“I’m Berry,” she said, extending her hand.
“Caroline.”
Berry gave her a wide, straight, white smile. She was more earth baby than mother, fresh and attractive, even with her hair falling out of its clip and her unshaved underarms, which were hard to ignore because Berry enjoyed long over-the-head stretches often. Right as she rang up food, while she waited for your money, she would put an arm over and in back of her head and use the other arm to push on the bent elbow.
“I’m part of this women’s CR group, and we’re having a potluck dinner tonight. You know, empowerment, the usual raising of consciousness, blah, blah. But it’s fun, cool people. Beer, food. Maybe you want to come?” Berry waited a moment, then began bagging Caroline’s purchases. At the co-op you were supposed to bag your own groceries, but Berry maybe needed something to do while she waited for Caroline’s response. Caroline watched her finish, and she thought, What harm could it do? A little company, she realized, was what she desperately wanted.
“Okay.” She smiled at Berry. “I’ll make a sweet potato casserole.”
“Far out,” Berry said and winked at her. Caroline walked home clutching the scribbled address in her hand. She wondered if Berry was a lesbian. Maybe Berry would fall in love with her and help her somehow. Somewhere she remembered Bobby warning her. It was so confusing — she shouldn’t be social, but she couldn’t be conspicuously antisocial. Make sure to stay away from the rads and the movement scene. This was okay, it didn’t sound too radical, it sounded small town and sweet.
Caroline remembered the first time she went to a consciousness-raising group. When you walk into a political group meeting without any men, you get a kind of rush. You realize you can say what you want, you are free from trying to win the approval of the men, the attention of the men, or figuring and worrying over the power relations of the men. Women in these groups made a real attempt at deep, foundational questioning: everything in your identity is potentially not real but an artificial creation of the cultural status quo (always patriarchal and suspect). It had seemed brave and bracing to her at first. She appreciated the issues, but in truth she would resist anything that included questioning and excluding Bobby. She refused to find solidarity that superseded their intimacy. Being “with” Bobby precluded her from questioning everything — and the point of these groups was a little mind-expanding, fundamental questioning. With some serious psychological self-analysis thrown in. After a few meetings, she had dismissed these methods as a kind of narcissism. The other women thought her doubts suspect, if not downright counter-revolutionary. And perhaps they were right. Her reluctance was cowardly. But she had her justifications: other issues and things she cared about were more important than women’s rights. She focused on opposing the war — and what did women’s issues mean in the face of the war?
But now she was Caroline, a woman alone. The Eugene Women’s Collective was totally different. She felt safe instantly. And this group of women seemed to have long recovered from initial reactionary anger and moved on to something more appealing. It was less a witchy coven of man-hating lesbians — a possibility that secretly freaked her out — than a social group with a political agenda. She imagined she had been missing subcultures of mother love, forgiving and nurturing. Nothing like the catty cliques of high school and college, where beauty reigned and all subjects related to men. These women acted easy and friendly. They ate and drank, and then began, nearly reluctantly, a discussion of various issues: women’s rights, certainly, but also vegetarianism, ecology and local businesses. Two of the women ran the Black & Red Book Collective. One had an Angela Davis Afro and her smooth, militant demeanor to match. That was Maya. She was the only black woman at the meeting, so the others constantly deferred to her. The other woman, Mel, never touched Maya but nevertheless made it clear they were a couple. The discussion turned to local politics, the University of Oregon and the chauvinism of the student activist organizations.
“I prefer the loggers to these ego-tripping U of O radicals. At least the loggers don’t pretend to care about women’s rights,” said Beth, a dark-haired, very thin woman.
“Yeah, these guys want free love and then they want you to do their laundry.” And so it went, and Caroline just listened quietly.
“Enough about men. We are not going to spend the evening discussing men, even criticizing men.” This from Mel. Caroline listened to Mel and then saw Mel carefully check her out. Caroline thought of how she looked to the others. She probably was the only one with shaved legs. And definitely the only one wearing lipstick, albeit a practically undetectable neutral peach tone. Caroline thought it went with the dyed blond hair. It wasn’t her, but that was the point. But no one seemed to notice. She felt okay here, inspired even. These women reinvented themselves: political lesbians, or merely libbers. Ah, liberation! Caroline always had to take a minute and work out what words the abbreviations stood for, or what the initials and acronyms referred to. She always had trouble with that, the way all the groups and movements shortened things and slanged them, or designed names just so they made acronyms, which were what they actually wanted to be called — like WITCH, the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. Designed for insiders — exclusive and status conscious, when you thought about it. Besides, the prepositions always tripped her up when she tried to remember what the letters of the acronyms stood for. Her brain didn’t naturally work that way. Bobby loved it, he created an acronym or initialism or nickname whenever possible. Bobby pointed out how that all comes from the military, how every subculture ultimately imitates the military, which is the mother lode of all exclusive subgroups. But Caroline thought it mustn’t be just exclusivity. The military has the most slang and acronyms because it has most need of euphemism. What does that tell you?
She believed failure of language belied deeper failings in the counterculture. The names just became more and more divorced from their meanings. What was the point of using a name in that way? Shouldn’t a name remind you of who you are, or are trying to be? Did they really want a name to be part of a secret, exclusive language — a club that intended to exclude, that deliberately obscured things for outsiders? Was the need to be exclusive sort of reactionary, oppressive and even patriarchal? Caroline knew she was onto something, she was learning how things get away from people. How gradually they, what? Become the very thing they long to escape.
What were these women up to? Trying to recast their lives without men. Trying to forget the entire culture, trying to question all the things they had presumed their whole lives. And why couldn’t Caroline have done that? Why couldn’t she have been a radical separatist, at the margins? How different it would have been if she had tried to save just herself instead of the whole world? But that was what she was now — a movement of one. The most radical separatist of all. You are moved to save the world, and then you are reduced to organizing everything just to save yourself.
Mel dominated the group: when she spoke, and although she spoke softly, the other conversations yielded and attention was paid. Mel’s aviator-shaped wire-rimmed glasses caught some of her hair in front of her ears, under the frames, Steinem-style. Mel spoke of entrepreneurial self-sufficiency, not domesticity. She wanted to expand the co-op. She wanted to force banks to give low-interest loans to women-owned businesses. Mel didn’t have anything to say about abortion, the pill or the hierarchies of orgasms. After it was over, Berry walked Caroline home.