The Best Buddhist Writing 2010 - Melvin McLeod [94]
There were old photo albums that she’d kept as a way to remember her life, only she couldn’t recall where the pictures were taken or the names of the people in them. There were young lesbians in flannel shirts, groups of women sitting around and drinking, and some very intriguing shots of Julia standing naked in a forest. Going through the papers added so many dimensions to the person I’d come to regard only as a burden. The papers and photographs were going to the university archives. I kept a box of blank postcards for myself. They were the pictures of Julia’s life and mind.
LES GUÉRILLÈRES
A drawing of a defiant woman merged with a bird. The postcard is an advertisement for Monique Wittig’s book, which is described as “A delectable epic of sex warfare . . . an extraordinary leap of the imagination into the politics of oppression and revolt.”
When I first met Julia in 1993, I was forty and she was seventy. She was colorful, unpredictable, a little abrasive, very smart. She had a long history of rebellion. In the 1970s, during the heyday of radical feminism, she’d left her position as a theater professor, founded a lesbian political journal, and traveled around the country with her much younger lover.
Her apartment was crowded with books and photographs and artwork—the gatherings of an interesting life well spent. On the wall, an artist friend had hung a cardboard snake made of these words: “The View after Seventy Is Breath-Taking.” When Julia had a mastectomy a few years later, the last words were changed to “Breast-Taking.”
She was at the center of our community. She wrote poetry and plays. She spent her evenings at the theater or the movies. She liked films that no one else cared for because the lighting reminded her of early French cinema or the staging was interesting. She saw the differences in the portrayals of men and women, how women are often naked and exposed objects but men never are.
She dressed with a sense of style: a black beret contrasting with her silver hair, a little bit of makeup, a colorful tie, flowing jackets. She walked as though she were striding across the stage. She was a mentor and a promise of what my old age might be.
As the years passed, Julia complained of her failing memory. She said, “I can’t think clearly when it’s cloudy.” She didn’t read long books anymore; she couldn’t remember what had happened in the previous chapter. She spent her days in her dark apartment and tried to reconstitute her disintegrating past. I took her to doctors’ appointments, resolved crises that usually concerned missing objects, and attempted to make sense of her checkbook.
On Fridays, we went out together. It was a little challenge for us both to find something new to do every week: seeing a play or an exhibit at the art museum, having lunch at a place we’d heard about. In keeping her world from shrinking, my world expanded; we showed each other the sights from our different perspectives.
She called me whenever she needed me; she called more and more often. She was slowly losing ground, especially on “cloudy days.” But she could still drive, take care of herself and her cat, more or less keep up with the bills.
“I’ll be eighty years old in August,” Julia said. She mentioned it every time she saw me. I planned a big party for her. We invited all the people in her address book. Her godchildren traveled to North Carolina from Connecticut and California. The party was a slice of Julia’s long life: an old friend sitting happily demented in a chair, former students, young neighbors, allies in the feminist struggle. When it was over, she said, “That was absolutely perfect.”
THE SNAKE WITH TWO HEARTS
An X-ray of a snake that has swallowed two lightbulbs. A shiny heart-shaped sticker is affixed to each bulb.
A month after the birthday party, Julia invited me to dinner. “You know what’s wrong with you?