This is how it went down, see: In a parallel universe, not unlike our own, Everywoman had studied the Holy Writ. She had read the Gospel of Zora and the Gospel of Alice, so she knew just what to do. Her journey would begin at the dinner table, with domestic implements, say an iron skillet or a carving knife. She knew, as the goddess had spoken through the Gospel According to Audre, that the master’s tools would never destroy the master’s house. However, Everywoman had read enough to know that those tools could render the master quiet for a while, thus allowing her time for escape, if wielded with a pure heart, a steady hand and, if necessary, the Evil Eye.
Everywoman chose her old Granny’s pecan cracker. She slapped it down on the table right after serving the banana pudding.
“Mm-mm,” said Mr. P_____, “You gonna crack me some pecans?”
“No,” Everywoman replied, “I’m cracking me some other nuts if you stand in my way. For today, Mr. P_____, I declare my independence from cleaninglaundrycookingshopping. I will no longer be your mule. I am marching off to Freedom Land. And it’s ‘pe-cahns,’ not ‘pee-cans.’ You sound like a hick. Bye now.”
Everywoman waved goodbye and stood up from the table as Mr. P_____ sat there open mouthed and wide eyed. She grabbed her nutcracker and a small suitcase she had tucked away under her chair. “Toodles,” she said, sunnily. She was almost out the door when Mr. P_____ caught up with her, grabbing her forcefully and spinning her around.
“Now just you wait, ho-bitch. You can’t take care of yourself out there without me. How are you going to support yourself”
Mr. P_____’s grip was strong and his glare was mean, but Everywoman had prepared herself for this. She underhanded him with a nutcracker to the crotch.
“Listen up, silly man, and listen good. I am marching off to Freedom Land. I got plenty to take care of myself. I got my Friends and Family Plan. I got my Credit Card. I got my Good Looks. I got my Wits. And Goddess knows, I got my Anger. You better let me go. Now.”
Everywoman squeezed harder on the nutcracker. Mr. P_____ winced. “You’ve seen the movie. It won an Oscar, for Goddess’s sake. You better let me go, or else you’re gonna wind up drunk and alone, dead, or both. Now don’t make me use the Evil Eye, too.”
Mr. P_____ blinked. “Go. You’ll never get into Freedom Land anyway. I made the door, and I own the key to all the locks. You’ll be back.”
“Ha,” said Everywoman, sashaying away.
All the rest of the day, Everywoman was feeling mighty good about herself. She didn’t need a map or the GPS function on her cell phone to find Freedom Land. She had memorized the directions from the Holy Writ. She could follow the sun in the day and at night, the stars. She had packed enough food in her suitcase for the time it would take to get her there. All she needed was a change of clothes, a light sweater, and plenty of new, clean underpants in case, as her old Granny had told her again and again, she was in an accident, she would not be found in torn, dirty panties. The only problem was that her cell phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing with that darned Friends and Family Plan, and each person saying the same thing:
“Are you o.k.? Are you sure you’ve done the right thing? You know it’s not safe out there for a woman alone. He wasn’t that bad. He went to work every day. He had a good job. He was a good provider. He didn’t hit you. He didn’t hit you much. He didn’t draw blood. Maybe you should forgive and forget. What would Jesus do? Are you safe by yourself? What if you run into someone dangerous out there by yourself? What if you run into someone who hurts you? Maybe you should go home where it’s safe. What are you going to do in Freedom Land anyway? What you’re doing sounds crazy. It’s not practical. You should go back to Mr. P_____. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”
Everywoman got so angry that she told them all to go to the devil and threw her cell phone in a pond. And that was the end of her Friends and Family Plan.
Soon Everywoman was tired. It had been a long day with all the leaving and the doubting. She lay down for a rest under a nice live oak tree, covering herself up with her sweater and using her suitcase as pillow. She kept the nutcracker in her hand just for safety. Everywoman was no fool. Luckily, she passed through the night without incident but woke up the next morning feeling as if something was amiss. Sure enough, there on a rock next to a stream was a brawny armed, flaxen haired man, talking up her Good Looks and rubbing his finger along her upper thigh!
“Ooooh, Anders,” Good Looks cooed, “I love a little Danish in the morning.”
“Yeah, yeah, and a Swede in the afternoon,” Everywoman harrumphed as she stalked over. “Good Looks, what are you doing?”
Good Looks rolled her eyes at Everywoman. “You are such a party pooper. Listen, I’m tired of this journey. It’s positively giving me blisters. You go on ahead. Anders here is giving me a ride.”
Everywoman was devastated. She and Good Looks had been BFF since birth, and now she was being deserted . . . For a Man! She could not believe this was happening! Yet she knew all along that it would, just not so early in her journey.
“Peace be with you, Good Looks,” she said.
As for Good Looks, she never looked back. That’s what hurt Everywoman the most, or so she thought.
“Well, if I can’t have Good Looks, I might as well have a chocolate doughnut,” Everywoman said, gathering her stuff and walking toward the café. But when she got there and placed her order, she found that not only had Good Looks deserted her, she had also ripped her off. Everywoman’s Credit Card was gone!
Everywoman cried and cried. She started on her journey again, but she could barely walk, so busy she was wailing and gnashing her teeth, pulling her hair and rending her clothes. This was truly a fit of Biblical proportions. She staggered from one side of the road to another, back and forth, like a madwoman. Everywoman hardly paid attention to where she was going. This went on for some time, until she almost ran into a fish on a bicycle.
“Hey lady,” he bubbled, “Have you lost your wits?”
Everywoman looked around. Indeed she had! She had somehow left her Wits, and her suitcase with her supply of food and clean underpants back at the café. She was not even certain where she was any more. This was clearly not part of her plan. There was nothing to do but sit down and wail. And that she did.
Everywoman wailed so much that she barely heard the still, small voice just to her left.
“’Scuse me, ‘scuse me. Didn’t you forget somebody?”
Everywoman turned around. There, filing her teeth and nails, and wearing a bright red dress and black stripper pumps was indeed someone she forgot, her old friend Anger. Everywoman jumped up, hugged her buddy and they both danced a jig.
“Anger! Anger!” Everywoman said, “I thought everyone left me. I thought I was lost. And here you are! Where are we, by the way?”
“Right here at the Slough of Despond, silly goose. You remember it from the map. I was with you all the time. I’m always with you. I never desert you. You know that.”
“But how do we get into Freedom Land?” Everywoman asked. “I thought I had to be pure of heart. I thought I needed my Friends and Family plan.”
“Oh, Everywoman, Everywoman, Everywoman,” Anger tsked. “Didn’t you read ALL of the Holy Writ? You can still be pure of heart and walk with me to Freedom Land.”
“But, but, but,” Everywoman said. “I thought I’d need you to blow up the entrance because Mr. P_____ made the door and owns the key to all the locks!”
“No, no, no. You haven’t been using me correctly. You’ve been using me as a weapon. You need to use me as a tool. Mr. P_____ may own the all key to the locks, and he may have made the door, but there are ways to get in other than using me as a weapon.”
Everywoman leaned in closely and looked Anger right in the eye. “How, Anger, how?”
Anger said right back, “This is a good start, Everywoman. The first thing you need to do, instead of tuning me out, is listening to me. Here goes. . . . “
Monday, March 14, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
First They Came For Wisconsin
This blog announces the return of Ms. Fredonia Woolf, Esq. from a long hiatus. Recent events compel me to speak and take action, and I am here to tell you, brothers and sisters, they should compel you, too.
Once Ms. Freddie’s wits left her momentarily, and she considered leaving her warm, cozy Florida home for places more ideologically compatible. A liberal publication she subscribed to published an article on “livable cities,” and Ms. Freddie ventured forth on a sunny May day to visit them. She travelled across our fair land, from Burlington, to Madison, to both Portlands (Maine and Oregon), and many other places: all cold. IN MAY. Let us make one thing perfectly clear. Ms. Freddie in cold is like the Wicked Witch of the West in water. She doesn’t melt, but it ain’t pretty. The one thing about cold, though, it can sharpen one’s senses. Ms. Freddie considered that it was easy to be liberal in places like Madison, where most everyone else was liberal, vegetarian restaurants abounded, and people read books. Being liberal in places like Madison was actually conforming, and Ms. Freddie likes conforming about as much as she likes cold.
But that was then. This is now. And my how things change. This, brothers and sisters, is not the “change” Ms. Freddie was “hoping” for in 2008.
What is happening in Wisconsin – an “easy place to be liberal” – is a very scary example of how rights are being taken away from us, one by one. Republican legislators defied their constituency and the legislative process itself to dismantle public service workers’ collective bargaining rights. That means people like teachers, police officers, and firefighters (the very people who are supposed to teach us how to be good citizens and defend our freedoms, right?) can’t organize and negotiate for fair pay because THEY are called a drain on the public budget. In what universe is this democracy? In what universe is this freedom? In what universe is this America?
Do you remember that infamous statement by Martin Niemöller that came out of Nazi Germany:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
but there was no one left to speak out for me.
Well, Ms. Freddie woke up this morning to read on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times, her newspaper of choice, this headline: “Next in line: Florida unions.” It is not just the unions, brothers and sisters. Voting rights have already been targeted. So have reproductive rights. In Florida, these are code words for minorities and women. The Times headline was just to the right of another from the national stage that read, “Tension, tears, and terror: A congressional hearing on Muslims is both defended and called a witch hunt.”
There is no place left where it is easy to be a liberal. There is no place left where it is easy to be a thinking, feeling, moral person who can remain silent and passive. Your only choice, brothers and sisters, is to live in the swamp like me. I don’t mean the literal swamp, with cypress trees and alligators. I mean that mental place that is outside of the mainstream: a space of radical resistance, philosopher bell hooks calls it. The swamp is the opposite of McDisneyworld, where your mind grows lazy from too much time in front of the shiny box, force-fed a diet of sugar and fat. The swamp is that free space inside you from which you think, organize, and act.
Ms. Freddie used to think she could go it alone in the swamp. She would be independent, a survivalist. Now, caught between a Marco Rubio rock and a Rick Scott hard place, she calls upon others to join her, sound their barbaric yawps, take up their word-weapons. They are coming for you, brothers and sisters, so don’t just sit there in silence. Remember Audre Lorde’s words: your silence will not protect you.
Once Ms. Freddie’s wits left her momentarily, and she considered leaving her warm, cozy Florida home for places more ideologically compatible. A liberal publication she subscribed to published an article on “livable cities,” and Ms. Freddie ventured forth on a sunny May day to visit them. She travelled across our fair land, from Burlington, to Madison, to both Portlands (Maine and Oregon), and many other places: all cold. IN MAY. Let us make one thing perfectly clear. Ms. Freddie in cold is like the Wicked Witch of the West in water. She doesn’t melt, but it ain’t pretty. The one thing about cold, though, it can sharpen one’s senses. Ms. Freddie considered that it was easy to be liberal in places like Madison, where most everyone else was liberal, vegetarian restaurants abounded, and people read books. Being liberal in places like Madison was actually conforming, and Ms. Freddie likes conforming about as much as she likes cold.
But that was then. This is now. And my how things change. This, brothers and sisters, is not the “change” Ms. Freddie was “hoping” for in 2008.
What is happening in Wisconsin – an “easy place to be liberal” – is a very scary example of how rights are being taken away from us, one by one. Republican legislators defied their constituency and the legislative process itself to dismantle public service workers’ collective bargaining rights. That means people like teachers, police officers, and firefighters (the very people who are supposed to teach us how to be good citizens and defend our freedoms, right?) can’t organize and negotiate for fair pay because THEY are called a drain on the public budget. In what universe is this democracy? In what universe is this freedom? In what universe is this America?
Do you remember that infamous statement by Martin Niemöller that came out of Nazi Germany:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me,
but there was no one left to speak out for me.
Well, Ms. Freddie woke up this morning to read on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times, her newspaper of choice, this headline: “Next in line: Florida unions.” It is not just the unions, brothers and sisters. Voting rights have already been targeted. So have reproductive rights. In Florida, these are code words for minorities and women. The Times headline was just to the right of another from the national stage that read, “Tension, tears, and terror: A congressional hearing on Muslims is both defended and called a witch hunt.”
There is no place left where it is easy to be a liberal. There is no place left where it is easy to be a thinking, feeling, moral person who can remain silent and passive. Your only choice, brothers and sisters, is to live in the swamp like me. I don’t mean the literal swamp, with cypress trees and alligators. I mean that mental place that is outside of the mainstream: a space of radical resistance, philosopher bell hooks calls it. The swamp is the opposite of McDisneyworld, where your mind grows lazy from too much time in front of the shiny box, force-fed a diet of sugar and fat. The swamp is that free space inside you from which you think, organize, and act.
Ms. Freddie used to think she could go it alone in the swamp. She would be independent, a survivalist. Now, caught between a Marco Rubio rock and a Rick Scott hard place, she calls upon others to join her, sound their barbaric yawps, take up their word-weapons. They are coming for you, brothers and sisters, so don’t just sit there in silence. Remember Audre Lorde’s words: your silence will not protect you.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Village People
I trekked to the big city last weekend to see a rock show, Geri X and the geriatric, Ronny Elliott, a longtime Florida favorite. Ronny’s songs are full of luscious imagery, but too many are about whores who just want sex and won’t give him any love. I had trouble mustering compassion. Geri X, with her long green hair and skinny tattooed arms, is a walking luscious image herself. But this has nothing to do with my point.
During the break between bands, a young woman stood up to make a plea for Impact Florida, a marriage equality organization. “We need straight people,” she said, “Oh God, we need straight people to join us.”
How sad, I thought, that they need straight people to validate their right to love. But oh so true. Being straightish, or at least relatively sure of my place on that famed Kinsey continuum, I took a card and signed up at www.impact-florida.com.
My capacity to remain stunned at people’s limited notions of family is itself limitless. Getting married is about starting the basic family unit: 1+1=2. The equation is infinitely repeatable. It’s about love, nurture, and got your back. It has nothing to do with hetero-normative pair bonding, and who’s doing what to whom using which orifice and which phallus. The only time I care about that is when my own orifices and phalluses are involved, or when someone else invites me to watch.
I grew up with a great family, a huge extended, “it takes a village” family. The only damage inflicted upon me came through socially reinforced hetero-normative pair bonding. My home was “broken,” folks said. We needed a man to “fix” it. Every man that came through left it in further disrepair.
Let me just say for the record that I don’t hate men. One of my best friends is one.
Back to broken homes. You read about Grendel in “Motherless Child.” He really did leave things broken – doors, hearts, limbs. Before him came Frankenstein – the one who said I needed to have a normal childhood experience and thus took me to Disney World. He drank, gambled away our money at the dog track, and came back to our hotel room ranting and slinging luggage about. Sympathetic staff snuck mother and me to the airport, where sympathetic flight attendants smuggled us on to the plane while keeping the monster at bay. (These were the pre-9/11 days, when security was a lot less strict. This was actually difficult. He worked for the Feds and had the right I.D.) If this is how you define “normal childhood experience,” then you can keep it. I’ve hated dog tracks, airplanes, and Disney World ever since.
Finally there was the Wolfman, filthy rich and egomaniacal, who believed personal hygiene was for the proletariat. After the usual rounds of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse, he moved on to break up my uncle’s family by moving in with his wife, while my uncle was recovering from open-heart surgery. At least there was some broken home payback. Said uncle once pistol-whipped the Wolfman after he got too violent with a female family member. Wolfman lost a couple of teeth in the bargain. Kept them lost too. Dentists were for the proletariat as well.
That same uncle, now deceased – a saint then and now – set the family tone when another relative was the first to come out. “I love her,” he said, “and I love the woman she loves. End of conversation.”
Family, again, means love, nurture and got your back. After every man-monster who was supposed to fix my broken home passed through, a motley assemblage of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors came in to pick up the pieces. Bandaids, blankets, bread, buckshot, beds, boards, beer: whatever my mother and I needed to heal, retreat to, defend ourselves, or repair the damage got produced like magic. Some of these folks came in hetero-pairs. Some came in singles. Some of them, I later figured out, were closeted queers. They all kept me as safe as they could, given the circumstances. And none of them – none – ever let me stray from the path of righteousness. Believe me, I tried.
A woman from an "intact" family once asked me, “Didn’t you feel incomplete growing up without a father?” I looked at her like she was a three-eyed cat. No, to be honest, sometimes I felt too full. I’ll take the motley village that raised me over a man-monster any day.
Her question begs a question of its own: where was my bio-dad has been during these fiascos? But that’s a story for another time. For now let’s say that if Impact Florida needs straight people, I’m there. Love is about a whole lot more than orifices and phalluses. I urge all you other straight folks out there to join them and say the same.
During the break between bands, a young woman stood up to make a plea for Impact Florida, a marriage equality organization. “We need straight people,” she said, “Oh God, we need straight people to join us.”
How sad, I thought, that they need straight people to validate their right to love. But oh so true. Being straightish, or at least relatively sure of my place on that famed Kinsey continuum, I took a card and signed up at www.impact-florida.com.
My capacity to remain stunned at people’s limited notions of family is itself limitless. Getting married is about starting the basic family unit: 1+1=2. The equation is infinitely repeatable. It’s about love, nurture, and got your back. It has nothing to do with hetero-normative pair bonding, and who’s doing what to whom using which orifice and which phallus. The only time I care about that is when my own orifices and phalluses are involved, or when someone else invites me to watch.
I grew up with a great family, a huge extended, “it takes a village” family. The only damage inflicted upon me came through socially reinforced hetero-normative pair bonding. My home was “broken,” folks said. We needed a man to “fix” it. Every man that came through left it in further disrepair.
Let me just say for the record that I don’t hate men. One of my best friends is one.
Back to broken homes. You read about Grendel in “Motherless Child.” He really did leave things broken – doors, hearts, limbs. Before him came Frankenstein – the one who said I needed to have a normal childhood experience and thus took me to Disney World. He drank, gambled away our money at the dog track, and came back to our hotel room ranting and slinging luggage about. Sympathetic staff snuck mother and me to the airport, where sympathetic flight attendants smuggled us on to the plane while keeping the monster at bay. (These were the pre-9/11 days, when security was a lot less strict. This was actually difficult. He worked for the Feds and had the right I.D.) If this is how you define “normal childhood experience,” then you can keep it. I’ve hated dog tracks, airplanes, and Disney World ever since.
Finally there was the Wolfman, filthy rich and egomaniacal, who believed personal hygiene was for the proletariat. After the usual rounds of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse, he moved on to break up my uncle’s family by moving in with his wife, while my uncle was recovering from open-heart surgery. At least there was some broken home payback. Said uncle once pistol-whipped the Wolfman after he got too violent with a female family member. Wolfman lost a couple of teeth in the bargain. Kept them lost too. Dentists were for the proletariat as well.
That same uncle, now deceased – a saint then and now – set the family tone when another relative was the first to come out. “I love her,” he said, “and I love the woman she loves. End of conversation.”
Family, again, means love, nurture and got your back. After every man-monster who was supposed to fix my broken home passed through, a motley assemblage of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors came in to pick up the pieces. Bandaids, blankets, bread, buckshot, beds, boards, beer: whatever my mother and I needed to heal, retreat to, defend ourselves, or repair the damage got produced like magic. Some of these folks came in hetero-pairs. Some came in singles. Some of them, I later figured out, were closeted queers. They all kept me as safe as they could, given the circumstances. And none of them – none – ever let me stray from the path of righteousness. Believe me, I tried.
A woman from an "intact" family once asked me, “Didn’t you feel incomplete growing up without a father?” I looked at her like she was a three-eyed cat. No, to be honest, sometimes I felt too full. I’ll take the motley village that raised me over a man-monster any day.
Her question begs a question of its own: where was my bio-dad has been during these fiascos? But that’s a story for another time. For now let’s say that if Impact Florida needs straight people, I’m there. Love is about a whole lot more than orifices and phalluses. I urge all you other straight folks out there to join them and say the same.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Look Away, Dixie Land
Look Away, Dixie Land
January 20, 2009
In honor of Barack Obama, a change I’d like to call for is the removal of those Confederate mega-flags along I-75. Yes, I know they’re on private property, considered acts of free speech, and all that. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
The Sons of Confederate Veterans who put them up say they represent “heritage,” not “hate.” But whose heritage? Not mine! I’m as Southern as you get. My family goes back as long as there were white people in Florida, and before that they were in Georgia. (Before that, I don’t know, probably fleeing something they ought not to have done in the British Isles.) When I see that flag, here’s what comes to mind:
A conspiracy of rich white planters who enslaved African Americans and sent my people to war in order to preserve someone else’s “way of life.” When the going got tough, they retreated to their town houses and black market goods while poor country people starved.
The same conspiracy pitted poor whites against African Americans after the war to keep power dynamics in check. When the Sons of Confederate Veterans celebrate the Civil War hero’s bravery, they conveniently leave out the history of Jim Crow’s jihad against blacks. The flag flew over both those terrorist groups.
Again, rich whites used poor ones to do their dirty work during the key moments of the civil rights struggle. One sees it in pictures again and again. Courageous black people integrating schools and lunch counters, behind yahoos wielding Confederate flags and weapons, looking like evil incarnate.
So when I see that flag, I don’t just see hate. I see my ancestors being played for fools. Over and over again. Doing violence against black people. Doing violence against their country. Just so rich white people could hold on to power. Sucker punched in the name of heritage. Over and over again.
“Here, Cletus, I got a job for you.” And poor dumb broke Cletus, who’s willing to carry the gun, hold the rope, swing the bat, but not smart enough to think about the implications of his actions, takes all the blame.
I’m not arguing that Cletus doesn’t deserve some of it. The hit man needs to do time, but so does the person who put out the contract. I’m just saying those Confederate mega-flags insult everyone, even the people who put them up. Bless their hearts, they’re too dumb to know it.
January 20, 2009
In honor of Barack Obama, a change I’d like to call for is the removal of those Confederate mega-flags along I-75. Yes, I know they’re on private property, considered acts of free speech, and all that. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
The Sons of Confederate Veterans who put them up say they represent “heritage,” not “hate.” But whose heritage? Not mine! I’m as Southern as you get. My family goes back as long as there were white people in Florida, and before that they were in Georgia. (Before that, I don’t know, probably fleeing something they ought not to have done in the British Isles.) When I see that flag, here’s what comes to mind:
A conspiracy of rich white planters who enslaved African Americans and sent my people to war in order to preserve someone else’s “way of life.” When the going got tough, they retreated to their town houses and black market goods while poor country people starved.
The same conspiracy pitted poor whites against African Americans after the war to keep power dynamics in check. When the Sons of Confederate Veterans celebrate the Civil War hero’s bravery, they conveniently leave out the history of Jim Crow’s jihad against blacks. The flag flew over both those terrorist groups.
Again, rich whites used poor ones to do their dirty work during the key moments of the civil rights struggle. One sees it in pictures again and again. Courageous black people integrating schools and lunch counters, behind yahoos wielding Confederate flags and weapons, looking like evil incarnate.
So when I see that flag, I don’t just see hate. I see my ancestors being played for fools. Over and over again. Doing violence against black people. Doing violence against their country. Just so rich white people could hold on to power. Sucker punched in the name of heritage. Over and over again.
“Here, Cletus, I got a job for you.” And poor dumb broke Cletus, who’s willing to carry the gun, hold the rope, swing the bat, but not smart enough to think about the implications of his actions, takes all the blame.
I’m not arguing that Cletus doesn’t deserve some of it. The hit man needs to do time, but so does the person who put out the contract. I’m just saying those Confederate mega-flags insult everyone, even the people who put them up. Bless their hearts, they’re too dumb to know it.
Motherless Child
Motherless Child
January 5, 2009
My mother died again over the holidays. Not physically this time. No death is ever permanent in our ancestor-haunted family. This one, a mental fall over a metaphorical cliff from which she will never recover, has been officially diagnosed by a man she calls “The Judge” as late-onset bipolar disorder and early-stage dementia.
By some folks’ testimony, Mother was normal on Thanksgiving: smoking, gossiping, cutting up, foregoing vegetables for sweet potato pie, and begging rides to the corner store for scratch-off lottery tickets. By Christmas, she was in the geriatric psych ward.
During “good” times, this is a marvelous garden, where she picks imaginary strawberries and tomatoes off vines that grow before her. It’s a circus (well, that much is true), with clowns and funny animals prancing about. It is home, where my grandmother, dead over a decade, tries on fanciful hats.
During “bad” times, she’s in jail, held prisoner against her will, forced to be a prostitute, beaten, and raped. I’m colluding with The Judge to keep her there because I’m a terrible daughter, always have been, she tells me over and over again. She bites and hits the nurses. She bangs against her geri-chair, a metal recliner with locking tray that keeps patients considered “flight risks” confined.
Part of me admires her volatile moments. Who among us – if we believed ourselves unjustly held prisoner – would not similarly rail against The Judge, bite his minions’ hands, and rattle the bars of our cages? “Attica! Attica!” I want to chant along with her. But this is my mother, not a movie.
If her last few years were filmed as montage, she would be shuffling toward that cliff on her walker, her body bent almost double and twisted with scoliosis. Granny and other dead relatives have been socializing with her for years. She supplements her retirement income with scratch-offs and cash advances from whatever credit cards come in the mail. She lives off sugar: diet drinks, cookies, and cereal. (Internet searches taught me that delusions, out-of-control financial judgment, and excessive sweet tooth are hallmarks of her disease.) She has a rock star’s drug resume: including Paxil and Xanax for mental health, and a variety of muscle relaxers and Oxycontin – “hillbilly heroin” – for the back pain. If the drugs didn’t do her in, her past would have caught up with her one day. My mother has already died many times before.
The first time happened when I was about ten. Ovarian cancer. I don’t remember much. People speaking in hushed tones around me. A mommy who went away and came back, much later, with the hair missing from all over her body. Then, a miracle! No one defeated ovarian cancer back then, but my mother was apparently tougher than anyone suspected. She went on to live through breast cancer, colon disease, high blood pressure, scoliosis, and multiple nervous breakdowns. Illness took some of the fight out of her. Still, she survived.
Only to face death disguised as a man. Grendel, high school friends and I called him, after the monster in Beowulf. Grendel did a lot of drinking, name-calling, hitting, and breaking. The worst time was when he busted down our front door, dead-bolt lock and all, and pointed a loaded pistol at my mother’s face. While I stood there, butcher knife twitching in my hand, weighing the pros and cons of stabbing Grendel, he clicked the gun slowly, multiple times before I realized it wasn’t loaded. He just wanted to prove a point. He was angry that my mom had borrowed money from the judge she worked for and accused her of sleeping with him.
Ironic how the people we call crazy often speak a twisted truth. There my mother sits, confined to her geri-chair, imprisoned by her past, searching for what bell hooks calls “homeplace.” Beside her, a helpless, hapless Beo-Woolf stands with pen in hand instead of butcher knife. I take notes furiously as The Judge fires terms at me like “Baker Act” and “state mental hospital” if Mother doesn’t stop biting and hitting. I, too, want to bit and hit, but whom? To what end?
January 5, 2009
My mother died again over the holidays. Not physically this time. No death is ever permanent in our ancestor-haunted family. This one, a mental fall over a metaphorical cliff from which she will never recover, has been officially diagnosed by a man she calls “The Judge” as late-onset bipolar disorder and early-stage dementia.
By some folks’ testimony, Mother was normal on Thanksgiving: smoking, gossiping, cutting up, foregoing vegetables for sweet potato pie, and begging rides to the corner store for scratch-off lottery tickets. By Christmas, she was in the geriatric psych ward.
During “good” times, this is a marvelous garden, where she picks imaginary strawberries and tomatoes off vines that grow before her. It’s a circus (well, that much is true), with clowns and funny animals prancing about. It is home, where my grandmother, dead over a decade, tries on fanciful hats.
During “bad” times, she’s in jail, held prisoner against her will, forced to be a prostitute, beaten, and raped. I’m colluding with The Judge to keep her there because I’m a terrible daughter, always have been, she tells me over and over again. She bites and hits the nurses. She bangs against her geri-chair, a metal recliner with locking tray that keeps patients considered “flight risks” confined.
Part of me admires her volatile moments. Who among us – if we believed ourselves unjustly held prisoner – would not similarly rail against The Judge, bite his minions’ hands, and rattle the bars of our cages? “Attica! Attica!” I want to chant along with her. But this is my mother, not a movie.
If her last few years were filmed as montage, she would be shuffling toward that cliff on her walker, her body bent almost double and twisted with scoliosis. Granny and other dead relatives have been socializing with her for years. She supplements her retirement income with scratch-offs and cash advances from whatever credit cards come in the mail. She lives off sugar: diet drinks, cookies, and cereal. (Internet searches taught me that delusions, out-of-control financial judgment, and excessive sweet tooth are hallmarks of her disease.) She has a rock star’s drug resume: including Paxil and Xanax for mental health, and a variety of muscle relaxers and Oxycontin – “hillbilly heroin” – for the back pain. If the drugs didn’t do her in, her past would have caught up with her one day. My mother has already died many times before.
The first time happened when I was about ten. Ovarian cancer. I don’t remember much. People speaking in hushed tones around me. A mommy who went away and came back, much later, with the hair missing from all over her body. Then, a miracle! No one defeated ovarian cancer back then, but my mother was apparently tougher than anyone suspected. She went on to live through breast cancer, colon disease, high blood pressure, scoliosis, and multiple nervous breakdowns. Illness took some of the fight out of her. Still, she survived.
Only to face death disguised as a man. Grendel, high school friends and I called him, after the monster in Beowulf. Grendel did a lot of drinking, name-calling, hitting, and breaking. The worst time was when he busted down our front door, dead-bolt lock and all, and pointed a loaded pistol at my mother’s face. While I stood there, butcher knife twitching in my hand, weighing the pros and cons of stabbing Grendel, he clicked the gun slowly, multiple times before I realized it wasn’t loaded. He just wanted to prove a point. He was angry that my mom had borrowed money from the judge she worked for and accused her of sleeping with him.
Ironic how the people we call crazy often speak a twisted truth. There my mother sits, confined to her geri-chair, imprisoned by her past, searching for what bell hooks calls “homeplace.” Beside her, a helpless, hapless Beo-Woolf stands with pen in hand instead of butcher knife. I take notes furiously as The Judge fires terms at me like “Baker Act” and “state mental hospital” if Mother doesn’t stop biting and hitting. I, too, want to bit and hit, but whom? To what end?
Friday, August 22, 2008
Taking A Blog Break
Freddie apologizes profusely for her blog break. She has a monkey wrenching project in the works that needs her full attention. Look for her after the winter solstice 2008!
Friday, August 1, 2008
¡Lo Hicemos! A Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, six beautiful princesses ruled a magical kingdom. They were some real tyrant-ass bitches. Vain about their looks, and paranoid about their power. Their names were Snow White, Jasmine, Cinderella, Belle, Aurora, and Ariel.
They used to rule separate kingdoms but one day got the idea of consolidating their power into one continuum, known as Princess, in order to rule the world. Merging their identities into one was not really a problem since they did not have fully articulated selves to begin with. To paraphrase Courtney Love, whom the Princess Continuum has classified among the Axis of Evil: they look the same, they act the same, they even fuck the same.
To wit: all Princesses have the same basic fairy tale story. Once upon a time, a beautiful girl was beset in some form or another (household drudgery, poison apple, various and sundry spells) by ugliness personified – often in the form of an older woman (stepmother, stepsister, witch, etc.) – who prevented her in some way from hooking up with the man of her dreams. Eventually, however, the girl’s beauty triumphed. She and the man were said to have lived happily ever after in hetero-normative pair-bonded bliss. The moral of the story, girls: don’t be smart, be pretty, and you too can catch a prince.
And yet: these men have not been heard from again since the formation of the Princess Continuum. But that does not mean the Magic Kingdom under Princess domination is some kind of feminist utopia. The Princess has instituted groupthink, groupspeak, and groupdress for girls. Mandatory pinks and purples, big hair and pastel eye shadow, sparkly shoes and tiaras, love of cupcakes and fear of dirt. All girls between the ages of four and six must go to Princess school, learn Princess history, play Princess games, sing Princess songs with an optional My Pretty Pony repertoire. At the Continuum’s formation, the Princess decided that in the Magic Kingdom, girls will rule and boys, well, they just drool. (Until they are called upon to be Princes and engage in the happily ever after rituals.) The problem is that the Princess allows only one definition of girl, and that definition is Princess.
Back to the issue of paranoia and the Axis of Evil thing. The Princess would not have to institute rules if it did not fear rule breakers. Way out on the Magic Kingdom’s margins lived a trio of girls who decided not to join the Princess Continuum. Tough, smart, dark-skinned girls who lived off their wits and thought there might be more to life than hooking up with some guy. Their names were Mulan, Pocahantas, and Dora.
It was Mulan who had the idea first, for she was a Warrior at heart. Pocahantas was happy just hanging out in the Everglades with the Seminoles. She knew the Princess would never go that far south – it was full of alligators, panthers, and snakes. Oh my!
“Pocahantas! Get off your ass and stop singing that damn song about painting with the colors of the wind!” Mulan yelled, banging on the side of her friend’s chickee one day. “It sounds like the Princess has gotten to you already.”
Pocahantas agreed that the Princess Continuum had grabbed too many girls and eaten up too much land. And why was no one asking questions about water in the Magic Kingdom? Its many lakes were dyed in Easter Egg blues.
“You’re absolutely right, Mulan. Those are not the colors of the wind! We must fight! We have to call Dora!” The two marched forth to their friend’s home.
“Wake up Shawtie!” Mulan and Pocahantas cried when they reached their friend’s hacienda. “We need the backpack!”
Dora agreed that the Princess Continuum had grabbed too many girls and eaten up too much land. And why was no one asking questions about the lack of real animals in the Magic Kingdom? There was only a scary presence of people in animal suits.
“You’re absolutely right, Mulan and Pocahantas. We must figure out how to get there and bring down the Princess Continuum. Let’s see what’s in the backpack! Look! A GPS and some weapons of mass destruction!”
So the three tough, smart, dark-skinned girls who lived off their wits and thought there might be more to life than hooking up with some guy divided up the weapons of mass destruction equally among themselves because they believed in the value of sharing. Then they turned over the GPS duties to Dora because she was the one with the best Explorer skills, and they set off for the Magic Kingdom.
The non-abridged version of this fairy tale details their brave exploits. Suffice to say, they made it to the Magic Kingdom safe and sound only to find that they did not have the ticket price to get in. They were momentarily flummoxed until Dora had an idea.
“Let’s look in the backpack!” she said. And sure enough, she found inside the $150 plus tax that they needed for entry.
“Yay!” all the brave girls cried, but soon their happiness dissolved into tears, for they saw that Dora’s backpack would be searched. The Princess Continuum’s security would find their weapons of mass destruction! What to do?
They were momentarily flummoxed until Mulan and Pocahantas simultaneously had an idea. They were older than Dora and knew about tampons.
“We shall hide them in our orifices!” they whispered, and indeed they did, backpack included. The girls walked in with their motives, and their weapons, undetected.
“Yay!” the brave girls cried, dancing about and squealing in high-pitched voices in order to look like all the girls who visit the Magic Kingdom. Now it was time to steal upon the castle.
The non-abridged version of this fairy tale details their brave exploits. Suffice to say, they made it to the castle safely, spirited over the moat with a rope-bridge from Dora’s backpack (removed carefully and sanitarily from Mulan’s orifices), and dynamited open the door (with ordnance removed carefully and sanitarily from the orifice of Pocahantas).
“Ka-Pow!” went the dynamite. When all was said and done, the two girl teams confronted each other, with the Princess Continuum headed up by Jasmine.
“What the fuck?” said Jasmine. The Princess Continuum stood behind her, either smiling or baring their teeth – with Princesses, especially the blonde ones, it’s sometimes hard to tell.
“What the fuck?” said Mulan and Pocahantas. Dora was too young to say “fuck,” so she hung back.
“How’d a dark-skinned girl get to be a Princess?” Mulan asked.
“They let in a Muslim too?” Pocahantas wanted to know.
“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” Jasmine said in a robot-like voice.
Dora sensed the presence of real evil. Not the devil kind of evil, but the banal kind the Hannah Arendt described. She held her backpack close and tiptoed behind the ruins of the castle door. She did not see everything that went on, but she heard the scuffling, biting, scratching, hair-pulling, and meowing. Her brave warrior friends Mulan and Pocahantas were losing the battle!
Dora opened her backpack. All the weapons of mass destruction were inside! What to do? She could blow up the Magic Kingdom, but everyone would die. Even her friends! Even Dora herself!
But wait? What was that? Dora heard a small voice, coming from a spider web by what was left of the door. “Help me!” it cried. It had wings and a human head. Was it a fly? A person? No! It was a fairy! Tinkerbell! Dora lifted her tiny new friend from the wreckage.
“I thought you were one of them,” she asked.
“No,” Tinkerbell said. “I wasn’t good enough for their Princess mythology, descending from both fairy and commoner lineage. You can look up my history on Wikipedia. Let’s bring ‘em down!”
Dora looked over to where the battle continued. Her brave warrior friends lay at the bottom of a Princess pile, being slowly transmogrified into plastic. There was no choice. She left her backpack with its weapons of mass destruction in the corner, and Tinkerbell lifted her up into the air. After they rose above the castle, the fairy sprinkled her pixie dust onto the backpack, making it explode into the biggest fireworks display that the Magic Kingdom’s visitors had ever seen. All of Florida’s I-4 corridor cheered, not realizing what was going on.
And yet: the Princess Continuum was not destroyed, for it was indeed made of ultra-durable plastic that endures both in reality and in the hearts and minds of girls everywhere. Any girl between the age of four and six is liable to fall victim to its groupthink, groupspeak, and groupdress. What Jasmine said to Mulan and Pocahantas is partially true. Resistance is somewhat futile, and you may indeed be assimilated. Poor Mulan and Pocahantas – once brave warriors – are now Princesses. And a new black girl, Tiana, is slated for assimilation in 2009. You can look all this up on Wikipedia.
The non-abridged version of this fairy tale could continue. Suffice to say, there is still hope in the form of Dora and even little Tinkerbell. The smart girls and the ones who’ll never quite fit the mold. The ones who always seem, paraphrasing Audre Lorde – another member of the Princess’s Axis of Evil – to have the right tool in their backpack for bringing down the master’s house. And the ones who wind up working within the system to subvert it in a different way, with a bit of poison pixie dust perhaps.
Parents, teach your children. Girls, keep your backpacks ready. Boys, stop drooling so much.
They used to rule separate kingdoms but one day got the idea of consolidating their power into one continuum, known as Princess, in order to rule the world. Merging their identities into one was not really a problem since they did not have fully articulated selves to begin with. To paraphrase Courtney Love, whom the Princess Continuum has classified among the Axis of Evil: they look the same, they act the same, they even fuck the same.
To wit: all Princesses have the same basic fairy tale story. Once upon a time, a beautiful girl was beset in some form or another (household drudgery, poison apple, various and sundry spells) by ugliness personified – often in the form of an older woman (stepmother, stepsister, witch, etc.) – who prevented her in some way from hooking up with the man of her dreams. Eventually, however, the girl’s beauty triumphed. She and the man were said to have lived happily ever after in hetero-normative pair-bonded bliss. The moral of the story, girls: don’t be smart, be pretty, and you too can catch a prince.
And yet: these men have not been heard from again since the formation of the Princess Continuum. But that does not mean the Magic Kingdom under Princess domination is some kind of feminist utopia. The Princess has instituted groupthink, groupspeak, and groupdress for girls. Mandatory pinks and purples, big hair and pastel eye shadow, sparkly shoes and tiaras, love of cupcakes and fear of dirt. All girls between the ages of four and six must go to Princess school, learn Princess history, play Princess games, sing Princess songs with an optional My Pretty Pony repertoire. At the Continuum’s formation, the Princess decided that in the Magic Kingdom, girls will rule and boys, well, they just drool. (Until they are called upon to be Princes and engage in the happily ever after rituals.) The problem is that the Princess allows only one definition of girl, and that definition is Princess.
Back to the issue of paranoia and the Axis of Evil thing. The Princess would not have to institute rules if it did not fear rule breakers. Way out on the Magic Kingdom’s margins lived a trio of girls who decided not to join the Princess Continuum. Tough, smart, dark-skinned girls who lived off their wits and thought there might be more to life than hooking up with some guy. Their names were Mulan, Pocahantas, and Dora.
It was Mulan who had the idea first, for she was a Warrior at heart. Pocahantas was happy just hanging out in the Everglades with the Seminoles. She knew the Princess would never go that far south – it was full of alligators, panthers, and snakes. Oh my!
“Pocahantas! Get off your ass and stop singing that damn song about painting with the colors of the wind!” Mulan yelled, banging on the side of her friend’s chickee one day. “It sounds like the Princess has gotten to you already.”
Pocahantas agreed that the Princess Continuum had grabbed too many girls and eaten up too much land. And why was no one asking questions about water in the Magic Kingdom? Its many lakes were dyed in Easter Egg blues.
“You’re absolutely right, Mulan. Those are not the colors of the wind! We must fight! We have to call Dora!” The two marched forth to their friend’s home.
“Wake up Shawtie!” Mulan and Pocahantas cried when they reached their friend’s hacienda. “We need the backpack!”
Dora agreed that the Princess Continuum had grabbed too many girls and eaten up too much land. And why was no one asking questions about the lack of real animals in the Magic Kingdom? There was only a scary presence of people in animal suits.
“You’re absolutely right, Mulan and Pocahantas. We must figure out how to get there and bring down the Princess Continuum. Let’s see what’s in the backpack! Look! A GPS and some weapons of mass destruction!”
So the three tough, smart, dark-skinned girls who lived off their wits and thought there might be more to life than hooking up with some guy divided up the weapons of mass destruction equally among themselves because they believed in the value of sharing. Then they turned over the GPS duties to Dora because she was the one with the best Explorer skills, and they set off for the Magic Kingdom.
The non-abridged version of this fairy tale details their brave exploits. Suffice to say, they made it to the Magic Kingdom safe and sound only to find that they did not have the ticket price to get in. They were momentarily flummoxed until Dora had an idea.
“Let’s look in the backpack!” she said. And sure enough, she found inside the $150 plus tax that they needed for entry.
“Yay!” all the brave girls cried, but soon their happiness dissolved into tears, for they saw that Dora’s backpack would be searched. The Princess Continuum’s security would find their weapons of mass destruction! What to do?
They were momentarily flummoxed until Mulan and Pocahantas simultaneously had an idea. They were older than Dora and knew about tampons.
“We shall hide them in our orifices!” they whispered, and indeed they did, backpack included. The girls walked in with their motives, and their weapons, undetected.
“Yay!” the brave girls cried, dancing about and squealing in high-pitched voices in order to look like all the girls who visit the Magic Kingdom. Now it was time to steal upon the castle.
The non-abridged version of this fairy tale details their brave exploits. Suffice to say, they made it to the castle safely, spirited over the moat with a rope-bridge from Dora’s backpack (removed carefully and sanitarily from Mulan’s orifices), and dynamited open the door (with ordnance removed carefully and sanitarily from the orifice of Pocahantas).
“Ka-Pow!” went the dynamite. When all was said and done, the two girl teams confronted each other, with the Princess Continuum headed up by Jasmine.
“What the fuck?” said Jasmine. The Princess Continuum stood behind her, either smiling or baring their teeth – with Princesses, especially the blonde ones, it’s sometimes hard to tell.
“What the fuck?” said Mulan and Pocahantas. Dora was too young to say “fuck,” so she hung back.
“How’d a dark-skinned girl get to be a Princess?” Mulan asked.
“They let in a Muslim too?” Pocahantas wanted to know.
“Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” Jasmine said in a robot-like voice.
Dora sensed the presence of real evil. Not the devil kind of evil, but the banal kind the Hannah Arendt described. She held her backpack close and tiptoed behind the ruins of the castle door. She did not see everything that went on, but she heard the scuffling, biting, scratching, hair-pulling, and meowing. Her brave warrior friends Mulan and Pocahantas were losing the battle!
Dora opened her backpack. All the weapons of mass destruction were inside! What to do? She could blow up the Magic Kingdom, but everyone would die. Even her friends! Even Dora herself!
But wait? What was that? Dora heard a small voice, coming from a spider web by what was left of the door. “Help me!” it cried. It had wings and a human head. Was it a fly? A person? No! It was a fairy! Tinkerbell! Dora lifted her tiny new friend from the wreckage.
“I thought you were one of them,” she asked.
“No,” Tinkerbell said. “I wasn’t good enough for their Princess mythology, descending from both fairy and commoner lineage. You can look up my history on Wikipedia. Let’s bring ‘em down!”
Dora looked over to where the battle continued. Her brave warrior friends lay at the bottom of a Princess pile, being slowly transmogrified into plastic. There was no choice. She left her backpack with its weapons of mass destruction in the corner, and Tinkerbell lifted her up into the air. After they rose above the castle, the fairy sprinkled her pixie dust onto the backpack, making it explode into the biggest fireworks display that the Magic Kingdom’s visitors had ever seen. All of Florida’s I-4 corridor cheered, not realizing what was going on.
And yet: the Princess Continuum was not destroyed, for it was indeed made of ultra-durable plastic that endures both in reality and in the hearts and minds of girls everywhere. Any girl between the age of four and six is liable to fall victim to its groupthink, groupspeak, and groupdress. What Jasmine said to Mulan and Pocahantas is partially true. Resistance is somewhat futile, and you may indeed be assimilated. Poor Mulan and Pocahantas – once brave warriors – are now Princesses. And a new black girl, Tiana, is slated for assimilation in 2009. You can look all this up on Wikipedia.
The non-abridged version of this fairy tale could continue. Suffice to say, there is still hope in the form of Dora and even little Tinkerbell. The smart girls and the ones who’ll never quite fit the mold. The ones who always seem, paraphrasing Audre Lorde – another member of the Princess’s Axis of Evil – to have the right tool in their backpack for bringing down the master’s house. And the ones who wind up working within the system to subvert it in a different way, with a bit of poison pixie dust perhaps.
Parents, teach your children. Girls, keep your backpacks ready. Boys, stop drooling so much.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
