In Her Day (13 page)

Olive charged over to Ilse and took a swing at her. Annie and Sue trailed right behind her. Alice, Harriet, and Brenda formed a wall between them and Ilse.

“Sit down, sit down and cool off, goddammit,” Harriet yelled.

Olive collapsed in a lump and began her famous crying routine. Annie mothered her and the chains on her jacket and pants almost rattled out Olive’s sobs. The other women, not ready for such a sulphurous reaction, sat in stunned silence.

Alice finally spoke. “I think the needs of this group and your needs aren’t the same, Olive. I can’t speak for anyone else but as far as I’m concerned I can’t work with you.”

It hadn’t dawned on Olive that she might be thrown out. If she felt sorrowful she covered it in another outburst. “Elitist snobs. You all suck up to Ilse. You talk about ideology. S’all crap. We’re supposed to love each other.”

“No,” Ilse stepped in. “We’re supposed to pull our weight. It’s unrealistic to expect we’ll all love each
other. The most we can ask for is to respect each other and to work for a common goal. If we’re going to love each other it’ll come out of working side by side not because somebody put it down on paper.”

“Well, I’m going to go to the
Rag
and give them a real article. And anyone who wants to can get away from these pigs and join me.”

Sue Betsychild and Annie Amazon followed her out the door. Annie snuck a look back to see if anyone was coming but no one budged. They heard Annie’s chains jingling all the way to the front door.

“What decayed ego structures those people must have, like rotting persimmons.” Brenda shook her head.

“That’s poetic, Brendie.” Alice put her arm around her.

“This had to happen sometime. If we’re going to talk about this group and its direction we ought to examine why we let this drag on so long. That may not be our first priority of discussion but why are women such setups for emotions? Damn.” Harriet sat back down again shaking her head.

“Because we’re the peacemakers, the ones responsible for soothing ruffled feathers,” Brenda said.

“Partly, but I also think it’s because we’re unsure of ourselves.” The women stared at Ilse. “We’re trying to pull an ideology together; we’ve got a lot of it but we’re shaky in parts. We haven’t been in political struggle that long. We’re not taken seriously so that doesn’t help one bit. And look at us. Look how young we are—we’re still getting our own lives together. It’s pretty easy for someone to run us around, you know, especially with tears. Christ, if there’s one thing women respond to it’s tears.”

“Ilse, you wouldn’t by any chance be saying we should be unemotional, pseudo-rational, shut off emotions
the way men do, would you?” Harriet questioned her in an even tone.

“I don’t know, Harriet. Remember when we first formed this group and people talked about getting in touch with their emotions? We thought if we could reach some emotional core that revolution would magically follow. I’m not saying we should shut off feelings or anything like that but more and more I’m favoring hard intellectual labor. We’ve had enough time organizing to sit down and figure out what went right and what went wrong. I know somewhere I’m beginning to doubt emotion. I mean we’ve all been raised in a system hostile to our needs, a system that thinks of us as functions not persons. How can we fully trust our responses, you know? For all we know compassion could be a conditioned response and one that continues to keep us oppressed by putting other people’s troubles ahead of our own. Isn’t that what good women always do, sacrifice? We could be making a virtue out of oppression.”

“This still isn’t media policy but it’s fascinating,” Brenda responded.

Alice followed, “I have the same questions, Ilse, questions that would have seemed dangerous to me even three months ago. But one thing still seems dangerous to me and that’s withdrawing to do hard intellectual labor. I can’t see how that won’t just isolate us from others. We have to keep organizing and try to draw our conclusions at the same time.”

“Yes and no,” Ilse said. “We could have dances for the gay community for the next five years and I don’t think we’d learn anything more by it. We’ve exhausted it as a learning process. Other people who haven’t been around the movement as long as we have could take it over and learn from it the same way we did. I mean there’s got to be some organized chain of experience.
Here we’ve learned something. Now if we sit down and write it out that’s fine. Women in Wisconsin can read and learn. Women in New York could also learn by performing that function we’ve begun and then move on when they’ve learned by doing. It’s incredible how we haven’t been able to transmit our knowledge—and one of the reasons is that we don’t have large organizations to provide shared ways for people to learn. A position paper isn’t enough. It’s time to recognize that some of us know more by virtue of years in the movement and some by virtue of special skills.”

“I hate the way that sounds.” Brenda grinned. “But I know it’s true. We always put the niceties of theory before the realities of practice. Time to get our feet back on the ground.”

“I’m not sure we can make decisions yet. Do we have enough evidence?” Judy Avery—who’d been silent all evening—piped up.

Ilse turned to her. “All decisions are made on insufficient evidence.”

“Yeah, but do we have the right to make decisions for other people?” Alice wanted to know.

“Alice, what other people? It’s a question of responsibility. Parents have to make decisions for their children. You can’t let an infant wander around. You make decisions when the child is fed, cleaned, exercised. That’s responsibility—and hopefully you teach the child to be responsible for herself. Well, little girls who are now one year old will be affected by whether we make decisions or whether we default. And what about adults? Look at all the women who flood women’s centers trying to find a way out of the maze. You know what we used to do with them? We’d throw them right in with us, in the thick of whatever program we were working on or whatever
political battle we were fighting. What a fucked-up thing to do. That’s like dumping someone who doesn’t know how to swim in a river with a fast current. No wonder the attrition rate was so high. We’ve got to take responsibility for people who come to us. Where are they coming from? What do they want? Do they even know what they want? Can we help them? Can they help us? We have to develop an organization that various people can participate in according to their various needs, skills, desires, you know? We can’t level everyone. And under the guise of sisterhood that’s what we’ve been doing. Really, listen to me. We’ve acted on the assumption that everyone has to be a fulltime political person, an organizer, a theoretician. That’s fucked. We’ve done to women what men have done to us. We’ve taken their identities away by expecting them all to perform the same functions.”

“Give me time to sort this out, it’s been an exhausting meeting. I want to go on with this when we’re fresh. Now that the obstruction is off the road we can all search for the answers with more trust.” Harriet sighed.

“Wait, before we break up for the night I want to read off three criteria I picked out of a pamphlet I read the other night. You might want to write them down and we can get to them at the next meeting or one by one,” Alice called out. “This is to measure a program or an activity. Okay? Number one: Does it meet material and/or emotional needs? Number two: Does it bring women together? Teach us how to win? Number three: Does it weaken the current power structure? That’s it.”

Catching the bus on East Ninth Street, Alice and Ilse rode over to Hudson Street together.

“Ilse, isn’t it funny how we can criticize each other face to face—and that’s a breakthrough—but it’s still hard to praise each other?”

“Never thought of it.”

“I’d like to tell you to your face that I think you have a fine mind. Who knows if we’ll find all the answers but you ask the deep questions, the questions that are underneath so many of our unconsidered actions or beliefs. I’m really glad we’re together. Whenever women like Olive bum me out I remind myself if it weren’t for the movement I’d never have met people like you.”

Ilse held her hand, “Thank you. I—I’m glad you’re here too.”

“Maybe it’s because I turned twenty-five last month, a quarter of a century. Sounds so old. I’ve been alive for that long? But I’m realizing this is a life’s work, this movement. I will fight this fight for as long as I live. That hadn’t dawned on me before. I feel a new seriousness. I feel that my life is measurable. I don’t know if that makes sense but when I was in high school and even college I had a vague notion that my life was infinite. Thought I could paint and travel and sing and read and do anything. I don’t feel that way anymore. My life is now definite and finite. I’ve chosen the thing I’m going to do and suddenly all the muddle cleared away. It’s peaceful. Now there’s a contradiction: here I’ve decided to spend my life fighting and it’s given me peace.”

“No, it sounds right. I know what you’re saying. I don’t think I have as clear a sense of my job yet as you do. I mean, I know I’ll be in the movement for the rest of my life too but you’re so talented. You could organize anything from building a battleship to a tea party on the White House lawn—for lesbians. You amaze me how you can pull people and
materials together. I can organize but not as good as you.”

“That’s because you don’t suffer fools gladly.”

“Well, if you mean Olive, no.”

“No. Olive is malignant. I mean you expect every one to be as intelligent as you are. You’re not patient. When you work with people you have to accept their limitations as well as their gifts.”

“Now I feel guilty.”

“Don’t feel guilty. Wasn’t it you tonight who said we can’t level people, we have to use our talents where they do the most good? So you’re a fair organizer. There are better people than you at that. But you’ve got a fearless questioning mind. So think. Anyway, you don’t have to make a decision on the bus.”

“Better not. Here’s our stop. I’ll walk you home.”

“Thanks. Hey, are you still seeing Carole?”

“Yeah, I was supposed to go up there tonight but the meeting ran so late. I forgot to call her too.”

“Want to call from my place?”

“No thanks. I’m only two minutes away from you anyway. I’ll call her when I get home and give her a full report.”

“I thought you said she wasn’t interested in politics.”

“Not the way we are. Like you said, I judged her by my standards but compared to other nonmovement people she’s pretty aware.”

“She’s striking. If she went out speaking people would join the movement just to get to know her.” Alice laughed.

“I’ll have to tell her that.”

“Sounds as though things are good between you.”

“I guess. She pisses me off sometimes. I mean, I guess I do want her in the movement. Her attitude of being above it all bothers me but she does give me
emotional support. Age makes a difference. Things that upset me don’t phase her. Flat, you know? Her perspective is different. She’s seen more, at least more of the everyday world.”

“We need that. A lot of the older women are reformists which doesn’t do us a hell of a lot of good.”

“Yeah, I know. Too bad those older lesbians are still in that goddamned closet.”

“You’d think they’d choke on the hangers by now.” Alice laughed.

“Mind if I borrow that line?”

“Nah, what’s mine is yours. Thanks for walking me home.”

Ilse walked the short two blocks to her house. Worn by the meeting, she walked slower than usual even though she wanted to call Carole.

The narcotic media, it desensitizes people to violence. Why didn’t I say that at the meeting? We’re surrounded by crime, violence, and nostalgia. For some reason she couldn’t discover, some lost connection, she remembered a conversation she had with Adele the last time the four of them were together. She wanted to know why Adele studied such cruel people as the Aztecs. Adele told her that she wasn’t an Aztec scholar, her field was the classic age of the Maya, but she had a passing knowledge of Aztec life.

“Why do you think they were so cruel?” Adele asked her back.

“Because they practiced human sacrifice. Not just one a year but lots of sacrifice.”

Adele answered her, “And you think we don’t?”

What stood out in her mind was Adele’s explanation about why they had such rituals. It wasn’t that the Aztec gods were especially hateful. They were hungry. All life is hungry. The destruction of living
things is the drum beat of life. Death fed life. If there wasn’t constant death then the life of the gods grew weak and how can a culture stand when its gods die? They fed their gods and then they communed to take some of the gods’ strength into themselves.

Vito’s hungry meows erased the Aztecs from her mind. She fed the cat and called Carole.

“Hello.”

“Hi, I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

“Ilse, where are you?”

“I’m home. The meeting ran late and I’m wiped out. We finally had the blow-out with Olive. She wanted the
Village Rag
to do an article on us. Can you imagine?”

“Sure,” Carole said. “They could title it, ‘Orphans of the Norm.’ ”

“Jesus Christ, Carole, after tonight that’s not funny. She was screeching at me that I’m an elitist and why do we need a media policy. Alice and I thought we needed more than a media policy …” Ilse’s voice wobbled a bit. She’d used herself up tonight. She couldn’t string her thoughts together any more. She wanted sympathy from Carole, some recognition that she’d fought the good fight. Carole’s crack was far from supplying the balm she was looking for. Now she was angry, bone weary, and babbling.

“Ilse, spare me your stream of consciousness and get to the point. Are you coming up or staying home?”

“Everything is stream of consciousness including the Post Office!” Ilse hung up.

The next day Carole called Ilse from her office and apologized. Ilse apologized in return.

Thursday morning at eight-fifteen Dutton was out with his dog, as usual, prancing. As Carole walked
behind the pair for a few moments she noticed the dog had a piece of string hanging out of its ass. Getting side by side with the misogynist Carole awarded him her most dazzling smile.