Dear Exile

by Hilary Liftin

  I had dinner with Delia last night and she couldn’t believe that I wear panty hose to work. She said that she can’t stand hose and would never do that. Of course Delia’s an actress and gets to wear red polka-dotted skirts and little tee shirts whenever she wants. I was vaguely annoyed that she doesn’t understand that I do this because, unlike her, I have to support myself. I explained to her that I’ve now been so exposed to office wear that I think it looks bad to wear a suit without panty hose. While we were having this trivial exchange, it dawned on me that since I’ve become a working girl I have broken many of the promises we made to ourselves in college: never to wear panty hose or painful shoes, never to have manicures, never to dye my hair or wear makeup every day or pay more than twenty dollars for a haircut or carry a purse. Little by little I’ve caved in to this time-consuming self-maintenance, originally in an effort to be taken seriously. Now I do some of it because I’m actually becoming part of office culture, not to mention beauty culture. I get manicures because I don’t think I have especially pretty hands but every time I have my nails done some man compliments them. I think it’s silly, but eight bucks for a compliment is a bargain. Still, I worry about what this is doing to me. When I started my first job, I remember having a separate work persona, which I couldn’t reconcile with my home life. Now those two personas have pretty much merged. I am officially a working stooge. I know there was a reason I kept those two lives separate, but now I’m not even sure of what I have sacrificed. As a working girl what can’t I do or think? It seems that as the years pass, conformity will fester and spread. I won’t be able to talk about anything beyond movies and the latest celebrity scandal. But the terrifying part is the idea that those things will feel like the most vibrant issues.

  My primary concern these days (on the road to Blandville) is my new digs. My apartment purchase is finally happening, so I will probably leave my bulldozed tower soon. Last week I went by the apartment for a final inspection (you know, to make sure the previous owners didn’t steal the light fixtures—which they didn’t—or the towel racks—which they did). My broker was schmoozing with the doorman and I was left alone in the apartment. The electricity was off, but there was a warm light coming in from the hall. I stood there thinking, I can’t believe I own a whole refrigerator. (I know you’re thinking I have no idea of how amazing refrigeration is.) And my refrigerator, which is mine that I own, will only host food that appeals to me. People I care about will visit, and make poems out of Magnetic Poetry on it. I stood in the living room and thought, I’m going to see the light through different seasons here. I’m going to play music and do my dishes and fold my laundry. I’m going to order in sushi and read The New Yorker. I felt so easy, so content right then. I had to refrain from doing a little dance. But I will—I will do funny dances, and I will talk to myself. This, I told myself, is more than just a box I’ve checked off some list of needs. I’m an American! I own land! (Well, in a way.) What good walls! A whole world that I will make mine in its cleanliness (or lack thereof). I can’t wait.

  But of course everything is crazy because I close on Thursday, Friday I paint, then I have to go to DC for the weekend because Steven wants to talk to our grandfather about his engagement. That would be my grandfather’s engagement, not Steven’s! This is all happening not even a year after my grandmother’s death. Steven wants to make sure my grandfather knows that we’re here to help and that he’s sort of vulnerable and shouldn’t get married out of fear or dependence. Because it came up so suddenly and without discussion, Steven’s sort of panicked about it. Have you ever seen Steven upset? It’s disconcerting, because he’s usually so placid. I’m used to being the unsettled one. He’s thinking a lot about family these days—getting engaged and all. I think being so close to Emily also allows him to compare his own family with the workings of another. I’m definitely concerned about my grandfather and agree that we should make sure he knows that we love him and can help him. But I think that Steven is feeling that all marriages should be based on the same values he and Emily have in their relationship. It’s not quite the same when you’re in your eighties, newly widowed, and unable or unwilling to cook or drive or clean or run a house. The whole thing makes me miss my grandmother, and mostly it’ll be exhausting.

  And then Monday my jailed belongings will finally be set free. I’m going skiing in Salt Lake so I have to unpack and find all my ski stuff right away. The ski trip is with Dad, Steven and Emily. Then Dad’s mate, Genevieve, and her friend will be in the same area but a separate condo. We were all supposed to be together, but now my dad and Genevieve are having relationship troubles so we’re going semiseparated because Dad didn’t want to let us down and Genevieve didn’t want to let her friend down. How insane (albeit kind) is that. . . . As you can see, my family’s a little messy these days.

  And how are you, my heroic missionary? Saving the world? When I think about it, it’s painfully obvious that not once did my parents say: Young Hilary, you gotta put something back in the pot. Is that strange to you? I was reared to be a good friend but not a good citizen. They say charity begins at home, so I guess that makes me a beginner. And in order to have a home in which to be charitable, I have to pay my mortgage. But Kate, isn’t it nice to know that so long as I pay my bills, there is a place in New York City that is totally safe and welcoming, always, for me, and you, and even that African husband of yours? I will give you a key, just in case you’re on Seventh Avenue and you get a blister. My adhesive bandages are your adhesive bandages. And with that generous declaration, love and goodbye.

  XOXOXO,

  Hilary

  RAMISI

  April 1

  Hil,

  I’m glad to see you are at least being honest and reflective about totally selling out. I love you anyway.

  The other day we had a bounty from heaven—it rained! It was the middle of the night and we both woke with a rush of adrenaline. Did we have enough buckets out to catch it? What other containers could we find? Quick! We collected 344½ liters! When we bathed, we washed our feet, and for the first time in months, rinsed the last little bit of soap from our hair. And you wouldn’t believe all the laundry we did! We thought we were sitting pretty—enough clean water to sink a battleship. Now, three days later, all the buckets in the house are still full, but an outside observer would probably think we were doing experiments in swamp ecosystems instead of accumulating a drinking water supply. I never would have thought it possible for such things to grow in the clean-looking, drained-off-our-roof, bleached water. I’m not even sure we should call it water anymore. Oh well. We had to sterilize all our filter equipment in boiling caldrons, and Dave biked home a backpack full of bottled Fanta to hold us over. Imagine being really, really, really thirsty and having to choose between stagnant pond scum water or orange syrup to drink.

  The other morning I was rolling around under the mosquito net trying not to feel guilty about Dave already being awake and puttering around when suddenly I heard this stifled gasp/scream/ curse from the other room. I said to myself, What happened? (But I said it really slowly because I was just waking up.) And I thought maybe Dave by accident stepped in the fire he was making to cook me an egg and mango juice breakfast in bed. Not bloody likely. Maybe, as we had both foretold, he had actually finally succeeded in killing a chicken with his breath, but there was no squawking. I was just turning over to have a nice dream about apples and cheese when Dave came running in all worked up because some kind of a poisonous snake dropped on his neck. Sure enough, it kept slithering around our steps. Since ninety percent of the snakes around here are deadly poisonous, I was thinking that someone really should do something about it. We had a short debate about whether a snake could slither up a stick that was jabbing it and bite the person holding it, but I decided that Dave should go ahead and give it a try. So, in a very manly fashion, he poked it to death. After it was dead, and looking a lot more like a baby snake, we decided that (a) it wasn’t a black mamba and that (b) it pr
obably wouldn’t have killed us instantly unless it had highly poisonous gums. So it lay there with its pale belly up, the chickens ate at it, and we felt a little quiet. The poor guy probably munched on mosquitoes and bread crusts, maybe a potato peel now and then. I bet he liked warm rocks and even had a stamp collection.

  Kate

  P.S. You should know that the snake with the stamp collection was two and a half feet long, as thick as my arm, mean-looking, and landed on my neck! I did not “poke” him to death. I slew that sucker, and saved both of our lives. And probably the lives of our neighbors too.

  Dave

  NEW YORK CITY

  April 10

  Dear K8,

  It’s April 10th. I sent you a postcard yesterday. But you deserve more, oh yes. I’m back from skiing in Utah. Going on vacation with my father was like meditating to a car alarm. He was extremely concerned with getting to the slopes on time, or where something should go in the kitchen (I was like, it’s a rental. Put the bowl wherever you want), or where we should ski the next day. And in the mornings, the more impatient my father got, the more Steven seemed to slow down. But as soon as we got out to the mountains we did pretty well, for a family.

  I don’t know how to break this to you gently, so here it is, plain: I lost my cybervirginity last week. I figured it was part of working for an online company, market research and all. It’s so weird: there are chat rooms with names like Love Shack where the lascivious lurk, saying things like, Any hot girls in the room? Most people are either obnoxious and gross or they’re from Kentucky and want to treat a lady like a lady. This is what I learned in the space of a few hours. So I was flirting with two guys at the same time (as you know, I’m a pretty fast typist). Both were twenty years old (or so they said, everyone lies about everything). One was dumb as a tree but really sweet. He kept apologizing and making smiley faces like this : ). The dopey nice guy couldn’t spell and I hated him, but turns out it’s just as hard to get rid of losers in chat as it is in real life. Meanwhile the other was a hard-core whacker named puked, which gives you an idea of how sophisticated he was, but who cares? None of it’s real. So I toyed around with those guys for a while. Believe me, you don’t want the details. I know you think you do. Okay, it’s like phone sex, except that you’re typing your fantasies. Anyway, let’s just say I had virtual sex with a man who was probably a lousy lay but an okay typist. I didn’t have to worry about how I looked, whether we loved each other, birth control, or whether he’d stay for breakfast. I thought, I could get used to this.

  A while later I found myself wanting to see whether I could get something else going (I was bored, okay?), and I started talking to KingX. KingX seemed just my type—a cynical, bored TV writer who worked in Soho. He was the only typist who seemed capable of proper use of the apostrophe. “Tell me a secret or I’m leaving,” he said. The very possibility that I might be boring him was so intolerable that I decided to let him in on my transformation: “I lost my cybervirginity tonight,” I told him. He seemed so normal that I was totally scared to talk dirty to him because I was terrified that he’d turn out to be someone I know. Like my brother or something. An awful thought. But then, as he questioned me about the cybersex, I found my image of him to be magically evolving into that of the ideal stranger.

  We segued seamlessly into a shared fantasy—it started with him typing, “What are you wearing?” And me admitting my less-than-sexy flannel pajamas. He claimed that flannel was sexy but was soon standing behind me and helping me remove it. I can’t bring myself to tell you exactly what happened, but, since you insist, I’ll include an excerpt, so you know how it goes.

  LUCKYH: where are you, at a desk?

  KINGX: yeah, you?

  LUCKYH: I’m on my bed.

  KINGX: ?

  LUCKYH: laptop

  KINGX: of course

  LUCKYH: what are you wearing?

  KINGX: boxers

  LUCKYH: that’s all?

  KINGX: afraid so

  LUCKYH: take them off

  KINGX: if you say so . . .

  KINGX: they’re off.

  His language was too much like a trashy romance for my taste (“I slide my hands down your soft skin”), but, in a way I never could have on dry land, I let it go.

  It’s amazing how enlightening a change of medium can be. In the real time of the moment I found myself saying (typing) exactly what came to mind, without processing for taste or dignity or precision. I used words with this stranger that I haven’t said to lovers. Maybe it’s not strange that afterwards I really did feel like we’d been intimate, since revealing oneself is much more powerful than processing someone else’s stuff, emotional or physical. And he, of course, wanted to do this again. He said, maybe we can meet, in Central Park, and “you won’t be disappointed.” Yikes. I hesitated, indicating that we need to find out whether there’s any chance that we’re actually compatible in an anonymous atmosphere first. But we did exchange first names, and I am curious and might want to meet him if this goes on. I hope it does. Imagine having a regular lover whom you’ve never met. Wowsa.

  If I sent you an article of clothing, would it be stolen? I just have it in my head that you need an oversized cotton shirt the color of yellow mud that they’re selling at the Gap. It’s so Out of Africa. But would you ever get it? Are things settling down there? Did you run outside in the rain and pretend you were taking a shower? Maybe you should just come home. Or else, stay, and you’ll be here soon enough, I’m convinced. Either way you’ll be stranger and wiser, like Dorothy. Did anyone tell you that it snowed here these past couple days? It’s Easter and it’s snowing. Okay, it’s 11:15. Bedtime. I just ate a lot of Hershey’s Hugs and I feel really sick. I need to get it together. I’m angry this time.

  Love,

  H

  P.S. But oh, how I cherish my little home!

  LAMU

  April 20

  Hilary—

  Guess what: Because the water is so bad, Peace Corps is pulling us out of Ramisi. Hold all mail. In two weeks, when they can find us a new school, new town, and new house, we will leave.

  On this island where we are currently having a deeply pleasant vacation, the only power is donkey—I have a new deeper understanding of what it means to be a beast of burden and I’ll never be yours. It entails continually getting the crap beaten out of you while carrying heavy things. And you don’t have arms. I like arms.

  More when we get back to Ramisi.

  Love,

  K8

  RAMISI

  April 24

  Dear Hilary,

  Yesterday I sent you a postcard and today I got a letter from you saying that yesterday you sent me a postcard and today you are sending me a letter and today I am sending you a letter, “if you’re getting me,” as they say around here. We’re in sync even this far away :-) (Do I have to make my smiley man sideways even when I’m writing by hand?)

  I am really glad that the cybersex guy wasn’t your brother because I think I would’ve had to go into therapy too if it had been. Isn’t everything you type on your computer recorded somewhere and isn’t that scary? I couldn’t even do stuff like that on paper I could burn. Even if it were all lies. But I’m glad you can and I think you should keep it up because I want more stories. And tell me about your very own apartment. Will you draw it for me?

  On our vacation we traveled far to a shallow but huge lake. It was a solidly brown color from mud, and the sun made it yellowy. It was also raining, so there was a twilight kind of light illuminating it, and there were silhouettes of mountains in the background. The shore, before the rise to the hills, was a wideopen, muddy plain where there were humpy cows and pure white fairy-tale cranes. In the middle of this flat lake in a small boat, we turned to see a small and harmless tornado of dust start in the town. Like it was Kansas. Then in a minute there were thirty of them. In the other direction a huge black storm cloud was darkening a rocky island. A hippo and its little hippo baby surfaced and ambled toward
the boat. A double rainbow appeared over our shoulders. A fisherman in a boat made of straw, wearing very little, paddled over to us to give us a fish. The driver of our boat took the fish and, as it flopped, shoved some wood in it to make it float. Then he called the eagles, and they swooped down for it. A crocodile came out of the brush and submerged, and we waited out the rain on the rocky island under some thatching with some chatting children. And that was only day one of the trip.

  Right now we’re in the staff room in Ramisi on the first day of the new term—still very few students, no surprise. As I told you, yes, we’re going to a new site next week. At first, as we walked to our house from the road, coming back from our trip, we thought, Oh Ramisi, how can we leave when we’ve come so far here! When we’re starting to know how things go? How can we make friends all over again? But within hours, I started to feel sick again—you have to drink a lot of the water because it’s so hot here all the time. Then, school reopened, with the headmaster caning the only students here and making them kneel in the brutal sun for an hour for not speaking to him with the proper respect. While we were on vacation another Peace Corps volunteer told us that a teacher at his school hit a student on her head with a chalkboard eraser until she got a bloody nose, so it’s not just our school. We won’t be sorry to leave here; we only hope that we’re not jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.