"Such confusing things!" says Little Miss Practical. "What's the point of making life so complicated? These French thinkers are not practical in the least. No wonder French movies are so depressing."
Miss Highbrowed Cynic stares at the other finger-woman with an air of condescension but says nothing. Instead she turns to me. "Kristeva talks about three ways for a child to create her identity. First, to identify with the father and the symbolic. Second, to identify with the mother and the semiotic. Third, to find a shaky balance in between."
I pretend to follow what she is saying, but Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't fall for it: "Don't you get it? If you pursue the third option, you could use the father's symbolic order and the mother's semiotic in your work."
"Hmm. . Is there a writer who has ever done that?" I ask.
"Yes, Sis. Take a closer look at Virginia Woolf's The Waves. She was writing precisely in that precarious balance."
I don't object. It might or might not be true. Writing fiction is a tidal river with strong currents. While flowing with it, one doesn't think, "Let me now add a splash of symbolic order and a dash of the mother's semiotic." You don't chew on such things when developing a novel. You are too busy falling in love with your characters.
That is what Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't understand. Novelists write without thinking. It is afterward, when literary critics and scholars weigh writers' every sentence that theories are applied. And then when people read those theories, they get the impression that novelists were purposefully creating their stories in such a way — which is not true.
"There's something I don't get," Little Miss Practical says.
"Why am I not surprised?" scoffs Miss Highbrowed Cynic.
"You're so into the theory of motherhood. All this semiotic, symbolic, bucolic. . But when it comes to the practicalities, I am sure you'd fall flat on your face."
"My knowledge would guide me," says Miss Highbrowed Cynic.
"Whoa, come on, Sister, you couldn't even change a diaper. I may not know anything about your theories, but I can get the hang of motherhood faster than Speedy Gonzalez runs."
The shape of her eyebrows indicates that Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't appreciate the remark. I leave them quarreling, and walk out of the library.
I wander around the campus. Being rid of the finger-women — if only for a short while — lightens my heart and my mood. Like a walking sponge, I soak up every detail I see, every sound I hear, every smell I sniff, and store it all away inside me. That is what happens when you are a foreigner; you collect details as if they were seashells on a shore.
In the cafeteria, I get in line and end up standing in front of a lesbian couple. One of the women is short and has spiky, carroty hair. The other is quite tall and heavily pregnant. We move forward, pushing our trays along inch by inch. Just when we reach the dessert display, the short woman chirps up
"Ah, would you mind if we take that, since there is only one left?"
There on top of a glass shelf, where the woman is pointing, is one lone piece of raspberry cake. I move back.
"Of course, go ahead."
"Thank you, thank you! Shirley has been craving raspberries since this morning," says the woman, giving me a wink.
"Oh," I say. "You're expecting a baby, how wonderful."
"Yes," says Shirley as she pats her belly. "Six feet one, chess and amateur tennis champion, professional artist, IQ over 160, interested in Buddhism and Far Eastern philosophy—"
"Excuse me?"
"The father," she says. "We picked him out of thousands at the sperm bank. . He's going to be a very special baby."
There is something in all this meticulous advance planning that freaks me out. Perhaps it is not surprising that women would look for athletic, charismatic, wealthy and influential sperm donors. But as someone who has grown up without a father, I am thinking, what does that ultimately mean to a child who will never know his or her biological father? Besides, the things we lack in life — such as blue eyes, a muscular body or conversational eloquence — might help us to develop other qualities that are dormant inside. Many talents are born in the shadows, out of necessity. The search for perfect babies misses the surprising role of oddities, coincidences and absences in our personal development.
In the evening I return to my room. The place I am staying in is about 130 square feet. It has the tiniest kitchen counter and a shower so small you can wash only half of yourself at a time.
Before me, there was an Indian painter residing here — the walls still smell of her paints. And before her, a Zimbabwean sociologist. The room has seen dozens of women from all over the world. The Indian artist left behind paint stains and an intricately designed rolling pin. The Zimbabwean scholar left a scary mask on the wall, which casts a long and thin ebony shadow.
What will I leave to next year's fellow? "Before me, there was a Turkish author staying here," she will say. I can't find anything but words to hand down to her. Perhaps I can leave one of my favorite Turkish words, which also exists in English: kismet.
I lie down on my bed. The solitude that I so enjoyed only this afternoon now darkens my mood. What am I doing here so far away from Istanbul, from my loved ones, from the place where my novels are set, from my friends, my mother and my mother tongue? Am I throwing myself into unknown waters just to see if I can swim?
What if I can't?
I recall my mother telling me I was too good at being alone. "It is as if you don't need anyone," she had said. "But you should. Too much independence is not good. You should be dependent, even if a tiny little bit."
This, coming from someone who had refused to remarry at the expense of being "a woman without a male protector" in the eyes of the society, had surprised me. But now I find myself thinking of her advice in another light.
Women of my age have husbands, children and picnic baskets. They don't hop on Peter Pan buses and go roaming Neverland. You should do that in your early twenties, when you are fresh out of school and your "life" hasn't started yet. But you don't do it in your midthirties. There should have been some order and stability in my life by now. Women my age have scrambled eggs in the mornings with their families and social rituals they like repeating. I'm still being dragged around by the winds, like a kite whose string has snapped.
The members of the Choir of Discordant Voices seem pleased to be here, doing their own thing. Miss Highbrowed Cynic doesn't look like she's ever going to leave the library. When she has a spare moment she attends either a workshop or a conference. Little Miss Practical keeps taking computer classes — PowerPoint, Excel, Linux. The last time I saw Dame Dervish she was meditating in this place where nature is so beautiful. As for Milady Ambitious Chekhovian, she is always on the Internet writing, applying for this and that, finding things to do.
Everyone is in their own world. But where is Mama Rice Pudding?
I haven't seen her since the airplane. Maybe she didn't come to America. Maybe she couldn't get through passport control after all. Or maybe she got lost somewhere in New York. . Suddenly my heart aches. Can a person miss a side of her whom she doesn't even know? I do.
As I fall asleep, I think of Mama Rice Pudding. I wish I knew her better.
Normal on the Outside
Courtney Love once said: "I like to behave in an extremely normal, wholesome manner for the most part in my daily life — even if mentally I am consumed with sick visions of violence, terror, sex and death." Everything is normal, as long as we appear so on the outside. But what is normal? And who exactly is a normal woman? Which womanly attributes are natural? Which others are cultural? Are girls genetically predetermined to be maternal, nurturing and emotional, or do their families and societies mold them that way? Or else, are the natural and the cultural qualities so intricately interwoven that there is no telling which characteristics shape whom anymore?