Bliss

by Hilary Fields

  “These dares are supposed to be for the person’s own good, right? Help you with your hang-ups and whatnot? Well, it looks to me like you two ladies have got one hell of a hang-up you need to hash out, and you don’t show any signs of doing it on your own. Maybe this will give you the opportunity—and proximity—you need. Come see me for the key at the end of the night if you still want to be separated,” said Sera, grinning fit to crack her face.

  “Now, who’s going to tell me about this Zozobra thing?”

  Chapter Ten

  Where are we going again?” Sera asked Aruni. The Back Room Babes formed a noisy procession, strolling, staggering, and skipping down Santa Fe’s sidewalks in the gathering gloom. They seemed to be heading north of the main tourist destinations, and as they walked, they slid into the slipstream of hundreds of other celebrants, citizens and tourists alike, festively dressed and visibly excited. Despite her request, no one had come forward with any information about the festival with the oddball name, and Sera wished she’d had the foresight to Google it before she came out tonight.

  Aruni relented, but just a tad. “We’re headed up to Fort Marcy Park for the burning,” she said, chuckling at her own cryptic comment. “Then after he’s toast, we’ll be coming back to the plaza to eat and drink and dance the night away. Well, some of us will be drinking. Not me, though—pollutes the body, and besides, I want to save room for Frito pie!” She laughed at her own hypocrisy, and Sera spared a moment of gratitude that she wouldn’t be the only one abstaining from alcohol this evening. “You got back just in time, girl,” Aruni continued. “Tonight’s not only Zozobra, it’s also the first night of Fiesta. This town’s been throwing itself a weekend-long party every September since 1712, if you can believe it. I’m told it’s the oldest citywide celebration in North America. The whole city will be dancing and singing and stuffing their faces all night long!”

  Aruni did a little jig, thrusting her arms skyward and twirling in a circle, unable to contain herself. But about this “burning” business, she would say no more, insisting Sera would have more fun if she waited until they got there to witness the event with unspoiled eyes. Jesus, Sera thought. This town is like dry tinder. I hope, whatever’s burning, it’s far away from any buildings or loose brush.

  They’d started out heading down West Marcy Street, just a block from where their little placita nestled, first turning onto Washington Avenue, which was one of Santa Fe’s wider thoroughfares, then crossing Paseo de Peralta, where the hideous pink erection that was the Scottish Rite Temple (according to Aruni, owned and operated by a local Masonic sect) loomed over the neighborhood like a Pepto Bismol–colored cry for help. They soon passed the turnoff for Artist Road, where Pauline’s house stood, and past which the ski basin opened up, though Sera had yet to visit it. As they walked, more and more people joined the procession, some holding flashlights, others drinking surreptitiously from concealed containers. Many families carried blankets and picnic baskets. With the crowd swelling and spilling onto the streets, it was impossible to take one’s car out tonight, which pleased Sera’s Manhattan sensibilities. She loved to walk, even if the thin air here did steal her breath.

  Or perhaps it was the enchantment of the evening that was making her light-headed. Along the adobe outer walls of big hotels, museums, fancy restaurants, and modest homes alike, little brown paper bags lit from within by tea candles—farolitas, according to Aruni—added atmosphere along with twinkling light. Chile ristras—mostly deep red, but some with yellow or green dried peppers mixed in—hung from the patios, door frames, and fences of many buildings, a ubiquitous decorative accent here in New Mexico, though still foreign to Sera’s eyes. Flags featuring Spanish heraldry from what must have been colonial days flapped in the light autumn breeze. Yet decked out as the city was in her festive best, her citizens shone brighter still.

  Pauline was by no means the only one outrageously dressed. Bands of mariachis in tight toreador-style outfits competed with street vendors swinging glow sticks, their heads half-buried in bands of neon glo-tubes like Burmese women’s necklaces gone psychedelic. Buskers and performance artists were sporting everything from conquistador outfits to traditional Pueblo Indian attire, reminding Sera that Anglos were relative newcomers to a city that had been old before America was even a nation.

  At last they reached Fort Marcy Recreational Complex, where, Aruni informed her, there was a very nice pool and a ball field if she were ever in the mood for some exercise. Sera, whose idea of a workout involved dead-lifting thirty-pound racks of steaming hot bread to and from her ovens, doubted she’d be seeking out softball leagues anytime soon, but she could appreciate the green space the park offered. At least, she assumed it’d be green. In the gathering darkness, surrounded by thousands of her fellow Santa Feans, it was difficult to tell what color the grass beneath all those shuffling feet might be.

  At the gates, Pauline inadvertently yanked Hortencia’s arm up as she reached to pull a pile of tickets from underneath her sombrero. Guess belly-dancing costumes don’t come equipped with pockets, Sera thought. Hope Pauline doesn’t freeze her bits off later on, considering how much the temps drop at night around here in the autumn. Hortencia shot her lover the hairy eyeball and ostentatiously rubbed her wrist, but Pauline was all cold shoulder—at least toward Hortencia. She had a bit more love for the rest of the Back Room Babes.

  “Women!” she shouted. “Gather round. I’ve got our tickets here.” The BRBs flocked to her side, taking their tickets and waiting their turns to funnel through the gate in the park’s chain-link fence along with what felt like—and probably was—half the city. “If we get separated,” Pauline called, “meet back at the plaza after the burn, ladies. And don’t forget—have a goddamn great time!”

  Sera followed Aruni closely, anxious that they not become separated. As far as her eye could see, swarms of people spread out, picnicking, meeting up with friends, laughing, blaring music. It reminded Sera of concerts she’d attended on Central Park’s Great Lawn in summers past. Well, that was until she looked up. Sure, there was a stage, much the same as those shows she’d seen in New York. But Manhattan’s stages didn’t tend to boast fifty-foot effigies of what looked like the world’s largest, ugliest waiter.

  “What the fu—” Sera stopped stock-still, just yards inside the park’s entrance. The colossal marionette took center stage, white-faced, huge-eared, with angry staring eyes and a long, white outfit sporting a painted-on black bow tie, black buttons, sash, and cuff links that looked to be fashioned from pizza pans. Actually, the effigy looked quite a bit like the Mr. Bill Play-Doh doll from old episodes of Saturday Night Live, to Sera’s astonished eyes—if Mr. Bill’s torture du jour were being stretched into Gumby shapes on a Spanish Inquisitor’s rack. As if aware of Sera’s thoughts, the figure’s long, spindly arms began to wave in slow-motion distress, and amplified moans of distress started issuing from its wide, gaping mouth, echoing across the grassy field.

  The crowd responded with a roar of delight.

  Aruni and Janice swept their arms around her, laughing. “C’mon, girl!” Aruni cried. “It’s starting! Let’s get as close as we can. We don’t want to miss the fire dancers or the little gloomies!”

  Sera allowed the two women to tug her forward, vaguely aware of the rest of the Back Room Babes spreading out into the crowd. She saw Hortencia start determinedly off in one direction, only to be pulled up short as Pauline just as stubbornly headed along a different vector. Hortencia, on the right, yanked her handcuffed arm. Pauline glared daggers at her and planted her Birkenstocked feet. Then the crowd surged between them and Sera, and she momentarily lost sight of their angry tableaux.

  “Um, guys…” Sera began, resisting the pull of her two new friends. “Is there supposed to be a moaning Mr. Bill looming over us like that?”

  “Yup. Not to worry. He’s an invited guest. That there’s Zozobra himself,” Janice said, following Sera’s dumbstruck gaze. “His name means something lik
e ‘Old Man Gloom’ in Spanish. He’s supposed to represent all the negativity of the past year.”

  Sera could see why. He looked a lot like a grouchy neighbor she’d once had, whose greatest joy in life had been waving his tennis-ball-tipped cane at neighborhood teens for anything from littering to displaying their tramp-stamp tattoos too close to his front stoop.

  “Um, what is the crowd chanting? I can’t really make it out.”

  “They’re shouting ‘Burn him, burn him!’” Aruni told her. “They’re going to set him on fire pretty soon, purge all that bad energy. He’s full of tax returns and divorce decrees and foreclosure notices. All that awfulness. I put a kiss-off letter to my ex in there myself. Had to slip the kid from the Kiwanis Club’s Zozobra-decorating crew ten bucks to let me stuff it in there, but it was worth it.”

  “Nice,” Sera complimented. She could think of quite a few negatives she’d like to see go up in flames, but somehow, she doubted the Kiwanis kid would be able to assist her in squeezing Blake Austin’s bloated ego into the effigy. Not that it would fit.

  “And what’re those tiny figures dancing around the base all about?” They looked like they were practicing for a Casper convention.

  “Those’re the gloomies.” It was Janice who answered, dimpling. “They’re local kids picked to take part in the ritual. They’re supposed to be ghosts of negative energy, if I remember right. Syna’s boy Jimmy got himself picked to be one of them this year. She was so proud. Oh, and look, there’s the fire dancer.” She pointed.

  Sera could just make out a figure in flame red, twirling and leaping around the base of the wailing effigy, waving a torch tauntingly. “I can guess what her job is,” she said. The chants of the crowd were growing louder, fists pumping in unison in the direction of the stage, like protestors at a rally, or rock ’n’ roll fans. No few of them held up lighters, showing their eagerness to help toast the grotesque figure.

  “Yup. C’mon, Pauline’s calling us.” Aruni urged her to close the gap between them and the rest of the Back Room Babes. Janice gave Sera a wink and linked arms with her.

  Despite the rowdy crowd, the BRBs were able to form a loose circle, and at Pauline’s urging, they all clasped hands. (Of course, Pauline and Hortencia had little choice in the matter, but they seemed to be keeping their simmering dispute under a tight lid for the moment.) Sera’s hands were taken by Aruni on one side, her birdlike fingers cool and serene, and Syna’s on the other, warm and slightly sticky. Janice had moved farther down the circle, linking up with Crystal and another woman whose name Sera couldn’t recall.

  “Women,” cried Pauline. “I’m so happy to be sharing this moment with you tonight.” She had on her lecturer’s bon vivant voice, Sera noticed with a smile—the one she’d perfected on NPR interviews and during commencement speeches at small women’s liberal arts colleges, back in the day. “What we have here is a perfect opportunity to free ourselves of just about any damn thing that’s been holding us back. You each joined the Back Room Babes because you were searching for fulfillment, something that was missing in your lives.

  “For some of you, it was a disappointing marriage bed,” she continued in her booming voice, oblivious to the grins and interested looks she was gathering from outside their circle. “For others, it was simply a desire for more desire, or to get to know and befriend your bodies better. And some of us—let’s face it, we just needed a place to shoot the shit with other women.” She jiggled her arms, sending a wave of friendly energy through the group’s linked hands. “Zozobra’s your chance to literally watch all those hang-ups go up in flames, and to chart a new course for your future. Now, I want you each in turn to get in the middle of our circle and share one thing that’s been blocking you from being the ultimate, bad-ass woman you’ve always dreamed of being, and then tell us what you’re going to do to change it. We’ll hold space around you to honor what you share and help you focus your affirmation for change. Who’d like to be first?”

  Syna let go of Sera’s hand with alacrity, hustling her booty into the center of the ring. The other women closed ranks around her, with Sera now holding River Wind’s callused hand. (River, she’d learned, was a local sculptress, and the one responsible for the earth mother fountain in Placita de Suerte y Sueños’s courtyard.)

  “My biggest problem is my exercise equipment,” Syna announced. “I spend hours every day wallowing in guilt over not using my stupid elliptical machine. I’m tired of hating myself because I don’t want to get motion sickness wobbling away on that darn torture device for forty-five minutes a day, all so my buns will sit a quarter-inch higher in my ever-so-fashionable mom-jeans. So here’s my Zozobra-resolution: that glorified clothes hanger is getting kicked to the curb! My butt is just fine, and anyone who says otherwise—including my husband—can just suck it!” She waggled her fist in the air, cheeks flushed.

  The BRBs let out a lusty cheer. “No, elliptical!” they shouted, in unison except for Sera, who only caught on belatedly. Aruni leaned over to Sera and murmured, “Funniest part is, her husband loves her curves. She just refuses to believe him when he tells her so. He’s absolutely crazy about her.”

  Sera smiled, touched. What would it be like to have a relationship like that? She had no real frame of reference. Her brief flings in college and culinary school had been… unsuccessful… to put it kindly, and her relationship with Blake… Forget burned; she’d been incinerated.

  Syna stepped back into the circle, which opened to welcome her. Immediately, another woman stepped forward. Not a bit shy, are they? Sera thought, admiring the BRBs even as she began to dread her own turn in the ring. Maybe I can arrange a fainting spell, or fake a nice seizure?

  “Harvey won’t go down on me,” Bobbie blurted as soon as she got to the middle of the group, startling Sera straight out of her reverie. The perfectly put-together woman smoothed her cardigan twin set and checked that her pearls were sitting straight. “I told him it’s really not a cardinal sin to perform cunnilingus, despite what his ex-wife told him. I even begged him to ask his priest if he needed confirmation, but he keeps refusing. Well, if he doesn’t at least give it a whirl once, I’m going to find someone who will!”

  “Yes, cunnilingus!”

  “Harvey’s her new boyfriend,” Aruni whispered in Sera’s ear, after the giggles died down and Bobbie rejoined the others.

  “I gathered.”

  “Wish me luck, girl!” Aruni dropped Sera’s hand, squeezing her shoulder in passing as she strode gracefully into the ring. She plunked her hands on her lithe little hips. “I won’t bore you guys carping about my dummkopf ex-boyfriend. We all know he’s a sucking pit of negative energy.” She tossed her curls. “Well, my Z-resolution is to wash that schmoe right outta my hair, as the song says.” (Sera pictured a Yiddish grandma belting out Doris Day’s tune, and choked on a laugh.) “He did what he did, but it’s my choice to hold on to that bullshit or let it go. Tonight, I let it go. You’ll never hear another word about that yutz from me again.” Aruni pressed her palms together in prayer position, then opened up into a quick sun salutation. Unable to resist, she finished by flinging her arms wide like a child and letting out a whoop.

  “No, yutz!”

  One by one, the BRBs stepped forward and shared their secrets, their revelations sometimes touching, sometimes funny, and once, in the case of a woman who’d been molested in her youth, truly heartbreaking. All the while, the crowd’s chant grew in volume, the gloomies bowed and swayed at the feet of Zozobra, the fire dancer twirled and taunted. The ground began to vibrate with the energy of the restless, eager throng.

  At last, only Pauline, Hortencia, and Sera were left, and Sera certainly wasn’t going to volunteer, despite the pointed looks and unsubtle head jerks her aunt was giving her.

  “It’s not gonna work, Aunt Paulie. I’m not putting my secrets on display until you two have laid all your cards on the table.”

  Pauline harrumphed, trying to cross her arms but being checked when sh
e dragged Hortencia’s along with hers.

  “Oh, grow up, Pauline!” Hortencia snorted. “Let’s get this over with. We swim together, or drown alone.” She hauled Pauline with her into the ring, and the encircling women gave a ragged cheer. The chants of ‘Burn him! Burn him!’ from the packed-in masses were growing louder by the moment. The BRBs looked from Pauline to Hortencia, wondering which woman would go first.

  Pauline could have modeled for a new perfume called Eau de Chagrin. Under her jaunty sombrero and loud costume, she seemed smaller, more fragile than Sera could ever remember. Still, she wasn’t licked yet. Squaring her shoulders with a determined shimmy, she took a deep breath. When she spoke, she addressed not just Hortencia, but all of the Back Room Babes.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you, and I guess tonight’s as good a night as any. It’s been hanging over my head long enough, for fuck’s sake, so maybe it’s time to let Zozobra carry the burden from now on. Anyway, I’ll get to the point.” She cleared her throat. “Remember how I always tell you women to get to know your bodies, make friends with them, even cop a feel of your favorite bits whenever you won’t get arrested for it? Well, one day I was saying hello to LuLu here”—she hefted her left breast demonstratively, setting coins clashing on her costume—“and I found something. A lump.”

  As if on cue, the mob’s chanting paused, as on the stage, the Queen of Gloom stepped forward, making some proclamation that was inaudible from this deep in the crowd. In the relative quiet, the Back Room Babes’ gasps were amplified theatrically. Sera felt a thrill of alarm, but Pauline was quick to soothe it. “It turned out to be benign. But it shook the shit out of my confidence, and it got me thinking about what’s important to me.”