The Summer Without Men

match. A physical fight between girls or women is a catfight, one characterized by scratching, biting, slapping, flying skirts, and a scent of the ridiculous or, conversely, of erotic spectacle for male enjoyment, the delectable vision of two women “going at it.” There is nothing noble about emerging victorious from such a squabble. There is no such thing as a good, clean catfight. As I sat there looking at Alice’s sad, red countenance, I imagined her socking Ashley in the jaw and wondered if the masculine solution wasn’t more efficient. If girls banged each other over the head instead of plotting nasty little games of sabotage, would they suffer less? But that, I thought, could only happen in another world. And even in that improbable world where a girl could dust herself off after a wrestling match with her nemesis and declare victory, what good would it do?
    By the time I said good-bye to them, Ellen had managed to coax her big girl onto her lap. Mother and daughter were enfolded in the beanbag chair, where Ellen had bitting alone only minutes before, listening to Alice’s saga of intrigue and deception. Alice buried her head in her mother’s neck, and her long bare legs and feet hung over the side of the chair. Ellen’s hand was moving up and down her daughter’s back, slowly and rhythmically. Behind the two, I noticed a row of the child’s dolls on a shelf. The impassive porcelain face of one of them stared at the wall behind me. Another poppet had a faint smile on her pink lips. A woman doll in a kimono stood rigidly at attention. An antique baby lay on her back with her arms in the air. The chorus, I said to myself, and they began to stir and move their lips in unison. I saw their teeth. The old magic trembled inside them all for an instant, animus, élan vital . On the sidewalk as I made my way “home,” I had a wild thought:
     
But I can no longer stand in awe of this,
Nor, seeing what I see, keep back my tears.
    As my feet moved, one in front of the other, my gait jogged loose the source. It had arrived courtesy of the doll chorus. Antigone. I smiled. A tragedy for a travesty, but still, I said to myself, there is grief. And who is to measure suffering? Which one of you will calculate the magnitude of pain to be found inside a human being at any given moment?
    *   *   *
     
Multiply by words, Alice—
Your airborne army spits spears,
Cracks syllables, breaks glass
Spews fury skyward.
The hundred tricksters
In flight on the page are you,
A swarm of grins penciled in
While oval heads are trampled underfoot,
Or name the Gorgon in the mirror
Alice. The monster twin, the other story,
Whose mouth blasts killing winds,
Forbidden thoughts, brazen phrases
Held back in the years of silent ainthood.
Good behavior. Conduct E for excellent.
Weep, Alice, if you want to, howl!
Make it rain, a deluge
Of N’s for needles from your eyes.
Your many I’s. Your multitudes.
Be foment, Alice, ruckus, tirade, trouble,
And if you wish, wish three times.
Wish them out. Write them null.
Blacken their bodies with ink.
Gorge them on sublimated sweets
Until they reel and fall
Beneath your dancing feet.
    I wasn’t at all sure I liked the poem, but it felt awfully good to write it. “Why are they so mean to me?” Alice had uttered this several times in a soft, bewildered voice. Wasn’t this the puzzled refrain of the “kinda different?” Jessie had said that by now I ought to know that Alice was “kinda different.” How different? Perception is laden with visible differences, with light and shadow and object masses and moving bodies, but also always there are invisible differences and similarities, ideas that draw the lines, separate, isolate, identify. I was, am kinda different. Not one of the gang. Outside, always outside. I feel the cold winds blow over me. I would have to decide what to do about them: the clique, the girls. I couldn’t let the business go. But I would have to resist hating them, my six still unformed little broads with their sadistic pleasures, the envy they sweated from their pores, and their shocking lack of empathy. Ashley, the princess of punishment. Hadn’t I seen it when she looked at Flora? Ashley, my devoted student. The girl wanted power. No doubt she had too little at home, a middle child in that large family who had probably fought for recognition from Ma and Da. Look at me! Surely, she deserved sympathy, too. I thought of her mother; it is worse to be the mother of a bully