Burgle-Man was a slight African-American, probably in his early forties, the ideal demographic for the tactic I had in mind. “You would look Martin Luther King in the eye and continue to rob this house?” I yelled, pointing to the poster. “You would know that the residents of this home believe in the causes of Black people, and you would still try to steal from them?”
Burgle-Man was speechless.
“You would ask my Black self for money, knowing Dr. King was watching?” I continued to scan for the keys, and continued to silently panic about my naked bottom half. I wondered if he would notice if I left the room just for a second to put on some underwear. But I had to keep talking. Eyeing other posters and prints on my living room walls, I asked Burgle-Man, “You would look at these celebrations of Sojourner Truth and Toussaint L’Ouverture and cavalierly ransack this home for mere dollars?”
Burgle-Man’s chin began to quiver.
Where were those damn keys? I wondered.
When I started my diatribe on Steven Biko and “our African sisters and brothers who struggle,” tears streamed from Burgle-Man’s penitent eyes. He cried, “I’m gonna change my ways! I’m gonna change my ways!”
“It’s alright, Brother,” I told him softly. Who did I ever call “Brother”? “If you start doing the right thing today, that’s what you’ll get to hold onto for the rest of your life.” Whatever that meant.
Burgle-Man dried his tears while I spun my head around, looking for my keys. Of course, what I really longed for, needed, and had to have was my underwear. I could visualize the cotton fabulousness balled up in my dresser drawer just waiting for me. I hadn’t missed them so much since I’d messed in my pants in the second grade.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“My keys.”
“There’s a key in the back door,” he offered.
“You cased my place?” I hollered, vaguely remembering knocks at my front and back doors minutes before the break-in. He must have seen the key through a window from the outside.
“I’m sorry.” His chin started quivering again.
I grabbed the spare key from the back door (which led to the backyard) and used it to open my front door. “Okay, good-bye,” I grimaced.
“Are you going to call the police?” Burgle-Man asked.
“No, just get out. And don’t do this again.”
“I won’t,” he assured me solemnly, and retreated down the front stairs.
I relocked the door and collapsed on my couch, my legs no better than rubber bands. I sat still for ten minutes, quietly looking at Martin, before I got up and hammered the window shut. But first I got dressed.
kathleen tarr is a published legal scholar, a lecturer, a member of the California State Bar, and one of few Harvard Law School graduates who focused her legal career on eradicating racism and other oppressions, all the while refusing payment from her clients. For several years after the break-in, she slept with a knife. Having put the knife aside, she still never sleeps without underwear.
Alps-ward Bound
frezzia prodero
I was twenty-one and traveling around Europe by myself for one month. It was a source of pride for me that I paid for the whole trip with my own hard-earned money. No parental help whatsoever. While abroad, I was determined to see the Alps, so I set it up to stay with a host family in Switzerland and hopped on a train. I didn’t know exactly where to get off, but I wasn’t worried; I figured the ticket collector would tell me when I’d reached the right station by yelling something obvious, like, “Alps, next stop.” (I know, I know, silly me.)
After an hour of watching stop after stop pass by, I started worrying and decided to ask. I found the ticket collector by the train door just as we were pulling out of a station. I didn’t speak the language, so I asked in my native Spanish and he answered in choppy English.
“It was this stop,” he said. “You just missed it.” He pointed to the station’s platform, which was now zipping past us. “You’ll have to get off at the next stop, two hours away in Italy, and buy another ticket—”
“Another ticket?”
“—to take the next train back,” the ticket collector said as he walked away from me and into the train car.
“When is the next train back?” I asked, feeling the alarm rising up my chest.
“Tomorrow.”
“What?” I yelled. “I’m supposed to meet a host family back at the station we just passed today.”
It wasn’t just that. I had nowhere to stay in Italy; no arrangements had been made. And I had no extra money for another ticket, or for a hotel. Just the night before I’d slept in a train station, and believe me, I was not eager to repeat the experience. So, in a crazed state, feeling the train picking up speed, I followed after the ticket collector who was walking down the narrow aisle between the passenger seats.
“What should I do? What should I do?” I asked him.
A man sitting nearby saw me panicking and said, “Jump!” I spun around and looked at him. He was serious. Suddenly, other passengers joined in, all urging me to jump. Even grandmothers. I thought of my alternative and nodded yes. They grabbed my bags from the overhead compartment and helped me to the door. I opened it, saw the ground rushing by, and jumped.
Yes, of course I was scared. But for some bizarre reason, in my anxious state, the thought of breaking down and having my parents wire me money seemed much worse than ending up in a full-body cast.
The ticket collector must have been shocked. He, or someone, pulled the emergency stop. The train screeched to a halt and the conductor stuck his head out of a window and frantically yelled something I didn’t understand, ending with the word hospital. I shook my head no and waved them off; I’d broken no bones. Then I stood up, a bit embarrassed (everyone on the train was looking out the windows at me), brushed myself off, grabbed my luggage, and walked the two miles back to the station.
Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been the smartest move. When I got to the station, I found my fall had ripped my heavy sweater all the way up my forearm, leaving a long bloody cut. But the cut wasn’t deep, and the Alps were great. So there!
frezzia prodero, originally from Colombia, South America, is a brave Latina who ignores silly old values that say women shouldn’t travel alone. She is raising her fantastic, much adored daughter to be just as adventurous.
Hands On, Hands Off
bobbi ausubel
Bobbi’s note: I have two stories, one from girlhood and one from adulthood. You can’t miss the common theme: I’m a woman who takes matters into her own hands.
Growing up female in the 1950s in New York City meant enduring packed subway cars and men who’d bump against you or press their bodies into you. A stranger’s hand would find its way here or there, often places you didn’t want it. This happened every day on the way to junior high and back. Not only was I young and wavering in confidence, but I was unsure about the groping: Is this from the normal jostling of the train or are they purposefully doing what I think they are doing?
One day, though not on the train, I knew for sure. I was sitting in a movie theater with my friend Iris when a man sat down next to me. I knew something was strange because there were lots of empty seats everywhere, but he chose to sit right next to me. Soon after, I felt something crawling around by my behind. It was his hand.
I was confused, and my mind went kind of numb, like it usually did on the subway. Then, an unfamiliar and wild surge of energy built up inside of me and flew out. I grabbed his hand, lifted it way up in the air and screamed at him so loud everyone in the theater could hear: “Does this hand belong to you?”
He got up and walked away.
Iris laughed, shook my hand, and said some 1950s equivalent of “You go, girl!”
Twenty years later, in the early 1970s, I was the director of a small theater on the East Coast. During intermission, I’d stand around in the lobby because I enjoyed listening to people’s conversations about the play in progress.
One night, a distraught young woman came over to me.
“Somebody took my wallet out of my coat!” She pointed to a man in a long tan overcoat at the other end of the lobby and said, “That man was sitting behind me.”
Dressed in elegant garb, the guy looked as if he didn’t belong in the predominantly hippie crowd my theater drew, so without hesitating, I marched over to him.
“Did you take something from the woman sitting in front of you?” I asked.
Only for an instant did I consider I might be endangering myself by confronting him. At that exact moment I imagined myself Wonder Woman, my childhood heroine. That promptly squashed any rising fears.
“No,” the well-mannered man answered, raising his eyebrows as if taken aback.
I didn’t buy it.
I pulled his unbuttoned overcoat open wide enough to reach in, fished my hand into the inside pocket, and grabbed the purse it easily landed on. I pulled the red leather pouch out, held it high, and called across the crowded theater lobby to the young woman, “Is this your wallet?”
I was shocked by my own actions, but that soon turned to feelings of triumph, because the surprised woman at the far end of the lobby heard me and nodded yes.
Thinking myself generous, I turned to the man, pointed to the exit, and said, “You can leave now.” We didn’t believe in calling the police in those days.
bobbi ausubel, a beautifully aging crone playwright and drama teacher, actively misses hippies, because, in truth, nowadays there are hardly any left.
Amen for Sneaky Women
cecelia wambach
The Pope was coming!
Everyone was saying how wonderful this was because he had never come to the United States before and we all knew him to be special—he was a social change activist in Poland, after all. It was 1983. I was teaching at a Catholic women’s college in New York City, and like some kid might do with a rock star, I took off three days from work to follow the Pope around as he appeared at various locations.
For the appearance at Yankee Stadium, a colleague gave me two free tickets. I gave one to my friend Bea. We were so excited. But when we arrived, we weren’t happy at all; our seats were very, very far back. We were able to see, but not much. Home plate looked like a speck. The stage looked like a dollhouse. Bea and I took off, determined to get closer.
At each new level down we simply pointed south and told the ushers we had seats “down there,” and in each case they let us through without actually looking at our tickets. Before this I had had no idea how easy lying could be!
As we proceeded down, we suddenly made it to a layer of cops. It was the honor guard for the Pope, made up of New York’s finest, and they all seemed to be Irish Catholic men. Now, you have to imagine the scene here. There were thousands of policemen in the stadium. I mean, the rest of New York was being totally ignored. These blue-uniformed officers paraded around the inside perimeter of the whole stadium, three deep. Just as we made it down to this cop level, the police right in front of us started to line up and march forward. Bea and I joined their line and marched forward with them toward the stage. No one tried to stop us.
Bea grabbed my arm and said, “God is taking care of us. We are invisible.”
“What?” I said in disbelief. I didn’t know if it was true or not, but it certainly seemed no one was noticing us—two plainclothed women, one Black and one white, in a line of big, burly Irishmen in blue. As I marched, I experienced a fit of laughter, mostly out of fear. Would they catch us? Arrest us? Shoot us? I started to pray.
We kept up with the police line and soon we made it onto the field where the symphony was playing and where all the important people sat, such as the cardinals and the rest of the Church hierarchy. When the cops sat down, we did, too. We ended up in a row with about a hundred elite police right in front of the Pope. I mean, I got to shake his hand! That night I called my mom to tell her about it and she said she already knew, she’d seen me on TV—live. The next day I saw I was in all the main photos of the event: one hundred policemen, Bea and me, and the Pope.
cecelia maria wambach was a nun for ten years. Now she is a lesbian who never lies. At the start of the third millennium she still loves the Pope.
Fat Grrlz Kick Ass
beth mistretta
You might remember me. I was the girl in your gym class that everyone described as “chubby.” I always came in last, heaving and beet-red, when we ran the mile. I hardly ever hit the ball. I wore a shirt two sizes too big in an attempt to hide my body and my shorts, which rode up my inner thighs as I walked. Maybe you acknowledged this by calling me “Heifer,” “Bertha,” or “Trailer.” Until I was sixteen, that was all I encountered in gym class.
Then in 1994, on the first day of my junior year in high school, Ms. L. walked through the door. Ms. L. was the new gym teacher. She was young, fit, and sported a shortish brown haircut that gave her a tomboyish look. She was a skilled camper and could survive in the wilderness for weeks. She preached teamwork, effort, and enthusiasm until we took these as gospel. Most important, she instilled confidence in all of us.
By midsemester, our class was practicing rappelling off our gymnasium balcony. Ms. L. had taught us to handle her hightech equipment like experts. While we were in action, she paced around the balcony checking our technique and shouting directions as if we were on a real mountain. Once we got the hang of it, we found rappelling to be relatively easy.
Then she taught us how to ascend.
This was the setup: The climbing rope was secured to the balcony. Both the ascender and the belayer wore harnesses that attached them to each other. The climber used a combination of larger ropes and smaller looped ones, as well as metal clamps. Throw on your helmet, stick your foot into the first loop, grab the clamps and climb. Sounds easy, right? Well, when the first boy in our class tried ascending, he sure made it look that way.
In two minutes this boy had climbed twenty feet with barely a drop of sweat on his brow. But when he climbed over the balcony, he exclaimed, “That kicked my ass. That was no joke, man.” His words threw all of our confidence out the window. This guy was one of the best in the class, and even he struggled. Despite this, Ms. L. still asked the dreaded question: “Who’s next?” We all stared off in different directions and stood in awkward silence, as if she wouldn’t notice us if we didn’t look at her.
I would be lying if I told you this boy’s words brought back all of my lifelong gym-class horrors. Instead, all I could think of was that I was a star in the class, too. I was one of the best rappellers, I had gotten an A on the canoeing skills test, and I had mastered a compass.
My hand darted up and I shouted, “I’ll go!”
Some people appeared relieved, though all my girlfriends threw me questioning looks. I avoided eye contact with everyone and created an aura of purpose around me. I was too busy to think twice. I rushed to put on my harness, adjust my ponytail, strap on my helmet, and swagger downstairs. Once at the bottom of the rope, I attached my harness, checked the setup with the belayer on the balcony, got my feet into the ropes, and grabbed my clamps.
“Belayer ready?” I shouted.
“Belayer ready,” the student yelled down.
“Ascending,” I called out. Before he could even reply, I was off and gone.
Off and gone, that is, until about seven feet into my climb, when I became exhausted—deeply exhausted—and came to a dead stop.
I sat dangling from the rope with my harness painfully digging into my butt and inner thighs. I stretched to pull up the looped ropes so that I could step into them and keep going. Unfortunately, I pulled them too high and could not move them down. Suddenly, the absurdity of climbing up with no ground below to push against struck me. In my tight jeans, my leg battled to defy gravity to get my foot into the damn loop. It felt too difficult. I began to panic. I considered giving up, yet I knew how humiliated I would be if the whole class had to watch the belayer lower me down.
Ms. L. sensed my frustr
ation and began to coach and encourage me. “This is not hard, Beth. I know you can do this. Just get that foot in there and push your body up. Move it!”
I tried, and tried again, and finally I got my foot into the loop. I grabbed the clamps with my hands and felt my quads, hamstrings, and biceps strain as I pulled myself up. I looked above at the balcony: about halfway to go.
Honestly, the rest of the climb was not much easier. I summoned upper-body strength I never knew I had. I mean, you’re talking about someone who couldn’t even do a single pull-up. Then, after one more excruciating rest on my pinching harness, my face met the floor of the balcony. I was almost there. With a surge of optimism (or was it adrenaline?), suddenly my work became effortless. Within seconds I was climbing over the balcony bars while Ms. L. commanded to the belayer, “Pull her in, pull her in. Don’t let her go yet!”
When I was standing on the balcony, both feet on solid ground, I took off my helmet and my head looked as if I had showered. I was heaving, my face was bright red, and sweat ran down my neck. By this time, everyone was clapping. I was the first girl at East High School to ascend. I tried to look humble, but it wasn’t working. I now knew I could run with the best of them, and I figured, why not smile about it?
Yeah, sure, beth mistretta ([email protected]) did graduate with a journalism degree from a good Chicago university, and did get a job in her field as Community News Coordinator for a daily newspaper. But way more important, she is also a fitness instructor at an allwomen’s health club, where she’s been teaching since shortly after taking Ms. L.’s class.
Paying for It
monique bowden
We’d been warned it was too dangerous to go out into the dark streets of Detroit, but I was hungry and so was Alice. We left the safety of our conference site at Cobal Hall and headed for a diner we’d spotted earlier.
That Takes Ovaries! Page 3