Bell, Book and Dyke - New Exploits of Magical Lesbians

by Barbara Johnson, Karin Kallmaker, Therese Szymanski

  "Oh," Sally laughed, heading out the door, "is that what you crazy kids are calling it these days?"

  What could only be described as an awkward silence followed, but then Tia caught Chameleon's eye, and they both started laughing. "I think Sally's trying to matchmake for me since I just endured the worst break-up ever," Chameleon said.

  "Of course, every break-up is the worst break-up ever, isn't it?" Tia laughed.

  "It's true. I bet you haven't gone through any of that drama in a long time, though. You seem so stable... like you're probably all settled down with somebody."

  Tia rolled her eyes. "Girl, I haven't had a steady girlfriend since there was a Democrat in the White House."

  "Really? I'd think you'd have to carry a softball bat to keep all the dykes away." Chameleon's face flushed pink. "I'm sorry. That was probably an unprofessional thing to say to your lawyer."

  Tia could feel her face heating up, too. Fortunately, her blush wouldn't be as visible as Chameleon's. "Actually, I'm kind of the ugly duckling in my family. Both of my sisters are beauty queens."

  "Well, you probably could've been, too, if you'd had the personality for it," Chameleon said. "Which, fortunately, you don't."

  "Oh, but my sisters do," Tia laughed. "When we were teenagers I could always be ready to go out in fifteen minutes—I'd brush my teeth, shower, throw on clothes, and that was that. But they'd take hours, ironing their hair, putting on lotions and perfumes, fixing their faces, trying on a dozen outfits. I used to tell them that if the house caught on fire in the middle of the night, I'd be the only one who'd survive because they'd have to put their makeup on and fix their hair before they'd step out the door. LaShea, my oldest sister would always say, 'Well, I'd rather die than walk around with nappy old hair like yours.'"

  Chameleon laughed. "It's weird, isn't it, how people can share the same genetic material and have nothing in common at all. My brother is a Baptist minister. We're total opposites."

  "Not that opposite. You're both religious leaders."

  Chameleon rolled her eyes. "Well, he wouldn't see it that way. If he knew I was a Wiccan high priestess ... Which, thankfully, he doesn't. When I came out as a dyke to him and my parents, they totally despaired for my soul. If I told them I'm a witch, too, they'd think that was my next step down the road to hell."

  Tia found herself laughing in Chameleon's presence a lot more than she thought she would. Tia had thought that a person with Chameleon's religious convictions would be painfully earnest and serious, but she actually had a wicked little sense of humor. A wicked witch, Tia thought, smiling. "Yeah, my family's pretty much decided I'm on the short list for hell, too," Tia said. "Of course, even though I came out to them ten years ago, they still like to pretend I'm just an old maid—like great-aunt Frances, who was a schoolteacher who could never find a man to marry her."

  "Probably because she never looked," Chameleon said. "Great-aunt Frances probably had a girlfriend nobody knew about."

  "I hope she did." Tia glanced down at her watch and was surprised to see that an hour had passed. "Shit, I'd better get back to the office."

  "Oh, I hope I'm not getting you in trouble by keeping you for so long."

  "Well, given that this is the first real lunch break I've taken in a year, they probably won't hold it against me if I come back a few minutes late. Plus, you're a client. This is a working lunch."

  "I guess it is, isn't it? Well, let me grab those books for you." Chameleon went to the counter behind the cash register and pulled out three books. "I could've brought you a whole library's worth, but I didn't want to overwhelm you. These three are a good start."

  Tia looked at the covers of the books: Dreaming the Dark by Starhawk, Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler, and The Witches' Bible Compleat by Stewart and Janet Farrar. The first two books wouldn't attract undue attention at first glance, but the sight of the third one, which was jet black with a pentacle and broomsticks on the cover, would be enough to send many a Christian running for crucifixes and holy water. Tia grinned. "I wonder what my mama would do if I left this book lying on the coffee table the next time she comes for a visit."

  Chameleon smiled. "It would probably shorten her visit considerably. One time I invited some Jehovah's Witnesses in, and I had that book and my ritual dagger lying out in plain sight. They threw The Watchtower on the floor and ran."

  "I bet they did." Tia swung the door open. "Well, I should head back."

  "Okay, well, just read through those and let me know if you have any questions."

  "Now you sound like a Jehovah's Witness."

  Chameleon laughed. "I do, don't I? Oh, I was thinking, maybe next Thursday night, if you wanted, you could come to our Sabbath—that's a ritual meeting. That way, you could meet some of the other witches in the coven and get a feel for the group and how it works."

  "Sure, that sounds good."

  "We always meet out in the country at the farm of one of our coven members. It's kind of hard to find, but if you can call and give me directions to your house, I could pick you up and give you a ride there."

  "Okay. I'll call you next week."

  Tia was halfway out the door when Chameleon said, "Oh, and just so you know, we work skyclad."

  "Okay," Tia said, having no idea what Chameleon meant. "Well, I'll see you." "Bye."

  That evening at home, flipping through A Witches'1 Bible Compleat and seeing photos of a beautiful witch wearing nothing but ritual jewelry, Tia discovered that "skyclad" meant naked.

  Chapter 2

  Tia wondered if she might be coming down with something. She'd only toyed with the salad she'd picked up for dinner. Her stomach felt queasy and shaky, and she couldn't concentrate on anything. She couldn't read. She couldn't watch the news. She couldn't even sit still long enough to pet the damn cat. She hadn't felt this way since... since the morning of the bar exam four years ago.

  So that's what it was. She wasn't sick. She was nervous.

  But why? Sure, Chameleon was going to pick her up in half an hour to take her to the witches' hoedown or whatever they called it. But there was no reason for her to be nervous. She had read enough of the books Chameleon had loaned her to know that Wicca was a harmless, peaceful religion. These witches weren't going to cook her and eat her.

  And yes, the witches were going to be naked, but it wasn't like she hadn't seen naked women before. But it's been a while, hasn't it? her sex drive whispered. She promptly told her sex drive to shut the hell up. She was going to be mature about this, and it was going to be fine. And besides, she wasn't going to participate. Nobody was going to make her take her clothes off.

  But what clothes was she going to wear? If everybody else was going to be cavorting around butt naked, then she'd look pretty stupid wearing the dress slacks and silk blouse and blazer she'd had on all day. She'd look like a cop who'd come to arrest them all for public indecency. She rummaged through her drawers and closets and finally settled on what she usually wore when she wanted to look casual but not sloppy: a pair of broken-in but not too faded Levi's and a white button-down shirt. Because she thought it might be muddy where the witches were frolicking, she put on the big clumpy pair of dyke boots she always wore around her mother and sisters just to annoy them.

  She brushed her teeth and quickly surveyed herself in the bathroom mirror. She kept her hair cropped so close that it required little care, and her caramel-colored skin was clear enough not to require any makeup. "Good enough," she said, looking at herself. She had often thought that women spent way too much energy trying to achieve perfection in their looks. If they could just look in the mirror and say "good enough," then maybe they could focus their energy on more important things.

  When the doorbell rang, she jumped even though it wasn't a surprise. Her tiger-striped cat, as always, raced her to the door, getting tangled around Tia's legs and making her trip. When Tia opened the door, Chameleon was centered in the doorframe like a picture. Her long
hair was free and wild around her shoulders, and she was wearing a purple dress printed with orchids. A pentacle with an amethyst in its center hung just below her collarbone.

  "Hi," Chameleon said. The cat rubbed against her ankles. "And oh, hi, kitty." She squatted down to give the cat a thorough petting.

  "That's Zora," Tia said. "She's the official greeter around these parts."

  "Well, she's a beautiful girl," Chameleon said. "My kitty died almost six months ago. I had had her since I was a teenager. I keep telling myself I need to go to the shelter and adopt another cat, but I guess I'm still in mourning."

  "I'm sure that's hard," Tia said. "Zora's my first real pet, and I'm surprised how attached I am to her."

  "Animals are more reliable companions than a lot of humans,"

  Chameleon said, standing back up. "Especially given my recent track record with human companions. Are you ready to go?"

  "Yep." Now that Chameleon was here, Tia felt calmer, but there was still a nervous twinge in her stomach.

  "I like your house," Chameleon said as they walked down the sidewalk to the car.

  "My house isn't as old as a lot of the houses in this neighborhood," Tia said. "It's just from the nineteen twenties. I think a big part of the reason why I wanted it is because it's a bungalow, and when I was little I read this book about a family of bears that lived in a bungalow, and I just loved that word. Bung-a-low," she said, stretching it out.

  Chameleon laughed. "So you bought the house so you'd have an excuse to say the word a lot?"

  "Basically, yes."

  In the car on the way out of town, Chameleon said, "You know, I've never seen you out of your lawyer costume before. It seems kind of strange to see you in jeans."

  "I live in them when I'm not at the office. That being said, I'm in the office more often than not. Come to think of it, I've never seen you in jeans either."

  Chameleon turned onto a tree-lined road. "I don't own a pair, actually. I just find these loose, flowing dresses to be more comfortable."

  "Well, they suit you," Tia said, feeling that twinge in her stomach again. It was strange. Chameleon looked beautiful in flimsy, flowing, flowery garments that Tia—or nearly any other black woman she could think of—wouldn't be caught dead in. She guessed a black woman trying to pull off the Celtic earth mother look would be as ridiculous as those white women who insisted on parading around in dreadlocks and cowrie shells and kente cloth.

  Graymalkin's farmhouse was farther out in the middle of nowhere than Tia had been since she used to visit her great-grandmother in Mississippi. There was something about being out in the country that made her nervous. Back in college, her friend Mikey had said one time, "I don't ever leave the city, man. I get out in the country and see all them trees, and I can't help thinking they used to hang people who looked like me from 'em." Tia had never thought of this until Mikey said it, but there had always been something about being in the country that made her uneasy and filled her with a longing for lights and noise and people.

  "Isn't it peaceful out here?" Chameleon said as she parked in front of the ramshackle old farmhouse.

  "It's quiet, all right," Tia said. "And dark."

  "And it's not even full dark yet," Chameleon said. "Wait until you see the stars. No need for streetlights when you've got a sky full of stars. Come on in the house. I want you to meet everybody."

  Tia knew there was no way she'd remember all their names. The older one was Graymalkin which was easy enough—gray hair, Graymalkin. And the fine-but-not-femme-enough-for-her-taste sister was named Anansi, which she could remember because she was familiar with the African myth. She was, however, rather shocked to see a sister in the coven, as she had always thought of moonlit goddess worship as a white girl thing.

  She was hopeless with the other women's names. The butch one called herself Coyote, and Tia knew she'd be calling her Wolf or Dingo or Poodle by the end of the night. And Iris—the cute, spiky-haired one who seemed to have some weird vibe going on with Chameleon—Tia would never remember which flower she was named after. And as for Belladonna, the little girl with all the metal in her face, Tia couldn't help wondering what name her parents had given her... probably one of those cutesy names like Brittany or Tiffany.

  Despite her amusement at their creative nomenclature, Tia had to admit that all the women were nice and welcoming and seemed to appreciate what she was doing for them.

  "Tia," Graymalkin said, "it's going to take us a few minutes to get ready for the Sabbath. Why don't you make yourself comfortable in the living room and then come out to the back field in about half an hour? You'll be able to find us because we'll have candles burning."

  "Okay," Tia said, her nervousness bubbling up a bit.

  "Oh," Graymalkin added, "there are some pagan magazines on the coffee table if you'd like to flip through them as part of your education."

  Sitting on Graymalkin's living room futon, nipping through a magazine which bore the inexplicably Dr. Seuss-like title Green Egg, Tia felt like she did when she was waiting at the gynecologist's office. Except, she thought, I'm not the one who's going to be taking my clothes off.

  After amusing herself with the magazine's personals section, which had ads with headings like "Green Man Seeks Goddess" and "Gay Gardnerian Seeks Same," Tia checked her watch and took a deep breath. Time to go outside.

  In the far field she saw the flicker of candlelight and shadowy female figures. She could do this, she told herself. It was research, just the same as going over to the law library and poring over the books. Except that the women at the law library weren't naked and engaging in pagan rituals. Stop it, she told herself. You can do this. Glad that she had worn boots, she started across the muddy field.

  Graymalkin met her a few yards away from the others, and it occurred to Tia that she had never seen a woman Graymalkin's age naked before. Movies certainly didn't show the bodies of any woman much over 35, as though age made the female body somehow repellent. But Graymalkin's soft curves were beautiful. Stop it, Tia told herself. Look only at her eyes. She was sure Graymalkin had noticed her staring, but when she looked at Graymalkin's face, she seemed as oblivious and comfortable as if she were standing there fully dressed. "You can sit anywhere outside the circle," Graymalkin said. "And I brought a tarp so you don't have to get all muddy. Not everybody likes to wallow around in the earth as much as witches do."

  "Thank you," Tia said, suddenly imagining the Sabbath as a kind of mud-wrestling tournament. She sat down on the ground and let herself look up at the coven. There they were, nipples erect in the brisk night air, the moonlight giving their bare flesh an ethereal glow. Skyclad, Tia thought.

  All the women were beautiful, and Tia felt a little drunk at the sight of them. Anansi's strong thighs and high, proud rear; Belladonna's sensuous curves padded with baby fat; Iris's tan, athletic frame; Coyote's muscle and sinew; and Graymalkin's pillowy lushness. They were also different yet all so perfect in their own ways that Tia wondered why every woman in the world was not a lesbian.

  But then the coven members parted, and Tia saw Chameleon in front of the altar. The amethyst and silver pentacle Tia had noticed earlier now hung between Chameleon's bare breasts, which were full and lovely and tinged with blue in the moonlight. She stood before the other women, her bare feet planted slightly apart, her arms outstretched, offering herself as if to a lover. Tia knew from her reading that the high priestess's job was to play the role of the goddess during rituals. Looking at Chameleon, who managed to be naked and regal at the same time, Tia had to say that the goddess role was One that Chameleon played well.

  Tia tried to follow the ritual as best she could, but she found the nudity, especially Chameleon's nudity, extremely distracting. When the witch with the flower name came up to Chameleon and started kissing various parts of her body, including a spot that was so low on her belly it almost wasn't her belly anymore, Tia felt a strange pang—was it jealousy? Why should she feel any
possessiveness toward Chameleon? She was just her client, for god's sake. Their relationship was strictly professional, and her only purpose in being here was research. When Chameleon turned around to face the altar, Tia found herself thinking, not a bad ass for a white girl.

  Stop it, she told herself, and she managed to control herself fairly well until the witches started taking turns kissing and feeding each other red wine which ran down their chins. Tia followed a streak of red wine as it ran down Chameleon's chin, down her long neck, and disappeared into her cleavage.

  What's wrong with you, Tia Thomas? she asked herself. These women are practicing their religion, and you're watching it like it's a porno movie.

  When the ritual was over, Chameleon made a beeline for Tia. "So, what did you think?" she asked, standing in front of her as though she were fully dressed.

  Tia wondered if she should stand since sitting down put her on eye level with Chameleon's crotch. But what if she stood up clumsily and fell into Chameleon? That would be even more embarrassing. "Um... it was very... educational," she finally managed to say.

  "Good," Chameleon said. "Well, we're going back to the house to get dressed, then we'll have a potluck."

  What was it about lesbians and potlucks? Tia had always despised the randomness of potluck meals. She used to say that her understanding of being a lesbian was that there was only one thing that started with P that you had to eat, and "potluck" wasn't it. "I'm sorry I didn't bring anything," she said, managing to stand up without falling onto Chameleon's naked body.

  "Oh, we wouldn't want you to bring anything," Chameleon said. "You're already doing so much for our coven as it is, and we're just glad you're here." She draped her arm around Tia in what would have been a casual half-hug, had Chameleon been clothed. As it was, Tia froze, knowing that returning the hug meant touching Chameleon's bare flesh.

  "Oh, I'm sorry if that made you uncomfortable," Chameleon said. "I'm so used to being naked that I tend to forget everybody isn't so casual about nudity."