She read her father’s letter quickly, made a sound of disgust, and put it back inside its envelope, which she folded in half and slipped into her back pocket. Scanning the yard, she spotted the skinny orange cat that sometimes came around, a cat who was seemingly afraid of no one or thing, despite the fact that he weighed all of ten pounds. Once Eve spied him having sex. It happened so fast that she wasn’t sure what she’d seen before he sprinted away from the other cat. The Smash Collective believed that’s how humans should fuck, too. Monogamy was just a way to keep the imperialist system going. To have a girlfriend or a boyfriend is to set yourself up. Eve remembered Warren explaining this to Daniella and Pete at that shitty Chinese restaurant in Morningside Heights Daniella had insisted on going to.
“Say the pigs held Daniella hostage,” Warren had said. “You’re going to do whatever they want to release her, right? But if you were to say to them, ‘Hey, man, I have no girlfriend, I have smashed monogamy; I will not let her fate tie me to your imperialist, bullshit system.’ They wouldn’t be able to use you, see?”
Daniella had remained quiet, but Eve knew what she was thinking: that Warren was a blowhard and a jerk. Daniella had said as much the first time Eve admitted she had slept with Warren, that she had lost her virginity to him.
“Oh, sweetie, not him!” Daniella had cried, and Eve had hated her for her casual judgment.
Once Eve and Daniella had been as intimate as lovers, just without the sex. For a time Eve took a certain pride in how close they were, how it was Eve and not Pete whom Daniella clung to after they learned of JFK’s death, how it was Eve who had finally dragged Daniella to a CORE meeting, even though Pete warned them not to get wrapped up in that “communist organization.”
Then betrayal. First Daniella went to Mississippi without her—when it was Eve who told her about the Mississippi Summer Project in the first place, when it was Eve who insisted they both apply! And then Daniella agreed to marry Pete, who as far as Eve was concerned represented everything Daniella had taught her to mistrust in the first place.
• • •
For most of Eve’s family, Atlanta was a small, interconnected world centered on four locations: Piedmont Hospital, where Dr. Whalen delivered the babies of their friends and social equals; the Driving Club, where a million years ago Eve grudgingly made her debut; All Saints’ Episcopal Church, where once a week the Whalens swallowed their wine and wafer; and, most important, The Compound on Northside Drive that covered twelve acres of Buckhead real estate and nearly stretched to Chastain Memorial Park. During Eve’s childhood the extended family would gather at The Compound each week for Sunday supper. Eve’s mother never did much in the way of cooking, but she served Ada’s dishes with pride, especially her fried chicken, which Ada soaked for a day in buttermilk before frying in hot grease.
Eve missed Ada’s fried chicken, not that she would ever admit to it, she who lived primarily on rice, beans, and oatmeal. She missed Ada, too, and on occasion even thought about trying to visit her but didn’t think she could trust Ada to keep secret her whereabouts. Besides, Eve wasn’t sure where she lived. Ada used to have a house in Peoplestown, which was only a few miles from where Eve was staying now. When Eve was growing up, Ada would sometimes bring tomatoes from her garden, fix Eve and Charlie BLTs or tomato sandwiches for lunch. But Eve had read in The Great Speckled Bird that much of Peoplestown had been torn down to make way for the downtown connector, where Interstates 75 and 85 merged. She imagined Ada’s house had probably been demolished.
Eve thought of how she ached for Ada during her first year at Belmont, the first time she had ever really been separated from her. She had been so glad to see her when she returned to Atlanta that summer, feigning the part of enthusiastic debutante in order to fulfill her half of the bargain she had struck with her mother, her mother who had immediately whisked her away to J. P. Allen to purchase a closetful of dresses and outfits for a summer of parties, including a long white dress that would have suited a bride. Indeed, the long white dress had cost as much as a bridal gown. When she and her mother had returned from buying it she had confided to Ada that she thought it was obscene to spend so much money on clothes. Ada had given her an inscrutable look that made her feel as if she had done something wrong, though at the time she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
Once Eve had dreamed of being a bride, of having her wedding portrait displayed in a sterling-silver frame on top of the Steinway. When she later confessed this to Warren, he told her that she was barking up the wrong tree if she thought someday they’d get married. She’d laughed it off, asked if he really thought she wanted to join such a sexist institution. Hell no. She was just trying to show him how far she had come.
Even though they were not a couple, were not tied to each other in any formal way—as mandated by Smash—she loved Warren, loved his fiery intensity. Warren said that the two of them really shouldn’t be in the Atlanta collective together, that they should have split up. They proved their loyalty to the cause by sleeping with everyone, sometimes switching partners, sometimes in a group, a collection of bodies being entered and explored by different hands, mouths, cocks. Sometimes Warren left for weeks at a time, to a collective in Detroit, she thought, though she did not know for sure. All Smash information was on a need-to-know basis.
The orange cat had made his way stealthily toward her and was now butting his head against her hand. She stroked the underside of his neck, and he began to purr. Eve had always loved cats. On her seventh birthday she had been given a gray-and-white kitty she named Ivan. From the time she returned home from the Coventry School to the time her mother or Ada tucked her into her canopied bed at night, Ivan stayed near. When she took a bath Ivan perched on the side of the tub, watching the water shift with her movements. Once Ivan jumped in the water, then somehow managed to leap out, a furious bullet of wet fur. After that he was more careful, but he still waited for her on the edge of the tub while she bathed. When she got out he would lick the water off her feet.
The cat was purring loudly now, rhythmically. As she stroked his fur she noticed that it wasn’t solid orange, but tabby stripes of different shades of red.
“Who’s a pretty boy?” she asked as she rubbed the cat’s back with more force. Hair fell off him while she stroked. She had half a mind to go inside and get a brush, but then she remembered that she didn’t own one. Nobody in the house did.
She heard a noise behind her and, turning, saw that Mack was awake. Abby and Jane must have still been sleeping off last night. Warren was at The Great Speckled Bird dropping off a Smash Manifesto he hoped they would run. Mack sat beside her on the back steps and began rolling a cigarette on the leg of his work pants. Soon he would turn them into cutoffs in deference to the impending Atlanta summer, but it was only May and the heat was not yet oppressive.
Usually the collective smoked weed—the herb of the proletariat—but Mack loved tobacco, couldn’t seem to give it up no matter what kind of abuse he endured from the rest of them. Tobacco was a dirty product sponsored by the state to opiate those who labored, to give them a little pleasure during the workday so they would not revolt against the capitalist system, and the members of Smash berated Mack for his cigarette addiction the same way Abby berated Eve for her “rich girl” trip. Little rich girl who brought a sterling silver tea set with her to Belmont College. God, why had she shared that detail with Abby her first year at Barnard?
Mack struck a match against the sole of his work boot. He lit the cigarette, took a deep inhale, then exhaled in the direction of the cat.
“Bring you anything?”
Eve shook her head.
The week before, the cat had brought her a large, dead gray rat, dangling limp from his mouth. Eve had wanted to scream but had forced herself not to, knowing that such a reaction would smack of bourgeois squeamishness, and besides, the cat was only trying to bring her a gift.
The cat carefully made his way over to Mack, bumping his head against Mack
’s hand, making Mack rub him whether he wanted to or not.
“You better be glad we don’t eat you, man,” Mack said to the animal.
“Gross,” said Eve, and immediately regretted expressing disgust. Warren always said that the wrong things disgusted Americans. Americans were disgusted by a little mold on a piece of white bread, but not by the mutilation of the flesh of Vietnamese children.
“I’m sure the Vietcong have eaten their fair share of kitty,” Mack said. “Protein’s protein.”
• • •
That night they sat on the floor of the living room in the ranch house, eating brown rice and black beans off dirty plates with chopsticks. Warren vented about the pussies at The Great Speckled Bird who had declined to run his incendiary manifesto that claimed revolution was not going to come without blood in the streets. “Alternative paper, my ass,” fumed Warren. “Those motherfuckers are all talk, talk, talk. Then they pussy out whenever anyone calls for direct action.”
“Ah, the mighty lion roars,” said Abby. Abby’s favorite charge to levy against Warren was that he, too, was all talk and no action. Sometimes during Smash sessions she would refer to him as the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz.
“Yeah, and we’re getting sick of your chauvinist trip, man,” said Jane. “The Great Speckled Bird isn’t made up of pussies. It’s made up of pigs. White, male pigs.”
“Yeah, pussy power, motherfucker,” said Abby. She had deep red marks up and down her arms and presumably on other parts of her body as well. Mack had matching ones. The two of them had been pairing up a lot lately, and everyone in the collective knew that Abby liked to scratch. Jane and Abby stood, unbuttoned their pants, and slid them off their hips. Neither wore underwear. “Who wants some pussy with their dinner?” asked Abby.
“Right on,” said Mack. He walked on his knees over to Abby, buried his face in her crotch, and then roared as if having swallowed some powerful elixir. Without thinking, Eve shook her head. Abby could always be counted on to take things a step further and Mack could always be counted on to follow. During their last confrontation with the police, Abby had bitten an officer in the arm when he tried to arrest her. In shock he had released his grip, and she had gotten away, joking later that the pigs might make a plaster mold out of the bite marks, to identify her by her teeth.
“What about you, Eve? No pussy power?” asked Abby.
“I’m down with it,” she said.
“Then show us,” said Abby.
“Yeah, show us your pussy! Show us your pussy!” Jane chanted.
Eve stood, unbuttoned her pants, and pulled them down along with her underwear, revealing a triangle of pale, blond pubic hair.
“Look at that bourgeois muff,” said Abby. “I bet you’re proud of how blond you are. I bet you’re proud that your blood is Aryan and ‘pure.’ ”
“We need to get a big, black stallion to come fuck Eve,” said Warren. “Then she might get off her elitist trip.”
Eve pulled her pants back up. “Fuck you,” she said to him. “I’d love to fuck a big, black stallion. He’d sure as shit be better than any of you motherfuckers.”
Warren laughed and Eve drew an inward sigh of relief. She’d gotten him off her back. During Smash sessions Warren was harder on her than he was on anyone else, enumerating the ways in which she still held herself above the group, still saw herself as special, wasn’t yet committed, wasn’t yet ready to die for the cause.
“I’m still hungry,” said Jane, picking up a leftover grain of rice with her finger.
“Of course you are, you fat bitch,” said Abby. Though Jane was now as sinewy as the rest of them, she had been chubby in college and Abby never let her forget it.
“Fuck you,” said Jane. “I want noodles. Wet, slippery noodles.”
“How ’bout some Vietcong cat?” asked Abby.
“How we gonna get that?” Mack asked. It sounded to Eve as if he were saying a line from a play he was performing.
“Maybe there’s one in the kitchen,” said Abby. “Just waiting to become cat suey.”
“Cat suey!” cried Jane.
“C’mon!” yelled Abby, standing and racing toward the swinging door that divided the living room from the kitchen. Everyone stood and followed. Eve followed, too, though she was the last to enter the kitchen with its filthy black-and-white-checkered floor. Lying motionless on the wooden table where Warren often wrote his manifestos was the little orange tabby, his head twisted halfway around, making her think, for a moment, of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
“Mack said Eve was growing attached,” said Abby. “So. Time to smash the cat.”
The scratches on their arms—they were from the cat, fighting for his life. Eve felt tears push against her eyes.
“That is some heavy shit,” said Warren.
Eve looked at him, desperately, pleadingly, as if he could somehow stop this, rewind to an earlier time, resurrect the cat. He held her eyes, and in that moment she thought he might save her.
“Dig it! White Bread Americans lavish their pets with food and treats and treat black and brown people like shit. Well, fuck that! And fuck any taboo that keeps us from revolution.”
Abby turned toward Eve, as serious as a drill sergeant. “You need to skin the cat.”
Eve’s stomach flipped and she put her hand instinctively against her abdomen. “I don’t know how,” she said, but of course that was a lie. She had told them the story of skinning a rabbit after one of her father’s hunts, during a Thanksgiving spent at their family farm in South Georgia. Her father had shown her how to do it.
Abby walked to the sink and dug a knife out of it, rinsing it off under hot water, then wiping it against the leg of her pants. Handing it to Eve, she said, “First cut is the hardest.”
The cat no longer looked like the animal she had stroked earlier that day. There was the broken neck, of course, but also, he looked so diminished, shrunken in his skin. Eve didn’t know how to cut him without holding him, and she did not want to touch him. She looked at Warren. His eyes bore into her, encouraging her to do it, to recognize that disgust is something a true revolutionary has to push beyond. Recognize that protein is protein, that cat is no different from rabbit or chicken. Recognize that if she could do this act, she’d be able to do anything, fight back when being arrested, put Warren’s dynamite to good use, be the front line in the war against the system, no longer allowing the black and brown people of the world to take all of the blows.
Eve walked to the edge of the table, standing above the cat with knife in hand. She was afraid he would be stiff when she touched him, but his body was looser than she had feared. Rigor mortis must not have fully set in. She set the knife down and repositioned him so that he was splayed on his belly, limbs sticking out on all four sides. She thought of her father instructing her on skinning the rabbit, guiding her: “Pinch the fur on its back and make a small cut,” he had said. She felt bile rising in her throat as she pinched the cat, gathering enough loose skin so that she could pierce it without danger of cutting into the flesh. She made a slit with the knife, big enough to work her fingers into. Even if she vomited she would not stop. She took a deep breath and hooked her fingers under the skin. Once she did this, the worst was over. As long as she skinned him, someone else could deal with the head, the feet, the guts. With two sets of fingers under the skin, she pulled one toward the rear and the other toward the head. At first nothing happened, but then she heard a tearing noise as the skin began to come off the body in two pieces.
“Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh! Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!” cried the others, and suddenly Eve felt powerful. She kept pulling, kept tearing. She remembered her father showing her how to work the legs out and then tug hard to tear off the hide, though the fur would remain around the little foot. It disgusted her, yes, but disgust was a privilege, a lie of the bourgeoisie. Protein was protein. This was the most real thing she had ever done in her life, and doing this meant that she could do anything.
/> The members of the collective cheered and whooped and hollered as she kept going. Abby suggested they eat the cat raw, but Eve, still working, said no, once she finished skinning the animal, she would let Abby gut it, and then they could make a feast of it, braise it with potatoes and onions and eat the stew the following night for dinner. For once Eve had the upper hand, and Abby had to go along. When she finally finished, she placed the dirty knife beside the skinned animal, and the group roared their approval.
She was feeling good, if a little weak. She stumbled backwards and rested her body weight against the counter by the sink. She slid her hand into the back pocket of her jeans, feeling the folded card from her father. She remembered its first line and how reading it that afternoon had only confirmed how little her family understood her, how little they understood the import of the mission she was on.
“Eve,” the letter had begun. “We are beginning to think we have lost you for good.”
Chapter 8
V.C.
Atlanta, 1972
Usually Warren was in decent spirits when he ventured to Manuel’s Tavern, ready to laugh at the dumb-ass liberals and bait Oscar about Vietnam. But not tonight. A few hours earlier, Eve had laid some heavy shit on him, not to mention the shit that had gone down last week. God, he had acted like an idiot—so impulsive, so undisciplined, everything he warned the other Smashers not to be, not that Smash really existed anymore, his comrades having mostly scattered, the majority going underground, while a few pussies turned themselves in, hoping to reintegrate with “society.”
It wasn’t exactly as if they had been living aboveground for the last four years. Ever since the Democratic Convention in ’68 there had been outstanding warrants for their arrests, making it necessary to lie low and use aliases when filling out forms and such. (His favorite alias was Fred, as in Frederick Douglass, whereas Eve often went by Harriet, for Harriet Tubman.) But he had viewed this as an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. After all, the warrants were for relatively minor things: disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, failing to show up for a court date. Until now he had always been smarter about his more committed actions.
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