Female Man by Joanna Russ

Author:Joanna Russ
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0553111752
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1975-02-03T05:00:00+00:00

IV

I found Jeannine on the clubhouse porch that evening, looking at the moon. She had run away from her family.

"They only want what's good for you," I said.

She made a face.

"They love you," I said.

A low, strangled sound. She was prodding the porch-rail with her hand.

"I think you ought to go and rejoin them, Jeannine," I said. "Your mother's a wonderful woman who has never raised her voice in anger all the time you've known her. And she brought all of you up and got you all through high school, even though she had to work. Your brother's a firm, steady man who makes a good living for his wife and children, and Eileen wants nothing more in the world than her husband and her little boy and girl. You ought to appreciate them more, Jeannine."

"I know," said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

"Jeannine, you'll never get a good job," I said. "There aren't any now. And if there were, they'd never give them to a woman, let alone a grown-up baby like you. Do you think you could hold down a really good job, even if you could get one? They're all boring anyway, hard and boring. You don't want to be a dried-up old spinster at forty but that's what you will be if you go on like this. You're twenty-nine. You're getting old. You ought to marry someone who can take care of you, Jeannine."

"Don't care," said she. Or was it Not fair?

"Marry someone who can take care of you," I went on, for her own good. "It's all right to do that; you're a girl. Find somebody like Bud who has a good job, somebody you can respect; marry him. There's no other life for a woman, Jeannine; do you want never to have children? Never to have a husband? Never to have a house of your own?" (Brief flash of waxed floor, wife in organdie apron, smiling possessively, husband with roses. That's hers, not mine.)

"Not Cal." Ah, hell.

"Now, really, what are you waiting for?" (I was getting impatient.) "Here's Eileen married, and here's your mother with two children, and all your old school friends, and enough couples here around the lake to fill it up if they all jumped into it at once; do you think you're any different? Fancy Jeannine! Refined Jeannine! What do you think you're waiting for?"

"For a man," said Jeannine. For a plan. My impression that somebody else had been echoing her was confirmed by a brief cough behind me after these words. But it turned out to be Mr. Dadier, come out to fetch his sister. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door. "Come on, Jeannie. We're going to introduce you to someone."

Only the woman revealed under the light was not Jeannine. A passerby inside saw the substitution through the doorway and gaped. Nobody else seemed to notice. Jeannine is still meditating by the rail: doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, poor man,

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