Valerie

by Sara Stridsberg

  ALLIGATOR REEF, FLORIDA, MARCH 1951

  THE BEACHES, THE FLAMINGO PARK

  At Alligator Reef the skies have a sparkling, healing light that gets into your dresses and handbags and hair. Helicopters circle above the beach and all the time you keep close to the pink lifeguard tower below the flamingo park. Dorothy builds a night shelter under the tower every evening when darkness falls and the beach empties of bathers and the starry sky sinks slowly down over you like a dark blanket.

  The bruises on Dorothy’s arms fade and she is far out in the waves; as she dips under, she longs to be transfigured by the ocean. When she comes back to the shore she is covered in freckles and happy. The white dress has been mended and is lying at the water’s edge, being bleached. There is sand in your sandwiches and Dorothy’s chief occupation is directing her eyes like radar beams scanning for attractive strangers and yours is eavesdropping on picnics on the blankets nearby, when you are not hunting for crocodiles and sharks and giant snakes.

  Dorothy is her most beautiful on the beach and your books crunch with sand and curl with salt water when Dorothy leaves them at the edge of the sea. Sand blows in your eyes and your hair is matted with salt. But the only sharks you find have polo shirts and black cars and glide slowly down the promenade. Dorothy looks at you with fire in her eyes.

  DOROTHY: Tell me a story.

  VALERIE: I’m reading.

  DOROTHY: Tell me a story about Ventor, Valerie.

  VALERIE: If you take your sunglasses off, I’ll tell you a story. You look like a giant fly in those glasses.

  DOROTHY (lays her head on your lap, the umbrellas rattle in the wind): You know what I think about flies, darling.

  VALERIE: Once upon a time there was a filthy little hole full of dickheads, gangsters and crooks and small-town whores with small-town pimps. And along came a little girl called Dorothy. And another little girl called Valerie. The sun was always shining and they laughed and smoked cigarettes. Dorothy worked with her fox boas. Valerie wrote her books. The men in Ventor were a mob of hairy apes who hung out at bars and took care of their egos and their fists and their tiny penises. Their tiny, tiny pet penises. There was a desert and a little house and a bathtub. The desert was full of girls. Or rather, they wished the desert were full of girls. There was Dorothy and Valerie …

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE (pulls her hand through Dorothy’s hair): Are you asleep?

  DOROTHY: I’m listening.

  VALERIE: You’ve got blood in your hair again.

  DOROTHY: I’m asleep.

  The ocean thunders around you, words drown in the waves and the blinding white light shifts into something softer. The sky and the sand turn to muted pink and the beach will soon be empty of bathers again. Dorothy opens her eyes.

  DOROTHY: Then what?

  VALERIE: Then all the villains disappear. Someone removes their brains and nervous systems and their penises. Dorothy and Valerie and all the girls and the foxes and the books and the typewriters go to Alligator Reef. And they live happily ever after. They never go back.

  DOROTHY: I love you, Valerie. I love you so much my heart is bursting.

  VALERIE: And Moran?

  DOROTHY (her empty gaze rests on the horizon): I’ll never go back to him.

  VALERIE: Okay.

  DOROTHY: I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll never go back.

  VALERIE: You don’t have a mother, Dorothy. You can’t swear on something you don’t have.

  Beneath the glare of the sun, beneath the cries of looping gulls, you walk along the beaches, seeking pieces of glass and shells while Dorothy is out for a drive in one of her many lunatic dresses. Outside the flamingo park there is a silken boy, selling photographs of sharks. You get a picture of a dead tiger shark and a Polaroid of his sandy shin. The stones in the sand look like birthmarks and there are new kinds of clouds over the ocean every day. One morning when you wake up there is a package on the sand.

  VALERIE: What is it?

  DOROTHY: Open it and see.

  VALERIE: For me?

  DOROTHY: Open it now. Or else I will.

  VALERIE: What is this?

  DOROTHY: A ribbon for the typewriter.

  VALERIE: What typewriter?

  DOROTHY: I’m going to give you a typewriter.

  VALERIE: When?

  DOROTHY: As soon as I can afford it. Rich men in rich cars.

  VALERIE: I don’t want a typewriter from any rich cars.

  DOROTHY: But I’ve nurtured a little author at my freckled bosom. And for that I have to take some responsibility.

  Dorothy has never read a proper book. She reads magazines and cake recipes in cookbooks, though she does not like baking and is useless at any kind of cooking. She celebrates another birthday at Alligator Reef. It could have been a black day, but her lies about her age get wilder all the time. Officially she is just under thirty and at every birthday it goes down. On her birthday by the ocean you go to a bookshop where Dorothy is going to choose a birthday book. The pale shadows of palm trees and clouds pursue you along the promenade like huge, unsettled animals. The salt-filled winds turn at the beach’s end and on their way back they are hotter and saltier, and it has to be something simple, Dorothy says, like a film, like a lipstick, like Marilyn.

  The book is thick and pink and Dorothy bears it like a jewel across the sea, the promenade, and the hotel complex. Then she lies for days on end on the beach looking through it, but she does not read. The loud ocean sounds are soporific and the Atlantic bewitches her, the ocean a deep blue solace. She moves restlessly on the sand, her hand searching in her handbag despairingly and time after time she empties it onto the sand to go through her belongings.

  DOROTHY: What are you reading?

  VALERIE: I don’t know. Mine didn’t have a dust jacket.

  DOROTHY: I’m going to take my book to the bar for a while. It might be easier to read there.

  VALERIE (with her eyes on the book): Do that, Dorothy.

  DOROTHY: I’m not going to the phone booth today. I’ve got nothing to say to him. We’re not going back. Period.

  VALERIE: You’ve sworn on your breasts.

  DOROTHY (squints at her neckline): I know.

  VALERIE: All or nothing.

  DOROTHY (her eyes and eyelashes twitching in the sun): All. I choose all. I mean I choose you. Period. Absolute period. The end of the book. I’m going to the bar now. I like this book. I think this whole books thing is interesting, truly important. Even if it doesn’t seem like it. Maybe it doesn’t look as though I’m interested in books, but I am. I’m going to concentrate. Everything isn’t what it seems. Valerie … Valerie?

  VALERIE: I know, Dolly. Go. I’m reading.

  You keep on reading your seawater-warped books and Dorothy keeps on vanishing behind her sunglasses, keeps on forgetting. Her cigarettes always burn out on the sand as she falls asleep, her dreams invaded by black underwater trees and black luminescence, constantly descending. When she falls asleep on the beaches of Alligator Reef she dreams about someone no longer wanting to be a mother, and she wakes every time with suffocating heart and salty wet globs in her mouth. Her hand moves on the sand and in her dream and the underwater world there is no shriveled foal, knowing it is going to die, but persisting, still a sticky mucilage around its mother, constantly letting itself be kicked away, for the warm taste of her milk like a watermark on its fur, its mouth filled with black ants. She picks up her book and tries to read, but she is robbed of concentration by the ocean, and still more by her pocket mirror, nail file, and cigarette, and most of all by her way of looking furtively over your shoulder at your book.

  DOROTHY: You just read and read. You must be very well informed by now.

  VALERIE: Dorothy, it’s only a novel.

  DOROTHY: I wish I could concentrate like you. I’m always thinking about something else. The letters start swimming on the page. My heart beats weirdly somehow in my chest.

  VALERIE: You’ll never go back to
him?

  DOROTHY: Never.

  VALERIE: Sure?

  DOROTHY: I swear on my mother’s …

  VALERIE: You have no mother, Dorothy. She abandoned you in the desert.

  DOROTHY: I promise, darling. I’m not a stupid cow.

  VALERIE (laughs and strokes Dorothy’s hair): Yes, you are.

  DOROTHY: Yes, I am. But I swear on my hair and my breasts and my legs.

  VALERIE: I’m not going back to him.

  DOROTHY (a small, smiling sun): Nor me. Wherever you go, I’ll go too.

  Her hair blows into her eyes all the time. Soon she is over at the bar again. The wind does not subside and there are reports on the news of typhoons and hurricanes and shark attacks. At night Dorothy sits glued to the television sets in the beach bars. The wind wrecks her hairdo and her good intentions; the sand, salt, and sun both soothe and excite and in the end the ocean will have ruined all her makeup.

  STATE SUPREME COURT, NEW YORK, JUNE 13, 1968

  MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., ASSASSINATED IN MEMPHIS, ROBERT KENNEDY ASSASSINATED IN LOS ANGELES

  The State of New York and Thomas Dickens give notice of a hearing in the case of New York State vs. Valerie Solanas. You are traveling across New York’s suburbs in a police car, a beautiful drive, the sky showing no self-respect and convulsing with bloodstained clouds and you offer to pay for the ride, you are used to paying for yourself, ten for a fuck five for a blow job two for a hand job. But it is New York State paying for the sightseeing tour this time, thank you most humbly, mister, a fantastic return trip to hell.

  STATE SUPREME COURT: Description of the offense: The plaintiff Andy Warhol is reported to have implored on his knees, No, no, Valerie! Don’t do it! Please, Valerie. The defendant also shot Mr. Warhol’s colleague Paul Morrissey. After several appeals by witness Viva Ronaldo, Solanas left the premises in the elevator without a word. Several hours later she handed herself in to William Schmalix, a traffic officer on Fifth Avenue. Andy Warhol is currently on an artificial respirator in the Columbus–Mother Cabrini Hospital. It is as yet unclear whether he will regain consciousness, and if so, how, and in what condition; it is still unclear whether the offense charged is attempted homicide or homicide. Attorney Miss Florynce Kennedy will represent the defendant, instead of the attorney previously appointed by New York State. Miss Kennedy is defending Miss Solanas for no fee. Miss Solanas neither denies nor admits the charge.

  (Silence.)

  STATE SUPREME COURT: Will the defense call the accused to testify?

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: No. The defendant is not of sound mind.

  VALERIE: I am of sound mind. My mind has never felt more fully sound.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY (whispers): I know you’re of sound mind, but you have nothing to gain from it in court.

  VALERIE: Win, or vanish from history.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY (to the court): Would you please just give us a moment, Mr. Dickens?

  VALERIE: Did you call him a dick, that judge?

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: He’s called Dickens, Valerie. In court he’s called Dickens, and nothing else.

  VALERIE: In my court he’s called a dick.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: I’ve asked you not to speak in court. Call him Thomas Dickens from now on, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Remember, I’m the only sane woman here.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: I know, Valerie. You’re one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement.

  VALERIE: Are you related to that Kennedy, Kennedy? Marilyn’s Kennedy?

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: Shush now, Valerie.

  VALERIE (whispers): —d-ick, d-ick, d-ick—

  (Silence.)

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: I request that Valerie Jean Solanas, born 1936 in Ventor, Georgia, be declared medically unfit.

  (Silence.)

  VALERIE: I’m not unfit, Kennedy.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: I know, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Then why would you tell him to say so?

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: Because I want you to be free, Valerie.

  VALERIE: Unfit isn’t free. The hospital isn’t free.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: The hospital is better than prison.

  VALERIE: But it’s not an illness.

  FLORYNCE KENNEDY: This is the law, not justice.

  VALERIE: Laws are all over, everywhere but on my side.

  (Silence.)

  STATE SUPREME COURT: Upheld, Miss Kennedy.

  (Silence.)

  STATE SUPREME COURT: Hearing adjourned.

  The State of New York and Judge Thomas Dickens declare you to be of unsound mind. Henceforth you will be regarded as incapable of making your own legal decisions and you are transferred to Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital while you await trial. Later you will stand trial for attempted homicide, harassment, and illegal possession of weapons.

  ALLIGATOR REEF, APRIL 1951

  DOROTHY’S BOOK CONTINUES, THE ATLANTIC CARRIES ON WORKING

  An ocean of dark mirrors. Dorothy holds your hand while she sleeps in the shade of the umbrellas. Salt waves sweep down the beaches, seabirds screech their hollow cries, ten thousand fathoms of ocean water seethe and sigh. The beach book (the pink one) lies open, filling with sand and wind and seawater. The pages are curled and sun-bleached and on some of them the water has erased the text. Dorothy is still only on page eleven. She read the end first and finds out that the lovers separate on a misunderstanding; she is inconsolable, thinking the book is about her, and then she cannot read any more. Instead she tosses her hair and flips her scarf and her eyes dart ever faster between sea and sky.

  Down by the water’s edge Silk Boy passes and inside his sweatshirt is a baby flamingo that has escaped from the flamingo park. He spends a long, chilly afternoon sitting beside your beach towel, listening to you as you read from your notes. Afterward your clothes are covered with flamingo feathers. Rotten seaweed and shimmering green seashells float ashore; some days the effluent from the textile mills makes bathing impossible. Swimsuits smell of chemicals and decaying algae. For several weeks now Dorothy has been running back and forth between the telephone kiosk and the beach bar. She stands for hours arguing with Moran, slamming down the receiver and calling him back, weeping loudly into the sleeve of her bathrobe, the phone booth steamed up with desperation. Once again she starts burning herself on candles. The sleeves of her dresses are always edged with black. Once again she is thrown out of cars, bruises on her arms, underwear ripped. Your skin is pink and blistered after all those hours in the sun.

  Dorothy keeps on forgetting things. First she forgets her promises, then she forgets her child; her angry, sunburned child who only thinks about books, and in the end she forgets herself. Moran drives to Alligator Reef in a stolen Mercedes and his hands are wild animals again, chasing around in Dorothy’s hair. She runs like a deer along the promenade. She forgets her name, she forgets the long happy spring spent by the ocean; all she remembers is their submerged screams from Ventor, all she remembers is his dead roses, his tongue and his hot stomach against hers. And she forgets her book in the sand, a forsaken scrap of pink paper about lost love by the ocean’s edge. The wind turns the pages a couple of times and the stars read it one night before it disappears into the sea.

  Moran has a suit and bright eyes, he is drenched in cheap aftershave and his hand shakes when he greets you. Dorothy gets a new ivory-colored dress and on the backseat is a parcel wrapped in shiny paper and done up with silk ribbon; it is a light blue typewriter. A Japanese-made Royal 100. And as the stolen Mercedes drives along empty roads, through forests and deserts, the sky is pale and calm between the treetops. The seats are hot and cracked by the sun, and Dorothy tosses her hair and laughs her desperado laugh into the cigarette smoke, as if no dangers exist. You type on your typewriter; the sound is a sound of joy and the pages are pages of mysterious beauty lying like fans on the parcel shelf at the back and you love that typewriter far too much to give it back. It is April 9, 1951. It is your fifteenth birthday.

  Happy birthday, little Vale
rie.

  ELMHURST PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, NEW YORK, JULY 2, 1968

  Dr. Ruth Cooper sits lost in thought behind her white lace curtains in the therapy room at Elmhurst Psychiatric Hospital. She fantasizes about Andy Warhol and his unconscious, hairless body on the respirator and she dreams of a world without clamoring, sobbing patients. Her hair lies in impeccable blond waves on her head and in her cool, ringless hand she takes yours, and she holds it awhile as you speak. And there are so many questions when you are in Dr. Ruth Cooper’s presence; all the silence you have swathed around you for the last few weeks surrenders in your conversations, and you assume that this is her intention. Why did you do it, Valerie? What were you thinking, Valerie? Do you realize Andy Warhol is dying?

  Your answers:

  One. Don’t know.

  Two. Don’t know.

  Three. I don’t know what dying means. We’re all dying, you know.

  The patients who sit and wait in the hospital corridors all look as though they are already dead—pallid, bloated beings with darting eyes, drowning people who masturbate with the aid of hospital fixtures, old women who stink of urine and excrement—you could tell all these lost individuals that nothing else will ever happen to them, that their turn will never come, that the doctor will never have time, their visitors will forget when visiting time is, you could tell them the mental hospital is their last stop, their final repository.

  And while you all wait in hope, those who are drowning hoping that it will be their turn soon, and you hoping it will not be yours, you recite aloud from Up Your Ass to a small group of castaways outside Dr. Ruth’s office. The only one who listens properly and whose glance does not flicker is a new arrival with blue eyes and freshly washed hair and your heart bleeds with your desire for them to grasp that the doctor’s office is not the way out, that the road from Elmhurst is not via the Therapy Room, Diagnosis, and Doctors.