Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

  By Dr. Goldman's unofficial classifications (and he would have been the first to term them personal and oversimplified), the mental “problems” of Sissy Hankshaw Gitche should have fit squarely into the first category, for she had certainly been attended by sufficient traumas in her formative years. Yet, after two sessions with her, one in which she was administered the talk serum to penetrate her reticence, Dr. Goldman was left with the uneasy notion that Sissy belonged partly, if not wholly, in the category of the voluntarily crazed.

  Since he was frustrated, annoyed, even a little scared by the second category, Dr. Goldman decided to turn over Sissy's case to one of his assistants. In particular, he decided to dump Sissy's case on Dr. Robbins, the young intern who had only recently assumed duties at the upper East Side clinic.

  Dr. Robbins spent much of his time in the garden, a dreamy expression on his face. He looked like Doris Day with a mustache. He had been overheard yelling at a patient who complained of a lack of purpose in life: “Purpose! Purposes are for animals with a hell of a lot more dignity than the human race! Just hop on that strange torpedo and ride it to wherever its going.”

  To a patient who had expressed a wish to overcome his alleged irresponsibility, Dr. Robbins had said, “The man who considers himself 'responsible' has not honestly examined his motives.”

  To a patient expressing outrage, Dr. Robbins had shouted, “Don't be outraged, be outrageous!”

  At least two patients had received from Dr. Robbins the following advice: “So you think that you're a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with wit style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.”

  It should come as no surprise that some of the clinic staff looked upon the new intern with less than favor. Dr. Goldman, however, resisted pressure to dismiss Dr. Robbins. “These young guys come out of school nowadays with their heads dripping Erik Erikson and R. D. Laing. Robbins is bright and those radical ideas are temporarily attractive. After he's been in the field for six months he'll recognize what idealistic hogwash they are and gradually reject them.”

  Dr. Goldman summoned Dr. Robbins from the garden, where he'd been fingering a crocus. He gave him Sissy's file. “When you interview Mrs. Gitche, you should consider the following variables: Depression—tensions combined with guilt derived from feelings that deformity is a punishment, tending to immobilize the deformed with consequent sadness, helplessness and inadequacy; Pessimism—a defense against the environment reflected by verbalization of a limited level of aspiration; Inadequate feminine role identification—poor identification with that which in our society constitutes womanhood, with resultant passivity and lethargy; Sociopathic impulsivity—emotions translated into aggressive action regardless of consequences to others; Inadequate compensatory ambition—the inability to mobilize additional effort to overcome the physical limitations of deformity; and, especially in this case, Inverted compensation—denial of the deformity or an irrational capitalization upon the deformity, exaggerated to the point of delusions of grandeur. A well-prepared line of questioning should narrow these variables down fairly quickly to one or two of primary interest and I rather suspect it will be the last that you will find yourself acting upon.”

  When he met with Sissy the next morning, however, Dr. Robbins ignored Dr. Goldman's suggested line of inquiry, asking Sissy directly and simply, “Okay, why did you turn your husband's birds loose?”

  “I couldn't bear to see them caged any longer,” answered Sissy. “They deserved to be free.”

  “Yeah, I understand. But don't you see, those birds had been in a cage their whole lives with somebody to provide for them. Now they're having to fend for themselves in a huge alien city where they don't know the rules and where they're probably frightened and confused. They won't be happy being free.”

  Sissy didn't hesitate. “There's just one thing in this life that's better than happiness and that's freedom. It's more important to be free than to be happy.”

  Dr. Robbins did hesitate. “How did you arrive at that opinion?” he inquired.

  “I may have always felt it,” Sissy said. “But it was the Chink who put it into words for me.”

  This time Dr. Robbins hesitated longer. As if he could bow it like a violin, he ran a finger back and forth through his shaggy mustache. The music that resulted was soft and dry, the sort that might make one flake of dandruff say to another, “Darling, they're playing our song.” Then, the intern buzzed the office intercom. “Miss Waterworth,” he said, “cancel my appointments for the remainder of the day.”

  Dr. Robbins arose, his mustache rising with him. “Sissy,” he said with a smile, “let's get a bottle of wine and go out in the garden.”

  56.

  THE GARDEN WAS AN ANATOMY lesson of calyxes and pistils. With no more embarrassment than an old professor, spring was turning the pages. On leather couches throughout the clinic, throughout the upper East Side, in fact, people were confessing the most bizarre and boring details to analyst after analyst, but out in Dr. Goldman's walled garden the flowers didn't care. The flowers stood around with their petals hanging out, lasciviously awaiting whatever bees might make it through the smog. And for the adjustments of neither the first nor second category of psychosis did the flowers care.

  Sissy didn't much care, either. Julian had promised that if she was a"good girl” and stayed at the clinic for a minimum of thirty days, he would take her upstate to meet her in-laws. Julian's father and his father's father were deceased, and his mother and paternal grandmother had moved back near Mohawk, New York, where, to Julian's discomfort, they had reassumed some of the old ways. For the length of her marriage, Sissy had yearned to probe the Indianness in her husband's background. Yet it wasn't merely the prospect of finally meeting the squaws in his closet that had her rosebudding that May morn. Sissy was being affable to Dr. Robbins, Sissy was glowing in each of her sockets, primarily because of the letter she'd just received.

  The letter had been delivered earlier that morning by a flunky of the Countess's. It was, in fact, addressed to her in care of the Countess, with a notation on the envelope: “Please forward—or it'll be your ass.” The postmark wore the word DOKATA as the queen of ink would wear a necklace.

  Dearest Sissy,

  Gee, it's been quite a spell hasn't it? It's not like I haven't had time to write. We were snowed in all blessed winter as usual, with nothing much to do. But although I thought of you a thousand million times, I just couldn't get it together to compose a letter. Today, though, the first whoopers came back—on their way north to hatch their chicks—and seeing them out there at the lake again was such a flashback, and made me miss you so much, that I just had to take pen in hand, as they say.

  Let's see now, what's the news? Well, we traded our Cadillac to Billy West for forty goats. Delores says we were robbed, but how else were we going to get a herd of goats? I ask you. We got no money to speak of and these are all prime animals, rustled out of Minnesota, but no sense spreading that around.

  So we've got our goats out to pasture and we've been busy putting in the garden and making repairs. The ranch got sort of messed up in our takeover, but I guess you noticed that. Sorry if I didn't pay attention to you at that time, but I was under a heap of pressure to pull the whole caper off. I'm just glad you got out of the way, and hope the Countess, as he calls himself, hasn't given you any trouble about it.

  We got a bunch of new cowgirls, almost twice as many as before. They're from all over. Some were involved in radical politics, some worked in the peace movement and some were pretty heavy into drugs. We even got a Gospel-quoting Jesus lady, her name's Mary. Linda is a professor's daughter from Berkeley, California—she and Kym ar
e really hitting it off. Then there's Jody, she's a regular simple ranch girl out of Nebraska somewhere. But they're all cowgirls now.

  Lost a couple, too. That rich woman from Detroit, the guest that joined up with us, she got such a case of cabin fever along about February that she hired a helicopter to come in and fly her out. She actually was talking out of her head. Then Gloria, she managed to get herself knocked up in Mottburg. I hated to see Gloria go, she was one of the original beauticians that helped me get cowgirls on the Rubber Rose in the first place. But Delores insisted that Gloria couldn't have a baby on the ranch, and of course there's nowhere in the Dakotas where a woman can get an abortion. So she had to split. That was weird, too, because Delores and Gloria were close friends. Delores and Debbie went round and round about it. Delores said that if women have any hopes of getting out from under men's thumbs—oops! pardon me, Sissy, I better say that a different way. Delores said that if women have any hopes of ceasing to be enslaved by men, then they've got to control and escape their biological roles, they've got to free themselves from motherhood. It's motherhood, both the fact and the threat of it, that makes us—wait a minute, got to look up this word in Kym's dictionary—vulnerable (according to Delores). She's all for testtube babies, made in laboratories and cared for by professional nurseries. Well, Debbie, she says such ideas are dumb. Debbie says sexual reproduction is the basic and primary difference between men and women, and we'd better not forget it. She says the ability to bring life into the world puts a woman closer to the Divine Mystery of the universe than males are, and that her motherly feelings are what gives her her protective and peaceful qualities, thus accounting for what is best in her— and best in the human race. She says the capacity for motherhood is the source of women's strength. Only women stand between technology and the destruction of nature, Deb says. If we're ever going to get the world back on a natural footing, back in tune with natural rhythms, if we're going to nurture the Earth and protect it and have fun with it and learn from it—which is what mothers do with their children—then we've got to put technology (an aggressive masculine system) in its proper place, which is that of a tool to be used sparingly, joyfully, gently and only in fullest cooperation with nature. Nature must govern technology, not the other way around. Only then can all oppression end. Nothing is more vital to the human species than the reproduction of life. That is woman's trump card. But if we allow babies to be created in plastic wombs or by any other than natural means, we are letting the sacred life process fall into the hands of men. The final and greatest power on Earth will be in the hands of logic-mad reason-crazed juiceless technocrats. They already own death, and use it to repress life. If women let them, they may also own life.

  What do you think of all that? Me, I guess I have to take Debbie's side this time. I might not be objective, however, because it's impossible for me to get pregnant. Result of being shot with a silver bullet.

  Oh, Sissy, now I'm remembering your sweet hands on my scar!

  In a few minutes, I'm going to return to the scene of our love. Last fall, Debbie and I left mountains of brown rice for the cranes to munch, and they stayed at the pond longer than they ever had in the past. This time we're going to try a different diet on them to see if they won't stay even longer.

  By the way, you might be interested in knowing that the Chink survived the winter in fine shape. I'm visiting him once a week again. Now you know my little secret, huh? Well, I hear tell that you didn't exactly sit at his feet listening to Bible stories. Ha ha. He's really something, isn't he? The billy goat!

  Let's see. Delores still hasn't had her Third Vision. Peyote is making her look green around the jaws. Billy West is going to try to snatch us a stereo because that goddamn radio plays nothing but polkas. Heather's eyebrow healed up fine. Big Red led a revolt against Debbie's cooking, so we're taking turns on the chuck wagon these days. Kym may have a poem published in Rolling Stone. Elaine has a bladder infection. I guess that's all the news for now.

  Sissy you are such a special person. I can't tell you how much you mean to me. I hope you're happy. Oh, I know that you are. You're so on top of it you could never be unhappy. You're an example to us here.

  I'm pretty happy myself. Riding the range in the spring sunshine I see my shadow against the grass and I swear that shadow extends far beyond this place. This prairie. This world. It's like my life is sparkling in every direction, through all of space and all of time. You of all people understand.

  I love you,

  Bonanza Jellybean

  As if it were a gift neither expected nor deserved, the letter caused new life to begin in Sissy. Observing her, Dr. Robbins sensed this stirring. He knew that whatever it was would be hard to name and hard to trace—it always is. And he recognized that no doctor, not even in the name of healing, has a right to set his shoes among the bloomings of the human soul. He poured wine. He inhaled the garden (although not deeply, for East Eighty-sixth Street was but a wall away). He observed her. Sunlight enhanced her yellow hair, her fruit-taste complexion, her pouty lips. Sunlight even did something for the inflated rubber turkey legs that were her thumbs—although Dr. Robbins was not sure what.

  “Tell me about this Chink,” said Dr. Robbins.

  Sissy was ready. She let out a sigh that could have inflated the whole turkey. And then she told him everything.

  57.

  TO NEITHER THE SIWASH nor the Chinese does the Chink belong.

  As are many of the best and worse contributions to the human race, the Chink is Japanese. With their flair for inventive imitation, the Japanese made the Chink.

  He was born on an island in the Ryukyu chain. It was called an island, but in actuality it was a volcano, a half-submerged dunce cap that Nature had once placed on the noggin of the sea for forgetting which had come first, land or water. For centuries this volcano had sent shock after shock of purple smoke into the sky. It was a chain smoker. A Ryukyu chain smoker.

  Upon the sides of this smoking volcanic cone the Chink's parents had raised yams and upon the sides of this smoking volcanic cone the little Chink had played. Once, when he was six, he climbed to the top of the volcano. His sister found him there, on the edge of the crater, unconscious from the fumes, his hair and lashes singed. He had been looking in.

  When he was eight, he emigrated to the United States of America, where his uncle tended gardens in San Francisco. Dr. Goldman's garden was okay for a clinic in New York City, but the Chink's uncle would not have wanted one of his gardens to marry it.

  The Chink picked up English and other bad habits. He went to high school and other dangerous places. He earned American citizenship and other dubious distinctions.

  When asked what he wished to do with his life, he answered (although he had learned to appreciate movies, jukebox music and cheerleaders) that he wanted to grow yams on the side of a volcano—but as that was impracticable in the city of San Francisco, he became, like uncle, a gardener. For more than a dozen years he made the grass greener and the flowers flowerier on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Robbins would have admired his work.

  By special arrangement with his employers, the Chink attended one class a day at the university. Over a twelve-year span he completed a good many courses. He never graduated, but it would be a mistake to assume he did not receive an education.

  He was astute enough to warn his relatives, on December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, “The shinto is gonna hit the fan. We'd better get our yellow asses back to some safe volcano and eat yams till this blows over.” They didn't listen. After all, they were patriotic, property-owning, tax-paying American citizens.

  The Chink wasn't anxious to flee, either. He was in love again. Camping on the rim of a different volcano. So to speak.

  On February 20, 1942, came the order. Two weeks later, the Army took steps. In March, evacuation was in full swing. Some 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were moved out of their homes in “strategic” areas of the West Coast and se
ttled in ten “relocation” camps further inland. They could bring to camp only what they could carry. Left behind were houses, businesses, farms, home furnishings, personal treasures, liberty. Americans of non-Nip ancestry bought up their farmland at ten cents on the dollar (The crops failed). Seventy percent of the relocated people had been born and reared in the U.S.

  “Loyal” Japanese were separated from “disloyal.” If one would swear allegiance to the American war effort—and could pass an FBI investigation—one had the choice of remaining in a relocation camp or finding employment in some nonstrategic area. The camps were militaristic formations of tarpaper barracks, supplied with canvas cots and potbellied stoves. Six to nine families lived in a barracks. Partitions between “apartments” were as thin as crackers and did not reach the ceiling (Even so, there were an average of twenty-five births per month in most camps). There was no great rush to leave the camps: a loyal family that had been relocated on an Arkansas farm had been killed by an irate anti-Jap mob.

  Disloyal Japanese-Americans—those who expressed excessive bitterness over the loss of their property and the disruption of their lives, or who, for various other reasons, were suspected of being dangerous to national security—were given the pleasure of one another's company at a special camp, the Tule Lake Segregation Center in Siskiyou County, California. The Chink had been asked if he supported the American war effort. “Hell no!” he replied. “Ha ha ho ho and hee hee.” He waited for the logical next question, did he support the Japanese war effort, to which he would have given the same negative response. He was still waiting when the military police shoved him on the train to Tule Lake.