Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

  “Hey, please. I don’t have any place to crash, I didn’t eat last night. Give me a quarter?” The girl looked fourteen. Tom ignored her, but Beth fumbled for change in her pocket.

  “There’s one every ten feet,” he snorted, and he was right. Hare Krishna chanters passed them, orange and white with their shaved heads glinting, moving like butterflies through the crowd. Their music came back through the thickness of people like a rhythmic echo. Phil was bargaining at the curb with a burly guy in a yellow T-shirt that said HOT TUNA and a grotesquely thin girl in a man’s white undershirt and torn bells. A folded bill and a matchbox changed hands. Phil popped the pill and ground the matchbox under his heel. Miriam was down the block where some street musicians were playing while the next rock group set up their vast system of amps and cables. She was dancing with another woman, big and ruddy and somewhat pregnant, and a young willowy horse-faced boy, all laughing in a round before the musicians, who were playing country style with guitars and a fiddle.

  “So we’d have three rooms. That’s two more than you have.” His fingers released her elbow and for once he put his arm around her. They bumped along through the crowd. “You can’t tell how great that place is going to look once it’s fixed up—decent furniture, a few groovy lamps and posters, the walls painted. I’m ready to put some effort in—tired of living like a bum.”

  “Have you let Jesus into your heart?” A pale grublike boy with a sweet set smile stretching his face and enormous brown eyes that seemed to see glory or nothing, seized her arm. “Tell me, sister, have you tried Jesus?” Hal passed them with his guitar on his back, carrying what looked like a cage full of pigeons. By the time Tom had disentangled them from the Jesus boy, her pockets were full of smartly printed exhortations about sin and salvation and how Africa and China were going to invade Israel and launch Armageddon as it said in Revelations, and they had come upon Lennie’s green nudes. Sitting on the ground, Dorine saw them and jumped up to wave. Leaving Jackson with Lennie, she came to meet them.

  “How’s it going?” Beth asked her.

  “Sort of awful. Jackson took over for a while and we had lunch and walked around. That was okay.”

  “Lennie hasn’t sold anything?”

  Dorine shook her head. “Don’t ask him. He’s kind of down.”

  Jackson had been standing beside Lennie staring into the crowd, and as they approached he started off slowly. She did not think he saw her, though she waved. He was watching something behind them, where the rock group was still setting up and the fiddler playing a hoedown.

  “What happened to spring?” Lennie mopped his forehead. For once he had taken off his leather jacket. He looked gaunt and pale. Ever since his beating when he was working as an organizer for the hospital union, his back hurt him and he stooped. “It’s summer already. I wish the wind would come up.”

  The sun laid a metal hand on her head. She could feel her bare arms beginning to freckle. They drifted on in the crowd till Tom stopped ostensibly to watch two exhibitors playing chess. He returned at once to Topic A. “I don’t get it. What are you afraid of? That your parents will find out? You’re a big girl now. What’s the point of this two, three times a week bit, when we can live together?”

  “I said I don’t want to.”

  “You’re being stubborn. I think we should look at those irrational fears and deal with them.”

  “Why do you want me to live there so bad?”

  He glared. “What’s the use getting an apartment if you don’t?” As his irritation mounted he began to plow through the crowd again, more quickly. He had let go her waist and his fingers pinched her elbow.

  “I have my place without living with anyone. I don’t see the connection.” But she did. Warm body, how do you like the kitchen?

  “Jesus!” He snorted and stuffed his hands at the pockets of his pants. They would not fit in, the pants being tailored too tight, and he again gripped her elbow. For five minutes he steered her through the crowd in a bristly silence and she could look around. A woman was handing out leaflets about the air war in Laos, a man was stringing beads without looking at anyone, a big oaf with a movie camera stomped on her toe and did not even turn when she yelped. She tried to imagine herself sitting on a mat selling big coiled pots she had made, like that woman nursing her baby. She had never seen anyone breast-feed a baby outside. She felt excited and confused by the street, smells of grass and vegetables cooking, and the mutter of drug deals going on all around her. Just at the other curb Miriam’s blue print flashed. She was walking alone now, slowly, looking around with a basket rocking on her hip. Behind her a balloon popped and she jumped, swung around, walked on more quickly. About ten feet back and a head taller than anyone in between Jackson strolled, his denim sleeves rolled up. Tracking her? A breeze stirred dust, but the sun beat down without relief. She could feel her arms beginning to burn. They had reached the end of the fair where a first-aid tent was set up. A woman shaking all over was being led in one step at a time, muttering and shivering.

  They turned back. “Look, I’m a grown man. I don’t want to live by myself. I want to live with a woman.”

  “Any woman.” She pulled her arm free. “Ring room service for a woman.”

  “I didn’t say any woman. I said you. You need speeches?”

  “But, Tom, I might as well be any woman. I’m a warm body, I listen to you, I make breakfast. I’m a toaster with a cunt.” It took effort to say that word. All the real sexual words were ugly.

  “Oh, I see.” He looked skyward. “I haven’t demonstrated enough interest in your mind.”

  “I haven’t asked you to. I like things the way they are. But I will not live with you.”

  “If you want me to know you better and treat you differently, isn’t this a fair place to start?”

  “I don’t want to live with you! I don’t want to! I don’t want to be closer!”

  “I guess you don’t.” His face seemed pinched toward his sharp chin and his eyes squinted. “I guess you’re scared to be a real woman with me, and that’s all there is to it. Well, take it or leave it, because that’s the way it is.”

  “You don’t care what I want. You just care what you want!” But she could not work much conviction into her anger. That was, after all, what the small thing between them had been based on. “Tom, try to understand. I just don’t want to live with anyone.”

  “I’m tired of this part-time crap. I want a woman, not an adolescent I have to date. Either you live up to it or we call it quits. I mean it, Beth.”

  She did not know what to say, because she had said it all. She stood awkwardly on one foot and tried a smile. He got angrier. “You think I don’t mean it. Think you can get around me. Think again! It’s forward or backward or get out of the road.” Turning, he pushed off into the crowd. He did not look back. His narrow back seemed to vibrate outrage.

  She wandered back toward Dorine, stopping to watch a street theater group doing a play about landlords and high rent, but she felt too unhappy to get interested. Past a table where people were explaining how to set up food co-ops, past two men quarreling loudly about which had ripped off the other, she felt exhausted before she found Dorine and began telling her what had happened.

  “You’ll make it up.” Dorine took her arm. “You know, I think you’re getting a burn.”

  Beth nodded. “I can feel it. I guess I ought to go home.”

  “Lennie, want to go back? You look so done in.” Dorine patted his cheek.

  He shrugged her off but got up. “Yeah, what’s the use. All those tourists making jokes. But how can we get the stuff back without Jackson?”

  “Beth can help. It’s not so heavy. Beth, you’ll help?”

  Tom was supposed to go to the landlord at three, so she did not think she would run into him. Or maybe she still hoped he would change his mind and come back and let them go on as they had. Besides, Dorine and Lennie really could not manage the paintings without her.

  On the way b
ack they did not talk much. It was a long walk. The paintings were heavy and awkward to carry. The twenty blocks felt like an all-day hike. Lennie was grumpy and Dorine was fussing over him. Beth was down too. The relationship with Tom was not much, but it was a lot more than nothing. She felt lonely already. She wondered if she would ever see any of the people she had met through him. Hauling Lennie’s canvases blocks and blocks and blocks felt like a heavy penance for something she had done wrong. After she had done this, surely she would have a right to come by sometimes. But Dorine and Lennie were totally involved in Lennie’s depression.

  Lennie was trying to cheer himself up as they finally climbed the stairs. “What the hell, people would always rather buy jewelry or pots, they don’t feel they’re putting their taste on the line the same way. If they pick out a canvas, they’re scared somebody else will look at it and say, ‘Ark, you’re an idiot.’ It’s exposing yourself.” He pushed the door ajar, thrusting his load in. As Dorine and Beth crowded after into the cool dim room, the two bodies stretched on the bed—Miriam lying on her stomach with her black hair half tangled over Jackson’s chest, he with one arm around her buttocks, the other lying palm up at his own side—jerked convulsively and froze. Lennie made a surprised noise in his throat. As they halted halfway into the room, Jackson yanked his arm free and, arching himself with rough speed, pulled the sheet from under him and over her, as she was struggling to sit up and cover herself. As Beth backed out the door, she could see vividly Jackson’s lean body with its hard, almost scarified muscles, dark wiry body and pubic hair, the limp condom swinging pendulum-like in the haste of his motion. Jostling, they plummeted downstairs, leaving the rest of the paintings outside the door.

  “Damn it!” Lennie struck his forehead. “He’ll never forgive me. Why did it have to be him?”

  “People … Hey, stop a minute!”

  They looked up. Miriam stuck her head out under the matchstick shade. “Leave your stuff where it is and wait ten minutes. Okay?”

  Lennie kept his head down. “We’re sorry. Honest.”

  “Don’t worry. Everything’s cool. Come up in ten minutes.” She ducked in under the shade.

  “Should we really go back?” Lennie bobbed nervously. “Jackson doesn’t lose his temper often, but when he does …”

  “Why not give them a chance to gloss it over?” Beth wanted to see them together. “Besides, what will we do with all your stuff? Take it back to the fair?”

  As they sat on the porch steps she kept thinking of how Jackson had immediately covered her, a chivalry of the reflexes more attractive than any amount of door opening or ritual complimenting.

  This time Lennie knocked. Miriam opened the door smiling gravely, in her Pakistani pants and top, barefoot still with her hair once again braided. The little hairs on the nape were wet: she smelled of soap. Carrying in a pitcher, Jackson motioned for them to sit on the neatly made bed. “Vodka and orange juice and lots of ice. Get them glasses, Miriam.”

  Back and forth on her bare feet she went, bringing glasses and then a loaf of Italian bread, plates, bologna and cheese, setting them on his cleared desk while he watched with a sucked-in smile of which only a little escaped. As everyone took a turn in the bathroom she moved gracefully around him in a parody of feminine subservience, a playfully overacted domesticity. She sliced the bologna and bread and cheese and arranged them, wheels within wheels, with mustard and horseradish, before she sat down on the edge of the desk beside Jackson on the desk chair. Dorine and Lennie and Beth were lined up with their plates and glasses on the bed.

  “Beth, Beth. Were you named that, or are you really Elizabeth in soft disguise?” Miriam’s voice was low and rich and a little gritty, teasing.

  “I’m named Elizabeth, but nobody’s called me that except in grade school.”

  “God is your oath—that’s what it means, you know.”

  “She could use an oath if her parents had decided to nickname her Lizzie instead.” Jackson crunched an ice cube between his teeth. As Miriam offered the plate around, he followed her movements with that slight smile. “Miriam’s a little insane over names. What did you tell me yours meant? Rebellion?”

  “Or bitter. I’ve seen it explained that way too.”

  “Not bittersweet?”

  “Not by the books.”

  “The books don’t know everything. It’s bitter and sweet.”

  “Like you.” She gave him a slow smile that was mostly in her eyes set deep and wide. Bending then, she gathered the dishes. Something Beth was groping for. If Dorine had been serving them, nobody would have noticed, though the actual act would have been the same. By playing servant with that conscious touch, Miriam made it more flattering to Jackson, to them. She wasn’t quite sure what in that disquieted her. Miriam asked, “Did many stop to look at your work, Lennie?”

  “To make cracks, sure.”

  Jackson stretched his feet halfway across the room, tilting the desk chair back. “People are afraid of the pain in your pictures. They don’t want anything that isn’t easy.”

  “Jackson …” Dorine rested her head on Lennie’s shoulder. Jackson and Miriam sat only a few inches apart but had not touched since the others came in. “You know, after all this time of being your roommate, I still don’t know your first name?”

  “That’s my only name. Jackson Jackson Jackson.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Miriam held her glass to her cheek. “He has a secret first name, like Rumpelstiltskin.”

  “What is it?” Dorine sat up. “Ebenezer? Zacharias? Is it a girl’s name that they give boys sometimes like Shirley or Evelyn?”

  Miriam shook her head sternly. “It’s a piece of Americana. He’d disappear if I told you—he does anyhow. You have to love this idiot for years on end to find out his secret name.”

  He tapped his finger on the desk beside her hand. “How do you know, woman, that’s really my name?”

  Under her low brows she looked at him, the light from the window shading her face under the cheekbones. “It would be like you to fool me. Do you know what I’d do if I found that out?”

  His face was a wary mask. “Yes.”

  They go so well together, Beth thought, that to see them is to find them immediately a couple, the clear answer to a series of muddled questions. Yet tensions sprang out. Watching them she felt a pang of loneliness and then remembered. “I must go. Tom will be coming back, and I shouldn’t be here.”

  “We have to go too. We’ll walk with you.” Miriam padded across the room to her shoes. “Jackson, this time we have to find Phil, immediately.”

  His face was wary, his eyes questioning, but he got slowly to his feet. Lennie and Dorine exchanged uneasy glances.

  “We have to find Phil, we have to come back here, and we all have to talk.” Miriam faced him, looking into his eyes insistently. “Don’t shut me out and don’t shut him out. You can’t make me choose any more. I can’t stand it. We can’t stay apart, all right, we can’t, but I can’t punish Phil for that. I won’t be the club you use on each other! Never again.”

  Slowly Jackson put his hand on her shoulder. He did not smile, no muscle in his face moved. “Phil was my friend long before I met you, long before he met you. Remember that.”

  “Stay open, Jackson. Stay open and talk. That’s all I ask.”

  “Woman, that isn’t enough?” But he nodded again, opening the door and following her down the stairs, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Going after, Beth wondered. What was happening? He was so thoroughly there with her, what could it be he denied that she needed Phil too, that drew hungry shadows down her cheeks from her watching eyes? She wondered if she would ever arrive at watching lovers without some pang of wanting to be loved too, for all of her analysis.

  Well, one thing had been saved for her out of the day. If Miriam did become involved with Jackson once again, she could continue to come here and visit. Miriam would justify her presence as somehow Dorine could not. And then she would come to know
Miriam at last too.

  5

  Women’s Soft Voices on a Summer Day

  SCENE: The Cambridge apartment. The room that had been Tom Ryan’s is now Miriam’s. On the double bed is an old patchwork comforter made by Miriam’s mother’s mother, Rachel. Phil is at work tending bar: he has two part-time bartending jobs at the moment, Oggy’s and Finnegan’s Wake. Jackson is off with Terry and Rick from Going-to-the-Sun commune, and nobody knows where they are or when he will reappear. Lennie is out hawking papers. It is Saturday afternoon. Miriam has just trimmed Beth’s hair, cut Donne’s, and had her own mane thinned and evened by Dorine. Now all three lie on the bed in a wilted row. The air over them is another feather bed.

  MIRIAM: Well, you guess wrong. I have a brother Mark, younger by a year, and a sister Allegra, younger by three. Not only wasn’t I an only child, I got stuck being a mother a lot.

  DORINE: Oh, I bet you dug playing mother.

  MIRIAM: Sure, playing it. But not having to do it day in and day out. When I was little my mother always had to work. My father was blacklisted for a long time and he couldn’t get a job. He was a folk singer and he’d signed his name to a lot of things.

  BETH: But at least you must have admired him.

  MIRIAM: When I was little, oh sure. He had us all conned. I mean, don’t get the idea he was a Communist. He was an opportunist, he just wanted to be a big-name folk singer. I’ll always wonder to what extent he was martyred to his associations, and to what extent he just thought it fine that my mother should teach and support him. But don’t imagine that meant he hung around the house taking care of us and doing the housework, oh no! I was raised to think he was a hero. When he was home he was always composing awful songs about civil rights that must have made the blacks embarrassed, or he was practicing. The only real radical in the family is my grandmother, who made this quilt, and she’s crazy now.