The Predictions

  Across the aisle, as though they were wedding guests from the groom’s side of the family, sat Hunter and Shakti, and behind them, Paul and Sigi, her hair long and flowing, like Shakti’s. Everyone talked among themselves, waiting for the meeting to start. Susie chewed on her nails. She appeared to be gathering her thoughts, running through a speech in her mind. I had seen Hunter doing the same thing before one of his long diatribes and wondered what it was she had rehearsed to say.

  Zachary stirred, and I remembered the tank top, stashed in his sling. Now that I had it in my possession, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it. I hadn’t thought this through at all.

  Susie stood up and cleared her throat. “We’re here to reach a decision about Fritz, whether it’s time to have a memorial.” She gulped, and her voice, when she started speaking again, was shaky. “He’s been gone ten years, and the majority of us think the time has come to mourn him. We need to close the wound.”

  From the pew to her right, where Katrina and Loretta and the lesbians sat, came murmurs of assent. From the other side: silence. I had expected Hunter to protest but he didn’t.

  “Does anyone want to get the ball rolling?”

  No one said anything.

  I put up my hand. Everyone turned to look at me.

  “Yes, Poppy?”

  I had been about to show everyone the tank top, then chickened out. “We could put it to a vote?”

  “We could do that,” said Susie, “but I’d prefer to reach a consensus.”

  Someone in the left-­hand pew, I think it was Paul, groaned. A consensus could take weeks.

  In the middle of this exchange, Shakti had leaned to whisper something in Hunter’s ear, and when she was finished, he had turned and whispered back. This went on, back and forth, loud enough that we could hear the swish-­wish-­wish of their whispering, but not a word they were saying, until Susie rapped her knuckles on the side of the podium.

  “For goddess’s sake. Don’t just sit there whispering like a ­couple of schoolboys. If you’ve got something to say, spit it out.”

  Hunter and Shakti turned to face her, then Hunter glanced one last time at Shakti before he stood up.

  “We can’t have a memorial for Fritz because we don’t know that he’s dead.”

  Moans of frustration emanated from the right-­hand pew. “You’re living in cloud cuckoo land,” said Katrina, getting to her feet. “And it’s not fair on the rest of us. We’ve been in limbo for ten years. He was our son. We all loved him but it’s time we accepted he’s gone.” Her voice cracked. “I just can’t do this any longer.” She sat down, in tears.

  “Katrina’s right,” said Tom. “We all miss him but it’s time to face facts.”

  “And what exactly are they?” said Hunter.

  “Mate, he’s dead,” said Tom. “Fifteen-­year-­olds don’t just disappear into the forest, never to be heard of again.”

  “Fritz did.” Shakti tried to stop Hunter from saying anything else, to pull him back down to seated, but he was rigid with frustration, and wouldn’t budge.

  Susie eyed the pair quizzically.

  “Hunter, Shakti, do you know something we don’t?”

  Hunter gave Shakti a pleading look. She shook her head.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “Then stop wasting our time,” called Tom, across the aisle. “Sit down.”

  Hunter sat. Susie waited for the unrest to subside. “Well, if no one has any other suggestions, I suggest we kick things off with a show of hands.”

  “Just call it a bloody vote,” said Paul. “We all want to get some sleep tonight.”

  “Do we all?” said Susie. “Or by ‘we’ do you mean the men?”

  Paul sighed. “Oh for fuck’s sake, can you leave gender out of it, just this once?”

  “No, I can’t,” said Susie. “Women have been oppressed for thousands of years, and we cannot just leave it out.”

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  While they were arguing, I had wiggled out of my pew and made my way to the front, standing in the space between the two aisles, on what I hoped was neutral ground. I held the tank top aloft, pinching each of the shoulder seams between thumb and forefinger. There were audible gasps when everyone saw it. I spoke at full volume so everyone could hear.

  “This is the shirt Fritz was wearing on the day he disappeared.” More gasps, and someone drew our attention to the blood. “Oh, that’s mine,” I reassured them. “I found the shirt in Shakti’s old caravan, and used it to bandage my leg. I don’t know what it was doing there but I think Shakti does.”

  I turned to look at Shakti, and so did everyone else, while she stared straight ahead, determined not to meet anyone’s gaze. From her profile, I tried to read her expression. It wasn’t neutral, but nor was it the face of a person who has just been found guilty of committing a heinous crime. If anything she looked vaguely self-­satisfied.

  “Do you have an explanation for this?” said Susie, stationing herself in a wide-­legged stance, arms folded, in front of Shakti.

  Shakti didn’t respond but Hunter stood up and squeezed his temples in exasperation.

  “You’ve got it all wrong!” he said. “You’re jumping to conclusions. Shakti didn’t do away with Fritz, she—­”

  He was stopped by Shakti, who gripped his arm and vehemently shook her head.

  “You’ve got to tell them,” he pleaded with her. “Otherwise they’ll think you’ve done something awful.”

  “Tell us what?” said Susie, turning to Hunter. “This is exactly the kind of bullshit we’ve had to put up with from you for years.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Pat, even though she had been at the commune for all of five minutes.

  “Yes, Shakti, what is it?” said Sigi, trying to sound reasonable, calm. “If you have some information about Fritz, you must share it with us.”

  Finally, Shakti stood up. The smug look had gone from her face, and she seemed, for her, to be nervous, at a loss for what to do with her hands.

  “I have to go back to the beginning,” she said, hesitating. “Otherwise you won’t understand.”

  “Try us,” said Susie, bristling.

  Shakti scanned the faces of the small gathering, then reached for Hunter’s hand. “When I first came to Gaialands, I could see there was a lot of suffering.”

  A few ­people murmured their dissent.

  “Suffering?” said Susie. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m talking about the way the children were brought up, not knowing who their parents were.”

  Dissent became hostile silence.

  “I think you all knew by then that your experiment had failed, but you couldn’t admit the effect it was having on the children.” She appealed to the gathering with a smile but was met with cold stares. “I did what I could to try and put things right. First, with a healing ritual, the ceremony I called the Predictions, and then”—­she pointed at the soiled green tank top, now hanging limply at my side—­“I helped Fritz to start a new life.”

  “You did what?” said Susie, incredulous.

  Shakti looked to Hunter for reassurance, but he wouldn’t acknowledge her.

  “Fritz wanted to run away,” she said. “So I helped him.”

  No one breathed. Our collective disbelief leached the air from the room. But Shakti seemed to take this as a sign we were captivated. She continued, more confident than before.

  “The plan came together so serendipitously—­as though the universe wanted it to happen. Fritz met some friends of mine at Nambassa with a yacht. They needed a deckhand from Auckland to Australia. At the time we had arranged, I picked Fritz up on the road outside Gaialands and took him to meet Johannes. I had hoped to pick up my caravan as well, but Fritz and I found it at the bottom of a gully—­the old girl wasn’t going an
ywhere. I gave Fritz new clothes so he wouldn’t be recognized, and we left his old ones there. To be honest, I thought you’d find it sooner.” Here, Shakti paused, and tried to make eye contact with someone, but none of us would look at her. “Anyway,” she continued. “The good news is, Fritz isn’t dead. This whole time, he’s been living in Australia. In Sydney, I think.”

  Shakti stood before us, smiling, awaiting a positive response, cheering or applause, then—­thwack!—­out of nowhere came a fist powered not only by a decade of wasted parental grief but by centuries of patriarchal oppression, a fist so righ­teous that when it socked Shakti on the jaw, she folded to the ground as if the puppeteer above her had cut her strings.

  Susie recoiled, as shocked as anyone that she had knocked Shakti to the ground, cradling her fist as though it had betrayed her, as if she was ashamed of it. But she had nothing to be ashamed of. When Tom patted her on the back, muttering, “Good job, Suze,” he put into words what we had all been thinking. Any one of us could have punched Shakti. She deserved it.

  Hunter helped Shakti to her feet. On her face, even a split lip was fetching, the blood congealed in a single, perfect droplet, like a beauty spot. She did not try to fight back, but cowered behind her hands, playing the consummate victim, after playing the reluctant hero.

  Around them the gathering stood in traumatized silence, each processing the news in his or her own way. Katrina wept, her tears profuse but making no noise, while Loretta buried her head in her hands, and was comforted by Tom, moist eyed but holding his emotion in check. I sobbed too, for the years I’d lost with my brother, and wished with all my heart that Lukas could be here.

  There was a lull in which no one said anything, then everyone reacted all at once, showering Shakti with pent-­up abuse.

  “How could you?” said Paul. “We loved him.”

  “I cried every night for five years,” said Katrina. “All that grief—­all that suffering.”

  “How long have you known?” said Tom, addressing Hunter.

  “Not long,” he said. “I swear.” Throughout all this, Hunter stood at Shakti’s side, shielding her with his arm, while his face told a different story. “You know I grieved with the rest of you.”

  Paul glanced Shakti. “And yet you can forgive her?”

  Hunter said nothing, nor looked at anyone.

  When the hubbub had died down, and it was quiet enough that she would be heard, Susie instructed Shakti to “Pack up your things, leave tonight, and don’t ever think about coming back to Gaialands.”

  Upon hearing this, Shakti straightened her spine and defiantly addressed Susie. “This place could have been paradise on earth but you ruined it for yourselves.” Then, with as much dignity as she could muster, she walked regally out of the chapel, followed, to the door, by Hunter, her loyal, if chastened, lapdog. But in the doorway, after Shakti had already walked out, he hesitated, then turned and spoke to the assembled group.

  “If she goes,” he said, “then I go too.”

  “Mate,” said Paul, “think it over. Don’t throw away your life’s work—­at least not for her.”

  “I have thought it over,” said Hunter. “And there’s no longer a place for me here.”

  “Bullshit.” Paul shook his head. He had always been Hunter’s right-­hand man. His ally. “There’s always a place for you here, mate. You made Gaialands what it is.”

  “That’s right,” said Hunter. “I poisoned it.”

  “He’s made his choice,” said Susie. “No one’s forcing him to go.”

  “Aren’t they?” Paul glanced around at the assembled group. With the addition of Pat and Barb, women now outnumbered men two to one. “Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do all along—­to get rid of us blokes?”

  For once, Susie was lost for words. She looked to Katrina for backup.

  “Not all the men,” said Katrina. “We still need a few of you.”

  “Yeah, right” said Paul. “To fix the bloody tractors.”

  “Actually,” said Pat, “I’m a qualified mechanic.”

  “And the latrines? Who’s going to dig those in the middle of the winter when the ground’s like concrete and the shit’s frozen solid?”

  “We’re strong,” said Susie. “I’m sure that between us we can dig a hole.”

  “Sure you can,” said Paul. “But up until now you haven’t wanted to. You can bitch all you like about how hard it is to be a woman, how the likes of me and Hunter here have held you back, but not one of you has ever put your hand up to help us shovel your shit.”

  “Well,” said Loretta, “the same goes for your dirty underpants. Who do you think scrubs the skids out of those?”

  “Skids?” said Paul. “What skids?”

  But quiet Loretta wasn’t finished. “Or the toilet seats. They don’t clean themselves. Nor does the shower block. You get three hot meals a day, thanks to us”—­she looked at the other women, who nodded—­“and then we do all the dishes.” Loretta had shaken off Tom’s embrace, and he stood by her side, dumbfounded. “Has it never occurred to you we might not like cooking and cleaning—­that we might want to have a go at something else?”

  I could scarcely believe she was voicing the exact same ideas that Shakti had planted in her head all those years ago.

  “You can have a go at shoveling shit,” said Paul. “All you have to do is ask.”

  “Very well, then,” said Loretta. “And you can scrub your own undies.”

  I couldn’t help it. After all the tension, I let out a snort of laughter. I tried covering it with a cough, but everyone had heard, and turned to look at me.

  “Aw, shit,” said Paul, shaking his head and grinning. “Poppy’s right. We just found out Fritz is alive and all we can do is stand here bloody arguing.”

  “It’s a bit of a shock, to be honest,” said Susie. “All this time, well, I thought you blokes were to blame.”

  “Us?” Hunter glanced from Tom to Paul. “How?”

  “I thought Gaia had cursed us. That she wanted us to destroy the commune and start afresh.” She shook her head. “Grief makes you think strange things.”

  “That wasn’t all grief,” Hunter said. “We did a few things wrong, here and there. I’ve had a long time to see the error of our . . . of my ways.”

  They stood for a moment in silence, and then Katrina exclaimed, “Which one of us is going to look for him?” She threw her arms in the air and whooped for joy. “Our darling boy Fritz is alive!”

  At last, the dour mood was cracked. One by one, each member of the group broke into smiles, as though finally the news had set in.

  “We’ll all go,” said Paul. “We’ll comb the streets until we find him. Then we’ll bring him home to Gaialands where he belongs.” To Hunter, asking far more than if he was coming to Sydney to find Fritz, he said, “Mate, are you in?”

  Hunter gazed out the door through which Shakti had disappeared and then turned back to his comrades. “You bet.”

  A cheer went around the parents, the sound of reuniting over shared love for a lost son, and I realized how badly they’d needed to find him, that they had been waiting for something that would bring them back together.

  The noise woke up Zachary, and he looked to me for the reassurance only I could give him. It was one of those moments when I felt very keenly that his life was in my hands, just as mine had been in the hands of my parents, and theirs in the hands of their parents before them, a chain of loving but sometimes incompetent responsibility that stretched back to eternity. For the first time in my life, I felt compassion for the adults. All parenting was an experiment, and however wrongheadedly theirs was conceived, they had carried it out with the best of intentions. Behind every misguided step had been love.

  I had carried Zachary over to the window, where it was quieter, and glanced out when something colorful in the dista
nce caught my eye. Some fifty feet away, at the end of a row of sleeping huts, where there was a partly covered area we called the loggia, though it was no more than a lean-­to held up with sticks, a woman struggled with a large bundle of what looked to be clothing or textiles. The bundle obscured the woman’s head, but I didn’t need to see it to know that it was Shakti. She came to the end of the loggia and paused. Her car was parked not far off but between it and her was a stretch of sticky mud that had been all winter in the making. This mud cropped up in the same place each year, and I had stood in that same spot where she now hesitated, deciding whether to take the long, sensible way around or to risk walking through it. Never one to retreat, Shakti adjusted her load, hitching it high on her shoulder, and stepped, barefoot, into the bog. The first ­couple of paces seemed to go okay, but roughly a third of the way across, the bundle of clothing came unbalanced, and in an effort to right it, Shakti overreached, striding where she ought to have tiptoed. Her legs went out from under her, and the bundle swayed violently to one side before coming undone in a cascade of multicolored silk. Shakti landed, ungracefully, on her backside, the fabric spread out across a nice, wide area.

  Up until this point, I had been passively transfixed, as though watching a nature program on television, but now I wondered if I ought to go to her aid. I was next to useless with Zachary in my arms and the adults were still in a huddle at the other end of the chapel. “Hunter,” I called out, “come quickly.”

  He went to the window and stared out at Shakti, now extricating her saris one by one from the mud, and scratched his head, unsure what to do.

  Presently, Paul came and joined him. “Looks like she needs a hand.”

  Hunter turned to his mate. “You reckon I should give her one?”

  “Your call,” said Paul.

  With undisguised eagerness, we crowded in front of the glass to watch the show. In gumboots and shorts, his year-­round uniform, Hunter strode purposefully in Shakti’s direction, then, when he was still some way off, called out to her. “Do you need a hand, love?”