Citizen Girl
PENGUIN BOOKS
Citizen Girl
Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus write together in New York City.
This is their second novel.
Citizen Girl
NICOLA KRAUS
and
EMMA McLAUGHLIN
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
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Published in Penguin Books 2005
1
Copyright © Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin, 2005
All rights reserved
The moral right of the authors has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90226–5
To Girl’s Fairy Role Models: Shannon, Sara, Katie, Ally, and Olivia, who read endlessly, cheered tirelessly, and who, no matter what their twenties served up, always found the funny.
We are utterly indebted to …
Our phenomenally dedicated, ‘a-rainstorm-gets-your-clothes-clean’ Team Girl for their faith in this project and overtime
ad infinitum
on its behalf: Suzanne Gluck, Erin Malone, Eugenie Furniss, Betsy Rapoport, Brenda Copeland, Louise Moore, and Ken Weinrib.
Our parents, Peter & Evelyn, Joan & David, John & Janet, and Joel & Nora, our formidable, yet loving, moral compass. Professor Janet Gezari, for so gracefully modeling what is possible in art, life, and feminism. And, of course, Emma’s husband, Joel, for being inexhaustible.
Finally, and with full hearts, Nicki’s grandmother, Xandy, the original C.G.
‘ … I went to my adviser and told her of the fears that were choking me. “You feel like an imposter?” she asked. “Don’t worry about it. All smart women feel that way.”’
– Peggy Orenstein
Note to Readers
Ms. Magazine
launched in the United States in December of 1971, and soon became a landmark institution in both women’s rights and American journalism. At the time of its founding the feminist movement was either denigrated or dismissed in the mainstream media – if it was mentioned at all.
Among other accomplishments,
Ms.
was the first to rate presidential candidates on women’s issues, to put domestic violence and sexual harassment on the cover of a women’s magazine, and to commission and feature a national study on date rape.
Ms.
was the first to make feminist voices audible, feminist journalism tenable, and a feminist worldview available to the public.
One of its co-founders, Gloria Steinem, is a hero of ours and continues to be one of the most recognizable icons of the feminist movement.
*
1. Doris Mindfuck
The ladies’ room door squeaks open and I stop breathing, jerking my feet up on the toilet seat in an effort to work through my lunch hour in solitude. Rubber soles scuff along the honeycomb tiles as I bend to inch the remains of my lunch out of view, but my pen betrays me, rolling brazenly out of my lap and onto the warped floor.
‘Who’s in here?’ my boss, Doris, shouts over the din of sweatshop sewing machines whirring up the airshaft. I consider not responding – maybe she’ll think the pipes are now leaking not only asbestos, but pens. ‘Hello-o?’ She knocks once on the last stall door before rattling it forcefully. Her tightly permed gray curls appear below me. ‘Oh, Girl, it’s you.’
I will a cheery smile.
‘You have your period again, don’t you?’ She stares up disdainfully as she turns a deep red from her inverted stance. ‘You know, Girl,’ she takes in my research materials on the floor, ‘I’ve provided you with a perfectly good desk.’
‘Yes, thank you …’ I try to dislodge my crossed legs without stepping on her face. ‘I was just taking advantage of the quiet to finish my presentation for the conference.’ I unlatch the door, and she abruptly shoves it in towards
me, spraying the cup of coffee I’d balanced on the toilet paper dispenser onto my coat. My new coat.
She arches her eyebrows over her multi-colored Fimo clay bifocals. ‘You’re a mess,’ she pronounces. ‘You really should make your lunch at home and bring it with you. You’re not managing your finances very well if you buy those expensive sandwiches every day. But I guess that’d mean you’d actually have to get out of bed on time.’ She remains squarely in the stall doorway, indicating that I owe her an explanation.
‘I should,’ I nod, collecting the offending sandwich wrappers, along with my files, from the floor. She folds her arms across her ample chest and continues to stare me down. Before I can determine how to atone, the bathroom door squeaks open again and Pam, Deputy Director of the Center for Equity in Community, waddles in.
‘Oh, Doris, there you are.’ She approaches, hulking from side to side like a bloated John Wayne. ‘I’m heading uptown for that meeting on the Youth Center rally and if it’s anything like last week’s, I’m going to be there till dinner—’
‘Those. Are. Fantastic.’ Doris points to Pam’s purple clogs, which match her bright purple hemp jumper and the dark purple African lariat she has ambitiously combined with lilac Mardi Gras beads. Had an eggplant been available in her kitchen, she’d have donned it as a hat.
‘Well, I saw Odetta’s green ones, so I asked for a pair from Santa, but you know I’m still hunting for
those
.’ Pam gestures to Doris’s black nubuck booties.
‘I’ll never tell,’ Doris says coyly, turning her ankle.
Doris’s hemp and nubuck ensembles are famously all black, giving her a cosmopolitan air amidst the Center’s menopausal sea of the waistband-and-ironing-board adverse.
‘I’m just going to—’ I point to the sink by the door and shimmy past them, dabbing at the pending stain on my coat with a sheet of toilet tissue.
‘Look at this one.’ Doris grudgingly steps aside and jerks her thumb at me, letting Pam in on the latest Girl Headache. ‘Can’t keep her coffee in its cup.’ She purses her lips, narrowing her eyes before continuing, ‘Girl, meet me in my office after you pull yourself together. I want to make an addition to the conference packet.’
‘Definitely. And I want to go over my presentation—’
But their pear-shaped figures are already disappearing as the door stutters closed. I slap my files down on the cracked linoleum counter, yank the last paper towel from the cracked dispenser, and shrug off my assaulted coat. I
do
make it out of bed on time, thank you very much. And actually, since you ask, I’m working through my
unpaid
lunch hour.
For you
. And the fact that the
only
square inch of peace and quiet I can find in this swirling
tornado
of psychodrama is
on a toilet seat
should tell you
something
about the kind of outfit you’re running here.
I’m
not the jackass. You.
You
are the jackass.
‘Jackass,’ I level at the curling thirty-year-old poster for
Having Our Say: Teaching Young Women to Step Up and Speak Out!
, Doris Weintruck’s iconic tome and the misleading cornerstone of my Wesleyan curriculum. She manages a dimpled grin, tilted with insouciance, to her raised
smocked shoulder, her auburn curls teased into an empowering Linda Carter do. Gripping the lapel where the coffee stain is now indelibly entwined with the pink wool, I whisper my pronouncement to the Doris of the disco era: ‘I quit.’
I turn to the door, heart rate escalating, mouth sandy. Just do it. Just march right in. Just march in and take a seat – no, stand. Yes, march right in there and stand and … and tell her that she’s unprofessional … and a hypocrite and, and … and mean.
Or wait till five when she’s tuckered. That’s safer. Or Monday when she’s rested. Maybe don’t do it in person at all:
Hello, you. This is me. I’m not coming back
. Hang up and that’d be it. Over. Done. No bloodshed.
No bloodshed, but no closure.
I spin to the poster and search her flat eyes. Don’t I owe Doris Weintruck, founding mother of the Female Voice Movement, the opportunity to throw her arms around me and wish me the best, so that we can move on, not just as colleagues, but as friends? So, ten years from now, when we’re co-chairing the same board, and she can’t get over how I look like a rocket scientist, sound like a rocket scientist, and am, in fact, a rocket scientist, we can have a nice long giggle about how she used to treat me like an asshole? I avert my gaze to the counter, where, inside my purse, my checkbook is barely covering the essential trinity of food, shelter, and student loans.
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
I sigh, once again tabling the fantasy. Folding my coat casually over my arm, I pick up my paper, ‘Beyond
Renouncing: Modeling Practical Strategies for Young Feminists’, that I’ve been researching, on my own time, since Doris finally consented to let me deliver my first talk at her annual Having Our Say conference. An event charged with activists at the forefront of the field, whose siren song brought me to the Center in the first place, ‘
If women could just unite on
——,
we could change
——.’ And the opportunity to participate is the last anemic carrot towards which I’m running.
The next morning finds me literally up to my eyeballs in stacks of pastel photocopies. Mindlessly collating packets while the radiator cackles and clanks, I circle the table, lost deep within a vision in which I’m stepping down from the conference podium amidst warm waves of applause as Doris turns to me, her head bowed low in respect. ‘NOW wants you on their think tank and Hillary would like to take a meeting,’ she announces, reaching to shake my hand. ‘I’m hiring an assistant for both of us.’
