COMMUNE OF WOMEN

by SUZAN STILL

  Palpitations and sweat assailed her, loose bowels, panting, and shakes so severe she could not aim her gun. She just had to shoot scatter-shot method and hope she hit something...someone.

  So, the Brothers have put her in here to monitor things, while they go charging off to glory! This is supposed to be libratory, this day. Why does she suddenly feel that she is just a female – nothing but a bothersome weakling, a girl, at this moment of triumph?

  Maybe she cannot shoot an AK-47, but she is very good with computers. It does not take her very much time to figure out how this entire airport terminal is monitored with cameras, or how each screen relates to a geographic spot on the airport map.

  The biggest problem is reaching the computers because X is only five-two and this very fat dead man – along with an enormous lunch box open by his side – makes about three of her. She thinks she may throw her back out, dragging his huge body and his monster food box out of here into the hallway.

  The screens show the carnage. Passageways are filled with bodies; waiting areas are running with blood. People are crawling, or flapping like birds with their feathers ripped out. People hold each other like lovers, but bent at odd angles and unnaturally still.

  She knew there would be death; hers, theirs. She just did not expect it to be so...agonized. Thank Allah-God there is no sound accompanying these images. She can see by the contorted faces of the still-living that there are sounds being uttered that no ear should have to hear.

  She must give credit to the Brothers. They are very efficient. On one screen, she can see a little group of the enemy, huddling behind a bank of chairs. Then, suddenly, some of the Brothers rush up and take aim. The people go into odd postures. They shrivel up like banana slugs sprinkled with salt. Their arms go up to shield their faces. And then the guns jerk and the people go limp. It’s strange how fast it happens – like a plug is pulled and the machine just stops dead.

  She stares and stares at that frame, long after the Brothers move on. From the corner of her eye, she sees them flickering across the wall of monitors. They stop. They shoot. They move on, popping up on another screen, and then another. But she keeps staring at that first one, as if something more would happen. But nothing does. They just lie there. There is not the flutter of an eyelid or the tremor of a finger. They just lie there, like trash blown into a corner by the wind.

  Where did that line come from: “For once, then, something.” Wordsworth? Robert Frost? Something from an English class? She cannot remember. But this day, this now, is something. It redeems a thousand yesterdays of uselessness and helplessness.

  For once, then, I am.

  Betty

  Since Betty’s the only one left standing, she’s going to have to be the one to sort this heap of humanity out, like so many pick-up sticks.

  There are several legs kicking, none of which seems to belong to a pair. Also, none that looks like Heddi’s.

  On top of the heap, already wiggling off to the floor on the right, is a slender woman in a beautiful aquamarine pants suit. She has long reddish hair that seems to have come undone from an up-do. Half of it is hanging across her face and chest. The other half is still rolled up at the back of her neck.

  Anyway, she seems to be doing fine on her own, so Betty bends to the next person, who’s got a big, broad, jeans-clad butt in the air. Her feet are kicking but she can’t get a purchase on the floor because of everyone else underneath her.

  “Wait!” Betty says. “Wait. Let me help you.”

  She pushes aside a leg that she doesn’t recognize, in snagged taupe nylons and no shoe, with a huge purple bruise on the ankle bone. She makes a place for the big woman’s knee. Then, she runs around to the front and supports her elbow, while she slides backward off the pile onto her knees.

  Betty helps lift her, as she staggers onto her feet. She can’t believe her eyes. This woman’s a giant! She’s not fat, just large – well over six feet tall, with shoulders like Paul Bunyan.

  She looks at Betty, wild-eyed, and rasps, “Thanks. Thanks for your help.” She looks down, then, and sees the mess still writhing on the floor. “Oh my! Let’s get these others up.”

  Together, they reach for the next person, the one with the bruise – a pencil thin black woman in a perfectly cut navy suit and with close-cropped hair. When they turn her over, two things are clear: she’s ravishingly beautiful and she’s out cold.

  The reason for that is plain enough. There’s blood streaming from her left shoulder. This woman’s been hit!

  The giant lifts her off the heap and carries her over to a sofa that sits against the wall, with Betty trailing along, ineffectually supporting the uninjured ankle.

  There, they find another surprise – a wizened little person like an apple doll, staring up at them like they’re aliens that just landed from Mars.

  “Lady, you’ll have to get up,” the giant says through her teeth, because she’s straining. “This woman needs to lie down.”

  There’s a flurry of what looks like gray rags and a movement that’s ferret-like in its quickness. And there she is, standing beside them, saying, “It’s all yers,” in a voice like ravens croaking.

  The giant deposits her unconscious burden onto the couch, careful to place her outside leg, which dangles onto the floor, beside her, before turning back to the others.

  Only there’s just one more – Heddi. She’s lying there, groaning. She looks like a flower that’s been trampled – all crumpled and bruised. The redhead is squatting beside her, holding her hand.

  The giant and Betty take Heddi by both armpits and hoist her to her feet. There’s an orange Naugahyde armchair next to the couch, so they guide her over to it and lower her into it. She’s dazed and mutters, over and over, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” The redhead comes to hover, so Betty turns away and takes a look around.

  They’re in a small, beige-painted room. Vending machines line the wall near the door. There’s a Formica table against the back wall with two molded plastic chairs around it – one green and one white – the sofa, the orange chair, and nothing more, except another door opposite from the one they all just crashed through.

  She goes to investigate and finds a little restroom with the toilet jammed in the corner next to the sink. It’s about the size of a coat closet.

  Nevertheless, it offers sanctuary for a second. She closes the door and locks it. She rests her hands on the edge of the sink and stares into a tiny mirror that’s duct taped to the wall, slightly out of plumb.

  She scarcely recognizes the face that stares back at her. Her pupils are dilated. Her hair’s sticking out from her head in weird tufts. And her face is smeared with blood.

  Sophia

  What should she do next?

  Everything’s bedlam. People are hammering on the door, but if she opens it, she may let in the shooters.

  She doesn’t know who’s out there.

  The door seems to bulge with the assaults from outside. The knob doesn’t look very strong. It could give at any moment.

  Sophia needs something to barricade the door. But what? The sofa isn’t heavy enough. The only other thing is one of these vending machines.

  The pounding and screaming is growing more intense. She leaps to the first machine, inserts her fingers into the gap between it and the next one, and leans with all her might into it. It’s heavy as hell.

  She takes a new purchase in the little crack that’s opened up, slides her whole hand in and puts her shoulder to the edge of the machine. She pushes like she had her truck stuck in mud, with night coming on; pushes until her eyes feel like they’re bulging out.

  At last, with a shrieking scrape, the machine lurches sideways and almost topples over.

  Someone screams, and the fat woman in blue who’s just coming out of what must be a bathroom, sees what’s happening and dashes over to help.

  She wraps her arms around the machine, Sumo wrestler style. Sophia pushes, while Fatty stabilizes. Sophia sees that the reason they’re hav
ing so much trouble is that the weight of the machine is tearing up the linoleum, instead of sliding over it.

  They decide to walk it, instead. They rock it and then swing it forward. Inch by inch, they get it into position and at last, slam it against the doorframe. It would take a bulldozer coming through to push it aside. They stare at each other in shocked relief. And they’re not a moment too soon.

  The screaming in the hall outside intensifies. There is a thunder of banging on the door – and then gunshots, right outside.

  The glass front of the vending machine blows out.

  They’re shooting right through the door!

  “Get down!” Sophia screams.

  They all hit the floor.

  There’s a rattle of gunfire and the back wall erupts in little fountains of plaster.

  To her left, someone is shrieking hysterically.

  Then, the gunfire moves off down the concourse. There is no more screaming and no more banging.

  Instead, an unholy silence descends outside.

  Heddi

  There’s a deadly quiet outside. It’s both a relief and a horror.

  Heddi’s afraid to look up, for fear of what she’ll see.

  She hears someone moving to her left and as they do, shattered glass crunching.

  She’s still in the chair but doubled over. She looks down at her body – is it all there? She seems to be intact but who knows, really, at a time like this?

  When she finally looks around, it’s as if everyone is frozen in space like bugs in amber. Bodies are crouched in odd positions all over the room. The giant is closest to the door, ducked down behind the vending machine she moved.

  Moving a vending machine, for God’s sake! Who is she?

  On an ugly coffee-stain-colored couch to Heddi’s left is a young black woman, covered in blood. Miraculously, between her chair and the couch, Ondine is face down on the floor. At least, it seems to be Ondine, by the long auburn hair and the slight figure. Betty is wedged into the corner to the left of the door, her eyes huge, her polyester suit coat smeared with blood, sobbing uncontrollably.

  And then, off to her right, there’s this vision straight from Bruegel; one of those ragged, lice-infested crones you see in the background of his paintings, lugging huge loads of firewood or lurking in the darkened doorway of a hovel. She’s a vision in gray – ashen face, grizzled hair, faded clothing. She wavers, ghostly, staring toward the door where the shot-up vending machine is bleeding its canned and bottled bodily fluids onto the floor.

  “Shee-it!” says the Bruegel. “All them drinks goin ta waste!”

  No thought, apparently, for what else might be wasted, just on the other side of that door.

  Ondine

  Ondine’s afraid to look up.

  What in God’s name has happened?

  Are they still barricaded, or did the terrorists get into the room?

  She lies still and listens, barely daring to breathe.

  Then there’s a voice like a parrot’s, rough and raucous, saying something about wasted drinks. No gunfire afterward. They must be safe.

  She lifts her head to look around. She’s on the floor, at eye level with the dirty, worn skirt of a shabby couch. The fabric is faded brown, patterned with stylized flowers in beige and teal. The floor beneath her is white linoleum, streaked with gray – and none too clean.

  Ondine rolls to her left to pull herself up by the front of the couch. Slipping her hand onto the seat cushion, she feels something sticky and wet, just as the smell hits her – that briny, metallic smell of blood. She remembers it from the morgue, still fresh on Jackie’s body.

  She pulls herself up and discovers its source, a beautiful young black woman, with blood seeping – no, more like pouring – from her left shoulder.

  Ondine lets out a shriek. “My God! I’ve never seen anyone bleed like this! Someone...help!”

  A calm, firm voice comes from behind her. She realizes through the fog of shock that it’s giving her instructions.

  “Find something you can use to apply pressure,” it’s saying. “You, with the long hair. Yes, you. Use your jacket.”

  Ondine turns uncomprehending eyes toward the door. The voice is issuing from a huge woman who, nevertheless, has a voice like melted butter, fluid and sweet. Ondine shakes her head at her. She has no idea what she wants.

  The big woman rises from a crouched position next to the vending machine barricade and hunches towards Ondine, keeping her head down. Ondine feels instant relief. Somehow, this woman exudes confidence, even in this madhouse.

  “Who’s got something cotton?” the giant asks, her eyes sweeping the room. “You there, in the blue suit. Give me that scarf... Yes, that one. Quick!”

  A fat woman in an atrocious, shiny polyester suit comes wobbling out of the corner, untying her neck scarf and hiccupping as she comes. Her face is smeared with blood that’s already drying and that doesn’t seem to have issued from her own person, as far as Ondine can tell.

  The giant woman grabs the scarf from the fat woman in one quick, definitive pluck and turns without hesitation to the woman on the couch. “Help me get her coat off,” she says to Ondine, not gruffly, just very authoritatively. Ondine kneels down in front of the couch and struggles feebly with buttons on the black woman’s suit jacket. The injured woman groans, as if the smallest touch pains her even in unconsciousness.

  “Here, let me,” says the big woman. She reaches into her jeans and comes out with a pocketknife. She flicks open a blade and, in one deft slice, cuts the sleeve of the black woman’s jacket from wrist to shoulder. Then, she works the blade through the neckline, cuts outward through the thickness of fabric at the shoulder and peels the jacket off, as if it were a banana skin.

  There’s a thin white blouse beneath, saturated in blood. Ondine can only tell it’s white by the very top of the shoulder that has somehow remained pristine. The big woman wields her knife like an expert. In one quick movement, she cuts through the blouse and bra strap, too, leaving the wound fully exposed.

  It’s a nasty, ragged round hole from which blood pours as if it were overflowing from a drainpipe. Then, in an instant, it disappears, as the big woman slaps the wadded scarf onto it and says in a commanding voice, “Here. Hold pressure right here.” Ondine moves to do so, as if in a dream. Everything has a floating, unmoored quality to it.

  As soon as she’s got the scarf in hand and has pressed down sufficiently, the big woman slides a hand behind the black woman’s shoulder and flips her forward, putting additional pressure onto the wound and making Ondine feel more efficient.

  The big woman is peeling clothes from the injured woman’s back now, and probing around. “Thank the Goddess,” she breathes. “There’s an exit wound, too. No bullet to dig out,” she says by way of explanation, meeting Ondine’s eyes. “If we can find some materials, we can stitch her up and stop some of this bleeding.”

  She turns to the room in general. “Who has a needle?” And then, “Someone look around...under the sink there, or in the bathroom. There might be a first aid kit in here, somewhere.”

  She pushes up from the couch and goes to look for herself because everyone is still moving like their bodies are suspended in water. Ondine is left holding pressure. It comes as a real surprise to her to find that she is crying in silent, wrenching sobs.

  She feels a hand on her shoulder and turns to find Heddi bending toward her from a chair.

  “Ondine? Oh, thank God! It is you. You’re crying. Is it too much? Too much like...”

  She doesn’t dare say “...Jackie?” Ondine realizes. This is hardly the quiet, therapeutic confines of her office where such a question could be broached after half a session of gentle lead-up. Here, Ondine is raw, shocked and vulnerable. Heddi must be in a quandary.

  “It’s okay, Heddi,” Ondine gulps. “I can do this. I’m okay.”

  Heddi gives Ondine her famous long look, but it’s not really the same because her eyes are dilated, her face is set in a harrow
ed startle and her short-cropped blonde hair is standing on end. She looks like someone who was in the bathtub when the hair dryer fell in.

  “Really, Heddi,” Ondine says again, “I’m fine. I can do this.” With that, Heddi settles back in her chair and closes her eyes, as if she’s fallen into an exhausted sleep.

  Pearl

  Well, Pearl’s seen a lotta damn thins in this life, but this here beats all! Looks lak she done fell inta one a them Civil War stories her Granpap use ter tell, all bout folks shootin one t’other, an cannonades an fusillades, an arms blown off, an legs sawed off, an who knows what else kinda wickedness thunk up by the mind a man.

  Good Lord!

  They be blood an glass an tarnation everwhar. Theys women cryin an women settin lak theys plum dazed, an women bleedin. An theys this one great tall woman, lak a tree, doin all the work.

  Pearl’s seen it a hunert times in this long life – everone settin on they tush an but one woman doin it all. Most times, that one was Pearl.

  So Pearl up an says ta her, “I gots a needle.” An she starts diggin round in her bosom, cuz that’s whar she keeps the thins she needs most – money, needle an thread, her pipe an tobaccy. The thread she has is good an strong, too. She uses it fer everthin – her dress, her shoes. Even flosses her teeth with it. Picks it up down at the discount store, five spools fer a dollar.

  By now, the giant’s rootin round under the sink. Out come a sponge, all curlt up. A open package a more sponges. A box a cleanser. Rubber gloves; some used, some new. A squirt bottle a window cleaner.

  “No first aid kit.” She comes outta thar, lookin darkly.

  Without another word, she whips inta the bathroom an starts the same thin in thar. Rolls a toilet paper. More cleanser. A plastic bag a clean rags. Not much more.

  Pearl’s kinda follerin along behind, jes ta be companionable. She’s backin outta that cabinet when Pearl axes her, “Is this here what yer lookin fer?” An she grabs a red box with a big white cross down from the wall.