Why We Need The Ledbetter Equal Pay Act

Note: This story is for Suzanne Conti and all the other tough, brave, farsighted women who carry it for the rest of us. So good to know there are those whose dignity and self-respect will never be on the table. Baci Baci. MP

I had been driving for hours alone in my 1983 Corolla across the prairie from Red Cloud, Nebraska, headed across Oklahoma to Perryton, Texas, to visit a friend from the 1984 Women's Voices writing retreat. Red Cloud, as you might know, is where Willa Cather was born. (If you don't know who she is, well, that's why God made Google.) Red Cloud is a scant 10 miles from McCook, where my mother's mother was born, and where my great grandmother, Martha Ann Duffield, "lost her mind" because the wind across the unplowed prairie was unrelenting, and "loud as a freight train."

As my tires rolled mile after mile onto the odometer, I mused over great-grandma's being roadkill in the headlights of Manifest Destiny, over her premature death at 45 from the madness caused by deafening isolation -- while others, like My Antonia, thrived and lived to ripe old age.

When my car radio could only crackle country 'n western, I really began to comprehend her plight on a visceral level. There was nothing, in any direction, except the unbroken horizon line. It was clear I was never going to get out of here. New meaning to the expression, "500 miles west of East Jesus." No way out but through. I began singing to myself, an old Illinois folk song:

Oh, the horses run around

Their feet are on the ground

Oh who will wind the clock when I’m away….

A snake’s belt slips, because he has no hips, and

We hope that Grandma’s clothes will soon fit Ginny….”

I've always been dedicated to maintaining a hold on sanity, no matter how tenuous, but I realized my grip was slipping. So I pulled over and pawed through my bags for tapes, finally settling on The Greatest Hits of Elvis Presley. Laugh all you want, but let me tell you, I couldn't have beat that with a stick. If you are ever on a seemingly endless road trip ("Ace of Cakes" staff, are you listening? Geoff?), the King will carry you.

After I'd sung along with "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" until I'd deluded myself into thinking I actually sounded pretty good, I saw a bump on the horizon. I pulled over again, and drank an orange juice out of the cooler, figuring my blood sugar was dipping to the point of delusion. But after Elvis and I had backed away from the low blood sugar edge, the bump was still there, and actually looked like a square.

The square grew larger and larger, until, an hour or so later, it proved to be a one-room concrete block building with a wooden lean-to kitchen built-out in the back, and an outhouse. The sign on the side said, "Rosie's Cafe." "Oh, sweet Jesus, there is a god," I sobbed, leaning on my steering wheel. I checked the time. 5:35. No wonder I was half-nuts! I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

But as soon as I walked through the door of the cafe, I realized I had truly crossed over. Every single person in the cafe wore either a vermilion or red clown wig, a bulbous red plastic nose, clown make-up, blue overalls, tattered boots, and striped shirts. No one spoke, but they all turned and stared. A couple of bicycle horns at the ready were squeezed in greeting. Since the room was at best 12x12 feet, it wasn't an option either to back out and run for my car or slip quietly into the chair at the one vacant table. I sat.

From the lean-to came a full-sized Raggedy Ann doll, balancing four blue-plate specials on her arms. After downloading, she stopped in front of me and pulled her order pad from her apron, her pencil from her wig. "Hungry, stranger?" she asked, and I thought, "No stranger than you, lady...." I ordered from the black chalkboard menu above the soft-drink cooler. Raggedy Rosie brought me a soda and returned to the kitchen. I tasted the drink gingerly, half expecting exploding paper snakes to emerge from the bottle, but it in fact tasted like "The Real Thing." I began to settle down a bit and to contemplate my fate in this bus full of clowns.

Who had clearly been contemplating me. A late 20th c. Lesbian from Oakland, California. Just guessing, I'd say I was a first. Might as well have been from the moon, Alice. While I smiled, and others smiled back, there was little direct conversation while we ate. I was most of my way through the actually quite good plate when one fine gentleman carefully wiped his mouth with his red bandanna and asked the assembled, "Well folks, why don't we take this little lady from California down to see the dinosaur?" As I listened to the general cheering and hoots of agreement, I began to see my entire life pass before my eyes. Well, mostly the part about my mother telling me women who drove around the country by themselves met with a "bad end."

The fella with the bandanna and the suggestion said, "You ride with us." Soon I was, with the entire cafe, driving off into the Oklahoma sunset in a caravan of clowns in Ford and Chevy pick-ups, at the time, I thought, an apt metaphor for this great land of ours.

About 20 minutes later, over dirt roads, through cattle gates, and over gullies, we arrived. I found myself gazing across a huge pit in the earth at a circle of clowns, and I thought, "Perhaps there is a clear advantage to knowing which ditch you will actually end up in, but what it is, I cannot think." Then, I looked down. And there, 12 feet below me, was a complete fossilized Sauroposeidon. "Sauroposeidon is a genus of sauropod dinosaur found in rocks dating to the Early Cretaceous, a period when the sauropods of North America had diminished in both size and numbers, making it the last known giant dinosaur on the continent." (Thanks, Wikipedia.) (Note: At the time, I had no idea that is what I was looking at, but I knew it was one damn big dinosaur.)

One of the women asked me if I would like one of the bones. "I don't think so," I responded, looking at the yellow plastic "Do Not Cross. Crime Scene" tape which had been unrolled and staked around the entire pit. I wondered to myself how on earth the paleontologist had figured out this poor Sauroposeidon had been murdered.

"Why not?"

"Well, I think if this fella has been here for millions of years, we'd best not disturb."

The guy with the red bandanna nodded. "That fella from the University said we needed to leave it be until they've figured her all out. And they're still digging."

"You know, it's strange to watch them down in there in that hole," another clown said. "They're usin' paint brushes and dustpans to take the dirt off them bones. And then they're puttin' the dirt through a flour sifter. I'd figure they'd be petro-fied, but one of them fellas said they wasn't."

We all stood there, marveling, in the sunset. I took a few desultory pictures, but it really was too dark to make anything much.

"My name's John," the lead clown said. "And this is the Missus."

Then, sounding off like the original Mouseketeers, they all introduced themselves.

"...George.... And the Missus..."

"...Kermit.... And the Missus..." all around the pit.

I asked one of the women directly, "And what was your name?"

"Oh, I'm the Missus..."

I asked three of them, and each time, "the Missus" was the answer. So I observed, "Why, all you ladies must be related."

"How so?" the Missus of the Bandanna clown asked.

"Oh, because you all have the same name." Fortunately, everyone laughed. We ambled companionably back to the pickups.

Rosie was most glad to see us all, particularly since we'd left without anyone paying. We all stood outside in the new moonlight, drinking coffee and enjoying the night air. "Mugsy?" Rosie asked.

"Yes?"

"Kin I ask you a question?"

"Sure, if I can ask you one back."

"Did you ever figure out it's Hallowe'en?" They all busted up, and of course, realizing how hilarious it was, I fell out myself.

Then Rosie asked, "What's your question, Mugsy?"

"Well, how'd you end up with your own name? None of these other ladies seem to have one."

"Oh, that," she said. "See, my husband passed away."

I drove on into the night toward the Texas panhandle, over who knows how many Sauroposiedons, past oil wells pumped Oklahoma crude from the residue of their days. Listening to Elvis, musing about my great-grandmother who transplanted from Hartford to the Nebraska Territory via a wagon and horses, a place where women had nothing, not even their own name, from which to build a life. Musing about loneliness and silence, about dinosaurs buried and and those still alive. Knowing this was a place where I'd have no chance of surviving.

I don't remember where I stayed that night. I suppose I was near enough a town with a motel or I drove on through the night to Perryton. But whenever I hear some city woman say she can't imagine why we still need the Ledbetter Equal Pay Act or the ERA in this day and age, I remember those women standing around the Sauroposeidon dig, dressed as identical clowns, not even able to offer their given name to a stranger. Koko, the great ape, had a name. Alex, the grey parrot, had a name, and his obituary would be printed in The Economist. But not these human women.

I am so very fortunate not to have had to marry someone because, as one of my friend's mother told her, "at least he was clean," just to survive. I feel so blessedly fortunate to have had been able to create a situation for myself where I have what Virginia Woolf called for so very many years ago, "Money and a room of our own with a lock on the door..."

Copyright 2009 by Mugsy Peabody. All world rights reserved.

Note: The wagon and oxen photograph was taken by my grandmother, though in the 1930s, not at the time they lived in Nebraska.

The Cat, The Potted Palm, and the Naked Lady

Thirty years ago, I wrote a story called "The Cat, The Potted Palm, and The Naked Lady," published in Issue No. 4, "Straight from the Gut," Ken Kesey's "Spit in the Ocean" Magazine (Winter, 1978, Lee Marrs, ed.). In honor of that anniversary, I open my blog here with that story. I liked the story well enough, but of course could have had no idea that three decades later, one line of that story has spread throughout the world, and has even been translated into Arabic, Serbo-Croatian, Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan. There are calendars and bumper stickers, coffee mugs and posters, buttons and catfood bowls. Tigger was a real cat/person, with a large following of her own, and all this attention would have pleased her. I brought her home at six weeks on a Greyhound bus, tucked inside my jacket, and she honored me with her presence for 21 years. She remains one of the best people I've ever known. MP

THE CAT, THE POTTED PALM, AND THE NAKED LADY

By Mugsy Peabody

"After all, a dog is a dog, and a bird is a bird, but a cat is a person."

I never figured out why they always die. I brought them home immediately, brought them belatedly, repotted them, left them in their original pot, watered them, droughted them, put them in the sun, in the shade. In desperation, I even put them in the refrigerator, put them in the shower (light cream rinse only), and under the bed. No matter what I did with the 6" Potted Palm, it died dead at once.

After changing my toothpaste three times, I decided they must be Scorpio loners, so I put them on the top shelf of the closet and ignored them. If possible, they died more quickly. Eventually, I had a tiny graveyard in the garden, Arlington Local. The neighbors began complaining about zoning, driving me to the People's Law, Dope & Free VD Test Library to research the plantricide laws of the state of california in and for the county of san francisco. I found out a good deal about victimless crimes, and in the course discovered that most of my complaining neighbors' waterbeds were not only x-rated, but illegal, immoral, and that wasn't oregano growing in their back yard either. But still I found nothing pertaining to my systematic genocide of an entire species of Palm.

When my landlord filed his position paper on Arlington Local, I screamed, "You know what you are, you're a cunnilinguist!"

He smiled. "I didn't know you knew, French and Latin, San Diego State," and returned to vacuuming the hall, whistling.

There never was an Annette Funicello/Bobby Darin movie without palms. Thirties and Forties movie stars always draped themselves around such greenery. You never saw Joan Crawford/Bette Davis/Lena Horne without the proverbial potted palm belching in the background. So when I migrated to california, naturally, I had to have one. I actually had about 34, to the amusement of friends and interested others. I am presently convinced that there are only three in california, two of which are 68 years old and owned by Living Plant Rentals, Inc.

(If you've been wondering what happened to all those kids who migrated to san francisco barefoot in the wake of the flower child, well, a number of us are still here, working and not working; living and dying; getting stoned and staying straight, and trying to raise suicidal palms. Those who stayed collected everything everyone else left when they went back to wherever after the diggers quit digging and governor raygun suggested the solution to the logging companies/sierra club feud was to cut down all the trees except those along the scenic highways.)

I was one who stayed. I collected a drafting table, a hamster tank, three pairs of tennis shoes, a doll's house, two televisions and several boarders who didn't work, and TA DA, a potted palm with a will to live! ! ! !

Which doesn't make me Joan Crawford. But if you think about it long enough, you know why Tigger and I live alone, having gotten sick of six consecutive communes and several dozen collectives, all doing Good Things for at least three weeks. And I ran out of room for yes to, "Say could you use a genuine fill-in-the-blank . . ., at least until I get back from. . . ."

Well, Aunt Martha, Tigger is a cat. (She's sitting out there in Watercress, Iowa, asking, "Who's this Tigger, who's this Tigger . . . , because my Midwestern relatives are totally convinced that I am Living in Sin. Oh, lord, if they had any idea just how hard Good Sin is to find! Especially in San Francisco, where 70 percent of the men not only could but often do look better in your favorite dress.)

Tigger is a cat, although she wouldn't like me saying that. As the lady on the tube said, people are so silly about animals. After all, a dog is a dog, a bird is a bird, but a cat is a person.

Tigger has her own sense of things. I put newspaper beneath her kitty litter and under her food bowl. Now she carefully covers up her food dish when she's finished eating. She likes music, often sitting on the Surrealistic Pillow and riding around, though she doesn't think much of the Fountains of Rome. And she likes to sit on my shoulder like a parrot (which is fine as long as she keeps her mouth shut). But, more than anything, she likes to eat Potted Palms. Which she says is her caviar (and my interior decorator's waterloo). Which is how she got into show business, and I nearly ended up in a strait jacket.

Slouching toward Bethlehem one day, she evaded my Maginot Line and ate an entire leaf of P. Palm. (I name everything, according to F. Fern.) P. Palm was howling and swearing a green streak and F. Fern was dialing the SPCP when I decided something needed to be done. I took a terribly frightened P. Palm off to the plant hospital around the corner: Theda Barr's Psychic Parlor and Plant Hospital. She promised me Palm would recover, especially if I paid her $43.00 (food stamps accepted). I mentally added $30.00 for an hour with my shrink, which would follow the worrying I was doing about where to get the money and/or stamps, and went home, where I finally ordered Tig up against the wall. She may be the famous one in the family, having modeled for underground comix, but that didn't give her the right to bully the others. Especially not $43.00 worth.

"You've sponged off me long enough! Goddamn it, I'm not made of money, you're going out and get a job!" I had saved that speech from my Haight-Ashbury daze.

"Doing what? You know how hard it is to get modeling jobs."

"Well, do something, cat food ads, maybe. But you've got to come up with $43.00 by Thursday."

Her sense of integrity was mortally offended. "I'm an Artist," she sniffed. But I explained that I didn't like working either as I packed her portfolio and her dr. dentons. We hopped on the Sacramenna bus down to the J. Walter Thompson Agency, who, it turned out, was only doing radio cat food ads these days. But Tigger showed them her equity card and did her stuff. The entire swimming pool production number from Footlight Parade and a complete Judy Garland concert. Then, wringing wet and high on reds, she recited "The Owl and the Pussycat" and the "Cremation of Sam McGee." They said they'd call us. But the receptionist told us it was because of the Equal Opportunity Employment people being on their case lately. So they had to get a siamese, manx, or Persian. It's tough to be a WASP in show biz these days, she confided.

But we no sooner got in the door when she called us back. Dyna-kitty was doing a whole new promo and liked Tigger's headshots. So I packed her into a cab and she chased back down there with a whole case of stage fright. I suggested a joint would be easier to carry, but she felt she had to do it straight, muttering about Artistic Integrity and The Method. So I muttered back about Paying the Rent and Buying Catfood.

I'd finally managed to relax into a hot tub of old confession magazines ("Lucy Tells the Truth about Liza and Desi, Jr.," "Did the best Seller Win? Or just Peter out?") when the phone rang.

It was my friendly neighborhood friend from Fresno with her annual entry into our Worry Contest (a traveling trophy).

"I think I've got you this time," she said. "I was just sitting here worrying about what to do with the siamese in case of nuclear attack. . . should I take them with me to the shelter, or just open all the cans of cat food. . . "

I wrapped the trophy while I told her about my problem with Tig. She said she'd been planting wild birdseed and the cats like that better than house plants. It was the first viable solution anybody had presented, so I immediately dashed down to the pet store.

"Do you have wild birdseed?" I asked.

"Birdseed, that's all we have, parakeet, finch, or canary," the man said. "And you might want to put some clothes on."

"Canary's fine," I said, "and do you have some potting soil?" "What the hell you going to do with the birdseed, lady?" he asked.

"Grow canaries," I said, rushing out. Buying dirt always bothered me anyway. Something about paying for something you can find anywhere. If you have a jackhammer.

I ran upstairs past the landlord who was now spackeling the holes the piano movers had left in the wall and collected an old pan and spoon and charged back downstairs with a sign from my last demonstration that said: "Free dirt and all political prisoners."

"You might want to put some clothes on!" he shouted.

The nearest thing to a tree on my block is a gas pump with a sign that says "post no bills," so I ran on down the street until I came to a concrete tub with a tree in it. I don't know where they captured said tree, but they had him all tied down with wire and rope so he couldn't get away. I straightaway filled the pan.

"Put it back."

I looked at the tree. Probably an out-of-work actor from Wizard of Oz, I thought.

"Put it back, okay?"

I told him about trying to buy steer manure at sears for my boss so he would understand that I knew BS when I saw it, showed him my sign and told him about Tig and what a brotherly thing it would be to do for P. Palm, but about that time the pet store man came chasing around the corner which was when I remembered I hadn't paid for the birdseed. I looked over my shoulder as I turned the corner to see the pet store man untying the tree. Soon they were beating feet behind me. . . da da da, da da da, da da da da da • • • (think William Tell Overture) da da da, da da da, da da da da da. . .

After I bolted the door, I resumed my meditation in the tub. Lucy never did say why Peter was the better Seller, but the story had a lot of nice pictures of Fred and Ethel Mertz in it.

Then I decided the birdseed was priority, since the box was already sprouting from being dropped in the tub when I got the spoon for the dirt out of the draino can. I wandered out to the kitchen and gathered up an old tv dinner tray and the dirt and planted the burgeoning seeds before anything further could happen to them. The doorbell rang then, and I was so nervous I spilled the remains of the box all over me. I answered the door before I realized I still had no clothes on. Oh, hell, if it was good enough for the Emperor, it was good enough for me. Of course it would be my landlord at the door instead of those guys from Palestine selling The Robe.

I have to admire san francisco chinese landlords for their composure. Even though he was backing through the window across the hall, spilling spackle from his trowel. "Look, you've got to get rid of that old refrigerator on the back porch," he said, standing-on the fire escape. "The public health was just here and they say it's got to go or they're going to fine me $200."

"Can I finish planting my birdseed first?" I asked. He ran down the stairs, muttering to himself in Cantonese.

Tigger came wandering up the stairs with a check for $300 and four cases of cheese-and-liver-flavored dyna-kitty. I helped her carry the check in. We locked the door and I finished planting the seed, which had now grown a full two inches, including the half box spilled all over me, making me look like a soon-to-be Birnham Wood. Tigger stored her royalties in the pantry and opened a can for herself. "Here," I said, putting the birdseed next to her food. "Salad. So don't you ever touch P. Palm again. Understand me? I've got enough trouble with the health department and the landlord right now without the SPCP on my back."

"Is there any thousand island?"

"Only if you paw in blood to leave Palm alone."

She was in such a good mood, she gave in. It seems she'd also been offered a role in Deep Coat, an x-rated movie about a Persian with her claws in her ears – although the cosmetic transformation from Maine Coon to Persian would have her in make-up for hours each morning. "I do have to let my hair grow," she said, "but otherwise I can fake it."

She tossed her National Organization of Cat Women card down the trash chute before I could discuss the ethics of the part with her, but we do have to make our own mistakes in life, and besides, the doorbell rang just then.

Tigger answered it, hoping for her first autograph seekers. "Just a minute," she said, and came back to the kitchen. "Look, I have a feeling you might want to hide. The landlord and some tree and another guy are out there, and I don't think they're going to be too impressed with you standing there looking like the Revenge of the Canary Seed Grass Person." She handed me a blanket, although at the rate the grass was growing, bark might have been more appropriate.

Tig went back out and stalled 'em, letting them scratch her ears while I hid. Finally they gave up their searching, searching, and decided to use the tree's willing branches while available to remove the old refrigerator. Which is how I ended up bruised, naked, and out of breath at the Good Will.

"Nothing in here but a tree with an old blanket on," I heard a voice say.

"No, it's moving. Probably not a tree."

Why the police believed any of this, I'll never know. But they took me to a greenhouse where I was striped of my foliage and then taken home in a big green garbage bag with holes cut in for head and arms.

Tee martoonies later, I sat Tigger and all the houseplants down for a good ole heart-to-heart-to-stem talk. Tigger decided we might go for relationship counseling, but I thought perhaps Theda Barr might help us learn how to get along. I thought P. Palm would be more open with a Palmist as a counselor. It was always so hard to get a plant to open up -- although I'd had considerable practice with some of the losers I'd been dating.

So we trundled down to the California Street Psychic Parlor & Plant Hospital, and I explained the situation to Ms. Barr, with a minimum of clumps of potting soil being thrown at Tigger, and she suggested a medium session. We pulled the drapes and dimmed the lights. Eventually, with paws, branches, and hands on the table, we began to hear strange noises. "I'll be calling you-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou." It was coming from P. Palm. Tigger, looking amazingly Northwest Mounted Police-ish astradle the chair, was echoing this madness. I stared at Ms. Barr in amazement.

"I'm going back to being an honest stock broker," she said. I just nodded, wondering if such a thing were actually possible.

"Oh, Nelson," P. Palm sobbed, "It's what you always do. You always get on that darned horse and upstage me!"

"But, Jeanette, what do you want me to do??? It's in the script," Tigger protested.

"You always have an excuse for what you do, don't you? And you say you love me…"

I suddenly felt so alone, sitting there with a medium who gave massages and my two best friends, a cat and a plant who turned out to be Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in their former lives. I might not be Living in Sin in San Francisco, Aunt Martha, but there were worse things that could happen.

Honestly, I must say, things have somewhat settled down now. It's a good deal noisier in the apartment, what with Tigger and Palm singing duets all the time, and the poor landlord wandering the halls talking to himself, but Palm gave a concert last week at the Boarding House with a cameo appearance by Tigger, and I can finally get some writing done, since they're now able to pay my rent.

Copyright © 2008 by Mugsy Peabody. All world rights reserved.