Your Daughters

David always answers the door, just as he’s always the first to grab for the telephone when it rings. He stands at the door, widely grinning, nods amiably at the inevitable spiel and when they run down like an overplayed record, extends the money. David, in his way, is helping the unfortunates of our society - or so he often solemnly declares.

I was glad to have him take over my role of reluctant lady bountiful because I dread those calls. At first they used to ask to see “the lady of the house” but I told him to say “my mother’s no lady - tell ME” and although many are likely taken aback, at the very least bemused, they’re polite and carefully explain what they’re campaigning for. Ironic really, to be met at the door by one whom society pities as yet another type of ‘unfortunate’.

Fortunately, David doesn’t know that - yet. He feels he is taking his place as a responsible member of this community. I don’t like to conform myself, but David, like his father, is very socially conservative.

Which makes for some very interesting conversations around the dinner table where many of our discussions take place. So the boys are exposed to opposite sides of any social or political conflict, as it were. And though we’re spirited in defending our views, we don’t try to foist them on each other, or on the boys. Although just recently, from sheer exasperation, Cliff said “Donna, you’re beginning to sound like your brother, a raving lunatic“, when I ventured a certain opinion critical of a recent government initiative.

“Anarchist”, I repeated firmly. I like the ring of the word. I’m no Red Emma, just a hausfrau who dislikes most of the obligations society burdens us with for the sake of propriety - observation of ritualistic ‘norms’. I have no intention of inciting my boys to riot, yet would like to teach them that there is nothing wrong with civil disobedience under certain circumstances. Nothing wrong with questioning the questionable. Alas, they don’t understand, perhaps don’t choose to - they’re too young, and the only disobedience incurred here is in relation to my homely little dictums like “take out the trash”, “cut the grass”, “wash the windows”, and zoom! Everyone disappears when minutes before no amount of gentle persuasion could entice them out of the house to enjoy the benefits of fresh air, sunshine, exercise and all that other good stuff mothers are supposed to be concerned about. Pity David isn’t as quick as Robbie and Denis, as he gets left holding the bag - rather the trash, the lawnmower, the Windex.

But on that particular occasion, the boys sat there bug-eyed until Robbie said “Gee mom, anarchists are dangerous loonies, they get zapped, like Sacco and Venzetti”. I swung on him in astonishment. “How’d you ever hear about them?” I asked, never having heard him offer anything outside sports-related trivia before. “Social history”, he mumbled, stabbing his meat and proceeding to cut it so vigorously the rest of us had to stabilize the table until Cliff hissed at him.

“Well, not all anarchists are violent, there’s something called passive resistance” I told him, them, defensively. “And the educational system is so backward they don’t teach you THAT. They’re probably still teaching about how savage the natives of Canada were - subhuman inhabitants of a land that belonged by right of destiny to whites who herded the savages onto undesirable land, paid them a joking pittance to stay there, diseased them with apathy and alcohol and now point at the meagre, sorry remnants and say ‘Ha! We told you so!”

“Now just a minute …” Cliff began, but I don’t like to be interrupted.

“AND THEY DO THE SAME WITH THE REST OF US TOO, only we’re too stupid to notice”, I overrode his objection and he settled back, knowing from long experience how useless it is to try to interrupt me. “ … all of us unsuspecting fools are herded onto urban reservations to become fodder for commerce”. I glared at him. “We’re subservient to the whims of a handful of political egotists stifling individuality and initiative with an insidious long-term program of depersonalization. We all conform to the consumer norm, cheer the banners of national pride and boost the gross national product - and the national product is GROSS!”

Robbie giggled nervously. Cliff regarded me with that concerned look a parent often bestows on a naughty child.

David though, David was loyal, undemanding, ready to appreciate. He regarded me with admiration. He knew he could never get HIS tongue around such a mouthful and he repeated lovingly, “Mom’s an aynarkist”.

“You said it!” Denis whooped, splattering mashed potato around the table.

“You’ve learned a new word, but let’s keep it in the family”, Cliff advised. I’ll tell you how conservative he is, he’s a chartered accountant and you can’t get any more strictured than that, can you?

Disagreements are surface though, in our family. When it comes to the things that matter, we’re all agreed, relaxed and reasonably content.

I was, I am, a nurse, though I haven’t worked for a while. Most people seem to think that nurses should know better, that, like doctors, they have the answers, about health and sickness, that kind of thing. Well, tain’t necessarily so. Starting a family late in life, the risks are greater. My mother once ventured the opinion that the wrong genetic material came from Cliff’s side, but I put a damper on that.

We try to keep him busy, give him learning opportunities, interest him in solitary-type activities, especially now that he’s getting older. Fifteen last month.

“It’s hard on him”, Cliff said. “I mean, I explained as much as I could and he says he understands but he doesn’t even have the normal outlet of a boy his age, mingling with girls, talking with them under normally developing circumstances.”

I won’t tell him, I decide, that some woman up the street, newly moved in, knocked at the door a few weeks ago, asked me to keep ‘that boy’ at home, ‘please’. I felt my face tighten, but smiled, asked why.

“He keeps calling”, she said, obviously embarrassed.

“Oh?”

“At my house”, she explained. “Asking for my daughter.”

“Does he know her?”

“He walked into our backyard one evening, just walked in, introduced himself. Said he hoped we’d like living here. It was very NICE of him and we didn’t know how to discourage him. He made himself comfortable, chatting with me and my husband. Our daughter was playing with the cat and this boy, oh, I am sorry - your son - said he wanted to take her out.”

“Oh, did he?

“Yes. Well, of course we said she’s too young. He said she’s going to kiss me, probably marry me, too.”

“Oh dear!”

“Exactly!” Look, I realize he’s uh, special, and we’d like to be understanding, but what guarantee have we … Look, I’m sorry, we just don’t want him around.”

The confused look on his face when I spoke to him. He explained he doesn’t like the girls who attend special education classes with him. They have, he says, “funny faces - fat, Mom”. My funny, fat-faced boy.

On our right lives Mrs. Wright, who is convinced she is. Soon after we moved to this house she approached me as the self-appointed ‘representative of neighbourhood concern’.

“She’s worried about us, Cliff, feels we should take steps to ‘protect’ ourselves from ‘a troubling future’”, I told him, afterward. “Said we should give serious thought to institutionalizing him. In her words: “best for him, for you, for the rest of us”.

David knew the woman didn’t like him, so he stayed away from her property. When Cliff told him never to trespass, even accidentally cutting across lawns, not even to smile - for David has a smile even for her - David understood.

She doesn’t see him as quite human. “He leers”, she’d said. Calmly at first, I’d corrected her: “he smiles”. Useless, there was no point. We must be dreadful people for God to have punished us with this living blemish. As some people see blacks or Orientals as depersonalized ‘looking all the same’ so does she see our David as a leering moonface, better locked away in shame and fear.

I try not to think too much about how often he walks down to the municipal swimming pool and stands there, watching the other kids having a great time. I came across him there once, just passing by, and saw him leaning on the wire fence surrounding the pool, his face immersed in his old dreamy look, his hands firmly locked above his head, on the wire.

But he gets restless. Sometimes when you think problems have been solved, they haven’t been, not at all. They’re just submerged and they’ll re-surface, sooner or late. We were just kidding ourselves thinking his sexuality could be kept on a back burner. If it’s not natural for any other boy, why should it be for him? He’s taken to cutting the sleeves off tee shirts, like some of the other boys around, to show off the muscles in his shoulders. He’s a well developed boy; stocky, musclebound. Let me tell you, he’s so healthy that he’s never had to have anything done to his teeth, not even a filling. The dentist says it’s unheard-of. Funny, he survived a precarious babyhood, several heart operations, continuous susceptibility to attacks of pneumonia, and now he’s a lovely physical specimen.

It didn’t work though. All that show of muscle and not one nibble from any girl. Naturally. I’ve tried to imagine just what might be going through his head. It’s not possible, of course, even Cliff can’t guess. Correct that; we can surmise and it doesn’t make us anything but uneasy. We catch him occasionally, observing his reflection in the mirrors around the house, pushing out his chest, fisting his hands to make his biceps bulge.

“You’re stuck on yourself!” Denis giggles and ducks to avoid David’s good-natured slap.

Then one day Robbie and Denis spoke to us, said we had to do something about David. “Jeez, we’re the laughing stock of the neighbourhood. He’s going around telling all the girls he’s going to marry them! They scream and run away and he goes on to the next one. What’s he expect? That some girl’s gonna want to go out with him? ‘s he have to act like a freak as well as look like one?”

They were as stunned afterward as we were. His own brothers. They said they were sorry, even cried. It was pressure; wanting to be accepted does that to people. That’s why I’d rather not present as an accredited member of society. But I haven’t been able to imbue the boys with that distance; they want acceptance.

Later, Cliff proposed what he said was a solution. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Clinton about it, he suggested it as a solution. They’re doing that now. Vasectomies for boys, sterilization for girls.” It wasn’t easy for him.

“It’s immoral, do they even ask the kids? Do they explain? Can they make them understand? It smacks of Nazi-ideology race purification !”

“Don’t be unreasonable, Donna, please. Let’s not have a lesson in sociology or politics this time. This is a problem we have to deal with on a personal level, without rhetoric or histrionics.”

“Cliff, what about the fact that these kids have low sperm counts - it’s true, I should know.”

“Yes, Dr. Clinton told me. Nature’s way of inhibiting reproduction of an inferior product”, he said bitterly.

“There’s NOTHING inferior about David. Cliff, what’s the point? A vasectomy will do nothing to diminish his sex drive.”

I’d always half-seriously considered David my innocent metaphor, my response to society hung up on facile social convention. Docile clones. It appears the fuse of my metaphor is burning a short wick.