Authors: Lucy Ellmann
Mimi (30 page)
– the pole-dancing kid I couldn’t help
– Mimi’s disdain for what I do (it’s not that I can’t
take
her to a medical conference—she wouldn’t go!)
– medical conferences
– the sadomasochistic mauling of healthy flesh, old or young. Leave ’em alone!
– “First, do no harm”—but we harmed people every day, flagrantly, for money
– the woman who died to save her son from having a fat mom (moms are
supposed
to be fat!)
– the women who want their labia trimmed (to match their inner emptiness)
– the man who dreamed he could have a penis the size of a horse’s, and asked
me
to do it for him
– the creepy requests to re-virginify Arab brides
– the veiled requests for female circumcision
– the suspicion that, by working as a plastic surgeon, I have personally contributed to the current epidemic of female self-hate and self-harm
– patients who come spinning in like a tornado, flinging sad tales in all directions
– the shame of working with Henry. Some beauty expert! He once gave a woman a
monster eye
(she’d asked for two)
– reading and writing medical papers
– speaking at clinical meetings and scold-fests
– energy-saving bulbs in the office
– Cheryl’s melancholy plight
– the noose of email
– the noise of lawyers
– trying to avoid garlic and onions before appointments
– being away from Bubbles all day!
– the diner near the office: matzo ball soup never hot enough
– I don’t really know what a good nose
is
anymore
Sure, I’d miss surgery itself—it’s a craft and I’d gotten good at it. But I could turn my hand–eye coordination to better things, like playing the piano, and working on my inventions. After all, I had enough money in the bank to live for the rest of my life (“as long as I die by 4:00 today,” as Henny Youngman would say).
It was only as the plane for home juddered down the runway for take-off that I realized that, during that pit stop at my apartment, I’d managed to grab a change of underwear but forgot my notes for my speech! (Such as they were—I’d never even settled on a definite subject.) What we had here was a real Grandma-died-and-her-dog-ate-my-speech situation, and an extra pair of underpants wasn’t going to help.
I could still cancel. (
Could
I still cancel?)
The thing Bee and I always liked about the Chewing Gum Plaza Hotel when we were kids was the modernistic indoor waterfall and fishpond in the lobby. This had now been replaced by a muggy rainforest of rubber plants and a dozy cockatoo chained to a log. The Ritz it wasn’t. Not that I noticed much when I got there: I was too busy trying to scrabble a speech together on hotel notepads, too nervous to resurrect any of my possible topics. Three chunks, I reminded myself hysterically, three ideas, three ideas per chunk, three chunks per idea, nine ideas per speech… Nothing but a few lousy phrases came to mind (and Mimi’s just dismissal of them). The last thing I wrote before falling asleep was an execrable thing about the ironies of plastic surgery, based on my trusty airport napkin.
I walked out of that hotel the next morning with what bravado I could muster and pockets stuffed with little pieces of paper (as well as a letter of apology, in case I chickened out), and took a tour around town just to re-familiarize myself with
its
execrableness. The last time I was there was for my mother’s funeral—but then,
Bee
was with me. Now I was alone: jobless, sister-less, Mimi-less, mindless, pointless, speechless.
Mimì! Mimì!
Walk. Take in one color, one sound.
Nothing was left of Bee’s graffiti now—the very buildings she’d daubed were gone. But some things remain the same. I first discovered sky in Virtue and Chewing Gum, the sky and then the rest of it, from the ground up: twigs, grass that could cut you (glass too), pebbles, puddles, pencils, much prized popsicle sticks, sewer drains, cigarette stubs, dog do, asphalt, oak leaves, cracks in the sidewalk that would break your mother’s back (and in my case, did!), tree roots, buttercups, sprinklers, hoses, inflatable pools, fire hydrants, trash, rose thorns, favorite tricycles, and little red wagons. It was the look of the sidewalks that got me most, the actual squares of cement under my feet: they were the same. The tree-lined playground with the tallest swings, and bark shavings to soften your fall. The ice-skating hut where Bee and I put on our skates every winter, and the field on which we skated and lost a few baby teeth: it was all there but so tiny!
But it was
lush
, my hometown—all the trees had grown. And there was the bakery that used to sell cherry cobbler pie, and still did. The river too was still rushing by of course—but no little red truck. The smoldering remains of what was once my childhood: earth, air, water, fire. Born twixt pee hole and shit hole, the brown and the yellow ale, east and west, north and south, spring and fall, black and white, Virtue and Chewing Gum, I was back in the land of contrasts: home. But
I
now inhabited a gray area, where Ant’s got no Bee, and Rodolfo needs his Mimì.
Big black beetles had gathered on the high-school lawn in their carapaces, the black gowns of bamboozlement. Parents were taking photographs. My audience: just kids, soon to be locked into mortgages and marriages. Don’t graduate, you fools,
individuate!
I wandered into the Principal’s office. Why was I surprised he was younger than me, and too busy to talk? He sat me down in the corridor with a copy of the high-school yearbook, and I flicked through headshots as if tasked with identifying a murderer. I didn’t even glance at my notes, though I fingered my letter of apology off and on. It’s no big deal, I kept telling myself. Humans make speeches: I am human, therefore I can make one too. People make speeches all over this goddam country every day! Really
stupid
people. (I ran rings around myself, logically.)
Once positioned amongst the School Board on stage, I had to resort to fantasizing about Mimi to calm myself, picturing her hands all over me and her lips on mine, throughout the Principal’s platitudinous oration, and then the militaristic handing-out of diplomas. The thought of Mimi was the only thing that stopped the shakes!
Bee-oh-double-you-el, I-en-gee,
Let’s go bowling, bowling, bowling,
My baby and me!
Bee-oh-double-you-el, I-en-gee,
Let’s go bowling, bowling, bowling,
For the whole fam-i-lee!
For “bowling,” read. . .
But now I had to snap out of it. The Chairman of the School Board seemed to have finished his generous, as of yesterday wholly erroneous, characterization of me as a successful doctor (he made me sound like Ant and Bee’s doctor:
huge
), and was handing me the floor. It seemed a little late to deliver my letter. I stood, knees wobbly, stomach tensing up, palpitations starting, mouth dry: I needed Meno-Balls! But then I remembered Mimi’s injunction to look directly at my audience. . . and they were a sad sight, all those awkward girls, dolled up and smiling—my future patients perhaps, if I hadn’t quit, with their wonky noses, plump thighs, and blemishes. Poor ducks, I’d give my speech for them.
“Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yes, it’s true, I did go to this school,” I began.
Isolated cheers
. “Yeah, hey, it wasn’t
that
good!”
Laughter
. “In fact, I came here to tell you how
awful
it was, and give you a few of my most bitter memories of the place.”
Whoops of delight; a few boos
. “But. . . that can wait.”
More laughter
.
“While you guys were finishing your Senior Year, taking SATs, and getting laid. . . ”
Chortles; coughs
. “Ripping up your prom gowns, or mending them with safety pins. . . ”
Laughter
. “My sister. . . ” Throat threatening to seize up. “My sister Bee, Bridget Hanafan, a sculptor,
also
a former student here. . . ”
Deep breath
. “Maybe you heard about it on the News. A guy in England went berserk and started shooting people, complete strangers mostly, and. . . my sister was one of them.”
Gasps; women fanning themselves with programs
. “After he’d killed twenty people, he came up with a better idea and killed himself.”
Vast, attentive silence
.
“What this event has left me with is:
one
, no sister. . . and
two
, a sense of how badly we treat women in general. We treat ’em like shit, my friends!”
Harrumphs from the School Board behind me
.
“Like shit, I tell you. Every single day, the girls in this very hall have to hear about women being beaten, stoned, raped, and murdered. Every day of their
lives
they hear this stuf
f
!
“And we just throw up our hands in surprise at the latest male atrocity and say, Yeah, it’s a pity, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Right?. . . ”
Murmurs
. “right?”
Vague assent
. “Nothing we can do, nothing we can do. . . ”
Inaudible heckle
.
“All my life this has been going on and I thought there was nothing I could do: some men are idiots, some are scary bastards, just forget about it. . . But now my sister’s dead and I
can’t
forget about it!”
Silence
.
“I have a confession to make.” Butterflies in stomach; take fresh breaths whenever opportunity allows. “Yes, a confession.” Pause.
“I am a terrorist.”
Gasps
. “
I am a terrorist!
”
Pause
. “All men are terrorists!”
A few feeble boos
. “We may not be active members of the terrorist movement, not knowingly anyway, but we all have
links
with terrorism, with fellow terrorists, and with terrorist organizations.
“The whole world is run by terrorists. And those terrorists are men. The fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers who’ve gathered here today are terrorists.”
Muffled sighs and growls
. “We’re
all
terrorists!”
Giggles and throwing of programs
. I pace the stage thinking, whatever you do, don’t jingle the change in your pocket!
“We are all part of a war against women. Women are on the front line, getting beaten, raped, murdered. They try to work their way
around
it, they try to
avoid
such fates, while fearing for their lives every day.
“Every day. This is the society we live in! America is not a safe place for a woman. The enemy is all around her: in the bushes, in the bedroom, in the boardroom and on the boob tube.”
Giggles
. “TV provides our daily dose of propaganda, it’s like a kind of night school for violence against women. And then there’s pop music, advertising, fashion demands, the so-called Beauty Industry, and porn. Is this all we can think up? A nonstop diet of disrespect?”
Isolated claps; wolf whistles
. “Because, you know? Disrespect paves the
way
for violence—they’re old pals!
“The war against women isn’t fought in the open. It hasn’t been officially declared by Congress. (Or not
that
kind of congress anyway.) No, we fight
dirty
! Most of the hostilities are conducted underground. We try to keep it quiet, keep it subtle, keep things private. . . We
isolate
women so we can grouse at them. We get them on their own and undermine them.”
Snickers; an idiotic clap; some distant heckle involving “underpants
.
”
“Yep, we’re pretty clever about it. But it’s a fight to the death—and the dead lie all around us!”
Silence. More fanning with programs
.
“We terrorize women through violence, always the threat of physical attack. But we back it up with ideology, literature, history, religion, tradition, a whole way of life. We intentionally misunderstand women. We ignore them—don’t tell me you never tried that trick! We misrepresent them. We mislead them. We silence them. We refuse to give them what they ask for. And we criticize them—god, do we criticize! We never let them do or be or say or have what they want.”
Clapping from some girls
.
“We will not leave women be. Be whatever they want to be. No, they gotta be
this
, they gotta be
that
. They gotta be fun, they gotta be sexy, gotta be thin, be glamorous, be cheerful and good-looking and tolerant of
us
. They gotta cook, they gotta clean.
And
they gotta work! Yeah—women now have to bring home the bacon, and COOK it as well!”
Cheers from the girls; claps from mothers. But a heckler yells, “Hey, men cook too!”
Always acknowledge what’s going on in the audience, Mimi said. Anticipate criticism.
