“I’m going to tell you about the beginning of things,” Rhea said, into the darkness.
“The beginning of what things?” Tammy asked.
“All things,” Rhea said firmly, and Cathy repeated in a sing-song, “All fings, all fings, all fings …”
Selena and Diane moved into the hall and paused at Phoebe’s door.
“I’m going downstairs to put some coffee on,” Selena whispered across the room to Phoebe, but Rhea had started to speak and Selena’s intention slowly weakened. Instead, she walked into Phoebe’s room and sat down on Phoebe’s bed. Lots of time for coffee, a voice said in her head, and she agreed drowsily. Diane followed her and sank into the rocking chair across the room from where Phoebe sat at the table that had served her as a desk for years. She leaned back and closed her eyes.
Rhea’s voice had begun again, steady and distinct even though it came to them from another room, across the hall. They knew she was speaking to all of them.
“I am going to tell you this story,” she said. “And when the time comes, you must tell it to your children.”
“I could tell it to my dolls,” Tammy suggested in a sleepy voice, “Or to the kitties &” Her voice fell off in a deep yawn.
Listen to her, thought Selena, that’s not the way to tell a story to children. But, although the words of the criticism formed themselves in her head, she couldn’t seem to speak them, and her mind had already jumped forward to follow Rhea’s story.
“In the beginning” Rhea began again, and a shiver ran down Selena’s back. Her voice was not loud and yet it resonated through the whole house. Selena could imagine the animals in the field hearing it and the birds nested down for the night in the trees and the tall grass.
Phoebe hadn’t pulled her blind. Her bedroom faced east and the moon was rising between and above the row of steel bins. It rose orange, a perfect circle in the dark sky. The old house was silent.
“There was Woman,” Rhea said, and they waited, they didn’t know for what. “And she had all the wisdom from time when there was no time gathered together in her body. It rested in the soles of her feet, and in her knees, it flowed with her blood upward into the secret organs of her body, it waited in her full belly and her great breasts, it murmured in the muscles of her arms and made the palms of her hands tingle, and it rose to sing its song in her heart.
“Around her head and massive shoulders there was a noise like the buzzing of a thou sand bees, and when she moved she gave off a smell that was so powerful that, had there been any living thing to come near her, it would have been stupefied by the heaviness and sweetness of the scent and would have fallen into infinite sleep.
“No one knows what there was before she came. Perhaps there Was nothing at all.”
Selena and Diane, and even Phoebe, listened. They forgot where they were, they forgot what day it was, they forgot each other and the small, ramshackle house in which they sat. Selena and Diane forgot their husbands, they forgot their children. Who knows what Phoebe forgot.
“She was, before there was the sea or the sky, the forests or the meadows, the rivers, lakes and streams, the desert and the mountains. Before there were creatures that run on four legs or swim or fly, she was there. Before there were women or men, she was there. And all these things she contained inside her, in her womb, for Woman is possibility, Woman is life, and out of this possibility, she drew forth the universe.
“First, she made the sea. It issued forth from her womb, and she thought how beautiful it was, and she blew on it and watched it dance. She danced, too, with it, and her long silvery hair floated over the sea and through it, like long drifting fishes or fireflies, and this made the wind. She spun and her hair followed, flowing, and out of it she fashioned the moon and the stars.
“Although the moon was her creation—she had made him—he became her lover. As the moon waxed and waned she began a companion cycle, she began to bleed, and she called that time from bleeding to bleeding a month, a mense.
“And that is how time was born.
“Out of her monthly bleeding, her menstrual fluid, she fashioned the earth, a daughter, and the sun, which she threw into the sky so there would be light. She breathed life into earth and her daughter began to grow grasses, trees and flowers to cover herself with. Out of her menstrual fluid Woman made human creatures, first a small one like herself, which she called woman, and another which she called man, to keep woman company. Woman placed in the man seeds and the desire to plant them in the woman’s womb so that he would be a faithful companion.
“For a time women and men were happy, peopling the earth as Woman had told them to do. Earth was good to them, giving them fruits to eat from her trees, and nuts, and roots. Seeing that her creation was complete and fruitful, Woman lay down to rest.
“But gradually, men grew jealous of women, for out of them issued forth new life. The monthly bleeding that coincided with the waxing and waning of the moon frightened man. It seemed to men that all nature was in harmony with women, and they felt themselves left out of this great and beautiful rhythm.
“Men muttered among themselves. Why should we be servants to these creatures, they asked one another. Gathering roots and berries, fruits and nuts for them to eat. Retreating to our huts when the moon shines and the women dance outside. Why must we bow to their rhythm?
“Huddled in their huts at night, they told stories about a day when men would rule, when men would be the ones to give birth, and about a great male god they would create for themselves.
“Till it came to them that the strength Woman had given them to build fires and gather food was greater than the strength the women had. When they realized this, their mutterings grew louder, and the care they took of the women grew less and less.
“Slowly men overpowered women and made them slaves. Because they could not bleed in the way of women, and because they knew that bleeding was the secret of women’s power, they shut women away when they bled. No man could go near them at that time, nor when they were giving birth, either. Bleeding is dirty, bleeding is evil, they told each other. Men are clean and good because their bodies do not bleed in such an indecent way.
“They were jealous of that blood though, of the power that it seemed to hold. So men began killing, they began to kill animals and to drink their blood and to devour their bloody flesh. Killing makes us more powerful than women, they said, because we can make blood flow in copious amounts whenever we choose, and then they invented rape, and wifehood.
“The women became terrified of the men. They began to try to please them, they pretended they were weaker than men were, and they acted as if they had been designed to be ornamental, pleasure-givers. They pierced their ears and noses, and hung ornaments in them, they starved themselves, or ate far more than they needed to please first one demand and then another, they painted themselves and wore garments that hobbled them, or hampered them, or hurt them.
“As time passed the women grew more and more confused. Each woman became split within herself: one half of her stayed in harmony with nature, bleeding and giving birth, while the other half of her became coy, seductive and servile.
“But still the men were afraid, especially of what the women might be fomenting in the birth huts. One day they declared that they would take over the births. The women were astonished. Did this mean that men could now give birth? But no, it meant that from that time forth men would take charge of births, drugging women or not, removing them from their relatives and friends, placing them in a ritual environment of their own fashioning.
“Eventually men invented science in order to try to control nature. They even discovered a way to make human life in test tubes without the need for a woman: they wanted to make women, whom they hated and feared, superfluous. In their struggle to take control of creation they destroyed natural things and their efforts produced disasters. They were in danger of destroying all human connection to the Great Swelling Mother who gives life to all things and to her daughter
, earth. All human life was threatened with extinction.
“But listen! Woman is waking now. Disturbed in her dreaming by intimations of disharmony drifting from her creation, her beautiful, silver-toed feet are stirring, there is a twitching in her massive thighs and in her great shoulders. She moves her head, and her long, silvery hair lifts and floats. The buzzing around her head, shoulders and arms grows louder. Soon Woman will wake.
“Woman has never spoken with words, but now, in her dream, a sound is issuing from her that is different from the buzzing around her shoulders. It is a gentle, broken hum that comes from deep inside her body and that threatens to grow louder as it gathers strength, that promises to burst forth in words or in song.
“If we hold silent, if we retreat within ourselves and listen with reverence, with humility, we begin to hear this voice. It will grow louder, it will fill us, it will give us courage and purpose, it will transform the world.
“Listen!”
Selena found herself sitting at the foot of Phoebe’s bed.
She felt as if she had been asleep. Diane was still sitting across from her and Phoebe, at her desk, sighed and stirred.
“I meant to put some coffee on,” Selena said, and gave a short, puzzled laugh. “I wonder if Rhea wants to go home now.” She rose from the bed, stretching and yawning, straightening her skirt. Diane rose, too, yawning and shaking her head so that her long, dark hair fell back behind her shoulders.
“I think I hear a car,” Phoebe said. She got up, too, and went to the window, apparently forgetting that she couldn’t see the road from that side of the house. The moon shone in on them, bigger than before, but a paler orange. Diane and Selena were at the door before they noticed Rhea, who seemed to have been standing in the hall. They went downstairs together.
The front door opened and Kent came in, followed by Tony, then Mark, then Jason.
“Hi,” Selena said, and Diane, coming behind her, murmured hello.
“Hey!” Kent said, “we could use some coffee.” There wasn’t enough room for all of them in the small hall, so the women waited on the stairs while the men hung up their caps, smoothing their hair with their palms, and went into the living room.
“How did you do?” Selena asked Mark.
“Won one, lost one.” He stood looking up at her with his hands on his hips, as Kent often did. “We came in second.”
“Hey, good for you!” Diane said.
“That’s great,” Selena added, “the last tournament of the year.”
“He got a home run!” Jason said, looking at his brother, his eyes bright even in the dimly-lit hall. “You shoulda been there!” Selena’s heart went out to Jason, so proud of his big brother, and envious of him. She wanted to tell him that he would have his moment too.
“How did your team do?” she asked.
“Oh, we got beat out early,” he said. “I don’t care.”
He turned to go into the living room, but stopped as Mark looked up at his mother on the stairs and said, “Jason’s a good second baseman. He’s one of the best players on his team.” Selena smiled at him. Jason, grinning, pretended to thump his brother on the arm, then went into the living room.
“There’s Coke in the basement,” Selena offered. They kept pop around only on special occasins, holidays, when they had company.
“Hey, Jason,” Mark said into the living room, “want some Coke?”
When the coffee was made and served and everyone was sitting around the living room, stirring and sipping their drinks, Diane asked, “Well? What did Doyle say?” Tony set his coffee mug down carefully on the coaster Selena had set out for him on the coffee table. He drew in a long breath, his eyes finally meeting Diane’s across the room.
“The bank wouldn’t give him the money,” he said. There was a surprised silence.
“What?” Selena said. If they wouldn’t give it to Doyle, who would they give it to? Rhea watched attentively from the rocking chair in the corner, but didn’t speak.
“They’re scared he’ll overextend himself and his whole operation’ll come crashing down,” Kent said. “Leave them holding the bag for a million or so.”
“But …” Diane said. The two boys, sitting side by side on the rug, watched the adults nervously, careful not to move or make a sound. Rhea’s expression hadn’t changed, her eyes moved from Tony to Kent and back again.
“Don’t worry, Di,” Tony said, although there wasn’t much confidence in his voice.
“What will we do?” she interrupted, her voice tense. Without the money from the sale of their farm, they couldn’t pay their debts; no salary was big enough to do that.
“Find another buyer,” Tony said. “What else?” She stared at him, holding her coffee mug in front of her, just where it had been when he first answered her.
“Another buyer?” she said slowly, as if she didn’t quite understand this.
Selena wondered if this meant they would have to come back and live on the farm, but Tony said, before she could ask, if she had been going to, “You won’t have to stay here.”
Tony and Diane seemed oblivious to everyone else in the room. Selena noticed that Phoebe hadn’t come downstairs. As if she had said Phoebe’s name out loud, Diane broke from Tony’s gaze to set her mug down on the arm of the piano they had bought for Phoebe when she started piano lessons. The hours I spent sitting in the truck while she had her lessons, Selena thought irrelevantly, then jumped up, lifted Diane’s mug and slid a coaster under it. Diane paid no attention to her.
“It’ll be okay,” Tony said, and Kent put in, “Land always sells, sooner or later.” Jason used this reassurance to make his escape.
“I’m going to bed, Mom,” he said, through a yawn. He rose from the rug, set his Coke glass on the tray on the coffee table, and left the room, turning at the door to say, “Good night.” Mark got up too, then, and after mumbling good-night to everybody, went upstairs behind him.
“Who’s driving me home?” Rhea demanded from her rocking chair. Kent rose at once, hastily putting down his half-full coffee mug. Selena had to smile to herself. Kent didn’t move that fast for anybody.
Even as Selena was going to the door with her, saying good night standing, shivering in the chilly fall night, noisy with crickets, she was thinking with awe of that look of certainty in Rhea’s eyes. Where does it come from, Selena wondered. Does she know things the rest of us don’t know?
PHOEBE PLAYING THE PIANO
Tony and Diane’s car was churning dust down the lane. It billowed up behind them, blotting out Tammy’s frantic good-bye waves through the back window. It was as though they were being swallowed by the dust. Selena dropped her arm slowly—farewell, she thought, farewell, what a good-sounding word.
She turned to Kent. His eyes had shifted from the dust cloud to the stubble field in front and to the east of the house where their small crop sat in bales. Kent had decided that it wasn’t worthwhile to hire somebody to combine it. There was barely any grain in the heads, so he had baled it for feed.
“Time I got those bales picked, I guess,” he said, sighing, looking toward the shed beside the barn where they kept their few pieces of machinery. He turned to Mark, who stood a little apart from his parents, still watching Tony and Diane’s car turn onto the grid. His longing to go too spread through the quiet air to Selena, she felt it in her gut and was surprised by this news. Surely Mark would never leave?
Jason bent down beside Kent, picked up a stone and threw it hard down the road. It skipped, throwing out puffs of dust. Phoebe said in an annoyed voice, “Jason,” although it hadn’t come anywhere near her. In reply, Jason threw another stone, harder this time.
“It’s time you learned to pick bales, Mark,” Kent said.
“You mean drive the bale wagon?” Mark asked. He couldn’t keep the eagerness out of his voice. His father nodded, grinning.
“Okay,” Mark said, casual now, as if it were nothing to him. He started toward the shed. Jason threw another stone. This
one struck the dirt suspiciously close to Mark.
“Jason!” Kent said. “I want you to dig the potatoes today. All of them.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, a hint of surliness in his voice.
They could hear the faint hum of Tony’s car, a long way off, vibrating on the still air. Phoebe stood with them, watching Jason till he disappeared around the house on his way go the potato patch on the far side of the trees. A horse whinnied in the pasture nearby and they could hear the dull hammering of its hooves as it broke into a gallop.
“I got his feet to attend to, too,” Kent remarked, trying to catch sight of the horse pastured beyond the barn.
“Could I talk to you?” Phoebe asked, not indicating which one of them she was speaking to. Something in her voice made Selena swing her head quickly to look at her. Kent, too, seemed to sense something out of the ordinary. Phoebe glanced rapidly from one to the other, then abruptly dropped her eyes. Her cheeks and forehead flushed. Is she sick? Selena wondered, then: she isn’t going to university.
“Come into the house,” Kent said, with an easiness in his voice that Selena recognized as false. He looked past them to the bales out near the road, and far across the yard to the fields of grass lifting into the distant yellow hills. But then he opened the door and led the way down the hall and into the kitchen. He sat down quietly at the table and assumed a listening posture, his arms resting on the table, but instead of looking at Phoebe, he fixed his eyes on the square in the screen door that looked out over the backyard to where a huge flock of birds perched in the trees, on the power line and the clothesline.
Selena went around behind Phoebe, who had stopped in the middle of the room. As she passed, she touched Phoebe’s upper arms encouragingly, then sat down gingerly, opposite Kent, facing Phoebe.
Phoebe backed away, her hands behind her, until she was touching the sink. She brought her hands around in front of her and as she pressed her palms together, Selena saw that she was trembling and the colour had left her face, revealing the pale transparency of her skin.
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