma’am, the best of to mention, “there are a number of friend of my generation complained that his lightened trends. The big men on my boy ever was. Did I ever tell you about that different views one might take of the Galley mother had castrated his father by being eampus were info revolution and humanity time when he was up at U.K. and him and affair. A Galley friend in Atlanta declares: frigid toward him. “Big deal,” I had re­ and long hair and like Abbie Hoffman made me and a bunch of other boys all took on He's one of the few real men left in this a point of never opening doors or buying torted, “all our mothers were frigid.” this old whore up ’ar in the frat? Why, that country. He’s being crucified by this Except, of course, for the few isolated cases flowers or otherwise spending a nickel on old girl look on about twelve of us and was government and keeping his cool because he of Lesbianism and the one above-mentioned their “old ladies” (as they called them in begging for more.” loves his country. area (allowed them for medical reasons my day), or other movement squaws. In 1 said, “How old was that girl?" 1 have been lying for the past few days only, of course). And why not? Even dogs this respect, the Southern pig-girls were “ Hell, I reckon about sixteen. We picked in the back yard on one of those aluminum have their pleasures. her up in the car in front of the Chevy somewhat more advantaged. and plastic webbed yard chairs, the long Once in a cultural anthropology class, Chase high school in Lexington and got her folded-out kind that you can get at the my professor described an African puberty so drunl^ man, why you never seen . . .’’ In all ways, my brother belongs in shopping center out in front of the A&P. rite: When a young girl is old enough lo 1 said, “How much did you pay that society. He is the most normal American Some women friends and neighbors of my marry; that is, when she enters mcnarchc, male I have ever met. Even in the intimacy girl?" mother had “dropped by to say hello to the matrons of the village (1 do not re­ “Why, what in the Sam Hill do you of family life, 1 have never noticed one tiny Gertrude’s daughter who is going to be member the name of the tribe) surround mean? Hell, I never had to pay for it in mah idiosyncracy. 1 have never heard my brother home for a few days and isn’t that naah-ice the virgin and pull out all her hair in life. Old gal sure put out for free. Gawd utter one phrase or express one idea any for you now, Gertrude," while 1, Gertrude’s clumps. \Mien I heard this lecture, 1 found a’mighty could that little gal take it in too. differently from the way the phrase is it strange that women who had once gone usually rendered. He is a master of idiom girl, lay there flat on my back half-naked Man, we really raised hell with her, me and themselves through such a ritual could bring both in speech and thought. He possesses and firmly shut-eyed there in the middle of John Rayburn and Bill Joe and the other themselves to inflict identical torment upon the most accurate, the most exacting, the my mother and all those other matrons, boys. John Rayburn pissed right in her the younger women as they came of age. It most sure-footed herd instinct one could looking for all the world like a centerpiece mouth. Hell, that was some time. That little was a curious custom. Primitive in its way. old gal really threw up after that. She was possibly discover. Sometimes my brother or a sacrifice, while Gertrude discussed me Finally, the women trooped indoors to stinkin' so much - that old sweat hog - we seems to me not to be a specific human with them as thouth 1 were not there. inspect one of mother's more recent furni­ finally had to kick her out. Man, 1 bet her being but a living stereotype, a hypothetical Mother said 1 was taking a badly needed ture acquisitions. After they left, a tcenaged butt froze. It was colder'n hell." juncture of mean, median, and mode. 1 rest. The women pulled up more yard grasp for a straw to remember him by. He is chairs, surrounding me more closely while neighbor girl appeared through the back hedges that separated our yard from hers, My father and mother are proud that an ideal candidate for a communal society, their gossip resumed over me. They were and 1 found myself for the balance of the my brother was a fraternity man like his so incapable is he of individuality. Even his retelling one of my very favorite stories. afternoon receiving on my aluminum couch father before him. Because my brother’s handwriting is utterly undistinguished. If When it was rumored that Sara Pate, a bad my brother’s would-be fifteen-year-old fraternity, they feel, has given my brother a my brother had grown up in the East rather woman, managed to get, for legitimate inamorata. The neighbor girl was all dressed lot of “polish” and improved upon his table than in Kentucky, he would surely be reasons, a tubal ligation, the envy of up in spite of the heat, which was making a manners. “Polish” means when my brother Woodstock Nation incarnate. Of course, Obensburg’s matrons was dazzling to be­ one cannot be so normal-minded without hold. “Now she thinks she can get away moustache of moisture on her dainty upper goes out on a date he opens the car door for lip. The neighbor girl had come up to hang also being normal in appearance. Any with it.” “ The good Lord will punish her, the girl At my brother’s fraternity, while about sniffing around hoping to catch a he was still a pledge, as part of the hazing, physical defect, it seems to me, is bound to can’t get away with going against nature.” How confounded the women of our town glimpse or have a w'ord with my brother, to the pledges were required to throw a produce less than an unquestioning accep­ tance of the universe. As Thomas Mann all were - a tubal ligation! They hadn t her an older and exciting man, her hero, “pig-party” and all the initiates were re­ and the object of unrequited but nonethe­ quired to bring to the party the doggiest said, he is “blond, blue-eyed, and troubled thought of that. How could that whore dare less star-crossed affection. As my brother girls they could find. The girls who were not by a doubt” to be so lucky. Now she can’t ever have her was not around, she made do with me, chosen were, therefore, those coeds who Descriptions are not as simple as they nose rubbed in the dirt like the rest of us. hoping 1 would put in a good word. We had had not been able to afford braces for their once were. A few years ago I could have They were almost at an impasse, those good quite a long chat about my brother, dis­ teeth, were too fat, who had had a bad case said my brother wore Gant shirts and Bass women who had passed directly from vir­ Weejun loafers and have done with it, but ginity to maternity with no transactions of cussing his accomplishments and attributes. of acne, or who had been sexually in­ The discrepancies between the way my discreet. Undoubtedly the young women fashions have been getting out of hand. All passion in between. Their efforts to brother refers to the eligible young women had been pleasantly surprised to find them­ the New York homosexuals are now ostracize Sara Pate, a bad woman, doubled of the county and the manner and tone of selves inexplicably invited to the SigChi house wearing what the black pimps in Harlem and redoubled. And now, in the midday voice which they, in turn, allude to him, 1 and had been looking forward to the wore three years ago, and the hippies on heat, the eternal perdition of Sara Pate had always find mind-bending, “She's got a evening for two whole breathless weeks as Eighth Street are wearing what the homo­ again been settled upon. Having agreed to great pair of jugs, piece of ass, et cetera," the fraternity brothers had planned they sexuals were into two yeare ago, and visiting that, my mother and her friends turned to would. The party went along innocently midwestem straight conventioneers look an enthusiastic discussion of constipation, seems somehow an inequitable counterpart enough until at a given signal the fraternity like hippies did last year, coming along fast enemas, and cathartics. 1 have frequently to, “Your brother is sooo handsome, strong brothers began to excrete in a big pile in the with those see-throughs and chokers. Hope­ heard married women talk with great yet tender, friendly and easy to get along with, sincere and lots of fun to be around," 6 sensual fervor of their bowel movements. and o th er excerpts from Seventeen something very wrong with having them out sewing box with their little legs lying beside become giant siblings sitting at our old magazine’s ten quaUties you most look for there in the garage all the time like that. them. places at the table as though we had never or admire in a) a steady, b) the man you The boys of the neighborhood had their 1 do not know how much capacity, if moved. We were arguing about the war in want to marry, c) ideal date, or d) all of the own interesting variation of the old game of any, the smaller bugs had for pain, but I felt general and the My Lai massacre in par­ above. tying tin cans to dogs’ tails. One of the that my brother, as he was performing his ticular. My mother’s position was: “Well it There is, after all, only so much a older boys devised our local version but my mutilative arts upon them, wished the pain was only some crazy ones that did it if any twenty-six-year old woman can tell a brother perfected it and added a number of great. .He used to tell me when I asked him- such thang ever happened at all. Normal fifteen-year-old one and be believed. 1 just innovations, inspired during a family trip why Ae liked doing that so much that he American boys just wouldn’t do such a lay there, neuter and bronze as an Oscar when my brother and 1 visited the Smith­ was practicing up for when the Japs in­ thang. Probably no such thang never award statuette, feeling for the moment no sonian museum in Washington, D.C., and he vaded 1 was precocious enough a student of happened anyways - just some communist kinship with either sex. became acquainted with small replicas of history that I tried to explain to him that talk trying to run down the United States. On another intense July afternoon, Oriental torture devices. My brother’s prin­ the Japanese were no longer our enemies, to If any part of what you said happened, it when I was just a few years younger than cipal piece of equipment was a toy cook- which my brother would reply that he was just some crazy ones, just a couple of my visitor, when the concrete of our stove that really baked and fried, which 1 would do it to the niggers then. 1 asked him shell-shook bad ones. You never know what driveway quivered in my vision until the had abandoned in the garage. My brother if he intended to torture Mattie, who was at kind of people you're going to get thrown gray cement went white in the heat, and the had observed a slightly older neighbor boy that moment baking my brother’s favorite in with when you get drafted. Why they lawn black, 1 was pulling back into the tearing the legs from grasshoppers, spiders, pecan pie, but he didn't seem to get the even have to take Yhowers with niggers. garage damp out of the high-contrast of the water bugs, and butterflies, and otherwise contradiction. His ingenuous boyish face They just throw the trash in with the sun after being sent out on my bike for ice slowly dissecting them. My brother recog­ would just glisten, leering lasciviously and educated ones like your brother. No normal cream for everyone. 1 scooted my bike nized the larger possibilities of the enter­ any of his buddies who were around would American boy ever did a thang like that.” alongside the car and leaned the bike prise and added to the above repetoire of chime in, "Yeah, torture!” At last I My father said, “Now Mother, I’m just a against it, not bothering with the kick tortures and victims somewhat larger screamed at them, “I hope someone does little bit afraid sister may have some truth stand, knowing my clairvoyant mother was animals: frogs, squirrels and birds, whose that to you! 1 hope you really get it. Serve to what she says. I was reading an article going to notice in short order 1 hadn’t agonies were more grandiose. Before long, you right!'’ the other day and from what I could judge parked my bicycle where 1 was supposed to. the Torture Game became a ne^hborhood 1 wasn’t really tattling, 1 decided, since it was told by a fellow that was trying to But 1 was eager to get into the ice cream. I fad and my parents (absentmindedly my mother and father knew as well as 1 did get his facts straight. Now, of course, 1 can’t was trying to get away with it Just one more indulgent of us both) took to leaving one how my brother spent his time in the be absolutely sure of it, but 1 think the man time, taking the risk of having my mother half of the garage vacant so that my brother garage. They saw the top of the cookstovc by the tone he took wrote the truth as best prod me right back out into the garage to would have more room to entertain his the same as me everytime they went in and as he could remember it and report it down. repark. We twelve-year-old suburbanites friends. My brother and his audience and out of the garage. My mother would step It was about a bunch of American soldiers were trying in our ways. 1 didn’t have time asastants were about nine or ten years old out of the car with a bag of groceries and raping and killing a thirteen-year-old Viet­ to revel in my little sin of omission, to then. One comer of the garage near the smile her cheerful motherly smile, beaming namese farm girl and I don’t think they had continue blithely indoors before I was door to the house where all members of the a good-natured hello down to my brother anything mentally wrong with them. 1 think brought up short But not by my mother. family had to pass every day, was intri­ and his little buddies hovered together over this feller seemed to feel they came from There they were again. 1 stared at them in a cately laced with the implementabli of the frying animals on the cookstove. just as fine a family as ours and I don’t moment of horrible fascination and torture, chief among these were a toy vise, So I appealed to my mother to make my believe they were crazy at the time. It was a slammed the door to the breezeway in a an electric burner that had been part of a brother stop. 1 was standing at her dresser terrible thing and I tell y' I just couldn't fury of impotence. How long was it going leather work hobby craft kit, my cook- while she put her hair in pincurls the way read the whole thing but it was in Saturday to go on, day in and day out? They had stove, mother’s old eyebrow tweezers, and they used to. “ Don’t you realize, mother, Review and 1 think they are preety careful been there for weeks and weeks. Spoiling acids &om a chemistry set,which turned out that's all he ever docs anymore? Please tell about letting anything get in there that’s a everything Until I hated, just hated, having not to be particularly effective. Sometimes him he has to stop it and make all those complete mi.srepresentation. I just don’t to go into the garage on any errand 1 might alone and sometimes with friends, my others stop it, too. Don't you see it’s bad think it could have been too far off.” have there, to get something for my brother would tinker with his bug tortures for him to be thinking cruel thoughts all the 1 asked my brother, “Tell me, how do mother, my bike or tennis racket, or a for hours each day, whiling away mapley time? Don’t you see?” Mother didn’t see. you distinguish between South Vietnamese screw driver for my father. wide-lawned suburban afternoons, for a “Well,” she said, “You should be glad your Gooks and Slopeheads and North Viet­ I had taken I the matter up with my couple of years until he became interested brother is a normal boy and likes to do namese Gooks and Slopeheads? The South mother only the week before, trying not to in girls. rugged things. He’ll outgrow it soon Vietnamese arc supposed to be on our side, be the kind of person who “forgets” to The year before, the neighborhood enough. You should be glad your brother is you know?” park her bike so the car won’t run over it, boys’ favorite recreation after school had not a sissy like that little John Parks who “Aw, sis,” he answered rather weary but trying very hard to be like on TV when been digging foxholes in a vacant lot, but plays the piano all day long. Your brother with me, “You don’t know how thangs are they showed the United Nations debates, the preoccupation of the entire male corps will never be a sissy boy.” over thar in Nam.” trying to be more like a grown-up petition­ of neighborhood children soon became “Well, you haven’t exactly been over ing the government or something like I had absorbed in the art of small animal vivi­ We are all grown up now. My mother there either,” I said. “By the way, what learned about in history class. 1 knew 1 section and insect dismemberment. 1 dis­ and father and brother and me were about torture? How do you stand on that didn't know everything yet and 1 knew liked every time 1 returned from school or together having grilled hamburgers in the issue?” sometimes I still did stupid stuff, but 1 the grocery having to pass through the back yard just like when we were children “ Wall,” he said, “1 tell you v/hsl Ah'd knew that there were .some things I was as garage where at all times a number of bugs on other summer evenings. Now that my do if we ever was to take us some prisoners. sure of as any adult and 1 knew for one that and small animals could be seen writhing brother is home from service and 1 am They got some kind of special tribe of I was right about them and that there was under dressmakers' pins from my mother’s home for a few days we seem to have Vietnamese or somethin’ like ‘at over ‘ar 8 and I tell you the natives in this tribe are the East Coast knew those legs . . .’ very skiiled in the art of torture. The Time went on to say (before our sister went United States has got them working for the underground, that is), “Bemadine told the Marines. If I ever caught me a gook 1 would War Council in Flint: ‘Dig it, first they HIGHPOCKETS By JO TRAHERNE killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the turn 'em right over to some of them. They gathered wood and charcoal and repaired same room with them, then they even After a year of teaching around the sure would know how to handle them. the water-pump (in itself almost a perpetual shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! fifteen little country parishes of the diocese They can think up thangs no white man task) and did almost anything else she was Wild!’ Next came a new Weatherman of Patzeuaro in Michoacan, Maria had be­ could dream up in a hundred years.” not clever or strong enough to do herself. slogan; ‘Manson Power - The Year of the come about as Mexican as any American For just the length of a jolt of a second She was as chaste as the nuns who in Fork!’ A four finger salute symbolizing the woman could become in that time. She had my parents, both of them, sat shattered, Mexico wear not habits but a kind of tines in Sharon Tate’s belly briefly replaced a head-start by being small, dark, mystical comprehending the breakthrough of some uniform, and who she saw frequently in the the clenched fist in vogue. and domestic, sensuous and down-to-earth sort of nonretractable ethical horror that at the same time. Her skin was even darker market buying fruits and vegetables. She If anybody wants to know where was I threatened for an instant their regard for now after so much sun and she delighted so was a very good and efficient teacher during the great war, what exactly was 1 their only son. My brother grinned good much in the food and the housekeeping without being especially conscientious doing during the police action, summer of humoredly, having no earthly notion of about it; she loved the children and had a ’71, I will have to reply that I spent the that the transition from the ways of the there being something irrevocable in the air. United States to those of Mexico had been wealth of patience and ingenuity. She was entire season as a compulsive sunbather for extraordinarily smooth, almost completely alone and thirty-two years old. She never an audience of my mother and her friends “LIEUTENANT GALLEY LAST WEEK so. She wrote home jokingly that she was spoke, or even thought, of “going home”. - not the most appreciative imaginable UNDERWENT PSYCHIATRIC EXAMIN­ “completely expatriated", but it was true, She had the status of an “English profes- ATION WHICH SHOWED HIM TO BE audience — but as long as 1 stay among as jokes often are. sora" working for the bishop in the town COMPLETELY NORMAL,”^ my transistor these women not one single draft resister on Maria lived by herself in a little rented and throughout the countryside, a status announced. Well, I mean, isn’t “gang-bang” either coast will ever be able to look up my house not far from the shining shore of the which inhibited the local Caballeros — even the most resoundingly all-American thing dress, baby. As long as 1 remain among region's famous frigid lake. This was the if it did not blind them and numb them to you ever heard of anyway. My nose was them I will not inspire deeds in men great high country of Mexico where the nights the softness and warmth she still had. sticking through a square of the plastic or small. They are old, these women, they were cool and heavily scented with Pon- She never looked back. She went back webbing so I could read Time magazine have sagging breasts, stretch marked derosa pine, while the days were warm and every six months, over the Texas border, in down underneath on the grass. I read about stomachs; but it is to them I address all the as serene and clear as the beautiful waters order to keep her tourist papers in order “The victim, a 5¥t inch asscmble-her- coquetry of my splendid young body — and stayed for a day or two and bought yourself girl model wearing hot pants and a even though they tend to pluck at the of the lake. Like most of the other houses of the new dresses and cosmetics and .shoes. But it permanent look of terror on her pretty tender hairs near my temples. might be said that she had almost forgotten face. ‘1 should look as good,’ the Aurora area, Maria’s had a red tile roof and a patio surrounded by walls topped with pieces of most of what had happened to her before p.r. gal said . . . Over 800,000 sets have she came here, to this lake and to these been sold to date.”^ Then I read that, “The FOOTNOTES: broken bottles embeddwl in the concrete to For reasons of expediency, some of the keep out intruders. The patio had a well, a mountains, to this work and to these people superintendent of West Point told Congress and to this faith. To this shining shore and recently that, ‘young ladies of liberal per­ quotations which have been attributed to pump, flower beds, and, although Maria was Time magazine in the above text actually not Catholic, even a shrine to the Virgin. ringing air, alive with silver-white fish and suasion' may have influenced Military bells. To this place, so far from every other Academy graduates to make allegations of appeared in the publications indicated The house had a kitchen, two bedrooms below as well as in Time: and a living room, and was furnished with place, and yet so close to life and death U.S. atrocities in Vietnam. The general themselves - to this Mexican village of went on to say, ‘In one or two other cases 1. “The Hero Calley,” Time, Vol. 97, No. petates, pottery, scrapes, a guitar from 7 (February 15, 1971), 14. Pachuca, strings of chilis and lacquered fishermen, surrounded still by fields upon we have found the female of the species fields of corn . . . more deadly than the male and have found 2. From a February 16, 1971 radio news gourds, American magazines and Mexican broadcast, New York, New York: furniture, a collection of straw and clay men who fell under the inQuence of young From whence had she come and why? ladies of liberal persuasion.”'^ Then I read Station WOR, 98.7 FM at 6:00 p.m. toys, a transistor radio, English-language 3. Fern Marja Eckmun, “Torture Toys, newspapers and short stories in Spanish, She had come from an Ohio country about Bemadine Dohrn, the Weatherwoman road and this is why . . . who is wanted by the FBI for blow'ing up Sick Scenes? ‘Kids Love It’,” New York candles and lamps and electricity, an inside things. I believe and I was really interested Post, June 11, 1971, p. 4. toilet and water purifier, a crucifix, and all 4. Morton Kondracke, “Atrocity Charges? the powders, paints, lotions and oils women It had all begun so innocently and with in hearing any news of her because Rat no hint of hurt or death. It was late August magazine, a “radical feminist” sheet that 1 Blame Girls: General,” New York Post, everywhere in the world use. June 11, 1971, p. 6. She was moderately poor but content. and hot and bright, a year ago, the first day sometimes read back in New York keeps Maria rode her red garden tractor down the trying to tell me Bemadine Dohm is a 5. Lindsy Van Gelder, “Bemadine Dohrn Her room and board plus $40 per month Is Weighed in the Balance and Found road to do a favor in return for a favor - to liberated woman and keeps calling her “our were provided by the bishop of the diocese Heavy," Esquire, Vol LXXV, No. 4 in exchange for her work — teaching En­ cut the weeds on a new neighbor’s five-acre sister who's gone underground.” “The big homestead in payment for having had the issue that year was Vietnam,” Time said, (April, 1971), 168. glish in the private and public schools. Her 6. Ibid, p. 170. needs were simple; the good cheap Mexican sickle-bar repaired for her free of chaige. “and Bemadine worked hard trying to She was still lonely and free as she took organize law-school students and others to chickens, tortillas, pastries, and the deli­ cious local fish. Her pleasures were moder­ that first ride in the sun. resist the draft. ‘She was an overwhelming The neighbor was not ev e n at home personality,’ says a male associate. ‘First of ate: the good Mexican beer, music and children. She could even afford to have a when she arrived. But she worked all all, there was her sex appeal She had the through the hot afternoon just the same, most amazing legs - every draft resister on handyman, and Cayatano, the old and wise and small one, dug the flower beds and just doing a job . . . with the already 10 bent forward a little. She was about fifty- cabinets went in. And the furnace and ripened milkweed pods bursting in her face color of a honeycomb and green eyes. The five, and always cheerful . . . And Maria pumps and finally the cellar steps. The first and clinging to her clothing, with no hint at kids in the neighborhood called her High- would never forget her hoarse laughter and month of their short life together was thus all of what w'as to come, in a silvery pockets, and the nickname stuck, fitting her clipped, throaty speech - or her bad teeth filled up mostly with the smell of sawdust silkiness and softness . . . perfectly. and dull eyes. and the feel of fresh, soft concrete and the Later she went back in the evening and Her walk was a aoss between a strut Usually they had a couple of beers with sounds of hammers and saws. Their first worked again. But the ground was too and a swagger. She was irresponsible, ma­ “Ma” , under the flaming trees, while High­ days close to one another were thus so busy marshy in other spots and the growth too terialistic, spoiled and superstitious. Big pockets talked automobile parts and and perfect that Maria saw not even the rank, and after her little tractor would work spending and over-sized lamps and clocks neighborhood gossip with the other woman perfection itself - until it was finally and no more she ended up eating pizza and seemed to make her feel superior to other - and Maria finally came to admire only fully upon her almost thirty days later. And drinking beer with the neighbor in the people. But she was frightened to death of Highpockets’ yellow hair, shining in her only that closeness itself was left to com­ backyard until midnight. dogs, storms and omens. personal loneliness and dark like a lamp, plete. So went the first day. She was aggressive and passionate. She altogether as fascinating, soft and warm as The evening Maria helped Highpockets And the second and the third ones were had wit and a vocabulary as colorful and the burning maples. It was on just one of lay the tile on her bathroom walls both almost like it. They continued the battle crude as an alley cat’s - also too much these afternoons that Maria first came to finished and began it all. The night was together now against the water-soaked, un- pride and fear. Maria would remember for ask herself - would the place she was not fresh and cool coming through the opened mowable grasses on the back of the new the rest of her life Highpocket's laughter seeking, inside Highpockets’ arms, be for windows, and scented with the clover- place. and amazing strength - her bigness and her a place of peace or doom? blooms they had cut just that day in a It all began so innocently and wiili no what seemed to Maria to be originality. nearby field. Highpockets came up behjnd hint of hurt or death in it at all. The hot She walked with her hands in her But that day they only slammed the her all at once and gripped her with both August sun and unblurred daylight were pockets most of the time. She looked best doors of the car, blew the horn loud and hands on her shoulders. And Maria tensed shining full upon the beginnings of these in black, wool slacks and a black sweater, long and drove away through the fiery at the touch and Highpockets asked, slowly tW'O. with her fair .skin and golden hair and sultry afternoon before she could think any more and softly, “Are you afraid of me?” Maria brushed the milkweed routinely smile. With her beautiful eyes, green and about it. Maria lay down her tools and tiles and off of herself, not connecting it at all yet swamplike, drawing Maria finally into Yet later in the day Highpockets was walked, without a word or look, out of the with the softness and brightness of cornsilk her . . . strangely quiet, and drove more slowly, house. or golden hair. They did not work all the time. Later which was different too. But in less than a week she was back. The neighborwmman was building a new' they went fishing along the river, although Maria had never known anyone like her Sitting with Highpockets on the living room house. Or rather, just finishing the building Maria was as bad a fisherman as High- in her life. She had never rode in speeding couch by the big new picture-window - of it. The workmen had finished most of pockets was a good one. They took long, cars, nor gone fishing, nor played cards half with Highpockets’ hands in her hair. She the major jobs by the time they met. But fast rides in the car. They went to a country of the night. She had never been so fasci­ tolerated this, and even rested in it, inex­ there were still enough unfinished little jobs auction where Highpockets bought a type­ nated. She had never known so much plicably. left to keep both of them working almost writer (although she could not type at all) seeming security before in her whole life. The house was finished and smelled new constantly together for a whole month - and a television cabinet, which she had For, aU at once, SHE WAS NOT ALONE and empty. It felt strongly unoccupied in enough time for Maria to learn to know this visions of converting into a liquor cabinet. ANYMORE. She was not yet aware of any every room, awaiting only life and love to w'oman and her world intimately. They went to see a fortune-teller who told physical need. Maria, at this point, merely warm it clear through. Maria would remem­ The woman's world was fast and color­ them nothing, but who worried High­ had someone to go to and to be with ber afterwards the beautiful, sanded sur­ ful. Made up of fast automobiles, golden pockets for days, just the same. They everyday, to work and play and joke with, faces of the cupboard doors when they beer and stereophonies. Made up of sweet­ shopped for new records, fancy olives and to be expected and wanted by. walked into the bedroom together. The ness. motor oil and Pepsi Cola. Made up of plaid shoelaces. They went out at midnight So, while the whole countryside was paint on the plaster, as fresh and clean as card games, transistors and pizzas. Made up and bought fried chicken. They ate one glowing and stilled, since autumn had come the sheets on the bed. The way the light of flannel shirts and blue jeans and bravado. night at an Italian restaurant where High­ and the birds had all gone, it inevitably came through the windows in this freshly- Made up of drums, Joni James and Sarah pockets drank eleven Manhattans and came about. At last all Maria had to be created place - and the paper stickers still Vaughn. Made up too of probantine, bella­ stored all the cherries away inside her finally was with her, and miracles of light on the new panes. TTien Highpockets donna, and maalox which the woman fed brassiere. and security were simply wrought. She was looked at her with the look which finally her ulcer on. .Made up of speed, sensuality They often visited a friend of High­ suddenly happy and safe . . . also blind, told her what she really was and wanted, and sanitariness. pockets called “Ma". Usually they found deaf and dumb to the actual source of this and yet left her so helpless to judge and For this woman was possessed of an her heating water for her washing, which thing . . . resist. exaggerated need for eleanliness which kept she did outside over a fire in a big, iron They cut down more weeds together There was a little bright pile of 8-penny the washing machine and taps in the bath­ kettle, in a jungle of old trees and junked and even dug a trench for a tile-line. They nails left in one comer by the carpenters. tub running almost constantly. How she automobiles. She was a widow with eight sweated still in the September air and And there was a hammer with paint on its loved the sheets and shirts and underclothes children, always dressed in a thin cotton cooled out on beer and laughs. Also during handle on the dresser-top. And the bare all to be blindingly white! One of Maria’s housedress, shapeless casuals and a coral- this time Maria began to feel strangely ends of two wires, for the thermostat yet to most persistent memories of their days colored sweater. It was beginning to be cold distracted when she was with this woman, be installed, hung like great, raw nerves out together would alw'ays be of the smell of in late September now, and already her and yet more distracted and somehow of the wall - all these things looked so soap and ammoniated combs, of glistening hands were chapped and sore. All of her restless when she was not. singularly real and sharp to Maria - just washes, shining hair - and emptied cisterns boys' hands were perpetually black with But all the while the house Highpockets before she turned to Highpockets, into the and wells. mechanic’s grease and her little girls were was completing step by step and task by blurt and dark which would be both delight The woman was big - five-foot-ten, two beginning to fill out in the breasts. She task was still the biggest thing to Maria. The to Highpockets and - for a while - to hundred pounds. Very fair, with hair the always walked with her arms folded and windows and floors and cupboards and Maria, too. 12 indestmctible as the tortilla. Or again - from her own house and to Highpockets' stood still before the house that High­ After that Maria went to her regularly, “wear it like a flower behind your ear and and back home again by this light alone. pockets had built. There was a difference in the early mornings. Past the big corn­ toss it to the first love you meet" goes an Autumn - so Tilled with the sound of between them now like the centuries, or a field, which was just outside the picture- old Mexican proverb about life. the bells on the cattle on the surrounding foreign tongue. This night Maria stood thus window, and which had now in October In such a place one may go to extremes farms and the burning of the trees and of in the winter of their separateness, looked turned into a field of fluttering flags. Past through the picture-window from the out­ like the land, contract a permanent and the withered wild asparagus and frost-black­ themselves. powerful faith like that of the Indians Autumn: so bright and shadowed at the side, and saw the picture of a stranger. ened clover along the edges of the road. After this, Maria walked back to the themselves. Past the big elm tree halfway to her house, same time. “Into the hollow of your heart will Maria’s last year in a shower of flaming center of the field and the lantern-light, and the tree filled with so much cool shade and lay down full-length upon the Mexican enter the charmed stick whose bliss is in the so many singing birds all the August-long of leaves, shooting stars and caresses, and the rains” runs the song of blessing chanted security of always being accepted, defended blankets and slept a sleep of exhaustion. their love. Towards the golden square of the over the gentle pulque. Your own heart a and cherished above everyone else . . . After that everything was simple and final picture-window — towards the place on at least. Maria never went back to the house sword shall pierce. But out of it shall run all Highpockets' shoulder, which was her place But the tassels on the corn finally the sorrows of your life to sweetness and turning inevitably stiff and dark. The soft that Highpockets built. - towards the most peace and rest and And a year later she was still deep in forgetfulness, like that which the pulque warmth Maria had ever known in her life. leaves too crisping and finally to powder brings, in its own kind of little dying like ash and becoming part of the woods Mexico. Every morning she let herself into the everyday. kitchen and made them both a pot of hot and lawns and earth . . . The sad face of the burro is still and at How could Maria know that High­ Death is not a kind of dread or flattered tea first, then while the water came to a guest in Mexico. He is not a stranger or even the same time the face of a clown. And you pockets would be able someday suddenly - boil she went and looked at Highpockets as an enemy. No one is surprised at him, or can, if you understand, be as whimsical she slept. It would still not be quite just to give it all up? afraid of him, or even particularly opposed about death as you can be serious. Their experience was so deep and fresh daylight, but she could see the brightness of to him. Rather, he is a kind of play-fellow, You have seen the marks of the rubber- Highpockets’ head on the pillow in any and intense to Maria that it was strong and tire sandals in the soft ground - the same as bright enough to survive almost anything. an everyday companion, almost a lover. light at all, and the dim shape of her under those found on the cheeks of sleepy chil­ But there was a fatal, hidden difference So when the Mexican “Halloween" the covers, so strongly comforting. rolled around, Maria knew what to expect. dren in the mornings? See then too: they This is what Maria had to give: An between them. are the marks of the woven petate, which is Highpockets, too weak to relate to Candy skulls and paper skeletons, little enormous appeal physically. Sheer, sensu­ altars and coffins made out of seeds and love-bed and bier both. ous pleasure. A beautiful body. Waving, anyone permanently, tired easily and You have smelled the acrid, singularly needed above all only someone to baby her: matchboxes. Fireworks and chants. Crosses black hair and brown eyes. A passionate, and candles and visits from one’s relatives sweet smell of tule, the petate reed, a beautiful mouth and thick, soft eyebrows. she could not go on forever pretending to returned from the other world. The “ bread bouquet of earth, corn, chili, and flesh. A degree of primitiveness. Humility and be strong and grown-up enough to take and of the dead’’ set out in little baskets and Death in Mexico is as familiar and as honesty adding up to directness and simpli­ receive another wholly and responsibly — covered with white napkins and flowers. intimate as these - and as beloved and real. city, physically and emotionally. A shade of not just sensually and temporarily . . . Incense and happiness. Faith and longing The Juanitzio Island Vigil of the Night loneliness and bravery. Complete femininity So even sense itself died in her before and picnics in the cemeteries. of the Dead is held in a little cemetery at - passive and yet sensitively responsive. long . . . the foot of the steep cliff on this island in And no wilder winds ever could have Even though Highpockets could not It was the time that the com was gathered in and the glory shone round in the middle of the lake of Patzeuaro. Here blown to sweep Highpockets so wholly to help it, this was undeniably so. Highpockets every face as if reflected off the heaps of the women begin to kneel at the tombs peace. Nothing else, nothing calmer and had used Maria to satisfy a lust in herself. around nightfall and stay near the graves duller, could ever have so completely pre­ When it was finally satisfied, irritability and golden ears. No ghost walked, but the resurrected saints were everywhere. Not the until the midnight procession alight with cipitated her, no matter how briefly, so coldness, guilt and satiety, set into High­ saints of the litanies - but those who had tapers and smoking torches winds its way entirely into ecstacy. pockets like winter . . . down the cobblestoned streets to the village This is what Maria had to give: A little, a By the last week in October it was all gone to God directly from one’s own arms. Now the dead came back for a holiday church. The tombs are draped with wreaths little pleasure. A little time, it was .summer over. of flowers and there is a bowl of fresh food and the weeds were rank with sweetness There came a night when Maria walked and this was not entirely incredible; we are all, according to the Mexicans, closer to one near each cross. Hundreds of lighted candles and flowers. home only just bewildered and exhausted. another in El Señor than we are to our­ stuck in the ground all around flicker and And then all at once the golden leaves, She went into her own house and got shimmer all night long like faUen stars. the color of Highpockets' hair, were falling, out two woolen serapes she had bought selves. A literal Christianity abolishes in Mexico even the loneliness of death. Even All the women dress in black. Children and covering Maria up. once on a vacation to Mexico and a lantern this final separateness melts away under the and dogs sleep in piles everywhere amid the Autumn — always associated with death and went out into the cornfield and sat baskets of food and scent of flowers and and dying, and quite naturally so. down and lit the light and tried to rest and Mexican sun. Like the wax of the thousands of candles being reformed into fresh, lumi­ beeswax. The whole scene is solemn and yet But always associated for Maria from think. ■' relaxed and familial. The incessant hum of The dried up corn leaves rustled every nous bodies at the shrine of the Guadalupe this year in her life on, with Highpockets, prayer biends with the crying of babies and once in a while with a little wind or winter everyday,the dead never really die and never and the year the maples all at once turned the barking of dogs. The women are as rabbits. She .sat with her head resting upon go very far away in this strange land — they the exact color of golden hair, and the happy and busy as if they were .still in their her drawn-up knees and watched the stars are only re-formed too, and burn as pas­ corn-tassels were just as golden and silken own kitchens, as they set meals for the dead in the sky and the automobiles on the road. sionately as ever with all their old desires soft inside the ripened, yellow husks Maria on these graves. Graves covered so thickly broke open. The year the sky was a deeper It was Halloween, the eve of all Saints for favorite songs and foods and loves. The yellow marigold, the Mexican flower of the now with candles and flowers and figures of blue than she had ever known it to be in her day. the still living that one wonders that there is She sat this way for a very long time, dead, is really the color of life — the color life - and was so brilliant with stars that for room enough for a spirit even to turn awhile she regularly found her way both but finally she walked across the field and of corn. And life is as perishable and yetas they saw. They finally had so little to say to was gentle as he set her down on her feel by around. did Maria. Highpockets was like she was in the one another on this night, in any language, her house with a sign of the cross, a bottle When Maria arrived by boat in a crowd simply because it did not need to be said. of pulque and a smile. She went in weakly of other pilgrims at about 11 o’clock, the beginning, strong and bright and warm. She The tiny white fish jumped in the waters, but happily and put the strange ear of corn island was already alive with lights and walked among all the kneeling women and children saying nothing, but looking at covered with flowers now, and the winds down in the hearth with candles and amu­ scurrying figures. She stopped first at the continued to speak as they had for cen­ lets and charcoal - and burned it to a black church and knelt down briefly by the Maria andl smiling, or looking at them and into the lights and smiling again. Maria turies of life-in-death and the quivering with ash. draped coffin in the center aisle just inside desire there must be to the end of all of us the huge, opened front doors - the coffin stood as if transfixed looking at her and this seemed both to amuse and touch High­ until all the lights ate blown out and we ate was covered with corn-stalks. More corn­ wafted, just as in this boat, to another pockets. For she finally came and stood stalks Stood upright all the way up the nave shore, peaceful and quiet as the waters at directly in front of Maria, and Maria heard to the altar. A giant orange candle burned last. at each comer of the coffin. The church her laugh a little soft laugh as she kissed her The children and dogs slept alt together (Jo Traherne writes that she is a was like a marketplace, busy and crowded hair again lightly, and then held Maria s and heavily, in the bottom of the boat. former social worker and journalist. and noisy. But it smelled heavily of an head between her two big hands. She stood Maria slept in the wake of her apparition of "Higljpockets" is a portion o f an admixture of incense and urine and melting perfectly still for a moment, looking out Highpockets in an enormous sudden weari­ unpublished novel about five Ameri­ wax and once outside again Maria was upon the dark flat lake over Maria’s head, ness. Her head was cradled in the lap of an can women in Mexico. She lives in a grateful for the fresh, cool lake-air. before she moved away again into the old woman who was clad from head to foot 10 room house an a 20 acre farm in She pulled the black rebozo she wore crowd of gleaming lights and dark rebozos. in black, and who had hair and eyes as Ohio, with 5 cats. 2 dogs, ¡0 sheep more closely about her and hurried up the How did it happen? Maria thought black as the waters themselves now were. (plus unborn lambs) I donkey and winding, steep streets to the blossoming, suddenly - How did you die? When the boat landed at Patzeuaro with acres o f rabbits as well as sundry glistening cemetery, just as the bell in the Yet, at this moment, Highpockets was a sound like a sigh as its bottom touched miscellaneous wild friends. She speaks village church began to toll heavily and so solid and real that she left the prints of the sandy shore, one of the fishermen o f her farm as "the ecological haven / unrelentingly. She stepped into a field of her black American casuals in the sand and the marks of her fingers on each side of carried Maria to land and the old woman will see that it remains", and o f her flowers and lights and stunning community put a long ear of American corn into her writing in fiction instead o f some - the living and the dead fraternizing with Maria’s face, burning and lingering behind hand. other form because “there is nothing one another - just as if the resurrection had her. Maybe it was “only physical”, as I came No one said anything. in the clinic or the church to compare already occurred an hour ago. It was getting daylight slowly. Maria with what is simply in the body and The little cemetery was filled with the to think, Maria finally admitted to herself, would remember forever - the fisherman heart”.) sound of chanted prayer. At the same time wonderingly, but even that can be as fireworks began to go off in the village tremendous as the mountains around here, square down below. The chanted prayer as deep as the waters and as all-enveloping, had an eternal, haunting, and yet new as green and gold as lakes and seed. After What’s Underground, Secret, quality about it, as all half-Indian, half- all, as engrossing as planting or reaping - Christian worship has, as if the barbaric and and as completely enclosing as an embrace Subversive, & On the Best Seller List? the divine come completely together in the or drowning, and as final as death. 1 force and flare of the fireworks and chants remember your eyes and your hair, Maria By NILA BOWMAN McCORMACK which always accompany such services - thought - Comsilk in a swamp, cool acters Helene and Shelley than Germaine resulting in an entirely fresh liturgy as sun-ripened and dark - your love and On March 20, 1972, Ttme magazine put Greer has ever made in her life. Wonderland human as it is supernatural and as magical lovelessness. Your faith and your fear - the out an issue called “The American nets spread bravely and beautifully here, Woman,” which proved to be a progress is the best feminist book I have yet read. If and immediate as it is everlasting. I were in a position of having to explain or Maria stood perfectly still in the center like butterfly wings, and the final agony of report on the feminist movement. Each of the little white fish in the same nets all Time's usual subheads - “Art,” “Business,” convince anyone of feminism and 1 were of the cemetery and celebration. only allowed one book with which to do it, along the shining shore. “Religion,” etc. - listed news of women in And then all at once in the golden I would choose Wonderland. Most “femin­ candlelight - she saw the golden hair again Highpockets finally swaggered or strut­ each area. The “Books” section included a ist” books make me angry, make me want at last. Saw it everywhere, all around her, ted up to a flowery cross and picked one of small photograph of all well known con­ to say, “Come on, why didn’t you dare tell where Highpockets walked once more. its blossoms, winked, and hid it in her temporary female writers whose works can the whole thing; why won’t you go all the Highpockets in her black sweater and sweater. Maria saw her drinking pulque and be construed to have a feminist stance. The way,” ending by saying, “You understand slacks, her head shining as stunningly as it stealing the bread of the offerings - it was listing seemed to me complete for all nothing, after all, traitorcss, why did you her alright. And then Highpockets was gone women writers at the particular level of au always had. Highpockets - carrying a beau­ write this lie,” (a feeling I did not have after as quickly as she had come. courant fame Time's editors seemed to have tiful, long ear of American corn in one hand Play It /4s It Lays or Such Good Friends, by - drawing Maria slowly into her again, as That was the last thing Maria remem­ settled upon. Except for one name. I find the way - I recommend them both highly). bered on the Island of Juanitzio. the omission of Joyce Carol Oates striking she had used to do, with her green, swamp­ The extraordinary thing about Wonder­ The Uttle winged boat came and brought since I found Wonderland, currently in hard like eyes. land's author is that in a few reviews and her back to Patzeuaro and her compadres back on the best seller list, just as descrip­ A little wind blew off of the cold water interviews with her that I have read, she has took care of her with a faith and under­ tive of women’s quietly desperate situations periodically and made all the candlelight not been considered feminist. 1 think I standing she could have earned only as Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays or Lois quiver. And this passed through Maria each understand why. She is just too subtle, too through serving them in ways and manners Gould's Such Good Friends. To my mind, time too, like a tremble of desire. But then, exacting, for such gross Madison Avenue quite beyond anything physical and sensual. Joyce Carol Oates makes in Wonderland far each time also, as the flames of all the categorizations. But her relentless subtlety candles settled back into stillness again, so She believed as they believed. She saw as more militant statements through the char- 16 contemporary American woman. It doesn’t them. New York: Vanguard Press, 1969. Another of Joyce Carol Oates’ novels, only serves to make her all that much more matter, just read what she writes. The Wheel o f Love. New York: Vanguard seditious. 1 may be quite wrong, but 1 them, also has some tremendous portraits Press, 1970. of trapped women — Loretta and her believe Joyce Carol Oates has even managed Books Reviewed: them and The Wheel o f Love arc also to escape being asked what by now has daughter, Maureen, both so different in Wonderland. New York: 'Vanguard Press, available in paperback (Fawcett Crest their conclusions but both so understand­ become one of the world’s most tiresome 1971. Editions). journalistic queries, that dreary unto death, able. them also has a Lesbian character, “Uh, how do you feel about Women’s Betty - Maureen’s sister - who is not a Lib?" 1 do believe that question has by now major character but is a good, accurate, been asked every woman well known for sociologically sound description of the his­ anything from adultery with high govern­ tory of the lumpen-proletariat- 3ilip L adies of Llaagollea little-city-mutt type of Lesbian. She is a ment officials to her cake recipes. ARE-REVIEW Perhaps Wonderland escapes notice be­ juvenile delinquent circa late 1950 s. She cause its protagonist is a man. Oates seems does not turn out any less successfully than (Editor's Note: The Decemberl7i- dearment cultivated, especially by women, as at home telling us the intimate thoughts the other characters, but Oates never treats January!72 issue o f THE LADDER and often surrounded by all the outward of a man as a woman. Part of her genius is any of her characters with crudity of contained a review o f Elizabeth manifestations of affection that are now no her ability to comprehend absolutely the understanding. Maureen goes from an early Mayor's hook .on the Ladies. A reader longer “possible outside an avowedly motives of almost any other human being bout with prostitution to finally, ten years has supplied this very different view o f lesbian connection.” (at p. 11). There is who may bear no immediate resemblance to later, at age 25, escape into a nice, normal, the same book which we feel is impor­ much more in her book in this strain. The herself in background, age, race, occupa­ quiet, married life. She yearns for stability tant enough to share with all o f you.) reader has the distinct impression that Ms. tion, religion, intelligence, or sex. She can so much that love seems a frivolous luxury Mavor equates “a Lesbian connection” reconstruct the formation of any human that she doesn’t even consider. T he book, THE LADIES OF solely and pejoratively with ephemeral, personality. If she were to write of the The Wheel o f Love is an excellent LLANGOLLEN, by Elizabeth Mavor, purely physical erotic encounters between collection of short stories for readers who anxieties of a Thirteenth Century Hindu. 1 London, Michael Joseph, 1971, merely by women. would like to sample Oates’ abilities before would not be surprised or incredulous. Only reason of its subject, should not be over­ This would be the same as saying that all perhaps going on with her novels. 1 would halfway through Wonderland do we meet looked. The Ladies of Llangollen were, of “love affairs”, between any two partners, suggest starting with “Where Are You Helene, Dr. Jesse’s wife and then his course, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, are merely casual sexual encounters. How­ daughter, Shelley. Going, Where Have You Been?” This story two Anglo-Irish women who at the end of ever, Ms. Mavor also declares that (at p. 10), concerns an All-American McDonald’s When Helene is first pregnant as a young the 18th Century, in spite of much op­ “In a word, the two women’s relationship intern’s wife, Oates writes an account of a Drive-In teenager, Connie, whose dreaming position from their families, escaped from was what we in modern times would adolescent faith in pop-tune lyric love songs visit to the gynecologist so excruciating, so the tutelage that was the common lot of consider a marriage.” Now, does Ms. Mavor tediously, minutely, gruesomely realistic has lured her totally unprepared into a women of their class and succeeded in mean that, although the Ladies were not nightmare. This story is a truly contemp­ that it is guaranteed to spiritually castrate, establishing their own independent house­ Lesbians, they were “married”, i.e., that orary horror story, realistic and allegorical for at least a month, any woman who reads hold in Wales, in which they lived in theirs was a marriage in which there was no it. Years later Helene becomes a woman of at once. conjugal felicity for fifty years. physical consummation? Such marriages, The superficial circumstances of Joyce 40, then 45, no more, no less, just a woman But the first question that arose in my though they are known to exist between of 45, hated by the young for that and that Carol Oates’ life - she is an Associate mind when I read it was. Why did Ms. men and women, are not usually considered Professor of English at the University of alone. Realizing she is hated, Helene jolts Mavor choose to write it? It is a fine job of the ideal nor the most likely to support the Windsor, Ontario, born in 1938 and raised from a lifetime of passivity long enough to research, some of it in original material. The happiness of the couples involved. Why this strike a young woman at an anti-war in the country outside Lockport, New characterization (as the characters present should be insisted upon as having been the York, married to another professor — offer demonstration. It is one brief action, but it themselves to this author’s view) is pain­ case with the Ladies is not clear to me. is the assertion, the single assertion, of her no indication of a worldly experience so staking. There is much in it of great interest Presumably it is done for the sake of vast as to have enabled her to have written life. to anyone who enjoys the social history of “rehabilitating” the Ladies’ reputations - six novels - all of which have received high Her daughter Shelley, embodies the new the period. But the book has a fatal flaw - rather late in the day, one would think. literary acclaim. She is as incredibly prolific kind of odyssey available to the present a flaw that derives from the ambivalence in The tlaw in Ms. Mavor’s book lies as she is excellent. But then, whenever did generation of women as the alternate cul­ the author's mind concerning the nature of chiefly in the fact that she is not outspoken we get the idea that to be a great writer you ture would have it. A dream of freedom the relationship between the Ladies. in this matter, which is central to her, have to have lived some kind of out-of-the- that overdoses at twenty-eight, like Janis M.S. Mavor subtitles her biography “A theme. She skirts the issue constantly, she mainstream existence and hitchhiked a lot a Joplin, of the rock culture, Diana Oughton Study in Romantic Friendship" and it approaches it as closely as may be, but sh6| la Kerouac and Hesse, or have spent a great of the revolutionary culture, or Edie Sedge- becomes apparent at once that it is her never says it in so many words, not even in deal of time drinking in Irish pubs like wick of the pop culture. (In case you don’t intention to “rescue” the Ladies from the the chapter in which she discusses at length Brendan Behan or at least pretending to be remember, ¿die was Andy Warhol’s 1967 imputation of having been Lesbians. She the attack on the Ladies as Lesbians pub­ a brawling Irishman like Norman Mailer, Girl of the Year underground superstar.) goes to considerable length in her Intro­ lished in their lifetime. In support of her instead of the nice little Jewish boy he is. Shelley is a run-away with a Charles Manson duction to present the argument that argument concerning this as the epitome of 1 can’t call Joyce Carol Oates a feminist, type boyfriend, a “sensitive” young guru “romantic friendships” were a fonn of the “romantic friendship” she cites Eleanor I suppose, since I don’t know if she calls who trains her to “erase,” humiliate, and platonic devotion common among women Butler’s alarm over this attack. Nothing in herself one. She might deny the whole finally obliterate herself. Shelley’s boy­ of the period, which nowadays are mis­ what Eleanor Butler said would be taken by thing, 1 don’t know. But she is whatever friend 1 find archetypal of the kind of understood since they were wrapped in the any woman with experience in trying to creature it is who can be said to be sensitive young man the alternate culture excessively sentimental language of en­ build her life with another woman as has spawned. ultimately sensitive to the condition of the anything but self-defense. Eleanor Butler of Eleanor's journal. bed. The union of Sarah Ponsonby with her private life together, their intimate was well aw'are of the problems she and Ms. Mavor concludes her book with a beloved endured for nearly fifty years association, lasted for fifty years without a Sarah Ponsonby confronted. The two of discussion of the material that has been without a cloud; it would seem that they cloud. And on the record, even as presented them had defied their families, and had fled published on the Ladies since their death. knew how to create a peaceable Eden on by Ms. Mavor and less sympathetic biogra- the edge of the world.” (•) from the threat of marriage or relegation to She seems to take particular exception to pher.s, that was the fact. a convent in order to stay together and this Dr. Mary Gordon’s Chase o f the Wild Mme. de Beauvoir obviously has no difficulty in recognizing the real nature of in face of the fact that neither of them had Goose, published in 1931 by Leonard and anything to live on beyond family ■Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press. Dr. Gordon, the relationship between the Ladies, since she has no difficulty in grasping the fact allowances and governmental pensions. It she feels, interpreted the Ladies’ relation­ really defies one's powers of belief that a ship in the light of her own predilections. that a “ Lesbian connection" can have all *The quotation from Mme. de Beauvoir is relationship that w'as merely a “romantic This reader, however, feels that, in spite of the attributes of a marriage, that a devoted taken from the 1949 edition Gallimard o f friendship" would have steeled two women reservations about the supernatural love between two women can encompass a Le Deuxième Sexe, vol. II, p. 188: of cultivation and sensitive feeling to with­ phenomenon described there - Dr. sexual relationship as well as all the other ". . .entre femmes, la tendresse charnelle stand the varied assaults that were made on Gordon's good faith cannot be questioned elements Ms. Mavor cites as the ingredients est plus égalé, plus continue; elles ne sont them. - and the shortcomings of her style, the of a “romantic friendship.' When she pas emporte'es dans de frénétiques extases, .Ms. Mavor also discusses the entries in earlier book gives a far more convincing speaks of the Ladies’ union lasting for fifty mais elles ne retombent jamais dans une Eleanor Butler's journal in regard to what picture of the Ladies and their marriage. years without a cloud she is not referring to indifference hostile: se voir, se toucher, light they may throw on the intimate side The portrait there is not as studied, it is not their practical difficulties, their struggles to c'est un tranquille plaisir que prolonge en of her life with Sarah Ponsonby. Again Ms. encased in such an admirably complete achieve a place for themselves together, sourdine celui du lit. L'union de Sarah Mavor is not forthright in what .she says, background drop of the period, but the their on-the-whole-succcssful effort to win Ponsonby avec sa bien-aime'e dura pendant but she seems to imply that, although women themselves are far more vividly acceptance for their marriage in the eyes of pris de cinquante ans sans un nuage; il Eleanor Bullcr spoke at length and in great realized and the strength of their devotion their world, their anxieties about money. semble qu’elles aient su se créer en marge detail (which she quotes) of her own less equivocally portrayed. What Mme. de Beauvoir means is that their du monde un paisible eden. " physical ailments and Sarah's tender care of 1 have one more cavil with Ms. Mayor’s her, she makes no reference to erotic book. This is a minor point, but since it passages between them and therefore it may bears directly on my main complaint, I shall be deduced that there were none. This mention it. Ms. Mavor refers (at p. 202) to seems hardly a justifiable as.sumption. Even Simone de Beauvoir's allusion to the Ladies in their intimate journals people of in her book, TTte Second Sex. She takes Eleanor's and Sarah's background did not exception to Mme. (the Erench usually ■ H Â D relate such details. One may cite Boswell’s accord her the Mme. in place of Mile, as a By BEVERLY LYNCH candid accounts of his encounters with mark of respect for her standing as a whores in the streets of London or Pepys' woman of letters) de Beauvoir's remark, It was worst when he was on top of her herself go, maybe damage him for good, descriptions of lying late abed another hour “The union of Sarah Ponsonby and her like this, u.sing her for his own pleasure and shut on him like a cold iron clamp, rip him to “sport" with his wife. But these were woman companion lasted for almost fifty not just to make money. She supposed that at his greatest moment as he seemed to be men, with the freedom of men in licentious years without a cloud," saying that it is was because it hurt most to be doing ripping her, “Relax, baby, I can’t make it society and Pepys, furthermore, wrote his “incongruous" that such a vague phrase something that once meant he loved her with you so tight," he urged hurriedly. She journal in a cipher that was not broken till appears in “a treatise that pretended to be and now put him in the same category as let his old voice, the same voice she had years after his death. No lady, in an age so scientifically specific,” and that life, for the other pigs who just wanted to move worshipped, work on her. The anger cooled when it w'as not admitted that respectable the Ladies, as for anyone else, was never around, heavily, using her like a machine to and she began to move as she should. “Ahh, women received any pleasure from sex, “without a cloud." In the first place I feel good. As long as she could keep chick,” he breathed finally, heaving one last would refer to such things. It really is too should like to point out that Mme. de thinking about it she almost blocked out his time before rolling over and shading his much to expect that Eleanor would speak Beauvoir’s French is full of such felicities of physical presence, but it was harder this eyes from the sunlight she had been staring of “sporting" in bed with Sarah, or even phrase as “without a cloud" and they in no time. She had not expected him and he had into; make a far more oblique comment to that way detract from the scientific exactness of given her no time to prepare her body for “Don’t I turn you on no more. Dot? effect. Ms. Mavor does conclude her dis­ her statements. In the second place Ms. his assault. She was afraid he would know Don’t you love me, babe?" cussion of this point (at p. 105) with the Mavor has taken the statement out of this time that he was no good for her “I just don’t feel so good today, Pete," remark: “ Psychologically the character of context. In this passage Mme. de Beauvoir is anymore. That he was just another trick for she managed to mutter through her their relationship seems clear, but tech­ speaking of the similarities and dis­ her, that he would throw her out. As long swallowed frustration. nically an enquiry must be inconclusive. similarities between unions of men with as she could just keep thinking so the hate “Hey, hon, that’s okay. 1 wish you Certainly love speaks in these entries," women and of women with women. She didn't start the hurt and anger which would could take a day off, but we didn’t make There again is Ms. .Mayor's ambiguity: says (my translation): “. . . between clamp her shut, make her body say what much this week and we got to put bread “ technically". By this 1 presume she means women, carnal love is more equal, more she would not. Oh, if she could just hurt away so we can get out of this.’ And she that the question of a physical relationship continuous; they are not carried away by him like thaf though. The rage was flowing must again pretend she did not know she between the Ladies - or, to put it more phrenetic ecstasy, but they never fall back through her as his breath came sharper, wasn’t the only woman he had working, bluntly, whether the Ladies' marriage in­ into a hostile indifference; they look at one rasping against her hair shining in the that this was not all to build their life cluded the enjoyment of sex together, in another, they touch one another, with a morning sun that streamed, hot, through a together while he looked for a job. She the goose-down warmth of their celebrated tranquil sort of pleasure which prolongs in a large tear in the green shade. That heat knew because an old John once said to her. double bed, cannot be answered by means muted way the pleasure they experienced in made her sweat and sicken. She could let “You’re just about his best, honey. Strap­ 20 ping young Irish like yourself. Just ripe. together. They stayed until the two Coast and how they’d have enough money aside down at the men on the street unloading Some of the others, they’re over the hill, on Guard trainees, shining in their whites, to take a vacation before he started work­ trucks, standing in the doorways of their dope, look all beat.” Her anger had built came to lead them back to their rooms for ing. She just lay there. stores. Gradually, thought came back to from that. Or possibly even from before ten dollars apiece. Since then, Madeline had “Talk to me, Dottie, tell me what’s the Dottie. She was hardly concerned with that. Her mords had not bothered her visited at least twice a week, but they had matter, we'll be out of this soon.” what had just happened. He would still when he had first suggested it - it was a not gone out again, reluctant to see each “ Pimp,” she whispered, screaming in her make it possible for her to earn money if good way to make bread when there was no other on sailors’ arms being led to their heart. she wanted to. It was the other things she other way. She earned more than waitres- greatest commonality and away from the “What?” he commanded, sifting up. had said - about hating men - that sing, twice as much, and, at first, it didn't comfort of each other. “ Pimp. Pig. Prick. Lousy hippy bastard concerned her. What did 1 say, she take any time at all. Now, though, she slept Pete was asleep, snoring, his fly still liar. You’re no flower child,” she continued wondered? That all women are prostitutes. until two or three in the afternoon to open, pants slightly down. Dottie hated the in the same enraged whisper, “you’re no All men pimps or Johns. My mother. My escape from the heat and the hate she had sight of him, but feared to cover him with a beautiful person. You’re shit. I wouldn’t father. I didn’t want to be like mama. Pete for what she was doing and for Pete, spent a blanket and wake him. She thought, even walk on you.” didn’t treat me like dad did mama, so I couple of hours getting ready and the rest instead, of the picture she and Madeline His face was contorted, full of con­ wanted Pete. But they’re the same. Mama of the time she did not have the strength to must make together. She herself was short, tempt, but he let her talk. would kill me for doing this, but she's the do anything, shop, go out for a good meal, with long wavy reddish-brown hair and was “I know, Pete, I know about your other same as me. Only he can’t just leave her. He spend some time with her friend Madeline, still, she did not know why, red-cheeked girls. I know you pulled the same shit on doesn’t want anybody but him screwing Just too down, she would expalin when and flushed with her new sexuality and them. I know what 1 am to you. I wish I her. If he had a bunch of women like Pete 1 Madeline chided her for not returning visits, what was left of her freedom. She was could kill you, I hate your stinking male bet he would do the same thing. realizing as she said it the danger of that, of strong looking in a hefty way. Built to pick body and all the cunt-hungry pigs you send Then Pete said - I guess he said I'm getting so tired of down that she would potatoes she sometimes mused, after the up here. I hate every man who gets off on queer because I think like this. That’s resort to anything to get up. The high she romance of youth, had she been in Ireland, fucking women and I always did, always supposed to freak me out. Her mind was needed would only come from a drug had married her to some handsome Irish will. You made it pretty for a while. Even if getting fuzzy. She strained to understand. strong enough to obliterate reality. That, boy destined to drink too much. Madeline we’d just been together and had everything Anyway, I stood up for myself. She felt she knew, would be the end of her. As long was taller, too thin, with dark, shorter hair you said we would, it wouldn't be pretty. It good, better than her silence had made her as she did not shoot up there was some far and Mediterranean eyes - sexy, the men would be just like ray father pinching my feel. Excited. Even knowing she had to off hope that someone, something would called them. But she was fifteen and not mother’s ass and I’d have to pretend like figure out more she could not. She had come and pull her out of this. That Pete, quite what a woman should look like. She the mother, that it was fun. Maybe there’s thought too much. maybe, would come to his senses or get a was also paler, less fresh looking than something wrong with me that sex with you Out in the hall she stepped over the job so they could live together, so their love Dottie, having started with her pimp at is lousy, maybe there’s something wrong ripped linoleum and ran up a flight of steps could be like it used to be when she left fourteen after running from New York. She with me that 1 can’t even start to get turned to Madeline’s room. home for him five months before and they always thanked her lucky stars that she’d on by you any more. But I think it’s just “Dottie, what happened?” hid, she thought, because she was sixteen had the sense to get out of New York where hate, cause you all sit on women, every last “ I told off Pete.” and he twenty-three, from the pursuing it was worse, she said. At least she was still pig one of you, you walk all over us. Don’t “Oh, Dot, did he walk out on you? police. But even then, she supposed, when alive. Madeline was really nice, Dottie tell me prostituting blew my mind, 1 know Listen, man, maybe my . . .” he went out drinking he must have been thought. Not bitchy like the girls she had I'd be a prostitute even if I was just with “No, no. It’s okay. I just got to think checking on his other women, collecting grown up with in Providence. And then, you cause I would have seen through you about it all and I need help.” She explained bread, not winning it at pool, like he said. such a relief after being with men all the sooner or later anyhow. You’d say it what she had been thinking, watching “Why don't we leave this?” she'd asked time for so long. As nice as Pete jn the different. You’d say marriage blew my Madeline's face brighten all the whOc. Madeline when they first met in the hallway beginning, only it was real, she did not want mind. Or kids. But it's you. “Dottie, Dottie, that’s what I've been bathroom, where Dottie had run when she anything but Dottie from Dottie. She ran They faced each other on the edge of trying to figure out, too. Like, how come heard someone crying in pain. Madeline was her hand over Pete's tangled long hair, the bed. Pete smiled. my sister thinks she’s better off than me, half-collapsed on the toilet in the peeling thinking of Madeline. “Okay, Dot, you got it all out. But with five kids already and her man's green bathroom, leaning against the dirt- Pete stirred, coughed and woke to turn remember. I'm still your meal ticket. Ain't stepping out on her. My mother that almost smeared sink. Madeline was letting the last to Dottie once more. He started to kiss her, nothing else you can do, jail-bait, except died aftet Pa hit her and she fell down the of her aborted child run out of her body but suddenly his frizzy beard, his hot male run home to mommy and daddy. You stairs and the cops took his side and said it into the blood-clot filled toilet water. breath, his wire-rimmed glasses always stupid chicks can’t get yourselves together was an accident. Even my other sister who's “ Where should we go?” Madeline had cutting into her because he did not give her enough even to get fake I..D. But don’t working her ass off in a factory so she can answered before another horrible groan tore time to take them off as he used to, worry, babe. Daddy'll take care of you. I’ll wait to find the right man.” out of her. Neither had an answer. The next revolted her. She pushed at him, feebly, give you a little hint. If you want good sex, “ Yeah, that’s the same kind of thing. week they had walked for a while at then became frightened, hoping he had not sounds to me like you better find a girl But what do we do about it?” twilight, to get out of their day-baked noticed. friend.” “I don’t know, Dottie, but it seems like rooms, into the cooling New London streets “What the fuck's the matter with you, Pete had dressed as he was talking and we can’t do anything while we're working and down by the docks. Gulls sang around chick?” But hadn’t he rejected her, she when he was finished, left Dottie put on for them.” them and Madeline, still wrecked by her thought, in a way a hundred times worse? jeans and a jeney, then went to the “You know, one thing Pete said could abortion, had leaned against Dottie sitting She could not lie again, just put an arm paint-sp(^t)ed mirror on the dresser to brush help us. He said that women can’t get at the edge of a pier. They watched little across her eyes and waited. Nor could she her hair. She looked at the woman in the themselves together enough to even make kids fish futilely for pollution-sick fish, but play the game when he began to talk about glass, at her set mouth and determined eyes. fake I.D.'s. Maybe we can do something if it was beautiful, cool and close here his college degree and a job he had lined up She walked to the window and looked (Continued on Page 34) a violent revulsion against heterosexual re­ which rests on the brink of pornography to their intimacy an element of seriousness in lationships and display a super-virility cal­ J o u r n e L j Ç in A vi selections which might be considered too conversation, as one woman expostulates culated to humiliate their indolent con­ ambiguous to be called homosexual at all. with the other. temporaries, but who also reveal Lesbian By SARAH WHITWORTH But here we are faced with the problem of But, as previously stated. The Other tendencies which were, at least, latent. It visual inference where the meaning of a Face of Love also contains many Lesbian THE OTHER FACE OF LOVE, by foreshadows the kind of liaison or marriage painting rests finally in the mind of the works which do not rely on inference but Raymond de Becker, Grove Press Inc., New in which the man, dominated by the viewer. Since Lesbianism is not solely a are quite explicit sexually. A group of these York, 1969, ($10.00, 209 pp). woman, prefers practices such as fellatio, matter of sexuality, it should not be are prints from Japan and China whose cunnilingus, or coitus per annum to the necessary to depict a sexual union in order artists have for many centuries delighted in The Other Face o f Love by Raymond usual sexual relationships. Lastly, it ex­ to depict a Lesbian union. Even if a work of drawing the gamut of sexual possiblities in dc Becker contains 175 illustrations iiv plains to some extent the criminality which art is not explicit or titled in some way to private editions of prints. These prints, of eluding sculpture, prints, paintings, certain psychiatrists believe they have noted give the necessary clue, the idea of a course, are not usually reproduced in the drawings and photographs that depict or as a frequent factor in female homo­ complete relationship between two women art textbooks but when they are included, allude to the homosexual theme. Of these, sexuality." can be implied. the Lesbian theme must be considered more 62 concern themselves with women. Never­ This statement, as well as many others There are a number of such works ■prevalent in Eastern art than is usually theless, this is not a book on gay art. The in the book could be criticized almost word reproduced in the Other Face o f Love supposed. text is a socio-political account of homo­ by word from the standpoints of drawing including drawings by Mariette Lydis (illus­ The Indian works of art reproduced are sexuality from ancient Mesopotamia an illogical conclusion from the beginning tration for Les Chansons de Bilitisj, Maillol far more subtle. The Indian print of Women through contem porary psychological premise, the use of proof by psychiatric (illustration for Guide to Frolicking) or the Embracing shows two clothed women with attitudes and legal conditions. However, it prejudice, insufficient data, and most im­ Dance at Moulin Rouge by Toulouse- legs intertwined on a bed. There arc several is not only predominantly concerned with portant, its greatest inaccuracy lies in its Lautrec. There is also a small collection of other paintings of harem women who are male homosexuality but is surprisingly definition of Lesbianism as an act of sex delightful photographs from films including seen together as friends: The Women (since its viewpoint is entirely supportive of rather than an act of love. And yet, even Lesbian scenes. Especially charming is a still Friends o f Ceylon, circa 1760, The Women male homosexuality) derogatory of Les­ though the text is at times infuriating and from the film. La Garçonne, by Jacquiline Friends o f Ajanta and the relief sculpture. bianism in several notations. for the Lesbian generally disappointing. The Audey showing two women dancingi who The Women Friends o f Regram. As can be The following quote is sufficient to Other Face o f Love does function as one of are so obviously enjoying each other that .seen from the Friends o f Begram relief, explain the tone of the book in regard to the few collections of homosexual art that one only doubts whether it is a photograph little more than an affectionate friendship is Lesbianism. “The sadistic aggression of the can be purchased in book form and for this of a real situation or a dramatized one. indicated in these works entitled “Women Amazons foreshadows that of the warlike reason does have a unique value for its Justice and Peace, reproduced here, is Friends”. However, according to the text of heroines of later ages who, wearing man’s reproductions alone. another illustration in this book which does The Other Pace o f Love, there is documen­ dress like Joan of Arc, Mathilda of Tuscany, The Lesbian works of art chosen for not indulge in pure sexuality but which tation for the existence of Lesbianism in Jeanne de Montfort, and many others, show illustration range from a Japanese print nevertheless points to a more complete the harems of India. The author states that portrayal of the physical and emotional Lesbianism is described in the Kama Sutra responsiveness between women. Foremost, and that “there is no shortage of carvings the painting is, of course, an allegory of the and ancient vases, some of which are in the virtues of justice and peace. But in addition, Berlin Alte Museum, which show women there is an implication of sensual feeling by carrying out various sexual practices which an intimate relationship between the between themselves . . . There are ap­ two women may certainly be inferred. The parently no fewer than five words in idea of art for art's sake had not been Hindustani for describing a Lesbian. At the scholastically conceived in the 16th century same time Havelock Ellis has pointed out when this work was painted; artists were that the Hindu poets have described usually required by commission to paint Sapphism with complete freedom and in religious or mythological conceptions. How­ the crudist manner.” This being true. Two ever, the personification of these moral Women Friends o f Begram may well depict messages was often chosen to cloak a freer a Lesbian relationship of two harem expression of sensual and sexual feeling women. At any rate, the jauntincss and than would otherwise have been allowed. openness of affection seen here is rare in Further examination of the background Western art and quite satisfying in itself. of the painting reveals the cupid on the left The contemporary works reproduced and the dove in a tranquil scene on the right are divided in half between those that are which are surely designed to symbolize simply commercial book illustrations evi­ justice and peace but may also be employed dently drawn for purposes of sensationalism as signs of love. As well as these symbolic and those that are from the hands of serious references there are also unmistakable indi­ artists. Of the latter, there are included cations of intimacy such as the closeness of paintings or drawings by Gustave Klint, their bared breasts, the gesture of the hands Edvard Munch, Jules Pascin (who is well Justice and Peace. Flemish School. Sixteenth century. Musee Thomas- and the touching of the lower parts of their known for his Lesbian themes), Albert Dobree et Musée Archéologique, Nantes, France. bodies. The position of the faces adds to MarqueL Leonore Fini and a rare find of two women kissing by Pierre Bonnard, search in this field knows the difficulty iliustrated here. There is also a collection of encountered in uncovering reproductions of early 20th century photographs of Lesbian homosexual art though a great deal does in encounters which are perhaps notable for fact exist Any conspiracy of silence is the time in which they were produced but designed to make the outsider feel alone in are much less inventive in terms of the art his or her difference so that out of loneli­ of photography per se. ness the ostracized person will deny indi­ Looking over the full range of illustra­ viduality and rejoin the fold. But through­ tions in this book, the conclusion that one out history, the visual arts have not ex­ arrives at is the realization of the extent to cluded Lesbianism or male homosexuality which works of art concerning both as subject matter and The Other Face o f Lesbianism and male homosexuality have Love attempts in this respect to break been excluded from the general art texts or through the silence so that we may all speak monographs. Anyone who has done re­ aloud.

The Women Friends of Begram. Panel from the ivory chest of an Indian Pierre Bonnard. Lithograph. Bibliothèque Nationale, Reserve, Paris. princess, ^atavahana work. Second century A.D. Musee Guimet, Paris. much of Margaret herself. Below is one of nymph-like form, and to fill her to glowing its stanzas. with her own lyric fire”. If all that was A LIFE OF ANGELS. The mystic flower read visible, to a man, one can imagine the.actual in thy soul-filled eye intensity of the relationship. To its life’s question Yet she still dealt almost instinctively, By LYNN FLOOD Margaret Fuller’s World the desired reply. unconsciously, with her desires. Her re­ But came no nearer. lationships and *'eelings were so obvious and On thy gentle breast Early in life Margaret Fuller was early childhood through an incident which naturally indulged that Margaret did not It hoped to find the haven of its rest; awakened to her unusual place in a world she deemed sufficiently important to come to terms with them, to rationally where women were accustomed to stifle herself that she included it later in an But in cold night, name them for what they were, or to hurried afar from thee. their own minds and identities. Margaret autobiographical sketch. This was the death discover a name for herself. While reading was not one of those women, because of of her younger sister. She wrote, “She who It closed its once Balzac’s LE LIVRE MYSTIQUE she fold half-smiling destiny. her father's insistence on a strict and broad would have been the companion of my life Emerson she identified with a character education for both his sons and his was severed from me, and I was left alone. A Miss Martineau entered Margaret’s life who “exerts alternately a masculine and a daughter. She grew up in the early nine­ This has made a vast difference in my lot. in this period too. She was the object of feminine influence on the characters”. teenth century with her intelligence de­ Her character . . . would have been soft, Margaret’s more mature love. She found in Emerson continued, assuring us, “Of all this veloped in the same way as that of the graceful and lively . . .” Through the rest Miss Martineau the “vigorous reasoning nocturnal element in her nature she was brightest young men around her. While she of Margaret’s life she remarks on these powers, invention, clear views of her very conscious . . . .” She once wrote talked with these boys and later men, grew qualities in o(her women. She seems, in objects” which she sought in a woman. about her awareness of her dual nature, with them and was a part of the intellectual fact, to be seeking them. Margaret said she wanted an equal, not a damning "this tremendous repression of an communities of Boston and New York, It was in the “first angel” of Margaret’s student or a worshipping young girl, but a existence half unfolded . . . .” She Margaret never forgot her sex. Probably she life that she found what she had been woman of intellectual strength to match her accepted male comment that her mind was was not allowed to do so. In the male seeking for the first time after losing her own in a world where only men seemed to a “masculine” one, not courageous enough Harvard community of her late teens and sister. A little older by then, she was have developed that strength. Despite their of intellect to recognize that she had merely early twenties, as well as in precocious attracted to a woman yet older than herself, intellectual appeal she had no interest in been allow'ed to grow more than her sisters. youth when she talked with great men in visiting from England and “was arrested by involvement with men. “What I want”, This is why the men who wrote about her her home, she was the only woman match­ a face most fair, and well known as it Margaret wrote to a man, “the word I crave, had to find redeeming qualities in her like ing wits with men and surpassing the seemed at first glance - for surely I had I do not expect to hear from the lips of “a woman’s appreciation of the beautiful in thinking of many of them. This led her met her before and waited for her long. . . men”. She felt that she had found in Miss sentiment and the beautiful in action”. naturally to reject the belief held then as the first knowledge of such a person was Martineau the first person who could “com­ (One wonders what that means). She let now that women were incapable of intoxication.” Margaret’s first love was thus prehend me wholly, mentally, and morally them convince her that her mind was of functioning in matters of the mind as described and the relationship developed ...” Here, then, was the peak of the love two elements and it was that conception of effectively as men. She suffered from her into a friendship which “engrossed me Margaret could express in friendship. It is herself which trapped Margaret into later knowledge of female oppression and taught wholly”. implied in the MEMOIRS that Miss decisions to deny one half of her self. Poor more than once in situations where she While living in Cambridge, Massachu­ Martineau understood whatever it was that Margaret; surrounded by men who admired could expand both the consciousness and setts, she became friends with Emerson and kept Margaret from expanding their friend­ her because “her judgments took no bribe education of women. Margaret also wrote many other famous men of letters. At the ship. from her sex”, and attributed her idol-Iikc WOMEN IN THE NINETEENTH same time “Margaret commenced several of The emotional level of Margaret's friend­ status among the women she knew to her CENTURY, the American parallel to Mary those friendships which lasted through her ships is referred to often in the course of “burly masculine existence”. She just did WoUstonecraft’s VINDICATION OF THE life, and which were channels for so large a the MEMOIRS. Emerson states, “Her not know she was a woman developed to RIGHTS OF WOMAN. part of her spiritual activity”. One of the friendships, as a girl with girls, as a woman near the fullest of her powers and felt There was more than a lopsided edu­ editors of MEMOIRS, J.F. Clarke, after this with women, were not unmingled with constrained to accept society’s view of 4 cation to account for Margaret's concern statement in the MEMOIRS, became very passion, and had passages of romantic herself as a borrower from men. for women. She had a deeply felt pref­ reluctant to discuss her friendships in any sacrifice and of ecstatic fusion, which I have Margaret did express some overt heard with the ear, but could not trust my thoughts on love between women. They erence for women as companions and as but a superficial manner and warned readers r recipients of her emotional expression. She of his reluctance by speaking of profane pen to report”. Margaret herself appear outright twice in the MEMOIRS, therefore developed a respect for the whole­ “ prudency’’, “risk” , and “misunder­ complains of “ days and weeks of heart­ once in explaining her marriage in the last ness of women as human beings which she standing”. One friend told Emerson years ache”, the source of which is not revealed, few years of her life. She excused her never felt for men. Constantly through her later that Margaret's position in the Cam­ but whose symptoms can be identified with decision to many partially by saying her MEMOIRS (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, bridge-Boston society and her relationships an unfulfilled longing for a love object. husband “is capable of the sacred love — 1852, 2v.) Margaret makes reference to the to the women therein was such that, “Had Again Emerson indulges himself in wonder the love passing that of woman”. From this gentleness of other women and herself, to she been a man, any one of those fine girls at the “violent” emotional life his friend and other evidence it is apparent that the intensity of emotion between women of sixteen, who surrounded her here, would lived in comparison with his own. She Margaret saw love on three levels, the and to her own cherished relatioaships with have married her: they were all in love with seemed always beyond his comprehension lowest between men and women. Of this women. her . . .” with her energy which was “too much a type of love she wrote: “I shall never forget The “angels” referred to in this title It was in Cambridge that Margaret wrote force of blood” and which left her that my curse [inability to love whomever were the women Margaret loved as distantly a poem supposedly occasioned by the gift incapable of peace. One description of she wished] is nothing, compared with that as she would have loved angels. Her of a “passion-flower” from one lady to Margaret with a friend shows Margaret of those who have entered into those emotions were first opened to her sex in another. The poem, it will be seen, reflected attempting “to transfuse with her force this relations, but not made them real; who only 28 Fuller was a dashing, romantic young figure seem husbands, wives . . The second yoked in some of her friends. She called her After a meeting with Miss Martineau, for who had the love of all around her for the level was that between women. The third state one of “strange anguish” and “dread example, Margaret became sick with actual taking and whose position in society and highest was a selfless, god-inspiied love uncertainty”. She longed to “rule circuni- fever and head pain. Her symptoms were offered her a certain freedom to have transcending alt human wants and needs. It stances, instead of being mled by them” usually as severe as the emotional strain she relationships with whomever she pleased. was this third type of love that Margaret and to be “what Nature intended”. One had been through. Often in the MEMOIRS Unfortunately Margaret made a decision imagined in her revering husband. editor wrote that she was full of feelings, people who knew her were quoted speaking during the time when .she was involved with Margaret’s most outspoken recorded but that those feelings were smothered and about her infirmities with pity, even saying Miss Martineau to abstain from ail love thoughts on the subject of love between became “stagnant”, bitter. Margaret FuUer that any social contact made by Margaret relationships. The memoirs do not, of women are below. rejected her own feelings for fear of their rendered her unfit for anything but a course, say what prompted this decision, disclosure. She rationalized that rejection darkened room and the soothing minis­ but it occurred at about the time, in the “At Mr. G.’s we looked over prints, with high ideals of self-sacrifice and trations of her hostess. Wives of men she early 1830’s, that Margaret’s father died the whole evening, in peace. Nothing spiritual love, but “this high idea which visited were most likely to perform this and left her with much responsibility for fixed my attention .so much as a laige governed (her) life, brought her into sharp function. The more intense her experience the younger members of her family and for engraving of Mine. Recamier in her conflicts, which constituted the pathos and with another person, the worse her con­ boudoir. 1 have so often thought over her mother. This circumstance, however, tragedy of her existence . . .” dition would be afterwards. Emerson noted seems little more than an excuse for the intimacy between her and Mme. Margaret seldom dealt with herself com­ that when she visited him, “She was in DeStaeL Margaret to avoid a decision to commit passionately, preferring to continue a jubilant spirits in the morning, and ended It is so true that a woman may be herself further to any one of her relation­ pattern of self-destructiveness begun early the day with nervous headache, whose in love with a woman, and a man with ships for fear of their obvious outcome. in life than to deal courageously with her spasms, my wife told me, produced total a man. I like to be sure of it, for it is One might suspect from the tone of her conflicts. When separated from her first prostration”. It is difficult to tell which the same love which angels feel . . . writing around 1833, when she met Miss love she was duly miserable. Her father sent spurred on the attacks more, the depth to It is regulated by the same law as Martineau, that she was on the verge of her away to school as a cure for her which she opened herself to other people, love between persons of different becoming more involved with the lady. depression, but once there she suffered a or her desire to be tenderly involved with sexes; only it is purely intellectual and When her father died, though, she was feeling of being out of place until she drew women who could extend their sympathy. spiritual Its law is the desire of the reinforced in her moralistic fear of consum­ attention to herself by becoming ill and She told Emerson that she “had read that a spirit to reali2C a whole, which makes mating the relationship. Margaret had a long withdrawa She was so successful at the man of letters must lose many days, to it seek in another being the strong, the history of this kind of conflict and suffered tactic that she became close, as a direct work well in one.” Emerson concluded, beautiful; the mute seeks the eloquent, from its persistence even after this decision. result of it, to an older woman, a teacher. “Much more must a Sappho . . .” Since her etc.; the butterfly settles always on the She entered a mystical period sometime That incident was the first recorded writing did not provoke illness, though, dark flower. WTiy did Socrates love after her withdrawal It may be that she evidence of a lifetime of psychosomatic Margaret’s work was only affected by the Alcibiades? Why did Korner love sought to relieve herself of the thought that illness That is, the illnesses were real but it persistence of her symptoms in time. It was Schneider? How natural is the love of her temptation to “sin” had somehow is probable that they were emotionally people who were her downfall. Wallenstein for .Max; that of DeStael shortened her father’s life. based. The MEMOIRS offer definite indi­ for DeRecamier; mine for___I Margaret tried from her youth to cations that M arket did not indulge her loved__ , for a time, with as much channel her “ intensity of passion” . It was emotions. Sometime in the 1830’s, pre­ passion as I was then strong enough to that disruptive tendency toward passion sumably around the time of her decision to feel. Her voice was always echoing in which she felt “unfits me for life”. She devote herself to her work and family, my ear; all poetic thoughts clustered thought, as one of the generation of trans- Marpret wrote that she “should rejoice to round the dear image. This love was a cendentalists, that free will was an issue for cultivate pnerosity, since affections gentler key which unlocked for me many a her. In exercising free will Margaret would and more sympathetic are denied me’ . She treasure which I still possess; it was the have sucumbed to passion, but she did not wrote later that she “took on me the vows carbuncle which cast light into so know how to “reconcile its workings with of renunciation”. In this passage her many of the darkest caverns of human necessity and compensation - how to language, as in many other places, betrays nature. She loved me, too, though not reconcile the life of the heart with that of the lady. She wrote, “my mistresses will not so much, because her nature was ‘less the intellect. . .” She complained that her thank me for fires made of cinnamon; high, less grave, less large, less deep’. “Destiny” was not her fault, that she did rather they run from too rich an odor”. The But she loved me more tenderly, less not lead herself into situations which ended imagery is altopther too sensuous for passionately. She loved me, for well I in sorrow, but stumbled upon them. Yet by complete innocence. In 1840 Margaret remember her suffering when first she calling herself “a poor magnet, with power reminisced about the flowers of her child­ could feel my faults, and knew one to be wounded by the bodies I attract”, she hood and her way of hugging them “with part of the exquisite veil rent away; recognized her unnecessary passivity in passionate emotions, such as I have never how she wished to stay apart and weep relation to those people who could make dared express to any human being”. One’s the whole day. her happy. Rather than act to bring sympathy rushes to the child Margaret here, 1 do not love her now with passion, happiness to herself and the women she did to see her in innocence allowing herself the but I still feel towards her as 1 can to attract, Margaret would not move toward pleasure of feeling and to know that she no other woman. I thought of all this wider experience at any level of her re­ would deny the power of her heart later in as 1 looked at Mme. Recamier.” lationships, but stood accepting the pain of life. For, Emerson wrote, “At all events, it self-denial and the anger which misunder­ Margaret Fuller and Bettina Brentano, is dear that Margaret, later, grew more At this point it may seem that Margaret standing of her non-motives probably pro- drawing by Bentley Edmonds. strict, and valued herself with her friends on having the tie now ‘redeemed from all was better than nothing, but an easy way to Margaret mused about her lot as a never think alone, without imagining some search after Eros.’ " escape from depth in a relationship. womaa She blamed her physical infirmities companion” . Yet she thought the need and This rejection of emotion wa.s the As there is evidence of Margaret’s repres­ on her sex, believing that her attempt to talent reflected “a second-rate mind”. She tragedy of Margaret Fuller. We can trace its sion, so is there evidence of attempted and extend womanhood into unaccustomed was also successful as a teacher. Her source through her MEM01R.S. She felt broken relationships which had come too realms was punished in this manner to younger students seemed “to reverence my from an early age that “growth” would be close to crossing beyong friendship. The demonstrate that women are not physically tastes and opinions in all things. . .’’ The her object in life and that “idolatries” and editors let slip a dream, dreamed four times capable of adapting themselves' to new older ladies with whom she conducted her “impatient longings for happiness” would when she noted it in her journal as follows. roles. She was not, however, corwinced of seminar-like classes, or formal “conver­ be interruptions in the straight path to this and always pushed herself despite pain. sations”, “felt challenged by the strongest intellectual wisdom. She advised her In C , I at last distinctly recognized the At times Margaret saw herself as the incor­ personal influence to a bold and generous younger brother that fantasy would mar his figure of the early vision, whom 1 poration of two natures, the woman, “who life”. ability for “real love” later and that found after I had left A., who led me, kneels and weeps in tender rapture” and the Below is quoted in full the impression “permanentness” should be a quality of on the bridge, towards the city, man “who rushes forth, but only to be Margaret made on a young girl at Brook that love. Margaret’s own childhood was glittering in sunset, but, midway, the baffled”. She expected the two to be Farm , an experimental community e.xcessively hill of fantasy. She developed bridge went under water. I have often transcended by one self, a “union of this (believed to be a model for Hawthorne’s her supposed distaste for the excesses of seen in her face that it was she, but tragic king and queen”. It made her both BLITHEDALE ROMANCE and Margaret emotion probably initially through fantasy refused to believe it. “sad” and “proud” to have been denied the basis for the character Zenobia in that and reading. On reading the published entrance to “the common womanly lot”. noveL See THE LADDER, Aug./Sept., letters of Mile. D’E.spinasse, she scorned Margaret’s first friendship warned her of Finally she reconciled herself to the 1970) which was a gathering place for some their lack of “pride or delicacy” and their the future when Margaret “laid my head thought that she would “always return to adventuresome individuals who wished to “abandonment” to pasión, calling it selfish against her shoulder and wept - dimly myself, to be my own priest, pupS, parent, live according to their intellectual beliefs. and without pleasure. At the same time feeling that I must lose her and all - all child, husband and wife” and to the Margaret was a frequent visitor to the farm. Margaret said she recognized the portrait, who spoke to me of the same things. . .” thought that “all has helped me to decipher SO minute in its touches”, and in doing so She wrote later of this same friend as being the poem of the universe” . For my part I reverenced her. She was admitted her own experience. She prayed too superficial for her later tastes and Two symbols of womanhood particu­ to me the embodiment of wisdom and lor something she called more worthwhile, excuses her passion with the explanation larly excited Margaret’s admiration and tenderness . . . I recognized a being to truth, not realizing the truths she hid from that she did not know “how little it could perhaps emulation. Neither of these, un­ whom every shade of sentiment was herself. Nature, Margaret felt, could lift her satisfy; more, more was all my cry . . .” fortunately for herself, was a living woman familiar. She knew, if not by ex­ above “ wounded affection”, “unworthy Interestingly, she contrasts types of women who would be an example for her. One was perience then by no questionable care” and “lowest aspirations”, but she did as wine and water, the latter like her friend a copy of a statue of the goddess Diana intuition, how to interpret the inner not recognize nature in herself. C. The last “angel” of Margaret’s life as who, she said, was “a woman’s ideal of life of every man and woman; and, by In order to avoid a submission to feeling mentioned in the MEMOIRS was a woman beauty” as opposed to the Venus which “is interpreting, she could soothe and Margaret ensconced herself in an aura of in Europe. To her, while married, she sent for men”. In Diana she saw “elegance”, strengthen. To her, psychology was an self-isolation. Although she was “always regrets that they had not had more time “spirit” , and a “graceful preemptofy air” - open book. When she came to Brook surrounded by admirers” she seemed not to together “to act out my feelings as seems not submissiveness or the emphasis of Farm, it was my delight to wait on one be aware of their feelings. “While they were right at the time, and not heed the con­ secondary sex characteristics. The other so worthy of all service - to arrange just ready to die of unrequited love”, one sequences . . .” The reason for her regret symbol was the Sibyl, or ancient female her late breakfast in some remnants of editor writes, “she stood untouched as was the realization that they were not close prophetess. In it she saw “female Genius” ancient China, and to save her, if it Artemis . . .” That last was a more apt enough to escape the differences of opinion and respected it for interpreting the will of might be, some little fatigue or comment than the prudish editors intended. or conduct” which might destroy their Apollo rather than merely singing his annoyance, during each day. They describe her as having an inward look friendship. As in her first relationship, the praises, as the muses did. When offered “the rather than one directed to others. During last brought thoughts of loss and sorrow divine union”, the Sibyl “preferred re­ For all this Margaret felt out of place in tlie critical period of her life while she was that there had not been more. maining a satellite to being absorbed into her time. She waited for “some proper and formulating her decision for emotional Emerson gave some reasons for the the sun”. These qualities coupled with attainable object of pursuit . . \VTiile in withdrawal, she wrote a letter in antici­ collapse of Margaret’s friendships, lie called Margaret’s admiration of a symbol who was Italy she wrote to her mother, “In earlier pation of that decision. In it she expressed on inequality of the friends to Margaret, not “ideal” in any one strength, but noted days, I dreamed of doing and being much, disappointment that she was not as inde­ “ingratitude” , or “incapacity”, and “the for the enthusiasm of her nature, would but now am content . . . to rest my plea pendent as she wished to be. She planned collapse of overstrained affections and indicate her identification with the figures. hereon, ‘She has loved much.' ” Had she her withdrawal (had she been hurt by powers” . Margaret herself commented to In this way a little more of her mind is recognized this greatest achievement earlier, Martincau’s lack of understanding?) to Emerson on the “disappointing forms of revealed. Margaret Fuller might have incorporated it avoid the dependence of being close enough men and women”. She wrote in her journal Margaret Fuller felt unsuccessful in all into a life full of many achievements. She to people to weakly accept their help that some people thought her feelings were she attempted to achieve in her life. It fought every love she felt worthy of her talents and wasted her life keeping within instead of enforcing the self-sufficiency she “strange” . One editor wrote the most seems apparent that the difficulties she required. The wisdom of her desire for touching description of her failure: “She imposed on her own life, the emotional the stra^ht and narrow road. strength was lost in her confusion about had never met one who could love her as suicide she underwent, were barriers to her CHRONOLOGY where strength lay. Instead of one good she could love; and in the orange grove of full development as a person. She was relationship Margaret kept “one I always her affections the white, perfumed satisfied with the conversational ability for 1810 Bom in Massachusetts love in my poetic h o u r. . . another whom blossoms and golden fruit wasted away which she was famous and attributes its 1833 Met Miss Martineau I visit . . . when I crave sympathy . . It unclaimed”. success to her “ need to be called out, and 1835 Met Emerson 32 1837 Organized a girls’ school in Provi­ critic for N.Y. TRIBUNE at Horace seen only through sister Kate’s eyes, is less dence, R.I. Greeley’s request explained. She is beautiful, a Lesbian, and 1839 Moved close to Boston 1845 Wrote WOMEN IN THE NINE­ with superficially good reasons for personal Published translation of Eckermann’s TEENTH CENTURY (pub. 1884) happiness. Why her career is ruined by her CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE 1846 PAPERS ON ART AND LITER­ passionate affair with another nurse is not Began “conversations” in Boston (to ATURE pub. (included articles from too believable . . .nor are promiscuity and 1844) the TRIBUNE, DIAL, WESTERN suicide attempts very realistic. Good, but 1840 Became editor of DIAL magazine, MESSENGER. AMERICAN not good enough. Ms. Taylor s 1%9 novel, organ of Transcendentalists MONTHLY) THE GODS ARE NOT MOCKED, was also 1841 Moved to own rooms in Cambridge Went to Europe very substantially Lesbian and considerably more successful It was set, however, in 1842 T ranslated correspondence of 1848 Son was bom Long time readers will recall that there “times past,” where authors often feel more Gunderode and Bettinc (see SEX 1850 Died in a shipwreck off Fire Island was a time when the editor of THE VARIANT WOMEN IN LITER­ 1856 AT HOME AND ABROAD published LADDER had only the duties of this comfortable about discussing Lesbians. We learned too late to include in last ATURE by Jeannette Foster) 1859 LIFE WITHIN AND UFE WITH­ column to perform, and the finding of older Had friendship with Hawthorne OUT published items of Lesbian interest was a more fre­ column that Isabel Miller's fine novel, PATIENCE AND SARAH (origmally 1844 SUMMER ON THE LAKES pub­ 1903 LOVE LETTERS OF MARGARET quent occurrence. Elsa Gidlow has shared published as A PLACE FOR US), was lished FULLER, 1845-1846 published. with me two very old examples that were chosen as a Literary Guild selection. This is Moved to New York and became missed by Jeannette Foster in SEX VARI­ ANT WOMEN IN LITERATURE and also astonishing for a major Lesbian novel and THE SHADE (Continued) should be considered a breakthrough, albeit missed in my many searches. One is “From we do it together. Maybe that's one way to recalUng that in the 1930s several Lesbian start, on l.D.'s, since kids are fucked over as An Argument oii the Equality of the Sexes by Clara Reeves, included in her book, novels were chosen by large good book much as women. Madeline, maybe we can ORIGINAL POEMS ON SEVERAL clubs and promoted to a wide audience. get out! 1 know we can if we just stand up Jane Rule’s AGAINST THE SEASON OCCASIONS, London, 1769. The other is for ourselves, be as tough as them. Maddy, I has been published in England now, by P oemç “On The Friendship Betwixt Two Ladies,” love you, 1 just want to hug you!” Peter Davies (London), 1972. Not lo be by Edmond Waller, published in London in They hugged and danced around the Cats Are Soft and Fluffy 1686. These only serve to prove that there missed. ___ room. Edward Lewis Wallant’s 1963 novel, will never be a time when “all” pertinent The joy Dottie was feeling in this t h e TENANTS OF MOONBLOOM. was Cats are soft and fluffy. material will be recorded and gives me an woman’s arms! As if they had something to one of the first of a series of novels takmg They are like that nearly all the time. opportunity to once again beg you all to say about what they were doing. Dottie as basic premise the decay of our city Then all at once they get mad. remember to tell us about anything you stopped. apartment buildings and the people inside They get furious. find that we might have overlooked, so it “There’s one thing, Madeline,” she said, them. Few have come up to his effort, They get so mad all at once suddenly, without joy. “Pete said I was can be shared with everyone else. though many will enjoy John Roc s They shock you. The Washington, D.C., Women s liber­ queer.” WINTER BLOOD, New York, Trident They really get furious. ation group has issued a 50c booklet by “ShiL don’t let that bother you. That'd Press, 1971. Widower Lew and his black They bristle up so fast they shock you. be a groove if you could dig women. I’ve Norma Allen Lesser called WHAT IS A friend. Cal buy a tenement building and WOMAN? This is an excellent simple known I dug girls more than guys for about proceed to try to evict the tenants. As you Women are soft and fluffy. six months now. He just wanted to scare graphics and text combination that could would expect, the tenants range from They are like that nearly all the time. be used very well for consciousness raising you, make you think it’s something wrong believable to exotic, and among the latter with you.” from teenage up. are a pair of Lesbian hairdressers whose Mickie Burns “ You like women?” Once again we are treated to the family dying beauty shop (they have specialized in gathering novel occasioned by the death of “ Yeah! Women arc the only ones that hair straightening and skin whitening) is a know how to make love with other women a parent in MY SISTER, MY SELF by microcosmic minor of the dying worlds ot Anna Taylor, London, Longman, 1971. - cause they’re women, too! Men just each of the tenants. Ending is surprisingly The Adventures o f Maria Quinones aren’t any good for sex. If we can make it Kate who narrates, and her sister, Lindsey, good . . . positive, a little hopeful. Very make up the cast for the most part, with on our own with money we don’t need well written, though it is unlikely that the assorted half-brothers and sisters Once upon a time, them at all!” many of you will find Carmen and Monique present semingly there only for window April came all the way up to Harlem. Dottie’s mind crowded with doubts, but either familiar or believable. dressing The father is dead, and the burial Maria Quinones cut school. she felt the rightness of what Madeline said Shena Mackay's AN ADVENT CALEN­ Maria Quinones laughed. at the family home near Hull provides the DAR London, Jonathan Cape, 1971 (as as if she had been waiting to hear it. She opportunity to examine in short glimpses Maria Quinones drank beer. hugged her again, more closely, feeling, as was her earUer MUSIC UPSTAIRS, London Maria Quinones had a baby. the unhappy lives of Kate and Lind^y. Duetsch, 1965), is a quiet English view of .she did, that she had never felt stronger, nor Abandoned by their mother, raised by their Then the baby laughed. had men ever seemed weaker. the realities of one type of Lesbian life, the Then the adventures began. not too loveable father (remarried and agam teacher whose boundaries, real and “They are,” she said, “they’re as weak a father of four more children), they are as us. Men. They only feel strong, look imagined, threaten her sanity. A novel For the baby. marked for tragedy. Kate's unhappy about unrealized hopes and realized horrors strong cause of the way they treat us. We marriage culminating in divorce and sym­ in simple lives, AN ADVENT CALENDAR just have to stop letting them use us for bolic assumption of her father s role in the Mickie Burns contains a marvelous portrait of a teenage anything, anything at all and not only will family is fairly well presented. Lindsey, we see how weak they are, they will too!” „ simply pointed out to her the one glaring A reader sent us the paperback edition THE MIDDLING, which was quite major fact she has left out of her yawning of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Univer­ though youthful. autobiography, that she is self-centered to sity SURVEY OF BROADCAST JOURN­ Colette lovers (are there other kinds of the point of having mental myopia. ALISM, 1970-1971, edited by Marvin women??) will want to get PLACES to The Lesbian as vampire is one of the Banett, N.Y., Grosset and Dunlap, 1971. read. Out in 1970 from Peter Owen of oldest themes in Lesbian literature, with the One chapter, WOMEN ON THE AIR, by London and published here in 1971 by classic example being J. Sheridan LeFanu's Helen Epstein, gives a complete rundown of Bobbs-Merrill, it includes fine photos of CARMILLA (which, if you haven't read the record you would expect - there are Colette. and you enjoy the idea of women running damned few women on the air, period, and We received for review a book called the world, do read sometime). Thomas those that are have the shit jobs. POEMS, by Anna Seward and Catherine Blackburn s very well done novel THF If you ate a reader, write to FEMINIST Sedley, published in paperback with an f e a s t o f THE WOLF London BOOK CLUB, 2140 WESTWOOD BOULE­ imprint of Pilgrim Hill, New York. Distri­ Macgibbon and Kee, 1971, may be the first VARD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA bution is by Tunbridge Press, P.0, Box 345, novel to attempt to deal with the Lesbian/- 90025. Ask for VOLUME A, SPRING, New York, N.Y. 10021; the cost is $2.50. vampire theory seriously. Simon Arm­ 1972. Everything in the book club is We knew that Anna Seward was the famous strong, Professor of English at an un­ directed to women, and much Lesbian “Swan of Litchfield” - an English poet specified London university, dreams of material is included . . . most of it at who is best known for her biography of being haunted by the various “other world” bargain prices. THIS IS DIRECTED AT Darwin and her voluminous correspondence creatures, including vampires. The violence THE MANY DOZENS OF YOU WHO (a characteristic of the period, since she of his dreams is transferred to some extent WRITE ASKING WHERE TO BUY lived from 1747 to 1809) - but we didn't into his relationship with his wife, Laura. BOOKS. If they aren’t carrying something I know anything about Catherine Sedley. The H ARRIS whose new novel, CON­ They adopt a child, a daughter, in a futile FESSIONS OF CHERUBINO. is published review and you feel they should be, tell only historically prominent woman with by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. attempt to stabilize the marriage. A psychi­ them so . . . they invite this kind of that name was mistress of Charles 2nd, and Photograph by Bruce Roberts atrist introduces Simon to a recovering suggestion. The book club is no rip-off. . . she lived from 1657 to 1717. We felt patient, Stella, hoping to help his recovery. this was started by Varda One (of EVERY- certain this couldn’t be the right woman, girl thwarted in all directions, whose Simon, Laura, and Stella are soon locked in WOMAN), with two other sisters. and we wrote the publisher to inquire but flailings and desperate attempts at freedom psychic battle, with power part of the We are checking out a collection of received no reply. In any case, the poetry are very moving. Joy Pickering is bright stake. The novel ends in a death, and I leave short stories, FEMINA REAL, by A.L. by Anna Seward quite clearly establishes It to the reader to find out who dies and ugly by contemporary standards, and hated Barker, London, Hogarth Press, 1971. her as a Lesbian. That by Catherine Sedley why. Very highly recommended, but not if Larger public libraries will have this and is considerably more pertinent . . . but we by her schoolmates and her mother and her fantasy disturbs you. sister. She turns first to Elizabeth, afore­ also some college and university libraries are at a loss as to who she is or was, and mentioned frustrated Lesbian school­ Readers who remember Bertha Harris’s We know it will be strongly feminist (from why her work is included with Anna teacher, and then to Eric Turle, an aging CATCHING SARADOVE, N.Y., Harcourt, the reviews) but suspect it may also be Seward. If any of you readers know, we'd mentally impotent poet. Not happy Brace and World, 1969, may have already Lesbian in view of Barker’s 1967 novel. like to know too. rea^ng, but Elizabeth's death in life and noticed her new book, CONFESSIONS OF Joy's hopelessness are real and believable CHERUBINO, N.Y., Harcourt, Brace and problems. Jovanovich, 1972. No easier to read, this is DESERT (for Georgia O'Keeffe) Public vomiting of personal lives began an improvement over the earlier novel, and Poem with the fiction (?) of Violette Leduc. In It IS very pertinent both to a Lesbian and a Inspiration? the same general vein is Sarah Davys' A women’s liberation reading audience The In that brass-bound land of sun? TIME AND A TIME, London, Calder & original Cherubino is an adolescent boy in Not only through the bright fever-bird grown dim; Mozart s opera, THE MARRIAGE OF FIG­ Boyars, 1971. Davys is said to be the (the bird of pain) ARO, and it is a role sung by a mezzo- pseudonym of a famous woman writer If But in the organ pipe residuum; soprano. Using this symbol, and much so, she is famous for some field other than that golden light gunning down biography certainly. A TIME AND A TIME material from THE TROJAN WOMEN over sweeps of sand. IS boring, it is in bad taste, it isn't necessary. (basic theme, captive women), Bertha Har- Davys’ problems seem to be that she is ns traces the weird convoluted life of No sheaths of green blue water round. central character Ellen Fairbanks. Ellen is a interested in commiting suicide, so inter- 0 does the sun rule with an iron hand? Kted in fact that she has tried twice in her southern woman who leaves home to go to college, to engage in what can only be life to do so. Moreover, this isn't connected Like an old treasure chest, unbound apparently to her Lesbianism, but that's not considered an unusual sex life. She is, consciousness might yield such troves resolved either, for she goes through several apparently, a Lesbian; but she gets off the (flowers, jewels) women without much attempt to work out track somewhere along the way and by the as only the releast soul comes upon a relationship past the bedroom door end of the book is a raving maniac. The when let out into holy groves! (except m one case where there is no controlled than in » « * wdroom at all in the relationship). I can’t CATCHING SARADOVE, but the reader The Lady of Imagination towers high: help wondering what would happen to her who demands that every detail be spelled And raises swans against a cobalt sky. precarious balance (mentally) if some friend out had better not read this. Caviar for everyone else. 36 Lynn Slrongin herself isolated indeed. imperial family, Brazilian fashion, dined in Iî'R.IE33SriDS But she was cheered during her illness to the middle of the day and afterwards Pedro By SARAH ALDRIDGE receive more than one letter from the retired for his afternoon nap. “It was then empress - “saying that she had been told of that 1 usually had the pleasure of conversing (Intioductory Note: Maria Graham was Maria’s journals of her sojourn in South my isolated situation and illness; that she with the empress,” said Maria. At first she bom in 1785 in the north of England, the America are now important sources for wished me to consider myself under her sent for her to her own apartments, but she daughter of a rear admiral in the British historians and botanists. At the time of especial protection as long as I was in Brazil soon was irked by the fact that they could navy. She grew up to be a bluestocking, their first meeting, Leopoldina was 26 to and that 1 should appeal to her if I needed not be alone and were always surrounded whose interests ranged from history and Maria’s 38. j help of any kind.” by the ladies in waiting, whose instant politics, botany, music and the arts to jealousy was openly displayed. So, after economics and current social conditions. As It was a windy, rainy day in March, When she was recovered she was sum­ moned to accompany the wife of the three or four days, Leopoldina “preferred a young woman she went to India and there 1823, when Maria Graham arrived back in Rio de Janeiro. The weather prevented her British ambassador to an audience. To her for me to stay in my own apartments after married a naval captain, who as a husband dinner and she would come to seek me.” from seeing the beauty of the bay. On her surprise, at this meeting, at which she was indulgent of her intellectual tastes. In Leopoldina preferred the room that had first arrival from Europe eighteen months expected only to be received by a lady in 1821 she accompanied him when he was been fitted up with books and bookcases before she had described it as beyond waiting, Leopoldina herself came forward ordered to South .America with the for Maria’s use as a library and there she anything she had hitherto seen. She was a with the greatest sweetness of manner to squadron of British naval vessels sent to insisted on having another chair brought so competent judge for she was a hardy greet her, taking her by thé hand and saying p ro ta t the many British merchants in that Maria need not stand while in her BrazU and the countries gaining their in­ üaveller, veteran of stormy voyages in that she hoped she would not leave Brazil at once. presence. dependence from Spain. After a stay of a sailing vessels to India, the Mediterranean As governess Maria sought to bring couple of months in Rio, where the and around the Horn, It was evident that Leopoldina, sur­ rounded by vulgar and intriguing people, English decorum into the upbringing of the Portuguese king John VI and his court had Uncertain of the future, on her way little princess. She was soon in difficulties, taken refuge from Napoleon fifteen years home to England where her family ties had had heard something of this Englishwoman who combined graces of mind with a in spite of the empress’s sympathy and before, they went on to Chile on the other been loosened by death and absence, she support. Her efforts aroused the animosity side of the continent. Captain Graham died lingered in this capital of a new empire. She tactfulness of manner that disarmed even men who scorned the intellectual capacities of Pedro’s hangers-on, who always had the on the passage around Cape Horn and Maria was aware that she was an eyewitness of car of their unpredictable master. Once she buried him in Valparaiso, She remained in tremendous events and she was eager to of women. Maria could not really remember later when the idea was first broached of went herself to send away a group of men Chile for almost a year before returning to record her observations, set against the who each ni^dit climbed the private stairs to Rio on her way home to England. During background of history. her being governess to Leopoldina s eldest little girl, but once the suggestion was the little princess’s sittingroom, after the her absence Pedro, King John’s son and the She began by establishing herself in child was in bed, where they could gamble made, the empress welcomed it whole­ heir to the Portuguese throne, declared lodgings. With the sympathetic aid of the undisturbed. Leopoldina shook her head heartedly. But first Maria must pay a visit Brazil no longer a colony but an empire few Brazilian scholars she availed herself of when Maria reported this to her the next independent of its mother country Portugal the scant intellectual resources. In the to England to settle family affairs. Almost a year later Maria was back in day. She agreed that Maria’s action was and himself its emperor. Carmelite convent, which housed the Rio and on her way to the imperial resi­ proper, but with her greater knowledge of His consort, Brazil’s fust empress, Dona library of sixty or seventy thousand dence, the palace of Sao Cristovao on the the people among whom she lived she Maria Leopoldina, was a Hapsburg, a volumes brought from Lisbon in 1810, she outskirts of the city. As she entered, the foresaw trouble. Maria had undoubtedly daughter of Francis 1 of Austria and a sister was given “a pleasant, cool little cabinet first person she met was Pedro himself, made an arch enemy of the ringleader of of Marie Louise, Napoleon’s second wife. . . . where whatever book I asked for is dressed in cotton trousers and coat, his bare the cardplayers, Pedro’s majordomo and She was married to Pedro by proxy in brought to me, and where I have pen, ink boon companion, who certainly would feet thrust into slippers, with a straw hat Vienna in May of 1817 and in November of and paper always placed to make notes.” trimmed in green on his head. With his complain of the highhanded Englishwoman. the same year arrived in Rio, a very blonde, But in Rio, only a generation away usual careless cordiality he talked a little The man did and he also conspired with the sweet-natured girl whose graciousness won from the colonial backwardness in which and then said she must sec the empress. ladies in waiting, who were jealous of the all hearts. She and Pedro were an ill- women had lived in more or less harem-like There on the verandah there would be a favor Leopoldina showed this foreign wom­ assorted couple. She came from the most seclusion, she was an anomaly. She was a lady in waiting to show her to the empress s an. For Maria had quickly become as much sophisticated court in Europe, used to the true daughter of her age. As an English­ Leopoldina’s favorite companion as the society of cultivated people. Pedro, the son woman of good family, she was quick to apartments. Leopoldina welcomed her with open princess’s governess. Together they read the of a termagant mother who despised her resent the affronts and aspersions too arms. But things had changed in the mean­ new books the empress ordered from Eu­ slow-moving husband, had grown up readily cast upon any woman who lacked a time. Leopoldina had explained the changes rope, discussed botany, examined cata­ ignorant and uncouth among his chosen husband or close male relative, in this in a letter that had only reached England logues of seashclis. In the fiow of this companions, the grooms of the royal conservative society that had no place for after Maria’s departure for Brazil. Tlie intellectual intercourse she had become the stables. He was promiscuous and through active, independent women. Although she political fortunes of the Bragancas had one friend to whom Leopoldina could open almost the whole course of his marriage was had friends among the English residents and taken another turn. As a consequence, her heart and mind. dominated by an aggressive and ignorant the first families of Rio, she decided she Pedro proposed soon to take his eldest The result was that Maria remained in mistress, who sorely tried Leopoldina even needed protection and she thought of the daughter across the Atlantic to place her on the palace only from September 5 to in her unquestioning acceptance of the new empress. Pedro’s wife had the repu­ the throne of Portugal in opposition to the October 10. She was ordered out by Pedro traditional role of uncomplaining wife. As tation of being bookish and well-bred in the in one of his sudden fits of temper, deliber­ midst of a court that was characteristically claims of his brother. emperor Pedro was quick-witted and Nevertheless, Maria moved into the ately sparked, she suspected, by a lady in forceful but arrogant, hasty-tempered and neither. She wrote to her, seeking her palace. A special suite of rooms, next to the waiting who roused him from a nap with yet notice. To make matters worse, she had capricious, easily swayed by self-seeking empress’s, had been arranged for her. The another complaint against this foreigner courtiers. fallen gravely ill for several weeks and felt who was usurping the place of his loyal the strength or education to do. You are so aid in a political matter. Dubious that Maria of the birth of a son in the preceding subjects. His capricious moods, though ab­ capable in .supporting me in making my Leopoldina, not politically asture, was be­ December, who was to be Pedro II of solute in their effects, were ephemeral. A dear daughters useful members of society, ing made use of, she nevertheless promised Brazil. In June she wrote again, saying that, few weeks later he was to meet her again through your talents and moral qualities. to do what she was asked and carried out “I begin by telling you that your last letter with bland good humor, as if nothing Still they spy on me . . .S o many times I her protnise. The result she never learned. gave me such sweet pleasure, that 1 think of untoward had happened. think with longing of your daily conversa­ But her personal situation got no better you a thousand times, my delicate friend, Obviously the empress had foreseen the tion, consoling myself with the hope that I and at last she decided she must return to and of the delicious moments I spent in probable course of events and indeed hesi­ shall see you again some time in Europe, England. It cost her much to take leave of your dear company.” tated to involve her friend in the discom­ where no one in the world could force me the empress. She saw her last on September She wrote once or twice more, thanking forts of her own uneasy life. The very day to leave off seeing you every day and telling 8,1825. Maria for the things she sent - a scale for Maria left the palace she wrote acknowledg­ you by word of mouth that I am for the “1 found Her Majesty in her library, assaying minerals and some “enchanting ing Maria's own letter, probably one of whole of life your loving and devoted quite alone, and she seemed to me in frail books.” But the effects of mental depres­ explanation. Maria, upset, had mentioned friend." health and in greater depression of spirits sion and physical collapse brought about by leaving forthwith for England, She added a postscript to this letter, than usual. She gave me several letters to her unhappy life were closing in on her. The “ My dear friend," said Leopoldina, “1 revealing in poignant phrases the hostile take to Europe, calling attention especially only repose of spirit that she could envisage have received your amiable letter and be­ atmosphere in which she lived: “1 ask your to one to her sister . . . was to go to Europe, “for the consolation lieve me I make an enormous sacrifice in pardon for my poor handwriting. But my “After the empress had spoken of her of being near my family and you, whom I separating myself from you; but my destiny poor head is confused and I write these own famñy and her wishes regarding Eu­ value with the dearest friendship," and this has always obliged me to place a distance words in the garden, where 1 am not rope, we spoke little. 1 promised to write to was impossible. between myself and those dearest to my observed.” her, and by her particular wish, to teli her Maria's last letter to her was dated heart and regard. But be persuaded that no Maria expressed concern, assuring her everything that I could about the members November 2, 1826. In it she tells her matter what the terrible distance that will that she would stay for a while in Brazil. of her own family. She promised to answer beloved friend of the severe bout of pneu­ shortly .separate us, nor other circumstances Leopoldina replied; “If I were persuaded my letters and then asked me if there was monia she has just survived and the news that 1 foresee may triumph, can weaken the that your remaining here is repugnant to something she could do for me or give me. I that, being tired of living quite alone in the friendship and regard in which 1 hold you you, I would be the first to counsel you to asked her for a lock of her hair. There were world, she had made up her mind to marry and I shall always seek occasions to prove leave Brazil. But, believe me, my delicate no scissors at hand and she did not wish to a man who had loved her a long time, the this." and only friend, it is a sweet consolation to summon a servant. She took up a penknife English painter, Augustus Callcott. She hoped that Maria would accept the my heart, to think that you will be living that lay on the table and cut off a lock. But Leopoldina never read this letter. It was small money gifts she was able to make, for some more months in the same country it is no use to dwell on these unhappy returned to Maria by the Austrian ambas.sa- saying, “By accepting them you will be as 1. moments. I went out with a feeling of dor, with the news of Leopoldina's death doing what 1 wish you to and you will “At last, when an immense distance, oppression, quite new to me, because I left on December 11, 1826. She died from the contribute to my happiness." which my fate will not permit me to cross, her as I foresaw to a life of greater complications of her eighth pregnancy, Deeply upset though she was, Maria separates me from you, I shall resign my­ vexations than she had already endured and made worse by the angry blows of her decided against leaving Rio at once. She self, with the sweet certainty that our in a state of health that could bear little husband, enraged at her protest against his rented a house in the suburb of Laranjeiras, manner of thinking is the same and that out mote.” ever more flagrant allegiance to his cruel at the foot of Corcovado, one of the friendship will endure forever. Be easy Maria left Brazil forever on September and aggressive mistress. mountains that rise dramatically from the about me. I am used to resisting and 25, 1825. She and Leopoldina continued to Maria died in London on November 28, shore of the beautiful bay - in Maria’s fending off hatred and ill-will, and the more write each other, through the intermedia­ 1842, after years of earning her living as an words, “a little valley . . . so-called from 1 suffer from intrigues the more I despise tion of the Austrian ambassador in Rio. author and as reader for John Murray, the the numerous orange trees which grow on the intriguers. But I confess, only to you, This man, who was devoted to Leopoldina publisher. Leopoldina’s letters and her own each side of the little stream that waters that 1 shall give thanks to heaven when 1 am and a great admirer of Maria, took the account of the events in Rio were found and fertilizes it.” There she could nil her delivered from this riff-raff.” empress's letters from her own hands and among her effects. leisure with writing, painting and botaniz­ Mindful of Maria's vulnerable position delivered into them those he received from ing, and keep in touch with her friend by and anxious to preserve her from the Maria. (Editor’s Note: This article is based on the letter. dangers that surrounded herself, Leopoldina These meant a great deal to Leopoldina. letters addressed to Maria Graham by the They corresponded in French. “My very resolutely deprived herself of her friend's On the second of February following Empress Leopoldina and Mrs. Graham’s dearest friend," Leopoldina wrote, “not a “dear company". But one day Maria re­ Maria’s departure she wrote: “I was very own unpublished account o f her last year o f moment passes that I do not bewail the loss ceived a letter asking her to come to the old agreeably surprised when our excellent residence in Rio. These documents are now of your company and amiable conversation, palace in the center of town at an ap­ friend delivered to me two amiable letters in the archives o f the National Library in my only recreation and true consolation in pointed hour. She hastened to obey, but of yours. This is the only consolation that Rio.) these melancholy hours. . . This is a very the coachman of the hired carriage, driving remains to me in my isolation. Believe me, unhappy time for me. I cannot follow the too fast, upset them. She emerged from the my devoted and trustworthy friend, I feel promptings of my heart and ask for news of wreck badly shaken and with a small bone very much the sacrifice that is laid on my your health. Here unfortunately there are in her wrist broken. Determined not to heart, which can appreciate the sweetness certain persons who are not satisifed to disappoint her friend, she first visited the of friendship, by my separation from you. have deprived me of a friend who is doubly English doctor and then hurried on. She It is a true consolation to my soul and helps dear to me, educating my dear daughters arrived at last with a bandaged hand in the me to support the thousand difficulties and in that way relieving my heart and my empress's presence, to be received with with which 1 am surrounded.” spirits of a burden, doing what 1 have not anxious sympathy. The empress sought her In a postscript to that letter she tells 40 IMPORTANT NOTICE From a Soul Sister’s Notebook THE LESSER OF THE WORST THE COMPLETE INDEX TO THE FIRST SIXTEEN YEARS OF THE LADDER WILL BE AVAILABLE AFTER OCTOBER 15. 1972. By ANITA CORNWELL THE INDEX WILL BE SOLD ON CONSIGNMENT ONLY. THIS MEANS YOU MUST ORDER YOUR COPY OR COPIES AT ONCE AND PAY FOR THEM SINCE WE WILL DETERMINE THE NUMBER TO PRINT BY THESE ORDERS. DON'T WAIT, OR YOU WILL MISS OUT ON THIS IMPORTANT TOOL. Since joining the Movement, I find another, “There’s a story on the front page EVERY STORY, EVERY POEM, EVERY ARTICLE, EVERY ITEM AND myself associating mainly with white of the Sunday Times that says George PERSON OF INTEREST THROUGHOUT THE YEARS IS INCLUDED IN A women. Most of the time I forget there is a Jackson was killed in prison . . ." PROFESSIONALLY COMPILED INDEX. THE INDEX WILL ENABLE YOU TO QUICKLY DETERMINE WHICH BACK ISSUES YOU WANT TO OWN . . . racial gap between us, but 1 sometimes feel 1 lay there, not unmindful of the fact WHETHER YOUR INTERESTS ARE IN FICTION BY GOOD WRITERS OR THE that such may not be the case with many of that 1 was a fairly great distance from HUNDREDS OF ARTICLES WE HAVE RUN ON PROMINENT LESBIANS OF them. home, from any public transportation THE PAST, That is not a sneaky way of saying apparently as we were out on a large farm, TO ORDER THE INDEX SEND YOUR CHECK OR MONEY ORDER FOR $5 racism exists within the Movement - which that 1 had come in a white woman's car, FOR EACH COPY ALONG WITH YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS CLEARLY it does, of course, yet not nearly as imuch as and was at that moment lying in another PRINTED. DO NOT INCLUDE THE PURCHASE PRICE FOR THE INDEX IN A one would expect considering the rfature of white woman's tent. And their white CHECK FOR A NEW SUBSCRIPTION, A RENEWAL, A BACK ISSUES ORDER our society - but rather that I do miss my Brothers had killed by black Brother! OR A DONATION SINCE THE INDEX MONIES MUST BE HELD SEPARATE FROM OTHER FUNDS TO INSURE OUR BEING ABLE TO PRINT THE NEEDED black Sisters and yearn for the day when Their Brothers were pigs, 1 thought NUMBER OF COPIES. INSTITUTIONS THAT REQUIRE PURCHASE ORDERS they will embrace the Movement more then, and 1 think so now. But what of my AND BILLING MUST PAY $6 FOR EACH COPY INSTEAD OF $5. whole-heartedly. Brother? A pig too, in all probability, as THE INDEX WILL RUN TO 250 OR MORE DOUBLE COLUMNED PAGES. Still, 1 know why they have not, the most black men are no different from white SEND YOUR ORDER RIGHT AWAY! main reason being that age-old sickness, men as far as sexism is concerned. racism and sexism, and the damage it has But they didn't shoot him because he done to all of us. was a pig. They got him because he was What really got me onto this train of black. 1 am black, too, and as James thought, though, was neither sexism nor Baldwin is reputed to have said to Angela racism, per se, but Lesbianism. 1 was some­ Davis, “If they get you in the morning, they what shocked recently when 1 realized that will certainly come for me in the night." BACK ISSUE SALE most of the white Lesbians 1 know seem to So what does one do at such a time? Do Are you now collecting back issues of the feel more oppressed as Lesbians than 1 do. you get drunk at eight o’clock in the Ladder volume by volume? At first I thought it was because I am morning although you’re already on the older than most of them, that since I had verge of ulcers, and you don't want a drink Write right away for details of obtaining been oppressed longer, I noticed it less. anyway? Do you go on a rampage, ripping the ones you still need to g e t. . .b e sure to Normally, 1 guess I would have assumed it white Sisters apart merely because they are say which is your oldest volume and what was because 1 am black. But, really, one white like your oppressors who arc coming you are interested in purchasing. does grow weary of making that assump­ for you also? Or do you shove the problem tion. into the vast, overstuffed room located Are you interested in starting to collect One of the absolute certainties of life in somewhere in the deep recesses of the mind back issues (full volumes) of the Ladder? this country is the almost endless parade of and slam the door? This is the best way to buy them, since dilemmas you find crossing your path daily. I lay there a while longer, then finally serious collectors get the best bargains. Not that you take such a rational, detached realizing that divine inspiration was not Write, ask for details. attitude while trying to grapple with one, forthcoming, 1 turned to stare at the canvas however. wall of the tent and told myself 1 would Just a shopper? Would you like to see As a case in point, when George deal with the situation after breakfast. what the Ladder looked like these past 16 Jackson, the Soledad Brother, was killed, 1 Yet many hours later, when I saw the years? Send $10 for 7 random back issues happened to be in Kent, Connecticut, at a black headline regarding Jackson's death, 1 package or $20 for 15 random issues. Make Corifercnce for Gay Women. I had gone quickly averted my eyes, unable to even check or money order payable to the there in a caravan of three cars consisting look at the newspaper, let alone cope with Ladder and indicate what you are ordering. of ten women, two of us black. About 125 the dilemma it had dropped in my lap. 1 Sisters attended the Conference, and at still haven’t, for that matter. These offers are limited to our supply of most 1 can recall only about twelve black Then, several months afterwards, 1 heard back issues, so order at once or you might women being presenL a bleating voice on the radio describing how miss out. Which means that at any given time, one Angela Davis’ health had deteriorated in could look in all directions and see only prison (because of poor medical care and white faces. other environmental stresses) before they Then, as 1 lay in our tent on Sunday let her out on bail. And again 1 had to Photo by Lyn Jones morning, 1 heard one white Sister saying to swailow my impotent rage because I knew she would not have been treated in such the cop on the comer? Weren't we just as popular, and exceptionally attractive with fashion had her skin not been the color of concerned as our white Lesbian Sisters that warm pad on her lower back. “Have a nice beautiful auburn hair which she wore long mine. “society” forbids us to hold hands or kiss in rest," the young woman called as she But why travel far across the country? public? and uncurled. She assisted her husband, a switched off the light. highly recommended physical therapist and Why not consider the black Sisters in my Inevitably, one comes up with the indis­ Miss Little had decided she would a delightful perspn himself. Of course. Miss own front yard who are raped, beaten putable truth that oppression is oppression extend a dinner invitation to the Mercers Little didn't seej very much of Mr. Mercer or/and murdered with monotonous regu­ no matter what the ideology behind it. And while her back was being massaged. Al­ since she understood he took charge of the larity and whose violators are never appre­ just as there is no such thing as a little bit of though there was little doubt in her mind more difficult rehabilitative therapy. hended because our white law insists that pregnancy, ditto with oppression. So why about Mrs. Mercer’s acceptance, she had to Mrs. Mercer was the one who took care black women do not exist, nor poor white should one be concerned about which label admit she felt nervous about the prospect of Miss Little, massaging her back, giving women either for that matter? is attached to one’s oppression? Does it of asking her. As far back as she could her the ultrasonic treatments, and putting Thus year after year, the hidden make any difference? remember, Mis^ Little had suffered a ter­ her in traction. Janey, a young therapist chamber is crammed with repressed fury, Then a tiny door of the vast room rible dread of being unable to achieve wiiat fresh from colfcge, usually handled other but you date not stop to wonder what opened just a crack, and a few of the she desired or of losing those pleasures she patients - the |ess special ones. Miss Little would happen if the w ils should suddenly outrages I have faced on a daily basis did attain. The callous, negative judgments thought with jmore than a smidgen of give way. You simply keep on hoping that because of my color floated through my of family and “friends" that had served to satisfaction. The only other regular person with a little luck, the reckoning will not mind. 1 had to admit, yes, there is a undermine her confidence in the past seem­ in the office wals the receptionist Marge. All come today. difference, it matters like hell. Because as ingly were indelibly inscribed in her of them had btcome kind of a family to Yet there is always tomorrow which someone has said, “When things go wrong, conscious mind. Even when people Miss Little over these past few months. haunts the mind like a half-forgotten night­ all blacks are black, and all whites are appeared to like and accept her at first, mare. whitey.” Twenty mi.iutes after leaving her apart­ invariably, in her eyes; their interest would ment, Miss Little pulled into the parking lot 1 suppose that is why 1 was so surprised That things stay wrong in this nation, fade on the second encounter. of the medical center. She had trouble when 1 first heard some of my Gay white can be readily seen by even a casual reading With the Mercers, though, it was a finding a space to park since there were far Sisters complaining about Castro’s oppres­ of the morning paper. And the moment 1 or different story. They had made it clear more cars than during the week when she sion of homosexuals in Cuba. Not that 1 any other black forget we are black, it may from the very beginning how highly they usually came. This was her first Saturday don t think they should complain. Indeed, 1 be our last. For when the shooting starts regarded her, and, moreover, they had never here, since on Thursday, her usual day, she am just as pissed off as they are! any black is fair game. The bullets don’t changed. She remembered Mr. Mercer But why didn’t 1 or the other black had been forced to make an emergency trip phoning after one of her early painful give a damn whether 1 sleep with woman or to the dentist. Lesbians I know get more uptight over the man, their only aim is to put me to sleep treatments to make sure .she had arrived When she entered the office. Miss Little oppression of Gay people? Don't we feel forever. home safely. And then there was his wife, just as threatened by a Castro as we do by was surprised by the number of patients in always seeing that she was the one to take the waiting room. During the week there care of Miss Little and assigning Janey to were only two or three patients besides otlier patients. Why, sometimes when she herself. Now she found herself forced to wasn’t too busy, this lovely person would stand until Janey came out and called even stay with her during pelvic traction, S f r e c ic ii someone’s name. A moment later a man always turning the conversation to Miss By BERNICE BALFOUR with crutches struggled to his feet and Little herself — about how she was feeling, hobbled into the inner office. Miss Little sat whether she was doing her exercises twice a Miss Sarah Little awoke on that beauti­ — in fact, she had begun to suspect that she ful Saturday morning with a feeling of down and scanned a magazine. Almost day, how her secretarial job was coming was someone rather special to them, and, of thirty minutes later Mrs. Mercer looked into along - and sometimes tactfully question­ pleasant anticipation. Today was to be both course, they both were very dear to her. an end and a beginning: the end of her visits the waiting room and smiled at her. “Would ing her about her early life in New York She put on the freshly pressed slacks, you like to come in now?” Miss Little, before she moved to the West Coast. Miss to the Mercers for professional treatment, bought at Mrs. Mercer’s suggestion after her unable to control her emotions on this Little, with a chronic heart condition, had and the beginning of a personal relationship first treatment since they were more that she knew they all wanted. momentous day, began to tremble. “Room never been adaptable to the fast pace of functional for the sessions than a dress or Three,” Mrs. Mercer said pleasantly as her For almost three months Miss Little had eastern city life. Neither was she a good risk skirt Then she stood before her mirror and patient entered the therapy .section. Inside been receiving physical therapy for a for surgery, according to her orthopedist, examined herself critically. Strange, in a the room. Miss Little removed her blouse. A slipped disc, and, if the truth were fold, she who had recommended physical therapy way, that she should be so special to such few .seconds later, Mrs. Mercer came in and had come to look forward to her twice instead. attractive young people as the Mercers. began to prepare the heated pack. weekly treatments. In fact, she had been A few minutes after Mrs. Mercer’s de­ After all, she was a middle-aged, graying, “My, but you’re crowded today," Miss quite depressed just a couple of weeks ago parture the light flashed on and Miss Little plain-faced, bespectacled spinster with no Little declared. when the orthopedist who had refened her jerked involuntarily. Surely it couldn't be really redeeming features except perhaps a “Wc certainly are.” Mrs. Mercer shook to the Mercers told her she had improved to time already for her massage. slim body fairly well preserved through the her head good-naturedly. “Saturday here is the point where she no longer needed the “Only me,” a friendly masculine voice years. becoming impossible. We may have to hire treatments. Then the thought had come to called. Duritig her drive to the medical center another therapist if this continues." her: Why not continue her relationship with Miss Little looked up to see Mr. Mercer for her final treatment, she thought about “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come today." rummaging through one of the cabinets. the Mercers — if not on a professional level, Mrs. Mercer and the warmth and joy this then on a personal basis, which, after all, “We can always work you in. Miss “How are you. Miss Little?” he asked, his charming young woman had brought into Little. No problem at all.” back to her. would be even more satisfactory? She knew her lonely life. Mrs. Mercer was, in essence, the three of them enjoyed the relationship Miss Little climbed onto the table and “ Pretty good," she replied, lazily ob­ everything Miss Little was not: extroverted. lay on her stomach as Mrs. Mercer put the 44 serving the handsome white-coated figure ing television (“Always sleep with a with the dark outmoded crew cut that gave and either one of them could have made (Bernice Balfour does free-lance him a rather old-fashioned collegiate look. some arrangement to see her again since bedboard,” the Mercers had cautioned). editorial work and book copy-editing. Yes, almost anything could happen. Sighing “ You know, today is my last visit.“ they knew her treatment was ending. She has had short stories in various happily. Miss Little realized she might be He turned now and smiled. “Yes, we Perhaps she wasn’t as special to them as little magazines and in ALFRED forced to return in no time at all. know." she’d thought. Or, more likely, all o f their HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY As she pulled into her carport, she could A moment later the room was dark patients were important to them, but as MA GA ZINE and articles in WRITER S hear Mrs. Mercer: “Why, Miss Little, how again and she was alone. Another ten patients only! DIGEST and CALIFORNIA WRITER. nice to see you again . . . We’re so sorry, minutes or so and Mrs. Mercer would return When the traction was completed and Active in civil rights work for years, though, that you’ve been having more to massage her back and give her the Janey unhooked her. Miss Little picked up connected with Fisk University, and trouble . . . Tliis time we'll just have to do ultrasonic treatment. For perhaps the her purse and slowly made her way down into women’s liberation, Bernice is a better job on you . . . Room one, twentieth time, she went over the invitation the hall, not really caring that she was married and has a 10 year old please ...” in her mind. “I wonder, Mrs. Mercer, if you walking stoop-shouldered again. She re­ daughter. She adds that the rest o f her and your husband would care to have called, as a child, wearing a brace because of lime! is taken up with seven resident dinner with me sometime soon. I'm sure poor posture, and momentarily wondered if cats and many visiting felines.) we’ve all enjoyed our contact here, and it her current back problem had its begirmings seems a pity to terminate it just because my then. She stopped at the receptionist’s desk I COULDN'T SAY, I REALLY COULDN’T SAY treatment has ended.” and cleared her throat several times. Marge When the light went on for the second did not even look up from her books until By CAROL MORAN time. Miss Little did not look up im­ Miss Little spoke, her voice unnaturally mediately but waited for Mrs. Mercer to low. The rain was noisy, a repetitious clamor. chewing on half a bagel and completely remove the heating pad and wipe the excess “This is my last visit. Do you have my When I finally reached the address, I was ignoring me. moisture from her back. She couldn’t quite statement, or will you mail it?” soaked inside and out. The August heat was I told her I had an appointment with believe it when she felt a towel being “It will be mailed to you. Miss Little.” constant. It had become part of me, slowing Mr. Getter. After a long pause she looked at my movements. For weeks 1 had crept slapped against her back. Why, Mrs. Mercer Marge smiled perfunctorily. “Goodbye me through two pairs of false eyelashes and always gently patted away the moisture. now, and good luck.” around, looking for a job, mumbling said he wasn’t in. 1 repeated that I had an bitterly to myself after each interview. She Jerked her head up and saw, to her “ 1 was wondering if - if 1 might see the appointment. She said there was nothing There were moments of complete despair, amazement, that the person about to rub Mercers to say goodbye.” she could do about it, he wasn’t in. I asked when the only thing adding up was my bills. oil on her back was not Mrs. Mercer but “ Hold on.” Marge, not trying to hide her if I could wait. She gestured with her 1 pondered robbing a bank. This was at least Janey! her annoyance at being interrupted, rapidly thumb toward an enormous couch and I uplifting and the whole idea, like some “Hi," the young assistant said. “Were disappeared down the hallway, returning slouched into it. romantic dream, mobilized me. I saw my­ After six magazines and the first forty you asleep?” almost instantly. Miss Little knew the self as Bonnie without the weight of Clyde, “Uh - no. 1 was - I was expecting Mrs. answer even before the receptionist spoke. pages of a book, Mr. Gerter kept his and every fancihii episode propelled me appointment, bolting from the elevator in Mercer.” *Tm sorry, both of the Mercers are tied through the streets with a bouncy stride. wrinkled bellbottoms and a loud printed Janey laughed. “Not today, sweetey. up now with a very difficult case. But they But today wasn’t an uplifted day. I was shirt. He was over thirty and trying hard She's up to her ears helping Mr. Mercer with said to tell you how much they enjoyed uninspired and my mind remained a blank not to be. I knew in one glance he was a a new case. Some poor guy with a broken having you and to let them know if there screen. seethcr and 1 ultimately hate seethers. Our leg, a bad neck, a wrecked back - Wow!” are any more problems with your back.” The building before me was modern, personalities never clash blatantly. They .Miss Little put her head down and made Miss Little nodded and went outside to with art work in the lobby. The atmosphere face each other, taunting. an effort to think clearly. She would still be the parking lot, feeling the aching weariness evoked the image of a snob saying, “Well, He gave me the once-over with his here for almost an hour. Surely Mrs. Mercer of the past descend upon her. What a fool what do you want.” The building was bloodshot eyes and said, “Oh, you're the would come in to see her while she was in she had been! To relieve her unbearable traction. She felt relieved when Janey thoroughly air-conditioned (my favorite on one.” I nodded yes and followed him into loneliness, she had lied to herself and rainy days), and had musical elevators. I his office. I handed him my references and finally finished the massage and ultrasonic dreamed the impossible. squeezed my dripping body between other he dropped them on the desk saying they therapy and she was able to slip her blouse It wasn’t until she had almost reached back on and go to the pelvic traction room. dripping bodies and took a ride. “Peg O’ My were really unimportant, and then he left her apartment that she saw the situation in Heart” was playing, and it lasted for the the room. 1 stood there in knots, shivering In the hallway she caught a glimpse of Mrs. a different light. A personal friendship Mercer adjusting the cervical traction equip­ first three stops. As the elevator doors in my soggy clothes, wondering what was would have been fine, of course, but, opened and closed, each floor seemed more happening. ment on a young man, presumably the new undeniably, she had received much pleasure case. impersonal until it reached a nadir at my He returned shortly, carrying a cup of from a totally different kind of relation­ stop. I stepped demurely from the elevator coffee for himself and, between loud sips, She was hardly conscious of Janey ship. She had been important to them as a fastening her with a wide elastic belt and - which was now playing “Red Roses For A began the interview. A woman entered the patient, and this, after all, was a role she Blue Lady” - and a feeling of nauseous awe assisting her on the table for another half room out of breath and asked him if there might well have to play again - yes, and swept over me. Could 1 face this five days a hour of therapy. As she lay on her back and was anything pending. He didn’t answer her again! No matter how careful she was, she week? felt the gentle pull of the machine, aware of question but asked if she had anything to knew that almost anything could set off a The walls were a devouring green, the the minutes slowly ticking away, she tried munch on. She scurried from the room and bad back. Furthermore, she could hardly be furniture an eye-smarting yellow, and in the returned with a large box of biscuits and to figure out what had gone wrong. Perhaps blamed if, occasionally, she would make a center of the room was a platinum-haired some napkins. She asked again if hie needed if she had not come on a Saturday - but mistake. Perhaps she would bend the wrong receptionist, her elbow propped on a desk anything he said no in a spray of crumbs, no, that couldn't have made any difference. way or forget to do her exercises, or maybe intended to look like a tree stump. She was and she left the room. She had seen both of the Mercers today, even fall asleep on the couch while watch­ 46 “Listen, can you start tomorrow?’’ he for lunch and ate a cream cheese and of course). Watching the reactions of Miss Late one afternoon during another asked me. "Oh, wait a minute. Can you datenut sandwich at her desk in a confusion Ellis very carefully, they seemed to bait her, meeting, 1 noticed Miss Ellis sitting at her operate a switchboard?" of papers and envelopes. 1 preferred to stay self-assured that anyone who did not curse, desk, stating at the typewriter, her lips “ Sure,” I said, “but will someone in the office for lunch and always hoped smoke pot, take time off, read pornography quivering. 1 went quietly over to her and acquaint me with the names and incidentals she would take the time to eat with me. or talk the “in” derogation of the common asked what was the matter. She looked at of the job?" When she did, she spoke softly amid the culture was “the enemy.’’ They accepted the closed door of Mr. Oerter’s office and “Oh, no! She’s through, finished, she drone of typewriters and telephones. She me somehow, probably because I used said, “I couldn’t say, 1 really couldn’t say.” was expecting this anyway,” he said nastily. knew 1 liked her and seemed pleased about profanity occasionally and told the new Well, I could but didn’t. 1 had a pressing 1 didn’t know who she was but 1 assumed it. Not that 1 was any different from the male addition he was a lazy pain in the ass urge to kick Mr. Getter’s door in and throw that 1 was taking someone’s place and that usual realm of office clerks - waiting, when he tried to push his work on me. This an open box of biscuits in his face. But 1 someone would be there to help me for a saving and studying for a better slot in the bluntness set me apart from Miss Ellis and didn’t do it few days. spectrum of bureaucracy - but she was in my abandoned manner around the office I know now 1 should have. That after­ But 1 was finally employed and I made pleased by my interest in her. I asked her (I had squared my bills by then) they noon was fatal for Miss Ellis. Behind the up my mind to stay, at least until my name once what she would like to have been had sensed a hidden story. I was accepted as a closed door in the heat of whispers, they was vindicated with the landlord, 1 was, she not become a secretary (or settled for curiosity, not a person. They never spoke to had made another wise decision: that Miss apparently, hired during a purge. The office the position). Her face slowly loosened me or included me in any consensus, but Ellis was bad for the new image. They deity had decided that the company needed from the wearied pull of conscientiousness they directed no innuendos my way - at explained it all to her when they called her a new image. Hiere was talk every day ol and she smiled deeply. “Oh, I . . . I . . .” least not in hearing range. Miss Ellis got in. They said that although her work was who would be the next to go and who She didn’t finish but sat there blushing and them all, but she was unaware of the outstanding, she was intolerant of her co­ should be the next to go. As it turned out, I knew I had more than touched on ramifications and the growing dispute over workers (for wanting them to work too), the ones who survived the purge were under something. I had rammed into it. There was her concern for the work they did. was a reactionary (for reprimanding one of thirty or pretended to be, with the ex­ a long pause while she shuffled papers and There were constant meetings by the the “liberated” women for graphically de­ ception of Miss Ellis, who did most of the wiped her mouth with a napkin. Then she hierarchy behind closed doors without Miss tailing the gymnastics of a sexual encounter work for everyone and was the one who told me in a bursting whisper, “An actress.” Ellis, who confided in me that this was she had had with two men at the same supplied Mr. Gerter in his moment of need I was expecting a teacher or something unusual, that she had always been present time), was a religious fanatic (for reading with cakes, biscuits and coffee, which he along the academic lines. Even the first at the meetings, and that her suggestions and sometimes quoting Norman Vincent took without recompen.se or gratitude. Miss woman president would have been easier to were important to Mr. Getter. Peale), but, most of all, she was con­ Ellis's age was hard to determine. She accept than an actress. For the fact was that They may have been important before temptuous of men (because she nearly seemed lost between forty and fifty. She Miss Ellis, though enthusiastic in her work the new image but Mr. Gerter found it struck the male addition when he told her had been with the company for fifteen and not unattractive, was incredibly bland. harder and harder to take his eyes off the she needed to be tipped off, a euphemism years and knew every office procedure. She It was an acquired blandness, a protective posteriors of the two women additions as for raped and mutilated). was the most competent secretary I had coating on a frightened lonely woman who they pianced in and out of his office By the time they had finished, they had ever met and her competency scared the had seen and felt a lot but was keeping it to complaining about Miss Ellis (or the virgin convinced Miss Ellis that she was some kind hell out of me in the beginning Dedication herself The thing that really amazed me queen, as they called her). What work they of monster. She walked self-consciously to such a thankless job seemed madness to about Miss Ellis was her obvious lack of did produce was sloppy and half-finished from Mr. Getter's office and sat down at me. conclusions concerning people and issues. until Miss Ellis took over most of their her desk shaking 1 stared at her for a long 1 became fascinated with Miss Fillis, who But, for all this, she was an eternal student duties, allowing them more time to regluc time, and she said something I’ll never was always there when 1 arrived in the of life, and an avid film buff, although she their eyelashes, talk about their idea of forget: “ You don’t have to worry. They morning and who stayed long after I'd gone preferred the theatre. I asked her if she women’s liberation and compete for the like you.” in the evening. She was a happy victim ( 1 were sorry she hadn’t pursued acting and below-the-waist stares of Mr. Gerter and Co. can think of her in no other way), glad to she said, “1 couldn’t say, I really couldn’t assist, glad to keep secrets and lend money. say,” and dropped the subject. She was the calm in the office storms - and The weeks went by slowly and I didn’t EXCERPTS FROM A LIFE there were many office storms. I felt a get to know Miss Ellis any better, although By BARBARA LIPSCHUTZ closeness with her, despite the difference in I grew more fond of what 1 did know. She our ages, a closeness that only confirmed was not liked by the other women in the “Aggression” She told her own mother who said she single women seem to have. I'hcy never office and was despised by two new ones. When she was four she lived down the should pray to Jesus about it. lower the boom on each other for what There were three people hired since I’d block from Keith who was seven and the So she did pray to Jesus and He their private lives might be, but enjoy a begun working there. They were very meanest kid in the world. Every time she answered her prayers. One day, when she vicarious participation in tlie mystery. straight, very hip, very lazy additions to the would go by Keith’s house, Keith would was playing in her own front yard, Keith Títere was a stronger bond between us, already very straight, very hip, very lazy grab her and drag her into his backyard and was climbing a tree in his front yard. unspoken - a certain camaraderie women staff The two women who hated Miss Ellis spank her. When she played in the woods She heard the impact of body on share who are not wholly accepted by their arrived the first day in Hot Pants and the near where she lived, Keith would follow cement all the way from his yard to hers. contemporaries for whatever reasons. men arrived later the same day, brimming her and spank her again. She looked and there was Keith, on the Although we spoke very little (site rarely with machismo and four letter words. They She told Keith’s mother (who knew all sidewalk beside the tree, moving but had the time), I learned that Miss Ellis had were thoroughly liberated, they said, about it, having watched from behind the obviously dazed and hurt. She knew that traveled a great deal and had done many of especially the women, who explained in kitchen curtains). Keith’s mother said, Jesus had heard her prayers and that this the things 1 hoped to do. When things were front of the entire office their liberated “Keith is only playing, dear. Why are you was her chance. She ran from her house to slow in the office, she allowed herself time views on sex and life styles (heterosexual. being such a baby?” Keith’s house, ran to his sidewalk beside his 48 tree, ran to Keith’s body lying on the of hysteria, and one time, in a drunken, ten. The other kids took gym, but I had had shoulders. She resembled a girl of stone. cement. darkened kitchen; on the other side. polio; I sat on the sidelines in my wheel­ Exquisite but frozen. There was a vague, When she got to Keith she didn’t hesi­ The boys would date Suzanne (who chair, rooting them on. (I'd been a whipper- unearthly gaze in her eyes - if one peered snapper, the fastest runner and could out­ tate a minute. She straddled him and would not date her) but they would not closely enough at the photographs - which banged his head against the sidewalk. She touch Suzanne for they knew how gauche strip the boys before my illness - every unnerved one. banged it and banged it and didn t care how they were, and her fragility frightened time.) I wonder whether she ever really cared much Keith screamed or how bloody his them. Suzanne would tell her this and Does this story turn more on the winter for anyone? I think she was cruel; I think I was twenty-one? when all hiding stopped, face got. She bathed in the righteous would laugh and break a bit before her she broke many hearts. One young Greek when the wingblow was driven by my ecstasy of revenge. She flowed in the sweet eyes. professor fell so deeply in love with her that father that laid the fox open? Or does it irresistible transition from the oppressed to In the summer of their friendship on when she turned him down, he left the turn more sharply on that ashen winter the oppressor. “And the meek shall inherit Suzanne’s farm they picked ripe corn, from college where he taught, in destitution. 1 afternoon when everything was the color of the earth.” Thank you, thank you, Jesus. Suzanne’s fields and roasted the ears and question whether she ever loved-truly. Even blown ash, O ash blonde!, when I was the woman? For, years afterward, when I Eventually she became aware of Keith’s smeared them dense with butter. As they fifteen and the vignette with the gym mother pulling her away, slapping her face, ate, ear after ear, brown and dripping hot, lost my woman and said to mother in teacher was etched indelibly on my mind? and carrying Keith into his house. they knew how wild they were at heart and bitterness, “Ah you’ve never been let down My home was broken. Right down the She sat there on the meanest kid in the did not speak. in love; you cannot know what it's like,” middle. 1 am the daughter of a moody world’s sidewalk, red with the meanest kid Suzanne turned Bah’ai and married a she laughed, lightly, even now aware of her Russian Jewish psychologist, and a in the world’s blood, and knew that she was man with an Arabic name. Now she has attractiveness and charm. (My own strict beautiful wild gypsy girl who loved a right. She knew that she would be punished religion and babies to cover up her definition of beauty was of course taking woman, and who turned uncountably cruel form.) but that didn’t matter. She was avenged and porcelain, like a pancake makeup, matte. toward me. I never held it against her that she was right. She hoped that Keith would There is still a madness down beneath her On the Hungarian stage, my mother she loved a woman; I learned it from father, played an angel as a girl of five. Her eyes die. eyes, and Suzanne's body, so soft in years after the divorce, that winter 1 was were coal, her cheeks round and rouged, “Thank you Jesus for answering my adolescense, has grown quite painfully thin. twenty-one when I ran away to him and his everybody's darling, imploring and prayers.” Somehow she got home, was She will call Suzanne and Suzanne will wife. I only held it against mother that in winsome. I think she has never quite out­ spanked by the father and sent to her room. come to visit her, but women cannot always loving a woman, she hurt him. I always held grown playing the role. Fm sure she sensed She heard the parents talking to Keith’s love, who loved as girls. it to be the greatest emotional dishonesty even then she was a wirmer; could take, and mother in the living room, beginning in on mother's part that she didn't marry the break anyone's heart she had a mind to. tight low voices and ending in screaming And so she did with the accurate crack of threats. woman. She would come up to his college firewood. Finally she and Keith (who had re­ weekends, supposedly to visit him, her Father said, “Your mother is not a covered by the next day) were forbidden fiance; but would visit on the sly the Lesbian; but she is drawn to women." I said ever to play with each other again. Which l l a i k woman she was in love with. It pierced my little at the time. Nor have I ever let on to suited her fine and only proved again that father to the core, although he told me her that 1 knew of her affair with the she was right. She had freed herself from By LYN MICHAELS about it quietly. After ten years with my woman. But I have mulled over what might the tyranny of the terrible Keith. 1 am often hiding things. It goes with mother, father will not tolerate secrets or have been the seriousness of the For the rest of that year, until her not being able to bend my back, with closed doors. At the marriage, mother had relationship. 1 was simply aware that she family moved, she would look from her keeping pain private. To bend is to tell. To worn thick brown satin; an early putting on would be phoned from time to time by a yard and see Keith in his yard, and some­ bend is also to experience excruciating pain; the cloth of mourning? Years later, she woman - with low, masculine voice; would where inside of her she would feel clean and for though they put me over the barrel, took it down from her closet where she flirt over the phone with this woman. I good. they could not limber my spine. To tell this kept it; so shiny and so bleak. It sent chills would be embarrassed for mother, knowing She knew in her absolute four-year-old story as it should be told would require an up my spine. she was hiding. Hiding - something. I had wisdom that bullies must be stopped. openness as if a terrific storm had blown And she had been a raving beauty when fled from her in psychic pain, only to learn She knew that if she had not struck him every cloud from the sky, left it scoured she wed him, twenty-three. She’d won a how truly raw my wound. In fact, Bobbie, down, Keith would have spanked her and clean. Or as if a scar were tom off a wound. beauty contest two years before; in fact, mother's woman, had come to father duriirg bullied her and terrified her until she would Can I? Ought 1? (although that is another was so arresting in her classic beauty - the divorce proceedings specifically to plead have had to stay in her house all the time, question.) Picture a veil lifted from the aquiline nose, perfectly clear fine features, her innocence; she felt herself not the cause out of fear. She knew that to conquer the face; that face has been covered for many deep set brown eyes and fine reddish-brown of the severing. At any rate, it rankled in bulUes of this world, a person gets one years; it is alien to the sun; now the shroud hair - that an artist in the streets of Ithaca me like a thorn - this unknown woman. chance only, and must seize it, unerringly, is removed in order to reveal the exquisite had begged her to let him paint her por­ Still does from time to time. regardless of future ramifications. beauty and trial of being human; in all the trait; an exquisite miniature I saw years Father only once cried out to me that 1 Otherwise she is lost, and will be bullied features, the history is written. It cannot be later. On porcelain. She kept it in our bore the bad seed. I forgave him picturing forever. ^ rewritten. Or unwritten. home. I think in her thirties, she reached again the funereal beauty of mother as Only what’s relevant should be told, but the height of her beauty; she wore suede young woman, mother in brown satin. The “Suzanne” it suddenly strikes me that no vignette will hunting jackets, aush hats with huge winter 1 was twenty-one was my legal For a while in high school her best do. All the details are ice-sharp; mother, feathers. She was always in the aet of coming of age, out of the age of innocence friend was Suzanne: Suzanne of miniatures, maniage, the teacher. flirtation. And I saw dreamy-eyed pictures into the age of understanding. calligraphy and sonnets. Suzanne whose From the gym teacher I could hide taken of her as a girl in St. Mark’s Square, But the gym teacher occurred when I face was porcelain which cracked a little nothmg. She felt me. (One can always sense Venice, all the pigeons fluttering about her was fifteen. I loved to watch her move. One when she laughed, a laughter just this side these things.) I was fifteen - looked about icy winter afternoon when by four p.m. it I slept long. No dreams. It is almost my wheelchair, then to the windowsill “Let me help you," she began quietly. was evening, and when I was feeling dawn. The world is rose and gold. The which overlooked West 73rd Street, Man­ Half aware of what I was doing, I began particularly rotten, she came up to me after tenements are bathed in l®ht. It is icy, hattan. If one craned the neck, you could fumbling for the zipper in back of my navy gym, asked: frosty this morning. I am warm, I can bend, see a strip of the oily Hudson, lights of the blue pleated skirt; I reached to my toes to “Want to take a hot shower, Jenny?" and siietch! To leap upon stars and bells of Jersey coast. I'd do this, letting in a blast of lift one leg and pull off my black knee 1 was stunned. wind, drift above this city. It is good, the icy air. Fortunately, we had a rusted black stockings. (My feet were icy as usual, Baths at home were a special problem. cold about me and the warm within. The windowguard to keep me from becoming turning blue; 1 didn't want her to feel them, We had a fine old fashioned tub of cold bare scent of dawn in this room is good the swan I wanted to and flying away, or even see them.) Now came the hard part: porcelain, though we were hard up for now in February. Soon dawn will smell of ’ although often in my dreams I took off that I clenched my teeth: I had to unzip my money, always trapped. But these old West coffee, and will be deep-colored. I cannot way. And once as a girl of twelve, I nearly orange turtleneck jersey along the back: my Side New York apartments had deep tubs. breathe enough of b ri^ t silver about me flew from my stretcher into the East Rivet, shoulders ached most when 1 did this, and In the hot tub, I could forget my pain; 1 against this far fire within. I shall be a bird, alarming the nurse and incurring severe my neck felt like iron: I still needed to have loved to trace my fingers over the cracks, soar too sharp with joy, leave this wasted rebuke. But here, there was blessed calm. If it stretched out, but treatments cost a veins in the aged milkwhite porcelain. But I body alone here in the dawn. it had snowed, all the Puerto Rican rooms fortune, a brace was cheaper. 1 was one of got into the bath seldom: 1 had to be Off with the covets! Now, cold, you in brownstone houses appeared touched by four children and had already cost my helped by my mother, her sharp eyes cannot sorrow me to the cote. Soon there benediction; a still palm laid on a burning parents a mint. (My parents, divorced by focused upon me; riveted. 1 could feel them will be coarse wool about the legs and soon forehead. Milkbottles were lined on the that time, drew together to pay my burning a hole through my shoulder-blades, enough there will be pain to bring salt tears windowsills. Some nights, there would be expenses, not without bitterness and which were skinny. I could feel her running to the eyes. Soon I will be up and out and explosions from faulty gas heaters which blame.) Our polio insurance used up, we her critical gaze over my badly twisted — arise. See in the small cracked sphere of would send families of nine or ten pouring could afford no more. No more Si-ster spine. I imagine she felt guilt over my mirror glass these wide green eyes moist out into the streets. My dreams were Kenny hot packs (I had wept when they condition, which she vented by some swing with tears. Look how strange, they smile, ^ haunted by these explosions. To flex one’s discontinued them ten days after they at my body. It made me overwhelmingly cry, grow wider still - till all you ate is , wings like a swan, to get away from sudden b^an, as they brought the only relief at shy; I'd rather lie in bed all night, cold and wide green eyes. See the pale long lightly fire and destruction. But one might get hand. aching, than expose myself to ridicule and freckled face, and thin dark blonde hair burned nonetheless by flames cycloned up Bending my neck was my greatest trial humiliation. 1 took to casting my eyes aglow with morning light. Queer little into skies by winter winds, all the feathers Agony at times. I'd rather anything. But down. But the bath - became the symbol madonna! Smile, laugh, cry. Gaze now far disintegrate like ashes. Swan whose wingtips Miss Smith was knowing; she unzipped the of balm. from the tiny sphere of glass, past morning were ignited, and then the whole blessed awkward jersey (why did Mama make me Dragged back from death at twelve, I rooftops, take care not to think; you must bird burned. There was no way out. wear THESE things? 0 yes, they told me to got the intuition she’drather I had not been not think. Let your thoughts fly as the stars I spent most of my time between twelve wear turtleneck things to keep warm.) returned. The bath became the whip: she fade . . . and seventeen on the windowsill. Then, gently eased off the brace I wore would run a steaming tub at eight in the Forget the wide green eyes and thin stiff That to which I came home was always round my neck which made me feel like a evening; neither my sister nor she would say limbs. Only gaze deep into the dim water of with me. So that afternoon, in the gym, turtle: cumbersome, vulnerable thing I a word. It would still be standing at nine. ashen morning sky. Watch that first softness when Miss Smith suddenly asked me this wouldn't have to wear again until 1 was Once or twice, we had a scene. But usually of scrolled smoke rising from a distant question, I started looking intensely down thirty-one. i she’d pull the plug from the (tain, without smokestack. WATCH IT CLOSELY, FEEL at the concrete floor of the locker room. My clothes, she laid out neatly on the a word, let the water rush back down. IT DEEPLY. Up, up, up through air easily “It would make you feel better-’’ wood bench; there was the rip in my Whole summers in shacks we rented. I'd to and fro. And only remember, now, far (How did she know I was feeling stocking; the skirt a size too big; my Willie go without bathing. But winters were worst. far back: a bird, pure bright gliding through rotten?) Goodwill wardrobe. Somehow she took Now came those long hours when I would a sky of grey . . . “Listen, you know, Jenny,” she said embarrassment out of the thing; or, rather, make of my spirit a spire of burning flame * * * sitting down on the wooden bench along­ put us beyond such emotions. to warm the ravaged body. First, there So went my reverie. Really how it was, side me, by my wheel chair so 1 didn't have Within moments, there I sat out of the would be the cold of the bed, and deep was I’d lie awake dreaming of Arizona. How to turn, “I have a secret to tell you: I, too, scratchy underthings. Nude in my young ache of cold in the legs. There would be would I ever work up courage to ask my had polio as a child; when I was about ten; girl body, just coming into puberty. The rigidness in shoulders and back, deep mother to take me there? I’d sometimes for a few years I wore braces on my legs up way she smiled on me, I felt she looked through to the bone; there would be tight­ watch old westerns on TV to see the desert, to here" - she indicated a bit below the upon mine as a beautiful body. ness all through the limbs. But then - or put suntan lotion on my limbs at night knee. “They didn't think I would walk I was undergoing . . . a transformation. through the marble cold of rooftops, one to smell the sun; I collected a little box of again; but I did, and now I only feel it I suddenly started smilii^, then laughing. worn star would kindle an instant flight of gaudy postcards of cactus. Arizona. My sometimes in my legs when I'm very tired.” And I was not given much in those days to fancy! Color, light, movement. I’d be living mother’d say one went to such a climate to I stared at Miss Smith. Did my mouth laughing. From that day, I would hold my through one thousand spheres at once. I’d die . . . fall open? I was blushing. She was smiling head a bit more high, despite the pain. ascend, far from the body, then dip down If it took four hours to fall asleep, deeply, frankly, into my gaze. My mind flashed back in those seconds suddenly as I rose to the small darkened alright. I’d bitterly remember the sound of There beyond us was the row of before transferring into the shower, to room. It is gentle, the dark, like the feel of the last of the bath water that evening steaming stall showers the girls had just those baths we children were given soon hot water. It is blessed, the dark, like the drawing down the drain. It epitomized the come out from. Now, all the girls were after we had been deathly ill in state y feel of hot water. Sacred. So is hot tea. And bitterness of our relationship. If I could get gone. There was about three-quarters of an hospital. They were hell, run by armies of ' that far floating star will glide past that warm up to the hips, I was fine. When I hour before I had to meet my ride home. Satan. I have never been in war, nor prison, -j smokestack soon. 1 think the star is green - couldn’t fall asleep,l’d be sure my ten year Christ, how 1 longed to get in. I felt But nurses in gunmetal gray uniforms almost blue. One with night. old sister was softly breathing, then shift to immensely shy, yet open. would arrive; huge battalions of women in grey frocks would descend, lower our I never met but once my mother's emaciated bodies on steel stretchers into woman. It was after 1 had had polio. We vats filled with about two inches of tepid three had a very restrained tea in out New water, and there bathe our private parts; York apartment one afternoon. I didn’t like THE LESBIAN SISTERS just a hint of water, no warmth, nothing to her, straight off. She was the type I would always steer from, fleeing as though I were IN LITERATURE A MONTHLY MAGAZINE immerse yourself in; there, beneath tall BY AND FOR LESBIANS baiied-in windows letting in little light, and the shot deer: sharp-angled, abrupt, evasive, that a yellow brackish one in winter to coy, with strident voice. I knew she was in Poetry-G raphics-N ews- Events match the vomit colored walls of those back of unhappy things. She made me feel a Bibliography by FROM SAN FRANCISCO DOB rooms. Sometimes, from the next tub one raw-boned and wrong. Gene Damon and Lee Stuart could heat a child softly whimpering. If we But later, when 1 first came to love a $5.00 per year cried, we were penalized by no dinner that woman, she resembled Miss Smith, tall, 1005 Market Street, Room 208 day. But our bodies w'ere stiff, if they jolted blonde, thirty-one with candid grey eyes. $2.25 from THE LADDER San Francisco, California 94103 us there would be a needle run through our She was the woman I had already wholly spine. Then, the bath done, they would lift created in my mind and had only to find. our bodies out again on precarious, waving Of the thousand things my beloved said stretchers and wheel us back down ward, to me, one stands shining, burning at core: evening drawing on, where there lay fifty Always having dreaded being touched, 1 other children; on, into our particular braced myself involuntarily when she laid AWT yellow-tile cubicle, with our cubicle-mate. her hand upon my shoulders, for I thought For hours afterward, we would be shivering. they felt to others like stone, marble (as So it was. The luxury of bathing. I was they felt inside) not human. 1 with­ shivering . . . But now, before me, this drew . . . warm young woman, in blue slacks, short “ Darling!’’ she said, “it's alright! I mean A Monthly Magazine By and For blonde hair damp with exertion; but grey - it’s not: it's brutal. But cvetri/iing about LESBIANS eyes calm. She helped me gently to transfer you is alright with me.” 1 year, £ 2.40 plus postage from wheelchair to stall shower seat. She So I had been drawn out of hiding. They turned the water on, warm. say: One feather of the wing flawed, the Single Copy .25p plus postage WOMAN “Warm enough?” she smiled. bird cannot fly. But all that can flaw is “Yep . . . just tight, perfect," I said. dishonesty. In her arms, I soared, ay, we SURFACE MAIL sealed £1.86 P.O. BOX 1169 She scrubbed my back, especially gently .soared so high that earth below looked like IOWA CITY, IOWA 52240 where I hurt most. 1 closed my eyes for half velvet dotted with tiny lights. unsealed £ .76 a second. Then got ready to come out. Like the shot deer, I fled from my A IR M A IL sealed £3 .50 1 year — $5 “Why not stay in longer?” she asked. mother’s woman. But my own: direct and unsealed £ 2.00 Institutions — $20 “I . . . yep. OK.” And 1 stayed in, till strong: her I would seek out over and over the hot water had beat all of the pain out of again. I vowed in my blood that if she'd Payment in Sterling Only Overseas — $13 my neck, and shoulder bones. have me, unUke my mother when 1 found Then the unaccountable thing happened: her, I would make her mine: would marry BCM/Petrel, London, WC I Published by a Lesbian Collective Something 1 have never been able to fully from then until the end of time. explain: mingled with the shower water, streaming, I suddenly realized that I was Keep On Top Of Things! crying. Hard strong tears; honest crying, as 1 hadn’t those three long years since I was V. * "W .P.C.t The P o lltic B of P o litic s " sick. 1 looked at her - all a blur, madonna V * "Phallsciss About the Hovemeni" through all that steam; fox-blonde. After, * "The Status-tory Rape of Pightln’ she turned the water off, she wrapped me CHANGING YOUR ADDRESS? Pathsr Duffy" warm in a white towel. READ the March Iseue of “Snow child!” she laughed. (Or 1 think If you are planning to move, those ivere her words.) Like a drenched rat, please let us know six weeks before MAJÇRITY REPORT my blonde hair hung down. 1 remember it changing your address. Please send had just begun to snow large grey flakes your old address and your new features: calendar for Ï.T. areai into early winter evening . . . Then she address, clearly marked. You MUST asked me, kindly, to try to bend my neck include BOTH your old and new zip feniniet directory, action page forward to my chin, three times. 1 could codes. REMEMBER, third class mail bend! Didn't feel the pain. Then, she helped is not forwardable. Send to CIRCU­ Bube - S3 fo r 10 iBeuee to me to slip the neck brace back on; helped LATION DEPARTMENT, THE MaiorltT Renort■ #5® 89-19 171 St. dress and hustled me upstairs, to meet my LADDER, P.O. Box 5025, Wash­ JaaaicaT II.I. 11432 /single copy 40e ride home. ington Station, Reno, Nev. 8^03. G a m m a s

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