Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

“What about the women?” asked Tula.

“Of course I’ll honor the famous women too — if there are any,” said Sammi.

“Don’t forget Sandra Day O’Connor,” said Mrs. Winslow when Sammi bragged about how many influential men she knew. “She was the first female Supreme Court Justice, and once upon a time she was a Rainbow Girl too.”

“I’m talking about local heroes,” said Sammi. “They can be men or women, but they have to be from around here.”

Most of the proposals seemed derivative to Tula, while her own, which she kept secret even from Mrs. Winslow and her mother, had never been attempted before — never even thought of! — while still being in keeping with the spirit of the founding charter. Her idea would change the very structure of the order — or not really change it, but build on what was already there, making it better for future generations of Rainbow Girls and freeing them from their subjugation to men.

From the time she was a middle schooler, Tula had seen how Sammi and her friends curried favor with boys — some of them in a very direct and obvious way. Even Sammi, who was athletic and strong and mostly resistant to peer pressure, rolled the waistband of her skirt so that the slightest lifting breeze would have shown the edges of her panties if Sammi had worn the kind of panties Tula wore underneath the pleated skirts that even the updated version of the Rainbow Handbook said were supposed to come within two inches of the knees.

But Tula didn’t. Tula, who was modest inside and out, could only marvel as Sammi teased the boys by flexing her abdominal muscles and arching her back. Even when Tula stood alone in front of her full-length mirror, she couldn’t twitch in a way that made her skirt swing from side to side the way Sammi’s did, so she watched uneasily as the boys and girls paired off and wondered how their behavior fit with their avowed submission to a patriarchal religion. Tula herself had sworn fealty to the same God and Savior, but in her heart she revered the Virgin Mother above all other deities and saints. Who was more pure than Mary, the mother of Jesus? She knew from the stories her own mother told her when they lay together at night, unable to sleep because the full moon, which her mother said was male, was pulling at the female tides within them the way men had always pulled at women, causing the tides to shift the way women had always shifted — even physically fit women like Sammi shifted, women with rock-hard abdominal muscles and intelligence. They all shifted like the tide the minute a handsome man winked in their direction.

After such a night, it was a relief when the sun rose, restoring to earth the female principle of sunlight and, even Tula had to admit, fertility. When Tula had mentioned the gravitational effect of the male moon to her benefactress, Mrs. Winslow had smiled indulgently and said, “You have it backwards, darling. The moon is the female principle. It is we women who affect the tides of men!”

Tula was still trying to figure out which made more sense, but whichever it was, she knew she owed it to the Virgin Mother, who smiled down at her from the niche above her bed, to resist the male principle for as long as she could. So she said no when Will Rayburn asked her out. She said no out of principle, but she also said it because Will Rayburn scared her. Or it wasn’t really Will who scared her, it was the feeling of the tides within her shifting whenever Will walked by.

1.5 Maggie

The cherry trees on Main Street were blooming big and pink when Maggie decided she could no longer continue in her current line of work. “You’ll lose your pension,” warned her friend Misty Mills, and True Cunningham added, “You don’t actually shoot the bullets, do you? Technically, you don’t even make them.”

“Bullets,” said Maggie as the three friends stepped from the cool aluminum shadow cast by the munitions plant onto the crazed asphalt surface of the parking lot. She stopped short of saying that she might have been able to make her peace with bullets, but the company they worked for produced everything from missile components to armor-piercing artillery shells, and the solid core of the shells was made of a toxic substance that had a half-life of four and a half billion years.

“We’re not the only ones making bombs,” said Misty. “We’re making bombs in a world where other people are making bombs. Do you really want to live in a country that doesn’t have them?”

“You don’t even work on the line — you work in the office,” put in True, but nothing anyone said would change her mind.

“Does that mean we won’t drive to work together anymore?” asked Lyle, and Maggie replied, “No.”

“No, we won’t drive together or no, that isn’t what it means?” asked Lyle.

“We won’t drive together anymore, Lyle. That’s the part that breaks my heart.”

When Lyle had lost his job at the prison, it was Maggie who persuaded him to apply for a job at the munitions plant, and for the past four years she had packed turkey and cheese sandwiches for Lyle and Will and turkey without cheese for herself, and then squeezed her knees against the truck’s gearshift until they dropped Will off at his school before continuing down the New Road, past the turnoff to the Choctaw Casino and along the New Road extension to the plant, but now she wondered how she could have been so glibly confident when she had said to Lyle, “Come work with me! You’ll know half the people there, and you won’t have to worry that an inmate will take you hostage if you make a mistake or turn your back.” Years before, there had been a riot at the prison, and people still talked about it as an ominous and continuing threat.

“What will you do?” asked Lyle, his eyes wide with love and regret as he and Maggie ate their last sad sandwiches in the munitions plant lunchroom, where they were constantly interrupted by people who stopped by their table to ask Maggie questions or offer advice.

“I’ll find a different job,” said Maggie with her old optimism, but it went without saying that her job perks and benefits would be hard to replace. In fifteen years, she had risen to the position of administrative assistant to Mr. August Winslow, civilian chief of operations, which gave her a far greater status than Lyle and their friends who worked in shipping or production. And if she were to stay on for another ten, she would get lifetime health care and a burnished wooden plaque.

“I guess you know that good jobs are hard to find,” said Lyle.

“I do,” Maggie replied.

“It seems like you’re giving up an awful lot.” But once Maggie had made her decision, she wouldn’t reconsider.

Lyle wasn’t the sort of person to ask “Why?” but that was the first word out of Will’s mouth when Maggie could no longer put off telling him about her plans.

Maggie was proud of her big, strapping son, who took in bits of information and then, when no one was expecting it, let them out again, rearranged. Like the time he asked Pastor Price if the identical Farley twins each had only half a soul and the time he asked if it was a sin to starve your children. “It’s not only a sin, it’s illegal,” said the pastor, which prompted Will to ask, “Then why is it also a sin and illegal for people without any money to steal?” The teachers in the lower school still talked about the day Will had surprised them by standing up at quiet time and asking if spilling seed was tantamount to murder. “Tantamount!” said the teacher gaily. “Now there’s a big word. Let’s all take out our dictionaries and look it up!”

“I’ve made my decision,” said Maggie, gently setting out the chipped rose-pattern dessert plates and a cinnamon raisin cake with drizzle icing. “I can’t pretend I don’t know what the bombs and bullets are used for. I can’t pretend innocent people aren’t getting killed.”