The Dancehall Years Page 19

  How much are you people being paid?

  Practically nothing.

  It’ll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow when your plan goes into effect, she says. I wonder what kinds of conflicts might arise? And what about all that cheap offshore gas in Vietnam people would like to get their hands on? They say Japan pays a lot of money for it.

  At home, she finds a few carrots and some broccoli in the bottom of the fridge. She’ll make a stir fry, whatever. When Eugene comes in, he keeps his coat on, peers over her shoulder. Are you going to caramelize those onions? It went well, she tells him. They actually discussed things. I figure—she hands him the spatula, grabs some paper and starts scribbling—a person could use this kind of drama to teach conflict of interest. Say a person set up a high-level government meeting, Eugene, say I did. You could have one individual who already had shares in a rubber company and stood to make a lot of money if they acquired property in Vietnam. Then you’d say, what should that person do when it comes to voting about entering into a war?

  Eugene hovers over the pot of rice tossing granules with a fork. Keep it simple, babe. You don’t want to take on too much.

  Maybe if you hadn’t bailed from my thesis committee, you’d be taking more interest, Eugene.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  Oh right, she says. I should be saying I rest my case. You did have a conflict of interest there. Anyway…

  The next day, the kids get straight into it. Let’s get these desks out of the way, she says. Half the class should be reporters, half citizens. After the interviews, they decide it would be a good idea to circulate a petition, maybe over the whole of France, to see if people would be willing to share tires, drop their standard of living until the Vietnamese sort out the way they want to operate their own rubber plantations. One car between every three neighbours sort of thing. In the end, the students are the ones who suggest that people in the West are living too high off the hog and making fortunes in the arms trade. Their homework is to write about what they, as individuals, would be prepared to give up seeing that the West has such a disproportionate standard of living.

  At home, she’s making a lesson plan for the next day when the phone rings. It’s the school office saying that the regular teacher will be back the next day, and they won’t need her. She’d forgotten all about the regular teacher. You need to get your teacher training, Gwen. You never know when you’ll need something to fall back on.

  I want to go to some workshops so I can learn more about this stuff, she says to Eugene.

  Well, he says, smiling at her. It looks as if you’re going to have that baby first.

  She looks down. There is that.

  He’s brought some lumber to build a waterbed to help her aching back. He measures the length he wants to cut and saws it. Bless his heart for thinking of it.

  The following weeks, she feels so exiled from the classroom she walks the streets after school hours staring in schoolroom windows. One day, she wanders back to Washington Square, thinking of the actors she met there as a kind of lost tribe. They’d be people who might be sharing a house where she’d be so welcome that, if she had no place to go, even if it were two in the morning, it would be okay to go in and find a bed.

  Dear Mom and Dad, Jenny’s grown a lot since I last wrote you. The nighties that were long when she was born are up to her knees, and the long sleeves look like short sleeves. As I sit writing to you, she’s doing her favourite thing with her feet, putting them in her mouth. I can’t wait for you to meet her.

  What’s the news from Leo? I sure hope he gets his tenure. Jenny’s eyes are dark grey with more brown flecks in them every day. Eugene says the organization of her hair is a lot like his. Hope to hear from you soon.

  It’s not long before the days of the early marches when they thought the war would be over soon seem like cheerful picnics compared to the street action they’re practising now. People are hauled off from sit-ins, their eyes and noses smarting from tear gas. Heading out on the front lines with Jenny in her stroller, Gwen tries to stay in the safe parts of the demonstrations where the police aren’t likely to take a swipe at you if they don’t like the cut of your jib. She finds herself endlessly typing and phoning at the Movement office. When they ask if she could come in and help, she can get everything done at home in half the time. The latest plan involves flying a plane low over the Bay area and dropping anti-war leaflets. Flying low is deemed a misdemeanor, and the pilot and his team are arrested.

  The morning a demonstration is planned to block the arrival of buses designated to pick up service men at the Clay St. induction centre in Oakland, she fixes her hair in a careful beehive, gets out her shortie coat, purse and heels, puts Jenny and her sign in the stroller and heads for the site. The night before, she’d been to a street theatre company meeting and helped draw up a manifesto declaring their decision to abandon theatre in favour of resistance action on the larger world stage.

  She’s standing in the street calculating a safe position when police in hard helmets line up twenty abreast across the street, batons ready and waiting. National Guard officers in back-up positions behind them. When the police start herding the demonstrators toward city hall, the white and gilt columns shine like beacons. The top section of the building looks like a giant wedding cake. One policeman lifts Gwen up from behind by the elbows; another picks up the stroller and deposits it on the sidewalk.

  I planned to stay in the safe area, but there wasn’t one, she tells Eugene at home.

  You can’t use a stroller as armor for heaven’s sake. I don’t want you going on those marches anymore. He gathers Jenny up and turns away.

  A morning comes when Gwen wakes up with aching ovaries. This time when she’s on the table, the doctor stands with one hand inside her and one on her belly, explaining that her IUD’s acted like a lightning rod. It’s conducted bacteria into her ovaries and given her a low-grade infection. Not to worry, once it’s out—IUD devices are foreign objects after all—antibiotics will clear it up. Her husband should take some as well to be on the safe side. Once she’s better, they’ll have to figure out something else for birth control. They mean to, but, waking up groggy in the middle of the night, they turn to each other half asleep forgetting which body parts belong to whom, let alone a condom the second time. So it’s no surprise when her breasts start to ache, and she wakes up nauseated in the mornings. All she wants to do is sleep.

  A last push, a wall of unconscionable pain, and Maya’s finally out squirming on the cord. Swollen with tears and pain and relief that the birth is over and Eugene’s there loving her. You, me, Maya and here’s Jenny, he says, one hand top of the other so a nurse can take their picture.

  At home, life is a sea of milk and stitches. They put the TV at the foot of the bed. Marilyn Monroe gets up and puts her underwear in the fridge, so Gwen gets up and puts her underwear in the fridge. Blodged on the waterbed, she aches from her waist to her knees. Spokes pull milk down to the hub of her breasts as she jiggles her nipple trying to hit the moving target of Maya’s mouth. The first few sucks are the worst. Half asleep, it’s Eugene who unbuttons Gwen’s nightie and props the baby on his hand to nurse, as if he’s staking a plant. Moving her to the other side so her mother can grab a few more winks, the three of them huddle together, smelling like milk and flannel and skin. Diaper off, the baby squirts a line of bright yellow feces like toothpaste from a tube. Her legs churn. Warm cells multiply like incremental bubbles when a pot starts to boil. By the time Gwen gets the diapers washed, nurses, plays with Jenny while Maya’s down, nurses again, fixes Jenny’s lunch and gets the baby up, buys a few things at the store, her whole body aches and her day is done. This is what love is, Eugene says. This is what we do.

  When the phone rings a few weeks later, it’s Mission High asking if she could sub again. It’s a gig, Eugene. It’s only for a few days. I’ll express some milk to leave. Maybe René would come over. It’s too soon, he says.

  But they wa
nt me now. It’s just for a few days.

  I don’t think Mother will want to come. But maybe we can find a temporary nanny. In the end, they find a temp agency; some of the kids remember Mrs. Kerr as she prowls up and down the aisles looking at papers on peoples’ desks.

  Hey, Mrs. Kerr. You’ve had your baby.

  I have. This book? Have you people started it yet?

  It’s The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.

  Our teacher says we’ll read it when he gets back. I tried to start, but I don’t get it. It’s set in the future. Way in the future.

  There’s been a war. A nuclear war? Gwen asks.

  After a war, Mrs. Kerr.

  So, it’s happened, has it? Which side set it off? I guess the Earth would be devastated whichever side set it off. After this particular war, it seems that nothing will grow for thousands of miles. North America is a wasteland: raw, cold and in perpetual twilight. The students wander around the classroom in strips of black plastic. Survivors who manage to reach a precariously habitable area have no materials to make shelter. They live under piles of old junk and debris. The side of one house is a pretend smashed car yarded from a radioactive free zone.

  What should we do about food? she asks. Should only the people who grow it be allowed to eat it?

  No way. Everyone is doing a job. The food has to be put in storage and divided equally.

  Does everyone agree with that?

  Everyone agrees with that.

  Later at home, when she’s sitting on the closed toilet nursing Maya and reading the novel, Eugene kneels beside the bathtub pushing Jenny up and down in the water. If I can find a way to get the kids to explore the concerns in the novel before they read it, she says, they’ll experience the characters’ situations more immediately, right? The excitement she felt outlining her ideas before he’d give her the go-ahead on a paper has returned. He lifts Jenny into a towel. Maybe you shouldn’t be getting involved with this right now, babe, he says. Couldn’t it wait? Hasn’t Maya been on that side for way too long?

  Oh God, I guess she has. She changes breasts. I need a way to bring the kids in and out of role, so they can get some distance. I don’t want them to get carried away and be upset.

  I do see what you mean, he says. It sounds interesting, it really does.

  The next day, she meets individual students at the classroom door and presses a single uncontaminated seed into each hand. Keep this somewhere safe, she says. Each person should think of one important thing to do. Freeze into position so that, if you were turned to wax in a museum, people would know what you’re doing. I see here a person who has a tool in his hand. What’s in your mind?

  I’m digging in the ground for a root.

  I see here a person who has a hand on somebody’s brow. What’s in your mind?

  I’m healing this sick woman.

  I see here a person who has a weapon over his shoulder. What are you doing?

  I’m guarding this village.

  If the land around their enclave is mined with death, and cultivation has been achieved at considerable cost, what do the village people need to protect their progress? Would they need some laws? At the town meeting, it’s decided that each person is to get one litre of water a day. If anyone feels ill, they have to go to the hospital. No one will harvest the crops except for the agricultural workers.

  At home, expressing milk into a bowl for the next day’s bottles, it strikes her that her students may be working their way toward a collective agreement. When the question of communism comes up, she doesn’t want to define it mechanically. Idealizing it would be a mistake as well. They should grow into the need for it. As she’s talking, Eugene’s picking up dirty stretch suits from the backs of chairs.

  It sounds good, Gwen, but do you think Maya is getting her fair share? Of you, I mean. The way Jenny did.

  It’s just a few more days. I’m only a sub. She fastens the flap of her nursing bra.

  I know it’s only a few more days, but then there’ll be something else. Jenny’s hanging onto his knees, so he picks her up and plops her in the highchair.

  Couldn’t you get a sub and take some time off? Gwen says. Come the revolution, there’ll be such a thing as paid paternity leave. What if an employer had to issue two cheques—same salary, two cheques—once there were children. If you’re going to redefine the workforce properly, it’s got to include whoever’s doing the home job, right?

  Eugene shrugs. Didn’t I hear your dad say he always handed over his cheque to your mother?

  The point is he had the power to do that or not do that.

  He stirs cereal. Have you considered that politicizing our situation only camouflages the compatibility problem we’re having?

  Have you considered that sometimes you’re a pompous asshole?

  Well, I know that, darling, but is it relevant? They laugh then, especially when the lampshade chooses that moment to lop off its perch and slide down the stand to the floor.

  Now we’re really getting somewhere, she says.

  Well, maybe we are. Who knows?

  Look, I just want to finish this drama. The kids are into it, which thrills me. There’s something here that might relate to my thesis. And then I’ll put the work on hold for a while.

  Okay. I’ll take a couple of days off.

  I love you.

  I love you too.

  The next day at school, she asks the students what they’ll do if the crop they’ve prepared for winter gets destroyed by the weather. They could leave, they say. But they can’t because there are still unexploded mines that might go off. What else, she asks, do people need besides food and shelter? TLC they say. That’s it, people need a supportive family and community life. If survival is dodgy, the way people get along would matter, wouldn’t it? In the novel you’re going to read, the people have made a law. Because of the inherited deformities as a result of radiation, all humans are required to have one head, two eyes, one nose, two ears, two legs, two arms, ten fingers and ten toes. Anyone not having those body parts is not allowed to live. They’re a small community, and deformities might be passed on. What would happen in our village if the people tried to enforce that?

  It’ll have to go to a vote, someone says.

  What if you vote against it, but it goes through anyway? What’s a person supposed to do then?

  You have to go along with it.

  What if a large proportion of people don’t like what happens when a government votes a law in?

  Well, they’d have to form a party and run on their ideas. Or if there isn’t time and it’s something serious, I guess they go on marches.

  Guess so, she says pointedly. They get it. Hallelujah.

  That night she lies awake worrying about how to get the class to understand the possible results of the law they’ve made about deviants. It would be wrong to manipulate their piece, rob them of experiencing the consequences of their choices. She tosses and turns.

  The next day is Eugene’s short day. He’ll be home before her, so would he be able to pay the nanny?

  I thought you were going to pay her from your subbing cheque.

  I don’t have it yet. I need money to get groceries on the way home. Why don’t we have a joint account, Eugene? I feel like a child, having to ask for housekeeping money.

  You’re not making any for a start.

  I’m doing the house. The kids.

  How well, he has to ask.

  Oh thanks.

  He takes fifty dollars from his wallet and hands it to her.

  The next day, the phone rings as she’s pulling up Jenny’s tights. If she were in a TV ad, she’d be in a short skirt and high heels kneeling beside her child, not still laced with painful stitches. It’s one of Eugene’s colleagues. Why’s she talking as if she doesn’t know him, says the voice on the other end; they met at lunch the other day. Doesn’t she work for that new antiques magazine? Another call to the nanny who hasn’t arrived yet. Why’s she still at home? She’s not coming.
He didn’t pay her? Oh God. Nothing to do but take Maya to school with her. When she lifts the carry cot onto her desk, the boy who appointed himself inspector says it’s clear to him the fingers on this child are exceptionally—he looks at the vocabulary word written on the board—deviant. He lifts a tiny finger and lets it fall back. Webbing is what we have here between what are supposed to be her fingers, folks. They look at their teacher to see how she’s going to respond. Belief is everything, she’d said to them yesterday.

  I was afraid something like this might happen, she says, in role as the nurse in the village. I didn’t vote for the law. Her fingers look normal to me.

  Well, they would, wouldn’t they? says the inspector. Maybe you have a vested interest in seeing things that way.

  Wicked stroke of learning there, kiddo. She takes Maya from the girl who’s holding her. Should they have thought more about the consequences of where some of these laws might take them? There’s no way this baby should be sent out to die, she says. She’s a little different, that’s all. Time to move over to where they talk about the play out of role; it’s dangerous to let them get mixed up between reality and pretend. If laws are too rigid, might people rebel because of individual differences? She has Maya under one arm while she writes on the board. You’ve done a good job, people, she says. I’d like you to come out of role and return to the classroom. Please go to your seats and think about the play. Here are some possibilities. 1) Write an outline of a scenario for the play from here on. Or 2) Sometimes people make laws and become victims of the laws they create. Agree or disagree.

  Wonderfully, there’s a small office at the front of the room with a window placed at a level where she can see the students’ bent heads and nurse the baby without anyone seeing. When everyone’s settled, the principal comes in. He looks shocked when he sees her doing up her blouse and the baby in her arms. I’d like to talk to you after school, he says quietly. The kids look up and then down again.

  After school, the secretary looks equally surprised to see Maya in Gwen’s arms, but volunteers to look after her while Gwen’s in with the principal. In the office, four parents are sitting on the other side of his desk.