Call Me Ishtar

by Rhoda Lerman

  For his school birthday party, my son receives vulva shaped cup-cakes, which I arrange with a heavy imprimatur and a generous filling of Ready Whip. The children are not ready for knowledge yet and Ready Whip lasts up to two weeks in the refrigerator. And my Armenian gorabia, which are shaped interestingly like halfmoons, which of course is an organic form, become, when the children study Greece, koulouria. When they study Italy, I coat the cookies with sesame and when they study Ireland, I coat them with green sugars and when they study Alaska, I coat them with poppy seeds and confectionary sugar. They get them, whatever reason, depending on what they are studying in social studies. There is nothing more social than a vulva shaped cookie. If you think that language is cognate, consider the cookie. I must tell Claire: the Continental Drift Theory and its functional and dysfunctional effect on cookies. Perhaps she’ll be interested. I take the stage. They had expected only a question from the floor. I rarely refuse a stage. And I suggest that at one time to raise funds for the building of a wall (I do not mention time or place and make the building of the walls of Ur sound rather like a garden club incident than a time-honored procedure) the ladies of the city removed their bodices … I have to stop and explain a bodice … and threw them, I continue to the politely attentive parents and teachers and the Fifth Grade Jazz Band, we threw them, checked with a number, into a pile and the men pulled out in exchange for the properly numbered ticket, the bodice, and then, for a sum of money which can be set by the organization, mated with the proprietress of the bodice. The monies earned, I assure them, are considerable and particularly since this type of event is rather innovative and will attract a great many Country Squires and Mercedes-Benzes … I see Robert waving his prayer shawl over his head in calf-roping motions. I continue. The faces below me are not entirely visible because of the stage lights. I hear some sharply drawn breathing. To reassure them and show my good faith I unlatch my bodice, slip it through the sleeves of my dress without disrobing, over one elbow and in and then all of it out one cuff, like the magician’s pigeon. I toss it over the lights into the audience. They shrink back from it. I do not know why. It is a pretty thing, a Bali bra with a tiny inset ribbon and lace. Actually, they more than shrink; they leap in horror and Robert, somehow, is behind me, pulling me back inside the curtains by the hems of my dress, his prayer shawl about my neck.

  My cheek meat blazes red. I will not go there again. Nor will I contribute to the washer-dryer combination fund.

  “The Hanging Gardens, the Lion Gate … we built the cities with coinage thus collected, Robert,” I argue on the way home to his stiffness. It is useless. He remains stiff. Soon, again, he will suggest a marriage counselor.

  “I think, Ishtar, you should rest a little. Stay away from the band. Relax.”

  “Would you like to pause at the drugstore”—I tug with affection on his prayer shawl—“and purchase some contraceptive devices?”

  “No, I want you to get plenty of rest.”

  Perhaps he wishes me dead. I listen that night to the trains coupling beyond my house. At midnight, I burn pure linen parchments over green compelling incense manufactured and distributed by E. Davis, Brooklyn, New York, and repeat my desires simply and fervently seventeen times into the grinding of the machines on their tracks and fervently I pray from a great distance and with great energies, my cheek meat still ablaze, fed by the utter consummation of pure mandragora juice, that the machines in Robert’s limited factory mate.

  “An enormous crack, like a cake,” the foreman tells him in the morning. “And the machines are wrecked. Totaled.”

  The shell of the building will be soon outfitted for Cupcake production. Prophetic abilities aren’t all lucky guesses. There is also something for Claire to think through about ancient knowledge wrapped up in the center of the Chinese cookies. I have also been called Lady Fortune. Claire has much to do. Grace will help.

  Robert’s teeth are giving him great pain. I offer him Cupcakes to help his teeth. He refuses the Cupcakes. “No,” he says to me at the door to the bathroom, where he is water-picking his gums. “They’re bad for my teeth.” He is correct. Not only are the Cupcakes bad for his teeth, but soon he will notice a sanitary napkin afloat in the toilet. I have done this monstrous menstrous thing to test him. If he is more alarmed at the danger to the septic tank, then I have not progressed as I wish.

  He will begin to shout and the waterpick will wave, wildly spurting its vinegar and warmth around the small room. It is worth the entertainment to wipe up.

  There goes the waterpick. Here are the shouts. Ah, he flushes the toilet. I am making progress. His shouts are ugly and deafening. He is particularly alarmed. Isn’t that funny? “Ladies don’t do things like that,” he screams.

  “Your idea of a lady and my idea of a lady are years apart,” I say with deliberate punctuation. “I am a lady. God knows where you got your definition.”

  He leaves soon after, having nicked himself numerous times on his smooth cheeks. There are spots of toilet paper on the nicks. Some of them still bleed. His teeth are giving him pain and he is going to have them examined by a tooth surgeon. I prepare dinner, which shall be corn, cookies and crisply fried chicken. “The tank’s backing up again in the garage,” I hear my cleaning woman calling to me. Robert does not like this woman in his home. She is not his and her commitment to his clean shirts lacks purity.

  THOU SHALT LOVE, HONOR, OBEY, FEED, WASH SHIRTS, SQUEEZE BLACKHEADS, CLEAN CLOSETS, PICK UP TOE-NAIL PARINGS, NEVER RUN OUT OF MALLOMARS, DENTAL FLOSS, TOILET PAPER, Q-TIPS OR MATCHED SOCKS.

  It is my contract, and I will try harder—Perhaps then he will find in our bed the solution he now is ready to seek with The Marriage Counselor.

  20

  I AM IN THE ATTIC. I HAVE ACQUIRED SOMEHOW A SPIDER WEB. THE web wafts from my shoulder to an attic beam. I wear only a perky patchwork apron. I sit on a pile of Life magazines with June Allyson on the topmost cover. You have seen the small statue of Isis on a pig, her legs spread as All-Giver, All-Receiver, sidesaddle. It is as I now sit. I have not been here terribly long. Robert and I had a mutual understanding following breakfast this morning. He told me, as I was boiling my son’s clothes and shoes, driving out disspiritedness, that I had a messy attic.

  Actually, because I do understand Robert so well, so terribly, banally well, I chose this time not to understand him.

  “Messy attic,” he repeated with gleaming tooth.

  “Vision,” I added to clarify my position and confuse his. He chose in turn not to understand me. In some ways we are well matched.

  “Try climbing the stairs and see. You won’t be able to get up.”

  In the oven my feather pillows, stuck onto the rotisserie were turning heavily, passing at the apogee of their rotation and then dropping, plummeting like twist-neck pigeons to their nadir near the consuming element of the oven only to be caught up again, saved from burning. I have been, in a housewifely effort, reading Heloise. It is she who recommends cooking pillows to regenerate the life of the feathers. It is a curious hint. We did once set children upon hearth fires to give them immortality, but never pillows. Heloise has some astonishing ideas which I shall take with me where and whenever I wander. When my son has chewing gum in his hair I have learned to rub in a handful of peanut butter and the chewing gum lifts out at once. I have to read further to find out about removing the peanut butter. I have learned to cook, with an ordinary household iron, foil-wrapped cheese sandwiches. I am consummately impressed with the pre-sifted flour Heloise mentions. When my grains needed preparation for the sacramental bread making I would advise a nearby king to send his churls, knaves, captive nations, etc., etc., to thrash and sift the fine grains in return for the friendship of my thighs. It was, in those days, easier to get help. My greatest political error, however, stemmed from my fame as bread-maker, which is actually what the word lady means. “Mother,” he called from the marketplace. “I need bread.” I ignored him, this upstart. “Please, Mother.” A few loaves did no
t pacify him. He’d been warned not to refer to me as Mother in public, giving away my age and all kinds of things to those rapacious crowds. Simply to shut him up, and annoyed with his begging, I dropped another load of ba-bread. That was the last I heard from him or the rapacious crowds. Not so much as a note.

  Meanwhile in the attic. It is Robert’s idea that I be here atop the magazines. But it is good for one must always ascend before beginning a major task. For instance, when a newborn is taken from the first room of his/her life, the one who carries him/her must not step down over the threshold but up. Up onto a stool or chair placed before the threshold. Ascend.

  Ascend.

  So it is well I have climbed these stairs. I hope Robert, who after all has demanded me here, no matter how fortuitous that I be here, remembers to turn off my son’s boiling clothes and take the knife out of the center of the kitchen table. The Redball Jets must be fair overdone by now.

  Robert attacked my care of the attic because I was boiling the clothes and the Redball Jets and also curing the cat’s cataracts by a tried and true method which I have written on a three-by-five card and mailed to Heloise’s publisher in return for her excellent hints. Blue, my wonderful male cat with whom I am in love, is tied to a ladder in the basement, spread-legged. Of newborn feces, cummin seed and my own saliva, I have applied a paste to his poor failing eyes. He will remain on the ladder for three days. At the end of three days his vision will be restored. Do you think Heloise will like this hint? Robert did not. He became upset this morning when he found Blue thusly.

  “I have been feeding him,” I assured Robert, who had unceremoniously dropped a bag of garbage, spilling coffee grains, egg shells and newborn feces on the basement floor. “For I dearly love my cat, Blue. I have also been feeding the ladder.”

  “What will people say?”

  “They will not know. That is why”—I indicate the large pot of bread sops soaked in milk—“that is why I feed the ladder and the furniture in the immediate vicinity so all will be well and the furniture won’t tell tales. I know, darling.” I walk close to him, stepping over the debris of the garbage at his feet, attempting to caress him as I speak. “I don’t want the neighbors to talk. This sort of thing embarrasses you. No one will know. It is spring and I am making things right, darling.”

  He jumps back in a nervous tango step, quite precise and graceful. I smooth my perky patchwork apron, not to be disappointed. The marriage counselor assured me that if I accept willingly my housewifely tasks this man will once more, quickly, take me on again as a wife. Make love, in other words.

  After sweeping up the debris and refilling the garbage bag, I served up breakfast to Robert on the sunporch since the new and large kitchen knife was struck into the exact center of the kitchen table. Which is prerequisite for boiling clothes. Robert did not eat but sent me to the attic. I am sure he has not turned off the clothes. And the pillows must be well done by now also. I hope he does not forget to turn off the oven. I am prepared to arrange the attic alphabetically. I believe that is a most perfect idea. I need not be around to give directions as to the location of the boots, the old diaper pail or the few relics/antiquities and parchment scrolls I carry with me at all times. Anyone can find anything once an attic is done alphabetically. The Marriage Counselor had suggested I stay at home and care for Robert and work my role as a woman. I asked him politely to define that role at our first and only meeting. He mumbled, this M.C., about staying at home and taking care of things. Certainly, willing, curing the cat’s failing eyes and my son’s sad disspirit and regenerating the feathers are excellent and housewifely tasks especially when I wear this perky patchwork apron over my naked body. Nevertheless, Robert, totally unimpressed, suggested I clean the attic and I shall. The M.C. seemed quite impressed with me and assured Robert, after expensive consultation, that our minor marital problems could be worked out, at home, together. I had a sense that our definitions of womanhood probably differed in certain aspects but since I had just purchased this wonderful Heloise book I was more than happy to stay at home and doubly hopeful that I would be taken to bed passionately thereafter but I sit here, with my wonderful tasks proceeding in the house below me, ignored, alone and sitting with my friendly and aching thighs on June Allyson’s face.

  I admire the M.C. He believes in free choice. I understand from a friend who attends him regularly that he so believes in freedom of choice, when his own wife chose to commit suicide he allowed her this freedom. He, actually, is more interesting than Heloise and it is why from up here I listen attentively as Robert calls him and describes my curing of the cat, feeding of the furniture, boiling of the troubled son’s Redball Jets, the rubbing of a pizza cutter across my stomach and my split personality.

  “Get dressed, darling,” he calls up to me. I roll the spider web and blow it over the beam in safety. I peel June from my thighs and descend. The house smells terribly of burned feathers.

  “What’s up?” I ask jokingly.

  “I think,” he says rather abjectly as he leads me to the bedroom, “it would be a good idea to see the Marriage Counselor again.”

  I look at him seriously now. He does know the law, his law, better than I.

  “And did you turn off the oven, Robert?”

  His shoulders bow in guilt as we enter the car.

  “And did you turn off the clothes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.”

  I am beginning to understand this man even more. He is treacherous in his organizational capacities. The M.C. is smiling as we enter. He will speak with both of us and then alone with me. He is a nice man, small, with a lean face, dark gypsy lean, city sallow. His neck is chicken thin from out of his loose and starched shirt collar. His pants billow and there are no bulges to entertain myself with as he scribbles mysteriously on a yellow legal pad. The thin wrist rubs along the legal sheet like the legs of a calculating fly. I do not like the sound. He looks up, from me to Robert. From Robert to me. There is a carbon sheet under his top sheet. There is a connection somehow with this man and Robert Moses. The connection is on the pad. “I understand, dear, you are having a bad day.”

  “On the contrary.” I remove my Heloise from my shopping bag and lay it ostentatiously on my lap. “But I do not like the attic.”

  “Aah.” He writes. “Why do you think you don’t like the attic?”

  “I am willing to please Robert but I can see no sense in straightening up the attic. The suggestion being that cleanliness is next to Godliness. It is not. He has not”—I point to Robert—“even caressed me once. He doesn’t wish to be next to me at all. I do not know if boots should go under Army or Navy. There seem to be regulation Air Force boots and Navy boots and I don’t know if they are A’s or B’s and frankly, I can’t understand how a clean attic will feed my cunt.”

  He writes. Robert clears his throat. Both men smooth their socks over their ankles. I wave my Heloise at them. The M.C. follows my movements. He speaks.

  “Work is healthy, you know. Especially when you are … uh … not at peace.”

  I laugh. I review for him my accomplishments of the day. He is not impressed. I describe for him the roach egg hunt Heloise has planned for Easter. I outline the cleaning of beetles from the shelves and boll weevils from the pre-sifted flour bags. I speak of the primacy of Baker’s Chocolate Chip cooky recipe over the Nestle’s Tollhouse cooky recipe. I tell him how I care; I tell him about my perky patchwork apron and my lonely thighs and I tell him with tears in my periwinkle eyes that I would sincerely like to be a good housewife if just to get laid. He pulls at his socks. I have offended him, this small listening man.

  “Robert.” At last he speaks, his writing done once again. “Robert, perhaps you should allow this woman to choose the tasks she wants to do. Give her a sense of her own freedom.”

  “Hello,” I say to him. “Tell me about your wife.”

  They both begin looking at their watches. “And beef ribs are cheaper than spareribs and make
marvelous b.b.q. for twenty-nine cents a pound, which is unheard of in today’s supermarket. I am quite pleased to do these tasks and have great joy in them. I was not having a bad day at all. Robert, in his judgment, was having a bad day and when he is wretched and I can not help him, it is best to give him territory. Would either of you like a Cupcake?”

  They of the smooth socks have not been listening. They don’t care. “Well,” Robert says in a sad voice, kissing my cheek lightly, “you sit here and talk all you want. I’m off to work.” He kisses my other cheek. Judas.

  I reach to hold him but he slips away and I am left with the sweet smell of his aftershave on my fingertips. I love this man. He does not glance over his shoulder. He closes the door quite silently but I hear him checking it to see if it clicked in.

  “Actually. M.C., it would help if he made love to me. Can’t you talk to him?”

  “Yes, that can be very disturbing.” He pulls at his socks. “Do you masturbate?”

  “No,” I answer. “Do you?”

  His socks begin to breathe hard. He folds his hands in his lap. I wink at him. He writes. His sleeve rubs. He underlines something and numbers other things. He is outlining me. “What is this,” he asks, “about boiling Redball Jets? What is a Redball Jet?”

  I explain it to him.

  “And the cat on the ladder?”

  “I do not know yet. He has another day to go on the ladder.”

  “The pillows?”

  I offer him the book. He shakes his head no. I offer him a Cup-cake. “Eat of this roll. It is sweet. It will give you knowledge.”