Big Sex Little Death_ A Memoir Part 7

"I would definitely be composting." Ambrose nodded.

"But he just says that because it's like a Zen aspiration," I said. "It's cool, but you know, for him, it's just a wish to be free of all the bureaucracy. He doesn't think working in an auto plant is inspiring, but he understands that I'm not into it for the cars."

"Well, you're fifteen, so the whole thing is a moot point for a good long while," Geri said, comforting herself.

"I'm sixteen."

"Yeah, well, we feel like we're a hundred and sixteen, cutie-pie."

"Let's move on to state capitalism versus bureaucratic collectivism," Ambrose suggested. He licked some ketchup off his fingers.

Was I going to be quizzed on the finer points?

"I'll take state capitalism for five hundred!" I brightened up. "Bureaucratic collectivist definitions are for losers!"

"You don't even know the difference, I bet," Geri said.

"Half the people in our branch don't know the difference," I said. "What the f.u.c.k does it matter what you call Russia as long as you're not some kook who thinks it's a paradise? They're just like the United States except there's only one corporation, the Party. Pretty soon they'll do the same thing here, except it'll be Chevron or Bank of America -"

"Oh h.e.l.l, you're in." Ambrose said, and laid his fork down.

"What can you pay in dues?" Geri asked, who looked like she was going to make me pay in tomatoes now that I'd emptied the bottle.

"Uh, nothing?" I had no idea there were dues.

"Geri, she's out on the picket lines every day, and no one's paying her for that, either." Duncan pa.s.sed me the salt.

"I can tell you're going soft," Geri said, "because Sue thinks she's embraced the state capitalist position."

"I can do five dollars a week or something," I said, wondering why I'd picked that number. That was five hours of baby-sitting, and it meant I'd have to forgo pot, blue jeans, and used records.

Geri threw up her hands. "I'll cover you; forget it! Someday you'll get a decent job."

Flo came over with a second bottle of ketchup so things wouldn't get ugly. I didn't want her job, but I sure would like to organize with her, or, better yet, follow her to wherever she went after work. I wished someone like her was confronting the Master Freight Contract instead of the lizard muncher behind us.

"Sometimes you just have to get people who have some fight in them," I said, but I was looking at my plate when I said it.

"From the mouths of babes," Geri said.

"Lord help us," Ambrose finished. He took his IS b.u.t.ton off his Teamster jacket, and I fastened it to my peasant blouse.

Patty Hearst

I took the train up to Paso Robles to see my mom right after I joined the IS. She'd moved three times since Edmonton. took the train up to Paso Robles to see my mom right after I joined the IS. She'd moved three times since Edmonton.

Elizabeth was the city librarian at a little Carnegie-era round edifice in the town square. Almond orchards, cattle ranches. She lived with her white Persian cat, Pussums, in only apartment complex in town, right near the freeway exit. Pussums had huge yellow eyes and paws as big as bedroom slippers. When I talked to her on the phone, she'd turn and make a remark to him. I hadn't seen her for two years.

Sometimes we'd talk about what she was reading, her New Yorker issue. She was as interested in politics and literature as ever. If she could expatriate us to Canada, surely she would glean why I wanted to move to Detroit, why I wanted to do something. But her reaction surprised me.

"What about Patty Hearst?" she asked. She was referring to the famous California newspaper heiress who'd been kidnapped by a self-described "revolutionary" group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). They proceeded to rob banks, shoot guns, and were eventually wasted down to nothing but ash by the L.A. SWAT team. Patty was one of the few survivors.

"Yeah, what about her? Mom, that has nothing to do with me; I'm not running with a bunch of crazy people."

She raised an eyebrow. My mom never said, "Susie, you're wrong; capitalism is grand." She didn't say I was exaggerating or melodramatic. Why would she? I got my bleeding Irish Catholic heart from her.

The difference was, she didn't join up with other people who agreed with her. She thought that was just another setup. "Who are these people, Susie?" she asked, her brow digging in. "You don't know them. You act like they're family - but they're not your blood."

I had to work on my straight face for that one. I hadn't seen a single one of her blood relatives since 1965.

My mom's voice got higher. "I just don't want to see anything happen to you."

"I'm not blowing anything up," I said. "I'm not robbing banks. That's not our plan. Those people who kidnapped Patty Hearst aren't even for real, they're FBI -"

She turned away and spoke to her kitty. "Little Pussums, Mommy's little Pussums, is hers a little bit thirsty?"

I waited.

"My brother called himself a socialist," my mom said with a snort, putting fresh water in Pussum's bowl.

"Really?" I'd never heard her say anything about her brother except one thing.

"But he was too busy drinking to do anything about that, either," she said.

Yep, that was it.

"I wors.h.i.+ped him when we were young," she whispered.

"But why was Uncle Bud a socialist?" I asked.

"Oh, the CCC camps, during the Depression," she said, like I would know what she was talking about. "They let the Irish in, and so all the young men from our neighborhood went."

"All the Irish were socialists at those camps?" I asked. I loved this kind of stuff.

She thought that was funny. "They were all a bunch of 'social pests' is what they were," she cackled. "But it was good thing, what FDR did, or those boys would've starved. Those were the only jobs they could get before the war, the only thing an Irish kid could do."

She started talking to Pussums again. "Little baby, little baby's not going to listen to her mommy, is she? Hers just won't listen!" Pussums had perfected the art of turning up her back and ignoring your every word.

I don't know why I even bothered. I mean, Mom didn't know anything about what I was doing; she'd never ask if I didn't bring it up. But sometimes I felt like she ought to know. What if I did end up in jail, or something happened? Was she just going pretend like it wasn't happening? I wanted Walter Cronkite to come by here, train my mother's eyes on him, and say, "Elizabeth, your daughter needs you to pay attention to what's going on."

I looked at the clock. There were two more hours before I had to be at the bus station for my trip back to L.A. Maybe she would like me to cook something. I could cook; I bet Patty Hearst didn't know how to do that. I bet they ate a lot of cereal in their SLA hideout. I wonder if they taught Patty to shoot the way Munk had taught me, with the beer can targets in the desert. That would be funny if we went shooting in Simi Valley and met them! They would rise up and shout some overwrought slogan - "Venceremos!" - before they pulled the trigger. Drama queens. I was embarra.s.sed to read about their s.e.x lives in the paper, how one man had mesmerized all those women with his c.o.c.k and his rhetoric.

"What does your father say?" I heard mom's voice behind me.

Maybe if I had known Grandfather Jack, I would've understood what she was driving at. It was always her prelude to losing control.

I stuttered. I could never think of the right answer to this one. "Oh, he's kinda like you; you know, he's supportive, but he worries about me, too."

"You have to do what your father says, Susie!"

But he doesn't say anything. He was more interested in asking me me what I thought what I thought he he should do. should do.

"You need to listen to him, Susie!"

More advice from someone who had cut her father off when she was twelve.

"Well, he doesn't say anything except 'Good luck and take it easy!'" I snapped. That was a mistake.

"Well, where is he, what is he doing, is he with his new wife?" She didn't wait for my reply; she didn't need it. "I suppose she's very pretty," she said, curling her fingers tight. "But that doesn't mean that he can -"

"Mom, stop, this is going -"

"Well, your father has had everything handed to him, and that's -"

I'd have given anything to talk about Patty Hearst again. But Elizabeth was past talking.

Her hand cracked my cheek and knocked me back. I didn't hear her last words. She burst into tears and ran. I heard the bathroom door slam. I felt my face with my palm and fingertips; it was sizzling, but I was okay. I'd better not cry, or she'd get really mad.

I went to her door and spoke through it: "Mom, are you okay? Mom, are you there? Are you okay?"

She didn't answer. I tried the door, but she'd locked it. "Mom, just tell me you're okay. I have to go to the bus, and I don't want to leave you like this. Mommy ... ?"

Nothing. G.o.ddammit.

"Mom, if you don't open this door, I'm going to call the police again and they won't be looking for Patty Hearst - they'll make you and me go to the hospital!"

Another one of her faces, the "Snow Queen," opened the door an inch. I was relieved to see her standing up, intact. "I am fine," she said. "Your things are packed; you may go."

"I'm really sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry I made you upset, I -"

She closed the door in my face. But she didn't lock it this time. She really didn't like the police.

I was relieved to catch the train back early. My face had a funny blush on one side, but I didn't think anyone would notice. I had to pee, but I could wait till I got back to L.A..

I left Elizabeth's apartment and walked across the landing to ring the bell at Apartment 2G. All the older ladies at this apartment complex knew each other.

"Hi, there, Mrs. Koperski." She recognized who I was - I look exactly like my mother. "Yes, I'm fine; I have to go to the train now, but would you go check in with my mom in a little bit? She's not feeling well, and I made her some tea. I'm worried she'll forget to drink it."

"Oh yes, sweetheart, of course I will. ..."

My mom's neighbors were good-natured busybodies. I didn't want them to discover her body, but I had to do something. She'd probably pull it together to save face. She'd forget what had happened between the two of us. Presto. I wish I could pull that off. I wish I could just turn around, like Pussums, and show you what I looked like walking away from every last bit of it.

Dago Armour's Apartment

I finally got permission from my dad to go to "Commie Camp" in Detroit the summer of 1975. I was seventeen, and you would have thought I'd been invited to a tour of Europe; I was so excited. As far as I could tell, Motor City was filled with charisma, a 100 percent working-cla.s.s town with factories on every corner, like pastry shops in Vienna. I could not wait. finally got permission from my dad to go to "Commie Camp" in Detroit the summer of 1975. I was seventeen, and you would have thought I'd been invited to a tour of Europe; I was so excited. As far as I could tell, Motor City was filled with charisma, a 100 percent working-cla.s.s town with factories on every corner, like pastry shops in Vienna. I could not wait.

But I had no money for my destination, no ticket to ride. I was going to have to baby-sit and hamburger-fry my way to the revolution launch pad.

My father didn't say anything directly about my plans. It was more like: "You earn it, you plan it, go ahead."

But his newest girlfriend, Judy, didn't hold back, and I heard her dramatizing it on the phone to one of her girlfriends. "She wants to go to Detroit for the summer ...

"Ha! Yeah, I know, why not throw in Newark and Carbondale and make it like a cruise! I told Bill, I told him, you're her father, you ...

"No, no, I don't think Susie has any idea; she's never really been out of California. She says to me [using a prissy schoolgirl voice], 'I'm sure there are nice places in Detroit, just like anywhere else!' Yes, I know, we're all waiting for the film to be developed!"

More laughing. I didn't think Judy had ever been to Detroit, either, so what did she know? I'd develop the pictures all right, and I wouldn't show them to her.

Judy was so ignorant - she didn't understand that Commie summer camp was not going to be in the city itself. It was a real camp, the kind of place out in Michigan's forests that gets leased to Girl Scouts and Rotarians. I guess the owner didn't have a problem with Reds, either, at least for a week.

Or maybe the camp managers didn't know who we were. One year we organized a high school anti-apartheid conference, for which I made up phony brochures for the kids' parents that said that the whole thing was being sponsored by the YWCA. It was the only way we could get those permission slips!

I had a couple more months to make the money for my bus ticket. I had applied for a scholars.h.i.+p to the camp itself that would cover my bunk and meals. I asked Geri and Ambrose to plea on my behalf. Geri called me back with something I didn't expect. "Some of the members of the Executive Committee think your family is loaded."

"What?"

"I know, I know - they think everyone in California is a millionaire, unless they're industrialized."

"Well, did you set them straight?" I was so embarra.s.sed. I thought the Executive Committee met in robes to solemnly discuss the future of Leninist cadre building, not Sue Bright's dad's financial statement.

"Of course I did. I told them that the average feeder driver at UPS makes more than your dad does teaching, and don't you worry, they're going to do it. I told them they were full of s.h.i.+t. But it's just like rubbing salt on a wound to tell the Executive Committee your dad is a professor ... that's what they were supposed to be if they hadn't dropped out and become Teamsters."

"Those guys went to college?" I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at the receiver like it was alive.

"You didn't know that? That's their secret shame - they're all Cal and Columbia dropouts." She told me that Mac Lofton was one quarter away from his PhD in English literature.

"Is it really a secret?" When I saw Mac in public, he wore a blue satin Teamsters' jacket with the American flag embroidered on the chest above Local 5. He married a comrade named Arlene, even though she was a lesbian, and listened to George Jones because "that's what workers do." Every time he saw me, or one of the other kids from The Red Tide The Red Tide, he'd make a face, like someone had put a hippie hair in his Danish. And every time I saw his wrinkled face, I thought, My G.o.d, you don't know a single "worker" under sixty-five. I loved the Teamsters Union rank and file, but Mac acted like no one mattered who wasn't over fifty and driving "over the road" - while most Teamsters I knew were young and loading trucks, like at United Parcel Service. We weren't listening to George Jones.

"Everyone knows," Geri said. "It's the story of half this organization - don't let them fool you. They don't want any of you kids to go to college, 'cause they would have to see you graduate when they didn't."

I'd never heard her talk like that. "Geri, didn't you drop out of school, too?"

"Yes, I hated it, but it had nothing to do with communism - I just got pregnant, and I wanted to live on an organic farm and bake bread with my baby on my back." Geri cracked up at herself. "It's no secret and no shame; I have no regrets. If I ever go back to school, I'll be doing it for me."

I didn't know what she was talking about. Mac and the rest of the IS leaders.h.i.+p acted like going to college was the same as turning your back on the whole cla.s.s struggle; it was like saying you were going to a fiesta while people were starving. I agreed a thousand percent. I was not going to waste the revolution's time by sitting in a cla.s.sroom with a bunch of dilettantes who thought they were going to get a degree and be somebody. Whenever someone said that s.h.i.+t to me, I'd come back with, "Instead of being somebody, why don't you do something for a change."

Yet here was Geri, acting like it was no big deal one way or the other.