He, She and It by Marge Piercy

her pragmatism won, and she realized that her position gave away her state. “I’m not hungry.”
    “So eat to please me. A little soup, how hungry do you have to be?”
    Sensing the indignity of her sprawl facedown on the tiles, Shira sat up. Malkah called her “little one” but was the same size, except a few pounds fleshier. They had the same dark hair, black in lamplight, red-tinted in the sun; the same large very dark eyes, big in their heart-shaped faces; but Malkah of course was an old woman, sixty-one years old. She wore her dark hair braided around her head and fixed on top with a silver ornament in the form of a dolphin. A salvage diver had given it to her. Only recently had Shira realized he had probably been Malkah’s lover. Shira had been too young to understand then, nine, then ten; and Malkah had been discreet. No man had ever lived in this house. Malkah had never married. If you married and a man hurt you, Shira realized, you had no place to run home to, no place to hide and nurse your pain.
    Malkah handed her a big handkerchief. “I have to go see to my soup. Did you feed your friend there?”
    “Not yet.” She had forgotten, and Hermes had not reminded her. Now he rose, stretched, stretched again and started for the kitchen, looking back for her expectantly.
    She daubed at her face. How could she live with so much pain? She could not imagine how she would continue.
    She did eat the soup. Malkah was right: it was soothing in a minor way. She was glad Malkah had decided to cook tonight. Most evenings one of them picked up supper at the Commons; sometimes they ate there with half the town. Other nights Malkah cooked, and once in a while she would have the house ask Shira to cook that night. Malkah sometimes did that when she knew Gadi was coming to supper. Another part of Shira’s life laid waste, as spoiled as the vast tracts of dead trees that had been maples on the mountains before acid rain, before the climate got too warm for them. Would Hannah take him home to supper now? How could he choose Hannah?
    “Didn’t your auction results come today?”
    “Oh.” Shira blinked hard. “What did I do with them? I hadthem with me when I … I’ll get them. I dropped them in the courtyard.” She rose from the table and ran to look for the printout.
    Malkah took it from her, scanned it. “Obviously this is not what upset you.”
    Shira looked into her empty soup bowl. “I’m fine now.”
    “Your young man, then.”
    “He isn’t mine! Not anymore.”
    “Shira, you’re too young to be plastered together for life. You’ve never listened to me about Gadi, and you’re not about to start now, I’m sure. I couldn’t stop you. No one can stop children in love unless by exile. But you’ll never grow up if you don’t let go of each other.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it.” Shira rose. “I’ll clear now if you’re finished eating.”
    “Still, we must talk at some point.” Malkah fixed her with her dark gaze, like a beam of energy and will. “We must also decide about this auction.”
    “What do I care about that anymore?”
    “Gadi was never going to get into the same universities you’re sought by, Shira. You’ll be paid to go. Avram will have to pay for him.”
    “He’s bright! He’s as smart as I am.”
    “But lazier. And scattered.”
    “But he’s more talented than any of us.… No, I don’t want to defend him anymore, I don’t want to explain him. I hate him!” Shira began clearing.
    “You love too hard. It occupies the center and squeezes out your strength. If you work in the center and love to the side, you will love better in the long run, Shira. You will give more gracefully, without counting, and what you get, you will enjoy.”
    Malkah did not know what love was. Shira refused to argue.
    After supper the two of them sat in silence in the late ivory twilight of the court. Malkah was accessing the Net, plugged in in full projection. Everyone in Tikva was