Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart_ A Novel - Alice Walker [16]
Ahead of them the other women’s boat was entering unusually powerful rapids. As they watched, startled, it overturned. They had barely time to think before they were running the same rapids. She wondered if they too would be flung into the river. But no, their oarswoman steered them slightly more to the left of a huge boulder that rose up like an iceberg in the middle of the river. They sped past the others, all swimming madly toward the shore.
That night, as they sat around the campfire, she was flooded with gratitude. To see the women safe, to hear their humorous stories of their surprise, their fright. To know they had depended on their own strength and courage to pull themselves to shore.
That night, in the adrenaline glow of having survived, the talk was, of course, about sex.
How much and how often, right? said Margery, drying her hair with a towel and throwing a fistful of dried twigs on the fire.
How long and how much does size matter, anyway? said Cheryl, biting into a chocolate bar she’d stashed for just such an occasion.
The women laughed.
“Gimme something that’s not hard,/Come on, come on.”
Sue sang the refrain from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Give Me Something,” from their Double Fantasy album. She loved Ono for recording what sounded like a live orgasm.
There’s a period in there where you really don’t want anything hard, said Kate.
Not me, said Cheryl. I fantasize big, hard, and long.
And black? asked Kate.
Cheryl colored. Sometimes, yes, she said. I’ll never forget the day I ambled into Good Vibrations and there it was, hanging on the wall.
The women roared.
There’s fantasy and then there’s, ah, actual flesh, said Annie, an oarswoman their own age, who had come over to join them. Firm is one thing; hard is something else, she said. She was a wiry Texan with a hawk’s nose and piercing gray eyes. Her wild white-streaked hair fanned out around her faded red baseball cap. The young can handle hard, she said; at our age firm is very acceptable. She lay back and looked thoughtfully into the fire. I once had a lover who preferred the term full. He thought being hard inside me would be painful, and it was.
Nature takes care of it very well, said Margery. If only someone would tell men it’s okay. Not to be hard as a rock, not to need to drive a woman through the bed.
Sally, wandering over from the other campfire, overheard this comment.
Well, she said, laughing with the women, I can see where the inquiring mind needs to be.
Oh, yes, said Cheryl, come sit with the big girls. We’ll tell you what time of night it is.
I can’t believe you’re all straight, said Sue.
There was a long pause.
I’ve been straight for incredibly long periods, said Margery. Thoughtfully.
The women hooted.
The moon overhead was creamy and round. The river was a wide yellow thread through the canyon. No longer on it, the women felt their kinship still. It was as if it now moved through their bodies, even while they slept.
She was drawn to Sue. She seemed so plain, so clear, so unadorned. They had separated from the others and were exploring caves, and their petroglyphs, high above the canyon floor.
I have always lived with women, said Sue, from the very beginning.
Didn’t you miss having a boyfriend? asked Kate.
Why would I miss what I never had? asked Sue, studying the triumphant figure of a woman giving birth. It was almost shocking, the power expressed in the woman’s attitude. The rock the artist had chosen was tall and round, like a person with its belly protruding. The woman giving birth was carved on the belly. Amazing, that artists were so alike, throughout eons. As giving birth was the same. But not the ecstatic sense of a woman’s power. That had changed, drastically. Now