“The Tioga what? How many of them are there?”
“One. I think he’s in the air force.”
My turn to laugh now. I choked on a long draw of clove smoke, stubbed it, and sprayed myself with Lysol. “So not a big deal.”
“He isn’t. But the other ones, yeah. It’s a religion-heavy organization.” Jackie leaned out the window to get a better look. “And it’s mostly men. Conservative men who love their God and their country.” She sighed. “Women, not so much.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, leaving her to burn the other lung with a second cigarette. “They don’t hate women.”
“You, kiddo, need to get out more. Which states do you think have the highest enlistment rates? Hint: they ain’t in fucking New England. They’re good old boys.”
“So what?” I was exasperating her, and I knew it, but I couldn’t see the connection Jackie was trying to make.
“So they’re conservative, that’s what. Mostly white. Mostly straight.” Jackie stubbed out the half-smoked clove, wrapped it in a plastic baggie, and faced me, arms crossed. “Who do you think is angriest right now? In our country, I mean.”
I shrugged. “African Americans?”
She made a buzzing noise, a sort of you’re-out-but-we’ve-got-some-lovely-consolation-prizes-backstage kind of a sound. “Guess again.”
“Gays?”
“No, you dope. The straight white dude. He’s angry as shit. He feels emasculated.”
“Honestly, Jacko.”
“Of course he does.” Jackie pointed a purple fingernail at me. “You just wait. It’s gonna be a different world in a few years if we don’t do something to change it. Expanding Bible Belt, shit-ass representation in Congress, and a pack of power-hungry little boys who are tired of being told they gotta be more sensitive.” She laughed then, a wicked laugh that shook her whole body. “And don’t think they’ll all be men. The Becky Homeckies will be on their side.”
“The who?”
Jackie nodded at my sweats and bed-matted hair, at the pile of yesterday’s dishes in the sink, and finally at her own outfit. It was one of the more interesting fashion creations I’d seen on her in a while—paisley leggings, an oversized crocheted sweater that used to be beige but had now taken on the color of various other articles of clothing, and purple stiletto boots. “The Susie Homemakers. Those girls in matching skirts and sweaters and sensible shoes going for their Mrs. degrees. You think they like our sort? Think again.”
“Come on, Jackie,” I said.
“Just wait, Jeanie.”
So I did. Everything turned out pretty much as Jackie thought it would. And worse. They came at us from so many vectors, and so quietly, we never had the chance to assemble ranks.
One thing I learned from Jackie: you can’t protest what you don’t see coming.
I learned other things a year ago. I learned how difficult it is to write a letter to my congressman without a pen, or to mail a letter without a stamp. I learned how easy it is for the man at the office supply store to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t sell you that,” or for the postal worker to shake his head when anyone without a Y chromosome asks for stamps. I learned how quickly a cell phone account can be canceled, and how efficient young enlisted men can be at installing cameras.
I learned that once a plan is in place, everything can happen overnight.
SIX
Patrick is feeling frisky tonight, even if I’m not. Either that, or he’s looking for stress relief before another day in another week at the job that’s keeping gas in the car and paying the kids’ dentist bills. Even a topped-out government job never seems like enough, not now that I’m no longer working.
The lights on the porch go out, the boys tumble into their beds, and Patrick tumbles into ours.
“Love you, babe,” he says. His roaming hands tell me he’s not ready for sleep. Not yet. And it has been a while. A few months is my best guess. It might be longer than that.
So we get to business.
I was never one to talk much while making love. Words seemed clumsy; sharp interruptions of a natural rhythm, a basic coupling. And forget about silly porn-style mantras: Give it to me. Here I come. Fuck me harder. Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby. They had a place in kitchen flirting or raunchy jokes with the girlfriends, but not in bed. Not with Patrick.
Still, there had been talk between us. Before and afterward. During. An I love you, six sounds, diphthongs and glides and liquids with only a single turbulent v, a soft consonant in so many ways, appropriate to the setting. Our names, whispered. Patrick. Jean.
Tonight, with the children in their beds and Patrick in me, his steady breathing close and heavy in my ear, my eyes shut to the glint of moon refracting off the dresser mirror, I consider what I’d prefer. Would I be happier if he shared my silence? Would it be easier? Or do I need my husband’s words to fill the gaps in the room and inside me?
He stops. “What’s wrong, babe?” There’s concern in his voice, but I think I hear a trace of otherness, a tone I never want to hear again. It sounds like pity.
I reach up, place both palms flat against the sides of his face, and pull his mouth to mine. In the kiss, I talk to him, make assurances, spell out how every little thing is going to be all right. It’s a lie, but a fitting lie for the moment, and he doesn’t speak again.
Tonight, let it be all quiet. Full silence. A void.
I am now in two places at once. I am here, under Patrick, the weight of him suspended above my skin, part of him and also separate. I am in my other self, fumbling with my prom dress buttons in the back seat of Jimmy Reed’s Grand National, a sex car if there ever was one. I’m panting and laughing and high on spiked punch while Jimmy gropes and grabs. Then I’m singing in the glee club, cheering on our no-star football team, giving the valedictory address at college graduation, shouting obscenities at Patrick when he tells me to push and pant just one more time, babe, before the baby’s head crowns. I’m in a rented cottage, two months ago, lying beneath the body of a man I want desperately to see again, a man whose hands I still feel roaming over my flesh.
Lorenzo, I whisper inside my head, and kick the three delicious syllables away before they hurt too much.
My self is becoming more and more separate.
At times like this, I think about the other women. Dr. Claudia, for instance. Once, in her office, I asked whether gynecologists enjoyed sex more than the rest of us, or whether they got lost in the clinical nature of the act. Did they lie back and think, Oh, now my vagina is expanding and lengthening, now my clitoris is retracting into its hood, now the first third (but only the first third) of my vaginal walls are contracting at the rate of one pulse every eight-tenths of a second.
Dr. Claudia withdrew the speculum in one smooth move and said, “Actually, when I first started medical school, that’s exactly what I did. I couldn’t help it. Thank god my partner then was another med student; otherwise, I think he would have zipped up and walked out and left me laughing hysterically under the sheets.” She tapped my knee and removed one foot, then the other, from the pink-fuzz-covered stirrups. “Now I just enjoy it. Like everyone else.”
While I’m thinking about Dr. Claudia and her shiny steel speculum, Patrick orgasms and collapses on me, kissing my ears and throat.
I wonder what the other women do. How they cope. Do they still find something to enjoy? Do they love their husbands in the same way? Do they hate them, just a little bit?
SEVEN
The first time she screams, I think I’m dreaming. Patrick snores beside me; he’s always been one to sleep heavily, and his schedule for the past month has run him into the ground. So snore, snore, snore.
My sympathy has already expired. Let them work twelve-hour days to pick up the inevitable slack that canceling almost half of the workforce brought about. Let them bury themselves in paperwork and administrative
nonsense and then limp home only to sleep like the dead and get up and do it all over again. What did they expect?
It isn’t Patrick’s fault. I know this in my heart and in my mind. With four kids, we need the income his job brings in. Still, I’m all dry on sympathy.
She screams again, not a wordless scream, but a blood-curdling waterfall of words.
Mommy, don’t let it get me don’t let it get me don’t let it get me don’t let it get me—
I’m out of the bed in a tumble of sheets and quilts, nightdress tangled around my legs. My shin slams into the hard corner of the bedside table, a bull’s-eye on my bone. This one will bleed, leave a scar, but I’m not thinking about that. I’m thinking about the scar I’ll own if I don’t make it to Sonia’s bedroom in time to quiet her.
The words continue pouring out, flying through the hall toward me like poisoned darts from a million hostile blowpipes. Each one stings; each one pierces my once-tough skin with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, driving directly to my gut. How many words has she said? Fifty? Sixty? More?
More.
Oh god.
Now Patrick’s up, wide-eyed and pallid, a picture of some silver-screen hero fresh with fright on discovering the monster in the closet. I hear his footsteps quick behind me matching the thrum of blood pulsing through my veins, hear him yell, “Run, Jean! Run!” but I don’t turn around. Doors open as I fly past them, first Steve’s, then the twins’. Someone—maybe Patrick, maybe me—slaps on the hall light switch, and three blurred faces, pale as ghosts, appear in my peripheral vision. Of course, Sonia’s room would be the farthest from my own.
Mommy, please don’t let it get me don’t let it get me don’t—
Sam and Leo start crying. For the smallest of moments, I register a single thought: lousy mother. My boys are in distress, and I’m moving past them, uncaring and oblivious. I’ll worry about this damage later, if I’m in the condition to worry about anything.
Two steps into Sonia’s small room, I vault onto her bed, one hand searching for her mouth, clamping onto it. My free hand gropes under her sheets for the hard metal of the wrist counter.
Sonia moans through my palm, and I catch her nightstand clock out of the corner of my eye. Eleven thirty.
I have no words remaining, not for the next half hour.
“Patrick—,” I mouth when he switches the overhead light on. Four pairs of eyes stare at the scene on Sonia’s bed. It must look like violence, a grotesque sculpture—my writhing child, her nightgown translucent with sweat; me, lying sprawled on top of her, suffocating her cries and pinning her to the mattress. What a horrible tableau we must make. Infanticide in the flesh.
My counter glows 100 over Sonia’s mouth. I turn to Patrick, pleading mutely, knowing that if I speak, if the LED turns over to 101, she’ll share the inevitable shock.
Patrick joins me on the bed, pries my hand from Sonia, replaces it with his own. “Shh, baby girl. Shh. Daddy’s here. Daddy won’t let anything happen to you.”
Sam and Leo and Steve come into the room. They jostle for position and all of a sudden there’s no more room for me. Lousy mother becomes useless mother, two words ping-ponging in my head. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks, boys.
I don’t hate them. I tell myself I don’t hate them.
But sometimes I do.
I hate that the males in my family tell Sonia how pretty she is. I hate that they’re the ones who soothe her when she falls off her push-bike, that they make up stories to tell her about princesses and mermaids. I hate having to watch and listen.
It’s a trial reminding myself they’re not the ones who did this to me.
Fuck it.
Sonia has quieted now; the immediate danger has passed. But I note as I slip backward out of her room that her brothers are careful not to touch her. Just in case she has another fit.
In the corner of the living room is our bar, a stout wooden trolley with its bottled assortment of liquid anesthetic. Clear vodka and gin, caramel scotch and bourbon, an inch of cobalt remaining in the curaçao bottle we bought years ago for a Polynesian-themed picnic. Tucked toward the back is what I’m looking for: grappa, also known as Italian moonshine. I pull it out along with a small stemmed glass and take both with me onto the back porch and wait for the clock to chime midnight.
Drinking isn’t something I do much of anymore. It’s too goddamned depressing to sip an icy gin and tonic and think about summer evenings when Patrick and I would sit shoulder to shoulder on our first apartment’s postage stamp of a balcony, talking about my research grants and qualifying papers, about his hellish hours as a resident at Georgetown University Hospital. Also, I’m afraid to get drunk, afraid I might develop too much Dutch courage and forget the rules. Or flout them.
The first shot of grappa goes down like fire; the second is smoother, palliative. I’m on my third when the clock announces today’s end and a dull ping on my left wrist gives me another hundred words.
What will I do with them?
I slide back in through the screen door, pad over the living room rug, replace the bottle on the bar. Sonia is sitting up when I enter her room, a glass of milk in her hands, propped up by Patrick’s palm. The boys have returned to their own beds, and I sit next to Patrick.
“Everything’s all right, darling. Mommy’s here.”
Sonia smiles up at me.
But this isn’t how it happens.
I take my drink out on the lawn, past the roses Mrs. Ray chose with care and planted, out into the dark, sweet-smelling patch of grass where the lilacs bloom. They say you’re supposed to talk to plants to make them healthier; if that’s true, my garden is moribund. Tonight, though, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the lilacs or the roses or anything else. My mind’s on a different brand of creature.
“You fucking bastards!” I scream. And again.
A light flickers on in the Kings’ house, and the vertical blinds twitch and separate. I don’t give a damn. I don’t care if I wake up the entire subdivision, if they hear me all the way to Capitol Hill. I scream and scream and scream until my throat is dry. Then I take another swig from the grappa bottle, spilling some on my nightgown.
“Jean!” The voice comes from behind me, followed by the slam of a door. “Jean!”
“Fuck off,” I say. “Or I’ll keep talking.” Suddenly, I don’t care anymore about the shock or the pain. If I can keep screaming through it, keep up my anger, drown the sensation with booze and words, would the electricity continue to flow? Would it lay me out?
Probably not. They won’t kill us for the same reason they won’t sanction abortions. We’ve turned into necessary evils, objects to be fucked and not heard.
Patrick is yelling now. “Jean! Babe, stop. Please stop.”
Another light goes on in the Kings’ house. A door squeaks open. Footsteps. “What the hell’s going on out there, McClellan? People are trying to sleep.” It’s the husband, of course. Evan. Olivia is still peeking through the blinds at my midnight show.
“Fuck you, Evan,” I say.
Evan announces he’s calling the cops, although not quite so politely as all that. Then the light in Olivia’s window goes dark.
I hear screaming—some my own—then Patrick is on me, wrestling me down to the moist grass, pleading and cajoling, and I can taste tears on his lips when he kisses me quiet. My first thought is whether they teach men these techniques, whether there were pamphlets handed over to husbands and sons and fathers and brothers on the days we became shackled by these shiny steel bracelets. Then I decide they couldn’t possibly care that much.
“Let me go.” I’m in the grass, nightgown stuck to me like a snakeskin. It’s then I realize I’m hissing.
It’s also then I realize the pulses are closer together.
Patrick grasps my left wrist, checks the number. “You’re out, Jean.”
I try to wriggle away from him, an act as empty of hope as my heart. The grass is bitter in my mouth, until I realize I’m chewing on a mouthful of dirt. I know what Patrick’s doing; I know he’s set on absorbing the shock with me.
So I stay silent and let him lead me back inside as the wail of sirens grows louder.
Patrick can talk to them. I don’t have any words left.
EIGHT
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Sonia’s blank stare as I walk her through the rain to the bus stop is the worst reproach, my punishment for last night’s grappa-soaked tirade in the backyard. Certainly worse than Officers So-and-So lecturing me on my disturbance of the neighborhood peace.
This is the first time I haven’t told her I love her before sending her off to school. I blow a kiss, and immediately regret it when she raises a tiny hand to her lips and starts to blow one back.
The black eye of a camera stares at me from the bus door.
They’re everywhere now, the cameras. In supermarkets and schools, hair salons and restaurants, waiting to catch any gesture that might be seen as sign language, even the most rudimentary form of nonverbal communication.
Because, after all, none of the crap they’ve hit us with has anything to do with speaking.
I think it was a month after the wrist counters went on that it happened. In the produce section of Safeway, of all places. I didn’t know the women, but I’d seen them shopping before. Like all the new mothers in the neighborhood, they traveled in pairs or packs, running errands in sync, ready to lend a hand if one of the babies had a meltdown in the checkout aisle. These two, though, they were close-knit, tight. It was that tightness, I understand now, that was the problem.
You can take a lot away from a person—money, job, intellectual stimulation, whatever. You can take her words, even, without changing the essence of her.
Take away camaraderie, though, and we’re talking about something different.
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