“Thirty days has September. All the rest I don’t remember.” This you probably believe, because yesterday I informed you that there were only 2 days left of Women’s History Month. Oops. As of today, there are only two days left of Women’s History Month. March is a month with 31 days.

Okay, mea culpa over, time for the story. A little background first. I belong to various writing groups, and one of the favorite (stupid) questions people like to ask male writers is “how do you write women so well?” Well, duh. Just write a person, right? But men always feel the need to put some sort of (equally stupid) answers out there. And from time to time, men have asked the women in the group if they will look over their women, see if they “got the language right” or if “the dialect is okay”. Seriously. Like men and women speak some sort of different language. So tonight, just for fun, I wrote a story about a town where men and women did not speak the same language. I will give credit where credit is due, though. It’s modeled (loosely) on Tom Stoppard’s marvelous play, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s MacBeth.

Five women:

• Maria Agnesi, mathematician, pioneer in field of calculus

• Hathshepsut, pharaoh of Egypt about 3,500 years ago

• Zora Neale Hurston, anthropologist and writer

• Golda Meier, former Prime Minister of Israel

• Gertrude Stein, writer

GET THE LANGUAGE RIGHT

 It started as just an ordinary day. I had been driving aimlessly west for about a week, stopping in every town big enough to have a place to stop, and visiting with the people I met for an hour or so. It had been an exercise in futility so far. I had been in many towns, heard many stories, and still didn’t have anything that inspired my next novel. I began to worry I was washed up. Maybe I didn’t have any more books in me.

I was starting to get depressed. Being washed up at thirty wasn’t something I relished. Having to get a real job wasn’t something I relished, either. As long as I was writing, Mother would pay my bills, living her dreams through me, seeing me write the books she never had time to write. But if I couldn’t write anymore…what was I fit for? A master’s degree in nineteenth century Russian literature, my only experience was a novelist. Probably not a lot of good jobs. I might end up working for fast food. I stepped on the accelerator, determined to find that next town, that next story, the one that would inspire me.

A text from my mother reminded me my time was running out. Oh, she didn’t nag or anything. She was just asking what I was writing. I dashed off a flippant reply and kept my eyes on the road. An exit announced a town…and that’s what it said. A town, 5 miles. I checked the map. There was no town listed. It must be small. Okay, I’ll give it a shot. If there was nothing, I would be back on the highway in no time.

The town was peculiar. I had never seen a place like it. There was nothing to announce the town, no sign saying Welcome To [X]. The buildings had blank facades, only pictures to announce what you would find inside. I stopped at a place with a picture of a gas pump, a pop machine, and a toilet, telling me it was probably a convenience store.

No one was minding the counter when I entered. I used my credit card to purchase a coffee at a pay as you go coffee machine, and found the restroom without difficulty. The familiar signs – a broad-shouldered male outline and a narrower female outline wearing a triangle. God, how I hate those signs! I sat on the toilet and texted Mom to tell her I was in a town, and if I could find a motel, I was going to spend the night. Her return text, naturally, was to ask me what town. I put up a puzzled emoji, and left it at that.

A woman was at the coffee machine when I returned to retrieve my coffee. She smiled. “Are you new here?”

I told her I was visiting, would stay overnight if I could find a motel She gave me directions, and told me I should make sure to find a translator. Before I could ask her what sort of translator I needed, she had gone. There was still no one minding the store.

The motel was easy to find. An enormous picture of a bed towered on a billboard over the building. I checked all the settings on the car, made sure I had turned everything off, and headed for the office. A man was tending the desk. At least I could get some help here.

“Do you have any vacancies?” I asked.

The man stared at me as if I had three heads. I repeated the question. He shook his head and pulled out a worn book. He thumbed through the book, and when he found what he wanted, he got angry and threw it at me. I was stunned. I’d met rude motel clerks in my life, but never one that acted like that.

“Bitch!” he shouted.

I picked up the book and discovered it was a translation guide. The guide told me the book was designed to allow men to understand women’s language. I frowned. I was sick of this. I got it regularly in my writing groups and clubs. Men would ask me, can you check my woman characters and see if I got the language right? Make sure it’s the correct dialect? Now here was a book literally proposing to translate woman’s “language” for men.

I thumbed through the book until I found the phrase I had used. The phrase meant…oh, my god, I didn’t say that. No way. I just asked if there was a vacancy! This…was something so rude, I never said it in my life. Is that really what men heard when women spoke? No, I have used the same phrase in every hotel I’ve stayed in. No one ever acted that way before.

I sat on a sofa and flipped through the book until I found a phrase that actually did mean do you have any vacancies, according to this translation guide. I went to the desk and rang the bell. The clerk came out of the office and glared at me. I held my finger in the page, and checked. “How many rolls of toilet paper can I buy on sale?” I asked.

The clerk smiled, and said, yes, we do have vacancies. Would you like a first floor or second floor room? I decided not to take a risk. I motioned to the stairs to indicate I preferred the second floor. He kept up a steady stream of chatter as he signed me in, ran my credit card, and activated a key card. I hauled my bags up to my second floor room without saying anything else.

I held the translation guide toward him, but he waved it away. “Keep it”, he said. “It might be useful.”

I sat in my room going through the guide, and writing down the phrases I would need for the evening. I approached the desk clerk again. “Would you like some Jello?”

The clerk pulled out a pamphlet. “You will find many nice restaurants on this street. Just turn right as you go out the parking lot, and stay on this street for about two miles. You will be in the center of town. Lots of places to eat there.”

“Why are the children dressed for church?” Translation: Which one do you recommend?

“Oh, definitely Alice’s Café on the Square. You’ll get a nice home cooked meal there, no problem. Just be sure to leave a big tip. Alice is trying to put two kids through college.”

Alice’s Café did look pleasant, and I decided to accept the recommendation. The parking lot was nearly full, but there was room for one more. I was seated immediately by a young man who had no trouble understanding that I wanted a table for one when I told him I had just seen a Martian. He bustled me to a pretty table near the window.

My waitress was female. I wasn’t sure what I would need to say to talk to her, so I checked my book again. She tapped her foot, impatient. I put up a finger, asking her to wait. She cleared her throat.

“Please just tell me what you want to drink, and I’ll get that while you look at the menu.” She was in a hurry; there were a lot of other customers.

“Ummm…strawberry soda”, I said. She bustled off. I worried about what I would get, until she returned and set a strawberry soda in front of me. “You understood me?”

“Of course. You said strawberry soda. It’s not hard.” The waitress smiled a tight smile. I realized I was becoming a trying customer. “Are you ready to order?”

I ordered, and she headed to the kitchen. A young man brought me a piece of bread and a salad. He whispered “Don’t let her say such rude things to you. She needs to learn manners.”

I nodded, not sure what she had said that was rude. I remembered my translation book, and checked “Are you ready to order?’ My cheeks flushed; I don’t allow anyone to call me that. But…no, she took my order, that’s all. She meant what she said. And my order arrived exactly as I ordered it, done to perfection. The waitress apologized for the rude behavior of the young man who brought the bread. “We’re trying to teach him not to say such things to women”, she said. I checked the book again. Wow. It translated obscene.

I stayed in a town for several days, intrigued. I discovered that the town was known as Emmanuel Lewis, if you asked the men, and Meg Ryan if you asked the women. Strange names for a town, no matter how you cut it, but I began to understand why the buildings had no titles. Words seemed to mean different things depending on the sex of the speaker, and the pictures were the only way they could put up something to identify a building without offending.

Funny thing, though. I never had any trouble understanding either sex. The words they spoke meant what they were supposed to mean, at least to me. I did catch on quickly that I needed to use different words when I spoke to men, or they would never answer the right question. Peculiar indeed.