The next day found Hannah grading papers at home, far from magically empowered lecterns and student-enchanted apples. The only way to get this done was to do it, she reminded herself. When that day’s quota of papers were thoroughly and fairly evaluated, she would allow herself to celebrate with one drink at Sappho’s. Until then she had to plant her ass in the rocking chair and grade. She turned off her cell phone, unplugged the old landline phone she used to call her mother, made a pot of coffee, and put on what she called “background” women’s music: Hildegard of Bingen, Isabel’s favorite twelfth-century composer. She stretched and wiggled her feet, clad now in the fuzzy Bugs Bunny slippers an old girlfriend had knitted for her.
The stack of papers beside her seemed to reach to the ceiling, but Hannah felt an odd calm; after all, this ritual of grading final exams occurred every year just before the Christmas and Hanukah holidays. There was no eggnog without grading, no latke without grading. All college professors understood that presents and kisses and mistletoe and menorahs could be enjoyed only after hundreds of grades were turned in to the registrar. If she read twelve, no, fourteen papers a day, for the next eight days, that would do it—108 undergraduate finals, plus those four graduate theses. She would have to be her own Hanukah menorah, burning oil for eight days and eight nights, the miracle being that she finished the job without screaming and was fair, fair, equally attentive and fair to every student who had dared to enroll in a women’s history class.
So, where to begin? The finals from her survey course were right there on the scarred wooden coffee table. Each consisted of twenty-five short questions, questions ranging across territory that Hannah herself had mysteriously explored this year (Who was Sappho? Who was Radclyffe Hall? Who is the Venus of Willendorf?) Sighing, she picked up and read through several of these pages in rapid succession, chuckling at replies betraying those who had never opened the textbooks. (“Sappho was a big lesbian. From Lesbos.” “Radclyffe Hall was a building in London where they had air raid drills in World War II.” “Miriam led the Jews through the Hebrew desserts.”) Where’s my Hebrew dessert? thought Hannah, glancing at the clock. Too early to get up and go burrowing for bagels in the kitchen; read six more.
Part Two of the final exam was far more interesting, if harder to boil down to the flat letter of A, B, or C minus. It was a short essay, inviting each student to respond to the prompt: “If you could go back in time and ask one woman in history any question about her life, who would you choose to meet? What would you ask her? Why?” The students had scribbled furiously, both excited and panicked by the open invitation.
Hannah settled back against the plush cushion in her rocking chair, swirling a carefully measured dollop of cinnamon coffee creamer into her goddess mug. These essays would be a treat. She’d look through whichever grabbed her fancy, to start. No, she should continue to grade alphabetically. No, she should pick out students who were about to graduate and needed their scores first. But what about the international students? They had to have their grades sent overseas early to stern bureaucratic entities who took a dim view of “women’s history” on a transcript. Maybe just pick out one favorite student to set the standard. Did she really have a teacher’s pet? She would never admit it if she did. Damn it. The clock was ticking. Focus!
The essays were damned good. If I could go back in time, I would speak to some of the Amazon women from the classical Greek period. How did they instill confidence in other women to become warriors? How were they able to empower other women without perpetuating patriarchy, in a time when women’s worth centered around bearing sons for men?
I’d like to talk to some prostitutes, to “low” women of Babylonian society, and ask what they thought about the ranking of women by reputation that was going on around them. They didn’t have the money, literacy, or importance to immortalize their beliefs.
I’d like to know why men decided women were less capable. When did a narrative of difference become a narrative of dominance?
If I could I would choose to ask a Spartan mother if she was satisfied with her level of power. If she is happy simply raising a son up to greatness or if she aspired to be great herself, you know. I personally would rather be a great warrior than a great caregiver of one. I am just learning about history but to me the title of mother of a great man feels inadequate. Being an assistant to greatness, to me, is not the same as actually achieving greatness.
Wow! Hannah could almost feel Hypatia, Phillis and Granuille breathing approval into the wintry living room. She reached for another essay, attracted by its unfamiliar handwriting. And read this.
You see, I have already gone back in time. I am here in your time, now, sitting in your classroom, Dr. Stern, because we use this same exam question of yours in our women’s history classes in the future. Are you surprised to learn about your influence, your impact? Well, don’t be. As I proposed to my own teacher, I chose to come back and ask YOU my history questions—though sitting in the back row, I’ve been silent. I waited all term for our conversation.
And now my time is up. On the first night of Hanukah, I’ll have to go back. Please, meet me at your club, your Sappho’s Bar and Grill, on Saturday night. I hope we may speak there.
Hannah’s coffee mug crashed to the floor.
The atmosphere at Sappho’s seemed quite ordinary, for once, later that night when Hannah poked her trembling snow boot inside the door and searched for a possible otherworldly guest at the bar. She realized her folly in expecting some Martian space traveller, instead of the time traveller this student proclaimed to be. It wouldn’t be a young dyke with antennae or pointy ears, but a futuristic women’s studies major. It certainly wouldn’t be someone whose presence in her big lecture hall had made her turn and stare. That semester she’d had students with purple hair, pink hair, spiked hair, no hair, modified wheelchairs, tattoos, piercings, henna, sports injuries, and narcolepsy. Everyone had a visible and, more likely, an undetectable “difference.”
There was indeed a young woman at the bar she recognized from class, the soccer player, drinking with three other student athletes. So it was Mallory, the goalie! It didn’t surprise Hannah that internationally revered futbol would still be played, probably with rules unchanged, in some future century. Were female athletes in that future finally being paid equal salaries? Equal bonuses for winning national titles? Could she even inquire?
Then the quiet student from the back row of class (whose soccer games she had neglected to attend even once this fall semester) held up her hand and greeted Hannah. Nodding to the other players, she excused herself: “I have a meeting with Dr. Stern to talk about my paper.” Isabel now waved to Hannah as well, directing them to the Nook, where a hot meal had been laid on the table.
They settled in awkwardly. Hannah found herself across from a broad-shouldered twenty-one-year-old (she hoped; Isabel had poured strong drinks for both of them. But wait—what was the legal age of someone from the future, who would not even be born yet in Hannah’s own time?). Mallory had a strong Middle Eastern face, Armenian or Palestinian, both pretty and androgynous, with short dark hair in untamed curls and lips swiped by a plum-colored gloss. She wore a very ordinary university goalie sweatshirt, bearing the number 22, cuffs neatly rolled at the wrists. But what in the world kind of wristwatch was that?
“Hi. I’m Mal.” The wrist came forward, and Hannah shook her student/time traveller’s hand, thinking, There is no normal way to begin this conversation. She made an effort: “Do you think your teammates bought that, about your meeting with me here to talk about your grade?”
“They drink here, they’ve seen you here, they’ve all apparently seen you grading at the bar,” Mal pointed out, and Hannah thought, Busted. How often had she brought work to finish at Sappho’s? “This is a very ordinary place for lesbians to meet, wouldn’t you say? Have I mentioned that I am one?”
Mal spoke with an accent, but it could have been any international exchange student’s staccato, lilting English
. Hannah looked at her intently. A human being from the future, a young dyke student like the thousands she had taught. Eyebrows, lips, teeth all regular, even refreshingly imperfect. Hannah considered Mal’s first words, and decided to begin there. “You called yourself a lesbian; that’s wonderful. Is that the—preferred term, still, where you . . . where you come from?”
“No,” Mal sipped from her wineglass. “In the twenty-second century we’re called tufts. Tufts, because we keep our pubic hair, and other women shave. And then we’re also seen as tough, so there it is.”
“I can get you a Tufts University sweatshirt to take back with you, as a souvenir,” was Hannah’s next idiotic remark, and Mal laughed. “Already have one, Dr. Stern. We played their soccer team last month and did a team jersey swap. But I wouldn’t count on it staying with me. May I ask if you, perhaps, have ever moved through time and brought back what you found there? It would change things in history, right? And we can’t have that, right?”
Hannah considered that she had only retained, for all her experiences that year, a Cracker Jack box prize that might have belonged to her ex-lover in 1946, and a fountain pen that might or might not have belonged to Radclyffe Hall. “So, ah—Well, what do you think of our food?” Hannah blurted, remembering how she had reacted to the striking tastes of the fifteenth-century crusts of bread in Granuille’s tower, and the sixth century BCE ouzo Sappho had spilled into her mouth so many months (or centuries) ago. Isabel had prepared an oddly high-carb meal for them that night: bowls of mashed potatoes, rice, toast with jam. “Are these your favorite things, from our time?” Hannah asked. “We call this comfort food.”
“It’s luxurious, fantastic,” sighed Mal. “We don’t have gluten any more. I’ve gorged on it for months here. It’s such an easy, affordable staple in the dining halls. I’ll miss its heft, its mouthfeel.”
“The starch has gone out of the future?” Hannah joked, and they laughed. More seriously, she queried: “You must have studied us—the lesbians of this time. My time. If I understand your note, you came into my classroom just to meet me. I’m flattered, of course, as well as terrified. Tell me why. And is any of it what you had expected?”
“The yoga pants are uncomfortable,” said Mal. “The material, waistbands, and so on. I prefer the athletic sweatshirts, as you see—the soccer uniform. But I read in one of your books that in your time, there were women’s music festivals where everyone danced naked. I wanted to experience that, and I managed to get here the same month that the Michigan festival stopped being held forever. Why did that end? I can’t tell you how frustrated I’ve been. How did women’s spaces end up being seen as oppressive or exclusionary, instead of respected as sacred retreats? Isn’t it possible for me to get to another one of those events while I’m here? Can’t I have dinner with Maxine Feldman?”
“Well—no,” Hannah stammered, thinking: For fuck’s sake, someone in the future reads my books! How about that! And God damn it, there will never be another Michfest. And, then: But if she can travel back like this, then any lesbian can get to a Michigan festival—just set the dials for 1979 . . . Will I be able to do that, when I’m eighty? Go back to 1979? Aloud, she said, “Stop. This isn’t real. I’m a historian, so maybe I can communicate with the past. But I can’t truly be holding a conversation with a woman from the future! It’s not possible!”
“Ah. Tell that to Fiona,” smiled Mal, and dug into her mashed potatoes with a long fork.
Fiona. She knew about Fiona! Of course. During her early thirties, Hannah had spent an entire year corresponding with women in “the future.” She’d been invited to be a guest speaker at a university in Australia, and preparing for that feminist conference involved weeks of online planning discussions with women’s studies colleagues in Sydney. All of their messages arrived in Hannah’s e-mail box dated one full day or more into the future. It had felt, then, like a vignette from Twilight Zone: Hannah pressed “send” while sitting in America on a Tuesday, and an instant reply came back from Australia dated Wednesday, a kind of voice from Tomorrowland. Then she’d had an affair with one of the conference organizers, Fiona, certainly the most expensive long-distance fling of her life, three or four trips down under, spread across a year. And each time that Hannah flew to Australia she lost an entire day, perhaps departing on Thursday and arriving on Saturday. One of her old travel journals complained, “I had no May 19th this year.” But then on the return flight she’d live the same Monday over and over and over again—that is, leaving early on Monday morning from Sydney, flying for twelve to fourteen hours, only to land at the same hour on the same Monday morning in Los Angeles. On such flights she’d estimate the passage of real time only by feeling the stubble of hair growing back on her shaven legs.
“Then this is just a longer extension of that talkback from tomorrow,” Hannah ventured. “But why me? Why did you pick me? If I could go back in time, I’d want to meet . . . ” and the chill came over her body, as the list formed in her mind’s eye. It’s everyone I’ve met this year. Sappho, Miriam, Radclyffe Hall, Katherine Lee Bates, Liliokalani, Phillis Wheatley.
Mal had finished eating and was tossing back one after another of Isabel’s green-flecked drinks, apparently feeling no ill effect. “I want to tell you this, Dr. Stern. We read your books where I’m in school. You made your mark, yes. We read your journals. We know, I know, that you hoped to have been useful, to be remembered. But unlike so many teachers you were able to suspend that boundary between what you taught, what you believed in, and what you experienced as a guide through women’s history. You lifted that curtain and showed your students the lesbian past. Even though you live in an era where the recent lesbian past is misunderstood, even vilified, you stood in that historical gap and held that space without apology. To be that ‘out’ in academia was, we think in my time, fearless.” Overwhelmed, Hannah burst into tears, and Isabel hurried over to their table.
“Everything okay here?”
“More than okay,” Hannah sobbed. Mal reached for the bar tab with her complex-wristwatched hand, and dozens of five dollar bills spilled from a wallet that opened gracefully as Mal chanted one word: Pay.
They sat there for another three hours talking. At last Mal stood up. “Needless to say, I really have to go. But I do have one actual question about our final exam, Dr. Stern.”
“I’m pretty sure you’ll be getting an A for this,” Hannah answered.
“No, it’s about the extra credit portion. In the essays, you asked us to pick a woman from the past and ask her questions. Well, that part I’ve done. But then for extra credit, you directed the class to write a postcard to some woman from the past and offer her advice. May I ask how you planned to have your students mail those postcards?”
“Oh—well, they aren’t meant for the real mail,” Hannah explained. “They drop them in my faculty box. Then I select the best and make a hall display for the women’s studies program bulletin board. I don’t really direct students to use the U.S. mail.”
“But what gave you the idea?” Mal persisted. “We don’t have mailboxes any more, you know—and personal handwriting, that’s done. I can tell you now, I struggled with writing my tests for you in class! In my women’s history class back home, we’d use something we call Dynamic Letterbox. But perhaps I’ve said too much. I know I have. I’m feeling full and sleepy now.” And she looked wavy, wavery, close to see-through for the first time, Hannah thought, or was that just the alcohol? Hannah struggled to collect her own thoughts. “Mal, I suppose I first seized on the idea for these writing exercises when I was in San Francisco at the gay and lesbian archives there, and one box in a climate-controlled display for visitors held a letter from Radclyffe Hall. She’d written to some American author, and her return address was clearly on the envelope. I wondered what would happen if I copied down that address and actually mailed something to Hall. She was dead by then, but would a postcard reach her anyway at her old residence? I wrote one and sent it. I remembered that when I
visited her tomb this year on my birthday, and . . . I did feel it had reached her, you know. Because . . .” Hannah mused, blushing down into her shirt, wondering what to say about THAT encounter now. And when she raised her head, Mal had vanished, leaving nothing but a dozen grains of rice upon a plate and a college soccer jersey with no body inside it.
Only a few of Hannah’s students bothered with the extra-credit postcards, and these she found dutifully shoved into her faculty mail box in Women’s Studies. But an entire other set of questions and advice for women-who-lived-in-the-past began arriving in Hannah’s email on the first day of Hanukah. They came for eight days and nights, glowing on the computer screen no matter what Hannah did with the on/off button, the reboot button, the wall plug, the surge protector plug, the hallway fuse. On one occasion, when a faculty colleague poked her head into the office and chirped, “How’s the grading going?,” the screen went discreetly dark—and lit up again as soon as the coast was clear.
Nor was it possible to print out and take home the mysterious messages. She tried, but each sheet of paper came out blank, despite fully replenished ink toner in every printer Hannah hooked up to her computer. She gave in to the understanding that these “postcards” were read-only.
Hi! I’m a student of women’s history, and my question is: What was it like for you to live as a lesbian in the late twentieth century, when you had no rights?
Greetings, Dr. Stern. I’m taking a class on women’s history, and we are assigned to make up a question for a woman who lived long ago as a defender of lesbians. I thought I would ask, what was it like to work at the Michigan festival?
Dear Professor, I wonder what it felt like to stand on the steps of the Supreme Court the day same-sex marriage became legal in America. Did you dance? Did you cry?
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