Saturday's Child (72 page)

We had our detractors. Boycotts were attempted by the Moral Majority and their ilk, protesting our coverage of lesbian women, atheist ethics, old women's sexuality. But this
Ms
. seemed to kindle new feminist fires, emerging as the voice of a revived movement. During the late 1991 Senate confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination, when Anita Hill's sexual-harassment testimony galvanized the nation, the press assumed this
Ms
. was “behind it all.” Reporters kept phoning me as if we were the war room of a nationwide plot that had prompted the firestorm of letters and faxes raining on the Capitol in support of Hill. In truth, our lead time meant we couldn't cover the subject until three months later, which we then did in-depth, with analyses from the feminist theorists Patricia J. Williams, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Barbara Smith—and Anita herself, choosing to break her media silence in
Ms
.

I drove the staff crazy about language, aiming for the level of scrupulousness we'd employed at
Sisterhood Is Global
. This meant vigilance about unthinking sentences like “You'd have to be blind not to understand the need for affirmative action”—since some of our readers got the magazine on braille. It meant watchfulness about using “riot” in connection with communities of color: the white community riots, too—by moving to the suburbs or cutting back social services. It's not good enough to say or write Native American, African American, and so on, if you don't also use European American instead of “white,” which otherwise becomes the generic. It's not accurate to say “working women” because full-time homemakers
work;
for women with paid jobs one can say “employed women” or “women in the labor force.” It's not fair to refer, as WHO does, to “maternal” mortality rates instead of “women's” mortality rates when discussing abortion. Language reflects and defines reality. But this sort of effort requires consistent, nagging attention to detail.

I'd told Gloria and Dale that I'd do it for one year: revision and relaunch the magazine, get it on its feet, then move on. But it's hard to argue with success. This time they were
both
persuasive, and the year stretched to two, then three. While extremely proud of our accomplishment (and grateful to be out of debt and have health insurance!), I nonetheless felt the toll the job was taking on me. What I'd feared had come to pass: my workaholism was in full play. There were some issues on which I hands-on line-edited two-thirds of all the copy. I worked an average of seven-day
weeks, twelve-to-fourteen hour days—
my choice
, assuredly—but then I would turn grouchy when not all staff members shared that commitment. (Bella reminded me that when she was in Congress and would moan, “Oy, oy! My staff is killing me!” her late husband, Martin, always answered her the same way. “Bella,” he'd smile, “your standards are showing.”)

I loved hearing from the euphoric readers, and I enjoyed the editing, especially writers' pleasure at encountering a
writers'
editor. I tolerated the press interviews and promotional appearances because they could also be used as forums for political organizing; besides, the four-year-old little girl in me was an old hand at such things. But the administrative problems were incessant. I'm not good at business management and dislike it hugely; in order to perform at all well in this realm I seem to turn into Attila the Hon again. I chafed at spending over two-thirds of my time needing to respond to crises—corporate crises, subscription-fulfillment crises, printer's crises—heading off disaster, being reactive instead of proactive. This focus on averting the negative made me feel like a seventeenth-century weeder woman.
¹¹
Furthermore, since I worked hard to defend the staff, protecting them from corporate ravages in ways they never even knew, I grew as tired of being deplored by them for my standards as I did of being resented by them for depriving them of their complaints. As time went on, I was sinking into a distastefully martyrish attitude.

But here was the true source of woe: although I churned out an editorial every issue and thousands of letters and memos, there was no space for real writing.
Upstairs in the Garden
—in production before I took the
Ms
. job—came out in 1990, poignantly reminding me that I'd once been a poet.
The Mer Child: A Legend for Children and Other Adults
was published in 1991—but I'd actually written it for Blake years earlier. Florence Howe, founder and director of The Feminist Press, wanted to revive its children's series in the Nineties, and thought
The Mer Child
would be the perfect choice for that; since I was earning a salary and could afford to do
so, I contributed the book to the press, waiving royalties and giving my literary agent more indigestion.
¹²
The Word of a Woman
came out in 1992—but it was a collection of previously written essays, although I did write fresh continuity to contextualize them (the second edition, published in 1994, encompasses later writing, including several of my
Ms
. editorials). All this publishing made it seem as if I was prolific, but the writer in me was wasting away as the administrator-mogulette, my personal Ms. Hyde, took command.

Certainly the daily exercise of power, even in such limited circumstances, was intoxicating. One could enjoy and detest it at the same time—like listening to rumor, which permits you simultaneous curiosity about the rumor and disdain for the person who relays it. But the brand of power in this kind of guilty pleasure ultimately corrodes a creative artist. One begins to identify with one's authority and its product, which produces defensiveness when either is challenged. There's a moral danger in the defensiveness blurring toward feelings of superiority—a danger heightened by the reality that, frankly, in the marketplace one is surrounded by blockheads. My characteristic impatience didn't help in all this. When turned against myself, it allowed no leeway for whining. When aimed at others, it revived the efficiency fascist in me. (It's disquieting to realize that being alert to Hannah Arendt's concept of “the Eichmann within” doesn't mean you can stop him from emerging; he must be re-imprisoned again and again.)

So. I was solvent at last. I had the money to buy concert tickets or to go shopping or take vacations. But now I had no time for any of that. Nor was I able to make myself
care
less about the magazine, walk through the paces, regard it as just a job. Back to square one, trying to be anything anyone
wants me to be, I'd catch a plane for New Zealand for two weeks, twice a year, trying to morph back into a loving partner. But I'd have to leave right after closing an issue (usually at 1:00
A.M.),
and by the time I unwound at the farm I was due back on the plane to New York. What's more, even at Atlantis the faxes and phone calls kept on coming. At the end of each eight-week production cycle, I'd take to the road—if not New Zealand, then Australia or Indonesia to meet Marilyn; or Japan, England, Canada, and around the United States on promotion for
Ms
. The tension was chronic. I was smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day and had chipped a tooth from grinding while asleep. I was becoming a glum, truculent person. But recognizing the pattern made me feel no less helpless to change it.

In 1992 I decided I had to leave, and prepared to turn the reins over to Helen Zia. I thought it well past time that
Ms
. be edited by a woman of color—and besides, Helen was ready and, I thought, ideal for the job. Then she fell in love and announced she was moving to the West Coast to be near the beloved. Devastated, I tried to convince her of the benefits of long-distance relationships, but she'd made up her mind.
¹³
Gloria seemed relieved, joking that in twenty years I'd still be saying, “I'm leaving,” just as she had, but never managing it, just as she hadn't. Actually, I felt trapped and my resentment was building—but with absolutely no one to reproach for what was externally an ideal situation, and with only myself to blame for my own work patterns. “Bletting” is a wonderful word that gardeners know; it means permitting something to overripen, a form of controlled rotting. I was bletting my resentment.

Even I didn't know how much until, at the close of 1992, I gave a speech and poetry reading at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Donna Shalala was then chancellor, and Gerda Lerner professor of history. I hadn't seen either one in ages, but they both came to the reading, bless them. Afterward, we had coffee, our conversation centering on hopes for the just-elected Clinton administration and record number of women in the incoming Congress (I remember telling Donna that we would raise hell if she didn't garner a cabinet post; she offered an enigmatic smile and
demurely waved her hand). Then she dashed off to a late meeting and Gerda drove me back to my hotel, in the process giving me a gift of incalculable value.

She asked what new book I was writing. When I couldn't answer, she demanded in her brusque Teutonic manner when I was leaving
Ms
., which was “all very important for a magazine of course but really, Robin, that's not who you are.” Suddenly it poured out of me, and Gerda listened with empathy but no sympathy—and with stern advice to do what it was time to do. I will always be in her debt, because as I got out of the car, I was already en route to resigning.

Dramatic decisions can take an irritatingly long time to put into effect. It would be seven more months (I gave the longest notice of departure in the history of magazine publishing) until I could step down as editor in chief. First I had to lure Marcia Ann Gillespie, a former
Ms
. editor and for years editor in chief of
Essence
, to come on board as executive editor, learn the ropes of this new ad-free, international
Ms
., and take over for me. Then we had to fight racism at Lang Communications to ensure “the succession”; they actually expressed fear that Marcia might make the magazine “too black.” But it all worked out. At this writing, Marcia is still editor, she and the magazine having survived yet another corporate takeover and, subsequently, a new, independent ownership by all-female investors. (
This
new structure, Gloria notes, will make
all
the difference.)

As for me, I spent those last seven months pushing myself to new depths of overwork with extra lectures, in order to salt away every penny. Then, in the spring of 1993, I bought a co-op, my current apartment, the first turf I've ever owned—though to be honest the bank owns it and I have a small share. When I first saw it, I thought
Be still, my heart
: not far from Perry Street, on a quiet, tree-lined block in the Village, with a working fireplace—and a real earth garden out back. It was a bit seedy (thus affordable), so renovations were necessary, and they began as I camped out in the midst of them. But I didn't mind. I was jubilant, facing a future with the home I wanted, where I wanted it, and time to write ahead of me. I longed to settle in at my desk as soon as renovations were complete. But I'd promised Marilyn I'd come to the farm for a full six months starting that September. I felt I'd neglected her and had to keep my promise. Instead of following my instincts, I followed my heart.

Persephone Redux

Marilyn had begun steady pressure on me to resettle in New Zealand, starting with her blushing “proposal” in a Chicago hotel room during the synchronous book tours in 1989; the proposal was, she said, a first for her. It moved me, but the pressure to resettle disturbed me. On the one hand, the proposal was finally the gesture of authentic full commitment I'd longed for her to make for so many years. On the other hand, the resettlement aspect was unrealistically imbalanced. She'd flatly said she'd never even consider the reverse move to New York, yet she dismissed as inconsequential my concerns: over leaving Blake and friends and my own culture, changing citizenship, having no effective political role as an outsider in New Zealand, and not much means of survival. I thought her increasing pressure on this matter was largely a byproduct of my having been unable to spend the usual time at Atlantis we'd both grown to depend on—so I'd sworn to come for a full half-year stay once I was free of the editorship and the apartment renovations were finished. If that worked well, maybe we could institutionalize it: the Persephone Plan, six months down under together, six up north. (How that particular myth did haunt me!) Now I saw no way to delay that first promised six months without aggravating the situation.

In her own fashion, Marilyn had thoroughly enjoyed my three and a half years as
Ms
. editor in chief. She'd counseled me to take the post and had been supportive at first, though in time she confessed wistfully that she'd “been spoiled by being the center of attention for so long,” and missed that. But she was pragmatic and heartily approved the change in my finances. She also liked having articles published in the magazine, and relished coming to New York while her lover was editor and could provide special perks, like press seats to women's tennis finals. Having been famous in varying degrees on and off since the age of four, I was under-whelmed by my revived public status (media-celebrity circuit, markedly different from literary or political circles), but I was amused that it excited her. My darling had never fully owned up to her own ambivalent love of power and fame during her parliamentary days; she functioned from a temperament and culture uninterested in living “the examined life.” So she sent myriad double messages she couldn't explain. Buy the apartment, move to New Zealand. Keep the job, quit the job. They seemed to boil
down to her wanting to have all the more to herself someone she perceived the world wanting to have to itself. In this equation, the actual
me
was absent, but I was yet unaware of that.

I was, however, sad at leaving my new home—freshly painted, pristine,
mine
. I'd spent the summer working on it and rediscovering life after
Ms
. with Blake and friends. Marilyn had visited briefly, celebrating and helping me start my own garden. I hadn't begun writing but assumed I would shortly. Reluctant to leave, I sent two trial balloons over the telephone to her. Once I hazarded that maybe I should wait a few months and settle in before coming for the long stay? Her reply was sharp and bitter, so I let the question drop. Then, a few weeks before leaving for the farm, I felt it only fair to remind her that I'd just stopped smoking, was still exhausted and not yet fully detoxed from the magazine stress, and had an even shorter than usual patience from years of having dealt with corporate dolts. I warned her that I felt raw, as if I lacked a skin's surface, and that I had less margin for enduring bouts of the silent treatment. Did she really want me around in such a state? All the better, she said. It'll be a refreshing switch, you having tantrums instead of me; I can take care of
you
for a change. Jump, my love, she said, trust me, I'm here with the net.