She... always been terrified of displeasing men, terrified of the names she would be called if she did. She had spent her life tiptoeing around them like someone lifting her skirt stepping through a cow pasture...Everybody had a group to protest and stick up for them. But women were still being called names by men. Why? Where was our group? Few people saw this plump, pleasant-looking middle-aged, middle-class housewife...she would make up a secret code name for herself...a name feared around the world: TOWANDA THE AVENGER!
Towanda was able to do anything she wanted. She went back in time and punched out the apostle Paul for writing that women should remain silent. Towanda appeared on "Meet the Press" and with a calm voice, a cool eye, and a wry smile, debated every man who disagreed with her until they became so defeated by her brilliance they burst into tears and ran off the show. She went to Hollywood and ordered all the leading men to act opposite women of their own age...she sent food and birth control methods, for men as well as women, to the poor people of the world.
Towanda ordained that: an equal number of men and women would be in government and sit in on peace talks...teachers and nurses would receive the same salary as professional football players...just yesterday Towanda had marched into the Pentagon, taken all the bombs and missles away and given the generals toys to play with instead while her sisters in other parts of the world did the same. And she'd personally see to it that all the sweet men and daddies, who had worked so hard, would each receive a trip to Hawaii and an outboard motor to go with it. And because of her vision and insight, she became known the world over as Towanda the Magnanimous, Righter of Wrongs and Queen without Compare."
***
Geneene the black nurse who prided herself on being as tough as nails, but really wasn't, said she was tired. She was working double shift today, and she had come in their room to sit down for a minute and have a cigarette. Mrs. Otis was down the hall in her arts and crafts class, so Mrs. Threadgoode was happy for the company.
"you know thata woman I talk to on Sundays?"
Geneene said, "What woman?"
"Evelyn"
"Who?"
"She's that little plump gray haired woman. Evelyn...Evelyn Couch.. Mrs. Couch's daughter-in-law"
"Oh. Yes."
"She told me ever since that man called her names at the Pigley Wigley, she just hates people. I told her, I said, 'Oh honey, it does no good to hate. IT'll do nothing but turn your heart into a bitter root. People cain't help being what they are any more than a skunk can help being a skunk. Don't you think if they had their choice they would rather be something else? Sure they would. People are just weak.'
"Evelyn said there are times when she is even beginning to hate her husband. He'll be sitting around doing nothing, looking at his football games or talking on the phone, and she has this terrible desire to hit him on the head with a baseball bat, for no reason. Poor little Evelyn, she thinks she's the only person in the world that ever had an ugly thought. I told her, her problem is just a natural thing that happens with couples after they've been together for so long.
"Poor little Evelyn, I worry about her. That menopause has hit her with a venegance! She said, not only does she want to hit Ed on the head, but lately, she's having fantasies in her mind where she dresses up in black clothes and goes out at night and kils all the bad people with a machine gun. Can you imagine?
"I said, 'Honey, you been looking at too many TV shows. You just get those thoughts out of your mind right now! Besides, it's not up to us to judge other people."
***
Ed Couch came home Thursday night and said that he was having trouble with a woman down at the office who was a "real ball breaker," and that none of the men wanted to work with her because of it.
The next day, Evelyn went out to the mall to shop for a bed jacket for Big Momma and while she was having lunch at the Pioneer Cafeteria, a thought popped into her head, unannounced:
What is a ball breaker?
She’d heard Ed use the term a lot, along with She’s out to get my balls and I had to hold on to my balls for dear life.
Why was Ed so scared that someone was out to get his balls? What were they, anyway? Just little pouches that carried sperm; but the way men carried on about them, you’d think they were the most important thing in the world. My God, Ed had just about died when one of their son’s hadn’t dropped properly. The doctor said that it wouldn’t affect his ability to have children, but Ed had acted like it was a tragedy and wanted to send him to a psychiatrist, so he wouldn’t feel less of a man. She remembered thinking at the time, how silly… her breasts had never developed, and nobody ever sent her for help.
But Ed won out, because he told her she didn’t understand about being a man and what it meant. Ed had even pitched a fit when she wanted to have their cat, Valentine, who had impregnated the thoroughbred Siamese cat across the street, fixed.
He said, "If you’re gonna cut his balls off, you might as well just go on and put him to sleep!"
No doubt about it, he was peculiar where balls were concerned.
She remembered how Ed had once complimented that same woman at the office when she had stood up to the boss. He had bragged on her, saying what a ballsy dame she was.
But now that she thought about it, she wondered: What did that woman’s strength have to do with Ed’s anatomy? He hadn’t said, "Boy, she’s got some ovaries"; he had definitely said what balls she had. Ovaries have eggs in them, she thought: Shouldn’t they be as important as sperm?
And when had that woman stepped over the line of having just enough balls to having too much?
That poor woman. She would have to spend her whole life balancing imaginary balls if she wanted to get along. Balance was everything. But what about size? she wondered. She never heard Ed mention size before. It was the other thing’s size they were so concerned about, so she guessed it didn’t matter all that much. All that mattered in this world was the fact that you had balls. Then all at once, the simple and pure truth of that conclusion hit her. She felt as if someone had run a pencil up her spine and dotted an i on her head. She sat up straight in her chair, shocked that she, Evelyn Couch, of Birmingham, Alabama, had stumbled on the answer. She suddenly knew what Edison must have felt like when he discovered electricity. Of course! That was it… having balls was the most important thing in this world. No wonder she had always felt like a car in traffic without a horn.
It was true. Those two little balls opened the door to everything. They were the credit cards she needed to get ahead, to be listened to, to be taken seriously. No wonder Ed had wanted a boy.
Then another truth occurred to her. Another sad, irrevocable truth: She had no balls and never would or could have balls. She was doomed. Ball-less forever. Unless, she thought, if maybe the balls in your immediate family counted. There were four in hers… Ed’s and Tommy’s... No, wait… six, if she counted the cat. No, wait just another minute, if Ed loved her so much, why couldn’t he give her one of his? A ball transplant… That’s right. Or, maybe she could get two from an anonymous donor. That’s it, she’d buy some off a dead man and she could put them in a box and take them to important meetings and bang them on the table to get her way. Maybe she’d buy four…
No wonder Christianity had been such a big hit. Think of Jesus and the Apostles… And if you counted John the Baptist, why that was 14 pairs and 28 singles, right there!
Oh, it was all so simple to her now. How had she been so blind and not seen it before?
Yes, by heavens, she’d done it. She’d hit upon the secret that women have been searching for through the centuries…
THIS WAS THE ANSWER…
Hadn’t Lucille Ball been the biggest star on television? She banged her iced tea on the table in triumph and shouted, "YES! THAT’S IT!" Everyone in the cafeteria turned and looked at her.
Evelyn quietly finished her lunch and thought, Lucille Ball? Ed might be right. I probably am going crazy.
- Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Pictures by Sooreh Hera.
Muhammed teddy bear.
ASCII Mohammed from Uncyclopedia: "Look! I've beaten the system. Its not drawn. Its written. Look!"
