Lee Uttmark Wicks

But back to “Macbeth.” The crones are gathered there feeling sweaty; they are not in a good mood at all, and the thought of all that passion between Macbeth and his lady is agitating. They can remember what it was like to be young and wait for your man to come home, to brush your long thick hair until it shined and rub scented oil into firm breasts and upright nipples. They can remember when their husbands could sit through a whole play without getting up to pee, and when the guys’ slightly enlarged prostates didn’t cause the same need five times a night. The crones’ fragile grasp on sleep has been more than one time ruined when their men clomped to the privy, banging doors and making the stairs squeak as they lumbered down the hall. In winter the men simply use the chamber pot, and the weak stream trickling against the porcelain has a sad sound to it, yet another reminder of the indignities of age.

So the crones know that men have a hard time, too. But they don’t really care. What men endure does not come close to menstruation, childbirth and menopause. And anyway, Macbeth and his lady are not concerned with any of that right now. They are thinking about wet mouths and other parts. They have that tense feeling in their lower abdomens. The tingling too. The crones know that the best way to soothe your own suffering is to make sure somebody else is having a worse time. There has to be a way to curse this reunion, and the crones find it. They meet Macbeth in the forest and plant fear. This always works. Bravado is only veneer, easily peeled away once you loosen the edges. The rest follows a predictable course. Shakespeare always punished greed, ego and passion.

I was thinking about all this at 3:30 in the morning. I woke up at 2, covered in sweat, and I pulled back all the covers. By 2:20 I was shivering and I pulled them back over me and went to sleep. At 2:45 my husband started tossing and turning and that was it. I could give up on sleep for the rest of the night. It occurred to me then that God doesn’t like women. God likes bears. Four-hundred-pound bears give birth in their sleep to cubs weighing 8 ounces. They don’t even know that anything has happened until this cute little thing crawls up to nurse. I don’t know what happens to them at middle age. Not much, probably.

In those early morning hours I got comfortable on the sofa and turned to a book on herbal remedies for self-declared crones. These remedies make sense to me on a gut level. I’d rather not take estrogen derived from the urine of pregnant mares. I’ve also got this idea that since I failed at natural childbirth and begged for painkillers in the end, I ought to be able to at least have a natural menopause. So I came to the book with an open mind; but after reading just three chapters I developed a seething and unattractive resentment toward women with the time to wander around vacant lots foraging for weeds.

I learned that an oat straw bath might help cool and relax me. So would garden sage taken as a tincture or an infusion. So would lavender, nettles, chickweed, valerian, chamomile and more, preferably harvested and prepared by me. The next chapter suggested masturbation. Very relaxing, said the imaginary crone narrator, especially nice if you break open a vitamin E capsule and rub the oil on your vulva. Plumps it up in just a few weeks. On the subject of sex, I learned about herbal aphrodisiacs, plus yoga, plus the health benefits of the act itself. Use it or lose it is the prevailing advice to counteract vaginal atrophy — a term I wish I had never heard.

Then there was a section on meditating that took me through the usual sequence of relaxing myself muscle by muscle. I noticed that I was clenching my jaw again. My periodontist wants to make me a $600 mouth guard to stop me from doing this, because it is causing my teeth to become loose. Recent gum surgery has corrected the problem for now. The mouth guard would be more long term, he says. It seems it’s OK to be a crone at heart, but nobody wants to look like one, complete with missing teeth.

It was 4:30 a.m., and I was still wide awake, when I read the sentence that put me over the edge. “If none of this works for you go for a walk, read a book and take a nap later on in the day.”

The church bells at the end of my street chimed five times and I gave up. My husband, Roy, wandered in from the bedroom and found me on the sofa. I was staring into space muttering about herbs and oat straw baths. I told him that I might have to leave him and live alone for a few years. He could keep the house. I’d find a furnished room near the diner where I planned to work once I quit my job. I could work the breakfast shift and then I could take naps in the afternoon.

I started to cry when the dog came into the kitchen looking for breakfast, because I knew I couldn’t take him to the furnished room with me. I cried some more thinking about how sad it would be for my daughter to endure another divorce. The only thing that made me feel good was seeing how bad I was making Roy feel. In fact, the more worried he became, the better I felt, just like the witches in “Macbeth.”

I drank lots of coffee and had a shower and went to work. Around 10, I called Roy to tell him I wasn’t leaving him after all. At noon I called again to say I actually liked my job and probably wouldn’t be filling out an application at the diner. At 4 he called me to ask what he should buy for dinner. By then I really needed that nap. I told him I didn’t care what we ate. “I’ve been cooking for 35 years and I’m sick of it. I’ll eat a bowl of oat bran,” I said. “Maybe I’ll put some seaweed on top. Maybe I’ll stop by the hairdresser on my way home and have all my hair cut off so I’ll look like I’m having chemotherapy and everyone will be nice to me. Maybe you’ll want to leave me because I’ll look so ugly. Go ahead. Find a younger woman. See if I care.”

He sighed. Something about that sigh had eloquence to it. I could see his shoulders rise and fall. I could hear just the slightest beginnings of laughter in it. “Find a younger woman,” I said, “and I’ll curse the two of you and you’ll never have sex.” I felt like a witch. I felt great. Being nice is an overrated virtue. Cackling anger is much more satisfying. I believe there’s just a tiny part of Roy that thinks I am capable of anything, and I plan to keep it that way.

Sad, huh?

The echo of our original vows put a sheen of melancholy over my anger. I think this is why I agreed to our having lunch together afterward at a diner just like the one we had gone to in New York after our simple wedding in 1969. I had worn a white minidress, we read from “The Prophet” and then we were married. On the day of our divorce, as on our wedding day, we both ordered eggs over easy with bacon. We smeared grape jelly on white toast. After a while I gathered the courage to ask the question that had been on my mind for a few months. I wanted to know why she had left him. How could a set of feelings strong enough to cause the breakup of a family vanish just like that?

With a little quiver in his voice, he told me that she had fallen in love with another woman. It wasn’t just some thing she was going through. She had been a lesbian for years, she now knew. A lesbian! He still found it hard to believe. Impossible really. He had lost me, his daughter, now her. He sighed and let his lip tremble.

At that moment, I was feeling a little sad for him. So I stayed and let him talk. He told me how she had cut her hair to her chin. He had liked it well enough, so just to show him that his liking it was totally beside the point, she went out the very next day and cut it to her ears. Then she shaved it above her ears. The most amazing thing of all was that she still looked beautiful — but she was lost to him forever. At that point I did not hesitate to tell him that he’d get over it.

We didn’t linger over coffee. I couldn’t wait to get back home so I could start calling my friends. My story had a perfect ending.

“He fell in love with a very beautiful, very young woman who spent every weekend in the house where I once lived. She used all my dishes and towels, and once, when I had to drop off Ali, I went into the bathroom, and her diaphragm was right there on the edge of the sink.”

“He’s scum.”

“Actually, she only used my things for a couple of years. Before the fire.”

“The fire?”

“Yes. Sometimes I think I caused it. I think if a person focuses that much hate on one location, the feelings vibrate, create their own heat. Or maybe I am a witch. In any case, there was a fire, and nobody got hurt, but almost all the furniture and household stuff was destroyed, and after that I never had to picture them together in my space.”

“Are they still together?”

“Oh, no.” I pause a little and let the smile creep into my voice. “She discovered she was gay and left him.”

Women laugh. They howl. They are delighted by this story. Men tend to look pained.

“And that’s not all,” I add while I still have the person’s attention. “Afterward he was so sad that he went out for a drive so he could visit all their favorite places and say goodbye. Then on the way home he totaled his car. They had matching cars, you know. She may still have hers. Oh there is a God.”

For the next few years, I never missed an opportunity to tell that story. Even today, I still jump right in when I get the chance. But ever since Ali came out, I feel a little guilty when I do it. I think I should stop and try to figure out why the story is so satisfying. Why does losing a woman to another woman seem like the grandest indignity a man can suffer? Bad in bed, was he? Turned her off men completely, eh?

This implies that men have the power to make women gay. And I don’t believe it. If that were true, Ali and all the other gay women I know would be deprived of an identity that stands alone, does not require trauma, is not yet another response to men. Women loving women is not about men at all. But that still leaves me wondering: What is it about?

When Ali first came out, I wondered if I could have done something to make her gay. She was born with a dislocated hip and she needed X-rays in her first months of life. What if something happened to her tiny ovaries back then? Did I ask the doctors enough questions? Ali came slowly to the belief that Roy, my second husband, and I would make it. When we told her we were getting married (she was 12), she neatly tucked the instep of one foot over the arch of the other, thrust out her hip and said, “Oh, really? And what makes you think it can work this time when you failed with Daddy?” Could that overwhelming sense of failure have cut off her hopes for a happy marriage? No, it didn’t — she absolutely hopes to find lasting love with a woman. If she had given up on love, she’d give it up altogether.

Time went by and I stopped looking for the causes of Ali’s sexuality. I stopped needing to find them as I grew increasingly comfortable, as I saw how little difference it made.I have come to think that Ali’s feeling about men as sex partners is like my relationship to peanut butter: I have tried different kinds and haven’t liked any of them.

I do not associate peanut butter with any bad memories — nobody ever beat me while forcing it down my throat. I sometimes wish I could be satisfied at lunch by a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But I can’t. Although I have nothing against those who scoop the stuff right out of the jar and lick it off their fingers, people look at me strangely when I tell them I don’t like it. It’s almost un-American. On long-ago Sunday nights, my whole family would all watch “Bonanza” and have snacks at our TV tables. My brothers gobbled peanut butter and Ritz crackers while my dad and I speared chunks of pickled herring from a small jar. There is no explanation for this, and there should be no judgment, either. It just is — as is Ali.

But on that day of my divorce, neither her dad nor I knew she was gay. She was still a kid at home wondering about I do’s and I don’ts while I sat in a diner listening to her dad’s sad story. He had placed his camera near his plate like another table utensil. He could raise his fork, his coffee cup or that camera at any time. I wanted to grab it and take a picture of his ravaged face after he finished telling me all about his lost love and her haircut. Ali still had shoulder-length hair then. I wonder what he thought when she cut it?

Have I mentioned that Ali is beautiful? Today her cropped hair shows off her good bones and gorgeous eyes. Her dad took hundreds of pictures of her as a baby and a toddler. I don’t know if he has taken any pictures recently, but he used miles of film on those weekends when Ali and the woman who later discovered she was gay made kites and sand castles and baked cookies together. He never offered any of those prints to me.

I couldn’t have looked at them then. I could now.

If she had married Ali’s dad, I would have found a way to make peace, because Ali loved her. Like the fine mother she may someday become, this young woman wrote poems and read stories and wove Ali’s hair into perfect French braids. To this day Ali keeps the letter this young woman wrote to explain why they wouldn’t see each other anymore. She was very loving and careful in her language, and so the letter merely managed to say goodbye. Ali read it and reread it until the folds wore thin. What’s amazing to me now is that the letter was written when this woman was just 22, younger than Ali is now.

The woman is 34 now. Ali located her a while ago and called. Sometimes I want to do the same. I’d like to say, “I never should have hated you. I’m so sorry. How is your life? Do you have a partner? What about children? You really ought to have children. Were you surprised when Ali told you she was gay? She cut her hair, too. It looks great. And by the way, what did your mother say when you came out?”

We all laugh. We don’t know what else to do. None of us have great memories of
the police. When I was a kid, the cops in my Brooklyn neighborhood hung out in the candy store. They seemed more menacing than the neighborhood criminals, who were far too busy running numbers games to offer any threat to regular people.

Police were the brutes at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Everyone
at the table is old enough to remember that. Police stood at the edges of
demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, just waiting for someone to provoke
them. Most of my friends took part in those demonstrations. If I press for the
image of a noble officer, only Serpico comes to mind, and what mother wants to
think about her daughter being set up by fellow cops and getting shot in the face — even if the experience did yield a book and a movie deal?

Learning that Ali was gay was nothing compared to hearing that she was
abandoning a liberal arts education to enroll in a criminal justice program
with the hope of eventually attending the police academy. People have died
at the police academy. Really. Just a few years ago a recruit died of kidney
failure because the drill instructor wouldn’t let him drink enough water. Three
or four others ended up in the hospital.

Ali took yoga as a winter sport. She’s always hated authority. (“Yes, but” is
her favorite answer in any argument.) Yet she went to the academy and
did better than simply surviving the physical and psychological challenges of her
training. She earned the award for academic achievement, made me cry at her
graduation and now she’s a cop in a blue uniform and black boots. She wears a
gun on her hip and handcuffs hang from her belt — along with a special-issue
flashlight, a huge key ring, a baton and other things I can’t remember. The
belt is heavy enough to bruise her slim hips. The bulletproof vest is stiff
and hot, but because she made a promise to her grandmother, she wears it, even
in 90-degree heat.

At dinner I tell my friends about the women’s self-defense course Ali teaches.
Roy talks about her community policing efforts. Our friends tell us that we are
wonderful parents. I accept the compliments. I don’t tell them that I am jealous because their kids are safer than my kid and because their kids will probably earn more money over their lifetimes, enjoy more autonomy at work and never have to say, “Yes sir, no sir, whatever you say sir.”

Jealousy such as this is an unattractive fact of motherhood. It’s the way I
felt when Ali was 2 and wouldn’t eat anything but raisins and Cheerios
while my best friend’s daughter ate everything, even liver and fish. I could
practically see Amanda’s little brain cells developing, and sometimes I thought
it wouldn’t hurt her to miss a meal or two. Sometimes I wanted to grab the
spoon from her chubby little fist. But instead I smiled at my friend Lydia and
told her Amanda was certainly a great eater and, by the way, did she ever worry
about those permanent fat cells that develop early — you know, the kind that live in your thighs forever?

Ali is doing better than many of her friends from college who are flipping
burgers while they pursue advanced degrees in fields where there are no jobs.
Ali has work that she loves, respect from her colleagues and tremendous
confidence. To her, conforming to a paramilitary organizational structure seems
like a small price to pay for the chance to make people safe. In fact, she
likes the discipline. To me it seems like awfully hard work.

She had the night shift for more than a year. Finally, she managed to get some days by juggling her schedule so that now she never has two days off in a row. She works on holidays. She goes to court on her days off. Because she’s the only woman on her force and the sensitive crimes investigator, she gets called in the middle of the night to handle rape cases, even when she’s not on duty. She routinely puts in 10 or more hours of overtime each week. She deals with many men who do not think that women belong on the force, let alone gay women. And she’s not yet 25.

My friends and I move the conversation away from our kids. We talk
about vitamins and Andrew Weil; technology stocks, vacations and the cost of
furniture. We drink a lot of red wine and talk about our parents.
Our fathers went away in suits to work at jobs we knew nothing about. We all
lied to our mothers almost as soon as we learned to talk. Had to. Everything
fun was against the rules.

I don’t think Ali lies to me about any of the important things. In fact,
sometimes she tells me too much. For instance, I didn’t need to hear the story
about the man who tried to assault her at a highway rest stop. She went
straight for his crotch with the grab-twist-and-pull maneuver she had learned
in RAD (Rape Aggressive Defense) training and left the guy moaning on the ground. I tell my friends about that. Eyes go wide. Nobody laughs.

How did I raise a young woman with such courage? I am a wimp who hates to be
yelled at or hurt. If I stub my toe I start to cry. Ali routinely walks into
dark and lonely places where anything could happen. I am so glad she
has the vest. While my mother’s gift helps keep her safe, I am quietly
calculating our home equity — just in case she decides that she wants to
get the bad guys by going to law school.