Oh sure, she could forcefully accomplish something through sheer will if she really felt like beating her head up against the concrete slab of reality. But she didn’t feel like that was anything realistic. Perhaps it was something that other women in some other country got to experience—one of the really rich countries, perhaps—but here in the GDR, it just wasn’t anything possible. Maybe that’s why women like her and Lena loved the punk scene so much. In punk, all suffered stripes for their studs. Not just the women. Yet here was the proof! Not only were there strong, empowered women doing strong empowered things outside of the Wall, heck, it appeared that some moving and shaking was taking place inside of it!
“You really think this is possible?” Vivika asked, pointing at a picture of a woman swinging a sledgehammer at a pile of shattering bricks, “That women can be that strong?”
“Oh, those are just pictures,” Lena replied matter-of-factly. “You have to look past that stuff. It’s just there to make you feel good. You have no idea the stuff that women have actually done.”
“Like what?”
“Here,” Lena said, fumbling through a stack of Shönheit episodes, before grabbing a specific one. It had a bare-chested woman on the cover, breasts proudly displayed, and holding a machine-gun. “You should read this one… it has an article on Margaret Hamilton and Sojourner Truth. Margaret programmed the computers for the American moon missions. By the time she was done, the stacks of books were as tall as her. As crazy as it might sound, all the software she wrote for them was knitted together in long ropes by a bunch of grandmas!”
“No way. You’re a liar!” Vivika exclaimed in disbelief.
“No, it’s completely true, I swear! And that’s not even as cool as Sojourner Truth. She was a slave in America who broke free of her slavers and practically started a war. She had a gun and everything, and started a thing called an “underground railroad” where she rescued people. She was a lot like Harriet Tubman.”
“Who?” Vivika asked.
“Oh my god, you have so much to learn,” Lena said excitedly. “You don’t even know how much. There are some terrible things that have happened all over the world. Unspeakable things. Things even worse than we’ve gone through. But there are people that have simply stood up and said, ‘No… absolutely not. I’ve had enough.’ And then they followed through no matter what.”
“No…” Vivika tried the words on for size, “Absolutely not.”
“I’ve had enough,” Lena mouthed as well, smiling. “It feels good to say it, doesn’t it?”
“It feels really good. One of these days I think I’d like to actually say it.”
“You just did!”
“No, I mean it. I really want to say it… for real.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Because that’s not how life works,” she shook her head, “It’s a great thing to think about, Lena. It really is. But thoughts like that belong in your dreams. If you actually said something like that to those people, they would kill you.”
“But Vivika, they actually said that to those people. They stood up and said the words, and didn’t have the slightest fear of saying it.”
“But…”
“And then they went on to start wars and win them.”
“Yeah, but they weren’t… that’s different.”
“How?”
“It’s just different.”
“You know what?” Lena put her hand over her heart, “Maybe you should. Maybe we should, you know, stand up. Maybe we should do something about it, and about them.”
“You don’t understand. These women—Sojourner, Harriet, whoever else—these women had armies. They had friends. They had money. We don’t have any of those things.”
“No, Vivika, they didn’t have those things either. They didn’t have any help at first, but that didn’t stop them.”
“Well they at least had guns!”
“We can get guns!”
“And then what?!” Vivika laughed.
“We’ll… we’ll shoot them!” Lena laughed back.
“We’ll just shoot them all?!”
“All of them! Just shoot everyone with our guns! The Stasi, the police, the Soviets, the… everyone! All by ourselves!”
Soon, both girls collapsed on each other laughing hysterically. Perhaps one of these days, they would indeed find a bunch of guns and shoot the nefarious ‘they’… whoever ‘they’ were. But, for now at least, it seemed safer to simply fantasize about doing something. The two stayed like this, simply lying next to each other, enjoying a brief moment of peace. The past several weeks had been fast-paced and all over the place. It was wonderful to simply relax with a good, comfortable friend.
“Vivika?” Lena said, after some time.
“Yeah?”
“Whoever you are thinking of… the person you want to say all of that to… you know, about standing up to him and saying you’ve had enough?”
“What about him?”
“He can go fuck himself.”
“Yeah.” Vivika said quietly.
Lena could tell that she was bothered and she wanted to ask, but thought better of it. It wasn’t a subject she felt welcome to bring up. Whatever it was… whomever he was… it wasn’t normal. It was something complicated, and she had every single right to feel the way she did. Still, Lena wanted to be a friend, and help in some way. She owed Vivika that much for not running away like the other two had.
“You know what?” Lena said, after thinking it through, “I’ve got something to show you.”
“She take you down easy, going down to her knees… going down to the devil at ninety degrees…”
The sounds of AC/DC’s ‘Givin’ the Dog a Bone’ screamed out as Lena and Vivika climbed onto the rooftop. Almost immediately, Lena’s heart surged with happiness. She hadn’t been to a rooftop gathering in, what, months? Since then, almost everything had changed. She knew things now: things about these people; things about the music they listened to and who all was listening to it; things about how safe the listeners truly were. But now that she was here, she felt as if a ton of bricks had been removed from her back. All the past wrongs felt righted, and she felt a year younger. It was as if she was back to being a regular know-nothing, surrounded by the blissful ignorance of light-hearted rebelliousness. There they all sat: Mr. Müller tapping on his thighs and humming tunelessly along; Herr and Mick picking on each other and trying to take swigs of liquor when Mrs. Schroeder wasn’t watching; Janet and Jonathan arguing over nothing in particular; no one liked Lorenzo; and Mrs. Schroeder sat, seeming more than slightly aggravated at the music.
“What in the devil are we listening to?!” she shrieked. “…’till his ammunition is dry’?”
“Aw don’t worry about it.” Mick chimed, “He’s talking about guns!”
“I know damn well he’s not talking about guns!” she howled back.
“Mrs. Schroeder said a swear!” Herr cut in.
“Shut up, you turd!” Mick yelled, punching Herr in the arm.
“Shame on you!” Mrs. Schroeder yelled. “Shame on all of you! And you two are too young to know what he’s talking about!”
“He’s just talking about a blowj-…” Herr began teasing, before Janet swiped him on the back of the head.
“Shame on us?” Jonathan said, “AC/DC wrote it!”
“Well, then shame on AC/DC too!”