COMMUNE OF WOMEN

by SUZAN STILL

  Pearl

  Well, Fatty, in thar – her name’s Betty, Pearl found out – she’s in a bad way. Cain’t stand the sat a blood. But Pearl reckons it’s more’n that. She’s scairt shitless. Which jes goes ta show she’s a reasonable gal. Anyone who ain’t scairt rat now gots ta be plum nuts.

  Now it ain’t that Pearl ain’t been in some bad sitchiations in her life. Livin with Abel Johns warn’t much removed from bein attacked by tearists. Din’t a day go by, but she done thunk it mat be her last.

  But this here is somethin else. Ain’t nowhar ta run ta. Got no woods ta hide in. No kinfolk ta shelter em. Not even a axe in the woodshed, as last resort.

  What they gots here is all they gots – and it ain’t much.

  Now thar’s one thin Pearl knows fer sure: when you ain’t got much, you takes care a what you do got. An thar’s lots a thins goin ta waste this very minute. So, she’d better tend ta em, cuz it don’t look lak nobody else is goin ta.

  Take that vendin machine, thar, fer instance. She’s gotta sweep up all that glass, ta get ta it. Then, she’s gotta save as much a them drinks that’s in thar as she cain. Some is jes layin on they sides, dribblin through bullet holes. If she cain find somethin big – a bucket or a dishpan – she cain pour em all in thar. Kinda lak Skip-an-Go-Naked Punch they use ter make, down at the Grange hall when she was a girl. Whatever anybody done brung got poured in the pot.

  Whoo-ee!

  Heddi

  Heddi has got to pull herself together! Two of these women are her patients, for God’s sake! She’s got to find her professional cloak that, unfortunately, seems to be shredded with bullet holes and soaked in blood – metaphorically speaking.

  If ever there were a time when breeding and training should come to the fore, this would surely be it. My God! She’s a direct descendent of Robert E. Lee! She was reared to believe that chivalry – Hal Merriweather notwithstanding – is not dead! At Miss Pryor’s School, they were taught that the courage of Southern women sustained the Confederacy!

  All that must count for something. Surely, she can rally herself and offer something besides dead weight.

  The trouble with depth psychology – she sees very clearly at this moment – is that it takes place within the sacred precinct of The Room. Tranquil and beautiful surroundings. Gentle probings. Years to burn, sorting through the psyche. No one ever trains you for triage. It’s a profession for peacetime, not the battleground.

  In L.A., you see these idiots driving around with WWJD bumper stickers: What Would Jesus Do? Every time Heddi sees one, she laughs, because WWJD turns to What Would Jung Do? in her perverse mind.

  Well, what would Jung do? Right here? Right now?

  He was a medical doctor, which she is not. Or rather, she is, but she’s never practiced. Psychiatry is hardly training for a medic. It’s been more than forty years since she did her surgical residency.

  Besides, the giant seems to have the physical end of things sewed up – quite literally, as it turns out. Heddi watched her close those wounds with an exactness that would shame some surgeons. She’s an interesting case. Heddi wonders what her typology is? Strong in Sensation, she’s guessing.

  So if the medical end is covered, there’s still the wounded psyche. These women have been through Hell. And Heddi’s quite sure they’re all aware that Hell may not be through with them, yet.

  In times of trauma, it’s best to restore routine and order as quickly as possible. That’s why Jung had people draw mandalas – to center themselves in an orderly universe and soothe their psyches. But they’d think her mad if she tried to get them to draw mandalas right now.

  The Bruegel has swept up. Now she’s mopping. So the housekeeping end is covered.

  What can she offer? All she really knows how to do is talking therapy, and they’re too scattered, yet, to think about doing a group debriefing.

  Then it comes to her! She knows what she wants! She bets the others do, too.

  When she stands up, she’s surprised how weak and shaky her legs are. In a voice that’s not as commanding or compassionate as she expected, she asks, “Who wants a cup of coffee? If the machine’s still working, I’m buying.”

  Sophia

  The patient’s still out cold, so Sophia can start thinking about what else needs doing now.

  Pearl’s dug a plastic dishpan from under the sink and she’s pouring liquid from the wounded cans and bottles into it. They’ll have to screen it through something. Don’t need anyone swallowing glass or metal shards.

  But Pearl’s got the right idea. No telling how long they’ll have to be in here. They have to consider the basic functions: eating, sleeping, elimination. As long as they’ve got water and can defend the door, they can hold out for weeks, if necessary.

  Goddess! Tell me we won’t have to do that!

  A situation like this turns you on to what plumbing is all about, Sophia notes grimly. Without water, they can’t last more than a few days. These people are already shocky. If they get dehydrated, they’ll start keeling over on her. Not to mention what happens to a toilet in short order, without water.

  Their only food is in those machines and it’s the lowest quality – processed cheese with denatured crackers, candy bars that are pure sugar, chips of various kinds, stale nuts. Not much to recommend it, but it’s all they’ve got.

  They’ll have to work out a system of equal distribution. Can’t have anyone raiding the machines and taking more than their fair share. Fatty over there looks like she could eat everything in there and look for more.

  And they still have their patient to think about. She’s going to wake up soon and she’ll be in howling pain. The drink machines must have ice. Can it be accessed, without destroying the machine? Ice would keep the swelling down and give her a lot of relief. Sophia will have to work on that.

  And there’s one more critical factor: the bodies outside the door. She knows without looking that there are at least eight out there. She can feel them. In very short order – a matter of hours – decomposition will set in, and the stench will become unbearable.

  Much as she hates to think about it, they’re going to have to go out and move those bodies. She’s thought about it every way she can and it all leads to that. If they wait, they’ll only be harder to handle and the smell will make it unbearable.

  And who knows what’s on the other side of that door? Are the terrorists still out there? She heard them run off but that doesn’t mean they haven’t snuck back, or posted a guard somewhere along the concourse, waiting for just this kind of thing – people sneaking out of their hidey-holes, thinking everything’s clear.

  Once she removes the barricade, they’re vulnerable until they know what’s outside. But there’s no way around it. If they don’t move those bodies, they’ll be so miserable that they’ll wish they were among them.

  Ondine

  Ondine just feels exhausted. She had jet lag before all this, but now...

  The other women seem to be rallying. They’re moving about, doing this and that. Heddi just bought them all coffee, which was an inspiration. Amazing how the smell of even this rankest of brews is heartening.

  Sophia is moving around, introducing herself to everyone. She stops and talks to each one, shakes her hand and moves on. She’s a natural leader. Thank God they’ve got her. They wouldn’t have survived that first assault, without her.

  Now Sophia moves to the center of the room and holds up her hands for silence. “Ladies, could I have your attention, please? We have some important issues to discuss.” She’s still speaking softly, aware, as they all are, that there could be listening ears outside the door.

  “First, I’d like you each to put all the change you have in a pile there on the table. We’ll use it to buy food for ourselves. I think it would be best if we eat at regular intervals and share everything equally. Are we agreed on that?”

  There’s a general nodding of heads.

  “Second, if any of you has any pain medication o
f any kind, prescription or over-the-counter, please put that in a pile on the table, too. We’re going to have our patient waking up any minute now and she’s going to be in terrible pain. We need everything we’ve got to keep her comfortable. Not to mention that, if she starts screaming, she could draw the terrorists back to us. We have to avoid that, at all costs.”

  The women begin shuffling around the room, collecting purses. Miraculously, all of them still have them. It must be a reflex reaction to clutch your purse in an emergency. When Ondine travels, she always takes her hobo bag, with a strap that crosses her chest, so no one can slip it off her shoulder in a crowd. She never expected it to have to survive a terrorist attack, but that’s what it’s done.

  She has a big bulge of coins in there but most of them are French. There’s also a tube of Advil and a few prescription sleeping pills left over from the flight. She adds them to the growing pile.

  “That’s great!” Sophia says. “Now, I want to warn you about the liquid Pearl’s collected. She was absolutely right in doing it. We have to conserve every resource we’ve got because they’re so scarce. But we have to strain it before we drink it, in case there are splinters of glass or metal in it.”

  Ondine has an idea. “I know! The patient has pantyhose. She’d be better off without them anyway, wouldn’t she? Better circulation. Let’s use hers.”

  “Good idea. You’re right. She would be better off. We’ll have to be very careful, though. We don’t want to wake her up with a start or it’ll get her bleeding again. Maybe we’ll wait until she’s awake. Just nobody drink from the dishpan until we can strain it.”

  The fat lady raises her hand.

  “Betty...isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Betty. Listen, I’ve got knee-high’s on. I’ll wash them out and we can use them.”

  “Okay. Good, Betty. That’s settled.” Sophia flashes her amazing smile and continues. “Now, we have no idea what the infrastructure situation is. I mean, right now, we have water, but what if they turn it off for some reason? Or if we’re running off an auxiliary tank, already? I think we should fill the bucket and any other large container while we can, as an emergency supply. And then, only flush the toilet if you need to.”

  “Meaning...?” It’s Heddi, needing precise information, as always.

  “Meaning, as we used to say during drought times in the mountains...If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”

  “Thank you. That clarifies it nicely.” Heddi sounds unusually cranky.

  “Also, we have no idea if the electricity will stay on. The police might turn it off in order to mount a sneak attack on the terrorists. Does anyone smoke? Do any of you have matches?”

  The bag lady nearly does a dance. “Matches? I gots matches! I even gots candles! Rat thar in mah pack! I even gots a flashlat an batt’ries.”

  “That’s astonishing!” says Heddi, the totally urban woman, whose envelope purses bulge in unsightly fashion, just carrying lipstick and a credit card. She’s staring at Pearl as if she were some rare species that’s just been dredged up from immense depths in the ocean – an albino fish or mammoth squid.

  “Thank you, Pearl. You’re the winner of the Who Would You Want To Be Stranded On A Desert Island With? Award.” Sophia bestows an incandescent smile on her that threatens to set the old bag of tinder on fire.

  “Now...here’s the hard one. I don’t know how to say this gently... There are dead bodies outside our door.”

  A communal rustling sigh passes around the rough ring they’ve formed, like a sudden gust through dry woods. Heads drop or shake and eyes close or roll. The little haven of sanity they’ve so tentatively established seems suddenly gashed and vulnerable. Silence descends like the herald of Death.

  Sophia honors the moment before she continues.

  “In a matter of days, if we’re lucky, or hours, if we’re not, those corpses will begin to stink. Once they do, this room will become unbearable...not to say dangerous. The gases emitted can be lethal, especially methane.”

  She looks around the group, taking the measure of each one of them.

  “Sooner or later...and I personally would vote for sooner...we’re going to have to move those bodies, or we won’t be able to breathe.”

  The silence grows deeper. It’s the first time they’ve balked at instantly doing her bidding. Finally, it’s the fat woman, Betty, who voices what must be a universal concern. “You mean, you don’t think we’ll be rescued, before...before...”

  “Before the corpses begin to decompose? There’s no way to know. But good judgment would suggest that we act as if we’re here for the long haul.”

  The silence only deepens. Each of them seems cast into a personal Inferno, where their worst fears are materializing in the mind’s eye.

  “Has anyone tried the phone?” Betty asks meekly. She nods toward the back wall where, to her astonishment, Ondine sees a beige wall phone. How could she have missed it?

  Ondine whips to the back of the room and picks up the receiver. The line is dead. She jiggles the hook, the way she’s seen people do it in movies. She has no idea why. It never seems to work for them and it doesn’t work this time, either. “It’s dead.”

  “What about cell phones?” Betty persists. “Have you tried your cell phones?” They rummage in their bags. Several minutes of punching buttons and futile listening, while spinning to all points of the compass, ensue.

  “Dead,” Ondine says, at last.

  “Mine, too.”

  “Mine, too.”

  Sophia has the wisdom to let this moment of deepened discouragement pass without adding to it.

  “We can talk about this later. We have time.” She glances up at the round institutional wall clock above the door. “It’s 12:34. We’ve been in here approximately four hours. That’s barely time for the police to send an e-mail to the FBI.” She smiles at her little exaggeration. “Let’s not worry about what’s outside the door right now. Let’s just get ourselves as comfortable as we can, for the time being...and as quietly as possible.”

  Heddi is about to say something when an eerie sound interrupts her – the high-pitched anguish of their awakening patient. They all rush to her as a body, until Sophia warns them off.

  “Ladies, let me handle this. Just go about your business. There’s plenty to do. Get yourselves cleaned up. Strain the drinks. See what else you can dig out of the cupboards...”

  She turns away to attend to the patient. The rest of them stare at one another like lost sheep.

  It’s Heddi who rallies them. “As I was about to say, let’s introduce ourselves, and then see what we can do to get this place livable.”

  Betty

  They’re taking turns in the bathroom. Each woman goes in looking like an extra from a Hollywood horror film and comes out, in due course, looking fairly normal – blood washed off, hair combed, clothes straightened, lipstick applied. It’s funny that even under the worst of circumstances women use their lipstick.

  Sort of like Nero, fiddling while Rome burned. Or Betty, arranging flowers while her family all moved out.

  There are just some things the mind fixes on as necessary or pleasurable, even if they’re absurd, or even destructive.

  But even as they’re moving around, restoring themselves and organizing things, Betty’s feeling a growing sense of unease. Heddi’s been trying to train her to listen to her feelings. She says Betty just represses them, which allows the unconscious obsessions free reign. Something like that.

  When Betty really stops to think about it, though, it’s pretty simple. She’s missing her routine. At home, it’s time for the soaps. She’d put her feet up, have a cup of coffee and watch the afternoon sun lighting up the arrangement in the west window – autumn leaves and chrysanthemums, this month. Maybe have some buttered toast, or a cookie or three.

  Before, it would have been the time just before the kids got home from school, the calm before the storm. Since the mass exodus, it’s just been
a time to blot out her mind.

  It’s funny, realizing that no one in her family will even know she’s in this mess. Larry will probably even talk with his friends over a beer about the big terrorist standoff at LAX, without even realizing she’s out here. Sam calls her every day, sweet boy, but if he doesn’t get her he won’t worry about it. And Serena...well, if she knew, she’d probably be glad.

  Another thing that’s bothering her is being in a room without windows. She’s so used to the light. Not her view, particularly, since it just looks out into shrubbery and asphalt. But the light comes in and spotlights her arrangements – and there’s a sense of depth, too. Like there really is more life out there, if she wanted to go and find it.

  But in here, with the blank walls, she feels like there’s no future, no prospect to look out on or even imagine. There are a couple of travel posters pushpinned to the walls. One shows a sunny beach, palm trees and a serene blue ocean, and the other must be some place in Europe. There are half-timbered houses and a gray, grudging-looking sky not made any more pleasant by being peppered with bullet holes.

  The posters don’t help. They make her feel even more trapped. She’s even had the sensation that the room is getting smaller, as if the walls are actually squeezing in on her.

  She never realized that the simple light of the sun was so important to her. Even if she never really wanted to go out into it, it was always there as a potential.

  What’s her potential now, she wonders?

  Will she survive to sit in her living room and feel lonely, ever again?

  Even loneliness would be a pleasure, compared to this sense of sitting inside a trap. It’s the frightened animal in her – that’s what she’d tell Heddi if they ever got to have a session again.