Conditions of War

by Lierre Keith

(first ten pages)

“A graceful political entertainment for the brave, the stubborn, the defiant, and those who want to be.”
--Andrea Dworkin

“Tight and intense. Conditions of War is propelled by rage and yet it has an incredible tenderness of soul.”
--Hikane: The Capable Woman

“It’s like Dykes To Watch Out For written by Dostoevsky!”
--Carol Ann Douglas, Off Our Backs

Chapter 1

Monday Night

It all started because of that lousy can of spray paint.

"Direct confrontations with male power," Abby was say­ing, rolling up her shirt sleeve. "That has to be the basis of our praxis. Otherwise, why call ourselves activists?"

Good question, I thought. It was getting late, almost ten o'clock, and we still didn't have a plan of action. We couldn't seem to agree on anything. Meanwhile, the rain kept coming, cold October rain. You know, the kind that makes you shiver just watching. It was foggy, too. Actually a perfect night for a group of guerilla feminists.

"Hey, try this," Marnie said, pushing auburn curls out of her eyes. One of her skinny legs bounced up and down. "We each get a tube of super glue and we could go all down Main Street and jam all the locks. Then tomorrow morning none of the stores could open." She was excited.

"How is that a response to a woman's murder?" Helen squelched her coolly. "The problem, as always, is that male power is so hegemonic. The institutional structures are hard to interrupt."

The problem as always is your stupid academic jargon, I wanted to say. Okay, I was running out of patience. And yeah, Marnie sometimes had some wild ideas, but they weren't bad ideas. And I don't think that just because she's my best friend.

"What about a curfew on men?" Hannah suggested halfheartedly. Hannah's my roommate. I watched her while everyone considered. Her sturdy features, strong arms, her bright red t-shirt with orange stars. And her eyes were always clear, either laughing or ready for battle, falcon-like, sharp and fast, steel claws. I looked around at the living room we'd assembled. Mostly milk crates, I realized with a sigh. But nice cushions I'd made, black with a pattern of grey leaves, and the two wooden chairs we'd found on the corner. Hannah'd started painting yellow lizards on them but got bored and finished up with giant sunflowers. I liked them.

I couldn't really say the same for our friends, not at the moment. I was a little too cranky and a little too desperate. Helen was talking and I wasn't listening. Yeah, a woman had been murdered. Mutilated. No clothes. Her body dumped in a parking lot like so much garbage. Electric fury in my blood metastasizing to despair, burning out the brain. Memory loss, convulsions, the electroshock of everyday. Another murdered woman.

"What about the courthouse?" I offered hopefully, like a mother coaxing pre-adolescent sulkers.

Groans and moans. "Not again."

"Why not?" I demanded, hurt.

"I'm tired," Carly sighed, the first thing she'd said all night. She tried to smile at me, her pale hair woven back into a braid. "Homework. Exams," she offered apologetically.

"Okay," I said, with what I hoped was equanimity. "Any­one else want to come?"

"What do you mean, `want to come'?" Helen asked. Perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect clothes. And perfect compo­sure, her long legs crossed easily, just the one eyebrow sharp as a knife. "You can't decide to do something like that on your own, X. Without the rest of us."

I should explain about my name before I get any further. Originally it was Christen. But when I was 12 and my mom was a stressed-out single mother doing a nose-dive toward the poverty line she would leave me these hurried notes:

dr-chkn & p's (dinner-chicken and peas)

v-d.r. (vacuum the dining room)

buy mk & t.p. (buy milk and toilet paper)

$ u bk (I'll pay you back.)

You know how people write "X-mas" for "Christmas"? Well, my name shrank to "X-en," which got shortened to"X," which stuck.

"Why not? I mean, when was the last time we did anything together?" I tried not to sound belligerent but it was hard as I was furious. "And don't tell me what to do, Helen."

Our eyes locked, hers cold blue and contemptuous, mine adolescent and defiant. Neither one of us could back down now. What a mess.

"X, you should take a look at your motivation. We don't think it's a good idea," Abby tried, leaning forward, one arm still wrapped loosely around Marnie's waist They'd only been lovers for a few months.

"Look at your motivation! A woman was just murdered! Somebody needs to do something. Spray painting is cheap, it's easy, it's accessible, and it's a skill I possess. C'mon you guys," I urged. "So what if it's cold and raining?"

Five pairs of eyes hit the hardwood floor. "Uh huh," I snorted and hated myself for it. Karen kept looking at me though.

"I think we should," she encouraged. "She's right. We need to do something."

So in the end we did. Hannah and Helen were the look­outs, Abby drove the get-away car, and me and Marnie did the painting. Blood red: Oh Men Beware. Women Are Seeking Justice. Alice Will Be Avenged. On the front steps of the county court house. Beautiful.

The trouble started when Marnie couldn't find her spray can. They all went out dancing after the action--Mondays are lesbian night at the local oh-so-chic-and-trendy club and be­tween my house and Marnie's they decided to make a splash on the scene. We have a reputation around town, you know, tough politicos and that sort of thing. Two months back a meant to­be-overheard-conversation was repeated through a friend.

"Well you know they hate lesbians," said Woman #1. Hannah's ex-lover. Ouch.

"Yeah, they never go to dances," said Woman #2, my ex­roommate.

Hannah bit her lip at this retelling, while I found myself forcing back tears. It was stupid, obviously, it was ludicrous, but still it was unfair. I couldn't go dancing. Nothing's as boring as other people's medical problems so I won't go into the details but I have a long Latin-named disease that means undifferen­tiated pain in the spine, and dancing is definitely out of the question. That's probably why they waited til they'd dropped me off to decide about going. I get a little sad around the edges when anyone talks about dancing or hiking or anything like that. I say "probably" because it makes it a sweet gesture rather than an oversight and they don't always remember. In fact I'm not even sure they all believe me but I can't really think about that.

So on the way home from dancing Marnie realized that she didn't know where her spray can was. Had she brought her knapsack? She sort of remembered putting the can in her pack, but she couldn't be sure. If so, where was it? And if not, where was it?

Hannah recounted this to me the next morning, over pancakes and fruit smoothies.

"I guess you don't remember where she put it," Hannah sighed, considering the dripping piece of maple-soaked pan­cake in her chopsticks.

"Can't say I do. I'm not sure I understand. Were her prints on it?"

"Well, she can't remember that either. She thinks she remembers dropping it in her knapsack but her gloves were off at that point."

"Aw shit," I muttered through my breakfast.

"And," Hannah continued, "if she lost her knapsack with her fingerprints and all her I. D. near the courthouse, we could be in trouble."

"How long have we been doing this? Jesus, you'd think we were a bunch of amateurs."

Hannah shook her head, "I know, I know."

"All right, where did you look?"

"We tore the car apart and we asked the coatroom at The Twilight, but nobody had turned it in."

"Is she going to call back later today?"

"I don't know. Frankly, we were nervous to go back to the courthouse."

"That I understand. She must feel like shit."

Hannah said nothing, just stared at me. "What?"

"Look, I may as well tell you since you're going to hear about it anyway. They think it's your fault."

"My fault? But I know where my fingerprints are. And my I.D."

"They're saying if you hadn't made us go out it wouldn't have happened."

"But I didn't make them!"

"X, you did pressure us."

The thing I love most about Hannah is her directness. She doesn't stew and fester and ferment. She'll just tell you flat out what's on her mind, so you never have to worry about what's gone rancid beneath the surface. It makes her very uncompli­cated. And there's her self-assurance too, except it's more like a total lack of self-consciousness. It never occurs to her to worry about what other people will think. She's impossible to embar­rass: she just laughs.

This gives her some special abilities. She can walk into the grocery store, pick up a bottle of coke, empty it on the pornog­raphy, grab a couple of avocados and some chips and cruise right out. No money has exchanged hands and no one has seen her. Because it doesn't occur to her that anyone will notice, no one ever does. A wonderful skill in our line of work.

"But I also said I didn't care who went as long as I could go."

"True," Hannah nodded.

"Did you ah I mean did you get, you know," I was flustered, "did you have one of your intuitions?"

"No, I just didn't think the energy was there."

"But the energy's never there," I was whining and I knew it.

"You're right," she smiled affably. "I'm not saying it's wrong. You did push. But that's what we need sometimes."

I tipped my glass back and swallowed even though there was nothing in it. " Do you think it was my fault?" I tried to sound nonchalant but it was all I could do not to burst into tears.

"No," she smiled.

"It's not fair," I muttered.

"We've got that in common," Hannah laughed. "It's the Libra moon. Injustice sets us right off.” She laid her hand gently on my shoulder. "Don't worry, it'll blow over."

I smiled back resolutely. I really love Hannah sometimes. Back when I was an isolated radical feminist reaching a critical mass of despair, I used to see her wandering around town in her dreamy dazes and paint-covered clothes or biking shorts and I admit I had a terrible crush on her. I was sure she was a feminist, the real kind, the kind who knows there's a war going on and women are being slaughtered by men. The kind who wants to stop them. It was the way she set her jaw beneath a genuinely happy nature, the way her eyes crackled sometimes. Time proved me right. We ended up roommates and the crush faded after its first cold dunk in reality and just sort of made things sweeter. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed half-asleep listening to the crickets she comes in fresh from a long soak in the bathtub and curls up in bed with me. She's so soft then, and she talks and talks to me long past the point when I'm gone. All right, one time we kissed, but that's it, and we didn't tell anyone because she was involved with Marnie and it would have made everyone miserable.

"Helen's supposed to becoming over," I swallowed harder.
"I know. I'll do the dishes. Keep your chin up."

 

Chapter 2

Tuesday Morning

Helen scares me. Not always of course, sometimes we're cruising right along being the best of friends, like the top is down and the radio's blasting and the needle's on full, and then bam, it's like getting a blow-out, or the boys in blue clocking you doing eighty-five: suddenly, she's listing my faults like she's reading me my Miranda rights and she means business.

For her it's like the engine overheats so you throw a little water in the radiator, give it twenty minutes, and you're off again, pass me a coke I can smell the ocean. But I feel like I just got totaled. Does she think these things about me all the time or just once in awhile, and is this really Who I Am or is it all just a misunderstanding? There's a violence to it that makes me queasy, not that she's violent or anything remotely resembling even raised voices. It's more like the violence implicit in therapy, being stripped bare or stripping yourself bare, it's what shouldn't be exterior or made public and then there it is, like someone's organ and it doesn't belong outside the skin unconnected to the rest. But see the thing is she must be right sometimes. I don't as a rule hang out with stupid people and the woman isn't stupid. So when she says, Number one, you're not paying attention, Number two, you're arrogant, and Number three, you introduce complete non sequiturs into these discussions, I want it all to be a mistake but it settles in my stomach like a quart of ice cream: Yuck. I had the feeling today was going to be more like a gallon.

Friday mornings we have an Institution, me and Helen. We push all the furniture in the living room into one corner and then I sing and she dances. Helen wanted to be a dancer, she started training when she was really young. That was before the accident. That's how she refers to it, the accident, briefly, with a shrug. She was eighteen, driving on an icy road. Lucky to be alive, isn't that what they always say? A broken collar bone and a mangled knee. They did reconstructive surgery, and she's okay, she's fine really, except she could never be a professional dancer.

I warm up while she stretches and then she says, Okay give me some Patsy Cline, and I give it all I've got, or all I can remember. It gets gradually wilder and looser until by the end I'm singing my favorite Olga B. poems and Helen's dancing with her eyes closed and then we're like leaves, little pieces of fire soaring on the wind and maybe it's as close to dancing as I'll ever get in this body and no one knows how sad I am except Helen, when she dances.

But today there wasn't going to be any dancing. One look in her eyes and I knew I was in for it.

"Hi," she said without a hint of friendliness.

"Good morning," I replied in my usual early morning singsong. "Did you have fun last night?" I asked following her down the hall.

She snorted and dropped her coat on a chair. "Yeah, it was great."

"Hannah told me what happened with Marnie," I said neutrally. "Bummer."

"This is more than a bummer, X. This is a mistake that never should have happened, and it puts all of us in jeopardy."

"Yeah, poor Marnie must feel awful."

"It's not about Marnie, X. You have to take some respon­sibility for this."

"All right," I said, keeping my smile steady. "How about Marnie gets half and the rest of us split the other half five ways. Actually," I considered for a minute, "I probably should get a little less, because I didn't go to The Twilight and I didn't even know you were going so that part was out of my control, but hey, let's not sweat it." Sarcasm is always my downfall.

Helen sucked in her breath. "You can't admit you're wrong."

"But I don't think I am wrong."

"You can't threaten the group and then just throw together an action."

"Well I didn't know that joining this group meant signing up for the Gulag. I don't even know if we are a group anymore, and no one ever said we couldn't act as individuals and some of our best actions have been spontaneous, and anyway I think there's a big difference between being scared and being lazy or even being tired and being lazy, I mean Carly didn't come and no one tried to make her." Helen wasn't budging under this semi-coherent flood of defense and I was starting to crumble. "You know what I mean?" I finished miserably.

Helen stared down haughtily, her blue blood icy as winter in Darien.

"There's no point in talking to you because you refuse to be self-critical."
"Well, you're all so good at it I figure why should I compete?"