Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [68]
“Maybe you an’t so bad,” Roxanne had told me when we’d gone off to the bathroom together at the concert. “But you really ought to think about using a little makeup. Cass is known for taking up with good-looking women—women who know how to present themselves, you know?” I’d just nodded and said nothing. I could touch Roxanne’s shoulder, share a sip of whiskey with her, but I didn’t know how to begin to talk to her, how to say I wasn’t looking to hold on to Cass the way she wanted to cling to Billy. But then I hadn’t known how to talk to Liz last night either, to tell her what to do. I don’t want to be poor myself. At bottom maybe it’s all about what you can stand and what you can’t. Certainly I wouldn’t be able to stand living with Richard any more than I could Billy, but I can imagine things that might help Liz—starting with a decent income, day care for Mikey and Janine, work that wouldn’t leave her exhausted and crazy—all the things none of us can give her. What would help Billy and Cass, or Roxanne, or even me?
I stretch up again, start the kata over, watching my form in the mirrored windows, the pattern of my body twisting, rising, kicking, and coming back around to start again. I start again, finish the form, and start a third time. Sweat runs into my eyes, and my muscles go loose and fluid. The magic starts in my belly, and the kata becomes smooth, the feel of it more like sex than anything else. My fear goes out of me, my grief. What did I imagine was wrong with me anyway? The first night I’d slept with Cass, I’d rolled over and laughed out loud when we’d finished making love.
“Goddamn!” I’d yelled. “I love my life.” Cass had laughed back into my face, pulling me down to start all over again.
“Goddamn,” I whisper now, and start the kata over a fourth time. Liquid and gold, my knees come up and my fists punch out. The kata, the dance, takes me up, makes me over. I let go of Liz and Judy and all of them. I come back into stance, with my hair loose and damp on my neck, the smell of my own body like wine in the morning sun.
“Goddamn!” I hiss the word between my teeth and look up to see myself standing with my head back and face glowing in the reflected windows. The whisper carries distinctly in the morning quiet. I can almost see the ripple of it in the grass.
“Goddamn.”
Violence Against Women Begins at Home
Paula swears that if I joined her yoga class, I would never need another chiropractor in my life. She may be right. Margaret says it’s sex.
“Everything is about sex, but a bad back? That’s the worst. It’s the congestion, all that compression and tension. You know, tighter and tighter. You got to have a release, and sex is the thing that’ll do it for you.”
I nod and light another Marlboro. Last week, my boss finally told me they were going to have to lay me off the first of next month. I’ve been swinging back and forth from exhilaration to a kind of mad dread since then. God knows I hate that job, but thinking about looking for another one makes my stomach ache and my throat go dry. It makes me want to drink lots of beer and smoke endless cigarettes. What I’ve actually been doing is staying up late baking coffee-fudge cookies, eating them till I puke, and then going to bed to cry myself to sleep. I get to work late, barely able to sit at my keyboard. If they weren’t already going to lay me off, they’d fire me.
“You haven’t quit yet, huh?” Paula waves her hand as if warding off smoke, though the air conditioner over our heads has already sucked up the thin blue cloud. It’s the reason I got here first and sat in just this seat—now I can just smile and not reply. I’ve known Paula a long time, and no response is always best with her unless you’re prepared to sit still for several hours of exhaustive argument, something I haven’t wanted to do since we left the feminist collective