My Beautiful Hippie

by Janet Nichols Lynch

When he left the kitchen to make the call, Mom glared at me and shook her head. “I don’t even know you anymore, Joanne. You’ve always been the difficult child to raise, but I never thought it would come to this, staying out all night at the age of sixteen.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. The Purple Cockroach is my favorite band. They were playing at the Fillmore, and I wanted to hear them. If I asked you, you wouldn’t let me go.”

  The doorbell rang. I could hear Dad hanging up and going to answer it.

  “Going into the Negro slum, hanging around with hopped-up hippies? No mother in her right mind would allow her daughter to do that!”

  “You never let me do anything! If I waited for your permission, I’d never go anywhere.”

  Dad appeared at the kitchen entrance. “Lisa still hasn’t come home. Leo’s calling the police,” he reported, obviously shaken. “There’s someone here to see you, Joanne.” He stepped aside, and there was Martin! He looked so out of place in my mother’s rooster decor, I thought I was still tripping. He wore clean Levi’s and a denim shirt, tucked in. His hair was washed and brushed back in a neat ponytail. I wanted to scream, “Run, run! My parents are so mad they’ll kill you!”

  Martin extended his hand to my mother, and she reluctantly shook it. “Hello, Mrs. Donnelly. I’m Martin. Joanne spent the night at our house, and when I woke up, I found out she was gone. I was worried about her, so I just came over to see she got home okay.”

  “She’s here,” Mom said flatly. “Have a seat. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I don’t do caffeine. Do you have any herbal tea?”

  “No, we don’t have any herbal tea,” said Dad.

  “Just a cup of hot water, then,” said Martin.

  “Plain hot water?” Mom exclaimed.

  “Water from the tap would be fine,” said Martin.

  Mom poured a glass of water and handed it to him. “Do your parents let you stay out all night?”

  “Um . . . well, I live with my older brother, and he uh . . .”

  “Lets you do pretty much what you want,” said Mom. “Do you think we should let Joanne do whatever she wants?”

  “Well, she has pretty good judgment.”

  “You think staying out all night is good judgment?” asked Dad.

  “No, that wasn’t,” said Martin. “I should have taken her home at two, when the dance ended, but it was late and—”

  “Are you having sexual intercourse with our daughter?” roared Dad, leaning over Martin, his hands on his hips.

  “No!” Martin raised both palms. “No,” he repeated softly.

  “But you have been seeing each other for quite a while,” said Mom.

  “No!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes,” said Martin. “Long enough for me to drop by and meet the family.”

  “And what do you do together?” Mom asked.

  “We talk a lot,” said Martin.

  “And walk a lot,” I added.

  “And drink tea,” said Martin.

  “Herbal tea?” Dad clarified disdainfully.

  “Right,” said Martin, “with honey. And sometimes we play music together. Last night we went dancing.”

  “Joanne is forbidden to attend the Fillmore or the Avalon dances ever again!” said Mom. “Are we clear about that?”

  “Right,” said Martin. “I won’t take her there again.”

  “What are your intentions toward our daughter?” asked Dad.

  “Well . . .” Martin rubbed his chin. “I was just going to ask her if she wanted to go down to Tracy’s for a donut.”

  “You better run along to Tracy’s Donuts on your own,” said Mom. “I was just about to ground Joanne for life.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well . . .” Martin slowly stood. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly. Thanks for the water.” He turned and gave me one of his beautiful smiles. I wanted to kick him for coming to my house. “Bye, Joni. Glad you made it home okay.”

  “Not everyone did,” said Dad. He showed Martin out the back door. My parents and I were silent, listening to the gravel crunch beneath Martin’s boots as he passed under the kitchen window.

  When we heard the gate clink shut, Mom started yelling again. “What are we going to do about this, Dick? What sort of man wears a ponytail?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dad. “But a fella who comes around to my front door, looks me in the eye, and inquires about the safety of my daughter is the sort of man I like.”

  Mom flapped her arms. “It’s okay with you that your daughter dates a hippie?”

  “I’ll let you handle this one, Mother.” Dad picked up his newspaper and shuffled into the den.

  Sitting at the kitchen table with all the roosters looking on, I knew I was in for a serious interrogation. I was going to try to be honest with my mother, something I hadn’t had much practice with.

  “Do you and Martin smoke marijuana together?”

  I winced. “A couple of times.”

  Mom sighed deeply. “I thought so. I read a survey where sixty-two percent of you kids have tried it, so I knew you’d be one of them.”

  “I don’t really like it, Mom. It makes me confused, and I’d rather think straight. You know I have a hard time remembering my music as it is. I don’t know how musicians play stoned. Even in rock you’ve got to remember chord changes and lyrics.”

  “Does Martin go to school?”

  “No.”

  “Does he have a job?”

  “Sorta. He works for his brother sometimes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Setting up his rock band.”

  “Oh, brother. He’s all wrong for you, Joanne, but I can tell by the way you look at each other that no matter what Dad and I say or do, you’ll find a way to keep seeing him. Don’t get pregnant, Joanne. It would ruin your life if you married him.”

  “Mom! I’m too young to be looking for a husband.”

  “Exactly what your sister said. She barely lasted a year at Cal before she got one. Don’t get me wrong. You know we love Jerry, but it would have been nice if someone in this family had actually graduated from college, and Denise was the one who could actually do it.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Well, Joanne, I honestly don’t have much hope for you. Smoking marijuana and playing the guitar and running after hippies, I imagine you’ll soon be one yourself.”

  I swallowed hard. I tried not to show that she had succeeded in hurting my feelings. “Can I go to Tracy’s now?”

  “I’d better let you. If I sent you to your room you’d leap out of the second-story window to chase after that hippie.”

  When I got to Tracy’s, Martin had my favorite donut, a custard-filled, chocolate-iced Bismark, waiting for me. “What made you think I was coming?”

  “Your parents seem to be reasonable folks.”

  “Martin! Are you crazy?”

  He laughed. “We’ve been sneaking around long enough. It’s bad karma the way you lie to your parents because of me.”

  “They could’ve forbidden me to see you ever again.”

  “I thought of that. But you’d find a way.”

  “That’s what my mom figured.” I scarfed down my donut.

  Martin reached across the table with a napkin to wipe the chocolate from my mouth. “Why’d you take off without telling me?” he asked softly.

  “You were asleep, and I was wide awake.”

  “How do you feel now?”

  “Good. Thoughtful. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to drop acid again. It’s going to take me about ten years to sort this trip out.”

  “I knew you were a quick learner.” His smiling eyes grew soft and deep. “You said something last night that made me sad.”

  It was impossible to remember everything I had rattled on about. “What?”

  “What makes you think I have other girls?”

  I felt myself blush. “Well, we don’t . . . you know, and Rena told me that once guys start having sex they have to hav
e it, and now everyone is into free love, and—”

  “You’re doing it again, Joni. Stereotyping me. Can’t you think of me as my own person?”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “There’s nobody but you, got that, lady? I’ll let you know when that changes.”

  “Not if, but when.”

  “I warned you from the start. I’m a rolling stone.”

  “I know.” I looked down at my hands. There was chocolate icing stuck under my thumbnail.

  “And you’ve got big plans. Juilliard. Carnegie Hall.”

  I knew all this, and Martin was right in thinking I occasionally needed to be reminded. I noticed a smear of pink Day-Glo paint on my arm and had to think hard where it came from. “Where do you think Lisa is?”

  He lifted one shoulder and dropped it. “Sleeping it off wherever that camper took her.”

  “She was going to the bridge.”

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  April Fools’ Day I really was sick, no joke. I’d been throwing up all night and I had a fever. Still, Mom was convinced I was faking. It was her bridge day—Thelma was hosting—and Mom accused me of planning to cut school to meet Martin in the park or somewhere as soon as she left the house. That was actually a pretty good idea. I would have to try it someday when I felt better.

  All morning, between fits of sleep, I was aware of Snoopy purring and kneading my pillow. I thought, Now I’m supposed to be in geometry, now world history, now orchestra. It was weird to think of the school day going on without me. Around eleven o’clock I heard Mom taking a shower, and when she checked on me just before leaving, I pretended to be asleep. A little while later I felt well enough to sit up in bed and finish the letter to Jimmy I’d started the previous evening. I’d been writing to him every two weeks or so, nothing personal, just the stuff he’d asked me to write about. He wrote back a couple of times, but not with news of the war; he liked to reminisce about home and make plans for when he returned, including a fishing trip to Clear Lake with Dan.

  Just as I was sealing the envelope, I heard the back door close. Mom, no doubt, had rushed home to check on me. I heard footsteps on the stairs, and then Denise burst into the room.

  “What are you doing here?” we said in unison.

  “I’ve got the flu,” I said.

  “Oh, give it to me so I can take the rest of the week off!”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work right now?”

  Denise sank heavily onto her bed. “Yeah. I went to lunch, then found I just couldn’t face Mr. Marlowe and his roaming hands.”

  My eyes popped.

  “Now when he stands behind me, he puts his hands on my breasts. He says it helps him think.”

  “That’s horrible! There should be a law against it.”

  “There isn’t.” She seemed resigned to the situation, when the Denise I once knew would be sprinting around the desk yelling, “Hands off!”

  “You should tell Jerry.”

  “Why would he care? He’s got his life arranged just the way he wants it. Did you hear the news yesterday? LBJ has decided not to run for reelection. That’s just icing on the cake. Now it seems Jerry will even get the president he wants—Gene McCarthy.”

  “Maxine wants Bobby Kennedy.”

  Denise shrugged. “It makes me tired to talk about politics. I just came over here to sit in this little pink room and—I don’t know—find myself.” She picked up a framed picture from her senior prom. “Oh, here I am. Look at me! I was so young and pretty then.”

  “That was only two years ago, Den. You’re still young and pretty.”

  She rubbed her cheek. “I feel like an old hag. All used up.” She lifted a volume of the complete novels of Jane Austen onto her lap. “And here I am. My favorite is Sense and Sensibility. I felt I was both of them. Ah! My little book of poems.” She flipped through a cloth-covered notebook, pausing to read here and there. “God! All bad imitations of Rod McKuen. Still, they’re mine. I wrote them.”

  I tapped a huge art history textbook lying horizontally in the bookcase. “There’s you again.”

  “Ah, no, Jo, not really. I only declared art history because I knew Cal had quotas in various majors and I had a better chance of getting in. I figured I’d switch to English later.”

  “You should go back to college.”

  “Jerry and I fight about it all the time. He says I have penis envy.”

  It took me a few seconds to understand what she was talking about. “Wait, I don’t get it. Jerry thinks you wish you had one?”

  “Uh-huh. Freud talks about it all the time. He says that’s usually why women are so unhappy.”

  “Yew, that’s sickening! Why would a girl want a . . . an elephant trunk hanging off her body?”

  Denise reeled with laughter. “Oh, Jo, you’re so funny!”

  “Seriously. Why would you need a thing to go to college? Talk to Maxine. You need to be liberated.”

  “Jerry has already liberated me quite enough. We now have an open marriage. He calls it group sex, like group therapy, like it’s all clinical and normal, but it’s just a filthy orgy.”

  I stared back at her.

  “I’m talking to the wrong person about this. Don’t tell Mom. I want her to go to her grave without knowing people do such things.”

  “She’s not that out of it.”

  “I don’t want her to know her daughter does such things.”

  “How is that liberation if you don’t like it? You don’t have to go to ogres if you don’t want to.”

  “Christ, Joanne, it’s orgies. Either I go or risk losing my husband to some slut who’s there on her own.”

  I kicked off the blankets and leaped out of bed. “That does it. I’m liberating you myself! Take off your bra.”

  Denise looked up from her book of poems. It seemed she had finally found one she sort of liked. “What?”

  “Go on. Take off your bra. Here’s one of mine. Come on, we’re burning them!”

  Denise let out a hoot and slapped her knee. “I’m in!”

  I rushed down the stairs to fetch matches from the kitchen. Soon Denise bounded down after me, a bit jiggly, waving her bra. I threw my car coat over my pajamas, and we burst through the French doors onto the patio. I dropped my bra into the brick barbecue pit, while Denise dangled hers over it.

  “This is silly, really,” she said.

  I snatched her bra from her hand and threw it down. I doused both bras with lighter fluid and dropped a match over them before Denise could change her mind. The elastic curled and sputtered and turned black. It stank. I watched the roaring flame in Denise’s pupils. She looked beautiful.

  When our bras were nothing but ash, Dan came loping into the backyard, waving a packet of papers. “I did it! I enlisted in the marines!”

  “What about college?” asked Denise.

  Dan batted the air. “I haven’t been going to class since January. I probably flunked out by now. I took all the tests at the recruiting office today: written, practical application, physical. I was the best recruit in push-ups! I knew I would be!”

  Denise and I stared at each other across the remains of our smoldering bras. “Congratulations,” she said flatly.

  “Thanks,” said Dan. He hit the deck and pumped out a few push-ups. He collapsed onto his belly and craned his neck to look up at us. “Yew, what’s that smell?”

  “We’re having a wienie roast,” I said. “Hey, you know what it’s called when you’re at a party and someone has a hot dog and you don’t? Wienie envy!”

  Denise’s laugh came out like a snort.

  After Dan ran into the house, I said, “He’s been dying for a chance to get himself killed, and now he’s got it.”

  “Maybe not. Jerry is campaigning for Gene, the peace candidate.”

  “Maxine is campaigning for Bobby, the peace candidate. I hope they don’t cancel each other out.”

  Denise sighed. “Guess I better go. Jerry will be expectin
g dinner, and I have to stop at Macy’s on the way home to shop for a new bra.”

  “Denise!”

  “Are you kidding me, Jo? If I went around like this, in a couple of months I’d have nothing but a pair of string beans!”

  I clasped my hand against my breasts. “And it does sorta hurt.”

  “Yeah, and hairy legs and pits like Maxine’s are just plain gross!”

  I had failed to liberate Denise, but at least I had cheered her up some.

  Three days later Martin Luther King, Jr., was gunned down outside his motel room in Memphis, and riots erupted in over a hundred cities. Dan made a show of propping his hunting rifle against our front door, his BB gun at the back door, and a machete at the French doors in case all-out war broke out between white and black. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

  The next day my parents kept me home from school. Our attention was focused to the north, toward our nearest Negro neighbors, in the Fillmore District. That day we could hear the shattering glass as every storefront on Haight Street was broken. As far as I knew, that was the worst of it. There were no deaths, at least not on our side of the bay. On Saturday, Black Panther Bobby Hutton was shot in a gun battle with the Oakland Police.

  “Hell, what do they want?” asked Dan.

  In an article in the Oakland Tribune, the Panthers made their demands clear in their Ten-Point Program. It included freedom, employment, housing, education, health care, and the end of police brutality and wars of aggression.

  I read it aloud to my family at the kitchen table. “Sounds like they want the same as what everyone wants.”

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  When I got home from school the first Monday in June, I found Maxine in the kitchen with Mom, no bridge party in sight.

  “I’m just not in favor of it,” said Mom.

  “Of what?” I asked, nosing in.

  “Joanne, what are you doing in school tomorrow?” Maxine asked.

  “Nothing.” It really was nothing. Instruction was done. In most of my classes we’d be applying sandpaper to the edges of textbooks.

  “How would you like to meet the next president of the United States?” Maxine gushed.