Summary
Chapter 15
Two weeks after she graduated from high school, Lorde moved out. She stayed with a friend of Jean’s on the Lower East Side, frustrated with her father’s cruel comments about Gennie and a fight with Helen. She actually felt quite prepared to be on her own. She grew up, met sustaining people, and learned who she was.
She dated a white boy named Peter. Sex with him was unfulfilling, but Jean said she’d get used to it. She moved to Brighton Beach to her own place, where she shared the common spaces with an old woman who talked to herself.
Lorde and Peter broke up, and she lost her job because she was depressed and didn’t go to work for three days. She had to sell her blood and faced constant derision when she applied for medical receptionist jobs. Finally she got a position through her college, working in the afternoons for a doctor.
That Christmas she spent alone for the first time. Peter called and they slept together not long after, and made plans to go somewhere for New Year’s Eve. He jilted her, though, and two weeks later she found out she was pregnant.
Lorde knew all about abortion mills and butcher jobs, and had seen botched jobs at the doctor’s. She was terrified but knew she could not have the child, so she tried to take care of it herself. Nothing worked, however, and finally she heard of someone who could help through Ann, her friend from when she worked at Beth Israel. The woman, Mrs. Munoz, was the mother of another surgery nurse. Ann assured her it would be safe and clean; it would take fifteen hours and cost $40.
It was a chilly January day when Lorde went to Mrs. Munoz’s apartment. The woman was kind and tried to reassure Lorde as she passed the catheter through her cervix into her uterus. The pain was tough but short, but she was told the bleeding would begin in a few hours.
Back in Brighton Beach the cramps began, then the clots of blood. Lorde did not think about any complications—only the pain. She felt no regrets, though, and was amazed at her own daring. It was “a choice of pains” (111). A friend, Blossom, and one of her old high school teachers, Miss Burman, drove out to see her. Blossom did not approve, but Miss Burman left her five dollars.
By dawn the catheter worked its way out and she thought she would be fine to take the job she’d signed up for earlier—ushering at a Hunter College concert. That morning she went to Coney Island and treated herself to a decadent, delicious breakfast, and felt that she was finally healing. She headed into the city.
By the afternoon she was overcome with nausea and vomited all of her undigested breakfast into the toilet in the ladies’ room at the concert hall. The attendant, a friendly Black woman named Miz Lewis who Lorde knew from Hunter High, asked if she was okay, and finally lent her some money so she could get a taxi and go home. She promised to cross Lorde’s name off the list downstairs and get her the money anyway, and Lorde could pay her back. Grateful, Lorde went home and slept for twenty-four hours. The cramps were gone and the bleeding trickled to nothing. She paid Miz Lewis back, who asked her when she was going to go home to her mama.
Chapter 16
Lorde got an apartment on Spring Street, and though it wasn’t perfect, it was her first real space of her own. She thought she was fine after the abortion, but things still affected her sometimes. She had a cat and two birds now, and her friends Martha and Judy, who were still in high school, came to visit. They brought apricot brandy and helped her decorate.
Time passed in a blur. She went to her classes and the Harlem Writers Guild meetings. She spent time in her apartment, trying to clean some of the dirt away but avoiding the disgusting kitchen. She purchased a mattress and box spring and two feather pillows. The Branded came and cleaned the kitchen in summer and finally she could use it. The summer was hot but Lorde learned to indulge in the heat and the sweat. The birds died and the cat ran away but she had her writing, which was the only thing that made her feel alive. She never reread what she was writing at that time—the words were despairing and cold—and instead, she contributed poems from high school to the Guild.
Chapter 17
Lorde failed German and trigonometry and thought it was her own ineptitude rather than taking care of the girls from the Branded all summer. She was bored with Hunter College and sexually frustrated. She wanted to have an affair with a woman but felt she did not know much about sex with women.
She would sometimes kiss and cuddle with Marie, a girl on the outskirts of the Branded, but eventually Marie ran away. She moved to the YWCA and married someone. There was also Bobbi, another girl from high school who ran away to California. The FBI came looking for her and her boyfriend. It was the height of McCarthyism and Lorde knew not to let them in her room. She and her friends “were a menace to the status quo, and defined our rebellions as such” (121).
Another contingent of FBI men came looking for Marie and her husband, who had stopped by two days prior. Lorde did not like him, and later learned he was involved in under-aged girl prostitution.
When Lori, a member of the Branded, told Lorde there were a lot of jobs in Stamford, Connecticut factories, Lorde decided she would do well to get out of New York. She padlocked her apartment, gave the combo to the Branded, and packed her few things.
She got a job at the ribbon factory and rented a small room. She had never lived in a small town before, and marveled at the different scale of life. She planned to work here and save her money so she could go to Mexico.
The ribbon factory was monotonous, and she was only there for three weeks before she was let go. Apparently, she was told, it was standard procedure to keep Black workers on for only as long as it took before they joined the union fully.
In this strange time, Lorde began writing again, and began speaking her thoughts aloud to Gennie.
Chapter 18
Lorde met with Mrs. Kelly at the West Main Community Center to go over her job application. She told Mrs. Kelly she wanted to be a medical receptionist, and the older woman arched her brows. She said there weren’t many jobs around here for Colored girls. Lorde thanked her and left, and found a job at an X-ray machine factory.
The women at Keystone Electronics did the reading of the crystals or the washing of the thousands of crystals processed daily. It was “offensive to every sense, too cold and too hot, gritty, noisy, ugly, sticky, stinking, and dangerous” (126), with no one telling the employees about the levels of radiation they were exposed to. All the help except the foreman and forewomen were Black or Puerto Rican.
Lorde did get to join the union, but she did not get paid for three weeks and was running out of money. She wondered if she could stick it out here, but she did make a friend in Ginger. On Thursday night when they got their paychecks, Ginger invited her to come to her mother’s house and to cash their checks. Ginger’s mother, Cora, had many mouths to feed and was skeptical of this new, hungry woman but was pleasant enough.
Ginger was divorced, twenty-five, and very talkative. She and Lorde began spending a lot of time together. One day they were shopping together for nylons (which Lorde despised for their inhuman, unforgiving smell and look on her dark skin) and Ginger mentioned the center was renamed for Crispus Attucks, and was shocked to hear Lorde did not know who that early Black American Revolutionary hero was. Lorde was ashamed that she had gone to good schools and never learned about this important Black man.
Lorde eventually felt dependent on Ginger for human contact in Stamford. She stubbornly ignored Ginger’s flirting with her because she did not know how to handle it. Ginger saw her as “a citified baby butch—bright, knowledgeable, and secure enough to be a good listener and to make the first move” (133), but Lorde didn’t feel like this at all.
One November evening Ginger invited her up to her favorite wooded hill, where they sat with the car and listened to music, then started hiking. Ginger was full of insinuations about Lorde as a “slick kitty from the city” (135), which confused Lorde. Finally Ginger asked if she was gay and Lorde did not know what to say. She was, but she’d never made love to a woman before and Ginger’s mind was made up that Lorde knew everything about it. Lorde said nothing and Ginger exasperatingly said she had to say something. Lorde said yes, and the two of them grinned at each other.
Ginger had a body like the Venus of Willendorf, with skin the color of caramel and dark little eyes. Ginger told her she should kiss her, and Lorde was nervous but acquiesced. It was lovely, and she realized it wasn’t a bad idea after all.
Lorde usually spent the night at Ginger’s house on Thursday when they got paid. They went back from the hill and Ginger went to take a shower while Lorde laid in bed. She wondered if she could pretend to be asleep, and, if not, “what would be the sophisticated and dykely thing to do” (137). She was tremulous with anticipation, not wanting to be found disappointing. She did not even think Ginger could be as nervous as she was.
The two of them made love for hours that night, and for Lorde it was like “coming home to a joy I was meant for” (139). She was delighted by and hungered for Ginger’s body, and all her former fears seemed ridiculous. Ginger fell asleep on her arm and Lorde thought she seemed like a different Ginger, a “beautiful and mythic creature created by my own need [who] suddenly had taken the place of my jovial and matter-of-fact buddy” (140).
(Lorde had decided that as Gennie’s death was so hard, she would never love anyone again. Loving hurt too much, since when you loved someone you depended on them and they just died or changed or went away).
The next day Lorde watched Ginger to see if she would behave any differently. As for herself, she liked “paying court to Ginger, and being treated, in private, like a swain. It gave me a sense of power and privilege that was heady, if illusory” (142). Both of them acted very cool, denying their importance to each other, but were very passionate.
Lorde spent more time at Ginger’s palace, and Cora accepted this with her good nature. She may have known what was happening, but always made it clear Ginger was going to get married again.
Chapter 19
The week before Christmas, Lorde fell off her work stool and hit her head, and also learned her father had had a stroke. She headed home for Christmas Eve; it had been a year since she saw her family.
After Christmas, she returned to Stamford. Her father died not long after, and she went to stay with her mother. Linda was “sedated against her frenzied and awful grief” (143), and since Phyllis was married and expecting her second child, Helen and Lorde handled everything. Lorde felt like a stranger with them but was able to start seeing her mother as separate from her, and thus she was free.
After she returned to Stamford she decided she had to get to Mexico as soon as possible. To save money she moved to the sunporch at Cora and Ginger’s house, paying less rent than she would in her other place. She lost her X-ray job but got another one at the same place. This time she was in the reading room, which was a more coveted position, and there were actually bonuses available if you read more than 1200 crystals a day. In the first two weeks there Lorde made $3 in bonuses. Ginger talked to her and told her to slow down because she was making the other women look bad and setting unreasonable standards, but she was annoyed and determined to keep saving for Mexico. Her daily rate of crystals increased and she made more and more money. She admitted to the reader that she was cheating by taking them into the bathroom, crushing them up, and flushing them, but no one knew and she had no qualms.
Keystone seemed to be catching on, and one day the forewoman told her she was being let go, but had severance. Ginger seemed secretly relieved when Lorde told her she was returning to New York.
Chapter 20
Lorde didn’t know why she was so enamored with the idea of going to Mexico, but it seemed like a palace of sun and music and song and happiness. She took a job working in a health clinic and got a room with Rhea Held, a liberal white woman who was friends with Jean and her boyfriend Alf. Mexico was a beacon of hope for her that summer, especially as it was a summer of red-baiting and the execution of the Rosenbergs.
Rhea and Lorde campaigned on behalf of the Rosenbergs. It was a terrifying time for many people; the struggle for the Rosenbergs “became synonymous with [Lorde] for being able to live in this country at all” (149). Lorde wondered about being questioned by the FBI if she was gay.
The day the Rosenbergs were executed was a traumatic one. Lorde felt old, lonely, and betrayed. She ran into her friend Bea, whom she’d met at Bennington College the year before when she visited her friend Jill. The two women walked across town holding hands, tears on their faces. That night they made love, and continued to see each other in Philadelphia, where Bea lived, for the next few months and even planned to go to Mexico together. Lorde did not feel like they actually had much chemistry, but it was hard to meet lesbians at that time. Bea was very different than her—white, wealthy, and from an old family. While Lorde made love to Bea passionately, it seemed more cerebral to Bea. Lorde cared for her deeply but said to herself every Sunday night that she needed to stop seeing her.
Finally Lorde decided she had to be forthright. She told Bea she was going to Mexico alone and they would not be seeing each other anymore. Bea wept and came to New York the following day and camped out on Lorde’s steps. She would not leave for two days except for food, but Lorde stayed at Jean and Alf’s and ignored her. Bea gave up but wrote to Lorde to ask why. Lorde was miserable, knowing she’d made this choice for self-preservation but that she still felt like a monster. She would never get involved like this again.
A week later, Lorde left for Mexico; it was two weeks before her nineteenth birthday. She could hear Bea’s sobs, and felt like she was “fleeing New York with the hounds of hell at my heels” (153).
Analysis
There are several significant events in these chapters: Lorde has an abortion, which she writes about frankly; she moves to Connecticut for a change of pace; she makes love to a woman for the first time; her father dies and she feels herself free from her mother; she breaks up with a woman for the first time; and she decides to go to Mexico. She comes into her own, experiencing a sexual awakening as well as a greater sense of who she is and what she wants and doesn’t want.
Lorde does not spend a great deal of time discussing her recognition of being a lesbian—it is always there, it is immutable, it does not need an official declaration. Monica B. Pearl notes that “there is in fact no ‘coming out,’ no moment of knowing, but rather, as it is described in the coming out stories best known at the time, a ‘becoming.’” Yet she does have to find the words and the accompanying courage to put her sexual desires into action. As a child she had trouble with words, coming to reading and speaking late, and now she struggled to match words with reality. Pearl sees this as a common trope in coming-out stories: “The very fact of claiming the power of speech over silence fulfills a coming out paradigm. Though the coming out narratives seem to declare a struggle with sexuality, they are more often and more accurately a declaration of a struggle with language, and a central moment of naming. Coming out focusses on the moment of knowing, on the conversion from not knowing too knowing.”
Meeting Ginger began a process that was of fundamental importance to Lorde’s sexual awakening. AnnLouise Keating writes, “the women she loves empower her to identify new parts of herself, aspects of her personality which had to be named into existence.” Though Ginger thought Lorde was an experienced city lesbian, she certainly was not, but “Lorde responds to Ginger’s challenge. By so doing, she discovers new dimensions of herself. In bed with Ginger, she realizes the depth of her own inner knowledge about women’s bodies. She learns to trust herself and be guided by her own desires.” Being with Ginger sets her up for making her desires known to Bea, and to her ability to break things off when she finally knew they weren’t right. It also allowed her to be forthright with Eudora when she was in Mexico.
Lorde’s discussion of her abortion is an oft-overlooked part of the text, but one would do well to heed its frankness and explicitness in a time in which such things were not spoken of publicly or in a relatively non-apologetic way. First, Lorde did not deliberate at all about keeping the baby, writing, “Something—anything—had to be done” (107). Second, she fixated almost solely on the pain of the experience, not the pain of getting rid of a child. Third, she had no regrets. In fact, she wrote, “I dared myself to feel any regrets” (111). She knew she had run risks, but “another piece of me was being amazed at my own daring…this action was a kind of shift from safety to self-preservation. It was a choice of pains. That’s what living was all about. I clung to that and tried to feel only proud” (111). None of this is to say that Lorde wasn’t affected by her experience—she wrote “Since I was physically fine and healthy, it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t totally free from any aftermath of that grueling affair,” and noted how she lost track of time and was spacy—it is just that she did not agonize over not being a mother at this moment, or fixate on some Judeo-Christian guilt trip.
Lorde’s abortion and sexual awakening are core parts of this Black, feminist, lesbian text. Bethany Jacobs praises Zami as a contribution to “a lesbian canon at a time when black lesbian narratives were scarce and needed,” and that Lorde offered the book as “an antidote” to the extreme isolation Black lesbians felt during the 1950s. Lesbian coming-out stories were only beginning to appear in the 1970s and 1980s. They tended to focus on community and unity as opposed to diversity and individuality, though Pearl notes, Zami “expresses this tension primarily by way of lament over the lack of the desired community, the ways black women do not acknowledge each other, see each other, especially black lesbians.” Regenia Gagnier agrees, calling attention to Lorde’s work as pioneering “feminist postmodernism,” which was the “theory of the diverse components of complex modern identity.” Zami shows the reader the “historical process of these multiple identifications that would culminate in a feminist postmodern theory of the subject and its corresponding political agenda: coalition, or unity by common goals rather than essence or sameness.”
