“Little Victories and Big Defeats”: How I Became an Artist, A Feminist, and A Personal Associate
Kathleen Zamboni McCormick
I dab on some L’Air du Temps Mrs. Ellis gave me when I turned thirteen. Mrs. Ellis is a total feminist, but she says that doesn’t stop her loving “the feminine.” When I became a teenager and since it was 1973, she came over to our house and proclaimed that my birthday entitled me to access all the privileges of a woman. This just about caused my father to go through the roof. You can imagine how relieved he was when I opened my present and it was only perfume. I never mention that what she says I need access to now that I’m fifteen is the pill.
I knock lightly on the screen door. Mrs. Ellis has a thing about fresh air coming in, even if it’s chilly. Probably because their house is usually kind of smelly. “Hi Bridget, thank God you’re here. I could really use some help. Are you on the pill yet?” This is becoming a standing joke. “Remember what Germaine Greer declared?” We both recite together, “The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood,” and we laugh. “But keep in mind,” and Mrs. Ellis always becomes serious at this point, “access to contraception is a privilege. So be sure you’re protected when the time comes.”
“I will.” It’s hard enough to imagine a boyfriend let alone needing birth control.
That line from Germaine Greer is one of Mrs. Ellis’s favorites, particularly, I think, because she enjoys how much it would annoy my father if he ever heard us. Mrs. Ellis is always quoting feminists. And she never makes me feel like I’m not smart when I don’t know who she’s referring to. But if I like a particular line, she insists I borrow the author’s book from her or take it out of the library, and that we then discuss it. I realized pretty quickly my father knows who most of these women are, if only by name (and of course disapproves of all of them), and my mother doesn’t but she should. So I’m forced to hide the books from him and show passages to her in secret, though she’s never as excited about them as I expect her to be. My father’s made my mother so un-feminist that she gets nervous even thinking about women’s liberation. Never mind Fear of Flying, my mother’s suffering from fear-of-feminism.
Mrs. Ellis lives across the street from us, but she could live across the universe when you realize how different our lives are, and I’m so grateful she takes the time and interest to include me in her universe. She’s changed what living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is actually like for me. Harvard Square isn’t only a place to shop and get an ice cream and hang out looking cool in funky clothes and ironed long hair. It has all sorts of galleries, and studios, and public meeting places—and all within walking distance from our house. Mrs. Ellis puts my prior lack of knowledge down to “town and gown.” She’s comfortable living in Cambridge as a gownie because Mr. Ellis is at Harvard Medical on a post-doc. So she’s totally involved in protest marches and makes posters for lots of events in the Square—against the Vietnam War, in favor of feminism, gay pride, social equality, and other stuff, all of which I’m now so into that you’d never know I was just a townie.
And yesterday my mother told me the most disconcerting family secret to date (we possess an infinite supply) that is so uncannily relevant to the town/gown situation. Turns out that my father was accepted to Harvard on a local-high-school-boy-scholarship but his father refused to give the school the piddling required “family contribution” since he was bestowing all the money he had on the seminary where his oldest son was imprisoned—miserable-but-stuck because his father had promised-him-to-God as a baby (seriously, WTF?). So because of my grandfather’s miserly and out-of-control controlling personality, my father had to get a college degree over eight long years by night while working as a lowly bottle-washer by day to pay for the privilege of attending night school since they don’t give scholarships. In which time my mother says he lost all his confidence and any hope he could ever escape his low-class-East-Cambridge-growing-up-motherless-and-in-poverty background.
So being over at the Ellis’s, where I’ve been coming for years, and seeing one of Mr. Ellis’s Harvard notebooks on the floor among the posters today is making me imagine how different life would be if my father had actually become a “Harvard man”—he’d be too busy and important to be so protective of me, and we’d probably live in a mansion on Brattle Street or Grey Gardens East or West and not in a dilapidated three-family on the wrong side of Huron Ave. whose prime feature is its proximity to the firehouse. And Mom, who’s as artistic as Mrs. Ellis, even if she isn’t as worldly, could’ve hired a cleaner to address all her cleaning obsessions and maybe she’d be designing posters for important events in Harvard Square.
Mrs. Ellis climbs over stacks of papers, toys, and two unfinished bowls of Froot Loops in streaked orange-blue milk to give me a quick, if slightly sweaty, kiss on the cheek. The place is more of a mess than usual. But since my mother threatened me a couple of years ago that I’d be forbidden to babysit for Mrs. Ellis if I ever again cleaned the house for her when the kids were napping—and Mrs. Ellis said it wasn’t worth losing me over a messy house—I no longer even consider the state of their floors. Or anything else. Unfortunately neither does Mrs. Ellis.
“I know the living room’s a disaster, even for me, but there’s so much important work to be done!” says Mrs. Ellis, sounding out of breath with the number of tasks she’s trying to do simultaneously. “So avert your gaze and come help me sort these new postcards I got from the printer. But be careful not to step on any of the posters on the floor. They’re lined up by color and need to be distributed around town ASAP.”
It’s impossible not to step on something since the floor is really covered. So I take off my shoes and gently pad across the posters in clean socks. “Mrs. Ellis?” I ask quietly. “Maybe for once I should pick up the toys and those dead cereal bowls so we don’t trip and kill ourselves before your big day.”
She looks serious for a moment and then says, “Nah” really loudly, and we both burst into hysterics because we know what’s coming next—that Betty Friedan line. “No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor, Bridey!” Mrs. Ellis makes me laugh more than any grown-up I know. And I suspect she really likes saying “orgasm” to me because it’s such a taboo word among Catholics. She also knows my mother’s pretty obsessed in the cleaning department.
“We need to reorganize this portfolio,” she sighs, cramming various postcards and posters into her leather organizer. Though in Mrs. Ellis’s case, it’s more of a disorganizer. “Everything has to look good because I’ve scheduled some job interviews this week designing posters for various summer events.”
“Now? This week? When there’s so much to be done for your talk?”
“Life doesn’t stop, Bridget, just because I’m giving a lecture on Vera Brittain!” Mrs. Ellis raises her eyebrows and looks a little overwhelmed.
“I’ll handle the portfolio,” I assure her, hauling it over to a big armchair that only has a couple of dolls and some plastic-sunny-side-up-eggs-and-sausages on it. I move the toys to one of their crowded bookshelves. She doesn’t mind about the toys—she knows I understand how she wants her portfolio organized. In reverse chronological order following her four organizational categories and nine subcategories of experience.
Mrs. Ellis keeps some of my poster designs in her portfolio, under “Bridget Flaherty, Associate,” which I’m really proud of. No one before her thought my work was any good. She particularly likes the way I create pop art words, which are so fat and curvy with all the 3-D-looking letters overlapping. The portfolio also includes samples of her Associate’s five full-page background geometric patterns she’s taught me how to create and color using her special psychedelic paints. As an artist, Mrs. Ellis can perceive how the juxtaposition of the background angles and the roundness of the foreground lettering makes a real statement. So maybe someday someone might commission one of my posters for an event in Harvard Square, though my father says hell would freeze over first.
I move to the floor so I can rearrange the larger pages of the portfolio more easily. Mrs. Ellis likes some of the subcategories arranged primarily by color. “Started reading Vera Brittain’s memoir yet? I expect at least one member of the audience to be exceptionally well- informed,” she says in mock sternness. Next week, as far as I know, will be the first time Mrs. Ellis is the center of an event, not just the poster maker. She’s giving a lecture on Vera Brittain because Brittain was both a feminist and a pacifist—what Mrs. Ellis believes are the two most consuming issues of our time. And if you don’t think so, you should come to the lecture to discover why you’re wrong. There’s a seat reserved for me in the first row, and I’m in charge of signing people up for Mrs. Ellis’s mailing list. Then I’ll likely be the one who addresses envelopes to them. It’s all pretty thrilling.
“I started Testament of Youth and it’s hard to put down!”
“What year was it written?”
“1933.”
“If you had to describe her, what would you say?” Mrs. Ellis delights in quizzing me on something she’s assigned me to read, and I delight in usually knowing all the answers. She contends if she hadn’t become an artist-activist, she’d be a teacher. I’m in awe at the education she’s giving me, but she’d be a disaster in a real classroom. Though I’d never tell her that. She’s got very little patience for people-who-aren’t-interested-in-what-she’s-discussing, and the increasing number of pregnant girls from other parishes St. Michael’s High is now accepting to increase our dwindling local pupil count has convinced me that most people are people-who-aren’t-interested.
“Vera Brittain was a great writer, a feminist, a pacifist…oh, and also a nurse, which she began in the war. What else?” She snaps her fingers.
“She was a strong and a well-respected public speaker, though, Mrs. Ellis, I do wonder if she would’ve become so great if every man in her life hadn’t been killed in the war.”
“Which war?” she asks immediately.
“World War I!”
“Well, you know what Gloria Steinem said?”
I actually don’t know what Mrs. Ellis has in mind since Gloria Steinem says so much. So I shrug and she gives me one of her best chubby-faced grins.
“‘Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.’” She pauses to let the brilliance of the statement sink in. “Totally applicable to Vera, isn’t it?”
I’m trying to figure out how the quote fits exactly when Mrs. Ellis says, “You’re so perceptive, Bridget. I begin the talk describing how repressed women were at the time and argue that, in the absence of the tragic deaths of Edward and Roland, Brittain might not’ve become quite so prolific or such an activist. And I use Steinem’s line as a lead-in.” Though I still don’t really understand the point, I know it’ll all make sense when she gives her lecture. And really, I do learn more from Mrs. Ellis than anyone else, teachers included. I pick up all of her colored pencils and start sharpening them. Mrs. Ellis takes out one of her many notebooks.
“So the K&K people called this morning to say the place is half booked already for Vera Brittain, and they want more postcards, which you should bring down later on. I’d like to come, but there’s no time.” Mrs. Ellis is referring to the Kite and Kestrel Coffee House, one of the most popular spots in Harvard Square. It’s getting a little late for me to leave for the Square now—my father requires that I be toiling at my desk, deeply engaged and dutifully completing assignments when he walks in the door, but I can probably make it to the Square and back if I take off immediately and ride my bike superfast. “I’ll go right now?”
“God no! There’s tons for us to do this afternoon!” Mrs. Ellis’s eyes frantically scan the room for something she doesn’t find. “Oh, and the kids say ‘hi.’ Of course, they prefer you as a babysitter, but I’m using what’s-her-name? That twelve-year-old O’Malley girl…Susan! She’s got a good-sized yard if you don’t step in any of their dogs’ poo—honestly some people! I get sick to my stomach envisioning all those O’Malleys playing back there. But Susan can at least keep my two out of mischief and allow us to get some work done.”
Mrs. Ellis is so amazing, and I’m happy that I moved beyond being primarily her babysitter to what she calls her “Personal Associate” or PA, but she doesn’t really understand, for all of her jokes, how my father will punish me if I’m not at that desk when he gets home. Of course, mostly the PA job isn’t paying—so babysitting did hold some advantages—but it’s so much more exciting to be with Mrs. Ellis than her kids.
I think Mrs. Ellis has read every feminist who’s ever lived. She’s always going on about Mary Wollstonecraft, and she’s had me read not only Vindication of the Rights of Women (brilliant in the parts I understood because it was written way back in the 1700s, when it was still kind of the dark ages for women), but also Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (disturbing because even though it’s almost 200 years old and pretty hard to follow, it contains some ideas my parents could learn from today). But Mrs. Ellis is not particularly well organized, and I can be a real help since I’m extremely orderly and methodical. Sometimes I imagine what I might be like if I had all her advantages.
Gesturing to the left of the room, Mrs. Ellis calls out, “Look at those posters of Vera Brittain on the couch. Aren’t they fantastic? They’re the latest iteration.” The posters began over two month ago as a brown-and-white picture of this beautiful woman in a white headscarf and a white blouse, or it could be a nursing uniform. The next ones had a lime-green tint. After that, purple. Then yellow. These are electric pink.
Mrs. Ellis does pay me for trekking around and putting up posters advertising her talk. Under the picture it says, “Vera Brittain: The Testament of a Feminist & Pacifist, Eve Ellis, April 11, 1975.” That’s next week—though I can hardly believe it since we’ve been preparing for months. Usually only musicians perform at the Kite and Kestrel. I’ve even been able to hang out there some nights when Agnes goes if I leave after the first set because, like most of the coffee houses in the Square, they can’t afford a liquor license. So while my parents don’t really like allowing me out of the house at all except to go to school—and particularly not to go someplace at night—after Agnes’s mom paid mine a couple of visits, my parents reluctantly agreed to allow me to be emancipated on some Friday or Saturday nights, as long as I’m home before 10:00. Agnes considers my curfew insane, but I know I’m lucky to get away at all. Agnes doesn’t have to be in till midnight, so sometimes she walks me home and then walks back while Lucy or one of our Harvard Square guy friends stays at the K&K and keeps the table. But this year, the K&K decided to branch out and start a lecture series, and Mrs. Ellis is giving the inaugural talk.
And in addition to having me put up posters, Mrs. Ellis has had the bright idea of getting me to change the posters every week. So I replaced the brown-and-white ones with green ones a few weeks ago. And I had to find new places to put the brown ones. Then the green ones became purple and so on. The artistic reasoning behind all this moving around is to draw people’s attention to the lecture through a process of subtle aesthetic surprise. Mrs. Ellis says the posters’ combination of familiarity and difference will intrigue the eye and capture the viewer’s interest. My father says she’s completely bonkers. “It’s exactly the same poster in different colors.” So, he thinks she’s just wasting money. “People will either attend the lecture or not, and it doesn’t matter a damn if the poster’s green or brown or sky-blue-pink.” Whatever color sky-blue-pink’s supposed to be. He can be so sarcastic when he isn’t interested in something I’m doing. But even if he finds the job idiotic, he’s glad for the money I make.
I’ve arranged and zipped up Mrs. Ellis’s portfolio. She’s trying out a few bits of her talk on me when I glance at their wall clock, which reads 4:15, so I realize suddenly that it’s 5:00. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ellis, but there’s not time for me to bike to the Square today. How ’bout if I just take a few of the new pink posters and a couple of the other colors and change them up in the stores right around here? Then I can get home before Dad…you know.”
“I can’t believe it’s time so soon,” Mrs. Ellis groans. Then she looks at the 4:17 clock and realizes it’s after 5:00. “Drats! The kids’re due back any minute now since those O’Malleys eat dinner with the birds. But you go, Bridget, because we all know your father’s such a tyrant.” He is, of course. Though she shouldn’t actually mention his tyranny out loud, even to me. It makes me worry that one day she’ll walk right up to him while he’s clipping the hedges and swearing because the clippers are so blunt, and she’ll start in on how he’s subjugating me, which would definitely lead to more subjugation if not some bodily harm to one of them. Reading my mind, Mrs. Ellis widens her eyes and gives me a squeeze. “Don’t fret, Bridget, I’m not planning to confront him.”
As I’m gathering up the posters, Mrs. Ellis asks if I’ll put one up in the firehouse. I hesitate. “I’m not sure firemen are really interested in feminism.”
She emits a loud harrumph. “Well, what about their wives? And then there’s all those uninformed girls who hang around them like they’re some kind of sex symbol. What the hell! Put one up. And make it a pink one,” Mrs. Ellis rocks on her heels, “because those are the brightest and will probably irritate the firemen the most.”
“I’ll do my best, but I’m not sure they can hang anything in the firehouse. It might be a fire hazard.” This is sounding like it’ll take too long, and my father…
“If they tell you that, Bridget, you let them know that Eve Ellis has a message. ‘Hang it in your locker next to one of your disgusting pinups.’” She laughs. “That’ll piss them off, but they won’t say anything to you since you’re such an innocent little cutie pie,” and with that she pinches my cheeks and kisses my forehead.
“Remember what Joan Baez said? ‘Little victories and big defeats,’” she calls out as I walk toward the firehouse and the shops.
Kathleen Zamboni McCormick is Professor of Literature and Writing at Purchase College, SUNY. Her creative work has been published in Green Hills Literary Lantern, Witness, South Carolina Review, phoebe, Italian Americana, Zone 3, CAYLX, Paterson Literary Review, Superstition Review, Kestrel, Rock & Sling, and Crack the Spine, and many others. Her novel, Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian Sometimes Awesome but Mostly Creepy Childhood (Sand Hill Review Press, 2016) won the 2017 Foreword Reviews Gold Medal in Humor and the 2017 Illumination Bronze Medal for Catholic Books (Pope Francis won the Gold!), along with other awards in humor and religion. In June, she received the 2019 Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Award. Named for the first woman in history to receive a PhD, this award recognizes outstanding Italian American scholars for their significant contributions to their profession and their communities. “‘Little Victories and Big Defeats’” is one of the stories focusing on social class and feminism that Zamboni McCormick is writing for her next book.