Anna in Chains

by Merrill Joan Gerber

  “I’ve watched enough to know exactly what I would learn! I could learn how to be a lesbian and have a baby with my lesbian lover’s brother, so we can all be one big happy family.”

  “Oh, get your head out of the Middle Ages,” Anna said in disgust. “This is almost the year 2000.”

  “I’m glad Papa didn’t live long enough to see what’s become of the world.”

  “You think Papa was so innocent?” Anna said. “When he married Mama, what do you think he was marrying? Her brains?”

  “Bite your tongue,” Gert said. “Papa was a religious man.

  “He was a man,” Anna said.

  “So was Abram a man,” Gert said. “Or didn’t you ever notice? You think Abram only wanted to pray on his wedding night?”

  Anna tried to remember her wedding night. Could such a thing be possible—for a woman to forget her wedding night? “Thank heaven—” she said, “this line is beginning to move.” She gave Gert a little shove. “Will you walk?” she said impatiently. “I want to get in there before they fill up.”

  The line suddenly began to shoot forward. A young woman carrying a walkie-talkie and wearing an NBC peacock emblem on her jacket pocket ran along beside them and herded them into a vast ceilingless cavern. It was like the dark inside of a refrigerator. She rushed them over cables and wires taped to the floor, she sent them up wide flat stairs to find seats.

  “Be sure to take an aisle seat,” Gert advised Anna, “or he won’t be able to get to you.”

  “What makes you think I care if he gets to me?” Anna asked.

  “Because you always have to be the center of attention,” Gert said. “But don’t bother to toss your hair for him,” Gert added. “Your charms had their day, Anna, but face it—their day is over.”

  Donahue’s guest was a young woman who looked like a school teacher but was really a whorehouse madam. Her ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. She was dressed like a girl going to church. Pretty, blonde, and blue-eyed, she sat on a chair and folded her hands in her lap. Her dress resembled a kind of middy-blouse Anna used to wear as a child. A string of white pearls lay on her throat. Anna observed how respectful Phil Donahue was to her; she disapproved. Why should a man as educated and intelligent as Donahue have to knock himself out for a woman like that—running around the audience with his coattails flying and his microphone sticking forward like a giant mushroom.

  They were talking about the madam’s business—how her “girls” were very smart and cultured, that many were college students, one was even a medical student. What other jobs could they find, she said, that had such good hours and such high pay? She provided regular medical care for them. Her girls carried little charge-card machines in their purses. They carried extra pantyhose and business clothes for the next day. They were refined, intelligent women, just women earning a decent living.

  The floodlights, burning brightly now and heating up the room rapidly, seemed aimed at Anna’s face. She squinted in the glare. Donahue went on smiling and nodding as if the whorehouse business was just fine with him; the trouble with liberals was that they forgave everyone for everything.

  Gert poked Anna.

  “Does anyone know what kind of part-time jobs your granddaughters have at college?” she demanded. “Do you think Janet knows what her children do?”

  “You’re crazy,” Anna said. “My granddaughters are not prostitutes.”

  “Do you know for sure where they sleep every night?”

  “No!” Anna said. “Do you know for sure where I sleep every night?”

  “I have no doubts about you,” Gert said. “You aren’t the type to sleep around. You only like to tease.”

  Anna was feeling dizzy. She was the older sister, she had always believed she understood everything better than Gert. Now her head was reeling. All these questions raised about her granddaughters, about her wedding night! Was she a tease because she liked to wear her skirts short? She had always had pretty legs, why shouldn’t she? She saw in her mind the red truck, the spurting black smoke, the truckdriver throwing her a kiss.

  “Let’s leave,” Anna said, “This show is worthless.”

  “I’m more than willing,” Gert said. “For this I had to waste a taxi coupon.”

  “Look,” Anna said, “Donahue could have had on Ralph Nader talking about poison in hair dye. He could have had on someone from the PLO. He didn’t send me a program. He’s only in LA for a week and this is what we got.”

  “We got sewage! From the sewer of the world!” Gert said. She waved her arm to dismiss the whole thing, and suddenly Donahue came bounding up the steps with his microphone quivering in front of him and grabbed Gert’s arm. He leaned right across Anna. He was so close she could see the thin white stripes on his pinstripe suit, the glare of the spotlights on his wedding ring. The hairs on his hand holding the microphone were glowing like hot electric wires.

  “C’mon, help me out here!” he said to Gert as he thrust the black knob toward her mouth, bending toward her as if he cared with all his heart exactly what Gert thought about every issue in life. He took her hand and pulled her gently to a standing position. “Tell us what you think.” He had a voice like a lover.

  “What I think,” Gert said, “is with all the troubles in the world, who needs to put a woman like this on national television!”

  A round of applause rose up all around them. The Mayflower Madam smiled sweetly and cast her eyes down; the applause for Gert was deafening. Donahue smiled at Gert and squeezed her hand. Anna could smell his cologne or his aftershave or something from his beautiful white hair. She was the one who had got the free tickets, and Gert was the one who had got to air her small-mindedness all over the United States of America.

  Anna raised her hand, but Donahue’s back was to her, he was rushing down the stairs—her chance was lost forever. She turned to Gert and saw how flushed her cheeks were. A smile as big as a freeway was on her face.

  “He’s a real mensch,” Gert said. “I could go for him.”

  “I thought he was too liberal for you.”

  “He’s only that way on television. In real life he’s married to a good Catholic girl,” Gert said. “He knows what’s right. He’s a good family man. I would be happy for my daughters to marry a man like that.”

  “You have no daughters,” Anna said. “You have no children, and it’s lucky for them you don’t.”

  “I wonder if my friends in New Jersey saw me,” Gert said as they waited at the curb for a taxi. She had insisted on staying till the very end of the show, and then rushed to join the crush of women as they filed forward to shake Donahue’s hand.

  “No doubt they saw you all over the continent. Probably the President of the United States heard you, too.”

  “I hope so. He would agree with my opinion,” Gert said. “He and I have the same politics.”

  “What do you know about politics?” Anna said. “All you ever read is ‘Dear Abby.’ “

  “I know the world used to be a better place. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Oh!” Anna said. “Why don’t you grow up?“

  “You think it’s grown up to cry for an hour in the bathroom on your wedding night?” Gert said. “Sitting on the tile in a brown silk dress and bawling your head off?”

  “That’s nonsense,” Anna said. “I never cry. I didn’t cry then and I don’t cry now.”

  “You were afraid to be left alone for the night with Abram.”

  “Not true.”

  “He came to me and begged me to calm you down. He had a hotel room reserved in Atlantic City, but you didn’t want to go away from home after the ceremony. You were hysterical.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “He thought maybe I could arrange it so you and he could spend the first night alone at our house, then you wouldn’t be so scared. What I had to go through!”

  “What did you have to go through?” Anna asked. She couldn’t remember a single thing about her wedding except the viole
nt odor of her corsage of gardenias, curling brown at the edges almost as soon as she got them.

  “First I had to get Mama farmed out. The Bronx relatives finally agreed to take her home with them and bring her back the next day. Then I had to find a place for myself. Do you know where I had to sleep on your wedding night?”

  “No,” Anna said coldly. “The way you adored Abram, maybe it was with him. How should I know what else you’re making up in this crazy story?”

  “He really should have married me,” Gert said. “I have a sweeter nature than you. He would have had a better life with me. The fact is, Rosie Dubin and her husband had just taken an apartment on Ocean Parkway, and they agreed to let me come and sleep there after the ceremony. But they had only one double bed. So I had to sleep in it with them. They made me get in the middle, between them, to prove there wouldn’t be any hanky-panky to embarrass me.”

  “It must have been a big night for you, the famous virgin, sleeping in a bed with a man.”

  “We laughed all night,” Gert said, smiling. A big bus blasted past them, and her hair blew back in the wind. She looked almost young and pretty.

  “Late as I married, I always enjoyed sex, Anna. Did you?”

  “When Donahue has me on as his guest, I’ll discuss it in public, not before.”

  The taxi they’d ordered pulled up, and Gert held the door open as Anna got in. As hard as Anna tried, she could not remember her wedding, her wedding night, her honeymoon. Had she ever enjoyed sex? What a question. She could hardly remember sex. When it happened, it was in the dark, late at night, she was always tired, she kept her eyes closed. Abram never stayed there long, he didn’t bother her too often. What was to enjoy? Did Gert know something she didn’t know? Did her granddaughters? All her life she had considered herself so advanced, but could it be she was the one still in the Dark Ages?

  The taxi driver, a handsome Armenian, drove them toward home. He had some music playing on the radio with a low, hard beat. He seemed to be in another world. On Santa Monica Boulevard they passed a porno movie. They passed young girls strutting about in short shorts. They saw two gay men looking in the window of an underwear store, their arms around each other’s waists. They passed a billboard with a half-naked woman in a bikini, advertising an airline. Gert had a satisfied expression on her face. Anna suddenly grabbed her arm. “I slept in the same bed with Abram thirty-one years, Gert. I had two babies. Doesn’t that prove something to you?”

  “What does it prove? Who knows which way you were facing?” She took a red lipstick out of her purse and rolled it around her lips without looking in a mirror. She squeezed her lips together. “You know, I had two husbands already,” Gert said. “If this one doesn’t hold out, I’ll find another one. If necessary, I’ll have three, maybe four.”

  “You’re seventy-six years old,” Anna said. “You must be crazy.”

  “So I’m crazy,” Gert said. “You should be so crazy. Here, put on some nice bright lipstick and enjoy your life a little, Anna.

  THE NEXT MEAL IS LUNCH

  One of the gay boys across the alley was hucking and hocking in his bathroom, which looked directly into Anna’s kitchen window. She pushed away her dish of cottage cheese—how could a person be expected to eat when these poor boys were dying like flies all over the place? And where were their mothers on a special day like this? If one of her daughters had AIDS, Anna would be right there, holding the bowl for her to throw up in, especially on Thanksgiving, when no one should be alone.

  She was alone. Accidentally, of course. A big dinner had been planned, as usual, at her daughter Janet’s, with Carol making the stuffing and Gert and Harry bringing the canned sweet potatoes. But then Janet had come down with the flu. Anna certainly hoped it was the flu, but these days who could know? She had always thought her son-in-law was perfectly respectable, but from the talk shows Anna knew that almost anyone you met could be a closet bisexual or have a file cabinet full of heroin.

  Today was a hard day to be alone. It happened Anna’s birthday came this year on Thanksgiving Day, and this one was not chicken feed, this was eighty, this was the Big Time. She’d already been planning how she would break up and distribute the chocolate turkey her daughters always gave her. The hollow head, she’d decided, would go to her youngest granddaughter, who had won a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship to college and proved to Anna—not that she needed proof—the superiority of her genes.

  She heard the sick boy cough again, half-choking, half-strangling. Could the AIDS virus leap across an alley? On the news they talked all the time about safe sex! When was sex ever safe? At its best it gave you children, and some children (of course not hers!) could ruin your life as fast as any fatal disease. Thank God Anna was past that minefield—no chance of getting pregnant and no chance of having rotten children. Now all she had to worry about was the diseases of old age. When she went, she wanted to go fast. And if she had the bad luck to linger, she only hoped someone would make short work of her.

  It crossed her mind she should cook chicken soup for the gay boy and bring it in to him, but, as usual, whenever she had a generous impulse, her good sense ruled it out. Neither did she want to hang around here and listen to him krekhts all day.

  “So I’m going for a walk,” she announced to her furniture, to her two pianos, to the ghosts who hopped around her apartment. “I should only live to see you again, I shouldn’t be mugged.” This was said to protect her from the evil eye though Anna had no use for those old and meaningless superstitions. Still, if a person anticipated all the terrible conclusions, they couldn’t sneak up on you. She didn’t take a purse—a strategy designed to discourage muggers, and she took her ID in her sweater pocket, in case she got hit by a truck.

  A truck hit Anna the minute she stepped off the curb at Melrose and Fairfax. For the first time in her life she flew like a bird, but grunting. And hit down like a rock, but bursting. Blood was in her mouth. She saw a Mexican jump out of the truck and felt him take her gently under the arms and drag her back on the sidewalk. She was sorry she had ever wished they would all go back to Mexico. He was staring into her eyes with a passion she couldn’t identify, but it moved her. She wished he were her son. Daughters could be devious (she was lucky hers were not!) while sons usually adored their mothers. She was about to ask him if he was good to his mother when he stamped his foot.

  “Lady! You crazy? You must be blind!” He pinched her arm. “Give me money. You make me late for work!”

  He growled over her with a dog’s mouth, menacing her, his mustache curved like a scythe. Anna felt a veil descend over her eyes.

  “Shit, man,” he said. “Shit, you losing me my job, man.” He kicked at her thigh. She saw him climb back into his truck and roar away.

  “Give me money,” she mumbled as she lowered her head down to the pavement. “Give me money. That’s all anyone knows these days.”

  THE DAY IS THURSDAY

  THE CITY IS NECTAR HILL

  THE WEATHER IS CLOUDY

  THE NEXT MEAL IS LUNCH

  The sign hung on the wall directly in front of Anna’s bed. Anna privately added a fifth line:

  THE PERSON FORCED TO READ THIS IS A MORON.

  She had lain here during the risings and settings of several suns, but the day remained Thursday, the next meal always lunch. She was strapped into her bed; at intervals she was turned like a frankfurter on a barbecue grill. A pattern of motion occurred around her: white-coated forms circled in the hall. Nurses slid along on their rubber shoes, carrying Dixie cups filled with little pills; aides, with their sullen faces, threw down lunchtrays, refilled water pitchers. An old woman in a red furry robe pushed her wheelchair up and down the corridor, crying: “They poison my food. My son stole my house. What comes out in the toilet is black. No one believes me.” In the background an old man crooned, “Nonno, nonno,” never stopping, never changing his tone.

  The moment Anna’s daughters materialized at her bedside, she said, “Get me out of he
re.” She saw them look at one another. “Listen,” she said. “The weather isn’t cloudy, the next meal isn’t lunch, and I’m not a vegetable. Not yet.” She motioned to the other two beds in her room, sporting horrors she preferred not to memorize. “You can’t get lox and bagels here. What does it cost me to stay here a day?”

  Her girls gave each other another look. They’d already explained to Anna that the hospital to which the ambulance had taken her refused to keep her because she wasn’t badly hurt, so until her dizziness went away she had to stay here in this nursing home. She’d told them she wasn’t dizzier than usual and she wasn’t ready for a nursing home. Now a panic rose in her lower belly, along with a premonition of her future here, a place from which she couldn’t call her congressman, or write a letter to the newspaper, or threaten anyone with a lawsuit. Unable to escape, she would be reduced to a lump of nothing.

  She thought of her miserable apartment with longing; it now seemed as spacious and fragrant as Yosemite itself, her narrow stall shower a waterfall, her white stove vent a snowcapped mountain. Never mind the Armenians barbecue fumes, never mind the germs coming across the alley from the gay boy. A haven of freedom was what her apartment was—where no one told her what day, what weather, what town she was forced to endure in. Was it possible she would never get back there?

  In a drawer by her bed at home she had her Hemlock Society card; if her daughters didn’t get her out of here, she would phone the society and ask for the name of some doctor in Holland who could mail her the correct pills as soon as possible. Was it a major problem that her children would be insulted when they realized they weren’t important enough to keep her alive? She began to compose a note to them: “Believe me, children, this has nothing to do with the way you treated me and it’s not that life wasn’t worth living, especially with your father (I wish I believed I would meet him and be his footstool in heaven, but dead in my opinion is dead, what can I tell you?) and it’s not that my grandchildren aren’t dear to me, but look, let’s face it, they’re not interested in me—do they ever come to visit?” This last she decided to leave out—she didn’t need to create any extra hostility. Please be advised I’m no coward—you’ll find out some day that old age isn’t for sissies.