Diamonds in the sea …
I dug you diggin’ me in Mexico …
Perhaps it is Mexico she dreams of. Sun-baked stretches of coast. Strange granite outcrops in the ocean. Bright flowers that morph into Sally-Ann’s graphic floral comforter. She hears, faraway and cheery, her mother declare, ‘Little Mother is hibernating!’ Her sleep-fogged brain trips over the comment: But I can’t be a mother yet! I’ve only just returned from my honeymoon. Then she notices her breast, milk-large, whiter than milk, hanging loose as in some Renaissance painting. Then, like a rib stolen in the night, her baby’s absence. She fixes her nightgown, wipes the sleep from her eyes. From the depths of the house, Picnic barks and Jim’s voice resounds, rustic and insistent; his high-pitched laugh.
Her parents dislike Jim. Somehow, the sound of his laugh reminds her of this.
Evelyn is still drowsy, cheeks flushed, when Jim tiptoes into the room. He has Solomon Tom bundled in his arms. He is wearing a maize-yellow guayabera. He has his sunglasses on. He looks, to her temporarily objective eyes, quite fat and a little ridiculous. Within a split-second, however, she has glossed over his imperfections; the chin doubled with his grin, the cosmetically-enhanced sideburns. She sees his pug nose, a grownup version of Solomon Tom’s. She feels an overwhelming gratitude.
‘Little Mother ain’t sleepin’,’ he tells Solomon Tom, with an indulgent smile at Evelyn. ‘See? We knew, didn’t we, Soul? Little Mother done slept enough.’
‘Too much,’ Evelyn agrees, flattening the sheets with her palms.
Jim’s weight dents the narrow bed. He places Solomon Tom between them. A fresh scent of baby powder rises up, making Evelyn aware of her own less-than-fresh smell.
‘I need a shower.’ She shifts aside. ‘You shouldn’t sit so close. I stink.’
This only provokes Jim to slide closer, nestle his face in her armpit. ‘Mmm, you do.’ He sniffs at her crotch like a dog. ‘Little Mother’s got her period.’
Evelyn scowls, crosses her legs. She does need to shower, and to pee, desperately. Yet she remains where she is, because of the way Jim is looking at her, mostly; his gaze through those sunglasses as humble and loving as ever, seeming to see everything, and forgive it. He reaches to stroke the fine, glossy hairs at her temple. She waits for him to mention Paris.
‘You finished next quarter’s budget for the Promised Land yet?’ he asks instead.
‘I’m still working on it.’
Jim inclines his head at the baby. ‘I can get Frida and Terra on it, if your hands are full.’
‘No,’ she says, too quickly. Jim looks smug. She continues, poker-faced, ‘If you’d like their input, of course, that’s your decision. I do think we should factor in the latest profits forecast though. This isn’t a time for cutting corners.’
‘Terra did a damn fine job on last quarter’s commune budgets.’
‘I agree … and her expertise will be invaluable as we move toward complete communalization of our meals service. But there are more complex factors at play, and it’ll take time to teach her the sort of long-range planning we need—’
Before she can finish, Solomon Tom gurgles peevishly, smacks his lips. Then he wails and stretches his clumsy half-fists toward Evelyn. Jim catches her eye with a smirk.
‘G’on, honey,’ he purrs. ‘My son’s thirsty.’
Evelyn takes up their baby obediently, hushes him. Her fingers fumble to clasp the fragile back of his head, the folds of his neck, and she feels a shiver, just a shiver, of revulsion. She gives Solomon Tom her pinky finger to suck and it quiets him. She looks cagily at Jim.
‘I’ll get Mom to give him some formula.’ Wiggling her finger inside Solomon Tom’s mouth, she lets herself feel an appropriate measure of guilt. ‘I think it’s time to start weaning. He may begin teething any day now. After all, he’s very advanced.’
Though Jim shows no sign of disapproval, only that curious tilt of the head, that animal benevolence, she feels compelled to explain further:
‘I want to move out of home — Well, not home.’ She smiles sardonically. ‘This house isn’t home, nor is America. What I mean is, I want Soul to know his true home, the Temple.’
There are unspoken things between her and Jim. She feels them, rippling and lurid as sea corals, as the innermost parts of her body: the walls of her uterus, the folds of her intestines, the valves of her heart, the glands of her brain.
‘Alright,’ he says, with an air of almost-formality. And yet, more inconspicuous still, a note of pride. ‘Alright, Evelyn.’
Of course, the moment cannot last. Solomon Tom rejects her pinky, shrieks anew, and she is quick to spirit him away from Jim, so sensitive to noise, bright light. Telling Jim to rest. Telling him: a pill, if he needs it, in the purple ceramic turtle on the nightstand. Her voice calm, though Solomon Tom is attempting to drag her nightgown down her shoulders. She twists her way into her robe, and is immediately glad of the cover, for already upon entering the hall she hears the blare of the TV in the den, the broken voices of Jim’s teen sons. Always, on his visits from across the bay, Jim brings a couple of them along for security: puberty has made them tall and strong, and his need for trusted guards has become more urgent since Wayne Bud and all those other young people defected. In the cozy oak kitchen, Evelyn finds her mother cleaning up after the boys’ latest fridge-raid, and a look passes between them that encompasses this, and other things. Jim beached on the bed in his sunglasses and guayabera. Solomon Tom’s squalling hunger. Evelyn’s desperation to shower and relieve her bladder. The certainty that this arrangement cannot go on forever.
‘Here, come to Grandma,’ Margaret coos, unburdening her of Solomon Tom.
Under the scalding rain of the showerhead, Evelyn’s scalp tingles; her skin flushes. She imagines her milk drying in the heat, her breasts shrinking to their former, merely ornamental state. Her mind reels forward to a time, soon, when she will return to the Temple with Jim’s baby in one arm, a clipboard in the other. And if the people whisper, it will only be of the tales he has told them. A perilous mission for the Cause. Mexico. Prison. Her body brutalized by enemy guards, impregnated against her will. Her baby born out of wedlock, yet into the holy light of revolution — and what a beautiful baby, beloved by Father, this baby called ‘Soul’.
Urban Jungle
1.
There is a night in the February of ’77, damp, smudged with moonlight, when railroad officer Eugene Luce, shining his flashlight into an idle box car, sees a man having sex with another man. Almost dropping his light at the shock of it, two pairs of blue jeans rumpled around two pairs of hairy ankles, two pairs of heaving buttocks. Two blue hard hats.
‘Railroad police! Stop what you’re doing!’
The men cuss. Pull up their pants. Grab for their hats.
‘We’re mechanics,’ one of them says boldly. ‘We’re just, uh, working.’
‘Doesn’t look like work to me.’ Luce clangs the metal siding with his nightstick. ‘Get dressed and get out here.’
By the time they jump out of the box car, into the dirty moonlight, they’re both zipped up, tucked in, sheepish. A light-skinned black man and a suntanned white man, both in their late twenties, muscle-bound, stubble-cheeked. The white man does the talking.
‘Look, I don’t know what you think you saw …’ As a wheeze of laughter escapes his buddy, the white man changes tack. ‘… We had some drinks after work and got carried away. Forgive us, officer?’
‘Trespassing on railroad property is a felony.’
‘We work here,’ the white guy repeats. ‘And I know this car isn’t going anywhere.’ He exchanges a glance with the black guy. ‘If you wanted to join us, officer …’
Luce can smell their sweat, the alcohol on their breath; can hear the racket of car changes in another part of the yard. Things that should put him off. He grips his nightstick, kicks at the grave
l so dust flies up in their faces. ‘Move it, or I’ll lock you up!’
‘Pfft,’ the white guy spits up dust, raises his palms in surrender. ‘Alright, take it easy.’ The black guy echoes, ‘Easy,’ backing away. Then they break into a jog, hard hats slamming against their thighs, giggles ricocheting through the yard. Fading into the fog, so all Luce is left with is the unbearable boil of his blood.
2.
‘… Dot Luce, you say you’re sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve endangered us all with your carelessness. How’re we supposed to trust you if you can’t even—’
‘Not just careless, arrogant,’ Luce’s ex-wife Joya, now ‘Joya Mendelssohn’, cuts Terra short. ‘Plain arrogance, to assume she had the right, without even bringing it to the committee! Where’d you get such a high opinion of yourself, Missy? I sure didn’t raise you that way!’
‘We didn’t,’ corrects Molly Hurmerinta, with a tug of her chevron cape.
‘Dot, you’ve always struck me as a young woman who puts care into everything you do.’ Meyer Mendelssohn, Luce’s younger and more with-it successor, sadly shakes his balding, long-haired head. ‘I would’ve thought you’d consider the consequences of your actions.’
Luce has to rack his brain to remember his daughter’s offense — showing old snapshots of the Promised Land to some non-Temple friends at her college — but he’s not going to let himself be outdone by Meyer, no way. ‘Makes me sick,’ he spits. ‘No better than your traitor-bitch sister!’
Risky, even three years after the fact, to mention the traitors. But sure to get a reaction. Dot’s tear-stained face turns a deeper shade of crimson, quivers like a foal’s legs.
‘Now, now, no need for that.’ Jim sits up on his sofa, positively glowing. ‘Dot, you’re gonna have to work to earn back our trust, but I know you ain’t no traitor-bitch, honey.’
A caressing quality to Jim’s voice that turns Luce’s white knuckles whiter. Dot lowers her eyes. ‘Thank you, Father.’
‘Course, you shoulda known better.’ Jim’s mood switches. ‘Dumb white bitch, what were you thinking? Showing pictures around like that?’
‘I thought … they’re nice pictures. I didn’t think anyone would m—’
‘You thought,’ Joya sneers. ‘Well, I guess you must be the best mind of your generation or something!’
‘Nice pictures,’ mutters Joseph Garden, their Agricultural Planner. Used to be with the Nation of Islam and has a militant arrogance that Luce associates with those men parading around the local mosque in robes and skullcaps. But Joe is clean-shaven, his muscular forearms shown to full advantage. ‘Our work in the Promised Land is better than your blurry-ass holiday snapshots.’
‘You should be showing them Phil Sorensen’s photography,’ coos Lenny Lynden’s mother, Liesl, a fine-boned lady about Luce’s age, who somehow manages to wear her drab Mao suit like it’s made of silk. Like Lenny, she’s got the brown hair, but curlier; a staccato European accent — not German, but something like that. Austrian? Austrian-Jew, that’s it. Old money, who lost it all in the war but married rich. If it wasn’t for the good of the Cause, Luce would feel sorry for the ex-husband she bled dry when she joined the Temple. ‘Phil is an artist.’
Phil Sorensen, he’s something, it’s true. Army-brat-turned-Vietnam-photojournalist-turned-official-Temple-photographer-filmmaker. ‘I’ve got some righteous shots from the December expedition.’ He accepts Liesl’s praise with a square-jawed smile. ‘How about I bring the projector to the campus sometime? We could even do a screening of the new film—’
‘The film is for members only!’ Jim bellows. ‘You bring that film on campus, how we know they ain’t gonna be making copies? Distorting our glorious footage and selling it to those right-wing media assholes? Vulture bastards, don’t give a goddamn what’s true and beautiful …’
As Jim launches into one of his tirades, and Phil respectfully bows his head, Luce concentrates on keeping his eyes open. Casting them up to the empty balconies, the pale soar of the ceiling. On the second floor, he glimpses movement: a doll-sized woman in trousers, circling toward the staircase like a figure in a Swiss clock. Descending to the stage and going straight to Jim.
Evelyn Lynden whispers in Jim’s ear. Placating him, you’d maybe think, but he keeps ranting and she keeps that same blank expression, stepping back when he waves his hand like he’s shooing a fly. Then she walks over to Frida Sorensen, Phil’s stuck-up skin-and-bones sister, and taps her on the shoulder, then Terra, who widens her eyes, shakes her head quickly. Evelyn slits her gaze, says something low and fast. Meekly, Terra dips her head and follows.
They go upstairs, pants swishing so urgently you’d think they were about to soil them.
‘… We have to keep our babies safe,’ Jim concludes, face sluggish. He glances around, flinching at the sight of Dot, still standing there in her pin-tuck blouse and ditsy-print skirt. ‘What you doin’, Sister? What you people doin’, letting her stand alone? Where’s your spirit of forgiveness?’ He waves his hand again. ‘Show her some love, goddamnit.’
Dot’s slim legs buckle in relief as they catch her in a loving flop of hugs, arm squeezes. ‘That’s right. Hug her good. We know how to resolve our conflicts lovingly, hm?’ Jim yawns. ‘Makes you tired, don’t it? Makes me tired. Almost, makes me wanna sleep forever.’
Jim lies back, drooping his head in a pantomime of narcolepsy or death. Luce laughs edgily along with the others, for Jim’s shirt has crawled up to reveal a strip of abdominal pudge. Jim sits back up, tugs it down. ‘No, not time for sleep. We got too much to do, don’t we. But a little rest, darlings …’ He nods sleekly. ‘I know how hard you work. Time you all got to enjoy a token of my appreciation.’
Just in time, the women reappear on the stairs with trays of paper cups. ‘Sweet valley wine!’ Terra beams, high-pitched like she’s talking to a bunch of preschoolers.
‘Are we Catholics now, Father?’ jokes Sally-Ann Burne. From her snub-pretty face, easy goofball grin, you’d never guess she’s Evelyn’s sister. But maybe it’s always like that — a sweetheart for every bitch.
‘Gotta be over twenty-one!’ Joya affectionately ruffles Dot’s pageboy cut. Of course Dot was always their sweetheart, Joya’s favorite. ‘We aren’t all over twenty-one here.’
‘I’m only twenty, Father,’ pretty Polly Hurmerinta raises a hand.
‘Oh, you’re old enough,’ Jim chuckles, and there’s a hint of that caressing tone again. ‘And you’re a good socialist. We’re all good socialists here. We all drink.’
Evelyn, Frida, and Terra busy themselves passing out cups. As Evelyn bends to Luce, her collarbones gape, and he remembers she has a baby now, wonders where the weight went. As if sensing his scrutiny, she frowns into her blouse, pulls away to serve Phyllis.
‘Our vineyards have been blessed with a wonderful harvest,’ Jim explains, once all thirty-some of them have cups. ‘Dot, honey? Tell me that don’t taste like manna from heaven.’
Eyes still tear-bright from the confrontation, Dot sips daintily, sputters. Not the reaction Jim was hoping for.
‘It ain’t poison, Dot!’ Luce swoops in. Jim cackles, and it feels good, that he can still make Jim laugh after over twenty years. Luce drains his cup, grins through the bitterness. ‘Tastes like manna from heaven, it does!’
‘You heard Gene,’ Jim booms. ‘Drink your wine, drink it up, drink, drink. When I tell you to drink, I mean it.’
All around Luce, cups tilt up, crumple in fists. Evelyn, by the red stage curtains, looks at Jim steadily and drinks. ‘You all done yet? Show me. Alright.’ Jim knocks his own wine back, wipes his mouth, holds his empty cup aloft.
Frida magics a garbage bag out of thin air, starts making the rounds with Terra.
‘I’m out of practice.’ Phyllis leans close to Luce, flashing her wine-stained teeth. ‘Either there’s two of you or I’m seeing
double?’
‘Just me and me twin brother … Steve,’ Luce offers lamely.
Phyllis throws back her head to laugh, and so does Luce’s ex-wife, face tomato-red against her cropped gray-blond hair.
‘Hiya, Steve! Didn’t see you there!’
Drunker than a skunk. She’d have to be, to laugh at his jokes these days.
‘Now that you’ve all had a chance to enjoy yourselves, I have an announcement,’ Jim speaks up from the front of the room. ‘Funny what Gene said. Ain’t poison.’ He chuckles softly. ‘Fact is, the wine you’ve just consumed contains a slow-acting lethal toxin. Within forty-five minutes, you’ll all be dead.’ He smiles. ‘I have drunk the same wine and will die with you. We will die together.’
We will die together.
There’d been a Planning Committee meeting, not long after Luce’s traitor-bitch daughter ran off with those Children of the Revolution, when Jim asked if he’d be willing to die for her betrayal. Joya, too, and all the other folks with treacherous blood. All of them, called to the floor, and Luce had been the first to say yes: gripping the .45 on his belt and vowing he’d kill himself, but first he’d kill her. Luce isn’t afraid of death. Luce is ready for death!
Luce looks sidelong at Phyllis. She doesn’t look ready: fingers stuffed in her mouth like cold cuts, muttering under her breath. Praying. Embarrassed, Luce glances away. Then his gag reflex kicks in.
Smells like … piss?
Somebody pissed themselves?
Bob Harris has pissed his pants. Bob, who’s good with engines and dogs, and whose caramel-colored mutt Luce helped bury after it was found dead (shot by neo-Nazis, apparently). Luce is disappointed in Bob, disgusted … and dreading the moment Jim makes an example of the poor candy-ass.
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