A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer

by Eve Ensler

  Ariel Dorfman

  “Your husband is still alive.”

  It was not familiar, the rasping voice of that man, not familiar at all, no matter how much I searched for something, anything, that would let me trust him, believe what the stranger on the other side of the phone was saying, that he really knew my husband was not dead. Proof, I wanted proof, wanted to ask where, when, how, friend, foe, near, far.

  Instead, serenely:

  “Bless you, if what you say is true.”

  “Of course it’s true. Last night, I saw your husband just last night. We shared a cell together, he asked me to call you, gave me your name.”

  But I still didn’t dare say what I really wanted to say. Behind me, the children began to cry. Why did they begin to cry just then? Were they warning me to be careful? Were they catching something from the strangled breathless language of my body as I held the phone too close to my ear, the slim slope of my body that he loved to touch and slender downwards with his hands, my man, my man, my body now so abruptly rigid that it scared the children? Or were they crying because they were hungry, set off by the smallest one, she who has never seen her father, who does not even know there is such a thing as a father, hungry for my milk as I stifled my words into the phone, hungry for the hands of a father to soothe her when there is no milk, when the lights sputter off in the night and the bombs fall nearby and my breasts grow sour.

  “He is well, you are telling me that my husband is well?”

  And the response was what I expected and is not, can never be, what I expect, the response from that rasp, that voice that has coughed too much, perhaps from too many cigarettes, perhaps, perhaps from too many screams wrenched from that throat: “Nobody can be said to be well in that place, that wet hole out of hell—that place is so dark, so dark I don’t even know what your husband’s face looks like, what he is wearing, I could not describe him to you if you asked—but do not ask, do not ask. Be glad he is alive and do not ask anything else.”

  “All I’m asking is that he come home.” And then I add, so this man on the phone doesn’t get any wrong ideas, heading off this man and his rasp, just in case, just in case this time this one also has plans, I blurt out: “We need him so much, my husband. Since they came for him, we haven’t had any income, not a penny, only a package every week from his old mother—” I stress that word, old. That word, mother. Draw both words out, accentuate them, see if that moves this one, the man on the other side of the line, moves him to pity, to understand that we are like orphans, we have nothing to tender, nothing that he can squeeze out of us, out of me—

  Have I made a mistake? Did I speak too soon of what we lack, of our destitution, am I frightening him away?

  Because now the man interrupts me.

  “I’m in a hurry,” the man says, suddenly impatient, and there is a coldness in his voice that was not there before. As if he resents my implication that he expects recompense, as if he is angry that I am poisoning his act of kindness. “I can’t talk much longer. They said if I called anyone, if I told anyone about this, anything, they would come for me again. We know you, we know where you live, we know where your brother lives, your mother, my mother is also old. So I will call you again soon. Goodbye.”

  Now I don’t lose a second wondering what to say. Now I whisper out urgently:

  “Wait, wait—” Just that, wait, wait.

  And he manages to shred out a few more words, grind them into my ears:

  “I will tell you more next time,” that is what he says. “Wait, wait!”

  And then the phone goes dead before I can add: “Tell me where he is, how to get him out, why they took him, I will do anything to bring him back alive.”

  I will do anything, anything, to bring him back alive.

  What I said to the other one, the other time, the last time, when the phone rang two months ago and another voice, without a rasp, that voice, like honey, that voice saying my husband was alive, still alive. And then added I will tell you more later, asked for money, asked me to bring the money to the corner of that street and also some of that stew you fix, your husband says you cook great stew, woman, and how to recognize him, you’ll recognize me, I will be smoking and I am a big man, a large man, you won’t have any trouble recognizing me. And two days and ten hours later, I watched him, that other man back then, count the bills under the streetlamp, lick his thumb each time to make sure he had not missed a bill and then, it is not enough, he said, as I knew he would, not enough, if I am to risk my life getting your husband free, bribing the guards, I will need more, much more than this. And then he tasted the stew, I saw his fingers go into the pot and come out with a chunk of meat and oh yes, oh yes, this is as good as I was told, but still, still not enough. And He knew, that man under the big hulk of his shoulders, those delicate bones of his holding up the enormous weight of his flesh, he knew and I knew that this was not the end of it. I had told him that I would do anything, anything, to bring the father of my children back alive, I had made that mistake. I knew, even when we parted later that night and he swore he would call again with his voice still like honey, I knew I would never hear from him again.

  And now? What now?

  Now, two months later, I wait with the phone in my hand and behind me the children, all three of them quiet, and it is worse than when they cried, and the dead buzz of the dead phone is more familiar than the voice that just said goodbye, I already miss the recent rasp of that voice, the flash of a promise in his throat that may have screamed too much in the dark, I will tell you more, I’ll call you again. Did he say that? I will call you again?

  What if he’s dialing my number right now? Forgot one last thing? Is ready to provide proof that my husband is really still alive? What if the other one, the man with the honey voice and the big hands under the streetlamp, is dialing my number right now?

  But I don’t let the phone go. As soon as I let the phone coil and snarl back to where it was before this latest call, I know that as soon as I force the receiver back into its cradle, that’s it, that will be it, there will be nothing to do with my body except sit here, park my body here, and then it will be dawn and then another day and then the next week and the month after that, waiting, waiting, waiting for the next call, this man of the rasp or that man of the voice like honey or another man, another man with whatever voice his mother offered him as a gift the moonless night he was born, someone, anyone with news, anyone to ask if my husband is still wearing the same shirt he was wearing the day they took him, did they uncover his head soon, don’t they realize he’s asthmatic, can’t breathe well under that rough dark bag they tied around his beautiful face, hid away his beautiful curly hair, someone to ask who sews his buttons, is he hungry, is he hungry for the meat I will prepare for him when he comes back, succulent and juicy and slightly sweet, does he know the child was a girl, does he know he has a daughter, someone, anyone to ask, anyone to say yes to, yes, yes, I will do anything, anything, anything to bring back alive the love of my life.

  Anything, anything.

  The phone is still in my hand and the baby has started to cry.

  I put the receiver back, I put the receiver back again and wait for the next call.

  The Next Fantastic Leap

  Elizabeth Lesser

  With the force of your slap, your punch, your put-down, I enter the wormhole and travel back to the Big Bang. I feel the blast of separation, the stunned particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from one another.

  With the force of your slap, your punch, your put-down, I land in the dark mud, in the prebiotic soup where it all began—where the seeds of desire and conflict lay dormant and meaningless in the first cell. Pristine and glowing in its Oneness, yet somehow unfinished and clearly not thinking it through, the single cell made its fantastic leap into complexity, dividing into the chaos of otherness. And immediately, separation begat the longing for reconnection. Encased in a membrane, cut off from the mother ship, each self-reproducing cell
slithered and crawled, flew and ran, propelled by a vague memory of fusion, of love, of Oneness.

  With the force of your slap, your punch, your put-down, I feel into the first fish, first flight, first fuck. I am the original bird, the earliest monkey, primeval man, new woman—all relatives of the first atom, the first cell, all branded with an ache for union and a brain not big enough to map the way home. I am the half-baked heart of humanity, still evolving, ill equipped, attracted yet repelled by the other. I am yearning turning into taking; want becoming force; desire shape-shifting into greed. I am the first skipped beat of the heart, the first touch, the first kiss. I am gravity’s pull toward love, and I am the weight of antimatter, tearing us apart. I know what happened first, and I know which force will prevail. I know how we got here; I know why the nations choose war; I know why you hit me. But I know what happens next.

  With the force of your slap, your punch, your put-down, my eyes become clairvoyant, my ears supernatural, my mouth a time machine: I taste your father’s violence, your mother’s rage. I see your little spirit growing in the dark, feeding on crumbs, giving up, losing its instinct for love. I hear my little spirit whispering what it knows, saying it out loud, seeking approval, being shushed, christened bad, beginning to doubt. I see us forgetting—forgetting we ever knew how to sing. I am falling back, back before the forgetting. Past my submission, past your hubris, past your father, past my father and their fathers on back to the Big Bang, the first cell, the primal leave-taking, and the eternal return. I pass my mother, your mother, and their mothers, falling back and back and back, through centuries of horror and holy interventions, cycles of mistakes and corrections, generations of progress and loss: the brilliance of your sex squandered; the genius of my gender negated through the ages.

  With the force of your slap, your punch, your put-down, I awaken. Delivered from the first fifteen billion years … just a blip after a bang! Just an awkward misstep as that first cell stumbled across the starting line. I’m taking evolution in my own hands now. It needs help. I know where we made the wrong turn—where the wires got crossed and instead of wooing the other into the bliss of union we went to war; we sought the One by hating the other, dominating the other, eliminating the other.

  After your last slap, your punch, your put-down, I made my own fantastic leap: I walked out and never went back. I left you to do the holy work of your own transformation. I am no longer your tour guide, your evolutionary shepherd. Lying here alone on my bed, I run my hands over my breasts and vow to trust the milk and honey of my own heart. I will make love with the other. I place my palm on my belly—where I am connected to God by a cord of blood and Eros. I will follow that river. My fingers explore the wet memory pool of my vagina, remembering and naming every tide that entered and each that left. Now I become the ocean; I become the wholeness: I am the being before the bang, the original soup, the earthy mess, the sweetest word, the warrior’s sword, the angel’s wing.

  I am deciphering the DNA of destiny in a lab of grief and freedom. I am finding my voice. I have joined a choir of men and women who praise union without force, connection without submission. We crave the cliff; the time is now; the next fantastic leap!

  Give It Back

  Suheir Hammad

  Give it

  back how did you

  get it give it

  back you not using it

  right no right to

  it return it to

  the earth to your

  ancestors to the spirits

  vanishing the physical

  Enough allowance has been made for women

  like you but genocide is

  unacceptable you will

  have to give it back

  there are plenty of sweet gay

  boys who could put it

  to proper use and some women

  would appreciate another

  one just for fun

  Give it up

  You so awed with guns and

  missiles put them down

  there then and give back

  what brings life

  cherishes life

  saves life

  Your mama must not have told

  you it was a gift

  your time is up homegirl

  Give it here yes

  you are sorry no

  you can’t get it back

  later

  There are serious consequences remember?

  Now get out my face with your

  war whoring and don’t come

  calling when those bombs

  and those guns are aimed at you

  The Destruction Artist

  Michael Cunningham

  At first I just destroyed my own art. I’d do a painting, and I’d look at it and think, Right, another painting in the world, that’s what we need. I felt this shame about it. Plus, okay, the paintings weren’t that good. They were good enough. We’re loaded with good-enough paintings and sculptures and installations and, you know, all that. Go to a dozen galleries. Nothing much is terrible. Nothing’s great. It’s all just good enough. You never feel like anybody died to make it. You never feel like it took a bite out of someone’s soul and the wound will never heal.

  So I started slashing up my canvases and breaking the stretchers and then burning the whole thing. I didn’t want to just throw them away, I wanted them not to exist anymore. And it felt so good. It felt like I’d done something. It felt much better than not having made the paintings in the first place.

  You can probably imagine what happened next. I started destroying other people’s art. It was a natural progression. I was onto something, and it seemed too good to keep to myself. I could walk into a gallery and take care of a painting with a box cutter in, like, thirty seconds. I could stomp an installation into rubble like that. Sure, you get arrested, and charged with vandalism, and sued, and everything, but that’s my art, that’s part of it. And, you know, the artists don’t like to admit it, but I make them more famous by wrecking their work. More or less the way a murderer makes his victims famous by killing them. But at the beginning, I only did inanimate objects. Cops and soldiers and psychopaths were so much better equipped for that other part.

  And then, of course, an artist has to move on. The first few art attacks are exciting, they feel like something new, but by the tenth, it’s over. So I started doing violence to myself. I started taking myself out of the world. Like we need another person, right? And, well, it’s not like I’m that great. I’m not bad, I like myself well enough, but you know, I’m a shitty boyfriend and I’m pretty lazy and it’s not like I’m contributing anything the world can’t do without.

  It was hard, the first time. I was scared. I knew I couldn’t do an ear, an ear seemed like the least painful possibility, but it would’ve been derivative. It would’ve been misinterpreted. So finally, I worked up my courage, got a cordless buzz saw, took some Percocets with about a pint of vodka, went into one of the better galleries on a Saturday afternoon, took off my boots and socks, and cut off my left little toe right in the middle of the room. Most of you have probably never severed a body part. It’s not as terrible as you might think. Your body does this Whoa, wait a minute thing, you get dizzy, everything goes sort of hot and white, there’s this paralyzing whoosh of vertigo, but if you hold steady through that, your body kicks in to what I’ll call mode two. Right, your body says, left little toe’s going, shut down the pain sensors, move into shock mode. The real pain comes later, and it’s not pleasant. But by then you’ve done it. You’ve done your art.

  I’m in my last phase now, and it’s the best work I’ve done. I had this final realization. If I haven’t really done anything much for humanity, I can at least do my art in the service of others. So I don’t perform the violence myself anymore. I invite other people to do it. It can’t be just anybody. I screen heavily. No fetishists, no sickos, it’s not about that. It has to be someone who’s had violence done to them, and it’s almost always women. Okay, it’s alw
ays women. I’ve had male applicants, but I’ve always turned them down. It’s not really something I can see happening between me and another man.

  The women and I don’t meet before, but we do agree on what will happen. My gallery handles that. The first woman—I don’t tell their names—shot me, real carefully, in the shoulder, above my heart. Another woman buzzed off my right big toe, which was, as it happened, my last one. Another stabbed me in the back, right on the Magic Marker X, so she didn’t get a lung or a kidney. And et cetera. It’s up to them whether they want to talk after or just walk away. Some do, some don’t. One woman held me and cried and asked me to forgive her. Which I did. One woman was pissed off, she demanded to know why I’d let her do a thing like that, but it felt like she was mad at herself and me both, as if we’d had sex when we knew we shouldn’t, and were both to blame. I was down with that, too.

  I’m pretty much done with the small stuff now, there’s not really much more to give, so it’s on to the next and, as they say, final step. I’m ready. I feel great. I feel clean and, I know this’ll sound funny, whole. There’s something saintly about it, like I’m sacrificing my body for something greater than me. I know that’s a little bit blasphemous. Sorry, I’m not really a religious person. And, as you might suspect, there’s not a big client base for the serious stuff. But it exists. Women are furious. Some are. You can’t imagine what’s been done to them.

  If you’re interested, ask around. You can probably find somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody. I’m still available. I’m here. I’m ready. I’m here for now.

  Hands in Protest

  Erin Cressida Wilson

  An armless female soldier stands center stage. Her name is Michaela.