In Her Day (12 page)

“That’s what I like about us, we never take the direct route. Now tell me more about Ilse. You didn’t finish that off.”

“Oh. Well, I think Ilse is in some way connected to Carole’s background. Ilse comes from money as you
know. Carole has always been fascinated and repelled by people who had it easy. Here is this Boston rich kid repudiating her own past and calling it a revolution. A potent combination for Ms. Hanratty.”

“You come from money. I don’t sense any lurking hostility from Carole toward you.”

“That’s because I’m Black. It’s a mark, a proof of injustice, of suffering. We’re equals in her eyes because I haven’t had it all given to me. Carole despises people who’ve had it handed to them and do nothing with it. She only respects people who work. I guess that includes working to remove the stigma of inherited wealth. She’s a strange combination of Spartan and aesthete.”

“I never thought of her that way but now that you’ve said it I can see where someone like Ilse would draw her. Ilse’s got it all handed to her and she’s handing it all back. That takes a certain amount of courage.”

“Yes and no. The reason why I could never get into the peace movement was because most of those folk wanted moral points for giving back the money, for bucking the system. They protested as much out of ego as out of ruffled justice. Don’t trust that. Besides, who’s to say they can’t go back and get the money if they change their mind, if the going turns ugly? You know that old biographical stage direction: Enter left. Exit right.”

“You never did.”

Startled, Adele hesitated. “I … no, I didn’t, but that was different. I wasn’t marching against the government—marching for civil rights. My daddy wanted me to be a lawyer like himself and I wanted to study art. I have to give credit to Dad. He paid my way through undergraduate school. When I left I didn’t take any more from him. That’s not exactly
repudiating him. I went to graduate school on my own. Things were cool on the home front for years after that, but Dad hasn’t cut me out of his will or anything drastic.”

“He’ll probably leave you only his law books out of spite, just wait.”

“Hells bells, as Lester would say. And if he did I’d manage. Got this far on my own.”

LaVerne announced, “And we got this far together. Are you hungry after all that exercise?”

They took a table by the window in the white and blue restaurant. After the waitress brought them drinks Adele lifted her glass to LaVerne and whispered, “I love you.”

Across the courtyard Lucia, in a mother earth mood, was baking fresh bread. The smell of it invaded Ilse’s small cottage. Vito chased a busy fly and Ilse was curled up in her bed reading Mao’s remarks on art at the Yenan conference. Mao continually surprised her. He was so practical. Carole’s insistence that art was the morning star of revolution prompted her to look at what others had to say on the subject. Initially she thought Carole was firing another flashy line but grudgingly she was losing some of her distrust of the beautiful.

She had feared beauty, feared anyone consecrated by creativity. Mother forced the so-called fine arts down her throat until she thought she’d choke. At school she was expected to flutter over Beethoven or swoon at Renoir. She hated the whole thing. Gaining a feminist viewpoint taught her that art was nothing but an extended commercial for the rich. They celebrated their values or lack of them, their petty morality or latest conquest. And so she threw the baby out with the bathwater. She forgot about Mark Twain.
She didn’t know about the artisans of the Middle Ages. She’d never even heard of Muriel Spark, Bertha Harris, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tillie Olsen, Barbara Deming, Maya Angelou, and all the other women fighting their way into recognition. She thought of art the way she thought of tennis. It was for the white and the rich. Worse than tennis it was almost all men.

As Ilse never faltered in her feminist faith so Carole never faltered in her faith that humans must create beauty or spiritually die. Carole forced Ilse to reconsider what she had thought was a dead issue. She still didn’t think of art the way Carole did but she reconsidered it from a political standpoint. Could art be useful? Can it teach? Can it activate people?

Why am I afraid of beauty? All my life I’ve been told I was beautiful. It was as though I was an art object, admired, prized, handled, and, later, polished. Mother saw to that. Daddy was too busy making money to participate in my growing up although he did manage to tell me I looked pretty. He also managed to look at my report cards. I hate them both. They’re self-deceived, cowardly, and inflexible. They are the enemy. Really, my parents are the enemy. Even Mother. I can understand why she did everything she did but I can’t forgive her for it. Even if she had no choice then she has a choice now. My mother should be right here in the movement beside me instead of taking ups in Brookline. Maybe that’s why I fear beauty or art or whatever it is that Carole pursues. It might get me off course, drag me back into my proper past. I don’t want a past. I want to start new. I want to be reborn. Reborn. That’s why I’m having trouble talking to Carole about feminism. I’m changed. I’m not what I was or what I was raised to be. I’m not what any woman was raised to be. I’m
a new world. I haven’t even got a language yet for what’s happened to me. None of us have. Perhaps we do need artists to develop that language. I never thought of it that way.

The phone rang. It was Alice Reardon reminding Ilse that tonight’s meeting was changed from her house to Harriet’s over on East Sixth Street.

Hurrying by Cooper Union, Ilse took a right under the scaffolding and ran smack into the local, neighborhood exhibitionist waving his prick like a pink handkerchief and breathing as though he needed an iron lung. Ilse slacked her pace, faced him directly, and said in the sweetest voice possible, “That looks like a penis only smaller.” She then crossed Third Avenue at a brisk pace arriving at Harriet’s apartment right on time.

Olive, glowering on the floor, spat, “Everybody’s here so let’s start. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

Ilse almost said she’d been on time but figured why bother.

Olive continued, “I’ve been approached by the
Village Rag
. They say they want to do a piece on us. Maybe one of us could even write it although those details would have to be worked out later. So I think we ought to talk about it.”

Alice replied, “What we ought to talk about is media policy. We’ve been so busy with projects and meetings about meetings that we don’t have a guideline for things like this.”

“What do we need a policy for? Why can’t we just decide about the
Rag
? If we start in on a policy we’ll be here all night and I don’t want to go out on the East Village streets late.” Sue pouted.

Suella Matson was one of Olive’s last remaining
devotees. She had changed her name to Sue Betsychild and let the hair on her chin grow into a healthy stubble. Somehow that seemed contradictory to Ilse but she knew better than to bring it to Sue’s attention.

Olive’s other remaining troop member was Ann Rappaport who changed her name to Annie Amazon. Even in blazing weather, five foot one inch Annie wouldn’t be seen without her black leather jacket sparkling with silver studs. She backed up Sue’s statement with a gusty, “Yeah.” Ilse couldn’t imagine that Annie Amazon was afraid to walk the streets at night.
Yeah
what? she thought.
Yeah
she’s afraid to walk the streets or
yeah
we don’t need to get into a media policy?

“Trying to figure out a way to handle the establishment media might take longer than one meeting,” Ilse offered, “but we should do it. Otherwise we’re going to deal with the problem piecemeal and we’ll screw ourselves up. Today it’s the
Village Rag
, three months later it’ll be
Esquire
. We need some criteria to measure this by.”

Sue Betsychild growled, “They need an answer by this Thursday.

Ilse was bored and angry with the constant hassles. “They might not get their answer this Thursday. I think the direction of this group is more important than pleasing some editor at the
Rag
.”

Olive exploded. “Shut up, James. We don’t need you telling us what to do.”

Harriet tried to calm things down. “Don’t personalize an issue, Olive. We do need to develop some policy for the group where the press is concerned. If we don’t, we run the risk of making serious mistakes.”

“What kind of mistakes?” Annie baited her taking a deep drag out of a crooked little cigar.

Brenda Zellner inserted her level mind into the
argument, “Look how the press misrepresented the Panthers to the public. And look how the press jerked off at the protests over the Miss America Pageant. The establishment media has never shown itself hospitable to political groups that could rock it’s own interests and we’re one of those groups.”

“Whadda ya mean, Panthers? And how are we shaking up the
Rag
? This is ridiculous. We could use coverage,” Olive fired back.

“Olive, why don’t you check out the
Rag
’s masthead? Check out its advertising? How many women do you see on the board or on the staff? H-m-m? The media is run by white, middle- to upper-middle-class men and they don’t want to hear from women’s liberation much less organized lesbians unless they can make some money out of us. Get serious. They’ll try to make us look like a bunch of crazies,” Brenda answered.

Alice whispered in Ilse’s ear. “Unfortunately we have a few crazies. Maybe we could give them Olive and they’d keep her as Exhibit A.”

Ilse had to stifle a guffaw. Alice was her closest friend in their political circles. Attractive in a quiet way, the movement saved Alice from becoming a parson’s wife but she brought the same steely patience of a missionary to the group. Alice had no illusions that organizing was glamorous. At twenty-five she realized that work is its own reward and no one ever has a handle on the future. All you can do is keep your shoulder to the wheel.

“If we had a write-up we’d get more members,” Annie bitched.

“We don’t need new members,” Ilse said.

“Oh sure, if new people come in then you can’t control the group,” Olive accused.

“Fuck off, Olive. Numbers aren’t important right
now. It’s more important for us to have some clarity, some understanding among ourselves first. Then if we want to build a large organization we can. If we open the doors now it will destroy all that we’ve done so far.”

“That’s unsisterly,” Sue hurled at her.

Even Alice was getting fed up. “Bullshit. We’re not a social group. We do need to decide where we’re going before we take in new people.”

“I think we’re getting off the subject. The subject is a media policy,” Harriet stated.

“Then I say we ought to take advantage of the contradictions and use the
Rag
to our own advantage,” Olive pressed, furious.

“You have no control over what gets in that paper. They can let you edit the article, then put back in whatever they want, and give you a song and dance afterwards. Christ, how can you trust these people? How can anyone trust the press?” Brenda expounded.

“They exposed Watergate,” Ann said.

“Watergate isn’t the women’s movement or lesbians. Watergate is still in their realm of experience. It offends their convenient morality but it’s safe inside their frame of reference. We are completely beyond their ability to understand us. We’re new women. New people. They’re blind to us. We’d be fools to allow ourselves to be used by these people for copy. Do you think they care about our analysis? Hell no. We’d make fantastic copy for them. The article would say how sexually desirable or undesirable we are. Whether we looked like men. Who is sleeping with whom. Do we like men? Do we hate men? That’s what they want to know. They’re unable to hear the questions we’re asking.” Ilse waxed hot.

Harriet supported her. “Right on. If we do ever use
the establishment media then it’s got to be on our terms. That’s why we need a media policy. Right now exposure is too dangerous and could hurt us. We’re still too unformed. If we were a reformist group trying to pass legislation or awareness of oppression then the press would have its uses immediately. But we’re not. We’re revolutionaries. Or radicals. I don’t know. None of those words seem to apply. They’re old-fashioned …”

“We know what you mean,” Brenda encouraged.

“Well, I mean our purpose isn’t to put a band-aid on a gaping wound. Our answer is economic—it isn’t just abortion or no discrimination against lesbians. We have more to us than that and we need to tie those ideas together and to develop a thorough program. The press is irrelevant to us now.”

“America lives by the media! How will we ever reach the masses?” Olive bordered on the hysterical now.

“I don’t think there are any masses.” Alice spoke firmly. “There are millions of individuals but no masses. I refuse to categorize people. That’s what male supremacy teaches us, to fit people into nifty little categories that destroy them. There are no masses and we degrade ourselves and the people we want to reach by going through a press, a medium, that conceives of them as a mass.”

“You’re quibbling. Coverage is coverage. How are people going to know about us and what we stand for if we don’t use tv and stuff like that?” Sue at this point was more perplexed than angry.

“By our work.” Alice went on. “By our own network of communication. Do you think people trust television? It shows them a body count in one minute followed by a Geritol commercial in the next minute.”

“Shit. People are stupid They’ll believe what’s on tv.” Olive ridiculed her.

Ilse rose to her feet. The months of enduring Olive had taken their toll. Her temper flew out the window. “People are stupid. If you think people are stupid then why are you in this group? Why do you even bother with the movement? What makes you so much better than anyone else? And who is going to listen to you or any of us if we look down on the people we’re trying to talk to? Nixon operated on the premise that people are stupid. Do you want to operate that way? You have no respect for anyone because you don’t respect yourself. Why don’t you take your hang-ups and just get the hell out of here!”