by Joanna Russ
She was neat but lazyI never caught her doing anything.
She held the baby like an expert, cooing and trundling, bouncing him up and down so that he stopped screaming and stared at her chin the way babies do. She uncovered him. "Tsk."
"My goodness." She was astonished.
She scrubbed my back and asked me to scrub hers; she took the lipstick I gave her and made pictures on the yellow damask walls. ("You mean it's not washable?)" I got her girlie magazines and she said she couldn't make head or tail of them; I said, "Janet, stop joking" and she was surprised; she hadn't meant to. She wanted a dictionary of slang. One day I caught her playing games with Room Service; she was calling up the different numbers on the white hotel phone and giving them contradictory instructions. This woman was dialing the numbers with her feet. I slammed the phone across one of the double beds.
"Joanna," she said, "I do not understand you. Why not play? Nobody is going to be hurt and nobody is going to blame you; why not take advantage?"
"You fake!" I said; "You fake, you rotten fake!" Somehow that was all I could think of to say. She tried looking injured and did not succeedshe only looked smugso she wiped her face clean of all expression and started again.
"If we make perhaps an hypothetical assumption"
"Go to hell," I said; "Put your clothes on."
"Perhaps about this sex business you can tell me," she said, "why is this hypothetical assumption"
"Why the devil do you run around in the nude!"
"My child," she said gently, "you must understand. I'm far from home; I want to keep myself cheerful, eh? And about this men thing, you must remember that to me they are a particularly foreign species; one can make love with a dog, yes? But not with something so unfortunately close to oneself. You see how I can feel this way?"
My ruffled dignity. She submitted to the lipstick again. We got her dressed. She looked all right except for that unfortunate habit of whirling around with a grin on her face and her hands out in the judo crouch. Well, well! I got reasonably decent shoes on Janet Evason's feet. She smiled. She put her arm around me.
Oh, I couldn't!
?
That's different.
(You'll hear a lot of those two sentences in life, if you listen for them. I see Janet Evason finally dressing herself, a study in purest awe as she holds up to the light, one after the other, semi-transparent garments of nylon and lace, fairy webs, rose-colored elastic puttees"Oh, my." "Oh, my goodness," she saysand finally, completely stupefied, wraps one of them around her head.)
She bent down to kiss me, looking kind, looking perplexed, and I kicked her.
That's when she put her fist through the wall.
II
We went to a party on Riverside Driveincognitaewith Janet a little behind me. At the door, a little behind me. The February snow coming down outside. On the fortieth floor we got out of the elevator and I checked my dress in the hall mirror: my hair feels as if it's falling down, my makeup's too heavy, everything's out of place from the crotch of the panty-hose to the ridden-up bra to the ring whose stone drags it around under my knuckle. And I don't even wear false eyelashes. Janetbeastly freshis showing her usual trick of the Disappearing Lipstick. She hums gently. Batty Joanna. There are policemen posted all around the building, policemen in the street, policemen in the elevator. Nobody wants anything to happen to her. She gives a little yelp of excitement and pleasurethe first uncontrolled contact with the beastly savages.
"You'll tell me what to do," she says, "won't you?" Ha ha. He he. Ho ho. What fun. She bounces up and down.
"Why didn't they send someone who knew what he was doing!" I whisper back.
"What she was doing," she says unself-consciously, shifting gears in a moment. "You see, under field conditions, nobody can handle all the eventualities. We're not superhuman, any of us, nicht wahr? So you take someone you can spare. It's like this"
I opened the door, Janet a little behind me.
I knew most of the women there: Sposissa, three times divorced; Eglantissa, who thinks only of clothes; Aphrodissa, who cannot keep her eyes open because of her false eyelashes; Clarissa, who will commit suicide; Lucrissa, whose strained forehead shows that she's making more money than her husband; Wailissa, engaged in a game of ain't-it-awful with Lamentissa; Travailissa, who usually only works, but who is now sitting very still on the couch so that her smile will not spoil; and naughty Saccharissa, who is playing a round of His Little Girl across the bar with the host. Saccharissa is forty-five. So is Amicissa, the Good Sport. I looked for Ludicrissa, but she is too plain to be invited to a party like this, and of course we never invite Amphibissa, for obvious reasons.
In we walked, Janet and I, the right and left hands of a bomb. Actually you might have said everyone was enjoying themselves. I introduced her to everyone. My Swedish cousin. (Where is Domicissa, who never opens her mouth in public? And Dulcississa, whose standard line, "Oh, you're so wonderful!" is oddly missing from the air tonight?)
I shadowed Janet.
I played with my ring.
I waited for the remark that begins "Women" or "Women can't" or "Why do women" and kept up an insubstantial conversation on my right. On my left hand Janet stood: very erect, her eyes shining, turning her head swiftly every now and again to follow the current of events at the party. At times like this, when I'm low, when I'm anxious, Janet's attention seems a parody of attention and her energy unbearably high. I was afraid she'd burst out chuckling. Somebody (male) got me a drink.
A ROUND OF "HIS LITTLE GIRL"
SACCHARISSA: I'm Your Little Girl.
HOST (wheedling): Are you really?
SACCHARISSA: (complacent): Yes I am.
HOST: Then you have to be stupid, too.
A SIMULTANEOUS ROUND OF "AIN'T IT AWFUL"
LAMENTISSA: When I do the floor, he doesn't come home and say it's wonderful.
WAILISSA: Well, darling, we can't live without him, can we? You'll just have to do better.
LAMENTISSA (wistfully): I bet you do better.
WAILISSA: I do the floor better than anybody I know.
LAMENTISSA (excited): Does he ever say it's wonderful?
WAILISSA (dissolving): He never says anything!
(There follows the chorus which gives the game its name. A passing male, hearing this exchange, remarked, "You women are lucky you don't have to go out and go to work.")
Somebody I did not know came up to us: sharp, balding, glasses reflecting two spots of lamplight. A long, lean, academic, more-or-less young man.
"Do you want something to drink?"
Janet said "A-a-a-h" very long, with exaggerated enthusiasm. Dear God, don't let her make a fool of herself. "Drink what?" she said promptly. I introduced my Swedish cousin.
"Scotch, punch, rum-and-coke, rum, ginger-ale?"
"What's that?" I suppose that, critically speaking, she didn't look too bad. "I mean," she said (correcting herself), "that is what kind of drug? Excuse me. My English isn't good." She waits, delighted with everything. He smiles.
"Alcohol," he says.
"Ethyl alcohol?" She puts her hand over her heart in unconscious parody. "It is made from grain, yes? Food? Potatoes? My, my! How wasteful!"
"Why do you say that?" says the young man, laughing.
"Because," answers my Janet, "to use food for fermentation is wasteful, yes? I should think so! That's cultivation, fertilizer, sprays, harvesting, et cetera. Then you lose a good deal of the carbohydrates in the actual process. I should think you would grow cannabis, which my friend tells me you already have, and give the grains to those starving people."
"You know, you're charming," he says. "Huh?" (That's Janet.) To prevent disaster, I step in and indicate with my eyes that yes, she's charming and second, we really do want a drink.
"You told me you people had cannabis," Janet says a little irritably.
"It isn't cured properly; it'll make you choke," I say. She nods thoughtfully. I can tell without a
sking what's going through her mind: the orderly fields of Whileaway, the centuries-old mutations and hybridizations of cannabis sativa, the little garden plots of marihuana tended (for all I know) by seven-year-olds. She had in fact tried some several weeks before. It had made her cough horribly.
The youngish man returned with our drink and while I signalled him Stay, stay, she's harmless, she's innocent, Janet screwed up her face and tried to drink the stuff in one swallow. It was then I knew that her sense of humor was running away with her. She turned red. She coughed explosively. "It's horrible!"
"Sip it, sip it," said he, highly amused.
"I don't want it."
"I tell you what," he proposed amiably, I'll make you one you will like." (There follows a small interlude of us punching each other and whispering vehemently: "Janet, if you")
"But I don't like it," she said simply. You're not supposed to do that. On Whileaway, perhaps, but not here.
"Try it," he urged.
"I did," she said equably. "Sorry, I will wait for the smokes."
He takes her hand and closes her fingers around the glass, shaking his forefinger at her playfully: "Come on now, I can't believe that; you made me get it for you" and as our methods of courtship seem to make her turn pale, I wink at him and whisk her away to the corner of the apartment where the C.S. vapor blooms. She tries it and gets a coughing fit. She goes sullenly back to the bar.
A MANUFACTURER OF CARS FROM LEEDS (genteelly): I hear so much about the New Feminism here in America. Surely it's not necessary, is it? (He beams with the delighted air of someone who has just given pleasure to a whole roomful of people.)
SPOSISSA, EGLANTISSA, APHRODISSA, CLARISSA, LUCRISSA, WAILISSA, LAMENTISSA, TRAVAILISSA (dear God, how many of them are there?), SACCHARISSA, LUDICRISSA (she came in late): Oh no, no, no! (They all laugh.)
When I got back to the bar, Clarissa was going grimly into her latest heartbreak. I saw Janet, feet aparta daughter of Whileaway never quails!trying to get down more than three ounces of straight rum. I suppose one forgets the first taste. She looked flushed and successful.
ME: You're not used to that stuff, Janet.
JANET: O.K., I'll stop.
(Like all foreigners she is fascinated by the word "Okay" and has been using it on every possible occasion for the last four weeks.)
"It's very hard not having anything, though," she says seriously. "I suppose, love, that I'm hardly giving anything away if I say that I don't like your friends."
"They're not my friends, for God's sake. I come here to meet people."
?
"I come here to meet men," I said. "Janet, sit down."
This time it was a ginger moustache. Young. Nice. Flashy. Flowered waistcoat. Hip. (hip?)
Peals of laughter from the corner, where Eglantissa's latest is holding up and wiggling a chain made of paper clips. Wailissa fusses ineffectually around him. Eglantissalooking more and more like a corpsesits on an elegant, brocaded armchair, with her drink rigid in her hand. Blue smoke wreathes about her head.
"Hullo," says Ginger Moustache. Sincere. Young.
"Oh. How do you do?" says Janet. She's remembered her manners. Ginger Moustache produces a smile and a cigarette case.
"Marijuana?" says Janet hopefully. He chuckles.
"No. Do you want a drink?"
She looks sulky.
"All right, don't have a drink. And you're"
I introduce my cousin from Sweden.
"Why do you people catabolize foodstuffs in this way?" she bursts out. Still on her mind, it seems. I explain.
"Sickness," he says. "I'm not an alcohol head; that's not my bag. I agree with you. I'd just as soon see people eating the stuff."
(Amicissa dreams: perhaps he won't have the insatiable vanity, the uneasy aggressiveness, the quickness to resent any slight or fancied neglect. Perhaps he won't want to be top dog all the time. And he won't have a fiancée. And he won't be married. And he won't be gay. And he won't have children. And he won't be sixty.)
"A-a-ah," says Janet, letting out a long breath. "Yes. Aha."
I left them for a while. I was alert to any opportunity. I was graceful. I smiled.
My brassiere hurts.
When I got back they had reached the stage of Discussing His Work. He was teaching high school but was going to be fired. For his ties, I think. Janet was very interested. She mentioned theuhday nurseries inwell, in Swedenand quoted:
"We have a saying: when the child goes to the school, both mother and child howl; the child because it is going to be separated from the mother and the mother because she has to go back to work."
"The tie between mother and child is very important," said Ginger Moustache reprovingly. ("Excuse me, let me move that cushion behind your back.")
"I'm sure Swedish mothers really groove on their kids, though," he added.
"Huh?" said my Janet. (He took it as an ignorance of English and relented.)
"Listen," he said, "some time I want you to meet my wife. I know this is a bad sceneI mean meeting you here with the plastic people, y'know?but some day you're going to come out to Vermont and meet my wife. It's a great, heavy scene. We've got six kids."
"Six you take care of?" said Janet with considerable respect.
"Sure," he said. "They're in Vermont right now. But after this work hassle is over I'm going back. You grok?"
He means do you understand, Janet? She thought it simpler to say yes.
"Hey," said Ginger Moustache, springing to his feet, "it's been great meeting you. You're a real ballsy chick. I mean you're a woman."
She looked down at herself. "What?"
"Sorry about the slang; I mean you're a fine person. It's a pleasuretoknowyou."
"You don't know me," she was developing the nasty look. Not very nasty as yet but frustrated-angry, tapping-the-fingers, now-look-here-I-want-this-explained. She is quite spoiled, in her own way.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "How can we get to know each other in ten minutes, huh? That's true. It's a formal phrase: pleasuretoknowyou."
Janet giggled.
"Right?" he said. "Tell you what, give me your name and address." (she gave him mine) "I'll drop you a line. Write a letter, that is." (Not a bad fellow this Ginger Moustache.) He got up and she got up; something must interrupt this idyll. Saccharissa, Ludicrissa, Travailissa, Aphrodissa, Clarissa, Sposissa, Domicissa, the whole gang, even Carissa herself, have formed a solid wall around this couple. Breaths are held. Bets get made. Joanissa is praying in a heap in the corner. Ginger Moustache got up and Janet trailed him into the hall, asking questions. She's a good bit taller than he is. She wants to know about everything. Either she does not mind the lack of sexual interest oras is more likely in a foreignerprefers it. Though he's got a wife. The harsh light from the kitchenette strikes Janet Evason's face and there on one side, running from eyebrow to chin, is a strange, fine line. Has she been in an accident?
"Oh, that!" says Janet Evason, chuckling, bending over (though somewhat hampered by her party dress), laughing, gasping with little feminine squeaks from the top of the compass right down to the bottom, hoarse and musical, "Oh, that!"
"That's from my third duel," she says, "see?" and guides Moustache's hand (his forefinger, actually) along her face.
"Your what?" says Moustache, momentarily frozen into the attractive statue of a pleasant young man.
"My duel," says Janet, "silly. Well, it's not Sweden, not really. You've heard of me; I was on the television. I'm the emissary from Whileaway."
"My God," he says.
"Ssh, don't tell anyone." (She's very pleased with herself. She chuckles.) "This line I got in my third duel; this oneit's practically gonein my second. Not bad, hey?"
"Are you sure you don't mean fencing?" says Ginger Moustache.
"Hell, no," says Janet impatiently; "I told you, duel." And she draws her forefinger across her throat with a melodramatic jerk. This mad chick doesn't seem so nice to Moust
ache any more. He swallows.
"What do you fight aboutgirls?"
"You are kidding me," says Janet. "We fight about bad temperwhat else? Temperamental incompatibility. Not that it's so common as it used to be but if you can't stand her and she can't stand you, what's to be done?"
"Sure," says Ginger Moustache. "Well, goodbye." Janet became suddenly repentant.
"Thatwell, I suppose that's rather savage, isn't it?" she says. "I beg pardon. You will think badly of us. Understand, I have put all that behind me now; I am an adult; I have a family. We hope to be friends, yes?" And she looks down at him solemnly, a little timidly, ready to be rebuked. But he hasn't the heart to do it.
"You're a great chick," says he. "Some day we'll get together. Don't duel with me, though."
She looks surprised. "Huh?"
"Yeah, you'll tell me all about yourself," Ginger Moustache goes on. He smiles and broods. "You can meet the kids."
"I have a daughter," says Janet. "Baby brat Yuriko." He smiles.
"We got homemade wine. Vegetable garden. Sara puts things up. Great place." (He's into his duffle coat by now after searching in the hall closet.) "Tell me, what do you do? I mean for a living?"
"Whileaway is not here-and-now," Janet begins; "You might not understand. I settle family quarrels; I look after people; it's"
"Social work?" asks Ginger Moustache, extending to us his fine, shapely, tanned, uncalloused hand, an intellectual's hand, but I have hardened my heart and I peep out from behind Janet Evason with the divine relief of my female irony and my female teeth:
"She's a cop. She puts people in jail."
Ginger Moustache is alarmed, knows he's alarmed, laughs at himself, shakes his head. How wide is the gap between cultures! But we grok. We shake hands. He goes off into the party to fetch Domicissa, whom he pulls by the wrist (she silently protesting) to the hall closet. "Get on your Goddamn coat, will you!" I heard only whispers, vehement and angry, then Domicissa blowing her nose.
"So long, hey! Hey, so long!" cried he.
His wife's in Vermont; Domicissa isn't his wife.
Janet had just asked me to explicate the marriage system of North America.
Saccharissa has just said, pouting, "Po' little me! I sho'ly needs to be liberated!"