Call Me Ishtar

by Rhoda Lerman

  From now on, gentle men with delicate ankles.

  There is a problem at home. It is not pleasant. I sit awake in the bed. I hear Robert scratching himself in the dark next to me under the Hudson Bay. There is a red tower signal blinking over the airport through the trees. I whisper, “Are you awake?” Because I am lonely. He does not answer. I do not know if he is awake. I watch the red point pulsing against the black of the sky and I feel the pulsing within myself.

  I have had my spiral removed. I have given up that delightful spiral which had eased my mind all these loving nights. I do not wish another child of this nature. “Too long,” my gynecologist said. “It must come out and be replaced.” I know about these things, seven lean years, world ages, and so on and I do not argue with him. “Don’t worry,” he assured me with his simian hands, “I’ll give you an abortion if you need one.”

  It is not a particularly divine thing to do, an abortion. I do not disagree with the principle of free will. But an abortion is simply not in my style. I want my spiral back and I may not have it for three months. I am not happy with this. A spiral is a happy thing. I have had it traced and etched on all of my temples. It is the basis of the chain of life, and the staircase to heaven. I can close my eyes and see, in the sunlight filtering through my fluttering eyelids, spirals and spirals and spirals. And they have taken mine. When I have time to be scholarly, I shall do something scholarly and abominable about why men become gynecologists. I believe, sincerely, it is out of fear of the organ.

  Robert, in a false spirit of generosity, seeing my great unhappiness, suggests that we do not make love for the three months. This is not a nice suggestion of Robert’s. I shake my head, no. I am speechless. “There are devices, foams, procedures,” I tell him.

  “Oh,” he says lightly, ignoring my eyes which fill with tears, “this will be easier.” I suppose he has been waiting for an out like this since his fear of me has increased in these last months. I believe he is relieved.

  I do not like seducing men. It is a cheap act of love. It is Claire’s mistake, to trick them into displaying their needs and weaknesses. I will have to seduce my own husband. That is what he wants, to be tricked into weakness. Suicidal, Black Widow, weakness. “Just come to me, Robert,” I whisper at his back under the Hudson Bay. “And I’ll come to you.” It has only been a week. I do not sleep well without his warmth. He is so afraid of the succubus in his remote unconscious that he sleeps on top of the top sheet with his own Hudson Bay knotted under his chin. I am underneath the blankets and I am cold. I cannot touch him. I understand this. I understand it all. It would never have happened if the spiral had not been torn from my womb. Yes, it might have. I no longer prepare his breakfasts. This would be the next step.

  “Hear this now,” Isaiah warned me, cursing so long ago. “Thou who art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am and no one else beside me. I shall not sit as a widow neither shall I know the loss of children. But these two things,” Isaiah warned, “will come to thee in a moment one day. The loss of children and widowhood.”

  I laughed at him and said, “I will be a lady forever.”

  “Sit thou silent and get thee into darkness, O Daughter of the Chaldeans, for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Sit thou silent and get thee into darkness, O Virgin, Daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground. There is no throne. Thou shalt no more be called the Lady of Kingdoms.” I turn on my bed lamp and examine Robert’s face. He is faking.

  I refuse. I categorically refuse an abortion. I categorically refuse coitus interruptus. I categorically refuse to be left alone like this.

  There is no other woman. He is an ethical man. I shall laugh if he sheds his seed in his sleep and warn him that no Jewish man should sleep in a house alone, for the succubus shall descend and produce demons from his seed. And I shall laugh. But I am not happy. I do not wish vengeance. I want to screw. “Robert, wake up.”

  I turn off the lamp. He mumbles and flatulates. Beast. As for adultery, Moses forbade it entirely, as esteeming it a happy thing that men should be wise in the affairs of wedlock; and that it was profitable both to cities and families that children should be known to be genuine. He also abhorred men’s lying with their mothers as one of the great abominations. Robert is also having difficulty with his teeth. His gums need cutting. I do not wish to be blamed for the connection. I will only be kind to him in our household affairs and continue to support him. He knows, however, my strengths and is beginning to suspect my powers and I shall not deceive him into thinking I am weak and silly. I abhor that in women.

  “Aah, Robert.” I tuck his blanket in against his shoulder. It is rather a difficult job, this being a man, wresting money from a cold world. I understand. I am here to help. But I can not help Robert. I hope to help others. Robert’s laws and fears are too entrenched. Robert, whose body I adore, whose bulges I contain, who can dance gracefully and kick both ankles together in the air and uphold me, I do not wish to lose. I also need him to direct the production of my Cupcakes. He will not allow me to help him.

  “Robert,” I whisper loudly. “Are you awake?” I touch his ankles with my toes. He has been awake, lying there, trying to keep still and breathe regularly. He is very very big. His bones are sharp, like sacrificial flints. I want him to smooth my hair and hold my hand. I want to play with the hairs of his sideburns, which will be red in the morning sunlight. I tear off his covers, leaping onto him. His knees go up in self-defense. Part of him doesn’t want to push me off. I am now well attached. At last we work together. But it is not tender. Fields and fields of dead men, all erected in the abominable ecstasy of battle lying heel to mouth, I have done this to them in my dark days and mandrakes have sprung up where they lay. I can not see his face. He can not see mine. I am finished first. Then he is. We go tripping over shoes and the velvet forms of dogs and cats to separate bathrooms to cleanse ourselves. When I return to our bed, his shoulders are turned in on himself under the blanket, knotted tightly under his chin, and he is, I suppose, asleep. I scratch my own back. Dawn is coming. The tower signal fades. I hear him flatulate under the Hudson Bay. Again. Involuntary acts to relieve the organs. I am sorry.

  In the morning I wait for him to mention this strange act of mine. He does not. He strews the eggshells and orange rinds on the black countertops, albumenlike slug marks along my Woodmode, and leaves, the station wagon throwing up gravel as it roars, a mad bull elephant tusking the earth, up the driveway to the road and toward the office. Later I will call him at the office and he will have to be kind because his secretary may be listening.

  “Mommy,” I hear my son calling from his bed. “Did Daddy go yet?”

  “Yes,” I answer, wishing things to be easier.

  My son is now ready to get up. I wash the dishes and make the beds haphazardly. The dog has eaten the last of the cats’ food, leaving her own. I kick her. We both regret our acts. I am not good today. I do not even wish vengeance.

  My young son climbs onto my lap at the kitchen table. “I want to be a baby today. I don’t want to go to school.”

  “Do you pull out your teeth,” I ask him, “because you want to be a baby?”

  It is a mistake on my part to ask him.

  “No,” he answers. “Do I have to go to school?”

  “Yes, of course. It is your job right now.”

  “I have to be a man before I can be a baby again.”

  This is strange. He watches “Space Trek” too often. “Do you pull out your teeth because you have to be a man?”

  “Is it nice to be a man?”

  “It isn’t easy.”

  He climbs from my lap and eats the pancakes I prepared. “How will you be a baby again?” What secrets has he seen on “Sesame Street” or “The Doctors”?

  “My spirit,” he says with syrup slipping from the corners of his mouth, “will go out of me when I die and get born again. I’ll be a baby from a tiny egg. Maybe I’ll be a baby man. Maybe I’ll
be a baby lion.”

  “You mean eggs like we have in the refrigerator?”

  “No, purple eggs.”

  “You watch too much TV.” He doesn’t comment on this. He has told me a shape-changing man in a striped polo shirt sits on the edge of his bed and changes shapes at night. “He isn’t real, but he is real in my head. I’m scared of him even though he isn’t real.” If I watched TV myself I might be able to cast judgments on all of this.

  “Can I go to community swim Sunday?”

  “You have Sunday School.”

  “Do I have to go to school today?”

  “I’ll talk to Daddy about swimming. You finish up and get ready for school.” At dinner I talk to Daddy. “I think I’d rather send him swimming than to Sunday School anyway. If he starts to drown, he can pray while he’s swimming to shore.”

  “I don’t know, Ishtar. He should have divinities in some way whether you believe in it or not. What does he have anyway?” We had a box of egg matzoh on Passover. How can I make Passover when I know that the matzoh which does not rise is in celebration of my end. I should wait for Elijah?

  “I don’t need a conscience.” The boy has been listening. I don’t know where he picks up these concepts. “I don’t want a conscience.”

  Robert’s eyes meet mine. It is the first time this week. I feel a thrill.

  “What’s a conscience, Buddy?” Robert asks him.

  I am smiling into the sink.

  “A little voice that tells you right from wrong. But mine always breaks in half.”

  I turn. Our eyes meet. I love this man. Why must this child’s disaster bring us together? Is this what the child knows? Is that his sacrifice?

  “It breaks in half?” Robert asks, incredulous at this infantile wisdom.

  “Yeah, it doesn’t always work. So then I can do what I want.”

  I swell with pride. I pour Joy over my hands.

  “Well, take a day off from Sunday School, Buddy. I’ll take you swimming.”

  As they leave I call softly, “Why don’t you stop and buy some rubbers?”

  “I have rubbers in the car.”

  And then Robert realizes what I am asking and grins, toothy, at me. “They don’t make them big enough for me.”

  The boy says, “I’m in a size five men’s already.”

  “Hate, hate, hate,” I say, trying to keep it light.

  “I’m taking him swimming. Why don’t you pick them up when you get the Times?”

  My face grows radiant with shame. I kick the dog again. She understands. She’s been spayed.

  This can not go on. I am prepared halfheartedly to accept a compromise with the gynecologist. If he cuts the time to a month, I’ll allow him to write me up in the Medical Journal. No pictures though. He has, by the way, become very religious and prays even while examining me. He used to giggle as he searched my breasts for cancerous nodules. Now he prays. Loudly. The feathers trouble his soul.

  15

  “BETTER THAN A HALF YEAR HAS PASSED,” I READ IN ROBERT’S Making Progress brochure, “since the government for the first time other than in all-out war imposed direct controls on sources of income.” It is a neat and intelligent white and blue folder from Shearson Hammill & Co., Inc. It lay next to Robert’s bed in front of his luminous dial clock, which I will neither have on my side of the bed nor touch to dust. I do not like man-made luminous objects. I continue reading. “In spite of the inherent risk that such massive tinkering with economic forces could be counter productive, the stock market has been taking the anti-inflationary controls in stride. The outlook for equities indeed continues to be bright, probably for the rest of this year at least.” I have spent the morning sorting out pennies with old backs from the receipts of last night’s gig at the Lake Forest Hotel for Robert’s penny collection. It pleases him. The language in the brochure is wonderful, is it not? “The general expectation is that the real growth in Gross National Product this year will run about 5–6 percent, roughly double the percentage of 1970, after filtering out an inflationary factor of 3–4 percent. In the meantime the new economic controls have been effective to some extent in blunting the former excessive rate of inflation.” At Delphi we never used such close figures.

  But this language becomes boring. Worse than his pennies. I do the pennies because we ran out of napkins this morning, and when he shrunk his lips in displeasure, I offered him a pretty flowered cocktail napkin which he threw to the floor. Of course, I realize this is only a manifestation of his great and growing fear and he took the cocktail napkin offer as an effrontery and a proof, further, of his unworthiness. I hope the pennies please him. The task is becoming, as they say above, counter productive. Do you know that we, when pleased with a well-membered man, spoke in delight of his boring love? Isn’t that funny? I have much on my mind. I do not wish to read the economic report. However, the language is blindly convincing with its neverthelesses and its by slowing the momentums of inflations and its given furthers. Would it impress you? I do have something rather oracular to tell you. I shall attempt it.

  “Better than a half year has passed since the electronic industry for the first time other than in all-out war, imposed direct controls on the electromagnetic field of the planet. In spite of the inherent risk that such massive tinkering with life forces could be counter productive, the industry has been taking anti-universal balance controls in stride. The outlook for cancer, mutant births and species extinction continues to be bright, probably for the rest of the year at least.

  “In the meantime, although labor is not yet aware of the fact that the human cell is a semiconductor and receives in great part its directions for basic functions from this electronic magnetic field”—am I doing well?—“the new rebalancing of the electromagnetic field has taken some of the wind out of the sails of the species. Ironically, existence of the new imbalance of controls has given rise to the hope and expectation that as and when the Fed begins laying on a new round of restrictive policy it will be insulated from having to revert to quite as drastic a regimen of “stop” and “go” policy as has frequently been the case in the past; some observers believe a policy change is already under way.”

  Hah, hah, Making Progress, I call it magnetic pole reversal.

  “As to the effectiveness of the controls themselves, the government lately has evinced some dissatisfaction with the way things have been progressing. Yet, short of fundamental overhaul, the system remains spongy at best. It remains sufficiently porous [he spelled dissatisfaction wrong, didn’t he?] to permit corporate management for the most part to pursue their respective objectives without great sacrifice, under the program. In other words, labor and management can have their cake and eat it. This is a prescription for a cyclical upswing which in turn can be expected to benefit …”

  I am lost. I turn the clockface to the wall and stick a penny in a socket. People read this little book and obey it. For instance, it recommends purchase of Fibreboard Corporation stock and states that Leeds and Northrup is an attractive stock for investors seeking longer term capital gains.

  This must be the way to direct Mr. America’s thoughts. A stock report. Buy this. We can expect solid growth, often erratic, but extensive in this field. Even with an unstable monetary picture on the international front, or with an all-out war, electronic equipment will …

  No, that is not clear. The production of electronic equipment is on an up cycle and investments made in these companies will be, up to a point, productive. The introduction of electronic activity into the electromagnetic force field of our planet will naturally upset the cyclic balance of these forces which we understand control such processes as birth, growth, healing and aging. It has been recognized statistically that the human cell, a product which has been in the past a fine investment with many multiples, escalations, built-in obsolescences and market splits, is actually a semi-conductor. This fact therefore relates the work of the cell to the increase of the electronic industry’s capacity to change the el
ectronic-magnetic environment, thereby influencing mammalian reproduction, regeneration, cyclic patterns in the earth’s field, the central nervous system and the possibility of induction of behavioral or cognitive disorders of a basic nature. Since this information is not known popularly, the time is ripe for a good buying opportunity of electronic equipment and installation corporations and the further expectation of rapidly increasing sales in the electronic line with regard to hospitals and the health industry. Although, eventually, in all probability, humanitarians will force the Fed to effect controls on the injection of electrical energy into the universal system, until that unpropitious event, we can look forward to a happy state of increasing cancerous growth, scrambled nervous systems, mutant births and an active market.

  We wish in particular to bring your attention to the manufacture of a small box by Pfitter Labs with electrode probes that can dedifferentiate the human cell into erratic growth patterns simply by increasing the electric activity around the cell. It is of inestimable interest to amputees, who wish new limbs, heart patients who wish to replace damaged tissue, farmers and defense industries. Enormous preliminary sales prior again to the possibility of Fed controls can be anticipated.