Rita Will

by Rita Mae Brown

  Simple as this rule is, it does have variations that illuminate the southern mind. For instance, everyone knows that running around while you are married breaks your spouse’s heart. The trick is to be discreet. If your spouse finds you and shoots you, you are at fault, not the spouse. The law may say otherwise, but the social and emotional reality is that people side with the injured party. If you got an ass full of buckshot, it was what you deserved.

  Another rule: Certain activities and even conversations belong behind closed doors. That’s what closed doors are for!

  You can never be ugly to a social inferior. This marks you as trash no matter how exalted your bloodline, how heavy your wallet. You won’t be excluded from society, but behind your back you will be called into question. And what people say behind your back marks your true place in society.

  Gossip fuels all personal relationships, whether it’s in the Pentagon or in your town. There’s good gossip and bad gossip, which is why what people say behind your back is crucial.

  If people say, “She’ll never reach law school,” that is negative and reveals as much about the speaker as the subject. Every southerner knows that, which is why we listen so carefully to one another. We listen for people to betray themselves. If it’s one negative story after another, over time we draw the conclusion that the speaker is angry and weak.

  So the dance of manners is much more than superficial, it’s the structure for exchange. But you must know how to listen. This is why Yankees fail so miserably in our party of the country. I mean party, too.

  The Yankee, compelled to tell you how terribly smart he or she is, appears the reverse to us. After all, a smart dog buries its bone.

  Mother said, “The difference between a Yankee and a southerner is, a Yankee will tell you how smart he is, a southerner will tell you how smart you are.”

  The other towering mistake is that a Yankee deals in ideas, while a southerner deals in personalities. If you wish to create social change here, you do not march on the state capitol. You find the governor’s mistress or sister or daddy. Then things change without appearing to change.

  The best world would be a balance of ideas and personalities. I haven’t found that place yet, so I’ll stick with what I know: Dixie.

  Dixie was about to tear me a new asshole. I tripped on that invisible barrier, which made everyone panic. Have you seen those invisible fences for dogs? They work. The dog rushes out to chase a car and hits the invisible fence, which gives Fido an unpleasant shock. A live but humbled dog sits down and rethinks chasing cars.

  Human and social interaction is like that. There are invisible fences.

  I hated duplicity. My natural instinct is to crush hypocrites. I still struggle with this. I must learn that they too serve a function. As Milton said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

  The function the hypocrite serves is to reinforce the ideal order while breaking the code surreptitiously. What makes people hypocrites is that either they believe the ideal is correct, even if they can’t live up to it, or they don’t believe a word of it but they don’t want to get caught. They are motivated by guilt and fear.

  You can only deal with hypocrites by giving them a way out. I didn’t and I paid for it.

  All those drinking, fornicating and sometimes cheating (on their exams) kids knew something I didn’t: Don’t challenge authority unless you have a chance of winning.

  I never slept with Julie Swensen. She wasn’t interested in that. I never slept with anyone in college other than Jerry and we were extremely careful. You couldn’t easily get contraceptives then and an abortion was out of the question. We lost a lot of young women to coat hangers. It was a war in a way.

  I hated that, but the reality was that if I got pregnant, I would bear the child. My career would be interrupted. I would bear the stigma, too, although Jerry would have been only too happy to marry me.

  I hadn’t slept with any women at all. My high-school relationship, which I thought was racy and sexual, really wasn’t. Hugging and kissing seems like sex when you don’t know any better.

  My trip wire involved integration. The integration laws, recently passed, meant that any public institution that did not comply with the almighty federal government would lose the almighty federal dollar and probably be sued in the bargain.

  The University of Florida in 1962 took the shattering step of admitting five Negroes. The word was no longer colored but Negro. These students were stuck in a corner of a dorm together.

  At first I was unaware of their isolation, but my political science professor, David Chalmers, made certain we knew of it. Most white students didn’t care. A handful of us did, especially two young men—brothers—Judith Brown (no relation) and I. We were horrified. There may have been other students who joined in later, but by that time I had left Florida so I can’t cite them.

  A wade-in occurred at the St. Augustine beach—beaches were still segregated. The two brothers got in trouble on that one because they joined the handful of adults, black and white, who integrated the beach. They may have even gone to jail for a night. I do remember that their father was ripshit mad. It hurt both young men, but they were courageous people. There may have been other students, but I don’t know.

  I sometimes attended student meetings. There weren’t even ten people there, and the group had no name. We uncovered some unsavory facts. For instance, part of the slum housing in Gainesville was owned by university administrators and city fathers. If a Negro family slipped behind in the rent in the winter, the doors would be removed from their home. It doesn’t get as cold as in Vermont, but it gets cold enough.

  The facts piled up like dead leaves. We were young, idealistic and very naïve. We started making noises.

  Jerry, furious, wouldn’t speak to me. At that time in his life, Pfeiffer had no social conscience. His task was to get to graduate school, which would be followed by a high-paying job. Black folks would have to take care of themselves.

  Eventually, we became a thorn in the side of the administration, a tiny thorn, but back then university officials were not challenged or chastised by students.

  As a scholarship student I was vulnerable. I didn’t believe it. I really thought that because our ideas were right and reflected what America was supposed to be, a place for everyone, we would solve this problem before my junior year.

  I talked to other students and faced outright hostility or apathy.

  The girls in the physical education department evidenced disinterest concerning racial injustice. No one connected it to any other kind of oppression. The gay women had no insight at all into their political situation. Everyone thought they could “pass.” I’d gone with them to gay bars on the weekend. I knew who was sleeping with whom. I never gave that knowledge a second thought except I knew I must never tell.

  My sorority sisters were horrified by my civil rights activities. I was dismissed via a little handwritten envelope in my mailbox, silver, gold and blue border. Delta colors. That angered me, but I could live with it.

  Unbeknownst to me, the university was stealthily aiming to rid itself of these pesky political mosquitoes.

  I was called into the office of one of the deans.

  “What is this trouble you have with girls?” she asked me.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She proceeded to inform me that my scholarship would be revoked if I didn’t “straighten up and fly right.”

  If I was to remain at the university, I would have to undergo intensive psychological counseling. She handed me a slip of paper and told me to see the psychiatrist right off.

  I didn’t cuss her. I did, however, inform her that I’d rather die than be a closet dyke like herself. I walked out and I think she nearly passed out.

  I walked to the psychiatrist’s office, then on the eighth floor of the J. Hillis Miller Health Center. A Turkish doctor talked to me in his office. His English wasn’t good, but his intentions were clear. These cases can be cured. I had sc
ored strangely on my Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It suggested a high percentage of lies.

  He had all my documents. He explained that the battery of tests we took to gain admittance to this wonderful state university were for our own good.

  I immediately understood the real reason for those tests. They had you coming and going.

  I did what I always do when I’m on uncertain turf. I shut up.

  After an hour of heartfelt counseling as to my appropriate sexual classification and gender behavior, I left.

  I opened my dorm door and before I closed it, three students from the physical education department jacked me up against the wall. I knew these girls. I liked them. Two were bawling like babies and one was so mad I thought she would kill me. I offered no resistance since I had no idea what had happened.

  They had heard that I’d ratted on them.

  Ah, yes, the dean had been a fast worker. She had undoubtedly called the head of the physical education department, or an underling, who must have told one of the lesbian professors that I was a lesbian in hot water and might reveal all. The department surely knew who on their staff was lesbian and who wasn’t. The lesbian professor, to protect her ass and the kids, told the kids that I was disclosing the names of gay students to the administration to “save myself.”

  I hadn’t uttered one word. I wouldn’t. To this day I have never said who was or wasn’t gay in the physical education department from the fall of 1962 to the spring of 1964.

  When they left, I cleaned up my trashed room before my roommate could return, but later I discovered she’d been transferred to another room. The danger of rooming with a lesbian was too great. She might be warped forever.

  This hurt less than you might suppose. No more piccolo music.

  I had a test that afternoon, a big class in one of those amphitheater lecture halls. I walked into the filled room. People laughed at me. Some hissed. No one would allow me to sit next to them. I sat on the floor and took the test. I knew I had aced it.

  I also knew the grade would be a D or an F.

  I might be stupid going into a situation, but I don’t stay stupid for long.

  After the exam I walked over to Jerry’s apartment. He was studying for exams. I told him what I knew. And I told him I’d have to leave the university. If I didn’t, they’d fail me and I’d have a hell of a time getting a scholarship somewhere else.

  He hugged me and said he’d take me home. I told him he needed to study. He’d be home soon enough. I was fine.

  I packed Russell’s duffle bag and caught the bus for the long, long ride home.

  I remembered Citation. He had courage. I’d try to have some, too.

  When I walked through the door, Mother was outraged. She called me every name in the book plus a few creative ones. I thought “scum of the river” had a ring to it.

  Some sweet soul from the university had called Mother to tell her that I was a lesbian sleeping with Negro men.

  Which made her angrier, the gay part or the race part?

  Neither.

  I had jeopardized my education. (This amused me since she had never approved of it in the first place.) I was dumb enough to be open about lesbianism, in that I could love a woman as easily as I could love a man. Lastly, the South was indisputably wrong about the way in which people of color were treated, but one little white girl wasn’t going to change it.

  “You could have been killed!”

  Mom didn’t scare easily. She was scared now.

  I hadn’t thought about being murdered. I figured they’d give me warning. The Klan was strong in north-central Florida. When I considered it, I had been warned.

  I asked Mother if I could move back in and pay rent to her. I’d been paying a small rent, twenty dollars a month, since I was fifteen. I couldn’t afford to furnish a place and I couldn’t afford a car. We settled on fifty dollars a month, which was a lot of money.

  I asked if I could borrow the car. She had calmed down. I accepted her rules—no race politics under her roof, no girlfriends. If I was a lesbian, I could damn well hide it, and she preferred that I marry. I told her Jerry kept asking. We hit the rock of his being Catholic.

  “Not again,” Mother moaned. “Can’t you find an Episcopalian?”

  “Mom, I don’t think I can find anyone. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Well, shut your goddamned trap.” She handed me the keys.

  I drove down to Holiday Park. It was about eleven at night. I sat in the bleachers and looked at the lesson court. A policeman chased me off about midnight.

  So I drove out to Davie, parked by the side of the road next to a field and called to the horses standing there. They walked over, big eyes hopeful for a carrot. I smelled their sweet breath and listened to their nickers.

  I wondered if I would be branded forever. Was this like Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter? Would I wear a lavender L tastefully embroidered over my heart?

  If I was going to be hung for a sheep, then I might as well be hung for a wolf.

  Would my University of Florida file follow me, preventing me from matriculating at another university? I was smart enough to know, no degree, no decent job.

  Was I supposed to become a hairdresser or a florist? Then, too, those stereotypes were about men, not me. I supposed I could become an undertaker. The dead don’t care.

  What was left?

  It was so awful it was funny.

  After a few tears of self-pity I figured I could go to Broward Junior College. If I could get in, it would mean that my Florida failings wouldn’t haunt me forever. Since Broward was part of the state system, if they refused me I’d know that I’d have to leave the state—and even that might not work. Who was to say if an out-of-state school would want me? But one way or the other, I’d know if I was marked.

  I figured if I could get in, I’d get my associate’s degree, then transfer to a four-year institution and maybe even go to graduate school.

  If everything blew apart and I was condemned to the shadows as a sexual pariah—just for speaking out loud about it, not for doing it, for Christ’s sake—I knew I could work with horses. I could muck stalls with the best of them, hose legs, wrap bandages, clean tack. If lucky, I could attach myself to an accomplished horseperson and learn. I knew enough about the horse world to know that hard work and knowledge counted for far more than sexuality.

  Then, too, the horses would like me for me.

  40

  Sandspurs and X rays

  Broward Junior College, a couple of buildings and a mess of sandspurs, offered little by way of aesthetics, yet a lot by way of education. Most of the students worked full- or part-time. Money wasn’t an issue. No one had any. There was barely enough to buy the baseball team uniforms. The professors, no doubt seriously underpaid, overperformed. My favorite was Neil Crispo, a political science professor. He could prod, cajole, trick even blockheads into original thought.

  After the University of Florida, J.C. might seem a comedown and I suppose technically it was. I liked the place. I liked the students and I liked my professors.

  Four of us chipped in together to buy gas for Carol Warner’s car. In one of my classes we got to talking, and a few other women listened in and we formed a driving club. Carol, the big wheel because she owned this ancient piece of machinery, is now a respected educator in Colorado. If anyone had told me then what she would become, I would have collapsed laughing. Warner, respectable? She was a stand-up comic. I figured she’d go to Hollywood. She made the better choice.

  The year rolled by uneventfully because I took a full class load, worked in a nearby gym after class and then walked home or took the bus. Sunday, my one day off, I mowed Mom’s lawn, trimmed her hedges, did whatever needed to be done around the house. I inherited Dad’s jobs. Every now and then I could borrow the old Plymouth and head to the Royal Palm Polo Club to hot-walk ponies and watch good polo.

  Jerry, in his first year of graduate school at the University of North Ca
rolina, wrote regularly. Chemistry came as easily for him as English, history and political science came for me. He liked the combustibility of chemistry. My favorite science was physics. His favorite humanities course was Latin. He was a better Latin student than I was even though we both made A’s. His Latin was grammatically perfect and precise. My translations veered toward fluid English. I never minded boogering the grammar. This used to infuriate my professors, who would force me to produce a grammatically exact translation. Then they’d let me fiddle with it.

  Our minds meshed in an unusual way. In the areas where he was precise, I was imaginative. In the areas where I was the queen of organization, he was the spontaneous one. Although the creative one in a traditional artistic sense, I was truly the logical, pragmatic one. He was emotional, romantic, impulsive at times.

  How UNC survived him I don’t know. He was wild. While I was wearing out sneakers walking to and from work, he was throwing tacky-waitress parties. You had to come dressed as the tackiest waitress you had ever seen. I don’t think he ever gave a party that didn’t dissolve into an orgy.

  His letters, filled with piquant detail and written in his left-leaning script (he was left-handed), described his friends and enemies with a jaundiced eye.

  After he debauched a large number of the fair sex, he turned his attention to his own. He wrote me that since I might be a lesbian, then he might be a homosexual, and even if he wasn’t, he’d try anything once.

  He cited me as telling him, “Don’t die wondering.”

  I wasn’t sure that my quote related to his current fuckathon, but it pleased him. The human mind can rationalize anything.

  He promised I was the only woman he would ever love.

  Interestingly enough, I never made a similar promise. His jealousy about men friends—not even lovers, but friends—erupted on the page and in person. I made the mistake of writing him that I liked Steve Cairns, a basketball player at Broward. Jerry couldn’t wait for Steve to enlist in the air force after junior college. I prudently never introduced the two men to each other.