"A midwife does this?"
"Well, she used to be a midwife. Now she says she only does circumcisions, that this is more symbolic and fulfilling to her than delivering babies. But she is medically trained. Everything will be sterilized, and she uses antibiotics and all that stuff. So it’s safe."
I suppose I should be relieved they are not using broken glass or old razor blades. "I don’t get it," I say at last. I peer at my granddaughter. "Is this some sort of religious thing?"
She bursts out laughing. "No!" she sputters at last. "Granma! You know I don’t go for that cult stuff. This is just about me taking control of my own life. Saying that sex doesn’t run me, that I won’t choose a man just because I’m horny for him, that I’m more than that."
"You’re giving up sexual fulfillment for the rest of your life." I state it flatly, wanting her to hear how permanent it is.
"Granma, orgasm isn’t sexual fulfillment. Orgasm isn’t that much better than taking a good shit."
I smile in spite of myself. "Then you’re sleeping with the wrong boys. Your grandfather-"
She covers her ears in mock horror. "Don’t gross me out with old-people sex stories. Ew!" She drops her hands. "Sexual fulfillment-that’s like code words that say women are about sex. Women need sexual fulfillment, like it’s more important than being a fulfilled person."
We are arguing semantics when what I want to tell her is not to let some fanatic cut her sweet young flesh away from her body. Don’t let anyone steal that much of you, I want to say. I don’t. I suddenly understand how grave this is. If I become too serious, she won’t hear me at all. She is poking me, trying to provoke me to act like a parent. I hold myself back from that futile abyss. I sense that Katie has already plunged to the bottom of it. Reasoning with her won’t work. Get her to talk, and maybe she will talk herself out of it.
"Have you any idea how much it’s going to hurt? Well, I’m sure she’ll use an anesthetic for the surgery, but afterward when you’re healing-"
"Duh! That would defeat the whole purpose. No anesthetic. It would go against the traditions of female circumcision throughout the world. Ticia and Mary and Sam and I will be there for each other. It will be just women sharing their courage with other women."
"Female circumcision was invented by men!" I retort. "To keep women at home and subservient to them. To take away a precious part of their lives. Patsy, think about this. You’re young. Once done, you can’t go back."
"Sure you can. At the midwife’s site, there’s a link to a place that can make you look like you did before. Here." She is fiddling with her netlink. I press the OFF on my master control again.
"That’s appearance, not functionality. They can’t restore functionality. How would they make you a new clitoris?"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. And you should know that much before you get into this. I can’t understand how that woman can do this to girls." The parent part is getting the better of me. I clamp my lips down.
Patsy shakes her head at me. "Granma! It has always been women doing it to other women, in all the cultures. Look." She reaches over to push my master button back ON. "Here’s a link to the midwife’s website. Go look at it. She has all the historical stuff posted there. You like anthropology. You should be fascinated."
I stare at her, defeated. She is so sure. She argues well, and she is not stupid. She is not even ignorant. She is merely young and in the throes of her time. Patsy will do this if she is not stopped. I don’t know how to stop her. Her words come back to me. Women doing it to other women. Women perpetuating this maiming. I try to imagine what this midwife must be like. I try to imagine how she began doing this to other women, how she could find it fulfilling. I can’t. "I’d have to meet her," I say to myself.
Patsy brightens. "I hoped you would. Look. On her site, my link is the Moon Sisters. Our password is Luna. Because we chose the full moon. There’s pictures of us, and the date and time and place. You’re invited. Mary wanted to have a webcam on the ceremony, but we voted her down. This is private. For us. But I’d like you to be there."
"Will your mom be there?"
Again her snort of disbelief. "Mom? Of course not. She gets all worked up whenever I talk about it. She threatened to kill our midwife. Can you believe that? I asked her if she ever bombed abortion clinics when she was younger. She said it wasn’t the same thing at all. Sure it is, I told her. It’s all about choice, isn’t it? Women making their own sexual choices." Her beeper chimes and she leaps from the stool. "Wow, I’ve got to get going. Teddy’s going to drive me out there. He won’t stay, of course. This is only for women."
I make my last stand. "How does Teddy feel about this?"
She shakes her head at me. "You just don’t get it, Granma. It’s not about Teddy. It’s my choice. But he’s excited. After this, if I have sex with him, he’ll know it’s not because I’m horny at the moment, but because I want to give that to him. And I think he’s excited because it will be different. Tighter because of how she sews us up. You know men."
She doesn’t wait for an answer from me, which is good, because right now I am sure that I don’t even know women, let alone men. As soon as she is out the door, I phone Katie. In a moment, I see her in the inset of my wall screen, but she does not meet my eyes. She is looking past me, at something on her own wallscreen. Her hand is uplifted, guiding a tinkerbell pointer device. Her blue-green eyes are rapt with fascination. I stare for a moment at my beautiful talented daughter. By a supreme effort of will, I don’t shriek, "Circumcision! Patsy! Help!" Instead I say, "Hi, whatchadoing?"
"Sorting beads from the St. Katherine site. It’s fascinating. You know my beadmaker from the Charlotte site? Well, I’m finding her work here, too. They’re unmistakably hers from the analysis. Which means these people traveled over a far greater area than we first supposed." She moves the tinkerbell in the air, teasing a bead on her screen into a different window.
"Or that the trade network was greater," I suggest as I smile at her. Despite my current panic, I have to smile at the sight of her. She is so intent, her eyes roving over her own screen as she continues working. When she is enraptured in her archaeology like this, she suddenly looks eighteen again. There is that huntress-fierceness to her stare. I am so proud of her and all that she is. She nods her agreement. I know she is busy, but this is important. Still, I procrastinate. I love to see her like this. Soon enough I will have to shatter her ardent focus. "Do you ever miss actually handling the beads and the artifacts?"
"Oh. Well, yes, I do. But this is still good. And the native peoples have been much more receptive to our work now that they know all the grave goods will remain in situ and relatively undisturbed. The cameras and the chem scanners can do most of the data gathering for us. But it still takes a human mind to put it all together and figure out what it means. And this way of doing it is better, both for archaeology and anthropology. Sometimes we’re too trapped in our own time to see what it all means. Sometimes we’re too close, temporally, to understand the culture we’re investigating. By leaving all the artifacts and bones in situ, we make it possible for later anthropologists to take a fresh look at it, with unprejudiced eyes." She glances up at me and our eyes meet. "So. You called?"