Transcripts

SPEAKER: It has dropped across my face again, the white net, the cloud that at one time or another obscures the features of every woman I've known. It is a snow falling always between my face and your face, the shocked expression of social chastity, the charged atoms of social courtesy, oversimplified emotion, parenthetical dreams. The message is too acute. The veil speaks possession and possessed desire.

A violent grace is required to lift the veil all on your own. By custom, the authority of touch is given to the priest, the husband. The woman's hands are always too heavy. The woman's hands are filled. The veil is the symbol of the female hymen. And to lift it was once and often still is the husband's first marital privilege.

The veil is the mist before the woman's face that limits her vision to the here, the now, the inch beyond her nose. It is an illusion of safety, a flimsy skin of privacy that encourages violation. The message behind the veil is touch me, I'm yours. The purity is fictional, coy. The veil is the invitation to tear it away.

Three photographs. In the first, my grandmother stands beside a fellow first communicant. Both are crowned with lilies and carnations, holding Christ's symbol erect. They are held. They are captured in the white shadow, in the air of their substanceless caves, the veils they wear. Here is my grandmother, at the age of 12. In two more years, at only 14-- too young-- she will deliver her first child. Her face is beautiful. Her ankle's thick, her eyes' too serious. It is as if in this picture, she knows that she's just about to enter a room with many doors, but no windows and no view.

Next photograph, my mother on her wedding day so beautiful with her veil thrown back that she clouds my father's shy face with happiness. She is adored. The ecstasy is on her, so plain to see. And there's something in her face of all that is to come-- the healthy children, the long marriage, the love that is to bear the weight of conflict through so many decades-- a durable look of pleasure.

Last picture, me at seven with my mother's veil tacked onto a lacy headband. I might as well be holding my grandmother's candle, too. The nylon dress is small and scratches underneath my arms. My bangs are curled on rags. My hair reaches down to my waist. And I have rehearsed over and over, in air and in the mirror, the act of tipping my head back, eyes shut and tongue out, receiving Christ.

To keep my mouth shut. To turn away my face. To walk back down the aisle. To slap the bishop back when he slapped me during confirmation. To hold the word no in my mouth like a gold coin-- something valued, something possible. To teach the no to our daughters. To value their no more than their compliant, yes. To celebrate no.

To hold the word no in your fist and refuse to give it up. To support the boy who says no to violence, the girl who will not be violated, the woman who says no, no, no, I will not. To love the no. To cherish the no, which is so often our first word. No. The means to transformation.

We are born in calls and veils, and our lives as women are fierce and individual dances of shedding them. We are stepping higher, higher now into the thinnest air. It takes about a decade of wild blue dancing to shed just one. If we are lucky and if we dance hard enough, will we be able to look each other in the eye, our faces clear, between us nothing but air?

And what do we do with the nets, the sails that loft, that tangled around our feet? What do we do with the knowledge and the anger? I see the veils twisted, knotted between us like sheets for escape. The taut material is strong when pulled and thinned to ropes between us.

Primary cords. We can use the means and symbols of our long histories as women of emotional and intellectual incarceration. We can remove the flimsy shadows from before our faces and braid them into ropes. We can fasten the ropes between us so that if one of us slips as we climb, as we live, there are others in the line to stand firm, to bear her up, to be her witnesses and anchors.

We are all bound. We are all in tatters. We are all the shining presence behind the net. We are all the faces we're not allowed to touch. We are all in need of the ancient nourishment. And if we walk slowly without losing our connections to one another, if we wait, holding firm to the rock while our daughters approach hand over hand, if we can catch our mothers, if we hold our grandmothers, if we remember that the veil can also be the durable love between women--