Ben Marcus - Notable American Women

1959

Animal artist George Rafkill, twenty-nine, is arrested when it is discovered that his popular portraits of horses and dogs, The Animals of America, which sell to hotels and restaurants, and can also be embroidered on flags, bear undeniable facial resemblances to thirteen women who have been missing from his Akron neighborhood for the past year. While Rafkill claims that he can “paint the dead,” authorities point out that he only paints those dead that are also missing and believed murdered.

1963

Athlete Emily Anderson, forty-five, who has been imprisoned for interfering with runners at a men’s track meet in Chicago just as they neared the finish line, is fatally injured when she is shot from a cannon into a brick wall during her “Hard to Die” show in July. An unknown Silentist, in a show of grief over the death of the quiet athlete, catapults herself from an English cliff into the sea, and an Anderson comes to be known as an act of mourning in which women launch themselves into the air for extended distances, often landing in the sea, but not necessarily.

1974

Men from Akron stack bones outside their houses to absorb the sound of women. When no bones are available, an entire person is used. Every family keeps a “Ben Marcus” for this purpose. Often he is sent out on thieving missions, smeared with a special scent, in order to attract the women’s attention. Now the women are required by the Silence Commission to carry a small bone in a holster. If they wish to be heard, they must hurl the bone into a field, creating a current of deafness in the air. When men cough or talk into their hands, they are praying to their own bones. The women ride velvet-covered bone cages, called “horses.” They produce an aggressive, highly pitched physical weeping, known as “galloping,” and in this way spread their feelings across large fields of grass.

1978

The first plaster casting is taken of the inside of Bob Riddle’s mouth, including the cavity that extends down his windpipe, ending at his lungs. When the casting is removed and hardens, it resembles a roughly shaped sphere (the inside of the mouth) with a ridged handle attached, and is considered a primary shape around which his body has grown, a hardened form of the white space at Riddle’s center, a sculpture of his nothingness. Riddle calls it, incorrectly and rather pretentiously, his “soul,” given that it represents his “language cave,” and he argues that this shape is the primary object by which a person can be understood, and possibly controlled. The object will later be known as a Thompson Stick, as important a shape as the sphere or triangle. Silentists will quietly beat the earth with it, releasing pockets of sound that have been stored in the soil.

1979

Jane Marcus occurs in Deep Ohio. She has an accurate walking style and can converse in one language. She sleeps lying down, and uses a filter called “hair” to attract her mates. The small people in her house call her “Mother,” and she answers them by collapsing the tension in her face, a release that passes for listening. Her motion is voice-activated. She has one pair of eyes, and they are often tired and red. When she uses her arms to prop up a document of regret, known as a “book,” her bones form an ancient shape, and a brief flashing signal is sent out through the window and into the fields beyond her house, where the hive is.

[Deborah]

THERE ARE ABOUT FIFTY known examples of it in the Rocky Mountain area, some dating as far back as 1931. They are thought to improve the people they encounter. The usual number of finished girls in a territory as common as “Deborah” is twenty-eight, with a quota of twenty and a maximum limit of thirty-two. Any more than this should suggest a dilution of the original Deborah, which produces strains of Amy or Ellen. Although the midcentury Rocky Mountain persons had utilized a Deborah to comfort the saddest local families, reserving the medical Deborah for only the most pressing cases of grief, the need for a cheer-spreading personage began to be felt at a national level, and abductions and faking occurred. There is consequently an extreme Deborah in the East, possibly of Colorado origin but bred through men of the Midwest (and therefore tall and reddish and chalky), dispensing a form of nearly unbearable, radical happiness into cities and homes. It is often housed in a little body, but its range is wide and its effect is lasting. To say “Deborah” is to admit to sadness and ask for help.

Statistics for Deborah: She preferred modifications to her head when we called her this. No matter how far we launched her in the chair, my sister did not faint. Small emotional showings were on view: contentment and pleasure, occasional cheer. She attempted to embrace my mother, usually before bedtime, and my mother only barely escaped these approaches. Sometimes she endured long hugs from this Deborah.

[Susan]

From afar, the Susan appears to be buckling, shivering, seizing, its body exhibiting properties of a mirage. Up close, there is mass to Susan and it is real to the touch. There will be food for you if you are Susan, although possibly a pile of food for Susan is a trap, to be regarded with suspicion. It is an elegant and refined system that established a school for itself, The Susan House. Its doctrine, The Word of Susan, is useful also to versions of Julia and Joyce but can be harmful to Judith. All of its books have gone unwritten.

Statistics for Susan: Quite poor weather during this phase. My sister aged considerably and showed signs of acute attention and superiority. Insisted on privacy. Dressed formally. Seemed not of our family. Our presence confused her. She once asked my father how he knew her name. It was a question my father could not answer.

[Jesus]

Women achieve their Jesus by speaking and studying their own name. The original Jesus figure examined his name, then derived actions and strategies from his analysis. This is the primary purpose of the Jesus noise — self-knowledge, instruction, advice. Women betray their Jesus when they forget that there is an answer at the heart of their name, to be divined by loud, forceful recitations of it in the streets, for as long as it takes. Simply saying “Jesus,” however, is ineffective. (Breathing is the most common strategy for remembering our names.)

Statistics for Jesus: It was decided not to call my sister this. Mother felt we might lose her. But I tried it anyway one night when my parents were asleep. I had to use a low-volume setting on the naming bullhorn and I whispered it at her while she slept. It was during an early Tina phase. She never woke. I sat at her bed all night and used this name against her until my mouth was exhausted. Nothing happened.

[Father]

To refer to a woman as “Father” is to engage her inner name and fill her hands with power. It is a code that many American women respond to with energy and hope. It is therefore used as a healing noise, particularly at hospitals, where nurses utter the word “Father” to women who are ill or tired. When men make love to Father, they use hearty motion and often call out words of labor and ecstasy; they thank Father, and they ask Father for more. Men in Utah, where this sort of naming is most frequent, take Father to the baths and hold her while rinsing her hair, until she feels soothed and calm, until she is manageable and not crazy with power, or too big for her body, or at least not dirty and alone, which makes Father dangerous. In wealthy households, Father enters a boy’s room and blackens it with a gesture of her hand, then starts in on the boy with warm oil on his thighs, squeezing the oil into his legs until he weeps or breathes easy. Father pulls back the sheets and she climbs in to treat the boy and teach him to live. A boy often first makes love to Father because she is gentle and confident, someone the boy can trust. He holds on to Father’s hands when she straddles the bed and affects her graceful motion. A boy says “Father” as she leans over him to help, dipping and rising, although sometimes the boy is quiet, preferring to feel her deepening attentions and not destroy the moment with speech.