Provided they stuck with their story my friends would be saved from over-zealous scrutiny and police harassment. Without giving her the exact details of my deal with the detectives I rang Chandra as soon as I could, and fell under the spell of that counselling voice.
'What could I have done, anyway? All she said to me was, I am being murdered, nearly two weeks ago, a life-time,' I said to her midway through our telephone call.
'Murder, suicide, accident, what had happened? How did she die?' Chandra was distressed but keeping cool.
'What could I have done, anyway?' I asked heatedly.
'Alison predicted it,' Chandra said thoughtfully.
'Did she?' I asked, while thinking I, too, had a premonition.
'You okay?' comforted Chandra.
'Maria signalled her fears to me, but,' I repeated myself, 'what could I have done, anyway? She died with a phone in her mouth, speaking…trying to speak to me. Why? Why me? Did she need to tell me something about Neil's death? I don't know, except she kept wanting me to do something. She rang a couple of weeks ago, saying someone was trying to kill her.'
'Don't worry,' Chandra soothed. 'It's a metaphor. Sofia has said Maria tried to kill her, too.'
'Has she? Well, yeah,' I went on excusing myself. 'That's what I thought, you know, that it was all psycho-drama, indulgence in lesbian relationship, you know, how women get inside each other, abuse substances and take it out on each other, you know, the whole frustration of being, you know, a woman, or bored, I don't know. I thought it was all theatrical bullshit. She rang some time in the early morning, like dark. She sounded drunk. She sounded stoned. I thought tough.'
'Listen,' she said quietly. 'I'll come over tomorrow night. Remember? Dinner date? Meanwhile, try and find Alison. Okay?'
'Yeah, 'bye.' I hung up, bemused. Alison's different personalities were something like Blindman's Bluff, you're spun and you don't quite know where you are going to end up. Was one of them psychopathic?
At McDonald's I discovered the Rik and Milt on their motorbikes in the drive-through talking to a little girl who ran back to the slides as I came up. They would know soon enough but I smiled, weakly. 'You know Tilly?'
'Of course. There's her mum. Alison?' Rik indicated the group at an outside plastic table and I couldn't believe it. The white-faced, older version of Tilly caught my eye. It was Alison, so drab, defeated and weak, she was unrecognisable. Drugs? The drama of death was exhausting. I couldn't move.
I had not asked Rik for her explanation of Tilly's bruises last time, and didn't want to now. Alison looked too unhappy. The rest with her were Kooris. A man had his arm in a sling. Alison shook her head. I walked back to my parked car.
When I set out for my Cliff Young shuffle along the road, which my Achilles heel did not need, but I did, I noticed there was no car next door but the female half of the couple was there. She had been as quiet as a mouse. I calmed myself by listening to the birds as they settled in their nests in the paperbarks, stopping, stretching. Not allowing myself to think, I walked, naming things: trees, birds, weeds, cars.
25
…the empty bed…
A hole appears at the core of Maria's reservoir of acquaintance, with her death. A sucking emptiness, as if the plug was pulled in the basin, turning love into a vortex. All floating friendship and kinship rush to the place where Maria had been, unless strongly attached otherwise.
The ethereal Sofia, whose classic prettiness could inspire lust, whose erratic behaviour arouses distrust—indeed—hatred in those not prepared to comprehend, is spinning from individual to individual, as they gather about her. Words, hysteria, tears have her going in circles, in a mania of activity. Within the sadness something is important. Maria's room is the centre of the whirlpool, the vacancy, containing not only the empty bed, but an archive of an unusual life lived in unique times, priceless documents should a moment of feminist history have value and brilliant books now out of print. Secret papers, pills and plans. Sofia's job is to keep the grave-robbers at bay. No one trusts her judgement. She oscillates between eagerness and anger. Her chilling insight and egotistical warmth make stormy weather of discrimination between the worth of the women who come to her aid. Not grateful, fully expecting and anticipating the attention, she hunts them away from the door of Maria's room. She is gracious in hospitality. Be anywhere, be everywhere, but not on her sacred site. She is as ferocious as a hound. She doesn't howl. She doesn't cry. She growls. There is plenty going on. Telephone calls from far and near. With each new woman come new thoughts at what to do. Sofia this. Sofia that. Real jobs. Real fears. Although the significance of Maria's death is nothing to the outside world, it is a tragedy for the gurls. Rumours, speculation, paranoia and opinions outweigh sentences of concern which, even when expressed, seem to involve intrusion on Maria's voided space. What a disaster!
Helen, of those who were with her yesterday, took the tale to Lesbianlands in her fast Subaru. Now Judith Sloane sings dirges in the yard. And Tiger Cat turns up. Cybil Crabbe and Lola Pointless. Ti, Kay and Em hold the fort. Dee, who stayed overnight on the lounge, prepares herbal teas, washes up, then goes out to shop. When Jill David comes, Sofia grabs her arm and says, 'At last.' Maz takes a drum and beats a rhythm to Judith's music. 'Dello,' Sofia instructs, 'don't let anyone in here.'
Jill emerges now and then to give reports, each more horrific than the last. Sofia is in a nest of papers. Has taken everything from the shelves. It is a mess in there. Dello and Jill let Sofia wallow in the tomb, becoming more and more confused. Other women want to see. Gurls gossip and mourn, hang about, hang out, inform the interested, work out a pecking order of power to swing into operation when Sofia finally lets them in. For now, they indulge her every whim.
People have a need for stories when a life is finished, stories fed from fact and memory. The aggrieved want to know why, where, when and how. The significance of death is the depth of intercourse among the living, a savage short-cut to knowing and being known.
Chandra's ideals are connected to her emotions by a very thick cord. When principle is at stake she cannot be dispassionate. Analytical thinking, while not beyond her, requires, in her, determined discipline. Few know of the control and difficult dedication Chandra puts into being a logical woman. Often criticised as hard for her strictness, it is herself, not others, she is keeping in check, her wild emotions, her sensuality. Duty is onerous for her. Yet she takes responsibility on all levels.
Rory rings. Chandra is glad. The shock felt with similar disinterested regret and genuine sadness moves the two into recognition of mortality. They agree. They share enthusiasm for the work and the excitement of life itself, which encompasses death, and exchange along the band-width an energy of the intellect. Love for their own kind, despite their differences, makes the conversation vitally present. Despair, depression, loss, felt by others, exist in a perfection that can only be achieved in a past, or a future, or other pastures. It is better to know the truth. The Valerie Solanas in us all, knowing herself as a 'dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant female', is unashamed, defiant of conventional condolence.
Not lacking in sensitivity, Chandra mentions the Solanasite Conspiracy. 'For now, we can only do what we can do. Remember and live. Vive la révolution!' Answering Rory's doubts, she asks, 'Any younger women out there to help you?'
'Yes,' Rory describes Hope Strange to Chandra, and, incidentally informs her that Margot Gorman is going to Lesbianlands at the weekend. Chandra does not tell Rory she is having dinner with her in a few hours. Perhaps she will when she arrives. 'See you soon.'
Sofia's number is engaged each time she rings.
Rory goes to get Virginia whose dual-cab Rodeo, always tuned and full of fuel, has a nice quiet diesel engine. Virginia's level head and speedy driving are what she needs.
They head off. To Chandra's first.
Fiona, Ci and Gig, immediately on hearing the news, jump in
Fi's car, pick up Yvonne and drive to Stuart to be there for Sofia. The drug culture has been around the lesbian movement for years. Fi and Gig are contemporaries of Sofia, and, at times, have harshly criticised her relationship to Maria; how suffocating! Nonetheless, a death, often an overdose, speaks to some fundamental sense of community, a deep desire to be of service, to be an aunt, a mother, a sister, a daughter, at a family tragedy. Downing tools, they go, not knowing what they will, in fact, do, just confident in the knowledge their presence is needed; their friendship is real. In the car, on the highway, they talk over each other, verbalising the hurt and the generalisations which come from experiencing living with and loving addicts.
'The annihilation of the self dissolved in the feel-good moment of heroin, that is the problem,' Yvonne rationalises, not really admitting to herself that Ti went to town to score.
'Junkies don't care,' Gig bravely, yet vaguely, states the obvious as if it just occurred to her. She says, 'What I hate is the lies, the theft, the conning and the cunning.'
'Ignoring and adoring the irresponsibility where the compulsory realigns itself behind the god of happiness at the end of a hit.' Yvonne sounds academic when she expresses herself.
'Moral dilemmas,' says Fi, 'are solved by craving. Oh the painless pleasure of being so alive to feel so pleasant! The self is dissolved, "gone".'
'I didn't know Maria used,' says Gig.
Ci is sure she didn't. 'Sof's cooking had something to do with it,' Fi says, not speeding, keen for the conversation to mean something. 'The hatred of self paralysed behind a set of problems arranged around the knowledge that there is a way—one single way to cope: "get out of it".'
Ci plays along, 'Fill the selfless hole with selfishness.'
'Oh yes,' Yvonne remarks sarcastically. 'Revolutionary that is.'
'Helps a lot.'
'I think not.'
'Revolt!' comments Fi.
'Grasp at any old slogan as at any piece of electrical equipment and take it and hack it or hock it!'
'Become sick and mutilate the body'
'Risk accident.'
Fi takes a curve carefully. 'Painlessness,' she continues, 'A pattern, a meaning.'
'They all hang together.'
'I think they're afraid of meaning.' Yvonne leans forward to look at Fi.
'There are all the excuses under the sun!' Fiona responds.
Yvonne, whose present lover is Ti, not a one known for brains, speaks as if she has been there and done that, with freedom and honesty her companions have not heard from her before. 'The beautiful high flies like an angel above the grotty mess below, individually and culturally, from a very early age, what the penis wants the penis gets in the phallocentric world. So she takes the penis given her, the pin, the needle, the fine dripping line and is an honorary man in a man's world, grovelling in the gutter of that world begging, stealing, borrowing, surviving.'
'But it is really self-hatred.
'Or hatred of women by women. Less than human without the addiction. The cockroach-infested kitchen of liberty, walled away from the real pleasures of life by service to a demon who holds divine painlessness within reach. An inch of time, enough money, the inclination. Information. It's easy to die or smile idiotically.'
'Ain't life a drag when you love an addict?' Fi grins impishly at Yvonne.
Yvonne acknowledges Fi's remark. 'You can't help loving someone.'
'Pity I didn't hear all that,' comments Ci.
Yvonne continues, 'Drugs suck out the goodness of good women. Nihilism: I am worthless therefore the future is worthless.'
'Death is a pretty final annihilation,' says Gig. 'Maria of all people!'
'The risk is always there,' Yvonne frowns. 'But when your self is drained, it seems more likely somehow.'
'You can get addicted to anything, I suppose,' reasons Fi.
'Like relationships?' Gig tolerantly jokes.
Yvonne takes out her tobacco. Gig offers her some hooch to go with it. She shakes her head.
'Nicotine's legal,' Yvonne has given up smoking and taken it up again more times than she can count. They pass through Pearceville.
'The teenage girl thinks it's cool, keeping her slim to fit the slut cut of dresses exposing belly-button studs, rings or chains.' Yvonne feels she can choose her poison but she cannot choose her meat. The extremities of her limbs are cold at night when Ti is dead to the world and she searches for some pleasure of her own which will flood the dark with tinkling lights. Poker machines, the attraction of town. Worries drowned by the chattering of strangers, deadened by alcohol followed by another drink, hoping for a win. Yvonne, the victim, wishes she wasn't intelligent.
'And food is a chemical addiction, too! Fats and preservatives, long lunches and sweet treats, beef outweighing rice in the diet, bombarding the mouth-watering taste with images of gluttonous pleasure as if that is all you need to be happy in the phallocratic society!'
As they come through a succession of curves and bridges over named creeks, Gig recalls Maria, in the light of their discussion. 'I used to see her at the surgery, trying to interpret her troubles with self-diagnosis, so that she didn't put the doctor to too much bother.'
Yvonne sounds off again. 'Not putting him to too much bother is what women do. And what the medical profession does is deal in prescriptions. Legally doped into submission.'
'Domestic violence.' Fi slows down at the speed sign, entering Stuart.
'Poisons they sprayed at the school fence.'
'Such stress,' says Ci. 'The woman of the 'nineties! Superwoman!'
Fi, Gig and Yvonne become spirited as their bomb of an automobile makes the turns through the exurban streets of the country town. 'And a mother as well.'
'Offered hormones, hysterectomies, creams and cosmetic choices in bewildering array; hospitalisation, in vitro fertilisation and caesarean section, but not for nothing.'
'Nothing for nothing!'
'For everything, her soul is paying all the time!'
'Agricultural monoculture of the moronic!'
Chemicals concerning the annihilation of a woman's self having taken their attention for the entire drive, they climb out of the car. Yvonne says, 'Search yourselves, girls. Have a look. If chemicals don't get you, motherhood must.'
Sofia wanted to show me something. I felt calm floating on a rather turbulent sea of mysterious undercurrents. The depth of hysteria and herstory was beyond me. Women stood in haphazard groups, wandered outside, squatted on the front steps, were in and out of earshot, restless. The telephone kept ringing: people were coming from as far as Adelaide, Melbourne, even the Pilbara and Alice Springs. A meeting was needed to organise the cremation, the wake and ritual. If Maria Freewoman was so widely loved and admired, how come it had been me, whom she hardly knew, who she turned to at the end of her life? Death had created, in some, a kind of obscene energy, a morbid curiosity, the pitiable self-importance of their own mortality. The majority of these characters were complete and utter strangers to me.
Batting flustered acquaintances away with flapping hands, Sofia took me into Maria's room and closed the door. The drawers of the desk and filing cabinets were all opened and we were ankle-deep in papers on the floor. Dated posters, old newsletters, roneoed theses, handwritten correspondence, fliers, leaflets, sketches and exercise books. Sofia pulled volumes out of the bookcase and fanned the pages under my eyes before throwing them down and thrusting other written matter into my chest. 'Nothing,' she said. 'No mention of me.'
Obliging her distress, selfish though it sounded, and, not actually believing it, I knelt down and looked at bits and pieces. I did not discover, as I had hoped, disproof of what she claimed. We spent a while on the quest for her name, even going through the wardrobe. Chest of drawers. There was no diary. Standing by the dressing table, I let a wave of sincere sadness wash over me, staring unseeingly at little bottles. 'Nux vomica' came into focus. I picked it up.
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