She Matters Read Online Free

prominent Liza and Judith—ate away at my friend’s allegiance to me . “That’s not really my thing,” I said. Patricia, with her faith in communal reliance, scoffed. “You’ll love them,” she said. She possessed an abiding belief in the happy outcome.
    Several weeks in, I did love them—Judith’s harried warmth, her voice laced with resigned Jewish humor, Liza’s intense face inquiring as she checked my expression up and down; our delicious and dense loose laughter. The three of them had daughters, girls older than Daniel and already walking. The daughters could squat, open cabinets, pick up one black bean at a time, one goldfish. Their nakedness appalled my eye, no penis. The playgroup lasted through our next pregnancies, then past those babyhoods. Once two writers and early friends, Patricia and I became a crowd. In the space of five years, we’d become a quartet of mothers, each with two children—twelve of us massed into a living room in winter. In warm weather we met on the grass in the park, handing the bottle of sunblock around, working the many limp arms with cream as we talked. We talked. We talked in cars and in parks, we talked at birthday parties, at weddings, relegated to the periphery as webounced our restless children in weary arms. I found us interesting in the very things that otherwise made us infinitely dull. Tasha’s meltdown in the parking lot? Tell! Tell of the perplexing hives on Frieda’s back, your worry over Maddie’s teeth, the bully at day care, the dingy smell of stubborn pee. Describe the appointment with the specialist, the rudeness of the pediatric nurse—What does she know—the dreary bathroom mess at day’s end, the pink vomit after a wasted dose of antibiotics, the defeated glance at the kitchen floor; the preposterous neglect of the laundry room, pets, sex life. Tell what you said when you called poison control, and then what they said. You did the right thing. I would have called, too. How tired are you? When did you last pee?
    We reminded one another to drink water, to keep appointments, we reminded the others of our degrees and achievements—Liza the scientist, Judith the educator—the desired careers that had taken root, then been put on hiatus or abandoned as we obeyed the mystifying compulsion to bear children and tend them. With equal heat we could talk about the anthrax scare or the manufacture of strollers; we talked of news stories—that mother who drowned all her children in the tub (“How horrible,” “How could she?” “Oh, I could see it . . .”); or of certain, future dangers: People would break our children’s hearts, unimaginable cruelty in our gigantic new business of love. Prom, we said. Driving, we said, laughing so hard, as if they’d ever be larger, as if they’d ever zip their jackets or use a Kleenex. We talked and talked, and when our babies in a roaring foreground were cranky or truculent or unfit for common errands, we scattered fragments of that talk, hands on their backs, our attention filtered, diluted, exasperated, but no one missed a Monday morning.
    I’d never had such friends, women to count on, who countedon me. It sounds simple, a natural equation, but I hadn’t succeeded at it before. A code emerged. One woman would gather another’s child in any situation. Emergency, hurry, helping. We swept each other’s floors, after Cheerios, frozen blueberries, then put the broom away. None of them could have done a single thing I’d have protested, and they granted me the same absolute permission. What a thing, balance with women. I didn’t wonder who liked whom better, who got more; camaraderie reassured me. Collective strength prevailed. I liked baking the apple cake on the fourth Mondays, everyone at my house, liked talking about ingredients and allergies and recipes. I liked the sight of our breasts,