Hunters and Gatherers

by Francine Prose

  “Fuck you,” said Scotty. “I ain’t leaving. I’m a human being, I’m not your fucking butler who serves you and sits at the fucking servant’s table.”

  “Well, fuck you, too,” said Joy.

  “I’m not at all sure that Scotty’s butler material,” said Titania.

  “Get used to it, Scotty,” Diana said. “Third World women do the equivalent daily and they don’t get special treatment. They don’t even get to complain—”

  “Third World women?” Scotty repeated. “Third World women? Are you listening to this white-man shit, Rita?”

  “What we’re saying, Scotty,” Starling explained, “is that this is not exactly free sharing of knowledge on Rita’s part. We’ve paid a pretty penny to come out here and study with Rita. Actually, with Maria—”

  “Maria!” Isis cried mournfully.

  Everyone got very quiet.

  “We’re getting paid for this?” Scotty said. “Goddamn it, Rita, why didn’t you tell me?” He flashed them a loopy grin, then went back to eating his dinner.

  “He’s out of here.” Joy glared at Rita.

  “Joy!” said Isis. “Ladies, please. Rita and Scotty are sharing their food and love with us, and the most positive thing for our vision quest is to shut up and be grateful and eat it.”

  This earned Isis many doubting looks. But eventually, with loud resigned sighs, the other women gave in. They picked up their paper plates and plastic Sporks and filed reverently past the barbecued beef, pots of chili, and tubs of coleslaw. Even the vegetarians helped themselves to the meat, except for Diana, whose plate stayed bare but for a few shreds of cabbage.

  It was dismaying and comforting to have seen the rotating cow: sad that a living creature had died for their dinner, but reassuring to know that their food hadn’t been tenderized on the road. Martha forked a slab of beef onto her plate, then added dollops of coleslaw and beans. She sat down at the table near Hegwitha and as far as possible from Scotty.

  Hegwitha said, “It’s lousy that we have to eat with him. It’s like being kids again and having to placate Dad, the whole family waiting to see what kind of mood he’s in and terrified of saying something to accidentally piss him off.”

  Hegwitha’s plate looked like an artist’s palette—discrete, tiny dabs of dinner. Martha dug in as if to show her how but then stopped eating, too. She was starving, but the food was inedible and repulsive. The greasy meat separated along every slippery muscle striation, lumpy islands of beans emerged from a lake of eggy mayonnaise.

  The others were packing it away.

  “Sonoma,” Martha heard Freya say. “Look how you loaded your plate!”

  Bernie said, “I had a client whose Sunday dinner, every week of her childhood, was spent waiting for the dad to get steamed at the mom and throw his plate of food on the floor.”

  By now Isis had sat down. “Are we still going on about Scotty? How amazing that we can come all this way, go through what we’ve gone through—the sweat lodge, the fasting, the visions, the healing, to say nothing of the years spent serving the Goddess—and still the only thing we can talk about is—men!”

  Titania said, “I guess when you get down to it, it’s still the only subject.”

  “Speak for yourself!” said Starling.

  “Yeah,” said Hegwitha, in unison with Joy and Diana.

  Joy said, “Damnit, Titania, why can’t you get real? You didn’t come to the desert looking for your spirit guide. You came out to Tucson looking for a fuckable cowboy.”

  “Me?” said Titania.

  Everyone found something to focus on so as not to have to look at Scotty. Martha noticed that Sonoma’s face had turned a marbleized red and white, mottled with embarrassment on behalf of the adult world.

  “Let Titania be,” Freya said. “I am so sick of your…antiheterosexual prejudice, Joy, making those of us who like men feel like traitors to the Goddess.”

  Sonoma said, “Of course you would stick up for men, Mother. They’re the ones who give out museum shows.”

  Freya said, “I have never been discriminated against on account of being a woman.”

  Bernie said, “I thought the Goddess was about accepting what we are, regardless of whom we sleep with—”

  Titania said, “And regardless of our age. Whatever happened to cronehood?”

  Joy said, “I realize it’s a problem, privileging gayness. But lesbians are still back where African-Americans were in the early days of Black Power—”

  Starling said, “I can’t believe you’re comparing two-income lesbian couples with oppressed people of color—”

  Joy said, “Would you listen to Ms. Political Correctness. Ms. Starling White-Ruling-Class Background.”

  “Would you stop it?” said Sonoma. “This really sucks.”

  “Sonoma!” said Freya.

  “Sonoma’s right!” said Diana. “I’m sick of all of you dragging everything into the mud, turning every spiritual conversation into some nasty catfight or political discussion—”

  Freya said, “Better that than trying to make everybody stop eating and pressuring children into getting lost in the desert.”

  “I’m not a child,” said Sonoma.

  “Don’t talk to Diana like that,” Joy told Freya. “We’re sick of your ego and your stupid art career. And we’re sick of watching you treat your daughter like dogshit.”

  Sonoma pumped her fist in the air. “Woo woo woo,” she said.

  “While we’re on the subject of ego,” said Hegwitha. “Sometimes I think this group is a lot more ego-involved than Goddess worshippers should be. Everybody fighting to be at the head of the pecking order and meanwhile claiming that Goddess religion doesn’t have a pecking order—”

  “Cluck cluck cluck,” said Scotty. Laughing, he got up from the table, tossed his paper plate into a plastic trash bag, and went off to the trailer.

  “Got rid of him, I guess,” said Titania.

  “Oh, thank the Goddess!” cried Isis. “Thank the Goddess for saving us from negative vibrations. Blessed be.”

  “Blessed be,” said several of the women.

  “Let’s center ourselves,” Isis said. “Then clear our plates and go on. I’m hearing some buried hostility here that needs to be brought out in the open instead of our sniping at each other and not saying what we mean. Maybe we could work with the Talking Stick and share our feelings before starting our vision quests. Let’s chant.”

  As the women’s eyes shut, Martha looked around just long enough to observe Rita’s surprise at Isis having somehow managed to reclaim her leadership position. But eventually Rita closed her eyes and joined in the chanting.

  Isis sent Starling back to their cabin to fetch the Talking Stick. When Starling returned, she was smiling at the stick, as if at a long-lost friend.

  Isis winked at Rita. “Talking Stick,” she said.

  Rita said, “Yes. Talking Stick.”

  Isis took the Talking Stick and thanked the Goddess for Her love and protection even here in the middle of nowhere, and then thanked the Great Spirit and (with a nod at Rita) our Mother, the Earth. She asked the Talking Stick to help her sisters weave their stories and share them with their sister-priestesses.

  Isis said, “I feel very lucky to have come to this place and learned all the great things that Rita has to teach us.”

  “Blessed be,” Bernie said.

  Isis passed the Talking Stick to Joy, who said, “Talk about lucky! I’m blown away with happiness that Diana and I are back together. I thank the Goddess for making us go the distance—geographically and spiritually—we had to go in order to see how much caring was still there.”

  The women applauded Joy and Diana’s showy hug. In mid-embrace Diana took the stick from Joy, waved it like a trophy, then passed it on to Freya.

  Freya pushed the bangs out of her eyes. “Most of you already know about the jaguar I saw last night in the sweat lodge. But now I want to say what I haven’t shared, and tell you what I think it me
ans.”

  Rita said, “When our animal guides come to us in the sweat, we think we know what it means, but lots of times it takes years till we know what it really means.”

  “Rita, dear,” said Isis. “I’m sure that your people have their own way of using the Talking Stick. But in our group, only the person holding the stick gets to talk. The rest of us keep quiet and try not to interrupt.”

  Rita gave Isis a hateful look. Then she shrugged, thrust out her lower lip, and gazed off into the distance.

  Freya said, “The jaguar was a female, devouring her cub. And I knew the jaguar was my ego, ripping into Sonoma.” Freya rubbed her eyes. “All today I kept thinking about when Sonoma was tiny and we’d have these battles and she’d cry herself to sleep. Later I’d go watch her sleep—she was so beautiful and helpless—and then go back to bed and stay awake all night thinking about how I’d failed her, how I’d hurt her with my selfish impatience and the cruel things I’d said.

  “Now, ten years later, it’s gotten worse. Sonoma is almost grown up and gone, and soon I will have lost my chance to make things up. She’s the only daughter I’ll ever have, and I will have failed completely. I want to tell Sonoma that I’m sorry for what’s happened, and I want her to help me be better from now on. To be a better mother, a better person in general.”

  Several women had tears in their eyes.

  “Tell her!” Bernie ordered.

  Freya looked at Sonoma. “I’m so sorry, Sonoma,” she said.

  “Give Sonoma the Talking Stick!” Starling said.

  Sonoma took the Talking Stick.

  “Sure, Mom. Fine,” she said.

  Freya hugged Sonoma, who went rigid but allowed it. “Great, Mom. The time you loved me most was when I was asleep.” She passed the stick to Titania, who handed it on to Bernie.

  Bernie said, “I think I’ll pass, too. I just want to add my hopes for a terrific vision quest.”

  There was another round of applause, and the stick went to Starling. Starling rarely said much when she had the Talking Stick, except to express discontent with herself, pale resolves for the future, her wish to live in the present and not worry about details. The other women protested: they needed Starling to worry. They’d be lost unless she made the practical arrangements. Now Starling scrunched her eyes and seemed to be delving inward, seeking something deeper than the desire for self-improvement.

  Starling said, “Since we’ve been here, a childhood memory has surfaced. It’s been running around my brain like a rat in a maze.”

  “Great image,” Isis said.

  “Childhood memories are always telling us something,” Bernie said. “Oops! I don’t have the stick!”

  “I know they are,” said Starling. “And I think I know what this one is saying. The memory is from when my dad was stationed in Thailand. There was a Thai who worked at the base. He said he’d been a dancer and could teach the American girls classical Thai ballet. His name was Mister Toon. After a while he said we were good enough to put on a performance. He had a beautiful wife, who was going to make us costumes. She came to our houses and measured us and our moms paid her to buy the silk. My costume was red with gold brocade, a tucked-up sarong and a tight jacket with epaulettes like angel wings, a pointy helmet, fake fingernails, tons of makeup—I felt gorgeous.”

  Martha tried to picture Starling swathed in red brocade, her buttony eyes, ringed with kohl, tracking from side to side.

  Starling said, “Maybe the moms should have suspected something when Mrs. Toon said it was Thai bad luck for us to take home our costumes before the performance. Well, there was no performance. The night of the recital came and the Toons didn’t show up. It turned out that she’d shown every girl the same costume. They took our money and left Bangkok.” Starling smiled. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then.”

  “What’s it saying to you?” Bernie asked. “How does it connect with the present?”

  Starling said, “This part is tough. I guess because it has to do with my feelings about the group. What I thought in the sweat last night is how there’s a part of me that’s always expecting the Toons not to show up, afraid I won’t get to wear my beautiful Thai costume. Part of me is always holding out, not letting go, not trusting. In the past it’s come between me and the group and made for some negative feelings. But now I know those feelings were all inside my own head, and it’s up to me to change them.”

  Starling reddened and burst out crying. Bernie and Isis rushed over to sandwich her tightly between them.

  Martha was next in the circle. As if the stick were glowing hot, Martha tossed it from hand to hand, thinking she’d hold it a second, mumble, and pass it on. But something stopped her and she said, “I’ve also been having a memory…”

  “Share,” said Bernie, and the others said, “Oh, yes, do, yes, do,” welcoming this chance to gather Martha back into the fold and offer her the healing she’d missed by sitting out the sweat lodge.

  “It’s about my old boyfriend. Dennis.”

  Joy said, “Oh, no, not him again!”

  “Joy!” said Isis. “Martha has the stick. One awful thing about psychic suffering is how often it lasts beyond the point at which our friends hate hearing about it. Martha, please, go on.”

  Martha gave Isis a grateful smile. “I keep thinking about the time Dennis was playing Othello—”

  Bernie said, “Was your boyfriend black? I don’t think I knew that.”

  “No,” said Martha. “He was white. Is white.”

  “Didn’t they have a black person in the class?” Diana said.

  “I don’t know,” said Martha.

  “Othello!” said Joy. “Another great Dead White Male classic about battering and killing women.”

  Martha gripped the Talking Stick. “All during rehearsals, Dennis seemed to be getting sadder. Until one night we were eating at an Italian restaurant and I finally got the nerve to ask him what was wrong. He said Othello was depressing him. He said it made him jealous, playing a guy who loved his woman so much that he would kill her rather than lose her. It made him realize he had never felt anything near that passion for me.”

  Titania whistled through her teeth.

  “Thank your lucky stars he didn’t,” Starling said. “You could have wound up like Desdemona.”

  Joy said, “Didn’t anybody ever tell this guy that Othello is a play about two closeted gay men?”

  “Really,” said Diana. “Didn’t anyone ever point out that it’s not about a guy who loves his woman so much he kills her, but about repressed homoerotic—”

  Isis said, “You’re lucky to be rid of that sadist.”

  “Definitely!” said Titania.

  “Wait a sec,” said Bernie. “Let me ask you something, Martha. Dennis said he never felt like that about you…but did you feel that way about him? Did you feel, for one moment, that you wanted to kill…the woman…What was her name?”

  “Lucinda,” Martha said miserably.

  “That’s brilliant and helpful, Bernie,” Isis said. And the other women chorused: Brilliant, brilliant and helpful.

  Martha didn’t think it was brilliant at all. It was just therapy talk. She hadn’t wanted to kill Lucinda. She had just wanted to die.

  “I guess you’re right,” said Martha, and thrust the Talking Stick at Hegwitha.

  She knew what she wanted to happen now. She wanted Hegwitha to tell the truth, to say that she was sick again and had let them pray for a lie. That would make them think twice about their self-righteous self-satisfaction, their cheap little therapeutic insights. How small of Martha to want to use Hegwitha’s illness as if this were some kind of trial, Martha vs. the Goddess women…And what was her case against them? What had these women done? Taken her in, treated her well, brought her to Arizona. Did she feel they were losing interest in her and so was preemptively turning against them?

  Hegwitha took the stick and said, “I don’t have much to share. I’m so grateful for the healing energy I got la
st night in the sweat lodge. I feel really positive that I’m going to stay in remission…And like I’ve already taken tons of everyone’s time.”

  How could Hegwitha lie about something so important? Martha was appalled and yet unwilling to blame Hegwitha for wanting to be part of the group and not wanting to upset them. It was like those stories one hears about polite guests nearly choking at dinner parties, reluctant to make any trouble.

  If Martha had any courage, she would have made Hegwitha tell the truth. That would show Isis and the rest what their religion was about. All their talk about loving and sharing and recovering their spiritual natures, and one of them was dying and didn’t trust them enough to confess. All that talk about getting in touch with Brother Rabbit and Sister Mouse, and some part of them was completely walled off from Brother and Sister Human. But what would that accomplish? It would humiliate Hegwitha and shock the Goddess women without inspiring them to change, or reconsider. And who was Martha to tell them that they should be different or better—Martha, who was willing to sacrifice a sick woman’s privacy to teach these harmless women a lesson, to punish them for having tired of Martha’s judgmental Athena mind?

  Hegwitha passed the stick to Rita. The women held their breath as if they shared a single respiratory system; no one exhaled until Rita grabbed it with both hands. Rita’s chin sank to her chest as she closed her eyes and emitted a low hum.

  Finally she said, “My dad used to drink a lot. Then he’d come home and beat my mom. I was the youngest of nine, so it had gone on a long time. Then one night—I was three years old—he started wailing on my mom, and I started singing a song, I don’t know where it came from. I sang my song over and over. Dad backed off and got quiet. Later Mom brought me to the elders and made me sing my song, and they said it was a sacred peacemaking song of the ancient ones.

  “After that, whenever my dad started in, I used my medicine, I’d sing and put my hand on Dad, and he would fall asleep. Any time a guy on the reservation started beating on his family, someone would come and get me and I would use my medicine.”

  “That’s wild,” said Diana. “That people would use this three-year-old…baby to take on a village of drunken batterers.”