JULY 1972
In the Harrisons' family room, my daughter Daisy and her new friend Toby stood on their heads, legs propped against the wall, bare toes pointing to the ceiling. Daisy's T-shirt had slipped down, exposing her 9-year-old torso.
Toby's mother, Flip, stood on her head, too. Flip's dark braid curled next to her like a pet, and her tanned legs waved a little. It was raining hard, and I'd expected to find Daisy and Toby playing cards, not standing on their heads. But we'd only just moved to Charlottesville. I didn't know much about Flip, except that she was a resident's wife, like me, and that she'd been kind enough to take Daisy for the afternoon.
“Hello, Prue,” Flip said, in a strained voice. Her arms formed right angles, supporting her body. “How's the unpacking?”
“Oh, coming along.” I didn't mention that I'd watched 3-year-old Mackie climb in and out of boxes instead of organizing the kitchen.
Two days before, the movers had unloaded our furniture into our new front yard. The couch's gold-flowered upholstery looked frayed and faded, and our Ethan Allen dining set had lost its finish. But the Harrisons' family room, with its white walls, blond-wood chairs and vivid fuchsia throw pillows, seemed airy and modern. Now I wished that the moving men had delivered our tired Colonial furniture to some other family.
“So your husband—Jack, right?—how far along is he with psychiatry?” I asked.
Flip was right-side-up and tugging at her shorts; a line of sweat darkened her tank top. “Right, one more year, and then the quest for the job. Or maybe I'll do the questing. Who knows?”
Frank had just started his neurosurgery fellowship, but we hadn't talked much about where we'd end up, the job quest. Med school, residency, too many call nights, not enough money: that was our life; seemed like it would always be that way.
“Mom, look!” Daisy stood next to me now. “I can do a tripod. Flip showed us how.”
“It's Mrs. Harrison, Daisy,” I corrected her, but Daisy squatted, tucking her head in like a turtle. She propped her legs on her elbows, balancing, then flopping over.
“I practice my yoga when I can,” Flip said. “Toby and Jack will practice with me if I beg, but Daisy seems like a natural.” She turned toward the kitchen. “Come with me. I've got some friendship bread for you.” This was a kind of sourdough, I learned; she kept the starter in a jar in the fridge.
***
Lately Daisy asked so many questions. I had her read her favorite columns, “Hints from Heloise” and “Dear Abby,” out loud, but even then she wondered why the sad grandma wouldn't get out of bed, or whether anyone would really use pickle juice to deodorize their kitchen sink.
So I was glad Daisy had someone to play with. On the other hand, I didn't know what to make of the Harrisons. Toby seemed sweet, and he let Daisy boss him around. But the second time Daisy came home from the Harrisons', she asked whether we had a guru.
“A guru! Why?”
“Flip and Jack have a guru,” Daisy said. “And Toby's going to meet him this summer. But what is a guru?”
I thought of the Beatles before their breakup, sitting cross-legged and dreamy, listening to an almost-naked man. Gurus were for hippies and rock bands. “A guru is a kind of teacher, I guess,” though that didn't sound quite right.
“I think we should get one,” Daisy said, before she pushed through the kitchen's swinging doors and out into the hot backyard.
***
“Mom, can I go over to Toby's?” Daisy asked.
I was frying chicken, and I'd burned the back of my hand. My “no” came out too sharp.
Frank was pouring himself a post-call, post-nap Scotch; his hair still stood up in back. “Prue?” he said.
“Sorry, Daisy.” I tried for a less shrewish tone. “Too close to supper, and you're over there too much.”
Daisy blew through the swinging doors, and stomped out to the backyard.
“What's the problem with Toby, Prue?” Frank ran his hands through his wild hair.
“Nothing! Daisy and Toby get along just fine.” I poured the grease into an empty can. “It's Flip and Jack. I mean, who has a guru? And the yoga. It's just” the right word wouldn't come “suggestive.”
“Suggestive of what? The Bhagavad Gita? An opium den?”
“I don't know, Frank. We just don't know what else might go on over there.”
“Guru, yoga,” he said, singsong, approximating an Indian accent. Frank moved out of the kitchen, little Mackie tugging him toward the backyard and Daisy. “Why don't we have the Harrisons over and let them tell us about their guru?” he said.
***
I'd assumed that Flip wouldn't mix with house-staff wives, and yet here she was, filling out nametags at the welcome-back meeting. Today she wore a halter top, and her hair was in schoolgirl braids.
From our folding chairs, we listened to Mimi Huggins describe the associates' get-togethers. “We've got some lively groups here,” she said. “Decoupage, Bible study and, not least, stitch-n-bitch.” She gazed around the room like she'd made a joke, and we all laughed at the risqué name. I looked around, too, and saw the usual mom-wear: halter dresses, short skirts. Flip wasn't so different, was she?
Then Flip spoke up: “I was wondering. What about a consciousness-raising group?”
“Consciousness-raising?” Mimi repeated, peering down at Flip, contemplating the braids, maybe.
“We'd have to get a lot of mirrors,” another woman, Janie Anderson, said. “That was a joke.” She said that in New York City meetings, women used little mirrors to see what their vaginas looked like.
“Or what about a gourmet cooking class?” Mimi Huggins said, but her words got lost in the exclaiming over who would, and who wouldn't, want to see what things looked like down there.
***
I wasn't sure about Flip's consciousness-raising meeting. What was I unconscious about, anyway? But if I asked Frank what he thought, he'd just laugh, like he had about the yoga and the guru; and if I asked Flip, she'd look at me intently, like I wasn't bright enough.
So I said only that yes, I'd be there, and that yes, Daisy could help Toby pass out snacks during the meeting, as long as she and Toby played outside once the talking started.
On the sticky afternoon of the meeting, one of those white-sky days, we crossed the street, me with my doubts and a pan of brownies, and Daisy in her LOVE dress and white sandals, chattering about the astronaut game she and Toby had played.
Flip shooed me into the family room and handed Daisy a platter of cheese and crackers to pass. The fuchsia pillows formed a circle on the floor, and from the stereo, Carole King crooned about her unraveling tapestry. Carole King seemed like the kind of woman who'd go to consciousness-raising sessions. But a guru? No, she didn't have a guru, I decided.
“Let's take off our shoes,” Flip said, so we did, lining them up along the same wall where Daisy and Toby had done their headstands. We sank onto the pillows, and Janie Anderson giggled.
“Some of us are feeling uncomfortable,” Flip said. “Let's just talk about whatever's on our minds. Prue. What's on your mind?”
“Well.” I could think of nothing substantial. “I need to get the couch reupholstered, if I can find some inexpensive fabric—”
“That is what we've got to break out of.” Flip leaned back on her pillow. “There's more to us than furnishing our husbands' homes and caring for their children.”
“I'm tired,” Janie Anderson said. “Tired of being a resident's wife, tired of my kids—”
“We aren't just cooks and maids, someone's wife, someone's mother,” Flip said. “We have to find out who we are.”
“Someone's got to be the mother, Flip,” I said. “Also, I like doing what I do.” But was that true? I was eager for Daisy to go back to school, for Mackie to start nursery school, but for what? To get the laundry done in peace? Maybe I shouldn't raise my consciousness; I'd just be irritable all the time.
I got up. “I've got to run and pick up Mackie from the sitter's,” I said. And I was home before I heard any more, and before I remembered that Daisy was still over there.
***
When Daisy came home, her face was flushed and sweaty, and her LOVE dress was spotted with purple stains. “We were playing spies, and we had to climb in the mulberry tree,” Daisy said, expecting me to chide her. “Oh, Flip gave me a book for helping.” She held it out: Swami's Suggestions for a Happy Life. Inside were Swami Sivanandu's thoughts on kindness, scholarship and respect for Earth's creatures, laid out like Bible verses. “Swami travels the world, but makes his home in India,” it said. “He loves the world's children.”
Swami's aphorisms might as well have come from Jesus. And I couldn't argue with Daisy climbing in the mulberry tree, though those stains were there to stay. “Go change out of your dress, Daisy,” I said, as I flipped through the little book.
But that night, as we backed out of the Pizza Chef parking lot, Daisy said, “Mom, I have to tell you something.”
She let her arm trail out the window, and I leaned over and locked her door–something I did when she was little and I worried she'd fall out–and then smoothed her hair, the straight, light-brown hair that flopped into her eyes. Maybe she'd found out that the Swami advocated smoking pot, or free love. “What is it, Sweetie?”
“You know how Toby and I were spies today? Spying was Toby's idea.”
“You don't have to do everything that Toby does, Daisy.”
“I know that, Mom,” she said, irritated at my interruption. “We spied on the ladies' meeting. Flip said we could go outside, and we were in Toby's tree, so no one could see us. It looked like they were playing doctor, in Toby's parents' bedroom. Then they closed the curtains, and Toby got mad and pushed me. That's why I ran home.”
How could I tell her that what the women had done was any different than when she'd stripped off her clothes and played doctor with another girl when she was 5? I'd yanked her arm too roughly that day, though I'd been worried more about the other girl's mother, what she might think, than about Daisy.
“Daisy, I can't explain what they were doing. But it wasn't meant for you to see, Sweetie.” I pulled her across the bench seat, and put an arm around her. Jesus. What would I say to Flip now?
***
Flip was drying the supper dishes when I walked in. The kitchen had an earthy smell tonight, beans or lentils, along with baking bread.
“You OK, Prue?” She stooped to slide a pot back into a cabinet. “Daisy did a wonderful job. Have a seat.”
“I'm not OK,” I began. My heart pounded, and my hands felt cold. “Flip, you had kids here,” I said, too loud. “What kind of lesson is that for them?”
She stood up, leaned against a counter. “What—that was private, and Toby and Daisy were outside.” She looked out the kitchen window to the dark backyard. “They couldn't have seen anything, not that it's anything they haven't seen before.”
“Well, Daisy saw grown women playing doctor,” I said. Now my voice sounded shrill.
“Playing doctor!” Flip seemed to gather herself up then. “Nudity is natural, Prue. We've got to stop feeling ashamed of our bodies. We're glorious creatures, and we need to see it for ourselves.”
How did she make strange things sound so normal? I wondered.
Flip leaned toward the pass-through window to the family room. “This is why I have to get out of here, Jack!” she yelled.
Then she turned to me. “Don't get me wrong, Prue, I like you, and I really enjoy Daisy, but there's just too much repression around Charlottesville, and you seem trapped in it.” Then back to Jack, who stood in the doorway, rubbing at his beard with one hand and waving hello to me with the other. “Jack, I'm really going to have to go,” she said.
***
Two days later, Toby was at our house, playing with Daisy as if Flip's and my confrontation had never happened. Daisy and Toby sat on the front steps, snapping green beans for me. Mackie was napping, and I went from room to room, straightening. When I heard Daisy and Toby through the window, I sank onto the couch and listened. “It's kind of like church.”
“Well, but what about school?” Daisy said.
“I'd go to school right there. There are lots of kids.”
“Is the ashram a house?” Daisy asked.
“There's one big round building, and a bunch of smaller ones around it.” I could see that Toby was describing the place with his hands. “Some people live in tents.” “So, it's like a camp. Yeah, and there's a big garden, too. Lots of sunflowers. That's where we go to get our pumpkins every fall.”
“Oh,” Daisy said. Her voice was quiet. “But I don't want you to leave.”
Toby kept on. “My mom keeps talking about this heavy suitcase she's dragging around, and that it's time for us to go live at the ashram. My dad will stay here and work. I don't know about that suitcase, though.”
Then Mackie was up from his nap, and Daisy and Toby had finished the green beans.
***
I sat at Flip's table, waiting for her to finish talking on the phone. I was doing this for Daisy, I thought; she'd cried after Toby had gone home. “Toby's going to live in the ashram with Flip,” she'd said. “My only friend in Charlottesville,” she'd wailed as I'd handed her a glass of water. “Why did we have to move here, and why does Toby have to leave!”
Now Flip hung up the phone. “What, Prue?” she said, her voice flat.
Many things–the smell of Flip's bread, Toby's description of the ashram, Daisy's outburst–went through my mind, but only this came out: “Could you show me some of that yoga? Nothing too strenuous, though. No headstands.” I tried to smile. “Something for beginners.”
“Well.” She put her hands on her hips. She seemed to be pondering me. “Why not.”
“Just breathe for a minute,” she said. Then she angled her body, sinking onto one leg and stretching the other out behind. Her arms reached toward the ceiling.
“Warrior One, Prue,” she said.
When I put my arms up, I wobbled like a toddler. She reached out, steadied me. “There you go,” she said. “Warrior One.”
—SARAH MCCRAW CROW, MA '88, is a writer in Canterbury, N.H.
