The Furious Spinner

It's raining out. Or is that the sound of Mario typing upstairs? Not sure. Although it is dark outside, I can see the clouds dropping into the gorge, blocking my view of the snow-covered cliffs across the river. I'm making dinner, doing the laundry, and writing this post. Quinoa and peas with sauteed vegetables. All organic, of course. Used to be I wouldn't let anyone ever see me cooking or doing laundry or anything domestic without me first explaining to them that Mario did most of the cooking and at least half of the chores. I was afraid someone would think I was a stereotypical wife. Isn't that funny?

I was a pioneer for women's rights, so I was going to shake everyone up. Sometimes I just confused people. My goddess-child thought Mario and I were brother and sister for a couple of years. Because we didn't have children and Mario cooked, she couldn't wrap her little mind around our coupledom. (Then there was the two-year-old girl who was very confused because milk didn't come from my breasts. Not that I told her this, mind you. Her mother did when the girl asked her. So when I came over to visit, she wanted me to discuss this disconcerting fact to her. How come I didn't have milk in my breasts. Because I didn't have a baby, I tried to explain. Why? Because...just because. See. I would have made a good parent after all.)

It's all about image. I didn't want my image to be "housewife," since I wasn't one. My name was different from Mario's, and for the first few years of our marriage, I would lecture anyone who called me Mrs. Milosevic—sales people, telephone operators. I wasn't attached to my husband and women in other countries don't necessarily take their husband's last name, I’d blather on. People also called me Mrs. Antieau which made me shudder. That was my grandmother's name. Many years into my marriage, I realized I could not change an entire culture. No matter what last name I had, if I was married, people assumed my name was my husband's name. So now when someone calls and asks for Mrs. Milosevic I calmly say, "I'm married to Mario. Can I help you with something?" I know my "image" has nothing to do with how these strangers perceive me.

Tonight we watched a movie with Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon. It wasn't very good. It would have been better if they had been together on the screen for more than about five minutes during the entire movie. So my mind drifted as we watched. Mario said, "He's not the American Gigolo any more." I said, "Yes, he's looking a little older. Ain't we all." I remembered being a teaching assistant at Eastern Michigan University while I was getting my master's degree. I ended up sharing an office with Dr. Marshall Tymn, who had been on of my professors. He wanted someone who didn’t smoke—yet he smoked. I said, "Marshall, this is a nonsmoking office. Why did you say you wanted a nonsmoker?" "Because I thought that would keep me from smoking," he said as he lit up.

Probably to annoy Marshall more than anything else, I taped a picture of Richard Gere from American Gigolo up on the wall near my desk. Very unprofessional, I know. I hope I didn't keep it up there for very long; I don't remember. I do remember Marshall practically squirmed every time he looked at it, and he kept trying to convince me to take it down. I just laughed. He said it wasn't very appropriate. He was right, of course. But he was often very inappropriate, and I never let him get away with it. When he said something sexist or stupid, I let him know. He never got offended or angry. He knew he was being an asshole.

Marshall was not the darling for the English department. He had gotten his doctorate in pop culture, or something along those lines, and that didn't sit well with the literati. Once, he asked me to nominate him for ‘teacher of the year’ at EMU. Marshall was aware that he didn't have the best image in the department, and he thought winning awards and getting published was something the department cared about. He always seemed frantic to me, frantic to be taken seriously, to be respected. To achieve.

I talked with a couple of the professors in the department about this request because I wasn’t sure what to do. One of them pleaded with me not to nominate Marshall. He said it would be a slap in the face to all the other people who had been nominated now, in the past, and in the future. I didn't think Marshall had been a great teacher, but he wasn't terrible. He was the kind of professor who rattled off lots of facts, then tested students on those facts. After some thought, I decided I couldn't nominate him. Telling him that I couldn't do it was very hard—because I told him why. When I told him, he looked away from me and down at his desk. His face kind of contorted, as though I had slapped him, even though I had tried to be gentle. I regretted my decision immediately. I've always regretted it. It wasn't a brave thing to turn him down; it wasn't the right thing. It was an unkind thing. Later he got another student to recommend him. I can't remember if he won or not. I do remember another professor in the department who was respected won a year or two later, and this professor believed there were no great 20th century women poets.

Marshall's wife Darlene was brilliant and beautiful, and he knew it. He loved her and his children very much, and he appeared to be more calm around them. Yet he often seemed lonely. Sometimes I would go out to a movie or dinner with him. One of the movies we saw together was Meteor. It was so stupid I think I laughed all the way through it. I went with Marshall to England (with a class); it was there that I met writer Russell Bates who urged me to apply to the Clarion Writing Workshop, which I did, the following year. Marshall Tymn gave me a letter of recommendation. I met Mario at Clarion.

Marshall and Darlene let Mario and I live in their house the next summer when they went to Europe again. We had our wedding "shower" in the house, where now a bunch of Clarionites who were attending our wedding also stayed. On our wedding night, Mario and I slept in Marshall and Darlene's bedroom, as usual, and listened in the darkness to our friends laughing and talking downstairs. When Marshall returned, he was annoyed that we had let the grass on the side of the house die. We went from his house to another professor's house, where we housesat for a few more weeks before we got our first apartment together. I don't remember if I ever saw Marshall after that.

Over a decade ago, a friend of mine from EMU called to tell me that Marshall had been in a car accident. Someone had run into Marshall's car after failing to stop at a red light or stop sign. Marshall sustained a brain injury. His brilliant mind was crumpled. His short term memory was shot. He would never be able to care for himself again.

I think of Marshall often. I wonder what he sees in the mirror. Does he know who he is? If I sent him a picture of Richard Gere, would he remember a photo of a younger Gere taped to his office wall? I hope before it all got bad—before he forgot it all—that he was able to look in the mirror and like what he saw.

I don’t like getting my photograph taken any more. Haven’t for years. I look at the pictures when they come back and I don’t see myself. I wonder who that person is. She looks so old and sick and unhappy. The photographs don’t reflect the person I would like to be. Perhaps they reflect the person I am. Who knows? It's just an image, and image don't mean nothin'!

Which is easy for me to say. In truth, how someone sees us often determines how that person treats us. People have preconceived notions about who someone is based on their clothes, for instance. I try not to stereotype someone based on appearances, but I'm sure I do it sometimes, too.

The "girl blogger" talks about election day in Iraq—and appearances. She writes: "I literally had chills going up and down my spine as I watched Abdul Aziz Al Hakeem of Iranian-inclined SCIRI dropping his ballot into a box. Behind him, giving moral support and her vote, was what I can only guess to be his wife. She was shrouded literally from head to foot and only her eyes peeped out of the endless sea of black. She stuffed her ballot in the box with black-gloved hands and submissively followed a very confident Hakeem."

She talks about going to a ministry building to find out some information: “'Please dress appropriately next time you come here.'” The man said to me. I looked down at what I was wearing- black pants, a beige high-necked sweater and a knee-length black coat. Huh? I blushed furiously. He meant my head should be covered and I should be wearing a skirt. I don’t like being told what to wear and what not to wear by strange men. “''I don’t work here- I don’t have to follow a dress code.'” I answered coldly. The cousin didn’t like where the conversation was going, he angrily interceded, “'We’re only here for an hour and it really isn’t your business.'” “'It is my business.'” Came the answer, “'She should have some respect for the people who work here.'”....No one could talk that way before the war and if they did, you didn’t have to listen. You could answer back. Now, you only answer back and make it an issue if you have some sort of death wish or just really, really like trouble....The problem with defiance is that it doesn’t just involve you personally, it involves anyone with you at that moment- usually a male relative. It means that there might be an exchange of ugly words or a fight and probably, after that, a detention in Abu Ghraib."

In Iraq and many countries around the planet, image does matter—appearances matter. If a woman isn't acting or dressing the way the dominant culture thinks she should act or dress she could be harmed. I think I'm changing my mind as I write this. I think that the next time someone calls me Mrs. Milosevic (or Mrs. Antieau) I might just give them a little lecture. In this country, so far, I can have my own name because I am my own person, not the property of my husband or anyone else. I wish that kind of freedom to all women. No matter how others see us, we need to see ourselves as free and autonomous.

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