Spirit Day

"Is there something the matter with that woman's tongue, Mom?" Garp whispered to Jenny. The superiority of the big woman's silence outraged him; Duncan was trying to talk with her, but the woman merely fixed the child with a quieting eye. Jenny quietly informed Garp that the woman wasn't talking because the woman was without a tongue. Literally.

 "It was cut off," Jenny said.

 "Jesus," Garp whispered. "How'd it happen?"

Jenny rolled her eyes; it was a habit she'd picked up from her son. "You really read nothing, don't you?" Jenny asked him. "You just never have bothered to keep up with what's going on." What was "going on," in Garp's opinion, was never as important as what he was making up--what he was working on. One of the things that upset him about his mother (since she'd been adopted by women's politics) was that she was always discussing the news.

"This is news, you mean?" Garp said. "It's such a famous tongue accident that I should have heard about it?"

"Oh, God," Jenny said wearily. "Not a famous accident. Very deliberate."

"Mother, did someone cut her tongue off?"

"Precisely." Jenny said.

"Jesus," Garp said.

"You haven't heard of Ellen James?" Jenny asked.

"No." Garp admitted.

"Well, there's a whole society of women now," Jenny informed him, "because of what happened to Ellen James."

"What happened to her?" Garp asked.

"Two men raped her when she was eleven years old," Jenny said. "Then they cut her tongue off so she couldn't tell anyone who they were or what they looked like. They were so stupid that they didn't know an eleven-year-old could write. Ellen James wrote a very careful description of the men, and they were caught, and they were tried and convicted. In jail, someone murdered them."

"Wow," Garp said. "So that's Ellen James?" he whispered, indicating the big quiet woman with new respect.

Jenny rolled her eyes again. "No," she said. "That is someone from the Ellen James Society. Ellen James is still a child, she's a wispy-looking little blond girl."

"You mean this Ellen James Society goes around not talking," Garp said, "as if they didn't have any tongues?"

"No, I mean they don't have any tongues," Jenny said. "People in the Ellen James Society have their tongues cut off. To protest what happened to Ellen James."

"Oh boy," Garp said, looking at the large woman with renewed dislike.

"They call themselves Ellen Jamesians," Jenny said.

"I don't want to hear any more of this shit, Mom," Garp said.

"Well, that woman there is an Ellen Jamesian," Jenny said. "You wanted to know."

"How old is Ellen James now?" Garp asked.

"She's twelve," Jenny said. "It happened only a year ago."

"And these Ellen Jamesians," Garp asked, "do they have meetings, and elect presidents and treasurers and stuff like that?"

"Why don't you ask her?" Jenny said, indicating the lunk by the door. "I thought you didn't want to hear any more about it."

"How can I ask her if she doesn't have a tongue to answer me?" Garp hissed.

"She writes," Jenny said. "All Ellen Jamesians carry little note pads around with them and they write you what they want to say. You know what writing is, don't you?"

Fortunately, Helen came home.

Garp would see more of the Ellen Jamesians. Although he felt deeply disturbed by what had happened to Ellen James, he felt only disgust at her grown-up, sour imitators whose habit was to present you with a card. The card said something like: Hello, I'm Martha. I'm an Ellen Jamesian. Do you know what an Ellen Jamesian is?

And if you didn't know, you were handed another card.
The Ellen Jamesians represented, for Garp, the kind of women who lionized his mother and sought to use her to help further their crude causes.

"I'll tell you something about those women, Mom," he said to Jenny once. They were probably all lousy at talking, anyway; they probably never had a worthwhile thing to say in their lives--so their tongues were no great sacrifice; in fact, it probably saves them considerable embarrassment. If you see what I mean."

"You're a little short on sympathy," Jenny told him.

"I have lots of sympathy--for Ellen James," Garp said.

"These women must have suffered, in other ways, themselves," Jenny said. "That's what makes them want to get closer to each other."

"And inflict more suffering on themselves, Mom?"

"Rape is every woman's problem," Jenny said. Garp hated his mother's "everyone" language most of all. A case, he thought, of carrying democracy to an idiotic extreme.

"It's every man's problem, too, Mom. The next time there's a rape, suppose I cut my prick off and wear it around my neck. Would you respect that, too?"

"We're talking about sincere gestures," Jenny said.

"We're talking about stupid gestures," Garp said.