Unquenchable Fire

by Rachel Pollack

  ‘At the Enactment. You didn’t say the Names, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I forgot my beads.’

  ‘Forgot—don’t you carry them with you?’

  ‘Well, I was saying them one night when I couldn’t sleep. I guess I just left them by the bed. The other day.’

  ‘Jennie, that’s terrible. Oh shit. I’m sorry.’

  Jennie wasn’t sure if this apology covered Karen’s outburst or the car’s latest attempt to bash the VW Rabbit in front of them.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jennie said. ‘I mean, I don’t mind.’

  ‘It’s just—it’s not good, it’s—You know I like you, Jennie.’

  ‘I like you too, Karen.’ What would she do if Karen made a pass at her? She imagined the car veering off onto the side road leading to the Wappingers Falls Women’s World.

  ‘I don’t want to see you cut yourself off. It’s not good.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  Karen made a click noise. ‘I don’t think you are. Since the—since, you know, what happened at the Recital, on Recital Day I mean, you’ve got so, so cut off.’ She hesitated. ‘You never went for the abortion, did you?’

  Jennie said, ‘No. I didn’t—I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.’ She realised immediately that that was a mistake.

  ‘That’s because you didn’t do the banishment. I told you it would be much harder.’

  ‘Please, Karen.’

  ‘If you’d done it you could have made a decision. Instead you’re trapped in that awful moment. And now you don’t even carry your beads any more.’

  ‘Maybe I just don’t think any of it is going to help.’

  ‘But that’s the point. That’s it. If you start thinking like that—’

  ‘What’s it going to do for me? I mean, really. So what if I say a bunch of names?’

  ‘They’re not just—’

  ‘Yes, they are.’ Jennie twisted round in her seat to face Karen. They had just passed the Sacred Shopper Mall and the traffic was picking up. ‘The Earth names, the names of the Founders, they don’t do anything.’

  ‘Well, maybe we’ve got to, to bring ourselves to them. We can’t just expect them to reach out to us.’

  ‘Karen I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘It’s just…So what if they didn’t protect you? Even if it was the Day of Truth. I know the Tellers aren’t what they used to be. So maybe we have to contribute a little more ourselves. Do we have the right to ask them to do everything for us?’ When Jennie didn’t answer, Karen said, ‘And maybe they did—at least, I don’t know, notice you.’

  ‘Notice me?’

  They turned onto Heavenpath Road. Karen said, ‘I’ve thought a lot about what happened to you. And why you wouldn’t do the banishment.’ She spoke quickly, not looking at Jennie. ‘It seems to me that the worst thing, well, not actually the worst, getting—what happened was the worst—’

  Jennie thought, Get me out of this, please.

  Karen continued, ‘—but in a way, what’s really shocking is the man himself. I mean, that he could do such a thing on the Day of Truth. I don’t mean morally. I just mean that he would even want to. That the Recital wouldn’t stop him—you know, stop him from desires like that. I’m sorry. I’m not saying this very good.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jennie told her. They were parked in front of Jennie’s house now. She wondered if she could make a run for it.

  ‘What I wanted to say,’ Karen went on, ‘I really thought about this, really a lot, and I suddenly thought, what if there was a connection? Even a horrible one. Wouldn’t that be better than no connection at all?’ She made a noise. ‘This’ll sound really weird. And I hope you don’t get angry at me.’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘Well, you know the Picture he told. Lightstorm, I mean. He did “The Place Inside.”’

  ‘I did hear something about it.’

  ‘Well, doesn’t a rape kind of go with that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shit, I knew I’d mess it up.’

  ‘Karen, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, suppose this guy sensed it or something. Could feel the Picture coming. Not consciously, you know, inside. And that’s what made him do it.’

  ‘You’re saying that Allan Lightstorm, and the recital, made someone want to rape me? And I’m supposed to feel good about that?’

  Karen held out her hands. ‘But it would mean there was some point to everything. That things had an effect. Even a terrible one.’

  ‘Thanks, Karen. I’m sure that makes me feel a lot better.’

  ‘But if that has an effect, so do other things. You can do things against it. Counteract it.’

  Jennie said, ‘Karen, I know you’re trying to help. It’s really sweet. But I’m okay. Believe me.’

  ‘You’re not okay if you just sit there when everybody’s saying the Names.’

  ‘I just forgot my beads. It didn’t seem right without my beads. That’s all. It’s nothing.’

  Karen began to cry. She hugged Jennie, who pulled back for a second, then wrapped her arms around her friend. Karen said, ‘I’m so worried about you. Please don’t stop believing.’

  Gently Jennie separated herself. ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s all right. I haven’t stopped believing. Really I haven’t. Honest.’

  Karen reached in her bag for a tissue. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess you think I’m a real jerk.’

  ‘Of course I don’t think that. I’m glad you care so much about me.’ Karen nodded. ‘Look,’ Jennie said, ‘I’ve got to go. My house is a mess and tomorrow’s a workday. I’ll call you, okay?’ With one hand on the doorhandle she kissed Karen on the cheek. She ducked out before Karen could say anything else.

  Safely in her house Jennie discovered her excuse was real. She made a face at the smell of dust and damp. The couch was strewn with junk mail and bills, unread copies of the Poughkeepsie Journal, and various shirts, jeans, and even underwear that Jennie had thrown off after coming home from work. Between the couch and the stereo (got to get a new needle, she reminded herself) squatted the vacuum cleaner on its plastic wheels, like some insect staring up at her. She’d taken it out a week before, planning to clean it before dinner, and instead had gone to sleep. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jennie said. ‘I’ll feed you soon. I promise.’

  No, she thought, do it now. She stripped off her wet clothes and marched with them to the bathroom where she dumped them on the floor. In the bedroom she dressed in an old jogging suit, red, for action, and tied her short hair in a cotton scarf, yellow, for methodical thoroughness. She went from room to room opening windows, ending in the kitchen where she fished out a filthy green duster (green for new life) and then marched with it back to the living room.

  While she rubbed down speckled ash trays and fluted lamp columns Jennie told herself that good cleaning was just what she needed. Do something useful. That’s what you did after Earth Day. Clean the house, make plans for the winter, close down the lawn. She’d have to remember the blindfolds for the guardians that dotted the lawn. Buried in the ground with only their heads showing, the Beings would encourage the grass to grow and grow all winter long unless Jennie put them to sleep by covering their eyes. She remembered how Mike used to do that, how the first Earth Day after he’d left she was sure the whole block was staring and laughing at her for having no husband to do the job for her.

  She grunted as she bent down to scoop out the old magazines and paperbacks from the rack next to the couch. Exercise, she thought. Make sure this winter to get in shape. Use the time well. She sat down on the couch, half in tears. How the hell could she get in shape with her stomach about to swell up, and her breasts flopping about? It was all so unfair. What did Karen know? All she ever did was wait around for men to dump shit on her. Maybe she should exercise. Jog, stand on her head, take up mud wrestling. Maybe that would shake the damn thing loose from clinging to her womb. More lik
ely she’d just break a leg. The Agency would take care of it. What did they care about her, as long as she carried their precious fish?

  A fine spray of rain reached her from the dinette. Moaning, she pushed herself up and went to close the window. She waddled slightly as if she already propelled a giant belly before her. In a sing-song voice she said, ‘Please don’t stop believing, Jennie.’

  She sat down on the dinette chair nearest the window, the one Mike used to sit on. How could she stop believing when she carried a genuine, grade A1, certified true event right in her own goddamn body? And yet, how could she forget the Names? How could she just dump her beads somewhere and forget about them? That was weeks ago.

  She wondered if the Agency wanted to turn her into a secularist. The thought made her shudder. She remembered the time—she was seven or eight—when she and Mary Geraldo went with Mary’s mother to see some clown show on Broadway and she passed, for the first time, one of the secularist bookshops around Times Square. Even as a child she’d cringed at the seediness of the place, the smell of sweat, the two or three men and women with their heads down as they hurried in and out. She still remembered the small hand-painted sign. ‘Honesty bookshop—Adults only.’ And she remembered Mrs Geraldo yanking her down the street. ‘That’s not for you.’

  The duster dropped from her hand. What was it like being a sec? What was it like in the Old World? How could people ignore the forces that make everything happen? ‘God makes the world go round.’ That wasn’t just a song. It was true. It was just common sense. She quoted, out loud, Adrienne Birth-of-Beauty’s 7th Proposition. ‘Gravity is a story told by the Sun.’ How did they think their lawns grew? By accident? How did they think the atoms in a molecule held together? By written contract?

  The funny thing was, they did believe in some kind of God or other. Or at least some of them did. Only, she couldn’t figure out what they thought their gods did. How did God pass the time with no work to do? Early retirement. What did they do in their ‘church’ thingies? They ‘prayed.’ Jennie didn’t know what they meant by that. What would they have done if God had answered them? A message smack in the eyes from the Living World. She laughed. Send them running right out of their churches and under the beds. But suppose God was waiting there too? Maybe lying asleep, like an old dog that everyone’s forgotten about. And suddenly growls awake.

  And what did they do without stories? God was made out of stories. Everyone knew that. Their children told stories. There were no Tellers and no Recitals but the children told stories to each other. That’s why children began the Revolution. And sometimes a few adults would sneak around playgrounds and schoolyards, telling stories to little groups of kids until a teacher chased them away or the police arrested them.

  She tried to imagine a world where only children told stories. It must have been a very childish world. And a very empty one. She looked around her, at the dinette table with its single green plastic placemat, at the kitchen and the crumpled tray from a frozen lasagne dinner, at the couch and the vacuum cleaner. Suppose that was all there was? Suppose nothing existed that she couldn’t pin down with her eyes?

  She went into the bedroom and opened the top drawer of her dresser, the one where she kept her photos of Mike hidden inside a box of old receipts and tax forms. Next to the box lay the case containing the gold offering pin. She held the box up before her so she could see it in the mirror marking a line down the middle of her forehead. Eyes closed, she lowered the box down to her mouth and kissed it. She carried it into the living room.

  She stood in the centre of the room and listened to the rain flinging itself at the window. It was already dark outside—no need to draw the curtains. Mike wouldn’t have, he never cared who was watching them, like that time in the restaurant.

  She shook her head. No distractions. You’ve got to plant yourself where you’re standing for a good offering. Give the Beings a chance to find you. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, then another which she blew out with a shout to clear the channels. Now she opened the case and took out the pin. The little light in the room collected around the gold shaft. She dipped it into the porcelain vial of alcohol.

  Jennie’s breath quickened. She closed her eyes and braced herself. The first time she jabbed she missed and had to open her eyes. She gasped as the point entered her finger. Blood blossomed out around the tip. Though she must have struck deeper than she usually did there was no pain, or queasiness, only a vibrating tension, like a bar of metal struck by a hammer. All around her, in the walls, in the carpet, in the couch and lamps, she could hear a fluttering. Eyes closed, she could almost feel the wings stroking her electrified skin.

  She snapped her wrists to fling her blood at the air. The fluttering grew louder without ever making a sound. Jennie’s hand moved by itself as if someone was shaking her arm. She blinked her eyes, and she saw—briefly—the room the way someone from the Old World might have seen it. A desert, with nothing in it but some furniture and a two-legged machine.

  Her arm dropped. Her hand was throbbing, and she sucked in her breath at the pain. Blood was dripping on the rug, only a few drops so far. Better bandage it, she thought. She almost grabbed the duster, then remembered how filthy it was, and ran into the bathroom. When she’d wrapped a Band-Aid as tightly as she could around the wound, she raced through an invocation to the household guardians to surround her finger and beat back any Malignant Ones trying to invade the opening. She turned on the shower.

  Jennie went through the house closing all the windows, then made the rounds again with a roll of paper towels to mop up the puddles of water on the windowsills and furniture. ‘Stupid,’ she said out loud as she dumped the used towels in the kitchen garbage. ‘Stupid, stupid.’ She knew she should try to blot up the blood. The good little hivemaker wouldn’t just leave a trail of blood from the living room to the bathroom. What would Gloria say?

  She got into the shower, jumping back until she could turn up the cold, then letting her body sag under the spray. Jennie stayed a long time in the shower, turning round and round, tilting up her face and gulping the water. When she finally turned it off she had to bend over to let a surge of dizziness pass before she could wrap herself in one of the thick green towels Sophie had given them for a housewarming. She tugged gently at the Band-Aid. It held. ‘The clinic is closed,’ she said, and crossed the hall to the bedroom. She dropped the towel on the floor, then lay down on the rumpled bed, thankful she hadn’t stripped it. She pulled the blanket up to her chin. Didn’t eat supper, she thought. Didn’t clean. Later. After a nap. ‘Sorry,’ she called out to the vacuum cleaner, the duster, whoever might be listening.

  Maybe Karen was right. Maybe she should do the banishment. She giggled. Clean herself if not the house. And yet—she didn’t know what it was, but something in her folded its arms and said, ‘No. Absolutely not.’ She fell asleep.

  10

  Excerpt from THE LIVES OF THE FOUNDERS

  Maryanna Split Sky

  The silent Teller. She could not speak, for she gave up her tongue as an offering to find her true voice.

  At the age of five Split Sky (in beauty and truth lives her name forever) was running along her backyard flying a kite. A large bird slit the kite with its beak. Right then a black dog ran out from behind a tree and growled at her. The dog told her that if she gave the birds a trophy they would teach her to speak to her toys.

  Maryanna went into the house and sat on the floor. She moved her dolls and told them stories. But the dolls lay against each other, silent, with blank faces. The next morning Maryanna woke up at dawn and tiptoed into the backyard. There she stood, watching the bird circle overhead. Its wings stretched out as it rose and fell in the sunlight. She watched for an hour and then she went back to bed. For three days Maryanna watched, but on the third she did not return to sleep. She took a knife from the kitchen drawer. As the bird dipped she stuck her tongue out as far as she could. In one stroke the little girl cut the tongue from her mouth
. The bird flew down to catch the ‘trophy’ before it could touch the grass. The wings brushed Maryanna’s face as the bird napped up again.

  She went into the house and sat down among her dolls. With her hands she told them a story and the dolls applauded.

  When the Revolution began Maryanna Split Sky became Teller to the deaf. She spoke with her hands in the universal language. As she told them her pictures birds flew from her fingers. They perched on the shoulders of the deaf and sang to them soundless melodies of the Living World.

  ‘Mazdan, hang around a second.’ Half out of her seat, Jennie sat down heavily. Around her, the other servers glanced curiously from her to Maria before they shifted out of the staff room on their way to their assignments.

  ‘I’ll call you this evening,’ Jennie said to the back of a black leather jacket. Marilyn Birdan raised her hand and wiggled the fingers without turning around. Jennie moved her attention back to her boss, who sat on the end of her scratched metal desk. Her thick weightlifter’s arms were crossed over the bib of her denim overalls. Her head tilted slightly to the left.

  She stood up. ‘It stinks in here,’ she said. She pushed open one of the big swingout windows, letting in a blast of cold late October air. She said, ‘Your pal Bill Jackman is out of his soul if he thinks I’m going to let him smoke those fucking cigars in here all winter.’

  Jennie stopped herself from saying that Bill Jackman was not her pal. A balding loudmouth who found sexual innuendos in children’s educational television, Jackman had only been working at Mid-Hudson a few weeks. During this time he’d twice told Jennie that he only took the job so he could get around the county and ‘check out all that available pussy.’

  Maria sat down on the desk again. She placed her hands on her knees and breathed deeply a few times as if she was demonstrating how to do it.

  ‘You’ve cut your hair,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a little dumb, with winter coming on?’

  ‘It’s easier to dry,’ Jennie said. ‘So I don’t go out with wet hair.’ She remembered sitting in the chair in the beauty parlour on Raymond Avenue and watching the woman cut too much off and being afraid to say anything. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘I’ve got my hat.’