Woman on the Edge of Time

by Marge Piercy

  “I’m not dressed right. My nightgown,” Connie mumbled.

  Bolivar took from a pile beside the body a long shift and helped her pass it over her head. It was much too long to walk in, but for sitting it was fine. “Person had taken it out to wear in a ceremony we performed in Red Hanrahan village last month. Neglected to return the garment to the library afterward. Person was often careless.” He spoke monotonously, face blotched and strained tight.

  “Oh, Bolivar. This is your second loss. Your mother Sappho and now Jackrabbit,” Luciente said. She walked over, touched her forehead to his. “Bolivar, you’re getting use to grief, and your pain must be great, recalling old pain not yet worn out.”

  “Nobody gets used to grief. Yet I feel numb.”

  “Before this night be over, your pain gonna loosen and come down.” Erzulia spoke, in a robe of sky blue. “I am ready to lead this ritual. Bolivar, you and Jackrabbit made so many good holies here. Many times you give us pleasure and the healing of conflict, the easing of hard edges, the vision that pick us up and carry us. I hope we able to bring you through this night. All the sweet friends and handfriends, the basemates and old family and mems. We gonna try hard to make the passing of Jackrabbit beautiful as person made other giving backs. We begin now. It gonna be done in truth and beauty and kindness.” On that last phrase her voice boomed forth. Her voice for a moment colored the air and hung there. “We gonna speak now and remember our friend. We gonna speak of the good and of the bad Jackrabbit done. We gonna remember together Jackrabbit.”

  A girl stood. She began to sing:

  “A hand falls on my shoulder.

  I turn to the wind.

  On the paths I see you walking.

  When I catch up

  person wears another face.

  In dreams I touch your mouth.

  When new friends ask me of my life

  I speak of you

  and words turn to pebbles

  on my tongue.

  I turn from them

  to the wind … .”

  Connie could hardly hear the ending because the girl was crying by the time she finished. “Jackrabbit was my teacher. I felt so close to per! I was angry person chose to defend while I was learning in torrents.”

  Luciente too began to cry again, but Bolivar sat like a scarecrow, his freckles drawing all the color in his face to them and the rest of his skin pallid.

  “I’m Arthur of Ribble, a Lancashire village in Fall River.” A heavy-set person of forty or so with cropped light hair rose. “Jackrabbit was my child. Gave me joy and hard worry. Person was running in seven ways at once from five on. Such beauty. Such a pile of beginnings! Jackrabbit wanted to do everything. Person could not, would not choose. Instead Jackrabbit would begin to weave a rug, would launch a complicated genetic experiment, would begin studying spiders, would start glazing a namelon, would demand to be taught how holies function, would begin cartography lessons, all in one week. A month later the rug would be a beautiful fragment, the namelon would be half painted and abandoned, person would know a bit about spiders, something of how holies function, would have had three cartography lessons and would have abandoned the genetics experiment in the third generation of fruit flies. Person drove me wild! I would yell and bluster and my child would sulk and withdraw. But person would forgive me—yes, that’s the way to body it. In sunny excitement my child would forgive me and come tell me how person—then named Peony—wanted to learn theory of wind power, construct a mill, learn lithography, study Japanese and vertebrate anatomy. I comped Peony to choose something. Much pressure. I wore out just listening. I could not grasp such trying on of subjects and roles was learning also. When Peony began to think seriously of shelf diving, I bound per into making a commit. I obsessed Peony into being ashamed of flightiness—which was excessive curiosity. I didn’t do this alone. Others reacted same way. Including the head of the children’s house.” Arthur sat down.

  The old person rose, still strongly made, with a squat pyramidal body ending in a head whose iron gray hair was worn in a knot. “I became Peony’s mother when that child was eight. Peony bumped on per original mother, Elima. Elima felt overwhelmed by Peony’s energy and truly began to dislike per child. So Peony and Elima brought the sticky up in council. I’m an old kidbinder and I spoke out and said I’d be feathered to have Peony for my old child. I was old then. Now I’m seventy-nine. In our village it isn’t common for people over sixty to mother. But Peony liked the idea.”

  Arthur spoke again, grinning. “Peony jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Yes, Crazy Horse is for me!’”

  “I’m an old hard-bitten comrade. I spent ten years in the war. I stiffed it all over Latin America working on reparations—I was one of the teams that worked out the details, in the early days when there were still endemic diseases raging. For a whole year after I could digest no fat. I didn’t settle down in Fall River till I was fifty-five. I’d had a child at fifteen, live-born child of my own body, and saw my baby die of tularemia when they loosed the plagues on us … . Peony—Jackrabbit—was like wine to me. Didn’t care for the right and wrong. I figured you grow through things. I can still remember being hungry as a child, always hungry … . What a pretty child person was—gawky, long-limbed, awkward, but coltish and gifted in giving joy. I had only three years of mothering but years I loved. I didn’t give dandruff if Peony was irresponsible. We were each comping Peony in opposing ways. No wonder person went mad at naming. I was gobbling up every prank like candy and Arthur here was pushing the straight and narrow … .”

  “What of the third mother?” Bee asked.

  “In Oregon now. Gentle, quiet. Couldn’t fix Peony against our heaving and hauling,” Crazy Horse said. “Still, Jackrabbit grew strong, and rough times can shake a body down. I never met a kid I liked better.”

  Arthur shook his head. “Jackrabbit used to fall by to see Crazy Horse whenever person worked near us, and we’d talk. Even last year we were arguing. Somehow we could never leave off arguing. I loved Jackrabbit, yet I think I must have spent ninety percent of the time we had insisting person was always wrong. Clipping, binding.” Arthur sat down abruptly and blew into a big orange handkerchief.

  At the back someone rose to play a sad melody on a flute. The flutist played for perhaps ten minutes, joined by a guitar, a flat twangy instrument, a drum. After the others stopped, the guitar played a song many joined with that muffled blurry sound people have when they’re not trying to sing in unison:

  “I feel like dry grass

  combed by the wind, the wind.

  I feel like last year’s grass

  raked by the salty wind.

  The tides creep in the marsh,

  the water rises,

  the water falls,

  but the old grass finally breaks

  under the wind.”

  After the singing died into silence and they sat on for a while, White Oak rose. “I came here fourteen years ago to work in the plant genetics base just firming. Jackrabbit and I have been friends since sixmonth after person came here to be with Bolivar. Jackrabbit ate with us awhile, deciding what family to join. Especially we shared a love for the sea What I want to tell is something two—no, three years ago. Now, you know my loving with Susan-B was not good. Never in balance. We all critted on that and tried, but it never flew and always I felt unvalued in the end. Susan-B is gone now and I confess it’s easier for me with person living at Portsmouth. For a long time I couldn’t want to be loving with anyone, waiting for Susan-B to want to be as close to me as I wanted with per. A long saddening. When Susan-B left, I had to face the failure of the whole long struggle. I withdrew even more. I worked hard—”

  “Fasure, day and night,” Bee said. “You coordinated and did the work of three.”

  “I feared being close. My family suggested a healer, but I was too proud. Zo, one day Jackrabbit and I took out the green boat and spent all afternoon and evening on the bay. It was fine—the wind, the salt, the water. I felt
loosened. I had not taken a day free in months. I know Jackrabbit sensed my mood, for person could easily catch changes. Doors opening, doors closing. Everyone had eaten. We scraped leftovers and Jackrabbit came along to my space … . How easy and insinuating person could be. Without deciding to, still addressing Jackrabbit in my mind as if person were half a child, we ended up coupling that night. After, I felt for the old knot, and it was melted. Only the feeling I’d been a great fool. I’d scorned what was easy, the affection of my own family, for what I couldn’t have. Since then I have tried to be simpler, better … . It wasn’t that Jackrabbit worked healer’s entrance, but person loosened the knot that pride kept tight. Once loosened, I couldn’t wait to bind myself again. Even I had that much sense.” White Oak smiled and sat down. Her gaze rested on the wall.

  “Person’s way of insinuating into other people’s beds was not always productive,” a young person said, standing on one foot. “Jackrabbit came to me once after a dance and then never again. I felt I was an apple person had taken a bite of and spat out.”

  “Person was so curious, began far more friendships than could be maintained,” Bolivar said dryly, without raising his head.

  “How can you carry on about a small thing?” Connie burst out. “Can’t you forgive him for something small that wasn’t even intended to hurt?” Joined to Luciente, how strongly she could feel her pain raw against the breastbone.

  Bee spoke in his deep, gentle, careless-sounding voice. “We recall what we can. Good and ill, doings and undoings. We want to hold person entire in our minds before we begin slowly to forget.”

  A short brown man rose. “Last year I studied History of Jazz at Oxford. Even there in Mississippi, they had a painting of Jackrabbit’s traveling from village to village. That’s from my home, I told them, and felt proud.”

  Luciente rose, swaying. Words came in gouts. “Was good to be with Jackrabbit. I was selfish, selfish over that good. Now it’s gone. Person is gone!”

  “How did it move, Luciente? Speak of Jackrabbit,” Erzulia commanded in a high, carrying voice.

  “Person made me able to be … careless. Silly.”

  “Was that good or bad, Luciente?”

  “At first I feared maybe bad. I cramped at forgetting meetings, experiments, issues. Gradually I felt that loosening gave me energy. Jackrabbit was water, I could float. Jackrabbit was wine, making me tipsy and glad of the moment. We were always laughing. We never stopped flirting. Person was full of grace. Person made me want to know things that on my own I would never have grazed. Now, nothing …” Luciente stopped, choking into tears. She remained standing, her hands inscribing shapes on the air, but she could not sort words. Otter sat her down gently.

  After a space of minutes of soft crying and shifting about, a child rose. “Jackrabbit worked with me a whole lot, teaching me how to handle a boat and swim. Person didn’t always suck patience, but person laughed a lot—not at me. Person made … even picking the Swallowtail caterpillars off the carrots fun. Person made them put out their horns … . I’ll miss Jackrabbit a lot!”

  Another child stood. “Person was teaching me holi work. Now nobody will have—will ever—grasp, believe in me when I can’t do what I mean. Person made me feel my—the pictures I saw in my head were good even when they came out—so stupid!” Abruptly the child sat, red in the face.

  Magdalena of the children’s house came forward on bare feet, small as a child and black as the blackest cat. “We think old people have a special kinning with children. But sometimes young people hold a strong sense of how it was, so that they stay in touch with the child inside and therefore with real children. Jackrabbit was so. Could enjoy children as people and want to work with them. Find their ideas interesting, their visions real, their problems worth mulling … . I worried about Jackrabbit’s wandering sexuality. Person knew of my mistrust and teased me. Ran circles around me. Now Jackrabbit is gone many more children will miss per than will speak of it tonight. I too will miss Jackrabbit! A good strong holi is a powerful tool of learning. Many artists who make ceremonial and artistic holies, if they turn to making instructional holies at all, do so as in a lesser medium. Condescending. They simplify … in the wrong dimensions. Children sense the falsity and turn away, bored. The holies Jackrabbit made for us we’ll use long past the lifetime that should have been pers.”

  A big man, grizzled and bald, stood. “Blackfish of Provincetown, I taught Jackrabbit. There’s no keener—or more dubious—pleasure than having a student you know will surpass you. I can’t stay, I have to go back on the dipper tonight, we’re in the middle of harvest. But what a waste! Person did nothing of what person could have. Nothing. We’re all poorer.”

  A person in a mottled green and brown jumpsuit rose and spoke loudly. “I want to tell you how Jackrabbit died. Then I must leave too. I wish I could stay the night … . The fighting’s been fierce. They have new flying cyborgs, can go rocket speeds and cruise at twenty kilometers … . We suffer heavy losses … .” The person in green and brown paused to look around as if to recover a lost intent. “At now, you all grasp from the last grandcil more of us are going to have to fight for a while … . Jackrabbit was no born fighter. Person would have been happier staying home. But fought well. Jackrabbit was wounded running out to move a sonic shield to protect our emplacement. Was dying when we got to per. Damage to chest and organs was too extensive for us to save the life. We blocked pain. Jackrabbit died within fifteen minutes. We corded a last message. Should I play it?”

  Erzulia rapped out, “Play it now.”

  Minor scufflings with equipment. Then Jackrabbit’s unmistakable voice spoke in brief, broken sentences, half swamped in crackling and background noise. “Luciente: weep and work. Was good. You have to help people prepare … . Bolivar: break open. Go to Diana for help. Finish our holi with browns, reds, greens. Glim into uprush. Earth itself moving. Armies of trees. See? Armies of trees … . Bee: bring Luciente through. Never got to mother. Mother for me … . Corolla: regret what will never fuse now … . Orion: have faith in visions and patience with matter—” The voice choked in midsentence. Only crackling followed.

  The person in uniform continued apologetically: “Jackrabbit meant to give more messages, but couldn’t. We could tell person intended to speak to more of you … . At first we were trying to save per. We should have grasped at once the wounds were too severe. Otherwise we’d have started cording sooner. We wasted time while we didn’t want to admit Jackrabbit was dying. Our tardiness robbed many of you of a message.”

  Bee said, “You did well. We’d rather have had Jackrabbit than any message.”

  The person in uniform bowed slightly and walked out. A voice began to sing:

  “The tree quivers

  wetly

  in no wind.

  I cone upon you.

  How the light breaks

  like arrows

  through my eyelids.”

  Connie stopped listening, catching Erzulia’s gaze on Bolivar, his dry narrowed eyes and brooding forehead. Rigid he sat with his legs crossed and his head at the top of the pole of spine slightly inclined. His eyes burned. His hands lay abandoned on his thighs like a pair of old kid gloves.

  Others were speaking their remembrances, recounting an episode, embarrassed or nostalgic. Otter said, “I remember stiffing it all night when a hurricane was coming, to bring in the harvest, to batten things down. How Jackrabbit kept us singing and made everything funny, even when the waves came over the sea wall and we were really scared.”

  Diana and Erzulia conferred. Diana rose and came back with three women of her core. Lovers, sisters, daughters of the moon, they wore the knee-length white tunics of healers. Their hair was bound back and they bore as decoration the crescent of the moon. Now they carried a cello, a flute, and a drum. After tuning up, they began to play, sitting to one side of Diana, who stood to sing … or keen. Her voice began softly, sobbing, wordless but musical, used like a fourth instrument higher than the cello
but lower than the flute. Her auburn hair fell over one shoulder. Tall and bony and commanding, she swayed. Her voice crooned, soared, ululated, wailed, and mourned over the rhythm of the drum. Finally Erzulia rose. She cast off her blue robe and stood in something like a dancer’s leotards, black against her black skin so at first Connie thought her naked. She stood still and then she seemed to grow taller.

  She began to dance, but not as Connie had seen her dance the night of the feast. She did not dance in trance but consciously, and she did not dance as herself. She danced Jackrabbit. Yes, she became him. She was tall, bony but graceful, shambling and limber, young and awkward and beautiful, talented and bumbling, pressing off at once in four directions, hopping, leaping, charging, and bounding back.

  Bolivar’s head slowly lifted from his chest. He was staring. Suddenly Erzulia-Jackrabbit danced over and drew him up. Slowly, mechanically, as if hypnotized Bolivar began to dance with him/her. Erzulia possessed willfully by the memory of Jackrabbit led Bolivar round and round. He danced more feverishly, responding, his body became fluid and elegant as he had danced that night of the feast with Jackrabbit—that night she had spent with Bee. Slowly tears coursed down her own face, perhaps more for Skip than for Jackrabbit, perhaps for both, perhaps for old losses and him too and above all for Luciente and the pain tearing her.

  The music ended and Bolivar embraced Erzulia. They stood a moment clasped and then Erzulia’s body relaxed. Bolivar jumped back. “But I felt per!” he cried out.

  “You remembering,” Erzulia lilted gently, wiping her forehead.

  Bolivar crumpled to the ground in a spasm of weeping so sudden that for a moment no one moved to support him. Then Bee and Crazy Horse gently held him, murmuring.