Vida

by Marge Piercy

  “That’s theory. What I want to stop is real. Real people really dying in real mud right now.”

  “My war is right here. For this country.”

  “Oh, sure. Hard to get shot up in this one.”

  “Don’t bet it won’t come to that” she said. “If we’re serious”

  “Are you serious?” He raised his thin eyebrows at her.

  “Serious enough to sit down and knock out this pamphlet. Time is short”

  She ended up writing most of the pamphlet, simply because he was no phrasemaker.

  ”In school you learn to discuss ‘issues,’” she wrote, “to interpret ‘objectively,’ to avoid dirty economic interpretation and asking who owns things and what makes them richer. You learn to ‘discuss the text’ and raise no extraneous issues. You make one Great Decision after another, fill out your multiple-choice questionnaire and depart, having sharpened your decisionmaking skills—presumably to make a wiser choice between toothpastes and candidates and whether you will buy your facts from Time or Newsweek …”

  While he vetoed suggestions, he could seldom block them with concrete ideas in concrete language. He was driven by a simple pure fanatical hatred of the war, and what she sensed of him besides was rather sweet, she thought. A steady type, not at all pushy. If he hung around, she had to think who might want him; he should not be wasted. Would Lohania like him? He might not be tough enough for her. Kevin played street-tough, as did some of the men in SAW, but underlying the assumed persona was a real and tried capacity for action. Leigh was tough in another way, the New Yorker through and through who could talk his way in and out of almost anything—more than the survivor, the successful competitor. Lark felt vague by comparison. Still, she would talk to Lohania about Lark. She rose to her conclusion: “… sure are ‘responsible leaders.’ They are responsible for the plastic bread you eat and the filthy air you breathe; they own the buildings that line your streets and the means of production and the means of distribution; they rot your mind with wanting what they have to sell. They own your bodies to fight their wars. They sell you their brand of Playboy sex and their religion of greed and their science in the service of power and their sterile and alienated art. They are responsible, and you should be articulate. Come to the Hilton … “

  By four they were exhausted. The pamphlet had to be at the printer’s at nine. That left too few hours to make it worthwhile to take the subway uptown to sleep and come back with the copy. They made a bed of old-clothes left from a rummage sale. Unpurchased clothes stayed in the loft because she had not yet got around to calling a rag dealer. Oscar had said he’d take care of it and hadn’t. After the demonstration, she must make some calls. In the meantime, stained summer shirts, faded cotton dresses, out-of-style trousers and suit jackets formed a nest for them. An athlete he wasn’t, moving stiffly, awkwardly among the heaps of clothes.

  Lying in the almost dark of the loft—light from the street coming in through the tall windows at the far end, the red light of the exit sign—she had trouble relaxing. Some animals—mice, she hoped, as opposed to rats— were scuttling in the old leaflets piled near the freight elevator. She did not feel comfortable lying beside him. He had not got undressed, and she had imitated him, lying stiffly in her clothes, annoyed at how wrinkled they would be the next day at work.

  Lark was not sleeping either; she could feel him stirring. He fumbled at his shirt and lit a cigarette, the flame huge in the darkness. She was irked. She did not like smoking in bed, even if the bed was a pile of old clothes from a rummage sale. Finally she said, “Would you mind not smoking in what’s doing us for a bed?”

  “What? Oh. Do you really mind?”

  “I do. I’m afraid to sleep for fear of waking up on fire”

  “Oh” He put out the cigarette on the floor. “Would you hold me, then?”

  If there was logic in that, it escaped her. She was stupefied, half sick with exhaustion, a light shaky feeling in her limbs. More than anything else she longed to be unconscious. Obediently and without enthusiasm she moved over and put her arms numbly around him, light, small as a child. Unsubstantial next to Leigh, or any of the stocky, firm-feeling men she had loved—Vasos, Oscar. When you held them you knew you had hold of someone real, whereas he felt like a scaffolding of a man. Stiffly he lay in her arms, and she had begun drifting down to sleep when he spoke again, startling her.

  “Are you squeamish?”

  “Wha?”

  “Are you squeamish about people? If something’s wrong?”

  Half asleep, she saw herself holding Natalie’s head as she had morning sickness, sponging her face. Every morning for two months. “I have a strong stomach. I get it from my mother.”

  “What do you think about amputees?”

  Now she woke up. “What do you mean, what do I think?” she asked cautiously.

  “Are you upset? Does it turn you off? … It’s my right leg”

  She forgot to breathe for a while. “I didn’t know”“ she said, and then got angry at herself. She had to do better. “From the war?”

  “My war. Not yours.”

  “Don’t you think we’re on the same side now?”

  “Well, does it bother you or not?”

  “Of course it bothers me. It bothers me for anybody to be hurt that way. How could I pretend I don’t wish you had your leg? But it doesn’t make me think you’re less of a person”

  “Or less of a man?”

  “Of course not,” she said loudly. How do I get into these things? She knew she had been mildly curious about Larkin, the way she was always curious sexually about any new man who came into the SAW inner circle. She knew too she had been flirting with him automatically, the way she flirted with every man a little unless she disliked him too strongly to carry it off. Just her way of greasing the wheels. She would sometimes in the middle of a serious conversation catch herself looking at a man in a certain way she had learned over the years as apology to men for being smart, aggressive, political, for being a competitor in the real things. Putting out a certain sexual buzz was a way of apologizing for being herself. She had not considered having sex with Larkin, but if she did not now he would think it was because he lacked a leg instead of because she was fatigued and not particularly attracted. How far up was the leg off? she wondered, and suppressed her curiosity as if squashing a cockroach. What did it matter? Legs were not sex organs. She reached for her purse with the diaphragm inside.

  Then she moved up against him and brought her mouth down on his and coolly, feeling like a professional working on a client, began to caress and kiss him. She excited him, covertly touching herself to make sure she was damp enough to get him in, then slid over him, inserted his prick and brought him to climax in her. Gently she disengaged and rolled off. For a moment he lay relaxed, and she considered the episode finished, until he rose on his elbow and then gradually, moving with the stiffness and care she was beginning to understand, let himself down between her legs, pushing her thighs wide apart. The flesh leg, the plastic leg stretched out behind him. “I don’t like favors,” he said. “Unless I can return them. See if I don’t know how to eat you out. If I can’t make you come” He went down on her with his lips and tongue, after a while using his fingers inside her. He was skillful, persistent, patient, and yet she felt something savage in him. He lived with a lot of successfully swallowed anger—a lot. If Lohania could feel that, she thought—and then stopped thinking for a few minutes.

  “You could come again” he offered.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “That’s enough for me.”

  Beside her he said dreamily, “I never was a good fuck before. I always came too soon … but afterwards a nurse taught me how to do that. She made it with men and women. Now I understand women better. Most women don’t like fucking, really, but if you know how to eat a woman, you can get her to come.”

  Vida actually preferred intercourse, but she knew that Natalie didn’t. “It was wonderful,” she said soothingly.


  “I don’t have the energy to do this a lot. It takes my strength to get through each day. Not to let people know I’m disabled. A fucking cripple. You know it now. I can’t lie down with a woman without her finding it out”

  “You can trust me. But why keep it a secret?”

  “I hate pity. I hate it” He was silent a while. Then he said gruffly, “You can’t organize people if they know you’re a cripple”

  “It seems to me you do everything anybody else does”

  “I can’t run. At demonstrations it’s hard. I volunteer to man the phones or something. But I’m always scared some two-legged bastard is going call me a coward … You’ll tell your boyfriend. The guy on the radio.”

  “A lot of things I know he doesn’t. We aren’t into all the same things politically … But why keep it a secret? You ought to be proud how much you get done.”

  “Never. I don’t want their pity … I don’t sleep with a lot of women. But you liked it?”

  “Of course. Couldn’t you tell?” In a way, she had. She felt caught in him emotionally.

  “I can’t do it often … I’m cut off from my body. I numb it out. That’s not all that’s wrong with me, understand. I stepped on a mine. I numb out the pain a lot, and that means numbing out everything physical.”

  “You do that with your mind? Or drugs?”

  “Hate drugs! I’m on medication … but not for pain. My mind’s all I got … But I like you. You’re serious. I like smart women. Women who know how to take care of themselves … “ He was silent so long she thought he had fallen asleep, and indeed, his voice came groggily, patchily. “When I’m sizing up people … I think how they’d act … places I been. I think, What would they do up to their waists in mud and under because crossfire? … Would they drag me out? Would they run like hell? … “ His voice faded into mumbling and breathing, emerged again farther down as if from a tunnel … “The sarge said, Go on, stick your bayonet up her … They cut off her nipples, her back was broken … my pistol and shot her in the head. The kindest thing I could think of … So I look at these dudes and I try to figure them out … You’re okay. You’d drag me out. You’d hold up a long time. What I figure … Women are tougher than men when you come down to it … “ He had talked himself to sleep, and soon he snored softly. She did not sleep that night.

  She took off her earrings, pinned up her hair, put on boots, jeans and Leigh’s buffalo plaid jacket over a man’s shirt. A helmet or not? Helmets protected your head against the clubs that could bash your brains to jelly, but some times they seemed to attract police wrath, if not enough others were wearing them; and they made it hard to hear. She put the blue football helmet back in the hall closet.

  Leigh was checking his Nagra, whistling, dressed no differently than on any other day except for his bright press pass pinned on. She felt distant from him before a demonstration. He went, sure, but not as a participant. His role was useful to all of them, the voice telling people not present what was going on; yet he faced little danger. His belly would not feel stiff as the old washboard her grandma used to wash clothes on with kosher soap; his colon did not jerk spastically, keeping him on the toilet for half an hour expelling everything, everything inside him till his anus burned.

  Finally she emerged with a great stiff plaster of Paris grin stuck on her face and met Lohania dressed in a Hilton maid’s uniform. “How’s this for typecasting?” Lohania said sourly.

  Her apartment had never felt cozier, warmer, more homey. All the books she had no time to read cooed like pigeons from their shelves. Together they clattered down the service stairs to Natalie’s.

  “You goddamn well can’t!” Daniel was bellowing, trussed into his demonstration khakis, looking like the football end he had once been. “If you want to lose this baby, pay a good abortionist. But don’t lose it from stupidity in the streets!”

  “Daniel, I don’t plan to brawl. It’s as much my duty to demonstrate as it is yours!”

  “Your duty is to your unborn child! You’re staying.”

  “They don’t ask Vietnamese women if they’re pregnant before they drop napalm on them!” Natalie yelled. “What kind of fink do you suppose I am to sit home while everybody’s putting their bodies on the line? Do you think I have some kind of pass out of having to take chances, just because I’m a mother?”

  “Natalie, I came down to ask you if you can man the telephones with Larkin. It’s awfully important tonight,” Vida said, trying to make peace in her family. Besides, Lark deserved to meet Natalie for voting on her side. Maybe Natalie would for once fall in love with somebody else, just once! Lark was much nicer than Daniel; maybe he’d like a ready-made family. She had already passed on a few titillating details to Lohania on the scene between them. Lohania had been intrigued, for Lark’s maiming did not put her off. “Could you get to the SAW office fast? Just take Sam along. We need people to handle the media and arrange bail.”

  “You’re just trying to make me feel as if I’m still a political person,” Natalie said, close to tears. “When I’m eight months gone I’ll sit in the I stupid office. But at this stage my baby’s protected against earthquake and even a couple of casual pokes in the belly!” Natalie was sent off to the SAW office. Lohania was annoyed. “Why didn’t you back her up? She has a right to be with us.” Lohania marched out alone, to try to penetrate the Hilton.

  Daniel, Pelican and his roommates and Vida set off together. “She’s so little,” Vida said to herself about Natalie. Her sister seemed to her less able to run through the streets. For once she sympathized with patriarchal Daniel. As they emerged from the subway among the many passersby on the evening midtown pavement, they recognized knots of their own kind. The placards were being hoisted; the chants were beginning. Suddenly more and more of them began to come together. A group from Teachers for Peace was singing “We Shall Overcome.” Her chest burned with excitement. Yes, look! Yes. Everywhere her people came together, marching arm in arm linked and shouting. The demonstration was starting. It was truly happening. Some words on a page she had written and people responded.

  The legal segment of the demonstration, where protesters walked with signs to and fro in a corridor between police lines, was two blocks away. Here demonstrators were stopping the cars of dignitaries, the limousines, the chauffeur-driven Cadillacs and Chryslers. Into the path of the cars they darted screaming. Bland faces peered at them through thick glass as if they were the menace, they who had never ordered a death; who controlled no bombs, no death rays, no machines of mass terror, no chemicals that brought starvation and changed the genes forever; they who wore no diamonds mined by black captive labor in the bowels of South Africa and invested in no Afrikaans enterprises burbling stolen profits. A kid was dragged half a block on a car that would not slow down and was helped off by a medic, leg crooked, nose bleeding.

  “No, guys! Not the regular cars!” she was yelling. “The limousines. Stick to the limousines!” You had to keep reminding the troops what they were supposed to be attacking. Too much Halloween. They could get intoxicated by the crazy raggedy feeling of running in the streets whooping. “Only the richies! Let the regular cars through.” Had they even bothered to read the pamphlet? How could you do political education when people can’t read any longer? Maybe that was the purpose of the slow destruction in the schools. The media were under tight control, while anybody with a printing press in their garage could produce the written word. The new illiteracy imposed by the schools. She wrote a leaflet in her head, running at full tilt to keep track of the action. “Only the richies! Only the limousines!” Corporate lawyers who specialized in military contractors, the folks who had founded the CIA and invented the missile gap, sugar magnates fresh from engineering an invasion of the Dominican Republic, officers from the Export-Import Bank, the Foreign Bond Holders Protector Council, Mobil Oil, Con Edison, IBM, the Dallas Citizens Council, Chase Manhattan Bank, ALCOA, IT&T, Pan American, The New York Times, Time-Life—they were in those cars. S
he knew their dossiers, compiled painstakingly in libraries by Movement researchers, but she could not tell one face from another.

  Barbarians, a professor at Columbia had called the Movement in the Times that morning. Maybe the barbarians, the savages were always those who had less lethal weapons. Bows and arrows versus tanks and artillery. Their own lithe bodies dancing in front of tons of metal. That made them savages: lacking the metal. Lacking armor, lacking armies, lacking the underlings to do it for you.

  Although the night was crisp, Vida felt hot under the wool shirt, running. She strained, leaping over occasional stoops, knocked-down garbage cans, running hard because a mounted cop was galloping after her trying to run her down. She stayed out from under the horse’s hooves by keeping close to the building, but then he leaned out of the saddle swinging his nightstick and brought her down. Police sirens whooped hysterically in the next street to the left as she twisted and dodged away from the blows of his club, plunging into a group of people in evening clothes emerging from a bar. A woman screamed at the rearing horse. Was her arm broken? She tried to move it as she ran. She jumped across the open stairway that led down and then plunged between two buildings, into a narrow passageway where the horse could not follow. The cop galloped after other prey. She fell panting against a building. Her arm throbbed. Was it broken? She felt cautiously, then moved it. Ow—her muscle felt torn; but the bone was intact.

  Chanting in the next street. “Hey, hey, L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?” As her breath slowed, she stumbled to her feet and turned toward the troops. Time to regroup, time to storm the hotel again. Turn them back from random charging down random streets. Back to square one. She had not liked being chased by the cop on horseback. Why were they always the ones running? Why were they always the ones getting beaten?

  Glass breaking. Screaming. She scrambled up a chain-link fence and dropped into a parking lot, crouching after the jolt of landing on the pavement below. Then she trotted out into the street, broken-field running among cars. She caught a glimpse of Kevin slugging it out with a counterdemonstra-tor. No reason to do that. It accomplished nothing politically, although she recognized a certain satisfaction in the sight. The movement had begun in pacifism, and she had twice been beaten by counterdemonstrators when they had caught her alone. They liked to trap Movement women and try to disfigure them, shouting Whore! Kevin was less easy prey, but fighting with thugs was not their purpose. They were out in the open to demonstrate, to show the government—and tonight especially the invisible government, the decision makers—how much anger existed against their war.