Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

  “I’m going over there. Now! And I’m moving out.”

  “Aw, Miriam, sit down and eat your supper and shut up. What’s all this? Just ‘cause we had a few harsh words—”

  “I can’t stand it! Phil, you’re always on something now and it makes you paranoid. I can’t forgive you for hitting me, I don’t believe you won’t do it again. A scene like that last night in the middle of the night, I think you’re going crazy! And you, Jackson, you just take and take and you won’t give. I can’t stand it! Loving somebody who won’t love back, it’s a dead end, it’s a trap, it’s killing me!”

  She stormed out of the room and he saw her limping down the hall halfway into her wet boots and trying to hurry. Then the outer door slammed. Jackson was being cool and trying to look bored. He could feel Jackson’s anger coming through the calm like a high-pitched whine, like steel bearing down on steel. “Some more meat loaf?” Jackson asked. “There’s plenty for us both, after all.”

  THREE

  Both in Turn

  18

  That Which God Has Joined

  Because events happened fast Beth had little time to think. She fell back on passive resistance, which worked poorly with Jim and the detective actively pushing and pulling on her, threatening and causing things to move faster than she could figure out the direction. When Jim showed up at the commune, she panicked. She did not want him in her life. She had a panicked, choking fear that if the detective and Jim marched around on her life, the fragile beginnings of independence and self and relationships that she had made, there would be nothing left. She did not want them to know her life. The more they threatened, the more she wanted to conceal. In her confusion and fear she agreed to go with them—anything to get them out.

  Then the detective flew to Syracuse, leaving her to drive back with Jim in his car. During that seven-hour drive she repeatedly imagined, every time she used a toilet in a service plaza, running away. Always when she emerged he was grimly standing in wait. Every time she tried to start a conversation with him he grew angry and began to drive so erratically she got scared and shut up. Turning the radio loud, he drove staring straight ahead. Dreading Syracuse, nevertheless after a few hours she could not imagine a tighter hell than being cooped up with him clenching his jaws and driving, driving while the radio sang about love and sweet dreams and easy sex. The Stones sang of women who were under their thumb, while other groups beseeched girls to give their favors, be true, stop hanging on or go away. They all sounded like bad jokes to her. She remembered in the early days of her marriage rock music had seemed to promise her life and space and energy. Now it felt like her enemy, reinforcing in Jim images of how men and women were supposed to be.

  The Massachusetts Pike turned into the New York Thruway and it was all the same nightmare of white road advancing before them and blurring to the sides. Two days before Christmas: the trarrle was heavy. That morning it had snowed, but the expressways were clear until outside Albany. After dark the wind rose and snow came blowing at them. He did not slow and she was attacked by fearful images of collision. Out of rage he would smash them both into a viaduct.

  They ate in a service plaza. He had a hot turkey platter and she had vegetable soup and a cheese sandwich. Chewing the tasteless cheese, she remembered the pill fight. Cold fingers closed on her throat. To have sex with him would be ugly but she was not sure what would happen. When she went to the women’s room, she removed the pills from the container in her purse and worked them into the lining of her coat. Then she threw the container away.

  Standing at the washbasin and scooping her hand for water, she took a pill and glared into the mirror. How pathetic she looked! She made a fist, grimacing. How had they found her? After a year and two months, she had felt safe. She hated herself for feeling safe. But maybe now he would give up when he faced her new self, her intransigence. The detective had hinted that perhaps if she co-operated a divorce might be worked out.

  When they finally arrived she said, “You’re in the same apartment? But please, I want to stay in a motel.”

  “We had a three-year lease. Where did you think I’d be?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want to stay out here.”

  “Did you think a lot about what I wanted?”

  “Anyhow, I don’t want to stay here. I came back to Syracuse to talk, but that doesn’t mean staying here.”

  He came around to her side, opened the door, and pulled her out. “You live here, remember?” He yanked her by the hand.

  She hung back. “No! I live in Somerville, in my house. I don’t want to go in there. I’ll come over tomorrow, but I don’t want to sleep here. I don’t want to be married to you, I don’t want to be with you.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck you want. And we are married, or did you forget that too?” He dragged her by the arm until they were inside. Then he let go and locked the door ostentatiously, even though it was only a chain lock and turning a knob. She sat down in the recliner, avoiding the couch. After all, she might as well act like company. But the act of sitting in his chair made her nervous.

  “You want a beer?” He got himself one from the kitchen.

  “Yes, please.” Her throat felt dry.

  “Oh, you learned to drink while you been gone.”

  “I just thought … water would be fine.”

  “Sure, you’d rather get high on drugs.”

  “What’s with you, Jim? You smoke grass.”

  “I don’t play around with those hard drugs, acid and speed and heroin and all that shit.”

  “What makes you think I do?”

  “I read the detective’s report, I know what you been doing. I know who you been hanging around with instead of me. Made a beeline right for it, didn’t you?”

  She found herself holding her breath. She looked away, around the room. “It’s not even messy. See, you don’t have to be dropping stuff on the floor. I mean, it looks nice.”

  “No thanks to you. I got a woman comes in once a week, a fat old spade who does some other apartments in the building, the super told me about her. Sets me back twenty just to have her for a day. Highway robbery.”

  “You got a tree too.” Twenty a day, a hundred a week if you did get work every day. About what she’d got in the department store. A woman paid to do what she’d been expected to do every night for free after a day’s work.

  “I got it for you. I figured you’d enjoy a tree, like we’re a real family for a change.”

  “Jim … I don’t want to feel like a real family. I want to be back with my friends. Sally’s going to have her baby any minute.”

  “Some hippie slut with no husband. Having a bastard. What’s wrong with you? What do you think your own mother is going to say to all this stuff?”

  “I’m sorry I married you, really! I don’t want to make you unhappy. I didn’t know what it meant. Everything was always pushing on me, get married, get married, get married—”

  “You sure pushed me. You wouldn’t give me the time of day without a ring. You sure changed fast.” He pulled a balled-up paper out of his wallet. “It’s all down here from that detective. You were screwing some professor who left his wife for you, right? Screwing him all the time in a house with a bunch of guys, maybe you were screwing all of them.”

  “No! It’s not right! I didn’t!”

  “It’s all down here in black and white!”

  “Jim, I don’t even go out with men now. Please listen to me!”

  “You like dykes better.” He shook the balled-up paper at her. “You’re sick, you know that?”

  “Dikes?”

  “Women who go to bed together. Don’t come on innocent with me any more, I’m on to you now.”

  She felt peculiar. Had the detective really thought that about the women’s commune? Who was she supposed to be lovers with? She said slowly, “I don’t think I want to be close to anybody that way. But I guess if I had to choose who to be with, maybe I would choose women right now. I neve
r thought of it. You laugh at me for not knowing what that word means, and I am ignorant. Or maybe I would have thought of that before. That touching women might be different from men. But I don’t want anyone to touch me.”

  “You think I’m going to believe all this crap, don’t you? You think I’m pretty stupid. You think you got smart hanging around a college and screwing professors. That was the real big time, you think, and you can push me around. You got another think coming, girl. I was nice to you before, I tried to treat you like a goddamned valentine. Boy, what you put me through. You kept me hot and hungry for months. You were too good to put out. You must think I’m stupid, you must think I’m easy to put it over on.” He stood, his hands open and sweating. “I had to pay that detective two hundred dollars and expenses and he flies all over the place and stays at motels and he don’t eat peanuts. I paid through the nose. I paid to get you back and I got you back, and I’m not taking any crap from you. You made me feel like a piece of dirt, but you’re going to take it instead of dish it out for a change.”

  He started for the chair. She got up and ducked behind, then made a run for the door. He caught her before she could get the chain off. He picked her up, carried her flailing wildly into the bedroom, and dumped her on the bed. Then he dropped on her. She remembered Miriam saying once, “Go on, I don’t believe one guy can do it against my will—I’d just give him a kick in the basket.” But Miriam was five feet nine. Beth was squashed under him, her thighs pinned, her hands clawing and pounding on his back. She was furious at herself. She hated herself lying squashed and helpless while he forced her thighs apart. Why did women wear pants like tissue paper? Why must she hate herself for being hurt?

  It hurt, him forcing his way into her, it hurt a lot. She chewed on her lips. It hurt and soon it must be over, soon. She waited for it to be over and tried to concentrate on turning hating herself into hating him. He was getting away with it this time, but she must not let him hurt her again. She was dry and tight and each thrust rasped and hurt more. He was making her a child. A child can say, “No, I won’t!” And mean it passionately, with all her heart and body. “No, I won’t!” But father or mother or teacher says, “Yes, you will” And they always win. A child can be sent to bed hungry, a child can be beaten, a child can be forced.

  Her father used to whip her with a wooden yardstick that stood in a corner of the kitchen. She had never seen it used for anything else. Her mother would slap her face, would turn her over her knee to spank her. Her father always whipped her with the wooden yardstick. She would run before him screaming, “No, Daddy, no! No! I didn’t do it! I won’t do it again!” It hurt, like this. It humiliated, like this. It was disgusting to run that way, lying and promising and blubbering and she would not cry now, her anger would seal her.

  Afterward she would look for bruises, sneaking into her parents’ room to use the three-way mirror. She would love her bruises for the feeling they gave her of being terribly abused. But if anyone else noticed, the humiliation would return and she would die. Dolores was the only person she ever told. Dolores’ father punished her with his fist. They whispered together and comforted each other.

  Lying with him plunging at her like a club landing, she hated her father, for the first time consciously she hated him. Would it have been such a big deal to love me? Would it have cost you so damned much? You stingy skinflint. You wouldn’t love me and you wouldn’t love Marie and I don’t think you loved Mommy by the time I was born. What would it have cost you? You think I would have asked for so much? You scared me witless I would lose my virginity somewhere, like losing a quarter out of a hole in my pocket, and then, god, you’d kill me.

  Why didn’t he come? He always used to come fast enough. She writhed under the raw scraping. Every time I used to be necking with a boy, the times Jim and I would pet, I’d be jerking around with fear. I would keep having this vision that you would suddenly appear and kill me. All I could think of was getting some man to take me away from you so I wouldn’t be afraid any more and I wouldn’t care any more that you didn’t love me. That’s all you ever wanted, to get me out of the house and married so you could wash your hands of me.

  Her mouth tasted tinny, salty. Blood from the lip she had bitten through. Why didn’t you raffle me off, one of those church raffles you loved where there’s a chance at the turkey or a car? You made me so hungry for love that’s all I could think of, somebody to love me and carry me away. Now look! Look! I suppose you call this love! Maybe it is, stripped bare. As Miriam would say, enjoy, enjoy. Why didn’t she come? Why didn’t she call me? She’d have known if I had to go with him. She’d have known if they could put me in jail. But she never called, she didn’t come.

  Finally he finished and rolled off. “How’d you like that?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “It hurt.”

  “Ill bet. Go on, you liked it.”

  “It hurt. I don’t like being raped.”

  He laughed as if she had made a joke. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To the bathroom. I hurt and I have to pee.”

  She locked the door and sat on the toilet to think. Her brain felt addled. Huddled there, she apologized for all the times she had laughed at lady wrestlers. She apologized for a day in late spring when she had passed on the Common a karate demonstration by some women. She had thought they looked ridiculous in their white suits, like walking laundry bags. The rigid chopping gestures and fierce noises had made her smile. Now she apologized to those women sweating and groaning and making explosive sounds from their diaphragms that spring day.

  She asked forgiveness of the girls she had watched in high school playing field hockey and volleyball. She remembered telling Dolores, “Well, if I was a giraffe like her, taller than all the boys, I’d go out for sports too!” She asked forgiveness of the women she had judged big and awkward and ungainly, because they were not willing to be weak. She had believed herself superior because she could not, because she did not dare.

  It didn’t matter any more whether he could put her in jail or not. She felt sore all over. Her vagina burned, her womb ached from being pounded, her arms and back hurt. So did her head. She looked in the medicine cabinet for aspirin. Creme rinse for hair: now Jim never used that. She looked further, among the hair tonics and shaving creams and laxatives. Two yellow pills in a prescription bottle: three times a day after meals, Arlene Rogers. If he had a woman, why was he doing this to her?

  Leaning against the bathroom window, she contemplated jumping. Ten feet. But she did not have her purse or winter coat and would not get far. He began banging on the bathroom door. Hurriedly she looked around for a good idea and then gave up and unlocked it.

  “Let’s go in the living room and talk,” she said.

  “I’m played out. I got up before sunrise to drive to Boston and I drove all the way back. I need sleep.”

  “I’m not sleepy. I’ll sit up and read.”

  “The hell you will. I’m not trusting you out of my sight.” He made her lie down with him, keeping his hand on her hip.

  She waited. She waited forever until he slept and then she watched another hour go by on the clock. His hand had fallen from her. Then she began to ease out of bed. He woke immediately. “Where are you going?”

  “To the toilet. Do you think this is school, I have to ask you before I pee?”

  “I want you to ask me before you do anything. That way we’ll get along fine.”

  He took a long time to go back to sleep. Again she waited and tried to slip out and again he woke. He was sleeping lightly, anxiety keeping him on edge. She told him her bladder hurt, which was true. She was too angry and scared to sleep. She kept berating herself for having agreed to return with him, for having panicked, for having let the detective scare her into believing she would go to jail if she did not come along. For letting them club her into submission with jail and her family and their sudden appearance. She had been afraid they would somehow get Sally in
to trouble, get the state to take her baby. Afraid they would hurt the women and break up the commune.

  Would they hold together without her? How self-important even to ask. Anything that depended on one person wasn’t worth doing. If it was working for them, they would hold it together. She imagined being back. Walking in the door. Sally would say, “Wow, you made it just in time, girl! Almost missed my baby.”

  Not if that meant dragging Jim and maybe the police back on her trail. She could not go directly back. She must run first in some other direction. The state-line game. Farther, faster, in a new direction. She would go west, as far as Chicago, maybe farther. She would not return to the commune until she knew she was safe. If she got away from Jim this time, he had to let her go: but she had thought that the last time. Hate would be a thin motive for a long chase. Perhaps he had hired the detective only recently: perhaps it had not taken them long to trace her but rather only lately had he bothered to try. Before she left, she must find out.

  Breakfast: “I’ll cook eggs but not bacon. I can’t touch or eat meat. I’m a vegetarian now.”

  “What kind of garbage is that? Just make me bacon.”

  “I can’t cook or eat meat, Jim. I’m telling you.” She grasped at a way to express it to him. “It’s against my religion.”

  “What kind of a crappy religion is that?”

  “I’m a Buddhist. I’ve become a Buddhist.”

  “You can unbecome one right now. You think I’m going to live on eggs, you’re crazy.”

  “I don’t care what you live on. I eat vegetables and fish and milk and cheese and eggs. But I can’t cook flesh.”

  She thought he was about to hit her but he controlled himself. She remembered that control. “All right. Skip the bacon for one morning. Tonight we have meat, I’m telling you. I got a steak in the refrigerator. And tomorrow you fix a Christmas turkey.”

  If she was still here tomorrow, he could cook her a turkey. She fried eggs and made toast and coffee.