Black Glass Read online

  I know that Nixon felt undermined and attacked by the media. We did not see it this way. None of the major networks met with our approval. Only the local public station reported the news in Berkeley the way we saw it happening. One of their reporters was a young man who covered those stories felt to be of particular interest to the black community. He was handsome, mustached, broad-shouldered. He had the same dark, melting eyes as Lauren’s dog. His name was Poncho Taylor. Lauren fell in love with him.

  Well, you didn’t expect us to give up love, did you? Just because there was a war on? I never expected you to.

  Poncho was politically impeccable. He was passionate, he was committed. He was gorgeous. Any one of us could have fallen in love with him. But Lauren was the first to announce her passion, and we were content to provide support. We took turns with her transcribing duties during his airtime so she wouldn’t miss a moment of his face. We listened patiently while she droned on about his cheekbones, his hair, the sexy tremor in his voice when a story had an unhappy conclusion, and we agreed. We saw it all. He was wonderful.

  I remember a night when we made chocolate chip cookies and ate the dough. Nestlé had just made the boycott list, but the chips were old. “The sooner we eat them, the better,” Julie had suggested.

  Gretchen had just returned from an organizational meeting with new instructions for us. We had been told to band together into small groups like the revolutionaries in The Battle of Algiers. These were to be called affinity groups, and we were to select for them people we trusted absolutely. We were to choose those people we would trust with our lives. We smiled at one another over the bowl of dough as it suddenly occurred to us that, for us, this choice had already been made. Just as Gretchen said, when we could find our happiness nowhere else, we were able to put it into each other’s hands and hold it there.

  “There’s more,” Gretchen continued. “We’re supposed to arm ourselves.” Julie took another spoonful of dough, heavy on the chips. I used the handle of my spoon to reach inside my cast and scratch myself. Nobody said anything for a long time.

  Finally Julie indicated the boycott list. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” she suggested. She didn’t sound sure.

  Gretchen did. “The boycott list is liberal bullshit,” she said. “It’s too easy. What good will it possibly do?”

  Lauren cleared her throat and tapped the air with the back of her spoon. “It’s a capitalist country. Money matters.”

  “You can’t destroy the system from within the system.” Gretchen was very unhappy. “We’re too safe.”

  We sent Nixon a telegram. Gretchen composed it. END THIS OBSCENE WAR AT ONCE STOP PULL OUT THE WAY YOUR FATHER SHOULD HAVE STOP It didn’t make us feel better.

  We should have done more. I look back on those years, and it’s clear to me that we should have done more. It’s just not clear to me what more we should have done.

  Perhaps we lacked imagination. Perhaps we lacked physical courage. Perhaps our personal stakes were just not high enough. We were women. We were not going to Vietnam. We were privileged. Our brothers, our lovers, were not going to Vietnam. But you do us an injustice if you doubt our sincerity. Remember that we watched the news three times a day. Three times a day we read the body count in the upper right-hand corner of the screen like the score of a football game. This is how many of them we killed today. They killed this many of us. Subtract one figure from the other. Are we winning?

  Could anyone be indifferent to this? Always, I added the two numbers together. My God, I would think. Dear God. Look how many people died today! (What if one of them was you?)

  • • •

  YOU ARE ON A PLANE, an ordinary plane. You could be en route to Denver from Chicago or going home for Christmas if you just close your eyes and believe only your ears. But you are really between Japan and Vietnam. The plane has a stewardess dressed in a bathing suit like Miss America. This is designed as a consolation for you. If you are very, very frightened, she may agree to wear rabbit ears and a tail when she brings you your drink. But you must not touch her. She is a white woman and looks familiar to you—her height, her build quite ordinary. This will change. When you remember her later she will seem exotic. It will seem odd to you that a woman should be so big. You will remember that she came and tightened your seat belt as if she were your mother. What was she keeping you safe for? Whose body is it anyway? You look at your legs, at your hands, and wonder what your body will be like when it is returned to you. You wonder who will want it then.

  The immediate threat is the plane’s descent. You make a sudden decision not to descend with it. You spread your arms to hold yourself aloft. You hover near the top of the plane. But it is hopeless. If they have to shoot you down, they will. Friendly fire. You return to your seat. The plane carries your body down into Vietnam.

  You think of me. How I will hate you if you don’t live through this. How you must protect me. And during your whole tour, every time you meet someone returning home, you will give him a message for me. You will write your message on the casts of the wounded. You will print it on the foreheads of those who return walking, on the teeth of those who return bagged. I am here, I am here, I am here. So many messages. How are you to know that none will get through?

  • • •

  MY AFFINITY GROUP was very kind about you. I would tell them frequently how the war would be over by Christmas, how you were responsible for the growing dissatisfaction among servicemen. Vets against the war, I said to them, was probably one of your ideas. They never mentioned how you never wrote. Neither did I. You were my wound. I had my broken ankle and I had you. It was so much more than they had. It made them protective of me.

  They didn’t want me at any more demonstrations. “When you could run,” Lauren pointed out, “look what happened to you.” But I was there with them when the police cordoned off Sproul Plaza, trapping us inside, and gassed us from the air. You don’t want to believe this. Governor Ronald Reagan and all the major networks assured you that we had been asked to disperse but had refused. Only Poncho Taylor told the truth. We had not been allowed to leave. Anyone who tried to leave was clubbed. A helicopter flew over the area and dropped tear gas on us. The gas went into the hospital and into the neighboring residential areas. When the police asked the city to buy them a second helicopter so that they could enlarge operations, many people not of the radical persuasion objected. A committee was formed to prevent this purchase, a committee headed by an old Bay Area activist. She happened to be Poncho Taylor’s grandmother. Lauren took it as a sign from God.

  Lauren’s passion for Poncho had continued to grow, and we had continued to feed it. It’s difficult to explain why Poncho had become so important to us. Partly it was just that Lauren loved him and we loved Lauren. Whatever Lauren wanted she should have. But partly it was the futility of our political work. We continued to do it but without energy, without hope. Poncho began to seem attainable when peace was not. Poncho began to represent the rest of our lives, outside the words.

  Lauren told everyone how she felt. Our friends all knew and soon their friends knew and then the friends of their friends. It was like a message Lauren was sending to Poncho. And if it didn’t reach him, Lauren could combine useful political effort with another conduit. She called Poncho’s grandmother and volunteered us all for the Stop the Helicopter campaign.

  We went to an evening organizational meeting. (We did more organizing than anything else.) Though now I remember that Julie did not come with us, but stayed at home to rendezvous in the empty apartment with her teaching assistant.

  The meeting was crowded, but eventually we verified Poncho’s absence. After interminable discussion we were told to organize phone trees, circulate petitions, see that the city council meeting, scheduled for the end of the month, was packed with vocal opponents. Lauren couldn’t even get close to Poncho’s grandmother.

  When we returned home,
Julie was drunk. Her lover had failed to show, but Mike, a friend of mine, had come by with a bottle of wine. Julie had never known Mike very well or liked him very much, but he had stayed the whole evening and they had gotten along wonderfully. Julie had a large collection of Barbra Streisand records we refused to let her play. Mike had not only put them on but actually cried over them. “He’s a lot more sensitive than I thought,” Julie told me.

  Mike denied it all. He was so drunk he wove from side to side even sitting down. He tried to kiss me and landed on my shoulder. “How did the meeting go?” he asked, and snorted when we told him. “Phone trees.” He lifted his head to grin at me, red-faced, unshaven, wine-soaked breath. “The old radicals are even less ballsy than the young ones.”

  I picked up one of his hands. “Do you think it’s possible,” I asked him, “for a revolution to be entirely personal? Suppose we all concentrated on our own lives, filled them with revolutionary moments, revolutionary relationships. When we had enough of them, it would be a revolution.”

  “No.” Mike removed his hand from mine. “It wouldn’t. That’s cowardice talking. That’s you being liberal. That’s you saying, ‘Let’s make a revolution, but let’s be nice about it.’ People are dying. There’s a real war going on. We can’t be incremental.”

  “Exactly,” said Gretchen. “Exactly. Time is as much the issue as anything else.”

  “Then we should all be carrying guns,” said Julie. “We should be planning political assassinations.”

  “We should be robbing banks,” said Mike. “Or printing phony bills.” Mike had been known to pass a bad check or two, though he never needed the money. He was an auto mechanic by day, a dope dealer by night. He was the richest person we knew. “Lauren,” he called, and Lauren appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I came here tonight because I have a surprise for you.” He was grinning.

  “If it’s dope, I’m not interested,” said Lauren. “Nor am I solvent.”

  “What would you say,” Mike asked, “if I told you that right now, right at this very moment, I have Poncho Taylor’s car sitting in my garage waiting for repairs?” Lauren said we would go right over.

  Poncho had a white convertible. Lauren loved it. She sat in the driver’s seat, because Poncho had sat there. She sat on the passenger side, because that was where she would be sitting herself. I discovered an old valentine in the glove compartment. Lauren was torn between the despair of thinking he already had a girlfriend and the thrill of finally discovering something personal. She opened it.

  “Love and a hundred smooches, Deborah.” Lauren read it aloud disapprovingly. “This Deborah sounds like a real sap.”

  “Poncho seems more and more to be the perfect match for you,” I added. The valentine had one feature of incontrovertible value. It had Poncho’s address on it. Lauren began to copy it, then looked at us.

  “What the hell,” she said and put the whole thing in her purse.

  I had no address for you, you know. I mean, in the beginning I did, and I probably should have written you first. Since I hardly talked to you when you came to say good-bye. Since I didn’t cry. I did miss you. I kept thinking you would write me. And then later, when I saw you wouldn’t, it was too late. Then I had no address. I couldn’t believe you would never write me. What happened to you?

  Even our senators sent me form letters. More than I got from you.

  Dear (fill in name),

  Well, here I am in Vietnam! The people are little and the bugs are big, but the food is Army and that means American. As far as I can see, Saigon has been turned into one large brothel. I go there as often as I can. It beats my other way of interacting with the locals, which is to go up in planes and drop Willie Peter on them. Man, those suckers burn forever! I made my first ground kill yesterday. Little guy in a whole lot of pieces. You have to bring the body for the body count and the arm came off right in my hand. We were able to count him six times, which everybody said was really beautiful. Hey, he’s in so many pieces he’s never going to need any company but his own again. The dope is really heavy-duty here, too. I’ve lost my mind.

  Listen, I got to go. We’re due out tonight on a walk-through with ARVN support, and you know what they say here about the ARVN—with friends like these . . . Ugly little buggers.

  Dust off the women. I’ll be home by Christmas. Love you all.

  (fill in name)

  Now you’re angry. I hope. Who am I to condemn you? What do I know about the real war? Absolutely nothing. Gretchen says you’re a running-dog imperialist. She thinks she met you once before you left, before she knew me, at a party at Barbara Meyer’s. In Sausalito? I don’t think it was you. She waited a long time to tell me about it. I was married before she told me. I don’t think it was you.

  So it took Lauren two days to formalize her final plan. It was audacious. It was daring. It had Lauren’s stamp all over it. Mike called when Poncho came in and picked up his car. This was our signal to start.

  It was Lauren’s night to cook dinner, and she saw no reason to change this. She had bought the ingredients for cannelloni, a spectacular treat she made entirely from scratch. It required long intervals, she claimed, when the dough must be allowed to rest. During one of these rest periods, she fixed herself up and Julie drove her to San Francisco, where Poncho lived. Julie returned in forty minutes. She had only stayed long enough to see Lauren safely inside.

  Lauren came home perhaps a half an hour later. She changed her clothes again, dropping the discarded ones onto the living room floor, and went into the kitchen to roll out the cannelloni dough. We sat around her at the kitchen table, chopping the onions, mixing the filling, stuffing the rolls while she talked. She was very high, very excited.

  “I knocked on the door,” she said. “Poncho’s roommate let me in. Poncho was lying on the couch, reading. Poncho Taylor! He was there!”

  “Can I come in?” Lauren had asked. She made her voice wobble. She showed us how. “A man in a car is following me.”

  “What was the roommate like?” Julie asked hopefully. “Pretty cute?”

  “No. He wears big glasses and his hair is very short. James. His name is James. He asked me why I came to their apartment since they live on the second floor.”

  “Good question,” I admitted. “What did you say?”

  “I said I saw their Bobby Seale poster and thought they might be black.”

  “Good answer,” said Julie. “Lauren thinks on her feet. All right!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with glasses,” Gretchen objected. “Lots of attractive people wear glasses.” She cut into an onion with determined zeal. “Maybe he’s gay,” she said.

  “No,” said Lauren. “He’s not. And it wasn’t the glasses. It was the competition. Poncho is so . . .” We waited while she searched for the word worthy of Poncho. “Magnetic,” she concluded.

  Well, who could compete with Poncho? Gretchen let the issue drop.

  Lauren had entered the apartment and James and Poncho had gone to the window. “What make was the car?” James had asked. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “Green VW bug,” said Lauren.

  “My car,” said Julie. “Great.”

  “They wanted me to call the police,” Lauren said. “But I was too upset. I didn’t even get the license.”

  “Lauren,” said Gretchen disapprovingly. Gretchen hated women to look helpless. Lauren looked back at her.

  “I was distraught,” she said evenly. She began picking up the finished cannelloni and lining the pan with neat rows. Little blankets. Little corpses. (No. I am being honest. Of course I didn’t think this.)

  Poncho had returned immediately to the couch and his books. “Chicks shouldn’t wander around the city alone at night,” he commented briefly. Lauren loved his protectiveness. Gretchen was silent.

  “Then I asked to use the phone,” Lauren said. She wip
ed her forehead with her upper arm since her hands were covered with flour. She took the pan to the stove and ladled tomato sauce into it. “The phone was in the kitchen. James took me in; then he went back. I put my keys on the floor, very quietly, and I kicked them under the table. Then I pretended to phone you.”

  “All your keys?” Julie asked in dismay.

  Lauren ignored her. “I told them no one was home. I told them I’d been planning to take the bus, but by now, of course, I’d missed it.”

  “All your keys?” I asked pointedly.

  “James drove me home. Damn! If he hadn’t been there . . .” Lauren slammed the oven door on our dinner and came to sit with us. “What do you think?” she asked. “Is he interested?”

  “Sounds like James was interested,” said Gretchen.

  “You left your name with your keys?” I said.

  “Name, address, phone number. Now we wait.”

  We waited. For two days the phone never rang. Not even our parents wanted to talk to us. In the interest of verisimilitude, Lauren had left all her keys on the chain. She couldn’t get into the apartment unless one of us had arranged to be home and let her in. She couldn’t drive, which was just as well since every gas company had made the boycott list but Shell. Shell was not an American company, but we were still investigating. It seemed likely there was war profiteering there somewhere. And, if not, we’d heard rumors of South African holdings. We were looking into it. But in the meantime we could still drive.

  “The counterculture is going to make gas from chicken shit,” said Julie.

  “Too bad they can’t make it from bullshit,” Lauren said. “We got plenty of that.”

  Demonstrators had gone out and stopped the morning commuter traffic to protest the war. It had not been appreciated. It drove something of a wedge between us and the working class. Not that the proletariat had ever liked us much. I told our postman that more than two hundred colleges had closed. “BFD,” he said, handing me the mail. Nothing for me.