I loved an activist hero who was part of the Movement. Which movement? The Movement. The one that was mine, or was yours. His obituary was in The New York Times. I knew that when he died, there would be a large, public funeral, which I would not attend.
Our time was one-to-one, lunch at a fast-food place, going to Costco together, the dailiness of a quiet life. His eulogies were by public people who knew him once upon a time. I knew the CD’s he liked and where he bought croissants for breakfast, the auto repair garage where he took his car. I enjoyed his company.
He was jailed, he was beaten, he made a difference. The time he is remembered for lasted a few years. Did my romance with him reflect his status on me? Was I shinier because of him? I thought so, once. Then I decided that I had a significant career, an influential career, in a different time and space. I raised children. I had a life that made me proud. I paid a mortgage and planted geraniums. My life was smaller, maybe, but as significant, maybe. Just not as public.
I attended a lecture he gave. My job was to hold his coat. I vowed never to be a coat rack again, to be invisible. I was not reflected glory, I was nobody.
I read about Cesar Chavez, and thought deeply about his relationship with Dolores Huerta and the young teenage girls he groomed. According to The New York Times stories, Chavez was close to their families. He was a hero to them.
Some friends and I were discussing artists living in unheated lofts in Chelsea, New York City, in the late 40’s, early 50’s — abstract expressionists. A woman confessed that it sounded so romantic. I asked if going hungry and wearing your winter coat inside is romantic?
Yes, it is, as long as it is not you.
Chávez is long dead, unable to answer questions we might have for him. But one of the girls’ statements made a lot of sense to me: “He was just a man.” The Farmworkers taught people to believe that they are stronger together. Those achievements are not negated by Chavez’s worst behaviors.
It doesn’t matter if the perpetrator is a movie producer, an activist, a writer, an artist, or a genius of measure in some niche.
Women are suspect, too. Were we collaborators in the myth? Of course. Did we keep silence on our own behalf, on behalf of The Cause, on his behalf? Yes. Should we blame the victim? No. Were we victims? Yes, no, both.
What did I have to offer? I was young. I was fun. I was attractive enough, not a beauty, but with a good sense of humor and wit. I was adventurous. I said yes.
I am now a 70-year-old woman with graying hair, love handles, and an ample lap. But I still wonder about those days of reckless abandon, youth that collected almost-celebrities like a mental scrapbook of mementoes, but more dubious, maybe a scrapbook of scalps. Man on Nobel Prize-winning team, yes; musician, yes; man who was a character in a famous book, yes. Maybe others collect sports heroes or glue down celebrity toupees.
Maybe there are no witnesses. No one left alive who knew. Maybe it was a secret. A secret makes it richer, juicier somehow. Maybe there is no reason it is secret, or maybe the secret is critical to the relationship.
Cesar Chavez’s name is quickly being replaced. He is being toppled like the statues of Civil War generals or dictators whose time has passed. I remember when he was a hero of that movement, when we boycotted table grapes, when Si, se puede (“Yes, we can”) would have echoes in another time and place for another hero.
Maybe we have lost a hero. Maybe this is the first time many people understand who he was. I needed to explain to younger people who lived on Cesar Chavez Boulevard who Cesar Chavez was, and why he is important.
Maybe we should understand we are all human, capable of great, loving, and terrible things.
I think of Woody Allen, and the movies of the 70s that I loved, that everyone loved. Manhattan was made in the 70s, and we talked about the luscious score, the great black-and-white cinematography of Manhattan’s skyline, and the humor. We didn’t talk about the high school girl who was the love object of the 40-year-old Woody character.
We do now, now that his choices of relationships are suspect and fodder for documentaries and Epstein file releases.
I don’t know. Times change and values change, and what is important changes. Our values need to be clear to us. Our goal is to live up to them.
We will fail. But we have resilience.
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