by Barb Howard
I have a fairly clear mental image of what he’s looking at down there. In the ’70s, I went to several of those parties where we all brought a hand mirror, dropped our pants and bikini underwear, got in a squat and had a good look at ourselves. Back then it never occurred to me to evaluate if everything looked “right.” But that’s an issue now. One of my former students sent me a note to say that my class had empowered her to get a vagina job. To make everything more even and rose-buddish, she said. I’m not sure how she got that sort of empowerment from my teachings. Yes, it was time to retire.
Speculum will be first, I assume. Not that I can see one. But, before I feel anything, Dr. Duescher’s head pops up from under my tent.
“Seen the stock market today?” he says.
“The what?”
“The stock market. It’s jumping.”
Duescher keeps looking at me, so I fumble for a response. I don’t think he’s senile—probably just trying to make conversation, make me relax.
“I’m not a player,” I say.
He goes back under the sheet. Ah, there’s the speculum. Inserted. Another archaic tool.
Duescher’s head pops up again.
“You could be a player,” he says. “It’s not hard. I know some women who do really well in it.”
What to say to that? I raise my head. He seems, again, to require a response before he goes back to work.
“I know some women who have lost a lot of money,” I say.
“Well now, let’s not be negative about the whole stock market based on a few bad experiences.”
Back under the sheet. Good, I’m thinking, get in there. Do your job, man. And as though he’s heard me, he starts snooping around, inspecting my love canal for hedge funds, pork bellies, cancer—that sort of thing.
In my early twenties, when feminism was both stylish and politically correct, my friends and I spent a lot of time discussing the plight of women and, more frequently, the nomenclature for women’s genitalia. Men had so many names for their genitals—friendly, racy, courageous, superhuman names. Everything from Admiral Dong to General Zibi. In the interest of equality, we felt we needed just as many names, preferably something more inspired than the few existing animal references. I can’t remember all the suggestions, although I do recall liking Atlantis and the Zen Palace. My boyfriend at the time, a slightly anemic biology major, once joined in the discussion and suggested the Bearded Clam.
The clattering at the end of the table suggests Dr. Duescher is switching utensils. More metal, no doubt. Those little forceps?
One of my formerly-feminist friends had her children late in life. I was at her house the other day and I heard her refer to her daughter’s pooty as a “front bum.” Now there’s a kid who is going to be messed up. She won’t know her ass from a hole in the ground, or her back ass from her front bum.
My thoughts are interrupted by a fire alarm ringing on another floor. Duescher probably can’t hear it, ensconced as he is between my thighs under the blue sheet. I’m not too concerned about Duescher or the fire alarm. But then, with an ear-splitting jolt, the alarm starts ringing on this floor. It feels like the bell is right outside the door of my examination room. I hate the idea of going down in flames.
Duescher must hear it now, yet he stays under the sheet. Is he deaf? He’s putting more metal up my front bum. Whatever it is that will perform the cervical punch? Maybe that was the forceps. I’ve lost track. With the alarm blaring, I pride myself on the fact that I don’t clench. Anything.
I wait a moment, then prop myself up on my elbows. I don’t want firefighters rushing in here while I’m in the stirrups. “Hello?” I shout between my knees.
“There we go,” Duescher says loudly as he comes out from under the blue sheet. He plops a small amount of fibrousy red stuff, like red algae, combined with blood from my ongoing periods, in a jar and walks over to the sink. He pours tap water into the jar and snaps on a lid.
“Just about done,” he says. “But first I better go see what all the noise is about.” He leaves the room with the jar.
I sit all the way up, dangling my legs between the stirrups. From this position I can look out the window and see a fire truck parked on the lawn. A second fire truck pulls up, lights flashing. I hop off the bed, pull on my underwear, jeans, shoes. I open the door. The hall is lit by floor lights—the regular overhead lights are off. The exit sign at the end of the hall is glowing.
Dr. Duescher is nowhere to be seen. Semi-dressed women peek out of doors along the corridor. One woman walks down the hall wearing a paper gown, a short jacket on top, a big purse slung over her shoulder, her back bum hanging out. The woman directly across the hall from me is hugely pregnant, dressed in a white tailored shirt and bare from the waist down except for the blue sheet wrapped around her waist. Business on the top, gyno on the bottom.
“What should we do?” the pregnant woman mouths. Maybe she says it out loud.
“I’m going,” I point to the emergency exit.
She points to her sheet, motions that she’s going to put clothes on her bottom half.
I grab my purse from the chair in the examination room and head toward the exit sign.
The stairwell is full of women. Employees, nurses, doctors, many in ponytails and pink Crocs. Patients ranging from solid teenage girls to sparrowy grandmas—all abandoning the Centre for Women’s Health. There are no flames, no smoke, and yet we hurry. Clearly no one wants to be left inside.
Once on the front lawn, I wait, making sure that I see the pregnant woman from my corridor come out. Women continue to pour from the doors. Some have even started to run. Finally, amidst the crowd, I see the pregnant woman. She’s skirted and panty-hosed and ready for work. I try to catch her eye but she is hustling away from the building.
Over in the centre of the lawn, I see Dr. Duescher talking with half a dozen men. Are they all doctors? Could be. I know the stats—I used to teach them. If there were one hundred men standing there, only 6.78 percent of them might be nurses. Some are young but one—a tanned, wiry man—is even older than Duescher and seems to hold rank. He’s telling a joke or a funny story and making a lusty big-boob motion with his hands. The men break out in hearty laughter. I wonder if Duescher dropped my biopsy jar at the lab before he left the building.
I decide I’m done for the day and head for my car. Just like Duescher said, no need to clutter my head with worry about the biopsy. But after thirty years of devoting myself to women’s studies, thirty years of active involvement in the women’s movement (the second wave, that is, which will likely be renamed the final wave), still plenty to worry about.
Three days later (that’s how it goes in cases like mine) I’m back at the Centre for Women’s Health for the biopsy result. I’m fully clothed, sitting in the vinyl-covered chair, my feet flat on the floor. I’m wearing my reindeer socks.
“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Dr. Duescher says, scanning his chart.
He sits down, lifts a page, looks at the page underneath.
“I see you work,” he says.
“I’m the one who was under examination when the fire alarm went off.”
“Alarms are always going off in here. It’s an old system. I’m used to it. We all are.”
“I’ll never be used to it,” I say.
Duescher sets the clipboard beside the sink, earnestly clasps his hands together. “Honey,” he says, “have you seen the stock market today?”
THANKSGIVING
From my chair on the porch, I can see the bottom half of Bob Stead. He’s in his fir trees, trimming off dead branches, tidying nature. Bob calls it fire-smarting; I call it unnecessary. Bob begins to descend the ladder with a branch in one hand, and Barclay, my German Shepherd who is waiting at the bottom of the ladder, gets excited. Bob shakes the branch at Barclay. Barclay bites one leg of the ladder, tugs. Bob lunges at the tree for balance.
I’m down my porch stairs by then. Yelling at Barclay. I grab a handful of skin
and bristling hair from the back of Barclay’s neck. He’s on his hind legs, barking.
“Throw the branch,” I shout. “Throw it.”
Bob tosses the branch towards his deer feeder. Barclay jumps out of my grip, dives on the branch. Tail wagging, branch held high, he prances past the deer feeder, up the hill. I steady the ladder. Bob hurries down.
“Control your dog,” he says, flapping his work glove in my face.
In town, later that afternoon, at the A&G grocery, I spot Bob’s wife Cheryl in the root vegetable section.
“Hello Stanley,” she says, smiling a bit, folding her hands on her pregnant belly. “All ready for Thanksgiving?”
“I suppose. You doing a big bird?”
“Oh yes, we always do. It’s in the oven. You off to friends?”
“No.”
Cheryl picks up a potato, rolls it in her hand. “Well, of course you’re welcome at our place. I don’t think Bob would mind, really. I could reset the table, put you beside my mother, across from Jonathan.”
“What time?” I ask as she untwists her plastic bag, drops the extra potato on top of four already there, and pushes her cart towards the pumpkins.
When my mother was alive she always made me put on a button-front shirt for turkey dinners. For her sake, I wear one of the green shirts I used to wear when I drove to work in the city. The collar cinches around my neck, the buttons at my chest are strained. That’s one good thing about being laid off from the water treatment plant. No more uncomfortable clothes.
Bob and Cheryl’s dining room smells of warm turkey and pine walls. There’s a sliding door at one end that opens onto their new cedar deck and groomed lawn. The table is big, harvest style. Four baby pumpkins surround a large red candle centrepiece. Every place has a turkey napkin and a turkey plate.
I sit beside the grandmother. She’s on a weekend pass. Her balding head shakes no non-stop. The other three seats are empty. Bob stands at the pine sideboard, working the cork out of a bottle of wine. Bob is a surgeon in the city. He’s the kind of guy who wears pleated pants on the weekend. The kind of guy who vacuums his garage and volunteers every year for the community water co-op. I hear Cheryl running the tap in the kitchen. Bleeps and snippets of electronic songs arise from downstairs. Jonathan must be playing computer games. He’s a good kid. Only been caught shoplifting once (or so I heard at the A&G). Nothing serious, just candy. Cheryl claims that Jonathan’s mathematically gifted. He plays one of those hand-held computer games while he walks home from the school bus stop. I watch from my porch, expect him to stumble, but he never does. Maybe he is gifted.
Cheryl rushes into the room and sets a bowl of cranberry sauce on the table. She’s wearing pressed pants and a leaf-print maternity blouse. Her belly protrudes like a gourd from her thin body. On her way back to the kitchen, she stops at the sliding door.
“Bob.” She taps the toe of her penny loafer at a spot on the floor in front of her.
“I’ll speak to him again,” Bob says.
“He’s got to learn. Just look at the dirt he’s tracked in.”
Bob leaves the room, thumps downstairs, stops the electronic sounds. The grandmother puts her shaky hand on my arm and asks for a taste of wine. Noticing that she doesn’t have a wineglass at her place, I fill my own and offer it to her.
“Might help my memory,” the grandmother says.
“Mine too,” I say, pouring wine into my water glass.
Jonathan sulks into the dining room. The bottoms of his pantlegs drag across the hardwood. His sweatshirt is huge, big enough to fit me. It’s the same outfit his skateboard buddies wear at the A&G parking lot. Nice for him to have so many friends. I nod hello. He scowls, slouches into the seat across from me. I like Jonathan.
“A touch more, if you don’t mind,” the grandmother says. I steady her glass on the table and pour. Jonathan brightens.
“Mom,” he yells into the kitchen, “Stanley’s giving grandma wine.”
Cheryl appears at the door to the dining room, pauses, inhales. “It’s Mr. Davis to you,” she says to Jonathan while she scoops the wineglass out of her mother’s hand.
When Bob sets the huge, caramel-coloured turkey in front of him, the table looks like a picture from a magazine. Bob twists the first drumstick from the turkey. Juice drips from the joint. I take in the deep hot smell.
“Dad,” Jonathan asks as we begin passing vegetables, “can I eat in front of the TV?”
Bob rips open the breast skin with the tip of the carving knife.
“Daaaad,” Jonathan pleads.
“This is Thanksgiving,” says Bob. “You’ll appreciate the memories when you’re older.”
“Mom?”
Cheryl shoves a casserole dish at him. “It’s tradition. Would you like some cauliflower in low-fat cheese sauce?”
Jonathan picks up the serving spoon, mutters, “Who cares.” I slide the mashed potatoes towards the grandmother. She waves them off, saying, “Just fiddleheads for me.”
“There are no fiddleheads.” Cheryl snaps her turkey napkin and drapes it over her belly. “You’re in Alberta.”
“Don’t we usually have turnips at Thanksgiving?” Bob asks.
“No, potatoes. We always have potatoes,” Cheryl says.
“I’m sure we had turnips last year.” Bob picks up his knife and fork. “We should write these things down in a notebook.”
“I don’t need to write it down,” Cheryl glares at Bob. Then Bob says he’ll have some potatoes. Cheryl turns to me, smiling. “Now Stanley, I’m sure this won’t stand up at all to your mother’s Thanksgiving dinners.”
I’m glad to be a part of the conversation, so I say, “My mother’s turkey was always drier than a pretzel fart. Stuffing like freeze-dried sewage.”
Cheryl looks across the table at Bob.
“And mother’s gravy always made me think of diarrhea,” I add, “or vomit.”
“Nice,” Jonathan says.
“I know you’re not supposed to say that sort of thing about your mother, especially if she’s dead, but I call ’em as I see ’em.”
Cheryl looks at her plate. Bob wipes his mouth.
“It’s Harvard beets and black licorice that give me the runs,” the grandmother says. I like the grandmother.
Through the sliding door, past the deck, smack in the middle of Bob’s neat lawn, a loosely woven hammock of hay hangs inside a small wooden shelter. Bob’s dream is to have deer browsing in his backyard. He’d especially like them there when his city friends come out for dinner.
“Much luck with the deer feeder?” I ask while I reach across Cheryl for carrots even though they don’t look buttered.
“Not one,” Jonathan interjects. “Zippo.”
“They’re all over my place,” I say. “Barclay’s got more deer than he knows how to chase.” Funny that the deer don’t go for Bob’s lawn. He takes good care of it—he’s always aerating or fertilizing or watering or pumping clover kill on it. At my place the deer eat the quack grass, the clover, even the thistles that grow on the gravel pile. Like I keep telling Bob when he asks, I’m going to spread that gravel someday and make a pen for Barclay.
It’s dusk by the time I scrape up my second helping. Everyone else is still picking at their first. I usually don’t notice vegetables, always ate my mother’s chilled Brussels sprouts and marshmallow turnips without complaint, but Cheryl’s vegetables are different. The carrots are sweet and seasoned with green flecks, and the potatoes soak up buckets of the smooth gravy. I even take more low-fat cauliflower. There’s lots of food, maybe because the grandmother only eats cranberry sauce. Red rivulets form in the lines under her lips. I take a breather, lean back from the table and look out the sliding door. Three mule deer file down the hill and eye the feeder.
“Got yourself some deer.” I wave my fork towards the sliding door.
Bob runs for his camera. Aware of Bob’s motion, the deer stop, ears wide, tails tucked under, and stare through the window at us.
Cheryl crouches beside the grandmother, points, repeats, “Deer, Mom. Outside. Deer.” She pats the grandmother’s hand and goes to the window to stand beside Jonathan, presses her palms into the small of her back, pushes her belly towards the glass. The grandmother nudges me. I fill her water glass with wine. “Too bad about the fiddleheads,” I say.
Bob returns with his camera, slowly opens the sliding door, pushes the big lens outside. A black-tipped tail quivers, rises. The tharump of padded feet sounds from the side of the house, louder and louder until Barclay careens around the corner. The deer spring up the hill. Barclay charges after them, a frayed metre of rope dragging from his neck.
“Look at them go!” Jonathan cries. “Yeesss!”
Bob slides the door closed, flips the lock.
“Barclay never did like being tied up,” I say as Bob sits heavily in his seat. “Maybe I should get that pen built.”
Cheryl takes the gravy boat and potatoes into the kitchen.
“Did you see that Dad? Did you?” Jonathan pokes his fork into the pool of liquid wax surrounding the red candle.
“Stop that,” Bob says sharply.
“My mother made the best chow-chow relish in Moncton,” says the grandmother.
I pour her some more wine. She wipes under her eyes with her turkey napkin. Jonathan stabs a baby pumpkin with his fork.
“Mom,” he yells into the kitchen, “she’s crying.” Cheryl hurries into the dining room.
“Pie, everyone?” she asks, discreetly laying a stack of tissue on the grandmother’s lap.
Mom and I bought our house twenty years ago, when she retired. We got a good deal because the original owners divorced and sold before the house was finished. Mom and I finished the drywalling and put on the porch. We used that porch almost every day. This time of year there’d be owls in the woodpile, squirrels in the empty bird feeder, chickadees and siskins in the firs, and deer. Right up to her last day, Mom could identify any critter or plant within a half-mile of the house. She thought it took me a long time to learn all the names in nature. But I pretended not to know things just so we could keep talking.
