The Female Man

And She

Shall stand (concave)

“Janet, he’s a Man!” I yelled. She went into the third variation, where the melody liquefies itself into its own adornments, very nice and quite improper:

I know (up)

That my redee (a high point, this one)

mer

Li-i-veth (up up up)

And She

Shall stand (hopefully)

And She shall stand (higher)

Upon the la-a-a-a-atter da-a-a-y

(ruffle fiddle drip)

O-on Earth (settling)

“JANET!” But of course she doesn’t listen.

II

Whileawayans like big asses, so I am glad to report there was nothing of that kind in the family she moved in with. Father, mother, teenage daughter, and family dog were all delighted to be famous. Daughter was an honor student in the local high school. When Janet got settled I drifted into the attic; my spirit seized possession of the old four-poster bed stored next to the chimney, near the fur coats and the shopping bag full of dolls; and slowly, slowly, I infected the whole house.

III

Laura Rose Wilding of Anytown, U.S.A.

She has a black poodle who whines under the trees in the back yard and bares his teeth as he rolls over and over in the dead leaves. She’s reading the Christian Existentialists for a course in school. She crosses the October weather, glowing with health, to shake hands clumsily with Miss Evason. She’s pathologically shy. She puts one hand in the pocket of her jeans, luminously, the way well-beloved or much-studied people do, tugging at the zipper of her man’s leather jacket with the other hand. She has short sandy hair and freckles. Says over and over to herself Non Sum, Non Sum, which means either I don’t exist or I’m not that , according to how you feel it; this is what Martin Luther is supposed to have said during his fit in the monastery choir. “Can I go now?”

IV

The black poodle, Samuel, whined and scurried across the porch, then barked hysterically, defending the house against God-knows-what.

“At least she’s White,” they all said.

V

Janet, in her black-and-white tweeds with the fox collar like a movie star’s, gave a speech to the local women’s club. She didn’t say much. Someone gave her chrysanthemums which she held upside-down like a baseball bat. A professor from the local college spoke of other cultures. A whole room was full of offerings brought by the club—brownies, fudge cake, sour cream cake, honey buns, pumpkin pie—not to be eaten, of course, only looked at, but they did eat it finally because somebody has to or it isn’t real. “Hully gee, Mildred, you waxed the floor!” and she faints with happiness. Laur, who is reading psychology for the Existentialists (I said that, didn’t I?), serves coffee to the club in the too-big man’s shirt they can’t ever get her out of, no matter what they do, and her ancient, shape less jeans. Swaddling graveclothes. She’s a bright girl. She learned in her thirteenth year that you can get old films of Mae West or Marlene Dietrich (who is a Vulcan; look at the eyebrows) after midnight on UHF if you know where to look, at fourteen that pot helps, at fifteen that reading’s even better. She learned, wearing her rimless glasses, that the world is full of intelligent, attractive, talented women who manage to combine careers with their primary responsibilities as wives and mothers and whose husbands beat them. She’s put a gold circle pin on her shirt as a concession to club day. She loves her father and once is enough. Everyone knows that much as women want to be scientists and engineers, they want foremost to be womanly companions to men (what?) and caretakers of childhood; everyone knows that a large part of a woman’s identity inheres in the style of her attractiveness. Laur is daydreaming. She looks straight before her, blushes, smiles, and doesn’t see a thing. After the party she’ll march stiff-legged out of the room and up to her bedroom; sitting tailor-fashion on her bed, she’ll read Engels on the family and make in the margin her neat, concise, perfectly written notes. She has shelves and shelves of such annotated works. Not for her “How true!!!!” or “oiseaux = birds.” She’s surrounded by mermaids, fish, sea-plants, wandering fronds. Drifting on the affective currents of the room are those strange social artifacts half dissolved in nature and mystery: some pretty girls . Laur is daydreaming that she’s Genghis Khan.

VI

A beautiful chick who swims naked and whose breasts float on the water like flowers, a chick in a rain-tight shirt who says she balls with her friends but doesn’t get uptight about it, that’s the real thing.

VII

And I like Anytown; I like going out on the porch at night to look at the lights of the town: fireflies in the blue gloaming, across the valley, up the hill, white homes where children played and rested, where wives made potato salad, home from a day in the autumn leaves chasing sticks with the family dog, families in the firelight, thousands upon thousands of identical, cozy days.

“Do you like it here?” asked Janet over dessert, never thinking that she might be lied to.

“Huh?” said Laur.

“Our guest wants to know if you like living here,” said Mrs. Wilding.

“Yes,” said Laur.