In Search of Mary (22 page)

During the planning of our meeting, Professor Bettina could not be more helpful. She replies promptly and sends detailed instructions on reaching the campus and finding parking. It’s all going swimmingly. As we drive along, I sing: “Beauty school dropout, go back to Fem-school.”

The University of California Santa Cruz is leafy and pleasant, and its campus mascot is a defiantly ugly custard-yellow slug. We make our way to her office. She welcomes us inside – “Call me Bettina!” – and hands a small Piglet toy to Will. She then agrees to come and be interviewed outside in the cold, where Will can romp and play about more freely.

Bettina has a gentle demeanour and an enviable New York accent. She was what they called a red-diaper baby, the child of renowned communists, and was herself a communist for many years. As a teenager she worked for W.E.B. Du Bois, the first
black American to become a professor. She was on the defence team for Angela Davis, the Black Panther. Bettina has spent her whole life deep in the struggle. And she doesn’t seem to care that I’m just an off-peak day-trip struggle tourist. Will picks us some daisies, then goes off to clean a puddle with his cloth.

“So, what is feminism?”

“OK – I’ve been teaching a class for a long time now, called ‘Introduction to Feminism’. You look it up in the dictionary and it says equality with men. But the question is what does equality mean, because it doesn’t mean ‘the same as’. It means some kind of comparability. My definition is that women should have at least as much to say as men about the arrangement of human affairs. Period. And I say ‘at least’, because men have always had more to say, so there’s a backlog.”

I take a deep breath – might as well get this done at the start:

“And what about those men who say one thing but do another?” Enter my rant on badly-behaved radical men. I stare meaningfully at her. Then add: “I wasn’t sure whether to bring it up, but I know this has resonance for you personally…”

Bettina sees what I’m trying to do, and she doesn’t mind. Indeed, it’s as though she wants to talk about it:

“My father did indeed rage against injustice. And with me, his only child, he could be playful and caring. He taught me about crimes against humanity, even as he committed them. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at his hands. And when I bore witness to this in my memoir, many left-wing people and radical historians denied that this could have happened.”

In the same instant we both look over at Will. He’s crouching down with his back to us, arranging some leaves on the
ground. I briefly shut my eyes, able to manage only a fraction of what this woman is calmly describing:

“The paradox for anyone revealing incest and child abuse is that the taboo is so strong, and the stereotypes about its ‘monstrous’ perpetrators so impenetrable, that it actually becomes unspeakable. While these crimes are universally condemned, the evidence is almost always denied.”

Bettina looks back to me as she continues:

“I just can’t explain the contradictions in my father. But he’s not the only one. And this allows us to see how the private is political, and how the personal bears its political weight.”

This must indeed be the ultimate example of the personal being political. Meanwhile Will has fallen over and comes to me with a half-hearted cry. I lift him into my lap, finding a strange, deep relief in his physical presence – the weight of him – as Bettina asks: “So you’re writing a book – what’s it about?”

I pause. “It’s about whether feminism and working motherhood are just middle-class preoccupations,” I say. But somehow it sounds like a question. Maybe it’s my new Californian intonation. She nods reflectively, and there’s another pause, so I add that someone told me that this topic is a “crock of shit”. And now that Crock is stalking me harder than those mums who sell school-fair raffle tickets.

“I don’t agree. The problem is not that this subject is a crock, but that it gets privileged over other issues. I’ve juggled work and babies, and it was complicated, but is it more complicated for a black woman? Possibly, because she might have fewer resources. But I don’t think it’s useful to measure degrees of suffering. I don’t think any issue that’s raised by women is a
crock: one needs to widen the view. It’s all interconnected. Feminism has to be enmeshed with all the women of the world. And the vast majority of those women are women of colour.”

The words of Hannah in Paris suddenly come to mind: the Jacobins getting caught off guard by women and Haitian slaves saying: “Ok, freedom – let’s do it!” At the time I didn’t make the connection about interconnectedness. So to speak. And then there was the Women’s Building: as a white woman I was as rare as that solitary man we pointed out, typing quietly away at the computer.

I’ve been looking at class; the nanny question. And it’s bigger than that. But it seems that even if I’m too ignorant to include race in my questions, race will go right ahead and include itself. Grudging respect, then, to the Crock. I confess my lack of race awareness to Bettina.

“But it’s key,” she says. “Race is always a factor. Slavery is totally defining for the US. People who have had privilege for a long time don’t want to give it up. Race, class and gender, it’s all interconnected. Like Bell Hooks says, how can feminism demand that women have equal rights to men, when not all men have equal rights? There’s no other way to understand it. If you want to see that interconnectedness in action, then just take a look at disc.”

“Disc?”

“Yeah, Dominique Strauss-Kahn – DSK. I taught a lot about this case to my students.”

I’m not sure, now I think about it, that even Wollstonecraft saw “interconnectedness in action”. Her intro to the
Vindication
is clear: “I pay particular attention to those in the middle
class, because they appear to be in the most natural state”. I have no idea what she means by this. She savages the most privileged and feels bad about the poorest. But has she, having dragged herself up from being a miserable governess, forgotten what that was like?

It does seem to support the accusation that it’s easy to call yourself a feminist if you have status, a career or – dare I say it – a nanny. I struggle to explain my worries to Bettina, who responds:

“The issue is how can we change things, how can we help these” – she makes quote marks with her fingers – “‘supporting women’ get to college or university? The point is, wherever we’re all stuck in our various places, is it not appropriate that women can have a profession? Yes! Therefore – how can I help others have this too? So it’s not to denigrate your position – I’m happy you have a nanny. Why shouldn’t you? But you should also be thinking: how can I assist her, or are there immigrant organizations I could help out in return?”

Well, there’s a proper answer. I respectfully fold it up and store it away with care. The way to recognize the fortune of having a nanny or a ‘supporting woman’ is to give her a leg-up and improve her lot. In Norway I asked: “She delivers sanity. How do you thank someone for that?” And this is how. Not by making tacky jokes that she’s your “wife”. But with support for education, or visa status, or progress to the next stage. Somehow. Even a small chance can make the difference. Just look at the Women’s Building, transforming angry young victims into majestic, empowering Teresas.

Will brings Bettina another daisy, and she smiles and looks around for a moment. Some students walk by carrying books
and chatting. They wave at her. She looks down at the daisies in her hand for a while, and her face is a little tired. “Each woman has her choice,” she says. “What I think is sad is instead of berating a woman for having children, why not help her take care of them?”

Tempting though it is to take full and immediate advantage of this babysitting offer, we gather ourselves and begin to say goodbye. Bettina tells us her favourite place to eat is at the Tres Amigos in Half Moon Bay. We set off to find our way there. Tres Amigos is a workers’ canteen right off the highway. It’s big and ugly and cheap, and there are no amigos, only solitary workers. They plough, grim-eyed, through huge portions. The food, though, is excellent. “Fill your boots, compañero!” I pass Will more nachos, and my wordless sidekick laughs and rolls his eyes.

The route back to San Francisco is stunning. There’s a long stretch of motorway – or should that be freeway – that runs alongside the sea, I mean ocean. I can hardly keep my eyes on the road ahead. The light hits off the giant rollers muscling their way into the shoreline. The sheer width spreads away, with nothing but more and more coast on either side and nothing else out to sea but more sea. It’s a complete change from the intricate, baffling coastline of Norway. It is gigantic. Will, we have to stop!

We can’t let this go by.

I pull over and park on a nowhere bit of roadside, and the wind is fierce when I pull Will out of his warm car seat. We nearly get lifted from our feet as we make a run for it, over the road to the ocean side, down a few boulders and straight
onto the beach. We run on the sand together, pushed and harried along by the wind. Empty coastline reaches away on both sides of us, and the wind blows our breath back in as we laugh in its face.

I see my Will lean right into the wind: he spreads his arms and looks back at me. His belly is poking over his trousers, his thin hair is blown back, revealing the dome of his head. He scampers his funny little boots around on the sand. They scarcely make an impression as he turns in and out of the wind with the immense waves crashing behind. We are both small – we laugh and turn and run around with our arms out. This small shining moment is one I won’t lose: it shoots deeply into my heart.

I sweep him up, and we scramble back into the safe stillness of the car. We are bright and wind-scrubbed, breathless and laughing. Why are these moments so rare – and can they be manufactured? Did I really have to come all the way to California in order to see my son laugh on a beach in a way that cuts through to last forever? No. It just came this way. Whether he dies tomorrow or lives way beyond me I will keep this, preserved like a bubble in glass.

I will always be in love with what just happened. He’s now sitting in his car seat. I adjust the rear-view mirror and we catch each other’s eye. Of course not every moment can be a “Moment”. And it doesn’t have to be a baby: insert your own loved one or even yourself. But there’s a difference: loved ones and ourselves don’t move so quickly away, forever turning into something new, not being ever again what they are right now.

There’s an entire industry of keepsakes – casts of tiny feet, babies’ first-year albums. There’s an online torrent of baby
photos being “Liked” by colleagues on a tea break. But how do you store that moment when it comes? Do you have to be in the right place or the right mood? This has felt like a luminous moth, choosing to land on me. Stop breathing to hold the moment fast. I can’t own it – it will fly. Does it matter that I know it’s a moment? Has that saved it?

I remember Vita Sackville-West on moments. She describes writing as “clapping a net over the butterfly of the moment”. I can remember that, but somehow not the precise discovery of Will’s first tooth. I spent so many years pushing babies on swings in chilly parks with a glazed expression on my face – where did those moments go? Did I even wish them away, without knowing what I was losing? The long blurry days from the first few years of a child’s life are as intense as anything can be, yet how entirely they evaporate! While the baby that you held and beheld up close all day every day has since turned into something else.

All lit up with this fierce vague sense of love, we drive along the coast back to San Francisco. It’s only as we pass some golfing courses and begin to re-enter the city that I’m jolted back into purpose. For a moment I feel remorseful for skipping so easily away from interconnectedness and DSK. Whee-hee – at the first glimpse of a sparkly view! But then, sparkly views make life better. And California wants me to enjoy it, I can just tell.

As for Will, so far he’s been locked in a room and endured some weighty lectures. It’s about time we had some sparkly fun. Because why the hell not? Wollstonecraft could’ve done with a bit more of that herself. And it doesn’t get sparklier or more fun than our next stop. Now that we’ve been introduced
to feminism, the personal being political and interconnectedness, we qualify for the next round. We’re changing waves from Second to Third. We’re going to meet Annie Sprinkle, and she’s a Feminist Porn-Activist Radical Sex Educator, and Ecosexual.

How do you get to Annie Sprinkle? She’s the one who kept evading me, and in all the weeks of setting up the trip she’s the one who seemed least keen and most likely to cancel. But every San Franciscan I’ve mentioned her to shouts “WOW, Annie Sprinkle!” This tells me we must get to her. And when I finally get through to her on the phone, she is gorgeously ditzy and warm:

“What, remind me who you are again?… From England?… With a baby?… Oh that sounds lovely, sure thing, just come right on over to my house!”

So we do. Walking up a sunny hill towards her house, we see a woman breezing down the road towards us. It must be her. Long skirt, lots of jewellery, tattooed arms, burgundy hair. She smiles and waves. It is her. She is sort of granny-aged, with stunning cheekbones and bright eyes. And a very long cleavage. She gives me an affectionate hug and invites us into her home.

Annie Sprinkle immediately begins offering me things – a coffee? Lunch? Cookies for Will? A drink for Will? Something for Will to play with? I can’t get her to settle down: each time we sit down near my recording equipment, she leaps up with another act of hospitality and a constant stream of Oreo cookies:

“Please eat them – I am going on a diet. It’s my diet group starting tonight.”

Will and I happily oblige. When everyone’s eaten and drunk, I start asking questions, but she’s still distracted by Will. He keeps laughing and holding things up to her face, with an eager “?” noise. And then she breaks off and starts adoring him. First it was the Shuffle of Rage, and now it’s disruption by force of cuteness – I can’t win. She tries again: