Caitlin Myer - Wiving: A Memoir of Loving Then Leaving the Patriarchy

Copyright 2020 by Caitlin Myer

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

Cover photo credit: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-950691-47-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-950691-59-3

Printed in the United States of America

For Marie. Nothing wastes.

Contents

A N OTE ABOUT M EMORY

W HEN I WAS WRITING THIS book, I had dinner with my brother at a cousins house. We talked about the blueberry summer at my grandparents farm, comparing what we remembered. That was the summer, I said, when we took the old blue Falcon out of the barn and drove it up and down Myers Road.

Blue Falcon? said my brother. You mean the old Falcon, the green one?

It wasnt green, said my cousin. Was it?

To settle the question, we called the other brothers and my father. Depending on who was remembering, the car was green, or tan, brown, or even red. I was so certain it was blue that, in my memory, we called it The Old Blue Falcon, as though that was its title. But nobody in the family remembered it as blue. None of us could agree on the color at all.

In this book, Ive changed many names and a very few identifying details. Some seeming inconsistencies are intentional. For example, sluff is a Utah regionalism for skipping school. The spelling is likely a bowdlerization of slough , but I cant say for sure. Yael also appears in the text with two different spellings. She is Jael in the King James Version of the bible. In other translations, and more commonly, she is Yael . I have preferred Yael throughout, except when directly quoting the KJV.

Time has always been slippery for me, and in these pages I have occasionally given it a shape for the sake of the story. I dont know, for example, if we drove the Falcon on the sixth day at the farm; what matters is we drove it, and it was marvelous.

I have a decent memory for conversations, and an ex sometimes referred to my tape recorder, as I was able to play back entire discussions nearly word for wordwhich proved to be as unhelpful in a relationship as it is useful in a memoir. All the same, my brain is not, in fact, a tape recorder. The dialogue is faithful to my memory, as far as that goes.

While Ive checked in with people who were there and verified facts as I was able, my own memory is my primary source, and no matter what my family says, the Falcon will always be blue to me.

Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

P ROVERBS 5:1819, H OLY B IBLE (KJV)

Behold their pride, and send thy wrath upon their heads: give into mine hand, which am a widow, the power that I have conceived.

J UDITH 9:9, H OLY B IBLE (KJV)

I AM FIFTY YEARS OLD and have just moved to a seaside town in Portugal. Im reading in a quiet bar when a man asks why a beautiful woman like me is alone.

What he means is, What is happening between your legs?

What he means is, You are breaking the rules of the story, but I can set you straight .

What he means is, I can fill that terrible gap between your legs .

In the story, a woman who isaccording to an occult and capricious geometry of features and culture and a mans particular tastebeautiful must be attached to a man. To be unattached at my age is a violation of the story. This man wants an explanation. If my answer isnt plausible, if there is no man waiting around the corner or recently dead or banging a college student, I should be grateful that he is offering me a happy ending.

His desire lands on my shoulders like a bird of prey.

What he means is, I need you to fill the gap in me .

I like to be alone, I say.

A single no is not enough. I say no to him, and no again. But I have learned to pull the sting of the no, my smile says, How charming you are, but your desire has nothing to do with me .

He offers a ride, and is baffled at my refusal, baffled and offers again and again, as though refusal is just part of the dance, as if I could be worn down to a Yes.

Tonight is lucky. This man, on this night, chooses not to force the issue.

Only a few weeks later in the same town, another man will not give so easily. Ive been dancing in a Saturday night discotheque with him and his friends. When I turn to leave, he follows me out to the street. My Portuguese is infant-level, but its clear that he is insisting that I stay. He makes his hands into a heart shape, holds them over his chest.

No me abandone , he says. This man is thickly muscled with a shaved head and hard face, and he is pleading with me not to abandon him.

Sozinho , I say, one of the first words I learned in Portuguese. Sozinho . Eu quero sozinho . I want alone.

He seems to relent. He leans in for the beijinhos , the cheek kiss, but as he gets close he grabs my face and forces his tongue into my mouth.

I push him away, step back, then turn and walk, hot and fast. I wind up and down streets and duck into a friends club, watch from inside to make sure the man hasnt followed.

A friend asks whats going on.

Being a woman is hazardous, I say.

He looks at me for a beat, then nods.

And then Im free to walk home alone in the dark of the sleeping town. I have believed in freedom for so long, had felt Id found it, had arrived at freedom over and over again, but tonight I know it is a perpetually receding goal, Xenos arrow halving the distance forever.

This is the best I have, a lonely walk through a quiet town.

PART 1: WIFE LESSONS

The womens entire education should be planned in relation to men. To please men, to be useful to them, to win their love and respect, to raise them as children, care for them as adults... these are womens duties in all ages and these are what they should be taught from childhood.

J EAN -J ACQUES R OUSSEAU, FROM MILE , OR O N E DUCATION (1762)

E VERY STORY BEGINS WITH THE everyday. Every day the girl crept from her bed of ashes to clean for her stepsisters. Every day the wives of Manasses and Heber served their husbands. Every day the first woman played naked in the garden. You could call her innocent but the word meant nothing then, innocence only comes to life as the mirror image of sin, reversed left to right.