The Women's Room

by Marilyn French

  ‘You do have beautiful clothes, Bart,’ Mira said.

  ‘He’s got great taste,’ Val assented.

  ‘Clothes. Who the fuck cares about clothes,’ Grant intoned.

  The conversation turned to the meaning of style. Style was an expression of the ethos, of the person, of culture, subculture, rebellion – they argued and ranted and laughed. Bart, though, was the expert.

  Now you,’ he told Val, ‘really have a style. You understand your body, yourself, and you dress great. You,’ he turned to Mira, ‘dress a little uptight. But you’re getting better. I really like those pants you have on. What fabric are they?’ He reached out and took an inch or so of fabric from the thigh portion of her pants and rubbed it between his fingers.

  ‘Cotton and polyester.’

  ‘Nice. Now you two,’ he said to Grant and Ben, ‘between you have the taste of a Zulu. Not to knock my own kind!’

  ‘Fuck clothes,’ Grant repeated.

  ‘You can fuck clothes because you got a closetful from your daddy.’

  ‘All I ever got from my father was a rap on the head.’

  ‘And a few on the tail too, if I recall,’ Val put in.

  Grant looked at her dangerously. ‘And I seem to keep getting those.’

  ‘Then you should be calloused by now.’

  ‘I’m the only one I know who had a great father,’ Ben said. ‘He worked on the railroad, and he was away a lot. But when he was home, he was really there. He talked to me and my brothers, and my little sister too. And to my mother. I remember the two of them sitting outside on the back step on summer nights, holding hands.’

  ‘Maybe absence was the secret,’ Val laughed.

  ‘Maybe! But you know what sociologists say about the absent father.’

  ‘Man, I’m glad my father’s absent,’ Bart said. ‘I only met him once, but he scared the shit out of me. My aunt says he used to beat my mother blind and he does the same thing to his wife and kids now.’

  Through all this, Mira was paralysed. Her thigh still tingled where Bart had touched it, barely touched it, as he picked up the fabric of her pants to feel it. Her heart had stopped when he did that. How could he dare? How did he dare? The blood pulsed in her head, it was a constant beating rhythm. Slowly, it slowed. She calmed. He was unpolished, he did not know that men did not do such things to women they were not intimate with. But, she argued, suppose Grant had done that? She would not have liked it, she would have felt it a violation, but she would have shrugged it off, attributing it to Grant’s lack of social finish. Her thigh would not have continued to tingle, as it was doing. No, there was more to this. She sat watching Bart talk and laugh, so young, only a year older than Chris, yet so much older, willing to take on Grant and Ben, and even Val, although he generally deferred to her. Yet, look closer, forget the dark skin which automatically made him old and wise, one of the witches and demons of the earth who know everything the moment they are born and spend the rest of their lives undermining us, the innocent, the privileged, the genteel … He had soft round cheeks, like Chris’s, and his eyes were still dewy with faith, or hope, or was it charity? It was his color. Her teeth set as she faced that. Her real protest was: how could he dare touch her with his dark hands? His hand was lying on the table beside his plate; she lowered her eyes and looked at it. What would it be like to have a dark hand like that on your body? And suddenly she put her head back, silent, but in her throat, a cry, a cry of agony and awareness and lament: of course, her brain pounded, of course!

  But it was not bigotry. It was the strangeness. She had never jumped rope with a black child, never held hands walking home from first grade. And over the years she had, despite her nice neat liberal ideas, absorbed the sense of horror of the big black buck. Prejudice lay in the body.

  Bart’s hand lay on the table beside his plate. It was a short thick hand, chocolate colored, its palm paler, almost pink. It had short nails, and its fingers looked somehow like a child’s fingers, curved naturally, with an unselfconsciousness it is impossible to affect, looking vulnerable and sweet and strong and capable. Mira put her own pale thin hand over it, settling down very lightly on Bart’s. Bart turned quickly. Grant was raving about his rotten father. Mira whispered: ‘Will you pass me the bread, Bart, please?’ She removed her hand, he smiled and passed the basket. It was over. She settled back into herself.

  She wondered if he knew, if he had guessed her agitation at his touching her, and the way she had chosen to confront her problem. She wondered if he would forgive her if he did know. He would forgive her if he had felt the same way about white flesh, but suppose he had not? White was the master race, after all. If he had not? Her eyes misted. Perhaps he would not forgive her. If he knew. But of course he knew, if not about her, about her race. Was there forgiveness for that?

  ‘You look misty,’ a voice said in her other ear. She turned to Ben’s sweet kind face.

  ‘Do you believe in forgiveness?’

  He shook his head. ‘In forgetting, maybe.’

  ‘Yes. Forgetting.’

  ‘Do you have something specific in mind?’

  ‘Oh, well, what you were saying about Africa. Or anyplace that’s been oppressed, any people who have been oppressed, black people, any people, women, for instance,’ her voice faded out.

  ‘There’s only one way,’ he said softly. Grant and Bart were currently arguing about the Proper Family Structure. Both agreed that a male should be dominant in the house, and that every house should contain a father, a mother, and some children. Beyond that, they agreed on nothing. ‘And that is – well, independence. I don’t know how else to put it. People – the Lianese – will forgive us only when they don’t need us anymore, when they’re equal to us.’

  ‘But that won’t be – in terms of power, I mean – for a long time. Probably never. Lianu is a small country.’

  ‘Yes, but there will be a federation of black African countries. I don’t mean absolute equality. When they or their league is equal in bargaining power.’

  Mira laid her head in her hands. ‘Tears were streaming down her face. I drank too much, she kept thinking, I drank too much.

  ‘What is it?’ Ben’s voice didn’t sound annoyed or impatient. It sounded kind, concerned. Still, she could not stop crying, and she didn’t know why she was crying. After he laid his hands on her back, she lifted her head.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked again.

  ‘Oh, God! Life is impossible!’ she cried, and jumped up and ran to the bathroom.

  20

  ‘Oh, I just got drunk. I was nervous and I drank too much. So I blew it,’ Mira shrugged, as if she didn’t care.

  ‘I’ve never seen you like that before,’ Val insisted.

  She tried to tell Val all of what had been going on in her head about Bart, ashamed of it as she was.

  Val listened soberly, nodding her head. ‘It seems strange to me,’ she said finally, ‘that although you thought of Bart as the stranger, the foreign element, you were feeling like a stranger yourself. As if you were saying – I want to love you, man, but can I forgive you for what you’ve done to me? – as if you were perceiving similarities between Bart’s relation with whites and your relation with men.’

  ‘Oh, Val, that’s ridiculous! God, you insist on interpreting everything according to your fanatic, your monomaniacal beliefs! I just got drunk and soupy and feeling sorry for myself! That’s all there was to it!’

  Val gazed at her for a moment, then moved her head slightly. ‘Okay. Sorry,’ she said, her voice sounding a little tight. ‘I have to go to the library.’ She picked up her books and left.

  Mira sat there in Lehman Hall feeling slightly guilty, slightly relieved, trying to feel justified. Val had been kind to her. She’d had the dinner party, invited Ben. But why did she have to insist that everybody see the world in the fanatical way she did? Mira picked up her books and walked out of the building, head down, ruminating. She decided she would never speak to Val again; she decide
d she would call her that night and apologize. Tears came to her eyes again. I’m having a nervous breakdown, she thought. Why was it so hard to know anything, anything at all?

  ‘Mira!’ a voice floated to her, and she looked up. A vision drifted toward her, a beautiful woman who looked like a young Katharine Hepburn, her hair, honey brown and glistening, floating out behind her in the sunlight, tall and slim, in pants and a sweater and a jacket that was open and flying behind her in the wind. It was Iso.

  ‘Iso!’

  ‘You look very sober.’

  ‘My God. You look gorgeous. What did you do?’

  ‘This is my natural self,’ Iso crowed, turning in a complete circle. ‘What do you mean, what did I do?’

  They laughed. ‘It’s wonderful!’ Mira exclaimed. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I let my hair down and I bought new clothes,’ Iso grinned.

  ‘Oh, God, if it could be that easy for me!’

  ‘You don’t need it,’ Iso flattered her.

  ‘Iso, have dinner with me tonight,’ she pleaded, finding a way out of her problem. If she could talk to someone, it would all become clear.

  ‘Oh, Mira, I’m sorry. I’m going to lunch now with Dawn Ogilvie – you know her? And I’m having dinner with Elspeth. And lunch tomorrow with Jeanie Braith. I’m sorry if I sound snooty. I’m just so delighted.’

  She looked it. She beamed and glowed, she couldn’t stop shining.

  ‘You’re trying to be promiscuous,’ Mira ventured, a little smile around her mouth.

  ‘I’m trying to reach a place where I can be promiscuous,’ Iso corrected her. ‘I feel so good! I’m going to have a party, Saturday night, you’ll come, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Mira said admiring.

  ‘Anybody you want me to invite?’

  ‘You look beautiful.’

  Iso turned a vulnerable child’s face to her. ‘Do you really think so?’ she asked, looking frightened.

  ‘I really think so,’ Mira said firmly. Iso glowed.

  ‘Well, I’m going to try.’ Her voice wavered. ‘I don’t have anything to lose, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Mira said, her voice wavering, full of tenderness, full of Val’s kind of perception of the human race as a bunch of terrified children. ‘Oh, yes,’ she added, including herself in her teary pity for the race, ‘your party. Invite Ben Voler. You know him?’

  ‘The African guy. Yeah. Okay! Wish me luck!’ Iso drifted away.

  The party was mobbed. Iso, obviously, knew everybody. Mira stood in the doorway of the dark living room which had been emptied of furniture, watching the dancers. Val was out on the floor making a fool of herself dancing with Lydia Greenspan; Iso was dancing, and Martin Bell, and Kyla, and even Howard Perkins, and the beautiful girl who looked like a gypsy, and Brad, and Stanley, who was dancing with Clarissa, who never looked at him and seemed to be dancing by and for herself. She was a marvelous dancer, and eventually, everyone else stopped and just watched her. She danced with her head bent, her eyes nearly closed. Her long dark hair fell across her face; her tautly muscled body wound and curved. Her dance was extremely sexual, but not sexy. Her body moved for its own pleasure, not for display, it joyed in sexuality as its own expression. Mira watched, suddenly perceiving the difference, although she could not have done what Clarissa was doing. How, she wondered, could Clarissa have so blanked out the room as to feel free to be herself? On the other hand, if one could not blank out rooms, would one feel free to be oneself when one was alone, a record blasting, dancing in one’s own empty apartment? Everything these days seemed too hard.

  Iso was dressed in a long white Moroccan robe trimmed with red and gold braid. Her hair floated behind her. Her face had been transformed just the way they do it in the movies: the girl with the hat, the glasses, the pinched mouth, removes hat to reveal flowing blonde locks, takes off glasses and military jacket and is revealed as sex bombshell. Iso’s change was less dramatic, but the long hair – down to her shoulders – made her face look fuller, and her heightened color, her glamorous clothes gave what had been the face of a schoolmarm a cast of great sophistication, wisdom, experience. Mira was entranced.

  ‘Come on,’ Iso said. ‘It’s time you tried this.’ She reached out her hands.

  ‘I’d feel like a fool. I don’t know how to do it,’ Mira protested.

  ‘Just move your body the way the music feels,’ Iso said, and took her hands, and led her gently onto the floor.

  She was dancing. Her awkwardness and self-consciousness vanished as soon as she realized that no one was looking at her. As the music blasted, she fell into it: she forgot herself and fell into its rhythms and moods. Iso drifted away from her, and Kyla drifted to her: they did a pas de deux, grinning at each other. She danced opposite Brad, Howard, Clarissa. She began to understand. It was a wonderful kind of dancing. It was totally free. She was not dependent upon a partner, she did not have to bite her lip in irritation at his ineptness, or rage because she would like to spin and fly around the floor and he lifted and set his feet in the same single spot. She could do whatever she wanted, yet wherever her motion carried her there was someone else, she was in a group, she was one of them, they were together, all full of delight at their own bodies, their own rhythms. Suddenly, her eyes squeezed shut, then opened, she found herself opposite Val. Val was large and smiling, but her face flickered a little when she saw Mira, and Mira felt hurt, hurt for Val’s hurt, and she moved toward her and put her arms around Val and whispered in her ear, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and moved back, and Val shrugged, grinning, glowing, and they danced, and moved apart to face someone else.

  It was a tiring dance, and in time, Mira left the floor to find a beer. The kitchen stood nearly empty. Only Duke, Clarissa’s husband, stood leaning against the refrigerator, and two people she did not know talked quietly in a corner. Mira had to ask Duke to move in order to get her beer.

  ‘You look a little lost,’ she said, understanding the feeling.

  Duke was a large heavyset man. He would be fat in a few years. He was pinkish and puffy; he looked like an aging football players In fact, he was a West Pointer. He had recently returned from Vietnam and was stationed now in New England.

  ‘Well, a Harvard party isn’t exactly my idea of the best way to spend a weekend pass,’ he said.

  ‘How do you feel when you come here? I guess Cambridge is the center of the peace movement.’

  ‘That doesn’t bother me,’ he said seriously. ‘I wish the war would end.’

  ‘How did you feel when you were over there?’

  His face betrayed nothing. ‘I was doing my job. I wasn’t near the front. But I don’t like this war.’

  Although Mira had not liked him simply because of the way he looked, she felt now a sympathy for him. He too was trapped. She wondered how he felt.

  ‘It must have been hard for you,’ she said sympathetically.

  He shrugged. No. You just have to keep things in separate categories. I believe in this country. I believe in a well-trained army. Sometimes the politicians make a mistake. You just have to do your job and hope the politicians will find a way to correct it.’

  ‘But suppose your job had involved killing? Suppose you felt it to be morally wrong?’

  He looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t sign on as guardian of the morals of the world. Who knows when something is morally wrong?’

  ‘Suppose you lived in Germany and they assigned you to putting Jews on trains?’

  He looked annoyed. ‘This isn’t the same thing at all. These things are always so simple for you people. It’s a bad war because a lot of Americans are getting killed, and there’s nothing to be gained by it. It’s costing us millions and we’re getting nothing for our money.’

  ‘I see. Do you plan to stay in the army?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s a good life. I enjoy it. I even enjoyed Vietnam. I bought some great stuff there, you have to come over some time and we’ll show it to you. Sculptures, some rugs, and
wonderful prints. I have one print …’ He launched into a precise description of one print after another, enumerating subject matter, color, linear rhythms. ‘They’re really great.’

  ‘Yes. They get beyond facts, which are always so false.’ She sipped her beer.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’ Then he launched into a long argument supporting factualness. He talked about things like sightings in bombsights and rifles, mapmaking, charts, graphs, and inventories of men and arms. He spoke long, and perhaps even well. Mira could not judge. But he spoke from a height. It was clear in his tone and his language that he was speaking from authority and knowledge to a simpleton who knew nothing of such things. Since this was indeed the case, his tone was all the more offensive. She wondered if he would listen for ten minutes while she explained the subtleties of English prosody.

  ‘Yes, but my point is that what you like about the prints is that they get beyond the facts.’

  ‘Hell, those prints are worth a fortune,’ he exclaimed. Then he launched into a precise explanation of how much he had paid for each one, and how much they had been evaluated for after he returned to the States. ‘The rugs, too,’ he continued. ‘I took each of them to three different dealers …’

  Mira felt a little numb. Duke was incapable of conversation. He was a monologuist. He was probably incapable of dialogue with any equal. He could talk down, and since he was in the army, no doubt he could talk up: ‘Yes, sir. The enemy are deployed at …’

  She looked around. The kitchen was completely empty now. She reached for another beer. She did not know how to get away. Duke was now talking about the uses of computers. He talked long and intricately, and she tried to listen. After a long time, she asked, ‘But what’s the point? I mean, what is it you’re trying to do?’

  He did not seem to understand the question. He continued talking, but what he said made no sense to her.

  ‘I mean, you must have a project. An aim. What is the goal of all these manipulations?’