Unquenchable Fire

by Rachel Pollack

  For a while there was silence. Then Asti said, ‘I will come to you for six months of the year. I will rule beside you and show you how to control your workers. We will find a way to let your residents speak to you. But the other six months you must let me return to my children.’

  The third sister lifted Lily off the hook, and set her down on the floor. Swaying slightly, Lily looked at her two sisters as they stood shoulder to shoulder. Their faces had begun to slide together. With a shrug Lily left the room to walk back through the strands of corridors. When the dead cheered her she couldn’t tell if they thought she was Asti, or their new mother, or they simply didn’t care.

  She paused only once before she leaped across the river and back into the blessed cold of the sky. A group of three women and a man stood in the middle of a great crowd of dead souls. One of the women wore a yellow dress, another a silver mask. Lily couldn’t see their hands or feet. She shrugged and jumped into the night.

  8

  Jennie sat in her living room, on the couch, bent forward with her elbows on her knees, and she thought about how God had taken the place of her mother. Why couldn’t they let her alone in her mediocre suburban life? Why did they have to push her into something important? Her mother had tried to take over her eyes and hands for art. Now God had taken over her womb. For what? Not for art? It didn’t matter. It was still someone—something—else’s plan for her.

  She went into the kitchen and filled the coffee pot. As soon as she’d plugged it in she decided she wanted something stronger and bent down to get the whisky from the cabinet under the sink. In front of the bottle stood the slightly grimy can of spirit-breaker. She remembered how she’d sprayed the house that time. Afraid a Malignant One had invaded her body. Maybe she could spray her womb, drive out the squatter.

  With a shake of her head she put down the can and picked up the Scotch, Shouldn’t drink while pregnant, she thought automatically. Alcohol coats the soul like shellac, makes it hard for the foetus to form around it. Makes the baby grow all stunted, or dull-witted or something. Not this foetus, she thought, and opened the freezer for some ice. This foetus came so charged up with holy fire it could burn half of Poughkeepsie if she did anything to offend it.

  ‘To your good health,’ she said, and raised her glass only to feel a stab of nausea and cramps that bent her double. The glass dropped out of her hand into the sink. ‘Don’t want any whisky?’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Goddamn you, that was good Scotch.’ She sat down and the nausea passed. ‘Can’t you find some other way to get your point across? I mean, you know, this goes with morning, remember?’

  A pang of guilt touched her, as if she could see a tiny wrinkled face about to cry. ‘It’s not you,’ she said, ‘it’s nothing personal. It’s just the way you got there.’ She shook her head. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  She poured a cup of half-brewed coffee, then gingerly lifted it to her mouth. No cramps. ‘Thanks,’ she said. Apparently, the creature’s medical scruples stopped with alcohol. Creature. If she was stuck with it she better start thinking of it as her tender baby. Or something.

  Drinking the coffee she allowed herself the fantasy that the pregnancy did indeed come from a Malignant One. She tried to remember any stories she’d read or heard about babies conceived by Bright Beings. There was that movie star, the one with all the divorces. She was doing some film about Danielle Book-of-the-People, and—the gossip magazines had implied—she’d run out of good looking men, so she’d bribed someone in the film crew to help her conjure an incubus into her dressing room. Vaguely, Jennie remembered some press conference the studio had tried to block, and all the reporters baiting the expectant mother. But how did the baby turn out? No arms or legs? How about all jumbled up with extra teeth everywhere? For all she knew, she was getting it confused with Jim Browning’s horror stories of babies born after recitals where the Teller had told ‘The Place Inside’. Actually, she recalled something about the child’s great beauty, and how the movie star had gone insane when the SDA had confiscated it.

  She shivered. The Spiritual Development Agency could take hers as soon as it popped out of its fortress. What would they do to it? In high school there was that girl, Irene something. She’d dropped out for a while and people said a succubus had commandeered her body to seduce the principal. According to the stories the Ferocious One had left Irene’s body pregnant and her parents had hushed it up instead of just aborting it. When the baby was born it flew out of the midwives’ hands and all around the private clinic before anyone could catch it. Jennie laughed. According to the stories at school the SDA had trapped it in some kind of electrical field which made the baby dissolve like a sugar statue, leaving such an awful stench the clinic had to move and Irene’s parents ended up with a huge lawsuit. Jennie laughed.

  The laugh turned into a whimper and she slumped down in her seat. What was she going to do? She knew very well no incubus had done this to her. That stunt with the trees could only have come right from the top. ‘A fish is swimming in your womb. The world is boiling with colour.’ Why couldn’t the world get back its colour without her? She got up and checked the calendar. The Recital was the 21st. She flipped the pages, then dropped them, realising what day the baby was due. March 21st, right smack on the equinox. How appropriate. Lamb’s Birth Day. The Day of the Rising Fire. Anniversary of the Creation of the Universe. Shit. You could bet this toddler would toddle out right on the date. What time, dawn? Twelve noon?

  Maybe she should start getting used to it. Go buy a stack of diapers and a crib. Disgusted, she left the kitchen, as if she could leave everything behind with the rag of wiped up Scotch. In the den she sat down on Mike’s old recliner, only to jump up and turn on the television. Some soap was on; a woman with perfect make-up was trying to invoke a Devoted one to spy on her husband. Jennie stared at it hard enough for the picture to turn back into dots. What did people do in the Old World? When abortion was forbidden and priests in black dresses burned women who tried to open clinics. She got up and went into the bedroom, leaving the television blaring behind her.

  Somewhere—she opened drawers, leafed through underwear, tops, shorts, Name beads, old receipts—somewhere she’d stuck some…There. Two long blue knitting needles. From the days before she worked, when she kept trying to think of things to do. Knitting had been one of them. She’d bought the needles, some balls of wool, and a book. The book lay somewhere on the shelves, with all the cookbooks she’d never used, the wool had gone for solstice decorations, but there lay the needles, long and sharp.

  Jennie held them in an open palm. Did women really do that? Really? Maybe they just told you that in school, scare stories of the Old World to make you appreciate the Revolution. Would it work? It would have to go into the uterus. She put the picture out of her mind, afraid she would get scared and not even try.

  Jennie took the needles into the bathroom, where she got the bottle of alcohol from the medicine cabinet. She wet a tissue, then rubbed one of the needles. She took off her shorts and panties, then climbed into the bath and squatted down. With one hand she grabbed hold of the guardian above the taps. Help me, she thought, then wondered what kind of invocation you could say for a self-induced abortion. Maybe, ‘Come, blessed spirits, and guide my hand.’ She wondered if she should promise a penance. Or make an offering. She just wanted to get it done. Anyway, the abortion would be enough of a blood offering all by itself. Fighting off another bout of squeamishness, she said out loud, ‘At the count of three. One…two…’ Jennie yelped and dropped the needle. In the white bathtub she could see it glow with heat. She sucked her fingers where the needle had burned them. Gingerly she touched it. It was cold again.

  Jennie climbed out of the bathtub and dashed into the kitchen. She came back with a potholder mitten, asbestos or some other insulator covered in yellow cotton with red dots. She jerked it on her hand, then picked up the needle. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘here we go. Damn!’ Her whole hand had started to burn. Quickly she y
anked off the glove. With her other hand she reached out to turn on the cold water, as she realised the burn had vanished; the skin wasn’t even warm. She picked up the needle and threw it at the wall.

  Jennie got out of the bathtub and sat down on the lid of the toilet seat. So. No abortion. That much was clear. ‘Goddamnit,’ she said. What would happen if she tried to throw herself down a flight of stairs? Probably trip and slide gently down, step by step. And yet, she knew she was relieved. Would she actually have done it? She wondered how desperate those Old World women must have been. Was she desperate—or just angry?

  She got up and put on her clothes. Back in the den, some man on television was promising some other man he’d never have to work again for the rest of his life. Jennie flipped the channel knob, settling finally on WPKP. At the moment ‘Poughkeepsie’s own’ station was fulfilling its role as community servant with a report on some children’s clinic in Pleasant Valley. Some of the children were acting out stories or something while the other kids drew pictures or talked about it. Or something. Jennie couldn’t concentrate. I should pay attention to stuff like this, she thought. Check out places to send my precious little dream baby once it’s born. But all she could think of was that mitten burning her hand.

  As the TV droned on, however, another thought pushed its way into her mind. In five minutes the news would come on. Full colour pictures of Jennifer Mazdan and her magic bushes. Karen and Maria and Gloria, oh God, Gloria Rich, watching her. Did Gloria watch the news? She never seemed to know very much. ‘Just the eternal truths,’ she’d once said when Karen caught her in some gross ignorance. Maybe nobody watched the Poughkeepsie news. Maybe it had a low rating.

  Or would the networks pick it up? Beverley sat before the news every evening like an eager puppy. She claimed that the ‘dance of the world’ fed her music. What would Beverley do if she saw her daughter on television, starring in a local miracle?

  For that matter, what would Beverley do when she discovered she had a grandchild? Especially one boiling with colour? ‘Please,’ Jennie whispered, to the foetus, or the Agency, or anything at all that might listen to her. ‘Please keep my mother from finding out about this. At least for a while. At least tonight. Just my mother. And Gloria Rich.’

  As the hourly round of commercials heralded the approach of the local news Jennie jumped up and grabbed the phone book from its wooden stand under the phone. She fluttered the pages until she found Gloria’s number. It took her three tries before she could dial it right.

  One of Gloria’s kids—she had no idea which one—answered the phone with a whiney hello. ‘Can I speak to Glo—to your mother?’

  The kid shouted, ‘Ma, it’s for you.’ An answering scream came back, and the kid said, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Jennifer Mazdan.’

  The kid let the phone clunk. Jennie waited, certain Gloria was watching the news and would come on with ‘Jennifer dear, why didn’t you tell us you were expecting? And how silly of you to want an abortion. I’m so pleased our Mother turned you back.’ But when Gloria did pick up the phone her syrupy voice only said, ‘Hello, Jennifer, what a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘Hello, Gloria,’ Jennie said, and her mind blanked on anything further.

  Gloria said, ‘Did you want something, Jennifer?’

  ‘Uh…No. I mean, I just thought it might be nice to say hello. After all, we live right next door to each other.’ She tried to work out how long she needed to keep Gloria talking. They’d probably show her right away, tonight’s big headline.

  ‘What a lovely idea,’ Gloria said. ‘I am rather busy but I do think we in the hive should stick together.’

  ‘Especially Raccoons,’ Jennie said. ‘I mean, the Spirit must have brought us together for a reason. Especially you and me living right next door to each other.’

  There was a pause, then Gloria said, ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose we didn’t become neighbours by accident.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Jennie kept herself from saying how their inner destinies had woven together on a higher plane.

  ‘Still, I didn’t think you could spare the time for such contacts. I know how busy you keep yourself. How tired you get.’

  ‘Well, I can’t sleep through everything.’

  ‘Only the important things? Forgive me, I didn’t mean to be nasty. Of course, when we think of the other blocks, the Squirrels, or the Sparrows, all together at the Recital. I know you did your best, we can’t always control such things as—as exhaustion, if that’s what it was—’

  ‘How’s Al?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Al. Your husband. Tall, smokes a pipe—’

  ‘I know who you mean, Jennifer. I just—we were talking about something.’

  ‘Well, I was just wondering how he was. And the children. How are they?’

  ‘We’re all just fine, Jennifer. A little disappointed.’ She let her voice fade.

  Jennie knew she should ignore the bait, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘Disappointed?’

  ‘Well, we did expect so much from Allan Lightstorm.’

  ‘Everyone did. But it was a bit silly, don’t you think? I mean, to expect we could get him to stay in Poughkeepsie just from one visit.’

  ‘Perhaps if we had presented a united front.’

  ‘It wasn’t a battle.’

  ‘A Teller can sense when people don’t surrender fully. Even if everyone comes, a Teller knows when people listen with their souls or just their ears. Especially one of the Living Masters.’ A crash sounded somewhere and Gloria shouted, ‘Leave that alone. That’s your father’s.’ To Jennie she said, ‘I’m sorry, the children, you know. I have to watch them every moment.’

  The children. The brats would see the news and tell their dear Mommy about it. She tried to remember any kiddie shows on the other channels that would keep Gloria’s kids away from the news. And Al, suppose he’d come home early, suppose he was home sick?

  Gloria said, ‘When you get your own little ones you’ll really learn what busy is.’ She wafted a laugh. ‘And tired.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Jennie mumbled. Silence again. Gloria said finally, ‘It was lovely speaking to you, Jennifer, but I do have to run. Al will be coming home soon and I haven’t even heated up the oven.’

  ‘When’s the next block meeting?’

  ‘On the 15th, of course. Our usual date.’

  ‘Whose house is it?’

  She could just about hear Gloria’s eyes roll. ‘Carrie’s house. Carrie Perkins. Don’t you pay attention at all in Raccoon meetings?’

  ‘I left early.’

  ‘Oh. Oh yes. You didn’t care for our company, I suppose.’

  ‘It wasn’t that.’

  ‘Did you become tired? Need to sleep? Really, Jennifer, I do hope you can make it next time. And can stay the whole evening. If those of us with children can manage, then someone all alone, without responsibilities—’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll make it, Gloria. I’m really looking forward to it.’

  ‘How nice. Then maybe our collective spirit can rise among us. Now I better—’

  ‘Do you think the collective spirit rises in the other blocks?’

  ‘The other blocks are not my responsibility. Or yours.’

  ‘I was just wondering. I mean, before we start criticising ourselves.’

  ‘Maybe you should wonder more about your own contribution. Or what you don’t contribute.’

  ‘But maybe none of the blocks really link together. Maybe no one does any more.’ Jennie wondered how much time had passed. How long did the news last? Maybe they’d gone on to the weather. Or sports.

  ‘We make the Revolution,’ Gloria said in her quotation mode. ‘If we lock up our souls in our bodies, then no wonder God can’t paste us together.’

  ‘You always put things so, so elegantly.’ Jennie was sure Gloria had garbled something from one of her magazines, Holy Digest, or Godsweek or something.

  ‘Thank you. The truth makes us all el
egant. Perhaps you should think about that. Now I must make dinner.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jennie said. ‘Give my love to Al.’

  ‘Yes. Certainly.’ A tone of confusion in Gloria’s voice made Jennie wonder if Gloria would now suspect her of having an affair with Al. The thought horrified and delighted her. Gloria said, ‘Goodbye, Jennifer.’

  ‘Bye,’ Jennie said brightly. She hung up, then ran in to the television. Ten after, the den clock said. It felt more like twenty minutes had passed. The reporter who’d hounded Jennie at the clinic was interviewing some forest ranger about wild animal attacks or something. Jennie didn’t understand a word of it and didn’t care. She wondered if this meant her own story had been killed for some reason. Would they run two features with the same reporter for the same evening? How many reporters did WPKP have anyway?

  The weather began with a few jokes about the weatherman mowing his lawn, and God’s plan for the mosquitoes. Jennie listened to all the talk of fronts and pressures and divine messages in the cloud patterns. Then it was over and a commercial came on for a carpet store on South Road.

  Jennie wished she’d watched it all. So she’d know what they said. She thought of turning on one of the long news shows from the New York stations, but instead switched off the TV. They wouldn’t run a Poughkeepsie story, not with pictures anyway. But what if the SDA had already certified it as a true event? They’d run that, certainly.

  Did they show her? Did everyone know? She could call Karen, see if she said anything. They had to show it. If they could show that ranger…

  The phone rang seven or eight times before Karen answered it. When she heard Jennie’s voice she said, ‘Did you go to the clinic? What happened? Are you okay?’

  She doesn’t know, Jennie thought. ‘I haven’t been yet,’ she said, and before Karen could interrupt she asked, ‘Listen, did you see the news just now? WPKP. The Poughkeepsie news.’

  ‘I know our beloved station. Why? Was something special on?’