Braided Lives

by Marge Piercy

  Her eyes rest on me hard and hostile. “Donna! Donna! Donna! There’s something really wrong with you. Something rotten.”

  Do not respond. No expression. Bacall in To Have and Have Not when the cop slaps her. Pride is being cool. “In this zoo, why ever not?” I fumble for a cigarette, light it with a kitchen match struck off my thumbnail, a new affectation I know will drive her crazy. I am suddenly thirteen again and miserable.

  We sit at the back of the bus for privacy. Donna dabs at her eyes. “It’s only five years since Jim graduated, but oh, they’re disgustingly settled! He used to care about things, he was practically a socialist. But when I tried to tell them about Lennie, they made fun of him.”

  “How could they? They never met him.”

  “Because I said he has a beard and paints.” She blows her nose hard. “I said, why should women have hours when the men don’t? They both started in, parents wouldn’t send their children to school if they weren’t protected. I said, Don’t you think people screw before ten thirty? That just makes it sordid. And they had the nerve to pretend to be shocked!”

  “How are things between Jim and you?”

  “Stu, you know what he did? Took me aside and gave me a horrid smug lecture on making men respect me. He said because I’m not Jewish, Lennie would just try to use me—Lennie! I’m more fed up with not having sex than Lennie is.”

  “Lennie loves you. Don’t talk to them anymore about him.” I pick at my jacket, feeling the cold ingroup pushing. Virtuous air of Aunt Jean saying broadly, “Why, when I showed him the house, he tried to jew me down.” Donna is an accident of warm flesh.

  “You’re the only living soul I can talk to besides Lennie, and there are things I can’t say to him.”

  “Have you told him about Jim?”

  “Not yet. He’s so good. I just can’t.”

  I am all for honesty but she is too unhappy for me to pester with my scruples. I check my package, peering at the fiery red of the dress. With great mystery Donna took me to a hallway lined with dentists’ offices where with the staring fixity of her confessions she swore me to secrecy. “Promise you won’t tell! Nobody! Especially Julie. Promise!” Thus I was initiated into the resale shop where I bought a red wool dress with a V neck, simple in a way that even I can recognize as well-made, of a jersey that clings and flatters.

  “Donna.” I tap her arm. She is staring out the bus window at Awrey’s factory where they bake the almond-tasting windmill cookies. “I want you to meet my old friend Howie. Tonight?”

  “Some other time. I’m worn out. Just let me come home with you. They make me feel so bad about myself.”

  Dad and Leo are down in the basement. The whine of the electric jigsaw rises. Whenever it stops I hear them talking. They get on together, their conversation jingling with odd, unfitted facts like a pocketful of nails. Dad loves to know exactly how mechanical objects or processes work. Since Leo is always going into or out of some new business, Dad gets to question him about something and Leo gets to play expert answering.

  I stand at the sink washing supper dishes. Mother and Donna and Matt sit around the lit tree in the living room. I expected Donna to keep me company while I wash. I long for her to come. Instead she hangs out in the living room acting just like the Donna of that first week at school, fluttery, vapid, with a dry silly giggle like marbles rattling in her throat. Matt seems to swell while she shrinks. He occupies more than a chair, preening, strutting even as he sits. Mother watches, coy, amused. Mother sits with her sewing in her lap but she is not sewing. The bits of their talk that I can hear over the saw and the dishes cause me to grind my teeth in helpless annoyance.

  “…just adore the way you customized your Hornet.” As if Donna can tell a Ford from a Chevy any better than I can. Ha.

  “Matt’s real clever with his hands,” my mother says flirtatiously. “He can make anything go.” Then she spoils her innuendo by launching into an interminable story about what went wrong with the washing machine.

  “… oh, Jill studies a lot more than I do.”

  Traitor! As a matter of fact—with pleasure I hit a cracked plate on the drainboard and lay the two pieces neatly to one side—I study one hell of a lot less than you, Donna baby. I go for walks while you’re bent over your books curled up like a porcupine with a bellyache. And I read my work and yours. Maybe that annoys her. I never considered that before. Maybe she thinks I am showing off. I just want to know everything she learns to share that too.

  When I finally finish the dishes, it’s time for me to go to work. Matt offers to drive me. The telephone office is about a mile and a half away. I’d love to turn down his offer, but I’m running late.

  As we’re walking out, Mother is saying to Donna, “After all, it’s not like you’re engaged to this boy from New York, right?” She picks up Donna’s left hand. “But since you aren’t, what’s the harm seeing another fellow for a little fun? If he leaves you alone on New Year’s Eve, that’s his fault. He can’t expect you to sit home when he hasn’t even given you a ring. You’re only young once.”

  Matt hasn’t driven me three blocks before we’re quarreling. “She won’t go out with you! She won’t. You don’t see anything in her but a pretty blond, but she’s intelligent. She won’t!”

  “You want to bet? I can tell when a girl’s interested. I saw her looking me over.”

  “How could she miss you parading up and down, you peacock?”

  “Watch your language, Snow White.” He squeezes my knee. Promptly I bend his fingers back. “Ouch! Hey, I’m driving.”

  “Then drive. They taught me it takes two hands in driver training.” Actually I never took it. You had to pay a fee. Dad kept saying he would teach me, but every lesson ended fast with me reduced by his annoyance to the physical equivalent of stammering, pulling all the wrong levers and treading hard on the accelerator instead of the brake.

  “I could teach you a few things you don’t learn at school. But you’re scared of me.”

  “Just bored.” I wonder I can sound so bright and hard when I am quite scared. I don’t trust him in the dark or the light. “You can play my mother’s son all you want—just keep out of my way.”

  “Your mother is one damn fine woman. Grow up a little.”

  “Doing my best. Just leave me and my friends alone.”

  “Your mother says it’s okay if I take Donna out. So let’s leave it up to the lady, why don’t we? I’ll ask her when I drive her home tonight.”

  They are all laughing at me. Mother and Matt. Now Donna is being drawn over to them.

  New Year’s Eve. When I walk in at ten forty-five, my parents are entertaining. Mother insists I take a hand in their canasta game. On my right sits Charlotte Ballard, kidskin face, brassy hair lacquered into rolls. She spends a fortune she doesn’t have on that curlicue hair and the upkeep of her body armored like a fighting dinosaur. “Oh, Malcolm, what a nasty hand you gave me, you mean man!” Next is Dad. Mother sits between Gene Ballard’s scraped red face, eyes tough and beaming, and Leo. I have to give it to Leo, he manages to look darkly handsome in a tan suit. On my left is his new girlfriend. Anita has ash-blond hair in a poodle cut and wears a dress covered with rows of tassels. She is on her best behavior, which involves getting a little tipsy, laughing at whatever the men say, in case it should be funny, and saying “Pardon my French,” every time she says “Damn it.”

  I deal, watching the cards snap out. Francis taught me. He also taught me to cheat, but I don’t feel like trying that, being out of practice. I settle for style over control. Poor Lennie, we’re both betrayed tonight. Mustn’t think that. Why shouldn’t she go out with Matt? I could give her no reason on the phone, with Mother running the sweeper behind me. The nerves creep in my fingers like caterpillars.

  On the porch beside Dad at midnight I hear the firecrackers and bells beating at the sealed black sky. Make Matt come back now. Wait till he decants a few of his choice opinions on women, society, the good life. What can s
he want with him?

  One twenty. Dad flashes around the table a look of quick boyish triumph, then card by card lays down a concealed hand. “Out!”

  “You old smarty!” Mother pretends to slap at him. Ballard, stroking his horsehead tie, peers sideways at the scoop neck where her breasts gleam through black lace. Ballard used to be in the shop with Dad. Then he went to work as an electrician for a contractor laying out subdivisions north of the city. Now he is a contractor himself, a little sleazy, sometimes rolling in money and sometimes so broke he borrows from my parents.

  On and on the night drags till two-thirty coffee. Finally the house is emptied of guests. Leo has gone off with Anita, the social lie being he will come in the back way later on. As I lie sleepless on the couch, only the porch light glows. Dad’s snores buck the dark. My thoughts plod round like a donkey chained to a mill. Like Samson, eyeless in Gaza. I do not love Milton but he feels appropriate in the rotten night.

  Matt’s key in the lock. I rise on my elbow and fall back. The porch light hits the clock. Three thirty. I would like to kill him silently and suddenly. Still the hair rises on my nape as I hear the rustle of Mother’s robe. “Matt,” she whispers, “you’re late. I want a word with you.”

  “Did I wake you? Sorry. I was trying to make like a mouse.”

  “I haven’t slept. It’s four, Matt.”

  The kitchen light falls on me briefly as she stands aside to let him past, then pulls the swinging door to. Her face in that flash hangs on in the dark, lines about her mouth sharply incised, eyes anthracite, hair standing up like a mass of rankled nerves. As I ease off the couch and creep toward the door, I feel momentarily sorry for Matt. The hiss of her voice and his answering confessional murmur torture me as I pick my way over the creaking boards. From the bedroom Dad’s snores rise undiminished.

  Mother grates, “But you promised!”

  His reply is a mumble. Slowly I lean on the door, a quarter inch, a half inch. “Don’t deny it! Matt, I see it in your face. Don’t you sit there and lie bold-faced to me.”

  “But Mrs. S.—”

  “You broke your promise to me!”

  “God is my witness, I didn’t mean to …” I can hardly recognize this whining boy. “I’m only human, damn it.”

  Sparks dance on my clenched eyes. No.

  “I knew I was right about that little bitch. But that doesn’t let you off the hook. I’ll never trust you again, Matt. I took you into my home—”

  “You’ve been an ace. I don’t deserve it. But I tried to remember my promise, honest.”

  She clucks her tongue, saying more amiably, “Well, I haven’t lived this long without learning that when a man takes advantage of a woman, it’s because she asked for it.”

  “Mrs. S., she’s got more fire than I ever run across—”

  “I was afraid of this. I’ve got an instinct about people.”

  “I swear I never meant to do it. I don’t know how to say this to you, decentlike, but she got me all worked up—”

  My shoulder hits the door. Half blinded by the glare I lunge. “You dirty liar!” I get him by the throat, seeing the pink lipstick smeared on his collar. Mother seizes my arm as he pulls free.

  Her hand goes back to strike me, then falls. “Shut up, you fool. You want to bring your father out? You won’t go back to college if he gets wind of this!”

  Letting my hands drop I meet her dark stare. Eyes burning back. But I win. She turns with a dismissing wave to Matt. “Get to bed. Quietly. Not a word about this tomorrow.”

  He sidles past and out. I switch off the light, not wanting to see her. My anger cools to a solid lump in my chest. I feel her at my elbow.

  “I won’t have you living with her. I knew it was something like this! If your father finds out, he’ll drag you home so fast it’ll make your head swim. You ask them to change your room.”

  I walk stiffly to the couch, a taste like rust in my mouth. Mother has given me a weapon. Dad did not want a roomer. With his sense of clan he will never forgive her if he finds out, and blame her twice over for concealing it. She hides the tea readings, the palm readings, the ill-smelling home permanent she uses, sure in her heart she keeps him with plotting and subterfuge. I would be cruel to tell him but it is fight or give up the pretense of my own life. I will not change rooms.

  How Donna has played into Mother’s concealed hand. Matt was only the silly bait. Is there nothing more between women and men than the secret war of marriage, sex the economic counter or submission to the alley world of smut? Rigid I lie, my hands clenched on my belly. If sex is a war I am a conscientious objector: I will not play.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IN WHICH POET MEETS POET AND WORDS ARE EXCHANGED

  SUNDAY NIGHT, a note from Donna lies on my bunk. She has plumped up her pillow and mine for breasts and used my black hairbrush for pubic hair and her hand mirror for a face. On the belly of the doll a note says:

  Stuiest:

  Peter (a friend of Lennie’s—he has lots of $ and his own apartment) is lending it to us for this evening till curfew. Peter’s due back late. So tonight is our night at long last! Pray for me now and in the hour of our death—hopefully from overindulgence.

  love, love love ya Donna

  An hour later Julie perches on my bunk, slicing fruitcake. “If I eat it, I’ll get fatter than I am. My mother! She scolds me I’m overweight and then gives me a two-pound brandied fruitcake to take back. Is that sabotage or not?” Julie is dressed up in a new grey flannel suit with a ruffled blouse. I do not like her in suits as her body’s opulence is all in baroque hips and ass and she looks stuffed into the suit. I would put her in gypsy skirts or pants. “I had supper with Van, but he had to go back to his dorm early to study. He must be the only person on campus studying tonight…. So you met Mike? Doesn’t he have marvelous melting eyes? But his ears stick out like the handles on a sugar bowl, poor lamb. Don’t they?”

  “I didn’t notice.” I don’t want to be vulnerable in front of Julie. “I only met him once for five minutes.”

  “Lennie’s getting an apartment in a month, hmm? I wish Van would. To neck standing up gives me a backache. Tonight, toute daring he put his hand on my sweater and squeezed. Then he blushed, I swear it. Of course all he got a hand on was my padded Lovable perfect circle thirty-four A—but it’s the spirit that counts.”

  “Why don’t you seduce him, Julie?”

  “I’m considering that. Otherwise he’ll go away when he graduates. If we do it, he might marry me.”

  “Well, you have two years to work on him, right?”

  “Year and a half. He’ll make a decent living as a college professor. He’s applying to several of the best graduate schools…. I think Mother doesn’t really expect me to do any better. But how am I supposed to seduce him standing in the courtyard?”

  “You have to ask Donna. I wouldn’t know how to seduce him lying down in a bed.” Unless he were a girl, I think wryly. I’m out of practice but at least I know where to start.

  “Donna? She’d be amused. She doesn’t care for other people’s tacky problems.”

  “Try her some time.” Defend! Though without conviction. Among women Donna relates only to me. I wonder briefly if I have higher status because of that long-ago act I have tried hard to recall.

  At thirteen I was part tomboy and part bookworm, finding my community with the gang. At fourteen Donna was pert rather than pretty, wild and shy with eight elbows jutting out. She had a high cackling giggle and a bright red nose peeling from sunburn. I wore my hair in braids still, for one of my acts of rebellion that August—the month after I was in Cold Springs with Donna—was to make Callie cut them off. I would not tell Mother who had done it, so was kept in for a week. Then my mother relented, setting my hair in metal curlers. Now she is permanently angry because I wear it long. Nobody has long hair nowadays, she says, and she is almost right. It is considered bohemian, which may be why I grew it, but I keep it long because I love the way it feels,
part cloak, part fan, part mane, part security blanket.

  Donna and I had sat that afternoon in the backseat while my father drove and Uncle Hubie read the map. I said to Donna, “Oh, my best friend Callie and I have the most super game when we’re alone.” I was going to tell her how we had taken to calling up names from the phone book and pretending to be the Gallup Poll. We asked whatever came into our minds (Does your dog wear pajamas? What do marshmallows make you think of when you step on them?) until they hung up or we started giggling. It astonished us how many stupid questions people would answer. Then I realized both dads had fallen silent. If mine heard me tell that, I would be in trouble.

  “What game?” she asked persistently.

  I signaled to her to be quiet.

  “What game?” she whispered, moving closer.

  “Later,” I muttered and began talking loudly about swimming.

  All day she kept asking me and I kept not being able to tell her, at first for security reasons of family within earshot, and then because nothing was adequate to the buildup. By the time we got into bed that night I could imagine only one game this inadvertent crescendo could climax in. I did not decide to seduce my cousin but backed myself into a corner where my pride required I produce something to justify all the suspense. I remember my desperation and my solution but not that act. At fourteen Donna was nothing special in bed and I forgot her. Now I love her far more than she loves me.

  Donna comes in Sunday night just before curfew ablaze with content, so it is not until the next afternoon that I bring up what I heard on New Year’s Eve.

  “Please.” I lean over her as she sits stunned, knuckles to her forehead. “Don’t ever sleep with anyone like that—someone who’s likely to talk inside the family.”

  “Who’d ever, ever think he’d go home and tell her?”

  “You can’t gamble like that. Mother wants to separate us—”

  “Oh.” Stark childish fright wrinkles her face but she makes her voice flat. “When are you moving out?”