The Female Man

Mrs. Robert Poirier. Jea

ME: Has anyone proposed the choice to you lately?

JEANNINE: I won't be a man.

ME: Nobody axed you to.

III

She was sick in the subway. Not really, but almost. She indicated by signs that she was going to be sick or had just been sick or was afraid she was going to be sick.

She held my hand.

IV

We got out at forty-second street; and this is the way things really happen, in broad daylight, publicly, invisibly; we meandered past the shops. Jea

(But I won't be mean.) I will not say that the sky ripped open from top to bottom, from side to side, that from the clouds over Fifth Avenue descended seven angels with seven trumpets, that the vials of wrath were loosed over Jea

She seemed to know where she was going. Badly sunburned, with more freckles than usual across her flat nose, Miss Evason stopped in the middle of the street, scratched her head all over, yawned, and entered a drugstore. We followed.

"I'm sorry, but I've never heard of that," said the man behind the counter.

"Oh my goodness, really?" said Miss Evason. She put away a piece of paper, on which she had written whatever-it-was, and went to the other side of the store, where she had a soda.

"You'll need a prescription," said the man behind the counter.

"Oh my goodness," Miss Evason said mildly. It did not help that she was carrying her soda. She put it down on the plastic counter top and joined us at the door, where Miss Dadier was trying-softly but very determinedly-to bolt. She wanted to get back to the freedom of Fifth Avenue, where there were so many gaps-so much For Rent, so much cheaper, so much older, than I remembered.

Miss Dadier looked sulkily up at the sky, calling on the invisible angels and the Wrath of God to witness, and then she said, grudgingly: "I can't imagine what you were trying to buy." She did not want to admit that Janet existed. Janet raised her eyebrows and directed a glance at me, but I don't know. I never know anything.

"I have athlete's foot," said Miss Evason.

Jea

"You didn't," said Miss Evason tolerantly. "Are you ready?"

"No," said Jea

Now I know how I got to Whileaway, but how did I get stuck with Jea

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Jea

"Who did that?" said Miss Evason. "Not me. Not my people."

V

Praise God, Whose image we put in the plaza to make the eleven-year-olds laugh.

She has brought me home.

VI

Dig in. Winter's coming. When I-not the "I" above but the "I" down here, naturally; that's Janet up there- When "I" dream of Whileaway, I dream first of the farms, and although words are inadequate to this great theme, while I live I yet must tell you that the farms are the only family units on Whileaway, not because Whileawayans think farm life is good for children (they don't) but because farm work is harder to schedule and demands more day-to-day continuity than any other kind of job. Farming on Whileaway is mainly caretaking and machine-tending; it is the emotional security of family life that provides the glamor. I do not know this from observation; I know it from knowledge; I have never visited Whileaway in my own person, and when Janet, Jea

Sixty eight-foot-tall Amazons, the Whileawayan Praetorian Guard, threw daggers in all directions (North, South, East, and West).

Janet, Jea

"I'll they know we're here," says Jea

"Why should they?" says Janet.