The Summer Without Men

masses by Newsweek magazine, claimed not that women were intellectually superior (an idea never advanced in the annals of human history) but, rather, that we of the large CCs have greater communication between the hemispheres of our brains, which in Newsweek was conveniently translated as “women’s intuition.” But then a study of Korean men and women found that the pesky thing was bigger in men. Koreans must be special. Then another study found no difference. Other studies followed: a little bigger, a little smaller, about the same, no difference. In 1997, Bishop and Walsten, the authors of a review of forty-nine studies on the corpus callosum, concluded: “The widespread belief that women have a larger splenium than men and consequently think differently is untenable.” Whoops. But the myth is still circulating. One simpleton, eagerly spewing his own brand of pseudoscience, has dubbed the CC the “caring membrane of the brain.”
    It is not that there is no difference between men and women; it is how much difference that difference makes, and how we choose to frame it. Every era has had its science of difference and sameness, its biology, its ideology, and its ideological biology, which brings us, at last, back to the naughty girls, their escapades, and the instruments of darkness.
    We have several contemporary instruments of darkness to choose from, all reductive, all easy. Shall we explain it through the very special, although dubious otherness of the female brain or through genes evolved from those “cave women gathering food near the home” thousands of years ago or through the dangerous hormonal surges of puberty or through nefarious social learning that channels aggressive, angry impulses in girls underground? Surely our Ashley, contrary to the good doctor’s analysis, is deeply interested in “social dominance” and “rank-related aggression,” despite her XX status, just as my old friend Julia was, when I was a sixth grader in an earlier era and I opened a piece of paper that had been left on my desk and read the words, formed by letters cut out of a magazine, “Everybody hat”0em” wiu because you are a big fake.” And I recall wondering, Am I a fake? Hadn’t I checked out from the library books with tiny print that were too hard for me? Did that prove they were right? The note stirred the psychic muck within me—guilt and weakness and a worry that as much as I wanted to be admired and loved, I wasn’t worthy—and I, wimp and crybaby, allowed them to taint me. Fake! I wasn’t fake enough. Glory to artifice, to the clown mask, to the Dracula face to hide the softness. Put on your armor and pick up your lance. Hail a bit of falseness if it protects you from the vipers.
    Truisms are often untrue, but that cruelty is a fact of human life is not one of them. We must go closer, so close that we smell the blood from their cuts and the frisson of secrecy and theatrical danger the girls found in the Coven. We must be so close that we feel the pleasure they took in hurting Alice and so close to Alice that we can see how in her vulnerability and her need to be so very, very good, she defanged herself, just as I had before her.
    But, I told myself, you are no longer twelve. Your fangs may not be the sharpest, but they have grown back and now you can act. I made seven phone calls and explained to seven mothers that I wanted to take a week off, but that during that week each of the girls had to write her story of what happened in either poetry or prose. Two pages minimum. The rest of the class would be spent dealing with that material in one way or another. I was forceful. Although I heard some murmurs of concern about “going over all that again,” no one opposed me in the end, not even Mrs. Lorquat, who seemed genuinely shaken by the whole ungodly mess.
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Dear Mom,
     
Dad has moved into a hotel. I’m not sure what’s going on exactly, but we’re going to have dinner on Thursday, and he has promised to talk to me, to be totally honest. I told him that he really should write to you, and he said he would, but I have to tell you he sounds awfully sad on the telephone, all slowed down. He’s no open book, Mom, but I will keep you posted. A week and a half and I’ll be in Bonden, my little Mammy dear, and will pop through your door and fling my arms around you!
     
Love from your own Daisy girl
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A. Boris dumped the Pause.
B. The Pause dumped Boris.
C. The