Karen Fowler - Black Glass

Do I expect miracles from a prison cell? Why should you provide them? You make a decision. You decide to be warm. You exhale your warmth into the air. It rises to the ceiling, it seems to disappear, but as you repeat this, over and over, the layers eventually drop to where they surround you. When you leave the cell, you will leave it filled with your heat.

It is a small room. Any man can accomplish a small task.

• • •

IN RESPONSE TO the invasion of Cambodia and the deaths at Kent State (Can I say murders? Will you object? Will you compare those four deaths to the body count in Vietnam on any single day or on 4 May itself and believe you have made some point?) UC Berkeley suspended classes. When they recommenced, they had been reconstituted; they were now supposed to be directly relevant to the single task of ending the war in Southeast Asia. I will not pretend to you that there was no opposition within the university to this. But a large segment of the campus made this commitment together — we would not continue with our lives until the war was over.

At the same time Nixon made his own pledge to the American people. He promised them that nothing we could do would affect policy in any way.

The war of the words took on a character which was at once desperate and futile, a soul-dampening combination we never shook free of. We did the work because it seemed right to us. We had no illusions of its potency. It began to feel like a game.

Julie and I had volunteered for a large committee whose purpose was to compile a list of war profiteers so that their products could be boycotted. We researched mergers and parent companies; the list grew like a chain letter. It would have been quicker to list those companies not turning a profit in Vietnam. I remember Lauren perusing our list one day with great dissatisfaction. “The counterculture makes roach clips,” she said. “It makes liquid sculptures you can plug in and they change shape.”

“Lava lamps,” I told her.

“Whatever. It makes hash pipes. I need a raincoat. What am I supposed to do?”

“Get wet,” Julie suggested.

“Get stoned,” said Gretchen. “And then get wet. You’ll hardly notice.”

Lauren had volunteered herself for the university’s media watchdog committee. Her job was to monitor three news shows daily and report on the coverage they gave to the war and to the student movement. The idea was that we would apply whatever pressure we could on those stations whose coverage seemed slanted in favor of the administration. The fallacy was that we had any meaningful pressure that could be brought to bear. We wrote letters. We added their sponsors to the boycott. Nobody cared.

I know that Nixon felt undermined and attacked by the media. We did not see it this way. None of the major networks met with our approval. Only the local public station reported the news in Berkeley the way we saw it happening. One of their reporters was a young man who covered those stories felt to be of particular interest to the black community. He was handsome, mustached, broad-shouldered. He had the same dark, melting eyes as Lauren’s dog. His name was Poncho Taylor. Lauren fell in love with him.

Well, you didn’t expect us to give up love, did you? Just because there was a war on? I never expected you to.

Poncho was politically impeccable. He was passionate, he was committed. He was gorgeous. Any one of us could have fallen in love with him. But Lauren was the first to announce her passion, and we were content to provide support. We took turns with her transcribing duties during his airtime so she wouldn’t miss a moment of his face. We listened patiently while she droned on about his cheekbones, his hair, the sexy tremor in his voice when a story had an unhappy conclusion, and we agreed. We saw it all. He was wonderful.

I remember a night when we made chocolate chip cookies and ate the dough. Nestlé had just made the boycott list, but the chips were old. “The sooner we eat them, the better,” Julie had suggested.

Gretchen had just returned from an organizational meeting with new instructions for us. We had been told to band together into small groups like the revolutionaries in The Battle of Algiers. These were to be called affinity groups, and we were to select for them people we trusted absolutely. We were to choose those people we would trust with our lives. We smiled at one another over the bowl of dough as it suddenly occurred to us that, for us, this choice had already been made. Just as Gretchen said, when we could find our happiness nowhere else, we were able to put it into each other’s hands and hold it there.

“There’s more,” Gretchen continued. “We’re supposed to arm ourselves.” Julie took another spoonful of dough, heavy on the chips. I used the handle of my spoon to reach inside my cast and scratch myself. Nobody said anything for a long time.

Finally Julie indicated the boycott list. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” she suggested. She didn’t sound sure.

Gretchen did. “The boycott list is liberal bullshit,” she said. “It’s too easy. What good will it possibly do?”

Lauren cleared her throat and tapped the air with the back of her spoon. “It’s a capitalist country. Money matters.”

“You can’t destroy the system from within the system.” Gretchen was very unhappy. “We’re too safe.”

We sent Nixon a telegram. Gretchen composed it. END THIS OBSCENE WAR AT ONCE STOP PULL OUT THE WAY YOUR FATHER SHOULD HAVE STOP It didn’t make us feel better.

We should have done more. I look back on those years, and it’s clear to me that we should have done more. It’s just not clear to me what more we should have done.

Perhaps we lacked imagination. Perhaps we lacked physical courage. Perhaps our personal stakes were just not high enough. We were women. We were not going to Vietnam. We were privileged. Our brothers, our lovers, were not going to Vietnam. But you do us an injustice if you doubt our sincerity. Remember that we watched the news three times a day. Three times a day we read the body count in the upper right-hand corner of the screen like the score of a football game. This is how many of them we killed today. They killed this many of us. Subtract one figure from the other. Are we winning?

Could anyone be indifferent to this? Always, I added the two numbers together. My God, I would think. Dear God. Look how many people died today! (What if one of them was you?)

• • •

YOU ARE ON A PLANE, an ordinary plane. You could be en route to Denver from Chicago or going home for Christmas if you just close your eyes and believe only your ears. But you are really between Japan and Vietnam. The plane has a stewardess dressed in a bathing suit like Miss America. This is designed as a consolation for you. If you are very, very frightened, she may agree to wear rabbit ears and a tail when she brings you your drink. But you must not touch her. She is a white woman and looks familiar to you — her height, her build quite ordinary. This will change. When you remember her later she will seem exotic. It will seem odd to you that a woman should be so big. You will remember that she came and tightened your seat belt as if she were your mother. What was she keeping you safe for? Whose body is it anyway? You look at your legs, at your hands, and wonder what your body will be like when it is returned to you. You wonder who will want it then.

The immediate threat is the plane’s descent. You make a sudden decision not to descend with it. You spread your arms to hold yourself aloft. You hover near the top of the plane. But it is hopeless. If they have to shoot you down, they will. Friendly fire. You return to your seat. The plane carries your body down into Vietnam.

You think of me. How I will hate you if you don’t live through this. How you must protect me. And during your whole tour, every time you meet someone returning home, you will give him a message for me. You will write your message on the casts of the wounded. You will print it on the foreheads of those who return walking, on the teeth of those who return bagged. I am here, I am here, I am here. So many messages. How are you to know that none will get through?