the grocer for staples, and to the plumbers who arrived in a speedboat to fix the overflowing toilets. It was not that different, then, from serfdom, except that Elaine worked the land as best she could too and got nothing in return but a reason to stay far away from Philadelphia.
On occasion a boatload of tourists would float by looking for whales, tossing plastic water bottles overboard,squealing and pushing one another with glee. Watching from the dock, someone at the compound would always declare bitterly, “Americans,” without evidence. If Elaine minded, she never said anything. It was a given that the people we were hiding from were Americans. No one mentioned the department stores in Philadelphia that fed us. I could never figure out these contradictions, but the dining hall rage – “Look what they’re doing now! Acid rain! Clearcuts!” – was such a force that I kept my mouth shut.
So to anyone who finds this girlhood among the unwashed romantic, I always say permissiveness comes with so many rules, so much disapproval. They’re just less spoken, meaning you navigate them blindfolded. I wore fishbowl headphones to listen to ABBA or Blondie so as not to pollute the living space, but Bob Dylan never stopped moaning from the speaker.
If you really wanted out, it was simple to float away; the trick was to make it look purposeful. While the grown-ups did their thing, planting the vegetables (that never really grew – more trips to the co-op – because people with degrees in Marxist philosophy don’t make good farmers) and talking talking talking, I would hitchhike across the water and spend hours in the drugstore reading
Tiger Beat
, tucking the good issues in the waistband of my pants and walking out slowly, smiling, because if you look happy like that, you can get away with anything. Then in the evening, I sat on the fence at the local drive-in staring at
The Wiz
, imagining lyrics to songs I couldn’t hear without a speaker. Sometimes I would bully a smaller, snot-encrusted kid into acting as sidekick, butthese kids were too hyper to sit still and too close to their parents to be good liars, so usually I went off alone.
I escaped house meetings to hide in the woods with my magazines and pin-ups, circling the addresses of fan clubs. I discovered that the farm down the road had a tidy blond family in it, and a girl in a skirt who was nearly my age. I watched TV there constantly, and began to skip out on the things I used to love: getting the shit-streaked eggs from the screaming chickens, milking the cows. I had fallen for Jaclyn Smith, the silkiest of Charlie’s Angels, and also, in my estimation, the smartest. Her character was called Kelly, a name like mine, a name for a boy or a girl. We could be friends.
The back of the milk truck was littered with my dad’s tools and thinning Mexican carpets. Without windows, I could go unseen in there. I got out my thesaurus and wrote, “Dear Ms. Smith,” because I never knew Miss or Mrs. existed, “I find your show superlative. Your hair is very comely. How did you become an actress? Will you write me please?” On the envelope, I wrote the return address: Rural Route 1, Gambier Island, British Columbia, Canada.
I didn’t notice the doors opening, my father a half-foot back, tentative. He stared at the envelope.
“Who are you writing?”
“Nobody.” I shoved the letter in the pocket of my hemp flares, the ones the draft dodgers brought across the border like offerings to the families that protected them.
My dad nodded, but he looked sad. “I respect your privacy,” he said slowly. Then he thought about this andrevised it. “But we shouldn’t have secrets.” More thinking, a condition I could identify by the wrinkles curling out from the corners of his eyes. My dad is so biologically slow that any mental exertion registers across his face like a piece of paper crumpling. “You think about it.” Uh-huh. “And tell me later.” A direct order?
On occasion a boatload of tourists would float by looking for whales, tossing plastic water bottles overboard,squealing and pushing one another with glee. Watching from the dock, someone at the compound would always declare bitterly, “Americans,” without evidence. If Elaine minded, she never said anything. It was a given that the people we were hiding from were Americans. No one mentioned the department stores in Philadelphia that fed us. I could never figure out these contradictions, but the dining hall rage – “Look what they’re doing now! Acid rain! Clearcuts!” – was such a force that I kept my mouth shut.
So to anyone who finds this girlhood among the unwashed romantic, I always say permissiveness comes with so many rules, so much disapproval. They’re just less spoken, meaning you navigate them blindfolded. I wore fishbowl headphones to listen to ABBA or Blondie so as not to pollute the living space, but Bob Dylan never stopped moaning from the speaker.
If you really wanted out, it was simple to float away; the trick was to make it look purposeful. While the grown-ups did their thing, planting the vegetables (that never really grew – more trips to the co-op – because people with degrees in Marxist philosophy don’t make good farmers) and talking talking talking, I would hitchhike across the water and spend hours in the drugstore reading
Tiger Beat
, tucking the good issues in the waistband of my pants and walking out slowly, smiling, because if you look happy like that, you can get away with anything. Then in the evening, I sat on the fence at the local drive-in staring at
The Wiz
, imagining lyrics to songs I couldn’t hear without a speaker. Sometimes I would bully a smaller, snot-encrusted kid into acting as sidekick, butthese kids were too hyper to sit still and too close to their parents to be good liars, so usually I went off alone.
I escaped house meetings to hide in the woods with my magazines and pin-ups, circling the addresses of fan clubs. I discovered that the farm down the road had a tidy blond family in it, and a girl in a skirt who was nearly my age. I watched TV there constantly, and began to skip out on the things I used to love: getting the shit-streaked eggs from the screaming chickens, milking the cows. I had fallen for Jaclyn Smith, the silkiest of Charlie’s Angels, and also, in my estimation, the smartest. Her character was called Kelly, a name like mine, a name for a boy or a girl. We could be friends.
The back of the milk truck was littered with my dad’s tools and thinning Mexican carpets. Without windows, I could go unseen in there. I got out my thesaurus and wrote, “Dear Ms. Smith,” because I never knew Miss or Mrs. existed, “I find your show superlative. Your hair is very comely. How did you become an actress? Will you write me please?” On the envelope, I wrote the return address: Rural Route 1, Gambier Island, British Columbia, Canada.
I didn’t notice the doors opening, my father a half-foot back, tentative. He stared at the envelope.
“Who are you writing?”
“Nobody.” I shoved the letter in the pocket of my hemp flares, the ones the draft dodgers brought across the border like offerings to the families that protected them.
My dad nodded, but he looked sad. “I respect your privacy,” he said slowly. Then he thought about this andrevised it. “But we shouldn’t have secrets.” More thinking, a condition I could identify by the wrinkles curling out from the corners of his eyes. My dad is so biologically slow that any mental exertion registers across his face like a piece of paper crumpling. “You think about it.” Uh-huh. “And tell me later.” A direct order?
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