Jennie stepped outside the door of the diner to get a better view and to hear the chant more clearly. They were doing ‘Sight’, the one based on Adrienne Birth-of-Beauty and her 5th Proposition. It was what they called a progressive chant, with each repetition getting faster and louder.
See what there is to see
Hear what there is to hear
Touch whatever you touch
Speak the thing you must speak
For your teeth are mountains
Your fingers forests
Your eyes are the oceans of life.
I’d love to do that, Jennie thought, then felt silly. She must be regressing, wanting to do the things she was too shy to do in high school. She laughed, then blushed in case anyone might think she was laughing at the Enactment. Anyway, if she’d tried to join a marching band in school her mother probably would have stopped her. She probably wouldn’t have passed the test.
The band made its way down the street and Jennie went back inside. After the tenth check of the clock above the shelf of stale cake, she decided it was time to go back.
The woman was waiting for her. Not reading a book or paper, just sitting there with the printout in her hands and squinting at Jennie as soon as she walked in. ‘You made that up, huh?’
‘Made what up?’ Jennie said. She put out a hand to take the sheet, then pretended she was flicking her hair off her face when the woman held it away from her.
‘The dream,’ the woman said. ‘The so-called dream. You didn’t really dream that. You made it up.’
‘No.’ Jennie wondered what the woman was talking about. ‘Of course I dreamt it.’ She was sure now that something horrible had come up. ‘Let me see that,’ she said, and grabbed the printout.
Jennie glanced quickly at it, then read more slowly. She said, ‘This isn’t possible.’
‘Oh really?’ the woman said.
‘But I did dream it. I did.’ She stared again at the sheet. The computer had broken the dream into ‘elements’ as it always did, but instead of the usual listing of ‘concurrences’, that is, how many people in the past three months had reported something similar, followed by several paragraphs of ‘reference, significance, and analysis’ the only words beside any of Jennie’s elements were ‘no reference.’ About the fish—no reference. About the Persian carnival and the food stalls—no reference. Even the desert at the end—no reference. This is crazy, Jenny thought. Even I can see the reference to the Picture, why can’t the stupid computer? She said, ‘There’s got to be some mistake.’
The woman said, ‘Sure. You dreamed something and the NORA computer can’t find anything about it in any of its banks? Come on, huh?’
‘But I did dream it.’
‘Sure, that’s right,’ the woman said. ‘Listen, that computer’s got every kind of dream anyone’s ever dreamt. No one can dream something they can’t find and reference. You can’t even make something up like that.’
Jennie stared at the sheet again. Even the part about her walking by the Hudson River full of fish. How could that come up no reference? There had to be something in her dream—something deep inside—that made it so strange even the most ordinary parts were—were different somehow. She couldn’t see it, but the computer could.
‘When did you dream this wonderful dream?’
‘Recital Day,’ Jennie said, and wished she’d lied.
‘Yeah? Maybe you’ll tell me next it was a special present from Allan Lightstorm. Look,’ she said, and Jennie stepped back slightly. ‘This is a holy office. Do you understand? Next time you want to play some trick, you go and take it down to the Tellers’ residence. They’re used to bullshit around there.’
Outside, Jennie stood squinting at the Sun coming off the concrete entranceway. The dog had crawled under a wooden slatted bench and lay on his side with his tongue out. A skinny teenager with cropped blonde hair and tight jeans and a black muscle T-shirt sat on the opposite bench smoking a cigarette. Jennie looked at the printout as she fumbled on her sunglasses. ‘It’s not possible,’ she said.
‘Sure it is,’ the teenager said. ‘Anything’s possible. That’s the whole fucking point.’ He laughed as Jennie rushed away.
She got in her car and drove out of the parking lot heading south. At the corner of Teller Street and Market Street she stopped for a light. To the right lay the wide road leading to the Mid-Hudson Bridge and beyond that the Catskill Mountains, grey in the haze of the Sun. On the other side of the road some boys were playing basketball on the YMTA outdoor court.
Jennie looked at the printout sheet lying beside her. ‘Shit,’ she said. She crumpled the paper up and threw it at the windscreen.
That night, Jennie was scrubbing grease off the broiler pan when a strange thought came to her. It wasn’t Mike’s idea to annul; something had made him do it, something that wanted him out of the way. The same something that gave her that dream. She dropped the tray and pad in the sink, splattering filthy water on herself. Instead of dabbing cold water on the spots she sat down on a dinette chair. This is crazy, she told herself, while behind her the water ran in the sink.
What had Gloria said? That people think they do things for their own purpose, but really some agency is using them for some deeper purpose. Not everybody and not all the time. Just people in particular situations at particular moments, when they can do something useful without even knowing it. Like Joan leaving her Name beads on the plane.
Gloria was a pompous idiot, but that didn’t change the principle. And it wasn’t an unknown, or even such a radical idea. Jennie had studied it in college, in Correct Doctrine, when they’d had to read The Dialectic of Ignorance and Certitude.
Something had grabbed hold of Jennie. And that same something had got rid of Mike. However much he himself believed his conscious reasons for annulling their marriage, however real they seemed to be, they were manufactured, no, manipulated, no, she couldn’t find the right word. The point was, Mike had been in the way. That’s all there was to it. With Mike around she couldn’t have the dream. Why, she didn’t know, but she was sure of it.
She discovered the dish cloth in her hand, and without thinking dabbed at the front of her blouse. How could they—it—do something like that. Push her around, get rid of her husband. No. The idea was ridiculous, absurd.
With a groan she got up to turn off the tap. A moment later she realised she hadn’t finished the dishes and turned it on again. As she got back to work on the broiler pan she thought, It’s true. I’m sure it is. An image came into her mind. She saw again the coloured fish from the dream as they swam out of her, and she saw the people rise into the sky, and as she saw these things the anger and fear lifted out of her, almost against her will, and her body seemed so light she became scared she’d float up and bang her head on the ceiling.
But when the strange sensations passed she discovered she was angry again. ‘Keep out of my body,’ she wanted to shout, and even though she wasn’t sure what she meant she knew that this thought was hers, not anything put there by any outside force. She scrubbed the pan harder.
Two days later Jennie had just finished a service at the Hospital of the Inner Spirit north of the city and was standing by her car when an ambulance pulled up to the emergency entrance. Two para-healers jumped out of the back to open the door to the hospital. The Sun sparkled on the white make-up covering their faces and arms. Jennie watched as they reached in for the stretcher. The woman lying there stared at the sky, her eyes so wide one of the paras had to shield them with his hand to keep the Sun from burning the retinas. Despite the restraining sheet her body jerked every now and then against the blanket. One of the other paras kept her hands on the woman’s ribs to cushion the internal organs. Through the doorway of the hospital Jennie could see a healer and his assistant, waiting for their patient to pass the gate. The healer was breathing deeply, to build up a current for the battle with the Ferocious One who had invaded the woman. On his left arm he wore a puppet of Jaleen Heart Of The Wo
rld, patron of healers. The purple recital skin reached to the healer’s elbow, while the lacquered wooden head bobbed back and forth, ready to begin the work. Behind the healer, Jennie could see the gleam of a sanctified operating table as well as banks of instruments for scanning the woman’s configurations.
‘Poor woman,’ Jennie said, and got in the car. She put the key in the ignition, then let her hand drop. For a moment she sat with her eyes closed, then with a small shake of the head opened them again. She shouldn’t have looked. She was too impressionable. As she started the car she remembered her mother telling her, ‘You’ve got a soul like a sponge.’ She drove down the highway, past lawns and trees and the edge of a private golf course for the staff. There were no patients visible anywhere, and no healers. Behind her no sound came from the complex of buildings.
6
Odd things were happening to Jennie’s body. She missed a period and then another. She woke up nauseous. A pressure on her bladder required her to urinate more often. Her breasts started to tingle and then hurt. When she examined them she noticed that the veins stood out slightly, and that the nipples and aureoles had darkened. Jennie did her best to ignore these things. When her stomach or her breasts forced their attention on her, she worried that a Malignant One might have invaded her body. Though she tried to tell herself that she didn’t take the idea seriously she sprayed the whole house with demon-breaker, the perfume made from flowers hateful to Ferocious Ones.
She knew she should go see a doctor. She couldn’t seem to make herself phone for an appointment. She was always too tired or too hot to think of such things. The truth is, though it worried her, she didn’t really mind not ‘flowing’ (as Gloria called it in the Raccoons’ women’s meetings). The heat had continued all through the Summer, the humidity too, despite occasional storms around sunset. Slight nausea and sensitive breasts seemed a fair exchange for cramps and headaches and having to worry about Tampax.
No periods also meant she could skip visiting the women’s house at the edge of the hive. From the first Jennie had hated the squat round building with its pink dressing booths, its coffee bar, and its Enactment chamber, an overheated room where the women sat on wooden benches with towels around them while they gossiped about TV, family problems, and whoever wasn’t there. In the middle of the floor a hollowed-out circle held a mound of wet mud. Each woman who came in squatted down at the edge of the circle with her legs apart (and Tampax or sponge safely in place), and pretended to ‘offer her water to the Earth.’ Then she would dab a bit of clay on her arms or legs, or maybe (giggling) her breasts, mumble a prayer of acknowledgement for the mystery, then hurry over to her friends on the benches. The only thing anyone took seriously was the fertility/infertility blessing on the way out. If you wanted a child you said a prayer and rubbed the guardian to the left of the door—a three-foot-high husk with mountainous breasts and hips, and pudgy fingers holding open the vaginal lips. If you wanted to avoid pregnancy you rubbed the sister on the right—the same statue except that the fingers covered the opening.
Jennie didn’t know why the women’s house annoyed her so much. She didn’t think of herself as a prude, and certainly not a purificationist. But it was all so casual, so quick. As a girl she’d learned about the original ‘female Enactment’, with Ingrid Burningsnake in San Francisco, and the ‘winter flowers’ that bloomed in Golden Gate park. What would Burningsnake say if she could see these chatty suburbanites hardly going through the motions? Not that it was any different anywhere else. In high school the girls had all talked about boys or practised dance steps, in Beverley’s neighbourhood the women discussed relationships and restaurants. But somehow the hive…maybe she was just a snob, infected by her mother’s contempt for hive dwellers.
So Jennie’s periods vanished and she did nothing. One month, two, she tried to ignore the changes in her body. On the day she found out she was pregnant her mother called.
The call came at mid-morning, an odd time, for Jennie should have been at work. She’d woken up that day more nauseous than usual. Sitting on the edge of the bath, wondering if she could throw up, she’d thought of the scolding Maria had given her the day before for sloppy work. When she finally dared to leave the bathroom she’d phoned up and in a voice she hoped sounded as awful as she felt she’d reported herself sick. And so was at home when the phone rang.
‘Hello sweetheart,’ her mother said. ‘How are you?’
‘Mom,’ Jennie said. ‘Why are you calling now?’
‘Are you doing something? Shall I hang up and call back a few hours later? Just say yes if you can’t talk.’
‘No, of course not. It’s nothing like that.’ Jennie often felt embarrassed at the lack of wondrous tales to excite her mother. ‘It’s just the time. I mean, usually I’m at work.’
‘You know I can never follow such things. People who work the same time every day—’ She let the sentence drop.
‘But you never call so early.’
‘How do you know if you’re always at work?’
Her mother’s high laugh made Jennie hold the phone away from her ears. She wished she’d accepted Beverley’s offer to call back later. She could have made up some story to placate her mother’s sensationalism.
‘How are you, Mom?’ she said.
‘Wonderful. I’m working on a new piece. It explores the sound possibilities in traditional women’s work. It’s called “Improvisation for Alto Saxophone, Clothes-pegs, and Amplified Washing Machine.” How are you?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Do you ever think of returning to the city?’
‘What a rare question.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic’
‘I’m very happy in Poughkeepsie.’
‘And don’t be silly, either.’
‘I’m not being silly. I wish you would let go of this ridiculous crusade of yours.’
‘What have you been doing?’
‘Not much. I went to see a play last week.’
‘Oh God, in that place you told me about? With the red satin curtains?’
‘People like it.’ She remembered sitting in the Bardavon Theatre watching Murder In The Coven and whispering to Marilyn Birdan what an awful production it was.
‘Alice’s new play opens next week. She’s very excited about it. She says she can feel a presence in the theatre the last few rehearsals. Benign Ones eating the excess energy created on stage.’
‘Maybe she can get them to possess the critics.’
Beverley laughed. ‘Or at least their typewriters.’
‘Mom, I’ve got some errands to do.’
‘Jen, are you all right?’
‘What?’
‘I asked if you were all right. Do you find that such a strange question for a mother to ask her daughter?’
‘No,’ Jennie said, ‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’
‘Jen, do you miss me?’
‘I haven’t gone that far, you know. I do come down and visit you.’
‘Do you miss me?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I often do.’
‘I miss you a lot.’ Jennie didn’t answer. After a pause, Beverley said, ‘A vision came at me last week. About you. I wasn’t sure I should tell you, but I think you should know about it. That’s why I called.’
There was a silence, during which Jennie had to fight the desire to slam the phone down. She said, ‘You’d better tell it to me.’
‘It happened across the street. In front of the deli, actually. I was walking to the bead shop and I glanced in the deli, window. To see if they had any of that cheesecake. You know, with the chocolate flakes.’
‘Please tell me what happened.’
‘I am. Anyway, there was nothing in the deli. All the shelves were empty. Except they gave off light, it was so strong my eyes hurt. At first I thought there were no people either, but then I saw someone. I had to shield my eyes against the light for a clo
ser look, and then I realised it was you.’
‘What was I doing?’
‘You were kneeling down. On your hands and knees. I think you were scrubbing the floor.’
‘Wonderful. Maybe the vision wanted to tell you what would happen if I came back to New York.’
‘Please don’t joke. This was a genuine vision, it penetrated my whole body. I was black and blue afterwards and I could hardly eat. I still feel sore inside.’
‘Was that all you saw? Me scrubbing the floor?’
‘No. I heard a growl. I thought you were crying or something, but then I realised it came from the back, the stockroom. Then—an animal came out and leaped on you.’
‘What kind of animal was it?’
‘A cat. A night cat. Completely black.’
‘What did it do?’ Beverley hesitated. ‘Tell me,’ Jennie said.
‘It attacked you. It…it cut you open. It cut you in pieces.’
‘Oh shit.’
‘I tried to get inside and help you, but I couldn’t find the door. I tried screaming for help, but I don’t think anyone heard me. A vision separates you, you know.’
‘And that was it? It just cut me up and that was the end?’
‘No. There was more. The cat ran off and then the shop filled up with people. And the shelves were full of food. Everyone started eating. I even found myself incredibly hungry. I had to fight not to rush inside. The food was you. It looked like ordinary deli, stuff. Like the vision had ended. But I knew it hadn’t. I knew that all those cakes and macaroni salads and turkey rolls were you. Everybody was grabbing it and stuffing it in their mouths so fast they hardly had time to swallow.’
Unquenchable Fire Page 9