Black Milk

stores at dawn with thermoses in our hands, and dash inside the second the doors open and start grabbing sale items before anyone else. We can decorate our home from top to bottom with scented candles and flowers of matching colors. Trust me, you’ll love it. Have you ever set a beautiful dinner table? Do you know how gratifying it is when your family and friends commend your culinary skills?”

Before I find the chance to give her an obvious answer, we hear a sudden noise at the door. I open it slightly and peek out.

To my surprise, there is a line in front of the restroom. And at the very front stands Milady Ambitious Chekhovian in her dark green general’s uniform. Tapping her military boots and fidgeting nervously, she appears to be in mighty need of going to the toilet.

A shadow of panic crosses Mama Rice Pudding’s face. “Oh, no! Not that monster!”

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Please don’t tell them I am here. They’ll tear me to shreds, those witches!”

She is right. Milady Ambitious Chekhovian with her doggedness, Miss Highbrowed Cynic with her pessimism, Little Miss Practical with her intolerance of anything that takes longer than ten minutes to prepare, would tear Mama Rice Pudding apart. I need to protect her from her sisters.

“Don’t worry, you are safe with me. I won’t whisper a word.”

Smiling warmly she reaches for my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. Her fingers are not manicured and well groomed like Little Miss Practical’s; they aren’t decked with rings like Milady Ambitious Chekhovian’s or chewed up like Miss Highbrowed Cynic’s. They are rough from hard work, pink and plump. I am bewildered by the affection I feel for her. If she is my motherly side, isn’t it weird that I feel the need to mother her?

“Wait a minute, how are you going to get into America?” I ask. “Do you have a visa?”

“I don’t need a visa,” she says. “They don’t even search finger-women like me at airports.”

I can see why. It’d be hard to find a terrorist streak in her.

“I’m not worried about the external world,” she says. “You just keep that coven of finger-women away from me and I’ll be just fine.”

“Okay.”

“Please promise me that you will not let them ever crush me again.”

As I ponder how to skirt this demand and how to get her out of this restroom without the other Thumbelinas seeing her, the plane experiences turbulence. The pilot announces that everyone must return to their seats and fasten their seat belts.

A few seconds later, I open the door. The line has dispersed and I can see that Milady Ambitious Chekhovian is already in her seat.

“The coast is clear now,” I say to Mama Rice Pudding. “You can go out.”

“I will,” she says with a new edge to her voice. “But you haven’t given me your promise yet.”

It is one of those moments when I know I should be totally honest and tell the truth, but for the sake of courtesy or out of pure cowardice, I simply can’t. Instead, I tell her what she wants to hear, even though I know deep down inside that I can’t keep that promise.

“I swear I will not let the other finger-women silence you.”

A huge smile lights up her face. “Thanks. I know I can trust you.”

“By the way, who is this other chick you were talking about?” I hear myself asking.

“You will meet her when the time is ripe.”

“But why is she hiding?”

“She is not hiding. None of us is. It’s you who doesn’t acknowledge our presence. For years, you’ve given all your attention to Little Miss Practical, Miss Highbrowed Cynic, Milady Ambitious Chekhovian and Dame Dervish.”

“I understand,” I say, although I am not sure I do.

“Okay, we need to go now.”

“Well, it was really nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” she says, blushing. “I guess I will see you around.”

Still smiling, she slips out the door. I stay in the restroom a few more seconds, slightly shaking-not knowing whether it’s due to the turbulence or to the confusion in my mind.

It dawns upon me that I don’t know myself very well. Throughout my adult life, I’ve favored certain voices inside me at the expense of others. How many inner voices are there that I have yet to meet?

I go back to my seat.

Until the plane touches down in New York, this is all I think about.

A Festive Banquet

Simone de Beauvoir, even more than fifty years after her death, remains a diva in the history of the feminist movement. At her funeral in 1956, thousands of mourners heard an unforgettable phrase: “Women, you owe her everything”-a phrase that says a lot about her charisma and legendary heritage. You may not agree with everything she said, you may not even like her personality, but you cannot turn a blind eye to her work or intellectual legacy.

“One is not born a woman, but becomes one,” she stated famously. For centuries girls were taught that their most important roles in life were sexuality, childbearing and motherhood. Armed with the small task of ensuring the continuation of the human race, young women were rarely, if ever, encouraged to pursue their studies and make more of their talents. In the France of the 1940s, motherhood was almost a religious duty, unquestionable and sacrosanct. Simone de Beauvoir knew what she was talking about, being raised by a staunch Catholic mother.

Waging a passionate war against bourgeois norms, she questioned the institutions of marriage and motherhood at great length. She said many women longed to rediscover themselves in their children-a “psychological need” she clearly did not share. She and Sartre were a committed but free couple-independent, self-reliant and sufficient for each other. Bourgeois marital life was full of lies, deceptions and unrealistic pledges of fidelity. Determined not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, they had made a pact: They would tell each other everything. They were both open to the idea of “experiencing contingent love affairs.” Besides, she believed that maternity was incompatible with the life she had chosen as a writer and intellectual. She needed time, concentration and freedom to pursue her ideals.

In The Second Sex, de Beauvoir reiterates Hegel’s famous dictum that the birth of children often goes hand in hand with the death of parents. Yet, despite her strong feelings on marriage and motherhood, de Beauvoir’s writings bear traces of another truth underneath: that if Sartre had wanted to have children, in her desire to please him she could have become a mother. She adored him. To her the sun of a new society rose from the depths of his eyes. He was the only man she respected more than she desired-the man whose time, work and ideas she had had to share with hundreds of other people, some of whom were women far more beautiful and ambitious than she was. And yet she knew how special she was in his eyes. Since the day their paths intersected in 1929 when they were both students at the Ecole Normale Superieure, he had been many things to her-a comrade, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a tutor, a best friend and an impossible dream.

One should not be fooled by the terms of endearment she uses in her letters to him: “my little man,” or “my dear little being.” He was a giant to her-a man she addressed with the formal vous all the time. If he had wanted to start a family, she would have probably gone ahead, even though she clearly thought that motherhood was not meant for the likes of her. Though she was hurt by Sartre’s infidelities, she continued to defend the pact they had made. Simone de Beauvoir was a woman of impeccable analyses and unexpected conflicts.

If the broader society was not ready to address motherhood in a critical light, the intellectual circles-by definition progressive and open-minded-were just as unprepared, not to mention disproportionately male. There was a widespread silence in the world of books when it came to issues such as premenstrual syndrome, postpartum depression or menopause. Likewise, hardly anyone wrote about the Bermuda triangle of “ideal wife-diligent housekeeper-selfless mother” whereby so many women’s creative talents disappeared into the vortex. In a milieu