Even the Queen

by Connie Willis

  Bysshe was still protesting. “I never even met Viola till today. I've only talked to her on the phone a couple of times.”

  “You must have done something,” Karen said to Viola. “They're obviously out for your blood.”

  “Not mine,” Viola said. “Perdita's. She's joined the Cyclists.”

  “The Cyclists? I left the West Bank negotiations because you don't approve of Perdita joining a biking club? How am I supposed to explain this to the president of Iraq? She will not understand, and neither do I. A biking club!” “The Cyclists do not ride bicycles,” Mother said.

  “They menstruate,” Twidge said.

  There was a dead silence of at least a minute, and I thought, it's finally happened. My mother-in-law and I are actually going to be on the same side of a family argument.

  “All this fuss is over Perdita's having her shunt removed?” Karen said finally. “She's of age, isn't she? And this is obviously a case where personal sovereignty applies. You should know that, Traci. After all, you're a judge.”

  I should have known it was too good to be true.

  “You mean you approve of her setting back the Liberation twenty years?” Mother said.

  “I hardly think it's that serious,” Karen said. “There are anti-shunt groups in the Middle East, too, you know, but no one takes them seriously. Not even the Iraqis, and they still wear the veil.”

  “Perdita is taking them seriously.”

  Karen dismissed Perdita with a wave of her black sleeve. “They're a trend, a fad. Like microskirts. Or those dreadful electronic eyebrows. A few women wear silly fashions like that for a little while, but you don't see women as a whole giving up pants or going back to wearing hats.”

  “But Perdita…” Viola said.

  “If Perdita wants to have her period, I say let her. Women functioned perfectly well without shunts for thousands of years.”

  Mother brought her fist down on the table. “Women also functioned perfectly well with concubinage, cholera and corsets,” she said, emphasizing each word with her fist. “But that is no reason to take them on voluntarily, and I have no intention of allowing Perdita--”

  “Speaking of Perdita, where is the poor child?” Karen said.

  “She'll be here any minute,” Mother said. “I invited her to lunch so we could discuss this with her.”

  “Ha!” Karen said. “So you could browbeat her into changing her mind, you mean. Well, I have no intention of collaborating with you. I intend to listen to the poor thing's point of view with interest and an open mind. Respect, that's the key word, and one you all seem to have forgotten. Respect and common courtesy.”

  A barefoot young woman wearing a flowered smock and a red scarf tied around her left arm came up to the table with a sheaf of pink folders.

  “It's about time,” Karen said, snatching one of the folders away from her. “Your service here is dreadful. I've been sitting here ten minutes.” She snapped the folder open. “I don't suppose you have Scotch.”

  “My name is Evangeline,” the young woman said. “I'm Perdita's docent.” She took the folder away from Karen. “She wasn't able to join you for lunch, but she asked me to come in her place and explain the Cyclist philosophy to you.”

  She sat down in the wicker chair next to me.

  “The Cyclists are dedicated to freedom,” she said. “Freedom from artificiality, freedom from body-controlling drugs and hormones, freedom from the male patriarchy that attempts to impose them on us. As you probably already know, we do not wear shunts.”

  She pointed to the red scarf around her arm. “Instead, we wear this as a badge of our freedom and our femaleness. I'm wearing it today to announce that my time of fertility has come.”

  “We had that, too,” Mother said, “only we wore it on the back of our skirts.”

  I laughed.

  The docent glared at me. “Male domination of women's bodies began long before the so-called 'Liberation', with government regulation of abortion and fetal rights, scientific control of fertility, and finally the development of ammenerol, which eliminated the reproductive cycle altogether. This was all part of a carefully-planned takeover of women's bodies, and by extension, their identities, by the male patriarchal regime.”

  “What an interesting point of view!” Karen said enthusiastically.

  It certainly was. In point of fact, ammenerol hadn't been invented to eliminate menstruation at all. It had been developed for shrinking malignant tumors, and its uterine lining-absorbing properties had only been discovered by accident.

  “Are you trying to tell us,” Mother said, “that men forced shunts on women?! We had to fight everyone to get it approved by the FDA!”

  It was true. What surrogate mothers and anti-abortionists and the fetal rights issue had failed to do in uniting women, the prospect of not having to menstruate did. Women had organized rallies, petitions, elected senators, passed amendments, been excommunicated, and gone to jail, all in the name of Liberation.

  “Men were against it,” Mother said, getting rather red in the face. “And the religious right and the tampon manufacturers, and the Catholic church--”

  “They knew they'd have to allow women priests,” Viola said.

  “Which they did,” I said.

  “The Liberation hasn't freed you,” the docent said loudly. “Except from the natural rhythms of your life, the very wellspring of your femaleness.”

  She leaned over and picked a daisy that was growing under the table. “We in the Cyclists celebrate the onset of our menses and rejoice in our bodies,” she said, holding the daisy up. “Whenever a Cyclist comes into blossom, as we call it, she is honored with flowers and poems and songs. Then we join hands and tell what we like best about our menses.”

  “Water retention,” I said.

  “Or lying in bed with a heating pad for three days a month,” Mother said.

  “I think I like the anxiety attacks best,” Viola said. “When I went off the ammenerol, so I could have Twidge, I'd have these days where I was convinced the space station was going to fall on me.”

  A middle-aged woman in overalls and a straw hat had come over while Viola was talking and was standing next to Mother's chair. “I had these mood swings,” she said. “One minute I'd feel cheerful and the next like Lizzie Borden.”

  “Who's Lizzie Borden?” Twidge asked.

  “She killed her parents,” Bysshe said. “With an ax.”

  Karen and the docent glared at both of them. “Aren't you supposed to be working on your math, Twidge?”

  “I've always wondered if Lizzie Borden had PMS,” Viola said, “and that was why--”

  “No,” Mother said. “It was having to live before tampons and ibuprofen. An obvious case of justifiable homicide.”

  “I hardly think this sort of levity is helpful,” Karen said, glowering at everyone.

  “Are you our waitress?” I asked the straw-hatted woman hastily.

  “Yes,” she said, producing a slate from her overalls pocket.

  “Do you serve wine?” I asked.

  “Yes. Dandelion, cowslip, and primrose.”

  “We'll take them all.”

  “A bottle of each?”

  “For now. Unless you have them in kegs.”

  “Our specials today are watermelon salad and choufleur gratine,” she said, smiling at everyone. Karen and the docent did not smile back. «You hand-pick your own cauliflower from the patch up front. The floratarian special is sautйed lily buds with marigold butter.»

  There was a temporary truce while everyone ordered. “I'll have the sweet peas,” the docent said, “and a glass of rose water.”

  Bysshe leaned over to Viola. “I'm sorry I sounded so horrified when your grandmother asked if I was your livein,” he said.

  “That's okay,” Viola said. “Grandma Karen can be pretty scary.”

  “I just didn't want you to think I didn't like you. I do. Like you, I mean.”

  “Don't they have soyburgers?” T
widge asked.

  As soon as the waitress left, the docent began passing out the pink folders she'd brought with her. “These will explain the working philosophy of the Cyclists,” she said, handing me one, “along with practical information on the menstrual cycle.” She handed Twidge one.

  “It looks just like those books we used to get in junior high,” Mother said, looking at hers. “'A Special Gift,' they were called, and they had all these pictures of girls with pink ribbons in their hair, playing tennis and smiling. Blatant misrepresentation.”

  She was right. There was even the same drawing of the fallopian tubes I remembered from my middle school movie, a drawing that had always reminded me of Alien in the early stages.

  “Oh, yuck,” Twidge said. “This is disgusting.”

  “Do your math,” Karen said.

  Bysshe looked sick. “Did women really do this stuff?”

  The wine arrived, and I poured everyone a large glass. The docent pursed her lips disapprovingly and shook her head. “The Cyclists do not use the artificial stimulants or hormones that the male patriarchy has forced on women to render them docile and subservient.”

  “How long do you menstruate?” Twidge asked.

  “Forever,” Mother said.

  “Four to six days,” the docent said. “It's there in the booklet.”

  “No, I mean, your whole life or what?”

  “A woman has her menarche at twelve years old on the average and ceases menstruating at age fifty-five.”

  “I had my first period at eleven,” the waitress said, setting a bouquet down in front of me. “At school.”

  “I had my last one on the day the FDA approved ammenerol,” Mother said.

  “Three hundred and sixty-five divided by twenty-eight,” Twidge said, writing on her slate. “Times forty-three years.” She looked up. “That's five hundred and fifty-nine periods.”

  “That can't be right,” Mother said, taking the slate away from her. “It's at least five thousand.”

  “And they all start on the day you leave on a trip,” Viola said.

  “Or get married,” the waitress said. Mother began writing on the slate.

  I took advantage of the ceasefire to pour everyone some more dandelion wine.

  Mother looked up from the slate. “Do you realize with a period of five days, you'd be menstruating for nearly three thousand days? That's over eight solid years.”

  “And in between there's PMS,” the waitress said, delivering flowers.

  “What's PMS?” Twidge asked.

  “Pre-menstrual syndrome was the name the male medical establishment fabricated for the natural variation in hormonal levels that signal the onset of menstruation,” the docent said. “This mild and entirely normal fluctuation was exaggerated by men into a debility.” She looked at Karen for confirmation.

  “I used to cut my hair,” Karen said.

  The docent looked uneasy.

  “Once I chopped off one whole side,” Karen went on. “Bob had to hide the scissors every month. And the car keys. I'd start to cry every time I hit a red light.”

  “Did you swell up?” Mother asked, pouring Karen another glass of dandelion wine.

  “I looked just like Orson Welles.”

  “Who's Orson Welles?” Twidge asked.

  “Your comments reflect the self-loathing thrust on you by the patriarchy,” the docent said. “Men have brainwashed women into thinking menstruation is evil and unclean. Women even called their menses 'the curse' because they accepted men's judgment.”

  “I called it the curse because I thought a witch must have laid a curse on me,” Viola said. “Like in 'Sleeping Beauty.'”

  Everyone looked at her.

  “Well, I did,” she said. “It was the only reason I could think of for such an awful thing happening to me.” She handed the folder back to the docent. “It still is.”

  “I think you were awfully brave,” Bysshe said to Viola, “going off the ammenerol to have Twidge.”

  “It was awful,” Viola said. “You can't imagine.”

  Mother sighed. “When I got my period, I asked my mother if Annette had it, too.”

  “Who's Annette?” Twidge said.

  “A Mouseketeer,” Mother said and added, at Twidge's uncomprehending look. “On TV.”

  “High-rez,” Viola said.

  “The Mickey Mouse Club,” Mother said.

  “There was a high-rezzer called the Mickey Mouse Club?” Twidge said incredulously.

  “They were days of dark oppression in many ways,” I said.

  Mother glared at me. “Annette was every young girl's ideal,” she said to Twidge. “Her hair was curly, she had actual breasts, her pleated skirt was always pressed, and I could not imagine that she could have anything so messy and undignified. Mr. Disney would never have allowed it. And if Annette didn't have one, I wasn't going to have one either. So I asked my mother--”

  “What did she say?” Twidge cut in.

  “She said every woman had periods,” Mother said. “So I asked her, ” 'Even the Queen of England?' And she said, 'Even the Queen.'"

  “Really?” Twidge said. “But she's so old!”

  “She isn't having it now,” the docent said irritatedly. “I told you, menopause occurs at age fifty-five.”

  “And then you have hot flashes,” Karen said, “and osteoporosis and so much hair on your upper lip you look like Mark Twain.”

  “Who's--” Twidge said.

  “You are simply reiterating negative male propaganda,” the docent interrupted, looking very red in the face.

  “You know what I've always wondered?” Karen said, leaning conspiratorially close to Mother. “If Maggie Thatcher's menopause was responsible for the Falklands War.”

  “Who's Maggie Thatcher?” Twidge said.

  The docent, who was now as red in the face as her scarf, stood up. “It is clear there is no point in trying to talk to you. You've all been completely brainwashed by the male patriarchy.” She began grabbing up her folders. “You're blind, all of you! You don't even see that you're victims of a male conspiracy to deprive you of your biological identity, of your very womanhood. The Liberation wasn't a liberation at all. It was only another kind of slavery!”

  “Even if that were true,” I said, “even if it had been a conspiracy to bring us under male domination, it would have been worth it.”

  “She's right, you know,” Karen said to Mother. “Traci's absolutely right. There are some things worth giving up anything for, even your freedom, and getting rid of your period is definitely one of them.”

  “Victims!” the docent shouted. “You've been stripped of your femininity, and you don't even care!” She stomped out, destroying several squash and a row of gladiolas in the process.

  “You know what I hated most before the Liberation?” Karen said, pouring the last of the dandelion wine into her glass. “Sanitary belts.”

  “And those cardboard tampon applicators,” Mother said.

  “I'm never going to join the Cyclists,” Twidge said.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Can I have dessert?”

  I called the waitress over, and Twidge ordered sugared violets. “Anyone else want dessert?” I asked. “Or more primrose wine?”

  “I think it's wonderful the way you're trying to help your sister,” Bysshe said, leaning close to Viola.

  “And those Modess ads,” Mother said. “You remember, with those glamorous women in satin brocade evening dresses and long white gloves, and below the picture was written, 'Modess, because…' I thought Modess was a perfume.”

  Karen giggled. “I thought it was a brand of champagne!”

  “I don't think we'd better have any more wine,” I said.

  ###

  The phone started singing the minute I got to my chambers the next morning, the universal ring.

  “Karen went back to Iraq, didn't she?” I asked Bysshe.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Viola said there was some snag over w
hether to put Disneyland on the West Bank or not.”

  “When did Viola call?”

  Bysshe looked sheepish. “I had breakfast with her and Twidge this morning.”

  “Oh.” I picked up the phone. “It's probably Mother with a plan to kidnap Perdita. Hello?”

  “This is Evangeline, Perdita's docent,” the voice on the phone said. “I hope you're happy. You've bullied Perdita into surrendering to the enslaving male patriarchy.”

  “I have?” I said.

  “You've obviously employed mind control, and I want you to know we intend to file charges.” She hung up. The phone rang again immediately, another universal.

  “What is the good of signatures when no one of ever uses them?” I said and picked up the phone.

  “Hi, Mom,” Perdita said. “I thought you'd want to know I've changed my mind about joining the Cyclists.”

  “Really?” I said, trying not to sound jubilant.

  “I found out they wear this red scarf thing on their arm. It covers up Sitting Bull's horse.”

  “That is a problem,” I said.

  “Well, that's not all. My docent told me about your lunch. Did Grandma Karen really tell you you were right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gosh! I didn't believe that part. Well, anyway, my docent said you wouldn't listen to her about how great menstruating is, that you all kept talking about the negative aspects of it, like bloating and cramps and crabbiness, and I said, 'What are cramps?' and she said, 'Menstrual bleeding frequently causes headaches and depression,' and I said, 'Bleeding!? Nobody ever said anything about bleeding!' Why didn't you tell me there was blood involved, Mother?”

  I had, but I felt it wiser to keep silent.

  “And you didn't say a word about its being painful. And all the hormone fluctuations! Anybody'd have to be crazy to want to go through that when they didn't have to! How did you stand it before the Liberation?”