by Lisa Alther
‘It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes every other day if we took turns,’ I pointed out.
‘Turns! Schedules! Lists! Did anyone ever tell you that you have an accountant mentality, Ginny? I suppose you’d like to mark on a calendar when to have sex, too?’
I hadn’t found it easy sharing a bathroom with a member of The Elect all these years, and my accumulated resentments poured out in response to this unwarranted attack. ‘An accountant mentality! Well, it’s a goddam good thing that somebody in this place does! If I weren’t around to pay your bills, Eddie, you’d be out on your ass so fast….’
‘There!’ Eddie said triumphantly, gesturing toward me with her hand. ‘It’s out at last! I knew it all along! I knew that deep down you resented sharing your fucking blood money with me. You grasping bourgeois types are all the same. I can read you like a book!’
‘Oh yeah!’ I screamed, standing over her, a quivering mass of bourgeois rage. ‘I don’t notice you making any efforts to earn honest money, Miss Holier Than Thou! You seem perfectly content to let me pay your way with my despised blood money!’
‘Your money, my money! Who gives a shit about your goddam fucking money? Shove it up your ass, Scarlett.’ She slouched lower in her chair and glowered.
‘Get out! Get out, you freeloader! I’m paying the rent, this is my place. And I don’t need you around calling me “grasping” and “bourgeois” while you live off me, like the cock-sucking parasite you are!’
I had never before let the phrase ‘cock-sucking’ pass my lips, though I had heard it often enough during my days with Clem. Eddie looked startled, but no more startled than I. We stared at each other in mutual shock.
‘So that’s it,’ Eddie said, nodding her head knowingly.
‘What’s it?’
‘You know as well as I do from Psychology 101, Ginny, that there’s more at stake here than rotten eggs or who pays the rent. And I’ve just realized what it is.’
‘What is it?’
‘You’re tired of me, Ginny. You want a man. A cock,’ she added with distaste.
‘No! That’s not true!’
‘I’ve been expecting it. You don’t need to deny it. It was bound to happen sooner or later. You’ve just been playing around with me. Basically you’re as hetero as they come.’
‘But you’re wrong, Eddie. You’re all I want. With one functioning lover, what would I want with any more? After all, how much sex can one person endure?’ I knelt beside her chair and began massaging her throbbing temples.
‘It’s no use,’ Eddie said glumly, pushing my hands away. “What’s done is done.’
‘But nothing’s done, Eddie,’ I protested with a laugh. ‘What do I want with a man? I’ve had men. You’re so far superior as a lover, and in every other way, that it’s ridiculous even to talk about it.’
I kissed her on the mouth tenderly. This was followed by an embrace. “You’re crazy, Eddie,’ I whispered fondly in her ear.
‘I guess I am.’
Lacking eggs, I dished us up bowls of molded soybean salad left over from the night before. There was a great deal left over, almost the entire salad, in fact. We ate in silence at the table, which overlooked the beaver pond. I kept trying not to breathe as I ate so that I wouldn’t be able to taste very well.
‘Delicious,’ Eddie said firmly, trying to convince herself.
‘Delicious,’ I echoed faintly. ‘And full of protein.’
The summer sun shone down bright and hot on the pond. Shimmering heat waves rose up all around the cabin. Bees bumbled in the weed flowers that were thigh-high in the yard.
‘I was wondering, Eddie,’ I said between hastily swallowed bites, ‘if we maybe shouldn’t rent a power tiller for the garden down at the hardware store.’ The garden we had so carefully planted was now overrun with weeds. We had to do something quick — either get rid of the weeds, or get used to them in lieu of tomatoes.
‘Are you kidding? A power tiller? Are you out of your mind? You don’t actually want to patronize an economy that turns The People into interchangeable cogs in some vast assembly line, do you? You couldn’t possibly want to participate in a system of production that makes medical supplies with one hand and bombs with the other. I mean, that’s why we’re up here, isn’t it, to wean ourselves from that sort of hypocrisy, to become honest working-class people? Well, isn’t it?’
I said nothing. I wasn’t at all sure that that was why I was in Vermont. I reviewed my motives and concluded that I was mostly here because Eddie wanted to be, for reasons of her own, and I wanted to be with Eddie. Once again I was shamelessly allowing myself to be defined by another person. I was afraid it would sound at best hopelessly bougie (Eddie’s shorthand for ‘bourgeois’) if I admitted this — and counterrevolutionary at worst. So instead I asked meekly, ‘Yes, but what about the weeds?’
‘We’ll pull them by hand,’ Eddie announced grandly, ‘like every person in the Third World does!’
That afternoon, shirtless, sweat pouring out of our hairy armpits, we pulled weeds in the hot sun for about fifteen minutes, clearing a small corner of the tomato patch. Our bodies clammy with sweat, we lay under an apple tree and smoked a joint.
‘If tomatoes can’t prevail against the weeds, they don’t deserve to live,’ Eddie concluded. ‘To pull the weeds would be to weaken the tomatoes and make them dependent on us.’
‘Maybe it’s too late. I think they’re already corrupted. They appear to need us.’
The apples hanging above us were tinged with pink. Because we had failed to prune the trees or to control the insects, they were tiny and deformed and riddled with worm holes. We turned over on our stomachs so that we wouldn’t have to look at yet another tribute to our ineptitude.
‘We may not be freeing up our former food supplies for shipment to the Third World,’ I said, ‘but we’re sure providing one hell of a feast for the area insects.’
When Eddie looked at me, I knew that my remark hadn’t been amusing, it had been reactionary. ‘What do you expect?’ she demanded. “We’re just picking up on all this soil shit. We’ll get it together for next summer.’
We passed the joint and became less and less glum. We glanced off and on at the beehive under a neighboring tree. At least we would have honey. We had left the bees almost entirely alone, in keeping with our policy of letting things fend for themselves. Only the bees had come through under this regime. They were rushing in and out with loads of nectar and pollen. Talk about accountant mentalities…
‘We should do more hives next year,’ Eddie said, yawning. ‘That’s my kind of project.’ She rolled over and wrapped her arms around me and nibbled my neck.
Eddie and I went one day to Mona’s and Atheliah’s for an autumnal equinox party. The plan was that we would all help them harvest their crops, and then we would have a big feed. I took soybean croquettes Creole as our contribution. When we arrived at their crumbling farmhouse, a dozen people in various stages of undress were lolling around in the weed patch that was their front lawn. I recognized about half the people as being in Mona’s and Atheliah’s group. The others were from nearby farms. Marijuana smoke hung around the group like a London pea-soup fog. A woman in a long Indian shirt with hair to her waist was plucking a dulcimer and singing a Kentucky coal mining song with a Brooklyn accent: ‘I hope when I’m gone and the ages shall roll,/My body will blacken and turn into coal./ Then I’ll look from the door of my heavenly home/And pity the miner digging my bones/Where it’s dark as a dungeon, damp as the dew,/Where the danger is double, the pleasures are few,/Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines/It’s dark as a dungeon way down in the mines.’ I felt a passing seizure of nostalgia for the mines of Appalachia that I had never known. Genes, no doubt. The collective experience of my forebears encoded within each of my cells.
A shirtless man with a Simon Legree mustache was silk-screening ‘Power to the People’ in white on his dark blue T-shirt. Atheliah was stirring something in a bi
g cast iron pot that sat in the middle of a small fire. A naked boy baby was tottering around with his arms outstretched for his mother, whom he couldn’t locate. I handed my earthenware dish to Mona, who lifted the lid and sniffed and said, ‘Soybeans. Far out.’
After a while a few people wandered out to the corn patch, which was almost as full of weeds as our tomato patch. Eddie sat down next to the woman with the dulcimer and started harmonizing. I went out to the corn patch to help pick. We ripped the ears off the stalks, shucked them, and tossed them in a cart. They were mostly four inches long and etched with brown worm tracks.
Halfway through the patch, Laverne, a woman in Mona’s house, found a stunted Hubbard squash that was about the size and shape of a small football. Laverne was statuesque. There was no other word for her. Her shapely hips and large breasts strained the seams of her T-shirt and jeans. She had long blond naturally curly hair and blue eyes. In another era she would have been a movie starlet, a model for Rubens. She held up her squash triumphantly.
‘A football!’ gasped a bearded man with bleary eyes, who looked like Sherman on his march through Georgia. He grabbed the squash, faded back, and passed it to another man, who wore nothing but jeans, which were too large for him and were bunched together and held up with a belt fashioned from a silk rep tie.
‘Keep-away,’ he suggested. ‘Shirts against the skins.’
We glanced around. Five of us wore shirts; three men were shirtless.
Laverne threw off her T-shirt with one smooth upward movement. ‘I’ll be a skin!’
Everyone stood transfixed, staring with awe at her magnificent brown breasts, which were very tanned and evidently accustomed to exposure. Trying to pretend that we hadn’t been staring, that we all saw bare bosoms this breathtaking every day, that the female chest was no big deal to people as sexually liberated as we, we began a frantic game of keep-away through the corn patch, trampling the juicy green stalks and passing and handling off the squash as we went. Everyone was clandestinely sneaking glimpses of Laverne’s breasts, bouncing firmly as she ran and gleaming bronze under the September sun.
The game got progressively rougher, and soon people were tackling each other and grappling in the dirt over the squash. At one point I lay trying to catch my breath after a savage tackle by General Sherman. As I picked myself up, I saw that the game had moved from the garden and into the high grass. Laverne, her jeans hanging on her hips just above her pubic hair, was dancing in place signaling to the man with the tie belt to throw her the squash. Her arms were raised high over her head, accentuating the narrowness of her waist. Her breasts were shaking in place like Jell-O.
The squash was flying through the air. Laverne leapt up to catch it. As she did, she was hit from three sides by male tacklers. The squash sailed over her head and smashed open, spilling its orange guts on the grass. Laverne herself landed on her back in the dirt with her jeans to her knees.
I watched in amazement as the bearded man threw himself on her and started lunging his hips into hers. I heard her gasping and shrieking. Shortly, he rolled off and another man climbed on, like a cowboy trying to ride a bronco.
I glanced back toward the house. A couple of people watched indifferently. No one seemed concerned. But from where I stood, with my mouth hanging open, it looked for all the world like what Clem used to call a gang bang. They were like a pack of mongrels balling a bitch in heat. Laverne was being raped and no one was helping! I ran closer, speculating that she had perhaps been asking for it.
By the time I was ten yards away, I could see that her legs were sprawled open and her whole luscious body was smeared with dirt and sweat and semen. I could also hear what she was screaming: ‘Faster! Faster! Don’t stop now, you motherfucker! Oh mother of Christ! Don’t stop!’ Her body was arcing up off the ground and twitching spasmodically, like a frog’s leg hooked into an electric current. Three men lay in panting heaps next to her, like bees after stinging.
I stopped running to her assistance and stood frozen to the spot. As I watched, blood rushed to my face. My nipples began tingling with excitement. I realized I wanted to join the fray, but whether on top of Laverne or underneath the men I was no longer certain. Divided loyalties.
I turned around and walked slowly back toward the house, breathing deeply to quell my beast.
I sat down next to Eddie, who was scowling.
‘…really disgusting,’ Mona was saying.
‘Revolting,’ Eddie agreed, looking at me. But I said nothing.
Later Eddie and I passed by Atheliah’s cast iron pot and got a bowl of soup. ‘Dr. Dekleine’s Victory Soup,’ Atheliah informed us. ‘Brewer’s yeast, powdered milk, and toasted soy flour. Delicious. And packed with protein.’
We sat on the steps, and Eddie said casually, ‘You liked it, didn’t you?’
‘Liked what?’
‘Laverne’s charming number in the corn patch.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘I saw you standing there watching and getting off on it.’
‘I thought they were raping her. I was worried.’
‘You don’t need to worry about Laverne. It’s you I’m worried about.’
‘Me?’
‘Admit it. You loved it. You wanted to be right in there with them. Didn’t you?’
‘It occurred to me.’
‘I knew it! You’re tired of me!’
‘I’m not,’ I assured her without conviction.
‘Can I help it if I don’t have a penis?’
‘Of course not,’ I said wearily. ‘I’ve told you that it doesn’t matter to me. There are all sorts of compensations to being with you instead of a man.’
‘Compensations? Compensations? Go ahead, Scarlett. Go drag one of those young studs on his macho trip out into the woods with you! I dare you to! You’ll come crawling back to me in minutes! Go on!’
‘Maybe I will.’ Under Eddie’s abuse, I was becoming more interested in the idea all the time.
That night we walked back to our cabin in an icy silence, me with the crusted soybean croquette dish under my arm. We climbed into bed and turned our backs on each other.
Later that night I woke up being caressed by Eddie. Warm tears were dripping from her eyes and onto my bare chest
“Don’t leave me, Ginny. Please don’t. I couldn’t stand it if I knew you were with a man. I get sick just thinking about it. Don’t do it to us.’
Reflexively, I took her in my arms, and we kissed and held each other. She parted my knees and began stroking me. On the verge of orgasm, I felt something hard and cold slide into me and start moving back and forth. It felt fantastic. Curiosity finally quelling lust, I sat up and said, ‘What are you doing, Eddie?’ I turned on the light
She smiled sheepishly and held up a greased cucumber. I looked at her with horror. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured me. ‘It’s organically grown.’
The incident with Laverne, as unimpressed as people had seemed by it at the time, had repercussions far beyond those on Eddie’s and my relationship. For one thing, Mona and Atheliah moved in with us the following week.
‘We didn’t want to interfere with Laverne’s honeymoon,’ Mona said with distaste as we sat in captain’s chairs around our wood stove the night of their arrival. The autumn air was chilly, and we had a small fire going.
‘You mean — she’s there with all those men just…?’ Eddie asked with uncharacteristic delicacy.
As Mona nodded with a sardonic smile, Eddie shuddered. ‘Well, I can certainly understand your leaving. You’re welcome to live with us for as long as you like.’
‘Be fair, Mona,’ Atheliah said. ‘It wasn’t just Laverne. This has been building up for a long time.’ Atheliah was sharpening her ax on a whetstone, testing the blade with her callused thumb. Occasionally she’d put it down to smoke a cigarette, which she’d hold between her thumb and index finger, cupping the glowing butt in her huge hand.
Mona nodded in agreement She was smoking a joint, had inhaled deepl
y and was holding her breath. Her face was turning dark red, like a child’s in a tantrum. Her bruised-looking eyes were beginning to glaze over behind her purple lenses.
‘It got to be a total turn-off,’ Atheliah continued. ‘They wanted to fart around in the garden all day and come in to find that the womenfolk had hot meals waiting for them.’
‘No!’ said Eddie. She picked up her chair and moved it behind mine. Sitting with a knee on either side of my chair, she began unbraiding my hair carefully.
‘Yes,’ Atheliah confirmed. ‘Or one of them would say, peremptorily, “Mona?” And would point to his cup to indicate that he wanted more tea. It was totally unreal.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ Eddie said.
‘I know, but it’s true,’ Atheliah insisted. ‘They’re on a real macho trip over there — me Tarzan, you Jane.’
‘What it comes down to,’ Mona said in a gush of exhaled smoke, ‘is that Atheliah and I just need a larger life space to work in. Laverne gets her rocks off on this macho stuff, but it’s a total turn-off for us.’
‘Turn-off isn’t the word for it,’ Eddie said with disgust. She was brushing out my tangled hair with short sharp brush strokes.
‘It’s not their fault,’ I suggested, speaking from personal experience. ‘It’s how they were brought up, with their masochistic mothers hovering over them anticipating their every need. They’re macho, I’m bougie. We can’t help ourselves.’
‘That’s cool,’ Mona agreed, hunched over with her elbows on her chair arms and her dark hair hanging in her eyes. ‘But at what point do the obnoxious personality traits that have survived your childhood start being your own responsibility, rather than your parents’?’
We all sat meditating upon this question and listening to the hypnotic grinding whir of Atheliah’s ax on the whetstone. Eddie got up and shoved a log into the stove. When she sat back down, she began to smooth my long mass of hair, which crackled with electricity. A window rattled in its frame, and a few flakes of early snow whirled past. The effect of the grinding fell somewhere between a back rub and fingernails skittering across a blackboard.
