Braided Lives

by Marge Piercy

  “Don’t break it down. It’s open,” Kemp says in his cold, nasty, don’t-mess-with-me manner. “You just turn the handle and pull.”

  The door opens and shuts and nobody says anything. I press my ear harder to the door. Finally the Black man says, “What’d you do with your girl? The one standing at the window giving me the once-over-lightly?”

  “I sent her home.”

  “Sent her in the bedroom, you mean. You call her right out. I don’t want nobody in this house I can’t watch. Don’t fancy being shot in the back by no white floozy.”

  “She’s a college girl. She’s doing her homework and minding her own business.”

  The bedroom door kicks in with such suddenness it catches my arm as I jump back. “Get out here where I can see you,” he barks.

  I sidle along the wall and sit at the table opposite Kemp. I still have my Schopenhauer clutched in my hand. The man’s eyes fall on the book and he grins. He is an inch or two shorter than Kemp, maybe five, six years older and built strong like Howie. His hair is in a long smooth conk and he is wearing a light grey suit as fine and conservatively tailored as any of Peter’s. “Missy Coed, no lie. You Chinese?”

  “No, Jewish.” Surreptitiously I rub my bruised arm.

  That always stumps them. Kemp seizes the moment to try to regain his lost dominance. “Okay, Mercer, what gives? I don’t remember issuing no invitations to come drop by and chew the fat. But now you’re here, sit. You want a beer?”

  “Let Missy get it. I don’t turn my back on lowlife.”

  “This here pimp is calling me a lowlife. That’s some joke.” Kemp nods to me to get the beer.

  “Yeah? My girls come to me because they like my loving and they want my protection and they got it. And they need some protection with lowlife like you and your little creeps scuttling around.”

  I sidle to the refrigerator and take out two beers. Facing Mercer, I open the bottles and place one in front of each.

  “I drink from a glass,” Mercer says. “Unlike lowlife.”

  I get him a glass from the cabinet and sit again.

  “Sure,” Kemp says. “We can break it after you leave. And that blessed moment should come real soon.” He drinks with his left hand. His right is under the table.

  “I’d be pleased to leave real soon with Rinda’s money. Your little creeps took two hundred off of her last night. I also want fifty for her doctor bills. Plus I’m giving you a warning. You lay mean hands on one of my girls again, I’ll cut you into pieces so little a pussycat can eat them out of a dish.”

  “Kemp was with me last night from seven on all night,” I say truthfully and with great relief. “Honest. There must be forty other people who saw us together including my whole co-op.”

  “But his two little creeps weren’t with you, college, Buddy Rayburn and Ray Koszieski. They busy down on Liberty, shaking down my girl and beating her till she bleed.”

  “Buddy and Ray beat up a prostitute and took her money?”

  “Shut up,” Kemp says to me. “A Black whore so ugly she ought to pay them to fuck her.”

  “Sure, she so ugly and so Black she make two hundred dollars by one A.M. sure as clockwork. Your girlfriend don’t think it’s so great they gang up, two big fat crackers beating on one poor skinny piece and knock her around and take her hard-earned money.”

  “You stay in your own part of town over on Detroit Street. But you were on our turf. If she wants to walk our streets, she pays us. She owes us, and we took it.”

  I am shaking with anger. “And Buddy likes to beat up women. He likes to leave women all bruised and bloody. That’s better than the money they took off her.” I stand and they both look at me with surprise. “Please, Kemp, give him her money. It’s hard being a prostitute, real hard. And if they hurt her, give him money for a doctor. I remember what Donna looked like after Buddy raped her.”

  “Shut up!” Kemp pounds his fist on the table. He stands. “Go in the bedroom and shut up. This is business. I don’t have a thing to do with that whore of a cousin of yours. This is a nigger whore and if she wants to come on a white street, she’s going to pay.”

  I grab my purse and throw my wallet down on the table. I pull out my money. Twenty-eight dollars. “Take that for her. She’s a woman, and do you think I’m so fucking white? I won’t have any part in this. I won’t.” I take my coat from the hook by the door and run out. I pull my coat on as I run, stepping into my boots and stumbling through the car tracks toward the road.

  Nobody follows. For all I know they may kill each other. Already as I go I think how I will miss him.

  Kemp stays away for a week and then comes around, but I find it easy to evade him. I have a whole houseful of women to answer the phone and door and say I’m in Detroit. He is too proud to persist, and after a week of siege he exits my life.

  I can’t tell you what happened to Kemp. When I used to travel west to Ann Arbor regularly in the middle sixties on antiwar business, nobody had ever heard of him and he wasn’t listed in the phone directory. Yes, I looked, I admit it. That was the year Francis died, presumably of a heart attack incurred while “resisting arrest” in Los Angeles. The body was covered with bruises and there were marks on the neck. Neither my mother nor I had the money to pursue the case, and the movement people I talked to in L.A. could not see how it could be political and thus their business, this middle-aged bum living in a Chicano neighborhood who was mixed up with a car the police said was stolen and he said he’d bought. Two different women introduced themselves to us as his widow. Both were attractive, brown-skinned and grief-stricken, and each told a different story about why the police had it in for my brother. Mother was equally consoling to each and equally convinced that he had not married her. Probably not. Francis was an anarchist to the finish line.

  Curiosity, as well as lust and nostalgia, made me try to find Kemp in ’66. I was still mourning Francis. To this day I think of Kemp oftener than any other man of my college years, except Howie, usually when I am cooking one of the dishes he taught me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  WHAT’S WHITE AND FALLS, WHAT’S BLACK AND STAYS

  FRIDAY, MY LAST final over and a dry pellety snow hitting the sidewalk like uncooked grains of rice, I saunter home into the sounds of Mozart and Miles Davis and the clatter of dishes from the kitchen. Rosellen bounds down the steps to seize me and swing me around the hall. “Donna’s getting married! Donna’s getting married!”

  I hold her still with the force of both hands. “When?”

  “Day after tomorrow. They had their blood tests. They got their license. Donna just called her mother and she’s bawling—her mother, I mean. Isn’t it wonderful? I’ve never been so excited.”

  I take the steps two at a time. Wanda, our house president, charges out as I enter. Donna’s eyes shine electric blue with anger as she pulls books pell-mell from the shelves and hurls them into a box. A worn sleazy slip hangs on her, her arms are smeared with dust, yet energy crackles out. “Cat! Get out!” She hauls Minouska from a half-packed box.

  “You’re getting married?”

  “Yes. Can you take that print down without tearing it?”

  I kick off my shoes to clamber on the bed, seeing with a jab of regret that it is the Gauguin of the woman with melon and flower that always hung in our rooms. “Why the big hurry? You aren’t quitting school halfway through your senior year?”

  “I’ll drop whatever I don’t require to graduate, and I bet I can finish up the last course or two at Wayne. I have oodles of extra credits from summer school….” She laughs, trying to cram books in sideways on other books. “That’s one advantage of avoiding going home that I never anticipated.”

  “What were you fighting with Wanda about?”

  “She wants me to pay next semester’s rent. But why? I’m leaving now. It’s not fair. You can get somebody else.”

  “This late I’m not so sure.”

  A brief flush of hope warms me. Maybe if the ho
use won’t release her from her contract, she can’t marry Peter yet. Anything could happen in a semester. He could choke on an olive pit or fall into a reactor model. Big Sal could come back and carry her off. I prefer him to Peter, I decide, for he didn’t take up nearly so much of her time. “Of course I’ll support you.” The rub of it is, I will. “Does Peter’s family know?”

  “We’ll send them a telegram right afterward. The idea is to do it, then let them react.”

  Rosellen surges in with two cardboard boxes. “I found these down the basement, but that’s all.”

  “I need at least five more. Can’t you try the supermarkets?”

  Rosellen feigns mopping her forehead. Then she grabs her double-breasted cashmere coat. “Back as soon as I can!”

  Donna shouts after her, “And a good strong box for Minouska, don’t forget!” Donna gives Minouska’s black head a quick caress as the cat sidles through the maze of boxes, sniffing and putting her small paws on top of each to peer in. Occasionally she gives a querulous, “Mrew?”

  “She’ll be scared of the car ride, I’m sure.” Donna wipes her dusty hands on her already dusty slip. “After the wedding, we’ll stop back here, load the car and then she only has to put up with an hour or so.”

  “Where’s Peter?”

  “Out trying to cash a check.” She lets an armload of books drop and stands overwhelmed and suddenly becalmed. “What will he say when I tell him Wanda wants to make me pay next semester’s rent?”

  “You look worn out. Stop and have a cup of coffee with me. Please.”

  She gives me a tiredly inquisitive look, then smiles. Across the dining room table from me in her plaid bathrobe, a checked excitement simmers in her. “My trench coat’s at the cleaners—I mustn’t forget. And mail forwarding. And how many sheets should we have to start?”

  “I suppose three sets minimum.” I shake myself. “Donna, Donna, why are you obsessing about sheets? Don’t you suppose Peter has sheets on his bed?”

  “But not our sheets. Who knows who else he slept with on those sheets?”

  Well, we both know at least one person.

  “I’ll have to crate the books and have Rosellen ship them; they’ll never fit in the Sprite. I told you, I want to get married. I want to be Donna Stuart Crecy….” She pronounces it French.

  “Why so fast?”

  “Fast is painless. Like pulling a tooth.” That small crooked grin. “Less time for the enemy to head us off. Anything could happen with him in two months. Leaving him in Detroit alone weekdays is far too dangerous, with all those old society girlfriends hanging around like hungry piranhas.”

  “You’ve hardly had time together to try things out. Why not wait till you’re surer of yourself. Of him.”

  “When would we get the chance, with him bustling around Detroit and me stuck here?” She brushes cobwebs from her forehead. Her voice has the sweet timbre of decision “He needs me to get him away from his son-eating family. Marrying must always be like jumping off a bridge. We have our license to jump.” She stands. “I must go pack. He’ll kill me if he comes back and I’m sitting around.”

  I follow her. “I’ll help.”

  “That’s a real kindness. Could you pack my socks and nylons? And see if you can find me one pair without a run.”

  “Will try.” All the time I feel that she is listening for Peter’s voice in the hall. I want to jump up and down to compel her attention. “Donna … I’m afraid for you.”

  Her eyes crinkled up, she gives me a quick hug. The ability to express affection has stayed since the abortion. “Stu, I’ll be much better off, much safer. You’ll see how calm and happy I’ll be. My therapist says I’m acting much healthier as a woman now. A man who belongs to me, a place I belong—we’ll be real people. I’m tired of being a student. Students are nothing! It’s time to live, instead of interminably studying other people’s lives.”

  “But your life has to center on some good work you want to do.”

  “Oh, all that running around fiercely trying to be somebody else. Imitating you, imitating Lennie, imitating Sal. Now I’m going to be Peter’s wife and be happy and make him happy. I’ve grown up. I’m accepting my destiny as a woman.”

  “Keeping house in that two-room apartment?”

  “We won’t stay there long.” She frowns at her slip, pinching the flimsy rayon. “So help me, I won’t take this ugly old underwear. I’ll be married in none, sooner. I’ll throw it away.” Seizing the slip in clenched hands, she rips it down the center, steps out with a pleased giggle and tosses it in the garbage.

  “You have this.” I hold up a black satin slip. “Sal bought this one. It’s still pretty.”

  “I’ll wear it. Black for the bride. Actually black is for the mourning and protesting parents, right? The howling mother of the groom. The threatening father brandishing the trust fund papers. I’ll travel in my grey wool suit.”

  I act as her maid, brushing the suit, my hands sketching arguments on the flannel. What can I say? Donna, he’s a little shit, please don’t marry him. Your darling is a trap. Nothing you give will be enough. His discontent will destroy you.

  “I’ll write, Stu. Are those nylons okay? Give them over. Now a clean blouse. And check it has all its buttons. Do you suppose he suspects how like an orphan child his wife is arriving?”

  “Would you like some indecent underwear as a wedding present?”

  “That’d be perfect, Stu. And please, talk to Wanda for me. Sway her. You can do it.” As I turn, she adds a quiet sentence, tilting up to me a face suddenly devoid of expression. “Stu, don’t try to make the wedding—all right?”

  Donna is encased in wedding. At a special house meeting, the women in a wash of sentimental excitement vote that we shall absorb the cost of her room among us if we cannot find someone to move in. I cannot see Donna alone and neither can Peter, for she trots with a wake of helpers, in a gale of errands and messages, of boxes and wrapping paper. Donna’s sister, Estelle, arrives from Detroit to run up and down the stairs with a distracted frown, an electric mixer under one arm and a pencil in her teeth.

  Off to Flint they go. Minouska and the boxes await their return. They are to stay with Donna’s parents. My parents are going to the wedding too. Obviously it is getting slightly out of hand.

  My mother calls. “Now, Jillie, you have to go. You’re behaving like a jilted female. You have to stand up proud and hold your head high so nobody can say she got the best of you.”

  “Mother, Donna asked me not to go.”

  “Well, I never.” She clucks her tongue. “She knows you’d outshine her as the sun outshines the moon!”

  “Mother!” I cover the mouthpiece, giggling. “Me? Since when?”

  “Aren’t you my daughter? You go anyhow. We’ll get you a dress. Come in on the bus and we’ll find one on sale.”

  “Mama, I can’t. I promised her. You go for me.”

  “What should I tell them, so it won’t look like you’re sulking?”

  “That I’m working at the library.”

  Mother calls back after the wedding, before Donna has returned. “So the only person from his side was his sister. A poor woebegone bean pole of a girl, looking as if she was smelling a skunk all the time and so nervous. Chickie, she jumped every time anybody spoke to her, like a mouse the cat’s caught. Imagine, his parents didn’t come.”

  “Mother, I don’t think Peter’s told them.”

  “I wondered.” She pauses, rolling that around in her mind. “So he didn’t tell them? Just his sister because she’s got no spine anyhow. So what will happen when they find out? Will they get it annulled?”

  “Peter’s twenty-six and Donna’s twenty-one. How can they?”

  “And carried on all the time he was your so-called boyfriend.”

  “I should be marrying him? That’s what you want to wish on me?”

  “Ha! With your free-and-easy ways with men, none of them will ever marry you. Why should they, when they can get
what they want from you for nothing?”

  Donna returns from Flint in a russet knit suit with her skin glowing as if a candle were lit inside and with a twisted gold band on her proper finger. Peter wears a similar band as he sits disconsolately at the bottom of the steps, still center of the reconstituted cyclone.

  “Peter!” Donna races down. “Help, please!” She tugs him upstairs. The boxes of books and records Rosellen and I will ship are stacked along one wall. Donna has piled up to go two old black pasteboard suitcases, a plastic wardrobe containing coats and her good cocktail dress (from Big Sal) and a new piece of blue Samsonite luggage containing the presents of the last few days. “Peter love, here’s the best box I was able to find for Minouska. What should I do with her shitbox? Would it be better if I put her in the box or if I just hold her on my lap in the car?”

  I stand with the water dish in my hand waiting a decision. Peter lounges in the doorway. Slowly his eyebrows rise. More slowly he strolls in with exaggerated astonishment, poking the two battered black cases. “Do you expect these to hold together till we get downstairs? I can see us driving down the highway, leaving a wake of old lingerie like dust bowl refugees.”

  Donna laughs nervously. “Should I put Minouska in the box or not?”

  “In my car? Look, Donna, we are not traveling with that beast. Where are we supposed to put it when we get there?”

  “Lots of apartments allow cats. I can’t just throw her away. She’s mine!”

  “You found her in an alley, put her back in an alley. We have a tiny apartment and I’m not sharing it with something that shits in a corner.”

  “She’s nice, Peter. You’ll love her once you know her. She’s very clean.”

  “Cats fend for themselves. Will you stop anthropomorphizing? And look at this crap!” He surveys the boxes, striding back and forth. “You’ve got more junk than a ragpicker. I can see us now arriving with this mess and carting it past the doorman. Hello, Mother, I want you to meet my wife—not the one with the mange, Mother—”

  I expect her to blaze out but she shrinks, fingers smoothing the russet skirt across her thighs. “She’s met me already.”