Female Man

by Joanna Russ

  Why does she keep having these dreams about Whileaway?

  While-away. While. A. Way. To While away the time. That means it's just a pastime. If she tells Cal about it, he'll say she's nattering again; worse still, it would sound pretty silly; you can't expect a man to listen to everything (as everybody's Mother said). Jeannine gets dressed in blouse, sweater, and skirt for her brother's place in the country, while in the valise she puts: a pair of slacks to go berrying in, another blouse, a scarf, underwear, stockings, a jacket (No, I'll carry it), her hairbrush, her makeup, face cream, sanitary napkins, a raincoat, jewelry for the good dress, hair clips, hair curlers, bathing suit, and a light every-day dress. Oof, too heavy! She sits down again, discouraged. Little things make Jeannine blue. What's the use of cleaning a place over and over again if you can't make something of it? The ailanthus tree nods to her from outside the window. (And why won't Cal protect her against anything? She deserves protection.) Maybe she'll meet somebody. Nobody knows—O nobody knows really—what's in Jeannine's heart (she thinks). But somebody will see. Somebody will understand. Remember the hours in California under the fig tree. Jeannine in her crisp plaid dress, the hint of fall in the air, the blue haze over the hills like smoke. She hauls at the valise again, wondering desperately what it is that other women know and can do that she doesn't know or can't do, women in the street, women in the magazines, the ads, married women. Why life doesn't match the stories. I ought to get married . (But not to Cal!) She'll meet someone on the bus; she'll sit next to someone. Who knows why things happen? Jeannine, who sometimes believes in astrology, palmistry, occult signs, who knows that certain things are fated or not fated, knows that men—in spite of everything—have no contact with or understanding of the insides of things. That's a realm that's denied them. Women's magic, women's intuition rule here, the subtle deftness forbidden to the clumsier sex. Jeannine is on very good terms with her ailanthus tree. Without having to reflect on it, without having to work at it, they both bring into human life the breath of magic and desire. They merely embody. Mr. Frosty, knowing he's going to be left at a neighbor's for the week, has been hiding behind the couch; now he crawls out with a piece of dust stuck on his left eye-tuft, looking very miserable. Jeannine has no idea what drove him out "Bad cat!" There was something about her . She watches the blotchy-skinny-cat (as Cal calls him) sneak to his milk dish and while Mr. Frosty laps it up, Jeannine grabs him. She gets the collar around his neck while Mr. Frosty struggles indignantly, and then she snaps the leash on. In a few minutes he'll forget he's confined. He'll take the collar for granted and start daydreaming about sumptuous mice. There was something unforgettable about her She ties him to a bed post and pauses, catching sight of herself in the wall mirror: flushed, eyes sparkling, her hair swept back as if by some tumultuous storm, her whole face glowing. The lines of her figure are perfect, but who is to use all this loveliness, who is to recognize it, make it public, make it available? Jeannine is not available to Jeannine. She throws her jacket over one arm, more depressed than otherwise. I wish I had money "Don't worry," she tells the cat. "Somebody's coming for you." She arranges her jacket, her valise, and her pocketbook, and turns off the light, shutting the door behind her (it latches itself). If only (she thinks) he'll come and show me to myself .

  I've been waiting for you so long. How much longer must I wait?

  Nights and nights alone. ("You can't," says the stairwell. "You can't," says the street.) A fragment of old song drifts through her mind and lingers behind her in the stairwell, her thoughts lingering there, too, wishing that she could be a mermaid and float instead of walk, that she were someone else and so could watch herself coming down the stairs, the beautiful girl who composes everything around her to harmony:

  Somebody lovely has just passed by.

  II

  I live between worlds. Half the time I like doing housework, I care a lot about how I look, I warm up to men and flirt beautifully (I mean I really admire them, though I'd die before I took the initiative; that's men's business), I don't press my point in conversations, and I enjoy cooking. I like to do things for other people, especially male people. I sleep well, wake up on the dot, and don't dream. There's only one thing wrong with me:

  I'm frigid.

  In my other incarnation I live out such a plethora of conflict that you wouldn't think I'd survive, would you, but I do; I wake up enraged, go to sleep in numbed despair, face what I know perfectly well is condescension and abstract contempt, get into quarrels, shout, fret about people I don't even know, live as if I were the only woman in the world trying to buck it all, work like a pig, strew my whole apartment with notes, articles, manuscripts, books, get frowsty, don't care, become stridently contentious, sometimes laugh and weep within five minutes together out of pure frustration. It takes me two hours to get to sleep and an hour to wake up. I dream at my desk. I dream all over the place. I'm very badly dressed.

  But O how I relish my victuals! And O how I fuck!

  III

  Jeannine has an older brother who's a mathematics teacher in a New York high school. Their mother, who stays with him during vacations, was widowed when Jeannine was four. When she was a little baby Jeannine used to practice talking; she would get into a corner by herself and say words over and over again to get them right. Her first full sentence was, "See the moon." She pressed wildflowers and wrote poems in elementary school. Jeannine's brother, her sister-in-law, their two children, and her mother live for the summer in two cottages near a lake. Jeannine will stay in the smaller one with her mother. She conies downstairs with me behind her to find Mrs. Dadier arranging flowers in a pickle jar on the kitchenette table. I am behind Jeannine, but Jeannine can't see me, of course.

  "Everyone's asking about you," says Mrs. Dadier, giving her daughter a peck on the cheek.

  "Mm," says Jeannine, still sleepy. I duck behind the bookshelves that separate the living room from the kitchenette.

  "We thought you might bring that nice young man with you again," says Mrs. Dadier, setting cereal and milk in front of her daughter. Jeannine retreats into sulky impassivity. I make an awful face, which of course nobody sees.

  "We've separated," says Jeannine, untruly.

  "Why?" says Mrs. Dadier, her blue eyes opening wide. "What was the matter with him?"

  He was impotent, mother. Now how could I say that to such a nice lady? I didn't.

  "Nothing," says Jeannine. "Where's Bro?"

  "Fishing," says Mrs. Dadier. Brother often goes out in the early morning and meditates over a fishing line. The ladies don't. Mrs. Dadier is afraid of his slipping, falling on a rock, and splitting open his head. Jeannine doesn't like fishing.

  "We're going to have a nice day," says Mrs. Dadier. "There's a play tonight and a block dance. There are lots of young people, Jeannine." With her perpetually fresh smile Mrs. Dadier clears off the table where her daughter-in-law and the two children have breakfasted earlier; Eileen has her hands full with the children.

  "Don't, mother," says Jeannine, looking down.

  "I don't mind," says Mrs. Dadier. "Bless you, I've done it often enough." Listless Jeannine pushes her chair back from the table. "You haven't finished," observes Mrs. Dadier, mildly surprised. We have to get out of here. "Well, I don't—I want to find Bro," says Jeannine, edging out, "I'll see you," and she's gone. Mrs. Dadier doesn't smile when there's nobody there. Mother and daughter wear the same face at times like that—calm and deathly tired—Jeannine idly pulling the heads off weeds at the side of the path with an abstract viciousness completely unconnected with anything going on in her head. Mrs. Dadier finishes the dishes and sighs. That's done. Always to do again. Jeannine comes to the path around the lake, the great vacation feature of the community, and starts round it, but there seems to be nobody nearby. She had hoped she would find her brother, who was always her favorite. ("My big brother") She sits on the rock by the side of the path, Jeannine the baby. Out in the lake there's a single canoe with two people in it; Jeannine's gaze,
vaguely resentful, fastens on it for a moment, and then drifts off. Her sister-in-law is worried sick about one of the children; one of those children always has something. Jeannine bangs her knuckles idly on the rock. She's too sour for a romantic reverie and soon she gets up and walks on. Whoever comes to the lake anyway? Maybe Bro is at home. She retraces her steps and takes a fork off the main path, idling along until the lake, with its crowded fringe of trees and brush, disappears behind her. Eileen Dadier's youngest, the little girl, appears at the upstairs window for a moment and then vanishes. Bro is behind the cottage, cleaning fish, protecting his sports clothes with a rubber lab apron.

  "Kiss me," says Jeannine. "O.K.?" She leans forward with her arms pulled back to avoid getting fish scales on herself, one cheek offered invitingly. Her brother kisses her. Eileen appears around the corner of the house, leading the boy. "Kiss Auntie," she says. I'm so glad to see you, Jeannie."

  "Jeannine," says Jeannine (automatically).

  "Just think, Bud," says Eileen. "She must have got in last night. Did you get in last night?" Jeannine nods. Jeannine's nephew, who doesn't like anyone but his father, is pulling furiously at Eileen Dadier's hand, trying seriously to get his fingers out of hers. Bud finishes cleaning the fish. He wipes his hands methodically on a dish towel which Eileen will have to wash by hand to avoid contaminating her laundry, takes off his coat, and takes his knife and cleaver into the house, from whence comes the sound of running water. He comes out again, drying his hands on a towel

  "Oh, baby," says Eileen Dadier reproachfully to her son, "be nice to Auntie." Jeannine's brother takes his son's hand from his wife. The little boy immediately stops wriggling.

  "Jeannie," he says. "It's nice to see you.

  "When did you get in?

  "When are you going to get married?"

  IV

  I found Jeannine on the clubhouse porch that evening, looking at the moon. She had run away from her family.

  "They only want what's good for you," I said.

  She made a face.

  "They love you," I said.

  A low, strangled sound. She was prodding the porch-rail with her hand.

  "I think you ought to go and rejoin them, Jeannine," I said. "Your mother's a wonderful woman who has never raised her voice in anger all the time you've known her. And she brought all of you up and got you all through high school, even though she had to work. Your brother's a firm, steady man who makes a good living for his wife and children, and Eileen wants nothing more in the world than her husband and her little boy and girl. You ought to appreciate them more, Jeannine."

  "I know," said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

  "Jeannine, you'll never get a good job," I said. "There aren't any now. And if there were, they'd never give them to a woman, let alone a grown-up baby like you. Do you think you could hold down a really good job, even if you could get one? They're all boring anyway, hard and boring. You don't want to be a dried-up old spinster at forty but that's what you will be if you go on like this. You're twenty-nine. You're getting old. You ought to marry someone who can take care of you, Jeannine."

  "Don't care," said she. Or was it Not fair?

  "Marry someone who can take care of you," I went on, for her own good. "It's all right to do that; you're a girl. Find somebody like Bud who has a good job, somebody you can respect; marry him. There's no other life for a woman, Jeannine; do you want never to have children? Never to have a husband? Never to have a house of your own?" (Brief flash of waxed floor, wife in organdie apron, smiling possessively, husband with roses. That's hers, not mine.)

  "Not Cal." Ah, hell.

  "Now, really, what are you waiting for?" (I was getting impatient.) "Here's Eileen married, and here's your mother with two children, and all your old school friends, and enough couples here around the lake to fill it up if they all jumped into it at once; do you think you're any different? Fancy Jeannine! Refined Jeannine! What do you think you're waiting for?"

  "For a man," said Jeannine. For a plan. My impression that somebody else had been echoing her was confirmed by a brief cough behind me after these words. But it turned out to be Mr. Dadier, come out to fetch his sister. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door. "Come on, Jeannie. We're going to introduce you to someone."

  Only the woman revealed under the light was not Jeannine. A passerby inside saw the substitution through the doorway and gaped. Nobody else seemed to notice. Jeannine is still meditating by the rail: doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, poor man, rich man; maybe he'll be tall; maybe he'll make twenty thou a year; maybe he'll speak three languages' and be really sophisticated, maybe. Mister Destiny. Janet, who has none of our notion that a good, dignified, ladylike look will recall the worst of scoundrels to a shrinking consciousness of his having insulted A Lady (that's the general idea, anyway), has gotten out of Bud Dadier's hold by twisting his thumb. She is the victim of a natural, but ignorant and unjustified alarm; she thinks that being grabbed is not just a gesture but is altogether out of line. Janet's prepared for blue murder.

  "Huh," says Bro. He's about to expostulate. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"

  Touch me again and I'll knock your teeth out!

  You can see the blood rush to his face, even in this bad light. That's what comes of being misunderstood. "Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, young lady!"

  Janet jeers.

  "You just—" Bud Dadier begins, but Janet anticipates him by vanishing like a soap bubble. What do you think Bud stands for—Buddington? Budworthy? Or "Bud" as in "friend"? He passes his hands over his face—the only thing left of Janet is a raucous screech of triumph which nobody else (except the two of us) can hear. The woman in front of the door is Jeannine. Bro, scared out of his wits, as who wouldn't be, grabs her.

  "Oh, Bro!" says Jeannine reproachfully, rubbing her arm.

  "You oughtn't to be out here alone," says he. "It looks as if you're not enjoying yourself. Mother went to great trouble to get that extra ticket, you know."

  'I'm sorry," says Jeannine penitently. "I just wanted to see the moon."

  "Well, you've seen it," says her brother. "You've been out here for fifteen minutes. I ought to tell you, Jeannie, Eileen and Mother and I have been talking about you and we all think that you've got to do something with your life. You can't just go on drifting like this. You're not twenty any more, you know."

  "Oh, Bro—" says Jeannine unhappily. Why are women so unreasonable? "Of course I want to have a good time," she says.

  "Then come inside and have one." (He straightens his shirt collar.) "You might meet someone, if that's what you want to do, and you say that's what you want."

  "I do," says Jeannine. You too?

  "Then act like it, for Heaven's sake. If you don't do it soon, you may not have another chance. Now come on." There are girls with nice brothers and girls with nasty brothers; there was a girl friend of mine who had a strikingly handsome older brother who could lift armchairs by one leg only. I was on a double date once with the two of them and another boy, and my girl friend's brother indicated the camp counselors' cottages. "Do you know what those are?

  "Menopause Alley!"

  We all laughed. I didn't like it, but not because it was in bad taste. As you have probably concluded by this point (correctly) I don't have any taste; that is, I don't know what bad and good taste are. I laughed because I knew I would have an awful fight on my hands if I didn't. If you don't like things like that, you're a prude. Drooping like a slave-girl, Jeannine followed Bro into the clubhouse. If only older brothers could be regularized somehow, so that one knew what to expect! If only all older brothers were younger brothers. "Well, who shall I marry?" said Jeannine, trying to make it into a joke as they entered the building. He said, with complete seriousness:

  "Anybody."

  V

  The Great Happiness Contest

  (this happens a lot)

  FIRST WOMAN: I'm perfectly happy. I love my husband and we have two
darling children. I certainly don't need any change in my lot.

  SECOND WOMAN: I'm even happier than you are. My husband does the dishes every Wednesday and we have three darling children, each nicer than the last. I'm tremendously happy.