The Valley
"Hey you! Chica! You!"
He is whistling at me. I keep walking rapidly. Where is homeroom again? Yes, B13, on the other side of the campus. That way, I need to go toward the central lawn and then—
"Hey, you! Girl, I'm talkin' to you!"
Followed by a sodden trill of kisses. People are starting to look. I scurry along, head down. I hate this school. Every single one of my six classes is in a different location. Portola Junior High is roughly the size of seven Camps Bay Primaries put together. It's my third day and I still get lost trying to find my classes.
"You! Baby! Turn aroun'!"
The hallways are clearing as the six-minute passing period ticks to a close. A good proportion of those who remain pause to take in the unfolding theatrics. I scan the faces around me anxiously. They are, to a last one, untarnished by empathy. Not a single face is familiar. No one to stand up for me. It would be impossible to know everybody here, or even a tenth of everybody. Who ever dreamed of putting two thousand kids into one school?
The bell rings, ear-splittingly loud. Drilling into my brain, sealing my mortification.
"You! Yeah, you in the red shirt!"
I can no longer make pretense to anonymity. I stop, and then turn, millimeter by painful millimeter, until I am facing my persecutor. He is Mexican, wearing those bizarre baggy pants. Mexicans are still new to me. As are Asians, Persians, and a whole host of other identities I'd never even heard of. But nonetheless I have a good idea of what's to come. As I suspected, he's not alone.
"Hey baby, my frien' here, he in love with you!"
I look at his friend. He is doubled over in mirth, incoherent, making spastic, scarlet-faced gestures of protest.
"He wanna make love with you," continues the first, straight-faced, drawing out the word love until it sounds like its own event. Like a circus, replete with spandex-clad acrobats and fire-eaters. He watches me innocently, waiting. He is pudgy, brown, studded with acne. I glare at them both with a fury that sears me with its purity. What insolence. If this was South Africa he'd know how to treat me. Perhaps lightning will course from the clear sky to annihilate them both on the spot. Then people will know my power, and my afflictions will be over. I pray briefly, fervently, for their speedy demise.
"He wanna have sex with you," resumes my tormentor, unsatisfied with my lack of response. He makes an O with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, and pokes his right middle finger through it. "Like this, baby, like this."
Do these people even have parents? Who lets them act like this? Where are the teachers? At Camps Bay Primary, we didn't talk unless we were spoken to. We roved the halls in neat, silent lines, hands behind our backs. Until recently, discipline for the boys included being whacked on the bum with a paddle.
"Yeah, like this, he wanna do it to you…" His tongue starts roaming his upper lip like a distended slug, coating it with a glistening layer. His eyes are droopy and yellow and they burn into mine as if those fried-sausage fingers are actually—actually—touching me—sis man—
"Stuff off!" I yelp out helplessly. "Just stuff off!" I take my right hand off my hip and wield it in front of me, making the worst sign I know. "Up yours!"
They collapse in hysterics, the fat one literally falling to the ground in paroxysms, his friend leaping around in unmitigated delirium. "Baby he love you!" howls the first. "I love you," concedes his sidekick, baying with laughter, graciously resigning himself to destiny.
It takes me a few more days to learn that the middle finger is the dirty sign here. What I was giving them, in this country, was the peace sign backwards.
Leaving South Africa was the hardest thing I'd ever done by far. My beloved teacher, Mr. Pearson, planned a wonderful surprise party and braai to send me off, which went magnificently until I got hit in the face with a ball and collapsed into a brief bout of tears. Astounded at my great luck in moving to Los Angeles, my peers promptly elevated me to an abrupt and heavenly popularity. At the final assembly of the week we left, after leading us in singing "Die Stem" and "All Things Bright and Beautiful," the principal announced his regret at our departure. "I'm very sorry you're leaving South Africa, Mariza," he intoned from the podium in his thick Afrikaner accent. Peering down at the neat lines of uniformed children striping the hall, blinking from behind glasses that rivaled mine in magnitude. I burst into tears and was attended to by a gaggle of newly solicitous friends. "Three cheers for Marisa!" screeched Felicia courageously at the close of the day, and the class cheered dutifully as I began weeping.
I bid a tearful goodbye to Dinki, my budgie, who did indeed follow me wherever I went when he was uncaged and who had mastered phrases in English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa. I hugged my cousin Richard tightly. "I'll be back," I said without conviction as he cried. Back to share Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah dinners with his family, the two of us giggling uncontrollably at the children's table as the adults droned through the prayers. Back to confirm that we were still in complete agreement on everything under the sun.
I kissed my grandmother on her cool, prickly-soft cheek, then drew back and studied her, straining to memorize every etching on the face I adored.
I watched as strangers entered our house and packed up everything we owned into a huge truck. And then I said good-bye to Maureen, squeezing her so tightly she could barely breathe, crying as she laughed and wept and didn't complain.
"I'll miss you, Maureenaz."
"You be a good girl, Mimi, good to Mommy and Daddy, okay?"
"Okay."
"And remember Maureen loves you so much, so so so so much."
"I love you too, Mau. I love you even more."
"No my baby, not possible."
And then we were in the airport, just the five of us. Somber and anxious. October 28, 1988. The day we'd been longing for. The day we'd been dreading.
"Frank Handler!" booms a voice over the loudspeaker. My father jumps in a panic. We have told the South African government we are leaving temporarily, going on a long trip. "Mr. Handler, please come to the South African Airlines office immediately." But it is only Mr. Pearson, come to the airport laden with gifts for our family. For my father, the dark chocolate he loves. For me, a journal, and a pen with my name inscribed on it.
Then we are on a plane, soaring over toy mountains, dollhouse gardens, vast bowls of heavy-cream cloud.
Then Heathrow, where we have a five-hour layover. I listen to the posh English accents and gaze at the chocolates behind glass in the bookstore. Same chocolates, different labels.
Then Dulles airport. "Welcome to Washington, D.C.," I tell my doll Nadine. She appears unimpressed. We are herded into an immigration line, then into a stuffy office where a man with a hook instead of a hand is drilling a German woman. We settle into our plastic chairs and I gawk at him in terror. This is the man who can give or take away our future. He's a real American, I can tell from his accent. Do all the immigration officers have hooks for hands?
Behind us is a large colored photo of The President. I like him instantly. He looks very kind, like someone who couldn't help but give me sweets whenever I asked. "Welcome to America, Marisa," I can hear him saying with his twanging TV accent, smile stretching even broader. "Welcome to the Land of the Free." Next to the photo is pinned a huge pastel map of our new country.
"Look, that's where we're going," I say in great excitement, having located Los Angeles on the map. "Shut up, Marisa," whispers my mother fiercely. Our sponsor, a rabbi, lives in Pennsylvania, and our papers say that my mother will be teaching Hebrew school in Pottsville. I sink into my seat, horrified at my stupidity. If we have to go back it'll be all my fault.
But the man with the hook lets us through. We emerge to the crisp air and raging colors of a northeastern fall. "We're in Amerrrica, folks!" says my dad, and we cannot stop laughing, relief bounding hot-breathed among us. That becomes the phrase to sum it all up— the many anomalies, delights, and puzzles of our new home: This is Amerrrica, folks. We visit the Lincoln Memorial, examine the Capitol and the White House from behind their fences, marvel at the size of everything from the top of the Washington Memorial. Stuff is bigger here. This is Amerrrica, folks. We go to the National Air and Space Museum, where I try to envision sleeping standing up in a rocket ship and can't stop chortling over the tube astronauts have to use to pee. This is Amerrrica, folks. We fly to LA and settle into an apartment in a gated community in Tarzana. It is tiny, cramped, and drab after our well-appointed quarters in Camps Bay.
My dad inspects our new home, characteristic enthusiasm hammered down a few notches. I wait. "Well, this is Amerrrica, folks."
Our first Thanksgiving: we are mentored by close friends, also expatriates. We gorge on the huge bird that sits brashly in the middle of the table. Not at all like ostrich meat, definitely closer to chicken. Then each of us takes our turn saying what we are grateful for, rolling this new tradition delicately across our tongues.
My mother, firm: "I'm grateful that we made it here, where we can live with a clear conscience. And that we're among friends." Looking about her warmly.
My father, eyes moist: "I want to give thanks for the whole family pulling together like we have. I'm very proud of all of us for working so hard to make this move a success." He meets my eyes and jerks his eyebrows up and down manically until I giggle.
My sister: "I'm grateful that we get to wear normal clothes to school instead of stupid uniforms. And ja, of course for arriving here safe and sound, getting out of South Africa, blah-blah-blah."
My little brother, pointed: "I'm grateful that we're all here, but mostly I'm grateful that it's my birthday in six days and that I'm going to get a remote-control car."
Me, suddenly blisteringly shy and on the verge of tears: "I—I think we should thank God for bringing us here and taking care of us." Then I am crying again as my sister rolls her eyes and sighs lustily, and my brother pesters my dad about remote-control cars. "She's very sensitive," mouths my mother to the table as I bury my face in her shoulder.
Our first earthquake, three weeks after our arrival: my parents are away. I am sitting at the table in our kitchen, writing an essay on George Washington (thanking my lucky stars that history harbors something novel after years of the Dutch East India Company, the Hottentots, and the Boer War). Dishes and other loose objects begin to rattle. My pencil skates across the page in an inelegant line. I am clutching it so hard it breaks. Then the floor starts rolling: the entire world is suddenly afoot and jogging toward what I know with absolute clarity will be total annihilation. "M-maybe someone's jumping on the roof," my sister proffers hopefully from the couch, clinging to an armrest. Pardon me? "This is an earthquake, you flipping idiot!" I rise shakily, sprint to our bedroom, huddle under a desk, and begin praying. "Please forgive me for all my sins, I'm so sorry, I'm trying really hard to be good and did I remember to thank you for my new school bag and also I never really meant to hit Marc he's just so annoying and if you only let me live I promise I'll never tease him again and also I'll never nag Mom and Dad again for anything ever again in my whole entire life I swear dear God and yes I know it wasn't nice to just call Gabi a flipping idiot but—"
In hindsight, I was a pretty easy target for your average schoolyard sadist. I wasn't used to wearing "civvies"— civilian clothes—to school, and my fashion sense was, well, unhoned. I tucked my sweaters into my jeans. I was one of approximately three people who actually did the school spirit day assignments, like dressing backwards on Yad Sdrawkcab, or wearing my school's hat and T-shirt on Fridays. Coolness was an entirely new concept to me, one that took a good couple of years to get the hang of. Instead of falling in lacquered waves, liberated from its Camps Bay Primary–mandated ponytail, my curly hair — which I continued to blowdry and brush out — assumed impressive proportions. And then of course there were my glasses. And the way I spoke. And what I said.
"Excuse me, can I borrow a rubber, please?" Turning politely to the boy sitting behind me.
"Oh my God! Marisa just asked me for a condom!" The entire class erupts on cue. Mental note: eraser, eraser, eraser, for God's sake.
Or:
"I really like your braces." (Translation: suspenders.)
Blank look. "What?"
"Ja hey, they're really nice."
"You like my braces? What is, like, wrong with you, anyway?"
"Er, nothing. So do you wear them for fashion or to keep your pants up?"
Somehow I remained relentlessly optimistic as I scuffled ineptly through the pitfalls of this foreign culture—a culture, I soon realized, comprised almost entirely of media and consumer culture. Coming from censored South Africa, with its single television channel and few hours of programming each day—half in Afrikaans, the other half divided between British and American shows—I discovered I was dangerously ignorant. My standard two hours of TV a week was wholly inadequate when it came to keeping up with lunchtime conversations at Portola Junior High. Mysteries abounded. Who were the new kids, and upon which block might they be located? What was so gosh-darn lovable about Lucy, anyway? Was Star Wars a game show or a restaurant chain? I learned that maintaining my dignity entailed keeping my mouth rigorously shut until I knew what my peers were going on about. At least I was familiar with some of the code: the Bill Cosby show, for reasons that continue to mystify me, was aired weekly in apartheid South Africa.
Along with catching up on algebra and Spanish, I issued myself an ongoing customized homework assignment: watch television. Lots of it. With particular emphasis upon the commercials. Commercials were perhaps my greatest teachers. They enlightened me to the sources of countless inside jokes. I learned to sing along with the jingles. I made friends with Ronald McDonald, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, the benevolently smiling M&M cartoons. I learned that Snickers Really Satisfies, Beef Is What's for Dinner, Milk Does a Body Good, and that when I was confused about something the superior response was to Just Do It. Most importantly, commercials instructed me on what I was supposed to want. Not that my parents were remotely sympathetic: having sunk all their resources into immigrating, they were deaf to my requests. But I knew what I was supposed to want, which was what really counted when it came to fitting in. In a culture meticulously constructed around the constant cultivation of desire, I was learning to play the consumer.
Yet I missed South Africa viciously. The malls and unremitting suburbs of the San Fernando Valley were little match for Cape Town. My friends in South Africa had told me I'd be running into Madonna and Michael Jackson on the street, but so far the only famous person any of us had met was Tony Danza. My sister was jogging in Balboa Park when she spotted him. When she told him we watched his show in South Africa, he smiled blankly and offered to sign his autograph.
Despite the assorted snags, Amerrrica is two fingers from paradise to our shining eyes. We are finally living in A Democracy. Unlike my classmates, I recite the Pledge of Allegiance with great fervor, hand firm over my heart. I feel a fierce love for my new country, a clarion gratitude for the beautiful vision laid out in its Constitution. Don't these people understand what they have here? Blacks in this country are lawyers, doctors, teachers. They're even in commercials. And there are some white people who clean homes! Compared to South Africa, this is racial nirvana. I make a black friend in school, Annette, and am inordinately proud of myself and attentive with her.
"You're friends with that girl?" says Michelle, another new friend, eyeing Annette from where we are sitting eating our lunch. Michelle has glasses like me and long permed brown hair, and I am very pleased to be the recent recipient of a glitter-pink invitation to her bat mitzvah.
"Yes. That's Annette. She's really nice." Annette is talking to another black friend, but she feels my gaze and looks back and smiles warmly at me. I can't wait to get home and tell my mother how much I like her.
"But doesn't the way she smells bother you?"
"Pardon?"
"The way she smells. Black people smell funny, haven't you noticed? Kind of greasy. They don't wash enough, you know."
I am openmouthed, too dumbfounded to even respond as Michelle shifts blithely to another topic and continues chattering away.
Everything here feels too big. "King-sized," rumble the voices on commercials. It's as if even the buildings know they have a lot of room in this sprawling country, so they stretch themselves out accordingly. And everything is "All New." (What's wrong with just plain "new"? asks my dad of a native with genuine curiosity.) Plus there's a lot of it all: reams and oodles and neatly stacked masses of the King-sized and the All New.
Going grocery shopping here is an adventure, a bold sally into the brightly packaged unknown. I drive with my mother to Lucky's. We locate a spot in the vast terrain of parking lot, and then make for the door. We stand just inside with our cart, trying to look as purposeful as the other women who look past us. Generally people are very friendly here. So friendly that we mock them at home, saying, "That's awesome!" and "You're very welcome!" with teeth bared in garish grins and eyebrows suspended millimeters below our hairlines. When they hear our accents, Americans smile widely and ask us where we're from. I've discovered I can say almost anything and these people will believe it. Half the time they refer to me as being from South America anyway. At school yesterday I told the girl copying my English homework that we wore nothing but grass skirts and rode on lions to school, which was in a big hut. She stared at me wide-eyed. "That's so cool," she said, and it was too late to fix it. People are friendly here, but I'm starting to see that it's mostly just when they're supposed to be. Like when I ask someone a question or they're ringing up our purchases. The rest of the time they look past each other. It makes me feel lonely even when I'm somewhere as busy as Lucky's.
My mother pulls her shopping list out of her purse. "Okay, Mims, let's find some raisin bran."
We begin with what would appear a simple assignment. I leave my mother at the miniature jungle that is the plant section and tear across the breadth of the supermarket and back.
"Cereal's on aisle five. Let's go."
We have direction. Off we charge, my mother examining her list as I try to steer the unruly cart. "Well…" she begins uncertainly, when we reach aisle five. It yawns before us like a carnivorous tropical flower, rainbow palate panting waves of recycled air. For a minute we stand in the blast of shimmering color and fluorescent light, overwhelmed.
"Come on, Mom." I pull her hand and we advance undaunted, me tugging the cart like a wayward goat behind us. I have never seen this much cereal in my whole life. Who could eat so much cereal? How would you ever learn to choose? Later, this face-off with excess will glow lurid in my memory, an early warning sign of a society severely off-kilter. But for now I am bowled over. Odd-shaped creatures beam dazzling from the boxes. Unequivocal block letters extol each item's many health benefits. I am familiar with some of the cereals from my stints in front of the television, and I note them as we pass, puzzling out their branding like code. And then I cannot help myself, I am temporarily distracted, mesmerized, Odysseus in the thrall of the Sirens. I slow my pace, eyes spinning with snippets of color and print as the cart thrusts at me like a bull hooking its inept matador. Yet Providence has not forgotten us: my mother remains clear-headed and rigorously on task.
"Raisin bran!" She has spied the grail where it rests unobtrusively at the very end of the aisle. She is running now, arms uplifted in triumph as the women around us turn and stare. "Look, Mimi, it's raisin bran!" And I am racing after her, shrieking with joy as she clutches it to her chest and gently closes her eyes with the unmistakable savor of victory. Yes, my mother is thinking, I can do this. We can do this. We were right to leave and we're going to make it work.
I always feel a bit of an oddball, but I come to love my new homeland. Or at least the idea of it. Democracy, justice, equality: it is love at first sight with these, and even though I soon begin to see how the actual society fails to measure up, I am too far gone to backpedal. I love the idealism upon which this nation is based, the goodness of the intentions behind it. And I love the distinctly American nature of the constant struggle to fulfill those intentions. Six years after our arrival, I get "naturalized" into U.S. citizenship. I stand in the hall during the ceremony, a lone white face among a sea of Latinos and Asians, and with a full heart pledge my loyalty to the country that has come to feel like home.
But that's years down the line.
In the beginning, much of Amerrrica is strange to me. Some of my peers, like my new best friend Allie, have enough stuff to outfit a medium-sized village. Allie's parents are never home and we amuse ourselves with her huge-screen cable TV, video games, and "pigging out" on the sweets—"candy"—my parents refuse to buy. Play is different here: while I still draw and write stories to amuse myself, my new friends either mock me when I suggest it or grow rapidly bored. What's "cool," I learn, is what falls within the bubblegum borders of pop culture. Exercising our own imaginations? Decidedly uncool. No one reads books here. Instead we rent videos or choreograph dance moves to Madonna. Allie introduces me to pornography, which was illegal in South Africa. She pinches her father's Playboy magazines and we study the centerfolds with awe, lamenting our own stubbornly flat chests. She reads the articles aloud with relish as I shudder in horror and covert pleasure.
My classmates seem very sophisticated. When we study sex ed in health class, no one even laughs when the teacher says "penis" and "vagina." I meanwhile give vent to a fit of snorts trying to stifle my hysterics. Standard 4P would have been up in arms. No doubt: sex ed is definitely a good swap for religious studies, when the four Jews in the class got shuttled off with Morah Rivka while the rest of Standard 4P stayed behind to pay their respects to the Father Son and Holy Ghost. But other than the occasional subdued bout of boredom, the classes here in general strike me as utter anarchy after Camps Bay Primary. This must be part of living in A Democracy, I reflect. I pity the teachers who are treated so rudely by my peers. "Thanks for sticking it out," I say to one substitute teacher who is obviously swallowing back tears at the close of math class. "It must have been hard, with this bunch." She gapes at me like I have a halo and manages to whimper out a thank-you.
But somehow, despite our best efforts and gutbuckets of good intentions, we are always misfits, my family.
We have to ask for a "glass of water" three times in restaurants before the bemused waitress understands us.
My parents throw around phrases in Yiddish and Afrikaans and South African English slang to such an extent that when I invite a friend to supper—"Huh? You mean dinner?"—I have to actually translate.
Nearly a year after immigrating, we move into a house in a gated community in Woodland Hills. "Will you go with me?" asks my latest crush, as we cavort in the community pool. He is pedaling water, eyes fixed ardently upon mine. "Go where?" I inquire ingenuously, and he splashes away in embarrassment. My astounding good luck dawns on me and I dog-paddle madly after him, crying "Yes! Yes, Carl, yes! Anywhere you want!"
We get packages of money in the mail. It is our own money that the South African government won't let us take out, and that a friend converts into multiple currencies in order not to arouse suspicion. It arrives in fat envelopes, a rainbow of stiff bills: yen, pesos, pounds. Still, despite this incontrovertible evidence of great riches, my parents won't buy us anything but the essentials. I start babysitting for two dollars an hour to fund the bicycle I want. At fifteen I get my first real job, at Hot Dog on a Stick at the Fallbrook mall. I don the colorful tank top and hat with pride, and proceed to fry up corn dogs and "stomp" lemonade with a vengeance. We are mostly teenage girls working there, and invariably we have a small fan-club of hormonal adolescent boys. My biweekly paycheck equals a measure of independence. By this point I'm no longer playing a part—I really do want the clothes, the music, the makeup. And now I have the power to buy whatever I want. From fifteen on I manage my own finances entirely.
My family never assimilates, but I do get better at suppressing the evidence of our difference. I adopt the flat intonations of a Valley accent (like, gag me with a spoon). I try desperately to be cool. In high school, I grow my hair long, discover hair products, get contact lenses, and am nonetheless largely ignored as I hover hopefully at the fringes of the popular crowd with my similarly ambitious friends. Academically I am an overachiever, and not above lording my successes or publicly correcting my teachers (it doesn't take me terribly long to get in the chaotic swing of things in the classroom). A couple of intrepid boys ask me out, but these ventures are short-lived: I am simultaneously bored and dreadfully shy, and far too innocent to hazard the murky provinces beyond kissing. Like most everyone around me—although I fall for their masks, and hope they fall for mine—I am ravaged by insecurities, convinced I am not pretty enough, not cool enough, not good enough. While I do have my small circle of friends, I can't help feeling there must be more to life than nail polish, acid-washed jeans, and boys. Not to put too fine a point upon it, but essentially high school sucks.
Salvation comes in the form of Habonim Dror: a worldwide Socialist Zionist youth movement. Where the counselors collect the campers' candy on the first day and redistribute it at parties. Where every session the junior counselors stage "Revolution" and kick the counselors out for an entire day of jubilant mayhem. Where each Friday we hold Hyde Park and anyone who wants, age eight to Methuselah, can step up on the soapbox to give feedback on any aspect of camp they desire. My parents had been involved in Habonim as youth in South Africa, and they are delighted at this opportunity for our happy indoctrination. In terms of locating Jewish community, we have largely floundered since immigration. Services here often feel like fashion shows; bar and bat mitzvahs in general strike us as absurdly extravagant and ostentatious. I am sixteen, a junior counselor, for my first summer at a Habonim machaneh in rural Pennsylvania, and it feels like nothing less than a generous slice of heaven. My friendships at machaneh are much richer than the thin sustenance I eke out of the arid terrain of my high school. We share ideals! We are building community! United by a cause! And of course when these get old there are still boys, clothes swapping, and clandestine cigarette rendezvous in the wilds beyond the pool.
Finally, I am being presented with a philosophy based on larger issues, on concern for the world, and it is of my own tradition. Judaism, Zionism, Socialism, Social Justice, and Self-Actualization: these are the five pillars of Habonim Dror, and the activities we plan always include one of them as a furtive—or bald-facedly overt—educational goal. "No, Joe, don't you understand? We all win when we pool our M&Ms and share them. That way everyone gets four. Otherwise you only get two and plus you're lonely and nobody will want to share with you the next round." We also learn about the occupation of Palestinian lands, and the vast political divide between orthodox and secular Israeli society. While relatively far on the left of the Israeli political spectrum, Habonim makes no bones about steeping us in the glorious lore of Zionist mythology. I learn about the waves of Jewish settlers working the desert (and deserted) land under a blazing sun, the Eden-like kibbutzim that sprang up within their muscled embrace. Like a mail-order bride, I dutifully fall head over heels in love with an Israel I've never seen. I also join Chug Nashim, the women's group. The two counselors who run it do not shave their legs or underarms, and they counsel us on the evils of media representations of women and on subverting the patriarchy. I am smitten.
At camp, I realize that our society's current modus operandi is not inevitable. I discover that alternatives exist, that these alternatives are beautiful, and that they can be lived. I learn what community means. Like my great-grandfather and my parents before me, I begin to conceive of other possibilities. I return to El Camino Real High School for my senior year ready and armed to just say no. I have stopped shaving my legs—a mere year-and-something after my mother let me start in the first place. I have become militant in my egalitarian employment of gender pronouns. I approach my favorite teacher and ask her to sponsor a new club. And then I launch Womyn Aloud, merrily inviting all and sundry to its first meeting over the PA system—and am completely bowled over by the fallout.
"You're a dyke!" accuses my friend Justin, who later makes halfhearted stabs at initiating a men's club. "No I'm not!" I screech back tearfully. "Not that there's anything wrong with it anyway!" The head of the Student Council tells me I obviously hate men. One teacher accuses me—me!—of being sexist for excluding men. "Men are welcome," I inform him coolly. "You're cordially invited." He regretfully declines. Another teacher tells me I am stirring up trouble for no good reason. They simmer down, however, after a teacher is put on probation when we send a letter to both him and the assistant principal, protesting his repeated harassment of female students.
No, I proclaim with great bravado, to the school, to the Valley, to the mindless narcissistic vacuity of it all. No. My voice loud, this time, and shrill with defiance. No and no and did you hear me? I said NO! Shove it up your ass! At this point I've lost whatever remote chance of fitting in I'd ever had. It is too late to say yes. But I discover, to my wonder, that I have a hardy band of compadres willing to turn no into a chorus.
Today, I still count Womyn Aloud as one of the best things I've been a part of creating. This posse of young women and a couple of brave young men coalesces in a way that blurs the boundary between political action committee and support group. We are honest, sensitive to each other, and unabashedly radical. We celebrate women's right to choose, scoff at supermodels, and study the text of Title IX. We listen quietly as each of us shares our experiences of harassment, abuse, even molestation. And we are not above swooning over John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Womyn Aloud even has a car in the homecoming parade, and I maintain with complete impartiality that by this point our reception is more cheers than heckling.
Habonim Dror had shown me the possibilities of life beyond the Valley, and returning felt about as comfortable as donning a hair shirt. But in this bleached-out terrain of silicone and strip malls, it was Womyn Aloud that helped preserve my sanity. Womyn Aloud showed me, often painfully, the consequences of saying no. But it also showed me that I could survive the fallout, that ultimately it made me stronger. And most importantly, that saying no out loud fortified others who were muttering it under their breath. Four years later, when I was a senior at U.C. Berkeley, a girl approached me on campus and asked if I had gone to El Camino Real High School. "You're the one who started Womyn Aloud, aren't you?" she asked, and I nodded, amazed. "I was a freshman at the time," she told me. "All I knew was that the world was a mess and everyone was trying to pretend like it wasn't. But Fridays at lunchtime I could speak my mind, and listen to other women speak theirs." She thanked me and told me that the club was still active and had grown. I stood there as she walked away, tears prickling, marveling over it all—it seemed like such a small effort in the scheme of things, but it continued to ripple out in ways I hadn't imagined. Womyn Aloud taught me that I could not just choose, but could actually build an alternative.
Not that I wasn't hell-bent on getting out of the Valley.