Othering

Having a light supper of peanut butter and wild berry jam

on water table crackers while watching PBS,

a woman who wrote a book came on.

She talked about married Indian women,

her curiosity about them.

They were private, at first, she said.

It took time to gain trust

and signed consents,

everything on the up and up, you understand.

How bloody “Margaret Mead” of her,

how “Jane Goodall,” I thought,

going over to make tea, draw blinds,

bring in the dogs for the night.

After all, I mused, if her subjects—

multilingual, educated, well-traveled—

wished for strangers to know

whether they watched porn,

places where they made love,

how they interacted with in-laws

and reared children,

they’d write their own accounts.

Instead, perhaps sometime

they’d document

the impudent guest

who came to town

for the sole purpose

of blabbing about all that went on

behind closed doors.