Burnaway

[cont.]
As she read about religions, she realized this low status for women wasn’t simply a feature with Catholicism. She noted how all major religions seemed to be built around keeping women subservient. And quiet. Quiet was very, very important in all religions. “Shut your mouth,” he would yell at Momma, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The only thing she was good at was having babies, having boys – that’s the only reason he put up with her. It was his litany, repeated more often than any Hail Mary.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish women were expected to produce babies one after another like good Catholic women. They and Islamic women were segregated from men in worship, demonstrating their inequality in the eyes of god. Hindu customs called for burning the living wives of men who had died, like they were simply property, a soiled piece of fabric. And when one friend insisted that women in Buddhism are equal to men, she pointed out how until recently women in Japan acted like slaves to their husbands, walking behind them with heads bowed. All religions were a glorified codification of a hierarchy of power, a divine justification for behavior which was actually intrinsic to all mammals. Once she saw that culture and religion were merely extensions of the herd mentality, she didn’t take the proscriptions personally. The will to power, after all, was fundamental to all alpha members of the ape family. Religions were simply clever enough to confer uncontested alpha status to all males within their homes.
It wasn’t just the reports of kissing. All the signs were there. She just hadn’t wanted to accept the finality of them. When Barbara began criticizing how she dressed, corrected her syntax, stopped introducing her to new friends, started taking up more and more of the space in the closets, Maggie, without consciously thinking about it, began the process of taking her belongings back to her bedroom at Odessa’s house. At the time, it simply seemed considerate of her to remove them and reduce Barbara‘s inclination to bitch about not having enough storage space. At the time, she thought Barbara needed more space in general and she loved her enough to give it to her. If you love someone, set them free.
That day, trying to ignore the ecstatic moaning, she found herself in the kitchen packing her few belongings into a plastic clothes hamper. Except for the painting she had begged Odessa to loan her now hanging in the bedroom, she could put everything she actually valued into this hamper and leave. So she did. She put in the books she wanted to keep first, then the glass mugs Dennis had bought for her on their first trip to Disneyland. Using a couple of commemorative dish towels she carefully wrapped the small pitted stone sculpture of a Buddha she had been given for her high school graduation by the mother of a childhood friend and inserted the cushion on which Odessa had embroidered “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” to prevent knocking and breaking. Everything she cared about pretty much fit into the hamper. She carried it all downstairs to the car. As she rode down in the elevator, she debated about the painting. She could leave it or wait to get it, but she really liked Tommy’s blue painting. It might get destroyed like the cut crystal vase from her great aunt which Barbara threw against a wall when Maggie walked out during a fight. Besides, once she left, coming back would be even harder.
“Just one more quick load, if that’s ok with you,” she told the valet and walked quietly back to the elevator. Getting the painting now guaranteed a clean break and having a witness around might actually make it easier.
She didn’t know what amount of reaction to expect and took a deep breath in the living room, willing herself to look calm, the way she learned to behave when her father came home during his periodic relapses into heavy drinking. When she entered the bedroom where a naked Barbara was wrapped around a petite blonde, one of the other gym enthusiasts in the building, both of them with the sweet sweaty euphoria of orgasm on their faces, Maggie walked over to the small painting across from the bed and removed it from the wall. The clothes she liked were already at Odessa’s. No reason to stay in the room a second longer.
“Hey, you should join us for the next round. Now.” Barbara patted the bed.
Barbara was taunting her for a reaction. Maggie could easily have responded by screaming curses. She could have broken a lamp with a single sweep of her arm. Instead she looked straight into Barbara’s eyes, “No, I’ll pass on that,” smiled slightly at the blonde, and left the room. On the way out, she paused for a moment by the front door. She realized she was waiting to see if Barbara would come after her. How foolish am I to expect that, she thought, hearing them laugh. Don’t cry. It’s a good thing to stand up for yourself. You deserve better than this. She lifted up her chin, blinked the tears away while she removed keys from the monogrammed silver key chain. The key chain had been a birthday gift from Barbara. She held the key chain and apartment keys for a moment, looking around at what she was leaving behind, all this and her first true love. She placed them quietly on the table, and closed the door behind her.
As she drove out from under the awning in front of the building, she felt suddenly lighter: no more nightclubs for her! No more tiptoeing in the morning. No more wondering when this moment would arrive. Leaving someone who abused your trust wasn’t nearly as hard as she thought it would be. It was painful, but she knew for certain that it was definitely not as painful as staying.