When Women Were Dragons(92)

As a scientist, it is a strange thing for me to stand in front of you and declare that science has no answer. But really, science rarely gives us answers. Rather, science gives us the means by which we may ask more questions: it provides context, connection, and background. It compounds our curiosities. We may stick a pin through the thorax of a butterfly in order to stop its wings and allow us to examine it closely, but by doing so, we will never observe those very wings pressing against the skin of the air and fluttering away. We will never know which direction that butterfly might choose to go, or what it would seek to do next. Science can only teach us so much.

You brought me here because some of you have daughters who dragoned. One of you has a recently dragoned son. Three of you have dragoned sisters. Dragoned neighbors. Dragoned colleagues. A dragoned wife. I know it is a lot to take in. I know that there are some of you who cling to the belief that dragoning is not only a cataclysmic tragedy, but that it is surely biologic in nature, and therefore must have a biologic antidote.

I am here to relieve you of that notion.

I am here to ask you to accept that which you cannot change.

I am here to point you to the fact that once upon a time, humanity worshipped the Divine Feminine, and that in that time all of humanity was in the thrall of her power and strength, both procreative and destructive, both fecund and barren, both joy and terror, all at once. If there is one thing I have learned in my years of research, it is that the answer is never just one thing. The particle is the wave, is the particle, is the wave. In the end, the entire universe is the marriage of opposites.

You have brought me here, gentlemen, in hopes of conquest—in an attempt to rein in this feminine largeness, to shrink it down and force it to acquiesce to your paternal control, to allow our culture to forget that any of this dragon business ever happened. This, my friends, is an impossibility. While it is true that there is a freedom in forgetting—and this country has made great use of that freedom—there is a tremendous power in remembrance. Indeed, it is memory that teaches us, and reminds us, again and again, who we truly are and who we have always been. The dragons are here to stay. Let us remember everything that brought us to this moment. Let us remember all those we have lost. Let us remember our loved ones as they were so that we may accept them as they are, just as we accept our country—changed, flawed, and growing—as it now is. Just as we must accept the world.

Personally, I think it’s rather marvelous.

—From the opening statement given by Dr. H. N. Gantz (former chief of Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, and erstwhile research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, the Army Medical Corps, and the National Science Administration) to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, March 12, 1967





37.

The first semester of my freshman year at the University of Wisconsin was already well underway when my diploma finally arrived in the mail. It took the post office a very long time to locate my new address, and I suppose I shouldn’t blame them. My new home was not . . . a typical sort of residence. Mail service was spotty.

The envelope was crushed and rumpled and the diploma itself looked as though someone had spilled coffee on it, but still, there it was. My name written in scripty letters. Highest honors. Despite the loss of my mother. Despite my father’s abandonment and abdication. Despite raising an irascible little girl all alone. Despite the deep wound of grief. Despite everything.

I would have called my father to let him know, but of course my father was gone. So I called Mrs. Gyzinska instead.

“I wondered when I’d hear your voice,” Mrs. Gyzinska said. And then, “Have you stopped in on Dr. Gantz, like I asked? I spoke to him last month, and he was asking about you, again.”

I hadn’t. I just didn’t have time. I had thought I would hit the ground running when I arrived at the university, and that every secret of the universe would simply fall into my lap, and that I could catch new scientific discoveries as easily as a child catches fireflies in a jar, and would untie mathematical knots with a single tug. As it turns out, college is a lot of work. Dr. Gantz operated in an out-of-the-way laboratory in the medical school. He wasn’t on the directory, but Mrs. Gyzinska had given me the number for his basement office. I just hadn’t had time to call yet.

“I’m still just trying to keep my head above water,” I said.

“No matter,” Mrs. Gyzinska said, and I could easily picture her waving my discomfort away. “See that you do so, though. Eventually. You’ll be glad you did.”

She waited for me to speak. I swallowed. I just didn’t know what to say. It felt strange, suddenly, to say why I had called or what I needed from her—was I looking for approval? for validation?—and I found myself experiencing a wave of deep embarrassment, and then annoyance for feeling embarrassed.

Mrs. Gyzinska noticed my pause. She cleared her throat decisively and continued. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch anyway, but several”—she paused, and I could hear her knuckles rapping the wood of her desk—“several interesting projects have been occupying my time.” I knew she meant her efforts with the new dragons. While there were a handful of schools that defied the state order banning dragons from attending primary or secondary institutions, I was fairly certain that my old school was not among them. Of course Mrs. Gyzinska would move heaven and earth to accommodate any dragon patrons. She was not one to suffer any impediments to a person’s education. Especially a girl person’s education. Or, in this case, a dragon person.