CLAIMING YOUR PEOPLE: THINK BIG

(Maggie Jochild and daughter, August 1977, Denton, Texas; photo by Mary Austin)

In August of 1977, I was hovering on the brink of major life changes. Since the spring, I had been carried along on a current against my will: My partner of five years left me overnight, brutally, for a woman who had been a family friend, taking our daughter with her. I dropped out of college on the verge of graduation and was rescued from suicide (both direct and indirect means) by my mother and my friends. I was desperate for a solid place to stand as I began my 22nd year.


Out of the floodwaters, a few things emerged as handholds. One is that I wrote Alix Dobkin, at the address on the back of her album, ostensibly a fan letter but it rapidly shifted into a plea for help. True to the ethic of sisterhood, Alix wrote me back right away, a personal letter full of encouragement and advice. She was a superstar in my world, and her caring had a profound effect. I kept her Living with Lesbians album propped up on my dresser, a photo of possibility.


As a result, I wrote to two different lesbian land collectives asking if they would be willing to accept me as a new member. One was RedBird in Burlingon, Vermont; the other was The Wimmin's House in Durango, Colorado. Both wrote me back saying I could come give it a try, see if it worked out.

I was more drawn to RedBird -- it seemed a more radical change, and, I'll be honest, I was very attracted to the fact that their letter was on bright red paper. (It was a novelty in those days.) Plus, Vermont was in the same general region as where Alix, Liza and their kind of dykes were also "living in the country". But I had a bit of a personal connection to Durango: I knew one of the women there, briefly, from shared political action in the Kitty Genovese Project, and my best friend Jean had lived with these women in Durango one summer a year or two earlier. In addition, if my ex ever relented in her obstruction at my seeing our daughter again, getting back to North Texas from Colorado would be much easier.

Years later in San Francisco I wound up living intimately with someone from Burlington and came to know almost all of the women from RedBird. That collective would have eaten me alive. It's a stroke of luck that I went elsewhere.

As I was trying to emerge from my stunned state and make a decision, one of the women from Durango, Mary Szczepanski, decided to come check me out for herself. Working class, from a Polish Catholic background in Buffalo, New York, she suggested we take a trip together: A ten-day trek into Mexico, where she'd longed to visit and was close to Texas. Without knowing her, I accepted.

We each had studied Spanish in high school and college but were not conversationally fluent. We decided that once we crossed the border, we would not speak any English with each other until we were back in Texas. We had a shoestring budget -- in the end, the entire trip cost me $75, of which $15 was the Sanborn's insurance fee and another $10 was a bribe to a cop in Mexico City -- so we planned to camp out and mostly make our own meals.

Looking back on it, I can only conclude it was my lack of self that made me able to embark on such a challenging adventure. Mary was, in essence, interviewing me for a place in her household, and the divide between us wasn't just that I was several years younger than her, I was also politically naive to the point where I didn't comprehend my own class background. But all this exploration had to take place in Spanish.

We became fluent. Rapidly. After four days, I woke up one morning and realized all my dreams of the night before had been in Spanish. I began writing lines of poetry and haiku in Spanish. The exposure to another language -- not just exposure, but immersion -- gave me a doorway out of the emotional constraints that were choking me.

The third and final breakthrough happened right after I returned from Mexico. I went to the second Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and discovered my compleat identity as a woman. I cut off my hair, I went naked in public, I learned ideas by the fistful, I changed my last name to Jochild (a matronymic) and I came back courageous. As in, with a new heart. I announced I was moving to Durango, and by Labor Day, I was there.

It's only recently that I've linked this series of events and its connection to Spanish with another period in my life. When I was 12 and beginning junior high, we were so poor that I had no hope of new clothes in which to begin the school year. My mother pulled a bolt of blue-and-white gingham from her unused fabric pile, very old-fashioned stuff, and made me a dress from an old pattern. I had to wear it three days a week, the other two days wearing one of last year's dresses that was really too tight on me. By the end of the first week, my public humiliation was absolute.

In that South Texas town was a rigid race hierarchy, silently enforced at school by rules which made speaking Spanish on school property grounds for expulsion. Only perhaps 25% of the population was white, but they controlled the local government and the schools. My family was at the rock bottom of the white pecking order, but we were still a paradigm above all the Latino/a inhabitants.

But my second week of junior high, I tossed my white privilege. When I got to school before they opened the doors to let us in, instead of joining the small cluster of "Anglo" girls in their spot, I walked by everyone to the group of Chicanas who hung out by the back entrance -- the girls who were the smartest, the lippiest, and the most mature of us all. Girls who defiantly spoke Spanish -- in whispers, but we heard them.

They went silent when I approached and did not say hi at first, eyeing me with suspicion. I had on the hateful dress. But then one of them, Alveisa, grinned at me and said "You wanna learn a word in Spanish?"

"Sure" I said. The others began giggling. Alveisa said "Chingao", and got me to repeat it. Now they were all in hysterics. I had no idea what it meant, and I didn't care -- I knew it was a bad word, that was obvious, but I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. After the fun of having me repeat it wore off, Alveisa and then Mariola taught me a few other words, not profanity this time. By the time the bell rang, I was grudgingly accepted by them and had been cast out socially by the white girls.

At the end of that semester, I sided with my father in his quest to have us move and we left for Brazil. In that relocation, I found a wormhole out of class degradation and molestation, but it began with becoming a race traitor. If you're a member of a non-target group, becoming a traitor and losing your "privilege" is extremely easy: All you have to do is stand up publicly for truth and justice. And it will be the making of you. Even if they kill you for it.

(Quote from Ricky Sherover-Marcuse)

I've now lost my fluency in spoken Spanish but can still read it fairly well. More to the point, I understand that when xenophobes rail against the presence of Spanish in American life, they are pushing back against not only racial diversity but also the mind expansion that arrives with bilingualism.

And I'm astounded at how stupid these same people are about English. According to Wikipedia, "English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. However, when combining native and non-native speakers it is probably the most commonly spoken language in the world." It became the dominant lingua franca (so to speak) partly from centuries of colonialism by the British Empire, but also (to my mind, equally if not more importantly) because as a language it is enormously flexible and nondiscriminatory. America is not the hoped-for beacon to all that Jewish lesbian Emma Lazarus composed her lines about, but English gladly welcomes vocabulary from anywhere, no xenophobia there.

There's no need to force English on populations, or to "protect" it from diversity -- its very strength lies in exposure to other languages. The fact it, the majority of its everyday vocabulary is Germanic in origin. Next in line is Latinate. It has minimal inflection, a hodgepodge of spelling and grammar, and has "developed features such as modal verbs and word order as rich resources for conveying meaning." It's a strongly stressed intonation-based language, lending itself to personal expression across a broad scale. And it has developed in these directions organically, to meet the needs of its diverse speakers, not to fit a political or religious mandate. Boxing it in will destroy what makes it valuable.


So when I read at Pam's House Blend that "two Hispanic surnames are now among the top ten most common in the U.S.", I feel pride and relief. It helps to offset the loss I feel when I read "While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts struggling to save at least some of them."

(To get behind the New York Times firewall for the original article about the census finding, check here.)

Further, as someone who studies genealogy, I know full well that surname distribution changes constantly over time as part of the natural order. Hundreds of surnames found on the 1790 census for the United States no longer exist anywhere in the country. Among English surnames, "...no clue can be obtained from the surname alone as to the original nationality or racial origin of a family". Even more to the point, until the last decade or two, all "family names" in America were divested of 50% of their ancestral data per generation (the females), and were culturally meaningless when forced on African-Americans and Indians.

So, let's stay grounded in reality when seeking to claim our cultural identity, because it will assist us in claiming a larger source. I once heard a genealogist who had no use for white-dominated lineage "societies" say he was forming a new group whose membership would be limited to those who were Descendants of Eleventh Century Peasants. (Which includes everyone now alive on the planet.) Yeah, sign me up.

For those of you curious, the two new surnames in the census Top Ten, Garcia and Rodriquez, have the following origins/meanings:

GARCIA: Definition: Surname is of uncertain origin but could possibly have and of the following meanings: 1) From a medieval given name meaning "like a fox." 2) a descendant of Garcia, Spanish form of Gerald 3) one who came from Garcia, in Spain. According to Elsdon C. Smith, the name Garcia could mean either "descendant of Garcia, Spanish form of Gerald" or "one who came from Garcia, in Spain."

RODRIGUEZ: Definition: A patronymic name meaning "son of Rodrigo." The "ez or es" added to the root signifies "descendant of." The given name Rodrigo is the Spanish form of Roderick, meaning "famous power," from the Germanic elements "hrod, fame and "ric," power.

Thus, even Rodriguez has a Germanic origin.

I'm reminded of the irony in Elder Lapp's admonishment to the Harrison Ford character at the end of Witness to "Be careful out there among those Englisch!" But -- belonging has a permeable border because human survival depends on it. So, instead, I send you off on your day with the following:

Déme su cansado, sus pobres,
Sus masas amontonadas que anhelan respirar libremente,
La basura desgraciada de su orilla de vertido.
Envíe éstos, el nómada, tempestad-sacudido a mí,
Levanto mi lámpara al lado de la puerta de oro!"

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POOR PITIFUL PEARL

Maggie on her first birthday, 1956. I was allowed to demolish that angel food cake on the floor.

There were times as a child when I received no gifts at Christmas, or for my birthday.

You have no idea how hard that is to admit. I want to keep you from blaming my mother, but I cannot.


One thing I never talked with my brother Bill about before he died is that my parents forgot his birthday twice: The year he was three, and the year he turned 16. I never brought up the 3-year-old incident because I wasn't sure he remembered it, and g*d knows I didn't want to add to his burden. The 16-year-old forgetting he absolutely did remember. He waited in the living room all evening until Johnny Carson came on. Then he stood up, said to my parents "I can't believe you fucking forgot I turned 16 today" and walked out the door.

Mama called me in hysterics. I had no comfort for her. He didn't come back until the next night. By that time, my father had gone out and bought him a brand new Beau James custom pick-up. Bill totaled it two months later, nearly dying in the wreck. They couldn't afford to replace it, of course.

He was not a planned child, and there wasn't enough to go around for him. I'm not saying I wish he hadn't been born, and I actually once asked Mama if she would have had an abortion, if it had been available then. She paused for several seconds, then said no. I believe her. Still, he knew he wasn't chosen (as I had been) all his life. What does that do to you? One of the Lesbian songs I loved best during the 1970s was sung by Linda Shear, and there's a section in it:
"There ain't much to be proud of, living pushed against the wall
And I know mistakes can happen
But it's just as well they do
My mama says I was one
And most likely so were you"

When I was 5 through 9, I did get gifts. Usually not what I asked for or really wanted, but I never complained. I was always given at least one doll, although I loathed them and wouldn't play with them. It's what girls got, and in some ways -- dolls, having to wear dresses, keeping my hair long -- Mama didn't listen to me or buck the system. It was the 50s and early 60s. I wanted a Johnny Express, I wanted one of those metal gas stations for little metal cars, I wanted a chemistry set, I wanted a typewriter (did finally get that when I was 15). I was smart enough to know it wasn't being a girl that was the problem, it was how "they" defined girl. Way before feminism or Lesbian liberation, I was wise to their lies. I worry for girls now, who are all too often being told they must want to be a boy if they want to wear certain clothes and play with certain toys. Bullshit, I say.

When I was 11, my older brother had a nervous breakdown, supposedly connected to his diagnosis of epilepsy but since it was the last year of his actively molesting me, I suspect other things were going on. He got taken to a hospital in San Antonio where, after an evaluation by a psychiatrist, he was put into a locked ward. My parents drove the 70 miles there and back every day for two days, until the psychiatrist (Dr. Bailey) told my mother she was part of the reason my brother was mentally ill. She went batshit and refused to go back there.

The next day was my 11th birthday. Mama was too upset to get out of bed. Daddy offered to take me with him to San Antonio, and I declined until he made it clear I would not be allowed in to visit my older brother, I'd have to wait in the lobby. All righty, then. On the way there, he gave me $20 and told me they hadn't been able to buy me any presents, I should get something for myself.

I know that sounds pathetic, and it probably was, but in fact that was a great birthday. The hospital was in downtown San Antonio, and within walking distance was a Joske's with a book department. Daddy gave me no instructions at all about what to do with myself, so I left the hospital, went to the bookstore and browsed for hours. I bought five books (one was a thick adult text on archeology, one was a collection of cat photographs by Walter Chandoha that I still have) and I had enough money left over to eat at a lunch counter, having my first club sandwich and a chocolate shake while I read about Troy.

The next day, Daddy checked my older brother out against medical advice and that was that. I'm guessing they didn't have mandatory report laws about child abuse at that time. I wonder what Dr. Bailey knew.

In September, my older brother started college in Arlington, Texas, living with my uncle and his family in Irving to save the cost of a dorm. He didn't want to go to college, and we didn't have the money to send him, but if he wasn't in college he would be sent to Vietnam. That year, we slowly starved. By the time my 12th birthday rolled back around, I said all I wanted was new clothes for the school year.

My father was working in Brownsville and coming home only once or twice a month. On the way home for my birthday weekend, he stopped at some roadside place and bought me a Poor Pitiful Pearl doll, which was all the rage at the moment. I was 12, about to go into junior high, and he brought me home a doll dressed in fake rags with a plastic teardrop permanently fixed to her face. There was no other money to buy me clothes.

After he left again, Mama went through the box of ancient fabric in the corner of her bedroom, lengths she'd bought years ago and never got around to sewing into anything. She managed to buy a pattern, of an old-fashioned full-shirted dress with no ornamentation at all, and she used blue-and-white gingham to make a dress with it. That was the only new thing I had to wear as I started 7th grade. My other dresses, from 6th grade, were too tight but I squeezed into one on Tuesday, and while I was at school that day, Mama washed the blue-and-white gingham, drying it on the clothesline. On Wednesday, I wrote it again. On Thursday, I wore another too-small dress, and on Friday it was the gingham once more.

I felt like dying.

In that small town (about 1500 people), racial segregation was actually still enforced at school. About 10-12% of the population was white, the rest Latino. All the white kids of a certain age plus about 20 of the better-off, more assimilated Latino kids were put into the "A" class, and all the rest of the Latino kids were in the "B" class. All the teachers and school administrators were white. We were told to never socialize together across racial lines after school, and silently encouraged to play on separate parts of the playground during school hours.

My family was at the rock bottom of the white people. It was our only claim to "decency", being white. But the second week of junior high, I walked past the cluster of white girls who were all snickering at me in my blue-and-white dress. I went to the doors at the end of the school where the Latina girls gathered before class, whispering in Spanish (speaking Spanish at school would get you expelled) and talking about far more interesting things. I joined them, and at first they went totally silent, looking at me suspiciously. But then Alveisa Barrera, who already had breasts, said "You wear that dress a lot."

I answered "My mother made it."

She nodded as if that meant something. She blew a bubble (gum chewing wasn't allowed either) and asked me if I wanted to learn a dirty word in Spanish. I said sure. She taught me chinga, and they all helped me work on my accent, laughing rowdily, until the bell rang. I ate lunch with them that day, shutting up and listening, and after that the white girls had something else to laugh at me about. Something a lot worse than my clothes.

Alveisa, if you read this, I love you.

Still, I didn't know how long I could hold on. So in November, when Daddy came home with yet another offer from his company for us to be sent overseas -- it paid a living wage but was hell on families, and Mama always yelled him down -- I listened to them argue about it for a while. Then I walked into the room and said "I want to go. I want us to go." I didn't even know where it was -- turns out, it was Brazil. But it was an escape route. We'd have money. We'd be in a place where I could start over. I'd be out of reach of my older brother.

My mother looked at me as if I had betrayed her. Which I surely had -- it was the only time I took my father's side against her. He crowed in triumph, and she gave in immediately.

Stonewall happened while we were in Brazil. I read about it in Time Magazine and hid that issue under my mattress, taking it out after everyone was asleep and reading it over and over. I had a place to go where there were other women like me.

I turned 13 in Brazil. I don't remember what I got; it didn't matter, I was following the drinking gourd.

We came back to the States and my father went on to Singapore, our next destination, to start work and rent us an apartment. Mama decided to keep us for the remainder of the semester in Stoneburg, Texas, the tiny town where her mother lived, where she had gone to school. We'd join Daddy in June.

But I fell in love with that town, with those kids. I had roots there, for the first time in my life. I met the girl who would become my first lover, and a boy in my grade, a 6th cousin, confessed to me he was gay. Before school was out, I went to Mama and begged her to find a way so I could go to high school there, in one place, no more moving around. She was washing dishes, I remember, and she stopped, with her hands in the suds, for a long time. Then she said "All right. I'll do it."

I skipped out the back door to tell my friends, overjoyed. I didn't know until ten years ago that this meant she would have to leave my father.

She didn't know how to tell him. She just stopped writing him. She tried to make the money stretch out, because he wasn't going to send home any more after June. We had to move to a broken-down house with no hot water and sometimes no water at all (if the wind didn't turn the windmill). She began having chest pains and didn't tell anybody. On my 14th birthday, she gave me 11 books of Green Stamps, all she had, and told me I could order anything I wanted from the catalogue. I'll never forget the humiliation on her face -- that hurt much worse than not getting a present.

The first day of school, she dropped me and my brother off and drove ten miles to the nearest doctor. He immediately put her in the hospital -- she'd had a massive heart attack. A neighbor picked us up after school and took us to the hospital, where Mama was in intensive care. My Aunt Sarah came up from Dallas and got me in to see Mama, rousing her by shaking her and saying "Maggie's here. You hold on, she needs you."

Daddy had to fly back from Singapore. The doctor told him Mama couldn't move around any more or be left in charge of everything. Daddy was furious. He quit his job and began selling Amway, housetrailers, used cars, or land scams. He was a terrible salesman -- he convinced nobody. She still didn't tell him she had meant to leave him; her failure to pack up and join him was blamed on the heart disease. I didn't put the pieces together until a conversation with him ten years ago. I didn't spill her secret. She was dead by then, and he preferred to live in ignorance.

Going to that high school was the making of me. I began figuring out class, feminism, pacifism, and being a Lesbian there.

I was a wanted child. Mama planned to have me, and did the best she could with me. She was glad I had been born. The last two years, I've spent my birthday alone, but I do have, have had all my life, the fact that Mama wanted me.

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