“Some men still do,” Meredith said. “They still keep them in a kind of prison. They don’t let them have their say. They don’t let them do the things they think only men can do. The think women are inferior. They treat them not as people, but as objects, mostly to do with sex. Do you understand what that means?”
“I think it means men think women aren’t really people, that they should be sexy, but not smart. Or not the boss, maybe.”
“That’s sort of it. Some men believe that women are weaker and dumber than they are and they keep them from moving forward. And men still hurt women in terrible ways.”
“But why? When it isn’t true? Women aren’t weaker and dumber. Why do they believe it?”
Meredith said, “I have a theory … it’s not entirely mine, but it comes from what I’ve read. Thousands and thousands of years ago, when humans were still very primitive, men were in awe of women because they could do two magical, powerful things men couldn’t. They could become two people … when they had babies. And they could bleed for several days … when they had their periods … without dying. When men bled for that long from an injury, they died. People had sex, but they didn’t know sex made babies or that bleeding had to do with that.”
“But then men became farmers, not hunters. And they started to breed animals and gradually they made the connection between sex and reproduction. If I do this to a woman, then she will have another person. So she needs me to do that. And when she has another person, she is weak and not able to get food. So she needs me to protect and provide for her. But how could a man be sure that a woman wasn’t doing ‘the thing’ with another man, as well? And how could he tell if the new person came from him or someone else? A man would want to know the new person came from him so he could give him some of his farm land and share his animals. He wouldn’t want to do that with someone else’s new person. And he didn’t trust that his woman would be faithful to him. Men saw women as temptresses, out to weaken men through their sexiness. So the man said to his woman, ‘If you want me to help and protect you, you have to stay inside and only see other women. You may never see another man except a father or a brother.’ That’s very simple, I know. But it explains to me why men have kept women down and confined. They have had to be sure their son was their son.”
“But what about modern times?”
“I think over the centuries it became such a standard for male and female behaviour that even as humans became more sophisticated, they were still wary of women’s sexuality, seeing it as something evil and disempowering. And they still believed women were weak and needed protecting and controlling.”
As she continues to wait for the plaster to harden, Lizbett imagines a play she is going to write where all the actors are female and all wear masks, male and female. And each character would wear two or three or even four masks, all representing different people … even though, in the play, they’d actually be just one person playing several different personalities and no one would ever know who anyone really was and one mask-person would know stuff about another mask-person and the person wouldn’t be aware of it. It would be a huge mix-up of identities. And people would get all confused and all sorts of things would go wrong. Maybe it could be another world or another species or hundreds of years from now. It would be like a crazy fairy tale, but not for kids, really. She is thinking she will suggest it at drama camp next month.
Melvyn cannot believe that on this day of all days, he has been the one to form Lizbett’s life mask, to stroke his fingers over her delicate, lovely face and create the face that would be her, that was her, an essential part of her. The thrill was almost more than he could bear and afterwards he felt unsteady. Her face, the external path to her, had been born in his hands.
He pulls himself out of his reverie and suddenly says, “Okay, Lizbett. Time to look at the real you.” Lizbett sits up, excited. And he loosens the edges all around her face and slowly, slowly lifts the mask off. When Lizbett looks at it, she says, “I didn’t know I had such a big nose! Or such a pointy chin.”
“You don’t,” Melvyn says, laughing. “It’s only that what you’re seeing is not what you see in the mirror, which is reversed and then interpreted by you, by how you hold your head, by what light you look at yourself in, by what you want to see. What you’re seeing in the mask is exactly how you are.”
Melvyn cannot believe how exquisite she is; how serene, how austere, how enigmatic. She is Lizbett, but she is not. What he is regretting is that Lizbett won’t be around to charge her mask at the end of the week, make her own “self” live. This has always proven to be a fascinating psychological exercise and most children, wearing their own life mask, lose all shyness and reveal selves that have never been otherwise evident. A lot of anger comes out, in boys especially. But the girls, too, become more verbally aggressive, their body language more forceful. Since Lizbett seems to be so constantly self-revealing, he wonders what inner spirit would have enlivened her mask.
But it is too late for regrets. His plans are set for this afternoon. He is desperate to carry them out.
Near the end of the class he gives Lizbett permission to leave a bit early. She wants to call her mother. But promptly at four, he dismisses the class and goes out to get his car. What luck. Pete is asleep. But as Melvyn clicks the door open, his heart stops. Pete suddenly sits up, his wide eyes seemingly staring at Melvyn. Then, just as suddenly, he falls back with a snort, his head dropping again to his chest. And Melvyn rushes away.
Pete will later swear that the door was never used on his watch.
After talking to her mother, Lizbett comes out of the museum doors at a little after four and stops to chat with several of her classmates at the top of the stairs. Big raindrops are falling. All the kids but Lizbett rush down to waiting cars. At the bottom of the steps, one mother asks Lizbett if she wants a ride. Lizbett indicates her umbrella and says, “No thank you.”
The umbrella is green with little frogs at the end of the spines. She puts it up. It’s a good thing she brought it because by the time she reaches the corner, there is a great flash of lightning, a violent, prolonged clap of thunder, and the sky opens. The rain that falls is dense and hard. A fierce wind closes everyone and everything in, in silvery, wet sheets. People are scurrying every which way to find shelter. Water flows over the sidewalks and rivers rush along the curbs. Lightning sears the sky again; a crack of thunder immediately follows. Lizbett stands at the corner, hesitating. She can barely see across the road. She wonders if she should simply dash into the hotel that’s on the opposite side. While she hesitates, a car pulls up making a huge splash and the passenger door opens. Lizbett hears, “Get in. Hurry!”
Lizbett bends down and sees Melvyn and quickly, gratefully, slides into the car, closing her dripping umbrella after she’s in. He pulls away practically as she’s doing it. In the confusion and power of the storm, no one has noticed a little girl with a green frog umbrella get into a grey Honda.
“Had to get out of there,” Melvyn says. “There was a bus on my tail. Look at you. Lucky I came along.”
“Lucky you did. I was getting soaked. I didn’t know where to go.” The car is cold from the air conditioning and she shivers a little.
“I