Small Changes

by Marge Piercy

  “So what do you want with him then?”

  “Beth, Beth.” Dorine put her hands on her shoulders. “Don’t do that to me! Make me feel guilty for something I did that I wanted. Don’t.”

  “But you’ve been so strong.”

  “But I can’t be strong for you. We can be strong together.” Dorine buried her hands in her curly ruff of brown hair. “All heterosexuality isn’t necessarily a woman servicing a man. It’s as if we can be friends now, real friends. I know he’s still hung up on Miriam and that she means a whole lot to him. He’s been broken and he’s mending. And I can’t give him much—not much time, not much energy.”

  “What can he give you?”

  “Communication. A sense of play. The feeling mellow in my body.… I don’t know about Jackson, about dealing with him. That’s a test of strength. Being around Jackson used to make me feel like a piece of nothing.”

  “I wonder if I’d still feel attracted to him. The way I used to.” Beth felt fierce with courage saying it out loud. “I don’t think so. Besides, he’s older now.”

  “So are you, ninny. So is supper. Come on downstairs and eat with the rest of us. There won’t be anything left for us.”

  Beth paused in the doorway. “Why did Phil have to come back? Why couldn’t he stay where he was! All he ever means is trouble.”

  “When you look at him, you won’t ask why he came back.”

  On Saturday, Beth marched with Laura and Dorine. Her uneasy conscience made her go: what Miriam called her Puritan, the voice that made her feel that the more it cost to do something—the less she wanted to and the keener her fears—the more needful it was that she perform that act. But she did not enjoy the chants and the songs. Oh, part of her could watch Laura striding arm in arm with Lynn and another woman under the banner GAY IS BEAUTIFUL and see how happy Laura looked. Her face was flushed, her hair tumbled, her eyes bright with excitement as she marched, almost dancing along. Dorine was having a good time too, shouting and waving a poster and singing in her strong soprano with the other women. Beth’s conscience could make her march, but her conscience could not make her feel truly a part of what she did not want to be doing. Her body felt tight and hard. She wished herself visible only to the women around her. She felt awkward around the men from Gay Liberation and was glad they were marching separately: they made her feel as if she were all elbows.

  The march had been called partly because of recent police harassment but also, Laura told her, to influence the women’s conference going on that weekend to give more space to gay women’s political demands. After the demonstration they went off to the conference, at Boston University. Laura went to the gay women’s meeting, but after looking through the nine workshops, Dorine and Beth decided they wanted to attend the one on women’s theater. “Wanda Rosario. Haven’t I heard of her? Does she write stuff?”

  “I don’t think so.…” Dorine frowned over the name. “I have a feeling it’s Joe you’re thinking of. Used to be a big macher in the Radical Alliance. Proponent of the student-worker line. Phil used to hang around with him. Remember Joe Rosario who got fired from Northeastern and there was a student strike? He used to drop by Going-to-the-Sun.”

  “Maybe she isn’t his wife, then.”

  “He had a wife. I met her when we were bailing Phil out. What she’d have to do with women’s theater I sure don’t know. Anyhow, maybe we can find a group that you’ll like.” Dorine gave her hand a squeeze.

  “Well, is that her?” Beth asked softly as they came in and sat down on the floor. They were late and the workshop was under way. A woman was setting everybody in groups to doing exercises with their voices and bodies.

  “I’m not sure.… It could be her. No, it couldn’t be.”

  For three hours they kept at it. It was exhausting and great. This woman knew what she was doing, she did not so much direct and instruct them as set them going together. They did some exercises with the group all at once, some things in small groups, some in twos and threes. They roared and bellowed. They sang. They drew air into their lungs and let it out in long, long groans and ululations. They beat time on the floor and on their thighs and they clapped in counter-rhythms. They danced and leapt and did slow circles. They became one another. They became parts of their own bodies and parts of their pasts. They were what they most wanted to be. They were animals. Then they were one big animal together. Then they were a machine. They were a cow together, they were a big snake, they were a wolf. They were a typewriter and a car.

  The woman Wanda Rosario was small, almost as small as Beth, but heavier. She had a chunky body and wild dark hair, coarse and short and streaked with gray. She had huge dark eyes, a swarthy complexion, a sharp nose. She had blunt large spatulate hands that became totally other when she used them. They became birds, they became fish, they became flowers: they had no bones but were water flowing; they became knives and boxes and armor plating. They were weapons. They were puppets.

  Her hair stood on end, her eyes blazed, her voice bellowed. Then it sank to a weird carrying whisper. She crackled with energy. She talked about women’s music, the songs women sang, the dancing women had done together, the rituals of women’s lives handed down from mothers to daughters for thousands of years from Paleolithic times and now destroyed. Women had had their culture stolen, suppressed. Women imagined they had never been poets or composers because their music had been anonymous and collective.

  She talked about the need for women’s rituals, for making each other strong, for giving each other power, for feeling each one her own beauty with each other. They must make their own strong clean rituals of giving birth and puberty and fighting and growing and sharing and dying.

  She illustrated with a ritual from the Santería, explaining how the forbidden African goddesses and gods had been disguised under the names of Christian saints, had entered the bodies of women dancing, and had thus manifested themselves. In this dance she was the goddess of the sea. One of the women who was in her company beat on a drum. Both Wanda and the woman began to sing something back and forth between them, and then Wanda began to dance, swishing back and forth rhythmically an invisible skirt as she stomped and turned and moved her hips. And Wanda dancing became beautiful.

  Watching her, Beth caught her breath. She could almost believe on the spot in possession, in the mystery of the Santería, because dancing Wanda was radiant with power and strength, Wanda was beautiful. A wanting touched her nerves. Did she want to be Wanda? She tried to imagine that. She was in the presence of a woman who could make hidden things real, who could make inchoate emotions leap into the flesh. She wanted—what?—to know Wanda? To be near her? To be part of what she did. Right then she knew what she wanted to do in the world. She knew. She wanted to work with Wanda, she wanted to be part of that theater group.

  As the workshop was breaking up, Wanda answered questions. One of them was from somebody obviously thinking like Beth, but with more nerve. “Yes, I’m starting a new group. Some of us from the old Red Wagon will be the nucleus, and we already have a house in Roxbury where we can live and work. But this new group is going to be larger. We’re going to use a lot more music and dance movement in our theater.”

  The group would work together until they had a common identity and a common style and a repertoire. She thought they should have three or four months of hard work before they could start performing. Providing they got started at once.

  Beth worked her way to stand as close to Wanda as she could approach. A group of women were asking questions, discussing methods, telling each other and Wanda what their groups were doing. They were arguing about whether anyone in women’s theater should take on a role like Wanda’s of director, or whether everything should emerge from the collectivity. Wanda’s voice came occasionally through the hedge of backs, sounding tired, sounding weary. She did not defend her position. She sounded too tired to defend herself. Beth waited and waited. Finally as Wanda was getting ready to leave, sticking her head through a
n old horse blanket of a poncho, Beth said in a voice that fled her throat like a mouse, “I want to be in your group! I want to work with you!”

  “Have you worked with any theater groups before?”

  “No. Only in the house. We improvise together. I live in a women’s house.”

  “Come out to Roxbury tomorrow. You got the address? Good. Do you work?”

  “Yes, but I’ll quit.”

  Wanda smiled wearily. She looked wan and empty. “Not yet, please. Come and see how we are. See if you want to be with us. We’re just starting. Today, here, we were doing simple exercises. Fun to do and loosens everyone. But we’re going to be trying to make theater that speaks for women. That can pull women out of their solitary cells. I can’t talk any more now, I’m beat. But come if you want to.… Don’t be afraid. I do mean that you’re welcome to come.…”

  Dorine and Beth left the conference giddy and floating. They were too wound up to stay for the plenary session, too excited to sit still. They walked across the B.U. bridge, almost skipping along. As they came off the Cambridge end, Beth said, “You know, we should have stayed. There’s a lot of business to be covered today, decisions about day care and health issues.”

  “You know we didn’t want to. Neither of us ever say a word at meetings anyhow, if there’s more than ten people. We’re both too excited to listen to anybody.… Hey, you want to stop by Phil’s? You said you wanted to.”

  But as they were turning the corner onto Pearl, familiar and shabby with its odd-sized frame houses crowding the street, Beth felt guilty. “Taking our pleasure to them. We’re backsliding.”

  “It’s the trouble in the house. You don’t want to go back right now and find Connie and Laura fighting, or Sally and Connie not speaking. It’s close to exploding. The kids feel it the worst.”

  “We’re making excuses. I’m giving myself a license for being curious because I think I found something today I really, really want to do. I think she’s great, Dorine. She gives off energy like a little sun.”

  “Beth, it is the same woman, though I just couldn’t believe it. When you were talking to her at the end, I looked at her close up. She has that big mole on her cheek. I remember that from the night at the precinct, when she was waiting for Joe and I was waiting for Phil—Miriam was on the computer. I remember thinking that she wasn’t very attractive. To show you where my head was at in those days, I thought an important guy like Joe, I’d expect him to have a pretty woman. But Wanda was plain and she looked her age.”

  “She looks older because her hair’s got gray in it. She can’t be more than thirty-five. I looked at her hands and throat.… I want to know everything about her.”

  “I remember noticing when we were sitting together that she didn’t shave her legs and I remember feeling superior, thinking she was a real slob. Thinking, how did she expect to keep a real righteous man like Joe, being so sloppy. Oh, men. Oh, women!” They were climbing the familiar dim stairway smelling of Orpheus’ signature.

  She knew ten minutes after walking in—oh, the room was much as it had been, the cat curled on a chair, nose tucked in his long dusty fur, one yellow eye checking them over, the web of extension cords, the dirty dishes and glasses overflowing with butts and the charred tobacco dumped from Jackson’s pipe—that whatever she felt about Jackson, she felt it still. Phil was thin and quieter. She did not mind him as much as she had. He was easier to ignore, and he was paying attention mostly to Dorine.

  Jackson looked … the same. She swore he was wearing the identical faded blue denim shirt. The sad lines etching his cheeks still drew her fingers. Dorine was much bolder. She was talking on, turning to Beth for support. Telling them about the march, as if daring them to say boo, talking about the workshop and the exercises.

  “You’re both looking tiptop.” Jackson scratched himself slowly all over his chest. “Life in the nunnery seems good for the body and soul. Isn’t that so, Felipe?”

  “I always said I’d like life in a nunnery. It’s the priests I never could stomach.”

  “I’m not a nun. Phil knows that already.” Dorine laughed and Phil pulled a long innocent face.

  Jackson looked from one to the other, raising an eyebrow. “And what about you, Beth? Are you a blue nun?”

  “Do you mean sad or pornographic? … I don’t know what I think about sex.” She would not look away from his sandy bloodshot gaze, though she felt her face heating slightly. She would not let him make her into a child.

  “Why, you’re not to think about it. It’s not a thing that improves with thinking, Beth.”

  “You should talk, Jackson,” Phil drawled. “That’s all you do, think about it.”

  “Better than talking about it all the time, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Aw, go on, back in the Boy Scouts in Sofa, Idaho, they told you if you used it regular it would fall off. It’s you should have been the junkie instead of me. That puts it from your mind for sure. Ride the needle far enough and you don’t know what to do with a woman if she crawls in your bed.”

  Jackson let his glance trail over Dorine. “I don’t know, we used to hear it all the time about the sexual revolution. Now, except for the homosexuals who’ve taken to the streets screaming, it seems like everybody else has given it up for macrobiotics or backpacking or freaking on Jesus.”

  “It was only a revolution for men.” Dorine looked delighted with something. Somehow she had ended up standing nearer to Phil and farther from Jackson, leaning on the refrigerator sucking his pipe. “It only meant I couldn’t say no without being told I was frigid and not with it.”

  “Don’t bring your banners in here. Still, I want to know what Beth was doing out with the lesbians. You strike me as about as much of a bulldyke as my mother.”

  Beth found herself standing very straight with anger, and then she saw him smiling inside his face at her reaction. She took a deep breath and signaled with her eyes to Dorine to let her answer. “Not all women are into playing butch and femme. In fact, being with women is one way of getting away from those roles. Second, I don’t have any particular sexual identity—”

  “You used to have one in the old days, back with Tom Ryan,” Jackson said, giving her a face of bland inquiry.

  “No, I didn’t. The only identity I had was loneliness.”

  “Hmm.” His face stopped being funny. “A lot of people could say that about a lot of things that go on. It’s kind of bald, but that about wraps it up.…” His face went into teasing again. “Still I can’t imagine anything quite so provocative as you standing there looking at me wide-eyed, telling me you just don’t have any sexual identity.”

  She hated herself because her heart was pounding, because she would have enjoyed punching him in the nose, and she still found him attractive. She still wanted him to find her attractive. It was entangled with her new and old fears about touching and being touched. She had marched with the gay women and now she was doing the best she could to flirt with Jackson, because she felt pushed to untie at last that knot she was satisfied to have tight inside her. “Doesn’t seem to provoke you to anything besides teasing me.”

  “Right on, Bethie.” Phil was slumped in a chair with one hand on Dorine’s on the table. “Call his bluff. If Jackson had a coat of arms, the motto would be KEEP OFF THE GRASS.”

  “And yours would be a bottle rampant. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach and/or other organs.…”

  “Four-thirty.” Dorine stood up. “I cook tonight. I do little enough the rest of the time. I have to shove off. If you want to stay for a while, Beth?”

  Beth shook her head no and followed Dorine down the hall. Phil kissed the back of Dorine’s neck, mumbling a question. “Gee, Phil, I’m sorry. We made a rule not to have men sleep over.”

  “Jesus, it is a nunnery. No men, like no dogs allowed. Do you think we might rape the children or shit on the floor?”

  “Easy, Phil. It’s a rule because there are women in the house more comfortable that way. It’s
a safe place. If men treated women reasonably, we wouldn’t have to deal with women so fucked over they’re threatened by any man just being where they live.… If you want I’ll come by Monday, late. I’ll call from the studio where I’m working and let you know.”

  “Monday afternoon I’m going over to Miriam’s but, I’ll be back here for supper. Give a call. But that’s some half-àssed rule. Suppose we made a rule, no females? What would we do, fuck in a phone booth? Aw, it’s like being fifteen.” Grumbling, he went off to his room.

  Jackson followed them to the door, hands in his pockets. “Good to see you, Dorine. And Beth. Any time you want to come by and discuss your sexual identity …” He was smiling, half coming on, half putting her down. “I think if we looked for a while we might find you one.”

  “Do you think so?” She was shaking with anger. She stomped out the door and then turned in the hall. “You think you can stick your notions on my head like a paper hat that has to fit!”

  He leaned on the doorway grinning. “I think I could have some fun seeing what fits.” He bussed her on the forehead, then ducked in, pulling the door shut. Inside she could hear him chuckling.

  She sat down on a step clenching her fists. Dorine hauled her up by the elbow. “My, my. I’m immune to him, that’s my goodie of the day. I don’t give a hoot about him. But you’re not in that state, are you?”

  “He thinks I’m a child. He thinks he can tease me and get back home safe. He makes me feel like a … nincompoop. I will call his bluff! I will!”

  “Shh! Beth.” Dorine took her hand. “You don’t win arguments with a man in bed. You be careful. You get mixed up with him and raked over the coals the way Miriam was and I’m not going to stand for it! I’ll kill him if he messes you up. Now you forget him.”

  “But I don’t feel attracted to any other man I know. I have to find out.”

  “What’s wrong with celibacy? You’ve been doing fine. What do you want to go messing around with him for?”