thought that I hated my mother, but she is nothing. She doesn’t even deserve hate. She doesn’t even deserve pity. She is a woman of the past, the worst kind of subservient swine. She simpers. She actually simpers.
It is my father that I hate. That horrible man. He comes sweeping back into our lives, and begins by making ultimatums, uprooting us from our home. Can you imagine? The sheer balls of that man. Yes, balls! That is what Mr. George says. “Balls!” I know what it means, too. It’s a private part that men have. And everything about a man is a horrible swear word by default! That’s what I say.
All of my respect for my mother has gone with the return of my father. She is nothing and he is Satan. We are to start for the Coast next Tuesday. I believe with all my heart that he will burn in Hell for this. I have no misconceptions. I know the story that Mother tells about his disappearance, but what is it, actually, except her story? I fully expect that he simply ran off with another woman, and she was too much of a fool to suffer this kind of insult. I bet that in her secret heart, she would be much happier if he had turned up as a skeleton washed ashore on Long Island. A dead father can have all sorts of great character traits that a live father lacks. Here’s another word I learned: bastard! The man is a bastard if anyone has the right to such a term.
I am not meant for men. Men are the ill that plagues our world. All of the girls in my class are busy planning their weddings. They are fools. May they die in their wedding beds! That’s what a wedding bed is—death! And I want to live!
There is only one consolation for me: Nanette. She is not interested in men or boys, weddings or fashions. She does not care if the womanly long skirt will be shortened for the season!
Nanette has been with me always, and she is my savior. I truly believe that without her, I would long ago have slit my wrists and watched, grateful, as the red blood seared hot bathwater in rivulets of fire. Even now, sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and go down to the kitchen. I sit there, with a glass of warm milk that I do not intend to drink (but that is cover for me if someone should wake and find me there). I stare into the gas oven and imagine what it would be like to turn on the gas and extinguish the pilot light—so simple and such a womanly endeavor, to extinguish the light on a stove—and to stick my head inside that dark cavern, encrusted with the food that women are entrusted to prepare, the food that gives us life.
Women are the givers of life: those that create, bear, and raise children; those that run the household, prepare the food, and give comfort and cure to the sick. What are men for? Doctors merely make comment on the natural healing of women. Politicians create problems to solve them; businessmen create monies in order to make them! They are one step removed from the truths of life. If it weren’t for the need of sperm (yes, I know all kinds of medical terms that my parents would blush at!) we would not need men at all.
Nor do I need men! I have no use for sperm, or pregnancy. I have Nanette and all of the truths that she teaches me through her inspiration. And particularly, I do not need my father, who asserts his (unnecessary) masculinity through ordering us out of our home and across the coast. I would not be surprised to learn that this whole determination is created through his desire to escape persecution for some ungodly crime committed during his absence. After all, aren’t men the particular criminals of society? Lizzy Borden is talked of so often on the playgrounds that one becomes sick of her name, but how many men have taken an axe or knife or gun to their loved ones, and yet escaped infamy?
I could so easily take an axe to my father, and I bet that I would have the good sense not even to be suspected. All men should die at the hands of gentle womanhood, not even suspecting. The fools.
I know what I shall really do, though. There is not even a need for a bloody axe. I will be a rich and famous medium, richer than any man, and more powerful too! After all, don’t presidents and senators have loved ones who died? They will all listen to me, and I will become the most powerful person in the world.
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