Donna Quixote, Chapter One
I’ll be traveling to Cuba and Argentina, so stay tuned. In the meantime, another installment of my novel…
In a certain trailer park near La Mesa, which for fear of litigation shall not be named, on a frontage road off the old Interstate in an unincorporated subdivision with scant services and scarcely worth remembering, along desert fringes barely separated from strip mall by thinning patch of Joshua, neither pleasant enough to be country nor pleasure-laden enough to be town, one of those bulldozed roosts for the recreational at heart with hook-ups to generators of spark if not spirit, set far enough apart to maintain all sixth, seventh, eighth amendment rights to privately destructive destinies, worn trails plied by alien pickers shutting down lifetimes in hideout, savoring a New World unworldliness disguised as the good life, that particular brand of nowhere no other where can match, safely removed from housing bubbles none here dared live under, yet recognizably at the tail end of that all-talking all-action all-American epoch, there subsisted, resisted, vegetated, hung on, a gentleman (if lengthy record of civil disobedience be gentle), one squirrely squire entirely untithed to estate of mind, diagnosed bipolar yet supremely organized into one-man united front, a deactivated activist, internally agitated outside agitator known to keep a retractable five-and-dime lance in the event of sudden street jousts with authority, even if V.A. hospitals failed to recognize his form of crusade, and with Dons in these parts reduced to N.C.A.A. Second Division mascots, scant campground scuttlebutt had it his given name may have been Ronald McDonald Cohen, on release papers from institutions gone in one end and out the other, though ever since the days when everyone took on dream handles, became chieftains indigenous to their own reservations, he had been known after nativist cartoon howler to co-conspirators and case workers alike as none other than Ron Coyote. . . .
CHAPTER I
In which Our Lady finds the right cause on the wrong day.
Sallying forth in molded space shoes -- the foundation for each day’s resolve into which she eased her misshapen clods with shoehorns as long as Tibetan trumpets -- Donna Quest turned a familiar corner of downtown Barktown, fully expecting to arrive at her chosen indignation of the day. If this was Tuesday, it had to be Niketown -- and a symbolic picket against sweatshop labor. Passing a block that was all Walgreen’s, Army-Navy surplus and smoothie shops, down a sidewalk as sanitized of human suffering as any could get, she listened for the soothing sounds of those customary chants, “Nike Runs On Third World Children! Just Do It!”
Sweatshop labor had become Donna’s penultimate peeve, perhaps in delayed response to her own Ukrainian mother’s tales of indentured childhood servitude to a Cossack seamstress who paid in bits of black bread. But she couldn’t make out any jeers nor cheers beneath the storefront’s multi-story silhouettes of Uncle Tomming slam dunkers; found no orderly line of more-starved-than-thou, plaid-shirted globalists circling the block. A cheery greeter in tracksuit actually mistook Donna for a potential customer (not about to trade the molded Noguchi forms on her feet for cross-trainers pumped with obscene profits). It appeared that the Movement had moved on, the Left left. Had she come to the wrong side of the street, the tracks, to join the right side of history? Donna Quest prided herself on never failing to miss an appointment, whether with the struggle or Dr. Shmuggler, her pet podiatrist. Her rounds were duly noted, alongside death dates of comrades and anniversaries of uprisings past, Paris Commune to Battleship Potemkin, in a jam-packed United Farm Workers desktop diary: foment-at-a-glance.
Was this slip-up the first dread chink of dementia in her organizational armor? A dread loosening of the grip on concrete social relations no Marxist dare lose? She considered checking for an alternative rally outside Banana Republic, several long blocks of retail away, past the college town’s several puny skyscrapers in brown reflective glass that looked to her like giant file cabinets, homages to data storage. But Donna’s feet already throbbed inside her customized clogs -- that she had sprayed bright red to match both her banners and her trademarked incendiary hair.
Once upon a time, Donna had been naturally auburn and wavy á la some Hollywood ingénue, the Veronica Lake of the Workmen’s Circle. By now, her thinning locks, cut unisex short, had been colored to every shade of flaming crimson that came out of a tube. She had the dyeing done at the regional Vidal Sassoon salon, two bus transfers away, on days budding trainees gave fifty percent off. Perhaps that’s why each replenished redness was always slightly varied. Sometimes the effect was luminescent, almost winsome; sometimes flat with hints of humdrum brown. But Donna had been born a redhead, with fair skin and spate of faint nose freckles to match, and she would die that way. Nothing about her could ever be gray.
Never mind that the boyish bob topped a mass of creases, leathered, lizard-like skin much like that of her own mother who for too many later years ran a boarding house for retired trade unionists in Miami Beach; or her lower front teeth turned yellowing and criss-crossed, twitchy fingers moving involuntarily from tip to tip in a strange self-comforting rite, plus a pre-diabetic licking at dry lips. Always the hottest firecracker in the pack, Donna’s chosen look was also pointedly youthful: a bare-midriff blouse of black Mexican lace, exaggerating a full bosom bordering on stocky; baggy black pants of simulated crinkly paper; a gold lamé jacket embossed with the names of imprisoned writers. Most of her outfits were incongruous combinations of thrift-store finds from “Recycled Rags” bargain bins for students who didn’t have any compunction about crawling into other people’s ink-stained jeans. In her determination to outsmart the system, she had left behind Bonwit Teller for the ranks of frugal scroungers. Often, Donna was the only fashionista combing the racks who wasn’t a punker in studs. Or had this former design maven, first on her Manhattan block to model Marimekko prints, yielded to the penny-pinching programmed into old ladies of all ideologies?
The cosmos her mind inhabited consisted of classless utopia, surplus value, the historic role of the proletariat. The world her body moved through: hallways full of stolen shopping carts, lines for bus passes, billboard appeals from injury law-suit shysters. Donna even hoarded her free taxi scrip to show support for the much-disdained public bus system, in defiance of her sons’ warnings, since Barktown’s accordion-linked coaches lurched and swerved, causing Our Lady of Stumps to weave like a drunken sailor. O, storm-tossed NorCal Transit! At least, she took inspiration from driving descendants of Rosie the Riveter who were not just female but black -- and so immense they barely squeezed behind the dash, somehow strong enough to steer solely with foot-long fingernails, fern-curled extensions barely scraping the wheel. But whenever she tried to inform them of their sisterhood with Soviet tractor drivers, Donna found that the wide-bodied ladies’ lacquered scratchers – meant to attract the opposite sex or keep it at bay? -- were also for pointing to signs that enjoined the public from conversation.
Now it would be a disheartening ride home. When Donna ordinarily might have pined for a good police tail, she now hoped no one noticed her backtracking.
Struggling to open the half-emptied corner dispensers for the many free underground weeklies, she tried to find some notice for the demonstration amidst the back page ads for bondage mistresses. Then she recalled the sneaky sneakers’ coalition was sponsored mainly by GAIN (the Global Awareness Intervention Network). Donna staggered further, militantly disdaining a cane, and any newfangled mobile phone, checking one forlorn phone booth after another until finding the one that wasn’t too piss-anointed. Was there a public sector anymore or just a pubic sector? Donna always kept a stash of spare change and miraculously, got both an automated listing and a wavering sort of lefty office ring.
She had no trouble explaining her predicament. “Where’s the protest?” was as second nature to Donna as “Where’s the fire?”
“Yikes! Didn’t you get our newsletter?” Theirs had to be the only one in the universe she didn’t get. “It’s cancelled for the celebration.”
“Celebration?” That wasn’t a word she associated with GAIN.
“International Women’s Day.” What a way to be relieved of incipient memory loss! “But who is this?”
Now Donna could proclaim her identity. “Donna Quest? The beacon of people’s radio with that beautiful basso voice? Brilliant!” Around Barktown, she was indeed a well-preserved living legend, the dramaturge who personally knew her stuff with it came to modernist angst, the vermillion-locked loon who could be counted on to show up for any subset of downtrodden. “I loved your series on Odets -- and that re-enactment of the death of Steve Biko, I mean, you’re one of the pantheon in our office. Take possession of that corner. Look for a Volvo, eco-green!”
Listing with late breezes off the Pacific, Donna dutifully kept a grip on the ravaged Yellow Pages attached to the phone booth ledge. Eventually, a car rolled silently past, which, if Donna paid attention to the automotive, she would have instantly identified as belonging to a fellow refusenik. This Swedish model was older than Max Van Sydow, outfitted with a rooftop bicycle rack crude as a medieval crossbow. A woman waved wildly out the rolled-down window, then double-parked to rush out and help Donna in perfect volunteer trooper mode. But this was no Girl Scout, it was Medusa Feldman.
Talk about participatory democracy! The help who had answered the phone was none other than the head honcho of GAIN herself! Donna had seen her from a distance speaking at untold rallies, also pictured on front pages -- even in the capitalist press -- as the leading disruptor at most every appearance of any visiting dictator or Federal Reserve Chairman. Why, Medusa Feldman could have made the Guinness Book of World Records. She had heckled and hectored more senators and CEOs than any woman alive.
“Donna, you’ve been on my list -- a good list, I mean! We’re going to break bread at the Free Trade Café!”
This woman did not speak; she declared declaratively, deploying her troops -- making Donna feel honored to be commanded with the assured twinkle of someone accustomed to deliberate forms of high-minded mischief. Despite her name, Medusa’s hair wasn’t coiled and snake-like but fine and dirty blonde, blowing in front of her face. Her massive teeth seemed to be locked in a half-grimace. She walked with jaw jutting out, as though striding into the face of a majoritarian wind.
Jumping out to help Donna inside, the driver fairly shouted over a door slam, “You are one brave soul, venturing forth alone beyond the friendly campus confines!” Coming from Medusa, such words were Donna’s best ever Women’s Day salute. Never mind that the entire floor mat where Donna settled her space shoes was filled with assorted yellowed issues of The Nation, The Progressive, Off Our Backs. There were worse things than sloppiness in Donna’s book, though they didn’t occur at the moment.
“Scuse the rubble. Never buy anything first-hand, right?”
So be it, Donna told herself, trying to stifle her bourgeois reflex for bringing order, preferably alphabetized, to chaos. “This used to belong to the sister of Herbert Aptheker, who got it from …” and Medusa went on naming names of famous radicals traced back to Max Eastman, until Donna could no longer keep track of the automotive lineage. Instead, she caught herself enumerating but a few of Medusa’s exploits as publicized on K-RAD. She led charitable 20K road races, even won some of them. She sang the lead in a stirring, Slavic-style women’s chorus. She helped win a group lawsuit against conniving Barktown landlords who had subdivided their Victorians to get around rent control. In her spare time, she probably organized a rebellion among hamsters on their treadmills.
“Here’s our HQ of world domination!” the heavy actually made light, slowing at a three-story corner building cloaked in an umber mural of brown campesinos. Used to living at a sprint, Medusa barely slowed to lead Donna across another uneven sidewalk. She didn’t coddle or betray an ounce of ageism, fairly pushing Donna inside the woodsy nook where GAIN peddled folksy macrame accoutrements people had no need for but gave away at Christmas out of guilt. Medusa ordered two decaf Sandino Blends and pupusa corn cakes.
“Do you know how we’ve tripled wages among the folks on coffee plantations? But I don’t have to tell you!” With that, Medusa did -- being a veritable encyclopedia of liberation movements, articulate to the point of every sentence sounding Politburo-scripted. This was the sort of person who would take you to paradise or a jail cell or both.
“We’re going to be comrades, bosom friends,” Medusa assured, apropos of nothing but the same proclaimed views and Manhattan origins. “But you’re coming with, aren’t you? The Women’s Day event? Just whistle when you want a lift home.”
Before Donna knew it, she was being whisked through traffic to the Barktown Womyn’s Building, a clapboard house from Gold Rush days that had probably once been a brothel, refurbished back in those heady days when there still seemed some intent in spelling it “womyn.” Feeding off Medusa’s confidence, Donna made it to through the ground-floor bookstore -- where the shelves belonged solely to authors with vulvas -- then bested the rickety back stairs up to an attic strewn with red bunting. Where loose window frames, susceptible to ocean winds, clattered in time to amplified rumbas, a dozen or so sisters in floor-length paisley held hands to form a big circle, not so much dancing as swaying their nose rings in unison.
Leaving Donna seated in a corner with a glass of unfiltered Gravenstein apple punch, the leader went to urge on a subversive barbershop quarter, portly in good-time suspenders, come to serenade the meager crowd with their “oldies from the Bolshevik Café.” Donna was cheered to know every lyric. Had the Left produced anything decent since “Which Side Are You On, Boys?” Catchy variations on pro or con were tough.
There seemed but one sex in the room -- until Donna noticed some lanky Latinos stray in. She never would have guessed, or been willing to admit, most were Cubans who’d fled to the North. Circling the periphery in straw hats and flowery shirts, they seemed like predators waiting to pick off the stragglers of the weaker-sex pack -- who might falter and fall, by evening’s end, into the cadence of their smooth salsa moves. So fitting for the two steps forward, three steps back of social progress!
By now, Donna’s decaf had worn off and the caf, too. She worried about Allende, her cat, missing his kibble. But just as she cast about for Medusa’s promised ride, her savior ascended to the mike. The woman solicited donations with the practiced aplomb of some evangelist Billy Sunday. All proceeds would go to defray costs for her newly unveiled initiative: “Sisters Across the Blockade -- A GAIN Delegation Bringing Women’s Health Supplies To Cuba.”
The comandantress then stepped down to hand Donna the very first leaflet, bearing the shapely silhouette of a decidedly female Cuban soldier with rifle slung over her shoulder like a Vuitton bag. “This one has YOUR name on it!” Medusa insisted. Was this the strategic reason for her free lift?
“Another reality tour?” Donna whispered back, flattered yet fearful. She had been on so many such front-line excursions -- guided traipses through places no tourist considered decent -- that she no longer recalled what an actual holiday felt like. She had met enough mothers of the disappeared to want to disappear into her hotel; peeked into favelas where pickpockets in swimsuits wondered why Donna wasn’t around the pool. She had also been through more sugar mills and mezcal factories than she cared to count. See the world, see the food chain. But she had never made a pilgrimage to the island nation that, like her, was a last proud holdout.
“This trip is more than symbolic, and you’re just the sort of mentor we want along,” Medusa hurtled on. “I mean, the Feds would never scare someone like you.”
“An old lady, you mean?” As Donna now noted, the dates of this itinerary coincided with a rather remarkable point in her long journey.
“A vanguard elder!” With that, Medusa led the masses onto the dance floor, expertly executing some hip-thrusting moves, accented by a dark shawl wrapped around her buttocks. Was that dark-shaded fellow Medusa’s partner, or was she going splendidly solo? Donna couldn’t quite make things out. But this radical Renaissance woman was the very opposite of frumpy, showing a voluptuous frame and much cleavage in a tan spandex top and heavy liner around globular “gotcha” eyes. The mass of Indian jewelry up each forearm earmarked Medusa as some high-ranking squaw. Being female was a full-blown sort of thing for her, full-blown as her beliefs. And Medusa did it all with the self-assurance of a real American, or real anti-American. Yes, this young woman -- young being anyone not on Medicaid -- was everything Donna had once hoped to be.
And Donna never held a star sister like this to petty promises! So Donna asked a Lesbian at her table to phone Hamid, a Palestinian cabbie with whom she carried on an oft-interrupted colloquy, a Gaza Strip tease. Waiting for her ride, she rose in one great effort and began shifting her feet in a kind of slow jig from one set of diabetic ulcers to another. Donna often did this at home, swaying to K-RAD’s “Rhythms of the Diaspora.” Now the fists she attempted suggested a pair of maracas.
What were the others gawking at? Why all the clapping to urge her on? After all, she had been a woman longer than anyone in this Womyn’s Building. And life still held surprises, one more foray! If Donna dared, she might even plant her rotten feet upon liberated soil on the day she turned ninety.