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Tilda Is Visible

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Jane Tara

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“She would begin to view them ... with greater objectivity; their need for her started to look like something less discriminating, more parasitical. She felt duped by them into believing herself to be generous, tireless, inspiring, when in fact she was just a self-sacrificing victim. It was this feeling that often brought her to a position of clarity about her own life. She would start to give them less and herself more: by draining her, they created in her a new capacity for selfishness.”

“In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy. "Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother. We looked for nervousness—there was none. For terror, perhaps—there was none. For uneasiness, for curiosity, for excitement—and all we saw was what might have been a vigilance committee of women doctors, as cool as cucumbers, and evidently meaning to take us to task for being there.”

“How odd it is that we judge a woman by her clothes and the place she eats lunch and the subjects she talks about with her colleagues on her coffee break, yet we don’t judge a man if he doesn’t grow his beard or if he works with women or speaks to them. Why do Saudi women allow subjugation to a man and adhere to men’s rules and conditions? Why did I?”

“I am not a lady I live in an elevator in a big department store America. “Your floor, lady?” “I don't have a floor, I live in the elevator.” “You can't just live in an elevator.” They all say that except for the man from Time magazine who acted very cool. We stop and let people into dresses, better dresses, beauty, and on the top floor, home furnishings and then the credit office, suddenly stark and no nonsense this is it. At each floor I look out at the ladies quietly becoming ladies and I say “huh” reflectively. My hair is long and wild full of little twigs and cockleburrs. I visit the floors only for water. I make my own food from the berries and frightened rabbits— I pray forgive me brother as I eat— that grow wild in the elevator. Once every three months, solstice and equinox, a cop comes and clubs me a little. The man from Time says I articulate my generation something wobble squeegy squiggle pop pop Yesterday pausing at childrens I saw another lady take off all her clothes and go to live in #7. We are waiting to fill all thirteen.”

“Not being assaulted is not a privilege to be earned through the judicious application of personal safety strategies. A woman should be able to walk down the street at 4 in the morning in nothing but her socks, blind drunk, without being assaulted, and I, for one, am not going to do anything to imply that she is in any way responsible for her own assault if she fails to Adequately Protect Herself. Men aren’t helpless dick-driven maniacs who can’t help raping a vulnerable woman. It disrespects EVERYONE.”