Vida (19 page)

Vida tuned out the theoretical argument. What they had to decide was what to do at the meeting; once they got upstairs, that was their agenda. Every person in SAW had their own politics—anarchist, liberal, communist, democratic-socialist, syndicalist, Catholic-worker, Maoist, Schactmanite, Spartacist—but what mattered was the politics of the act. Decisions rose from solving problems in struggle. Everyone was accommodated in the vast lumbering movement. Vida was content to be of the New Left, without a fancier label. All that hairsplitting—that was what the poor Old Lefties had sat around doing in dreary meetings in the fifties nobody else attended while the resident FBI agent took notes. Now they knew that everything must be done and they must speak to everyone, through the poetry of the act, through the theater of the streets, through the media, the music, irrationally and rationally and subliminally. History was a sense of urgency, a rush in the blood and a passion to make things better, to push with her whole life on what was. SAW was a fiercely, totally democratic organization, open to anyone with or without the low dues, with an elected leadership usually galloping in one direction while the members marched in another. Chapters did as they pleased and projects happened because enough people did them. Program was hotly debated and then often coldly ignored, unless it really was up from the grass roots. SAW was uncontrollable and lush as a vacant-lot jungle.

When they walked into Vida’s apartment, the living room was filled with twenty people sitting on everything available and the floor. Leigh looked annoyed. “Closed meeting. Only
Roach
staff”“ Mopsy wriggled to be petted.

She’d forgotten that Leigh had warned her the newspaper staff would be meeting there. “Sorry”“ Lohania and she trotted downstairs after Natalie. The phone, which had taken its Sunday-morning break, was ringing, as usual, every ten minutes. After Natalie had begun feeding Sammy canned goo in his high chair, Vida or Lohania continued whenever she was called to the phone. Lohania began supper, a process continued by whoever was not at the moment dealing with problems. Vida took calls about a women’s-caucus meeting (Wednesday night. I’ll try to make it. I have to meet with some chapter delegates from Queens College. Of course I think it’s important, but … I’ll put her on. Natalie!) The feed is broken on the Multilith press; who knows how to fix it? (Victor does. Call him at Betty’s after eight); Do you have a copy of Gorz’s
A Strategy for Labor?
I’m writing an article. And when are we going to see each other again? (Leigh has a copy. I’ll bring it to the Steering Committee. I love you too, Pelican, of course.) Nan got busted spray-painting at Whitehall Induction Center (Call Martin Abrahmson at his home number on Central Park West. The number is … ).

Natalie’s apartment was not as sunny as Vida’s, down three floors and facing West End, but the atmospheric difference was in the style of messi-ness. Not as often were random Movement extras from Tucson or Seattle camped on the living-room floor or taking unaccountably long baths reeking of dope and bubble bath or tying up the phone in long-distance calls to Alaska on fake credit cards that would be traced here in two months. Instead, more toys lay scattered underfoot, more small garments were abandoned on chairs and odd plastic nipples of the pacifiers Sammy insisted on sucking were stuck like flattened mushrooms to the sink drain-board and the windowsills. Both apartments had the air of being part-time offices, with mimeographed piles from mailings and political-education pamphlets stacked in every closet and covering varying amounts of the floors.

Daniel burst in, his face florid. “The kids were sitting in to protest ROTC and the administration bastards called the police. Lots of casualties. One with a broken back. They threw him down a flight of steps. I’ve got to get on the phone.”

After Lohania cut short a call to Newark about starting a community radio station, Daniel took over for a series of staccato queries. Then he stormed into the kitchen, shoving his arms into his “respectable” overcoat … “Who’s got the emergency kitty?”

“Upstairs, my room. I’ll go with you” As Vida ran beside him up the service stairs, feeling the anger and concern radiating from him like heat from a burner, she was sorry she had felt negative about him all day. It was she, Vida, who was saying at meetings that they must attract more ordinary people into war protests, and then she became impatient because Daniel and Natalie were a real couple and had babies all the time.

“I know the kid whose back they broke” Daniel muttered. “His brother was killed in Nam. Big gangly overgrown mutt just turned nineteen. And the papers will go on about student violence tonight.”

She found the money for Daniel without disturbing the
Roach
staff. As they were leaving, she encountered Chapel Hill couple carrying their sleeping bags. “That meeting seems like it may go on for hours” the guy said. “We’re going to stay up by Columbia.”

“Sure. Take care,” Vida said, wishing she could remember their names.

After Daniel rushed out, a pork chop in his hand, Natalie, Lohania and Vida sat down to eat, while Sammy kept up a steady babble. He was playing baby. When he felt his mother was failing to pay all of her attention to him all of the time, he deployed a battery of devices. One of the ploys Vida found the most irritating was when he pretended to be a baby again and drooled and cried and made nonsense sounds at the top decibel level his baby-bird throat could gape. GAH GAH GAH GAH, he bellowed, banging a spoon, and then he giggled and waited to see if Natalie would not pick him up.

“Turn it down, Sammy. I have to talk to your Aunt Vida and your Aunt Lohania. You can it, now; I mean it,” Natalie said—her voice, however, wheedling.

”Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo,” Sammy shouted.

“The basic problem” Natalie bellowed grimly, pretending she could not hear Sammy, “is to ensure that this coming demonstration has political content. That the kids learn about the nature of the power structure and imperialism and not just get some exercise. We’re moving people, yes, but we’re not changing the way they think.”

“What did you think of the Fair?” Lohania leaned back in her chair, touching up her nails with Mauve Magic. She had the longest nails Vida had ever seen in real life. They were a particular vanity and passion, a hobby, an artwork. Lohania liked them to be slightly grotesque.

“Eh . . “ Natalie sighed, letting Sam crawl into her lap and sit there, grinning, victorious. “That’s not my favorite constituency, strung-out kids. How can you talk to somebody who’s stoned all the time?”

“We’re reaching them” Vida insisted. “Sure, you can’t get into long rational arguments with them like you can straighter people, but they have a feeling for who lies to them and who tells the truth. We have to reach everybody, my darlings,
everybody
—and we’re doing it. We’ll mobilize every sector and we’ll stop the war by Christmas—or at any rate, by the spring.”

“If we don’t get out some troops for the demonstration a week from Thursday, they’ll think we’re losing momentum. The media bastards are always saying we’ve peaked—as if we were some advertising campaign” Lohania snapped.

She had a vision sometimes of a movement like one of the big spring parades—not the kind of more militant demonstration SAW would be mounting, but the big spring mobilizations with old people and mothers pushing strollers and men in suits and kids in bodypaint and rabbis and priests and shamans and marching bands. Everybody would belong—every-body but the ruling class. More and more people were against the war; more and more people were for change. The climate of the age was warming. She felt bursting with strength when she thought of how far they had come, from a tiny minority, timid and isolated, to a force that felt as if it was becoming the mainstream. Now there were social workers for peace, sanitation workers for peace, secretaries for peace, grandmothers for peace, zoo keepers for peace. They would take the country and make it fulfill its promises, its good dreams.

When Leigh’s meeting finished, he came downstairs. Sammy was tucked into bed, still audible, while Vida made notes on points to present at the meeting of the Steering Committee. Lohania was giving Natalie a neck rub. When Leigh came in, she halted and winked at him. “So, the
Roach
got its priorities straight for another issue?”

”Only a mere four hours to reach four decisions … What did you do with the men? Eat them like black widow spiders?”

Natalie’s eyes shone with anger. “Men project their own violence onto women!”

Lohania fluttered her lashes. “Since when do you mind being eaten?”

Vida said nothing, for she interpreted Leigh’s question as meaning Is Kevin gone? He had come down not after her but after Lohania. The two of them had not made love all week. Vida had no desire to interfere, but she wished she had second-guessed them earlier. She saw herself stretching out in her big bed for a nice night’s sleep. Good to have an occasional night by herself. The propaganda wasn’t working. She felt too overwound to remain alone.

She excused herself and called Pelican Bob back. “I found the Gorz. If you want it, I can bring it by.” Nine thirty on a balmy October night; there were lots of people on Broadway. Pelican lived on Claremont by Tiemann, right off 125th, so she would have two short blocks to trot from the bus. Further, she experienced the pressure put on all Movement women never to admit being afraid in the streets, afraid of any neighborhood, especially Black.

Pelican Bob was nicknamed because he had grown up in Florida and once, while stoned, he had broken his usual reticence to speak for perhaps half an hour on the virtues of that bird. There were many Bobs in the New York Movement, so the title helped. She did not want to sleep with Pelican, but dropping by his apartment would be pleasant. She could relax and incidentally lobby Pelican and his roommates to support her in Tuesday’s meeting. She might need his vote. She had slept on their couch before.

Into her Greek carpetbag she packed her working clothes for tomorrow. The only disadvantage of sleeping at Pelican’s was everybody’s ribbing when they saw her dressed for her secretarial job; but probably none of them would be awake when she left.

8

The next morning, nobody at Pelican’s was awake. Her dress for work was demure, the skirt not as short, the colors not as throbbing, no long dangling tinkly earrings. She daubed on her off-white lipstick and combed her hair back, put on her paisley hat and a flowered shift and she was ready for Kyriaki. Perhaps she spent an occasional impulsive night out to appreciate her household. Sour milk in Pelican’s kitchen, Wonder Bread, potato chips. In her apartment Leigh rose with her and breakfast was a social occasion, sometimes the only quiet time to talk until night brought them to bed together. The tub at Pelican’s was stained with the dirt of the ages, and the toilet smelled of men who pissed in the dark and sometimes missed. She hated to begin the day without a good hot scrub and soak.

On the subway she put her mind into shape for her job, doing English-to-Greek and Greek-to-English translating and typing. At Kyriaki they assumed that she was Greek—she had applied for the job under I.D. still in her old husband’s name—and that she had then married outside. Her name was Mrs. Pfeiffer there. Never had she been Davida Asch on the job. She enjoyed being half invisible, as if under an alias.

Knowing she was married, they thought they knew all about her. The older women asked her when she was going to have a baby; the younger women consulted her about their boyfriends; the men told her their troubles with their stomachs, their wives, their in-laws. The duller her routine at work was, the more it soothed her. She felt like Clark Kent: glamorous, dangerous Vida Asch disguised as Mrs. Secretary. She was well paid and did not feel exploited. Using her Greek was delightful, and sometimes even her French or Spanish was called upon. She only wished she had an excuse to study Russian or Chinese. Every language was a new code, and to satisfy cracking it a zesty pleasure. Further, the objects the company sold were pretty. Sometimes the girls in the office got samples of a new blouse. In Vida’s living room the rugs were Greek knotted carpets of bright peasant designs, bought at wholesale. Occasionally one of the men put his hand on her ass and she removed it. Such attempts were not serious. She had worked there since 1965.

Why did she feel as if she were pretending, sitting at her typewriter? Teachers, social workers, taxi drivers, city planners belonged to antiwar groups and marched and organized; but most of the full-time SAW organizers did not work at outside jobs. Gobbets of money floated around, fat in the economy. Anybody could find a part-time job. It was easy to get unemployment, easy to get on welfare. Cooperative shrinks or doctors wrote letters. Some full-time staff people came from families who sent money. But she did not. Ruby and Sandy were more comfortable than Ruby and Tom had been when she was a child, but with two kids still home, Sharon and Michael Morris—the baby, who was now in junior high—they had nothing to spare. She’d always worked. She made more money than Leigh did or anybody else except Daniel. Why did she feel she was playacting? She sometimes suspected if she were a truer revolutionary she would immediately quit her job and live off the cuff the way Pelican and company did. Voluntary poverty had no appeal, for her whole childhood had been spent in the working poor, and she liked her comforts. Wonder bread and cockroaches, ugh. She herself ran a clean kitchen.

Tuesday night she bought Chinese takeout on the way to the SAW office from work. Though the meeting was not until seven thirty, she had a lot to get done. Heaped on her desk were requests for antiwar literature, requests for speakers, letters from chapters with problems who wanted a regional representative to visit, donations, clippings, a threat from Minute Man marked with the cross hairs of a rifle sight, a love note from Pelican, an obscene hate letter addressed to Vida Ass and a notice to vacate their loft from the landlord. Have to call their lawyers on that one. The hate mail she shredded by hand and discarded. She tried not to read it when she opened it, but could not ever quite keep her eye from traveling over it. She never spoke of how sick it made her feel; not even to Leigh; not even to Lohania, with whom she shared most of her personal wishes and fears.