COMMUNE OF WOMEN

by SUZAN STILL

  Holly snuffles. “If I wrote 666 right over his damn crosses,” she answers promptly. “In blood.”

  “In menstrual blood!” Heddi yelps, really getting into this fantasy.

  “Yeah! In menstrual blood!” Holly chimes. And somehow, through the tears, she manages a giggle and before they hang up they’re howling histrionically enough to raise the Devil, imagining all the things they could do to subvert the Little Temple of Living Misogyny and send its congregation, en masse, to its knees, praying for deliverance from liberated women.

  So now, Heddi’s looking at the windows and her knees are feeling weak. The midday sun is streaming through, baking a mooshed-up mess of blood and oil onto the glass. It looks like a chicken was butchered on there.

  She tiptoes out of the room, goes down the hall to the bathroom. She looks in the wastebasket. Sure enough – Holly’s on her period.

  Heddi feels a little dizzy. She heads to the guest room, thinking she’ll lie down.

  Blaaghh!

  There’s blood and oil there, too, but not quite so dried out because it’s the shady side of the house.

  She pulls the blinds and lies down. Bit by bit, she fluffs out the wadded scraps of memory and tries to piece them together into a coherent whole.

  “So what kicked all this off?” she asks Holly during a lull in their commotion.

  “Oh...” Holly puffs. “It was that class I’m taking. Women’s Spirituality. He picked up my textbook and read a few pages. It was the part where the Hebrew god Yahweh speaks through the prophets and tells them to destroy the goddess and cut down her pillars and groves.

  “He made some remark, and I said that I thought we’d be better off if we still worshipped the goddess – and he just went ballistic! I mean, it was worse than when I said I thought Jesse Jackson would make a good president. He just went crazy. And then, he went to see the pastor.”

  Heddi gets up from the bed and goes in search of Holly’s textbook. There it is, stowed fastidiously in the little bookcase by her desk in the corner of the master bedroom. She opens it at random. Neatly underlined in yellow highlighter, she reads:

  Archeological evidence suggests that ancient goddess-worshipping societies were egalitarian and non-aggressive, the latter being inferred from an almost total absence of weapons at these sites. The monotheistic sky-god cultures that overran these earlier civilizations, however, were almost universally patriarchal, hierarchical, and dedicated to the arts of war. The subjugation of women, accomplished by rape, destruction of material goddess culture, and laws limiting women’s rights, was justified by the fact that the male godhead was the model of superiority, in which first the king and the priesthood, and then all other males, partook.

  Heddi closes the book and returns it to its shelf, thinking about the day Holly called, bursting with the amazement of her discovery: God used to be a woman! Heddi always has the women in her Jungian study groups read Neumann and Gimbutas, so these things are old hat for her, but Holly was so excited!

  That realization seems to have played an important part in unwinding the skein of Holly’s very conventional, very married life and setting her on the apostate road of feminism. Holly couldn’t wait to join a consciousness-raising group and to share in the empowerment that was going on there.

  This semester, she was beginning to see her role from new eyes – so new that Roscoe thought they might be someone else’s; someone Satanic.

  Heddi thinks about Rosebud, lifts the shade and peeks out at the yard through the hideous smear of blood and oil; the goddess and the patriarchs, going mano à mano across the sliding aluminum windows.

  “Holly, honey, the party’s getting rough!” she mutters, dropping the shade.

  That night, Heddi goes out under the night sky, all milky with moonlight and wispy clouds, and calls for Rosebud. Not that she actually expects her to respond, but she gave her word to try. The geese honk in response, down at the pond beyond the front lawn. In the dim light, she can see Snodgrass, the big white Chinese goose, rise up from the banks and spread phosphorescent wings as he throws his head back and squonks his answer. But no Rosebud.

  Heddi goes back into the house, locks the door and sets the alarm for the night. In the guest room, she throws back the covers, changes into her PJ’s and crawls into bed feeling a trifle undone by the day’s revelations. The last thing she remembers is the quiet shush of the central air coming on and the gentle blast of cooling breeze from the vent above her.

  Suddenly, she sits straight up in bed. She knows from the leadenness of her body that hours of deep slumber have transpired.

  What’s she hearing? What’s going on?

  Groggily, she listens and identifies the sound. The geese are in a tumult down at the pond! There is honking and shrieking enough to raise the dead!

  Rosebud! The wolf, hungry after her release from the kennel and its regular feeding times, must be stalking the geese! Heddi leaps from bed and dashes down the dark hall into the living room. With blind fingers, she gropes for the lock on the front door, throws it open and rushes onto the lawn shouting, “Rosebud! Don’t you dare touch those geese! Ro-o-o-sebud!”

  The cold dew on the grass is showering her bare feet. The night has turned chilly and she wraps her arms around herself. Off toward the pond, she thinks she sees a vague, silvery tracer, leaping toward the orange grove. The geese squawk indignantly but the urgency of their alarm seems to have diminished.

  She goes back into the house. 3:17, she notes, on the digital readout glowing eerily beneath the invisible TV. She gropes her way into the hall, heading back to the guest room.

  Suddenly, she’s engulfed in sound! Sirens are going off somewhere in the ceiling over her head. An alarm making a whooping noise is blasting from somewhere in the living room.

  The noise is deafening! She covers her ears and sinks to the floor, trying to shield herself. For a moment, she thinks that she has lost her mind; that she’s finally having that acid flashback her friends warned her about back in 1969.

  A brilliant, dead-white strobe light is illuminating the scene, surreally showing her Holly and Roscoe in their wedding photos, framed on the hall wall, now darkness, and then again, Holly and Roscoe, looking too young, and then darkness again.

  A disembodied male voice, like God’s over the black wastes of Chaos, cries out, “Identify yourself! Identify yourself!”

  What can she say to this existential request?

  “Female hominid, of Planet Earth?”

  “Lone woman, unarmed?”

  “Renegade Daughter of Eve?”

  “What the fuck is going on?” she shrieks, instead.

  The implacable voice demands again, “Identify yourself! Identify yourself!”

  The strobe light is making her nauseous. She begins to crawl along the hall wall, making for the front door. As she passes the doorway to the bathroom, a bell somewhere within the recesses of the linen closet begins to clang, adding its uproar to the siren and the over-sized Whoopee Cushion.

  She is screaming now. “Shut up, goddam you! Shut the fuck up!” and crying because of the violence of this assault on her slumberous nervous system.

  She’s almost to the front door when the whole thing suddenly stops. Silence descends utterly, and she experiences it with a kind of primordial awe – or maybe she’s just been rendered permanently deaf. She can’t be sure – until the telephone rings, a sound almost dulcet on her contused eardrums.

  She gropes along the wall for the light switch but can’t locate it. She crawls across the cold linoleum toward the sound of the phone. Instead of picking up the receiver, she knocks it to the floor in a blind swipe, and then has to hunt for it.

  “Hello?” she whispers into what she hopes is the right end of the thing. She is impressed that her voice seems to have regressed at least five decades in so short a time.

  “Hello?” she says again, hoping to sound more authoritative. It comes out as an unintelligible rasp.

  “Who is this?”
a stern male voice demands.

  “Who is this?” she counters, suddenly fired up. “Don’t you give me a hard time, you bastard! I’ve been through enough for one night without being harassed by some goddamn drill sergeant!”

  “This is Delta Alarm Service. You have fifteen seconds to respond with the code word, or...”

  “Or what?” she screams. “You’ll shoot to kill? Launch Cruise missiles against me? You motherfucker...”

  And she bursts into tears, her most maddening trait. She never can carry out a complete fit of pique, but must dissolve into these un-macha sobs.

  “Oh shit!” she howls, and throws herself onto the floor in a heap, cradling the phone to her cheek like a security blanket.

  “You sound upset,” the voice says, not un-gently. “What happened?”

  “The alarm happened,” Heddi whimpers between snotty hiccups. “I tried to go outside to rescue the geese from the wolf and I forgot the goddamned alarm.”

  “Geese? A wolf was after the geese? Lady, there haven’t been wolves in this valley for over seventy-five years!”

  “Okay. Okay. I confess. I was trying to rob the place and in the process of lugging out this two hundred pound turquoise vinyl recliner, I set off the alarm. Now are you satisfied?”

  “Tell me about the wolf. Oh...as long as you don’t, by some chance, know the code word?”

  “I do not.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Holly’s – the wife’s – the owner’s wife’s – stepmother. Dr. Heddi Merriweather.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Trying to catch the wolf.”

  “You really insist on this wolf?”

  “I do. Such things are not unheard of – even in modern times,” Heddi says stiffly, gathering her dignity about her. She’s aware that somewhere in the last several sentences, they have changed their tone from confrontation to banter.

  She’s lying there on the cold linoleum of the living room floor in her pajamas in the 3:30 AM darkness, a failed wolf-catcher, needing to blow her nose and having a flirtation with the Delta Alarm Service switchboard guy.

  What’s next? she wonders. A flying saucer landing in the pasture? The imminent arrival of a marching band blasting John Philip Souza? The parking brake failing and her car slowly rolling backwards in the moonlight, down the driveway and into the pond? She has a brief epiphany concerning Life in Its Infinite Variety.

  “My step-son-in-law has a wolf,” she says wearily. The fight and the flirt have suddenly left her. “It got out of its kennel. I’m trying to lure it back in again. That’s it. Nothing mysterious. Just a loose wolf and a forgotten alarm system. Period. End of report.”

  “I see,” he says grudgingly.

  Oh Mister, Heddi thinks, you ain’t seen nothin’ like what I’ve seen, these last few hours! You don’t SEE, at all!

  In the morning she makes the decision, while still lying in bed half asleep, to leave. She can’t bear another day behind these grotesque windows. It’s obvious that she is never going to catch the wolf. She needs the solace of the creature comforts with which her home is so richly appointed. She wants out of this madhouse.

  She doesn’t even take the time to make herself a cup of coffee because it’s just instant coffee bags, anyway, and no cream, just one-percent milk. The image of herself perched on cold turquoise vinyl sipping this ghastly ersatz concoction is what propels her from bed and into a flurry of bed-making and jamming toiletries and PJs into her overnight bag.

  “I’m not leaving,” she mutters, “I’m fucking fleeing!”

  Her car waits intact out in the driveway, not dripping with slimy green pond weed or showing signs that it has in any way been involved in the surreal business of the night. She opens the passenger-side door and throws in her purse and bag.

  As she’s going around to the driver’s side she senses she’s being watched. Shit! she thinks, her whole body jerking spastically. It’s the police! They’ve got guns trained on me! She looks around fearfully.

  There, by the pasture fence, sits Rosebud. Her silky silver and charcoal fur is blowing and glistening in the morning light. Her yellow eyes are trained on Heddi like scopes.

  For all the trouble she’s caused her, Heddi still loves this animal. From the first moment Heddi laid eyes on her, when Roscoe brought her home as a pup in the palm of his hand, she loved her beauty. And as the months went by, she learned to love Rosebud’s wildness and her indomitability.

  It was only through imprisonment and brute force that Roscoe had any influence at all on her. He wanted her mean. Heddi couldn’t bear the spectacle of his abuses to this animal that never groveled and never broke, but only watched and waited and hated in some fierce recess of her ungiven heart.

  “Good morning, Rosebud,” Heddi says softly. She knows that in the kitchen there is a defrosted chicken waiting for just this circumstance. “You’re looking very beautiful this morning,” she croons. She doesn’t make a move toward Rosebud, nor the wolf toward Heddi.

  Heddi also knows that the alarm system is now fully armed. No one can enter the house without the code to disarm the alarm, which Heddi does not have. She’s taken it from the wall, wadded it up and thrown it in the waste-basket. If she enters the house and tries to find the code, too much time will elapse and the alarm will sound again. Not only is she unwilling to endure this consequence a second time, but the sound will send Rosebud into the next county.

  Roscoe, you clever paranoid, she thinks, with a sly smile, you’ve outsmarted yourself.

  She looks Rosebud in the eye. They seem to be having a meeting of the minds. The wolf stands in a motion too quick and graceful to see.

  “That’s right, Rosebud,” Heddi says softly. “This is your moment.”

  Rosebud shifts uneasily, still staring steadily at Heddi. The morning breeze sifts through her soft coat like fingers through fine sand.

  Heddi raises her arms and shoos her. “Go!” she says, without much conviction.

  Rosebud edges away a few steps. Heddi waves her arms, more agitated now. “Go, Rosebud! Go, girl! Go! Go! GO!”

  Heddi is crying, now. She runs toward Rosebud, waving her arms and the wolf turns and begins a slow trot in the direction of the road. Beyond it, in the morning sun, the foothills rise, round and tawny with summer-dry grasses, a few minute’s journey for a fleet-footed animal.

  “Go, Rosebud! GO! GO! GO!”

  Heddi’s sobbing. She’s running down the driveway and Rosebud’s loping through the pasture, parallel to her and a little ahead.

  Rosebud turns her long, yellow eyes and looks back, briefly. Heddi feels such a hit of wild love in her heart that she can scarcely breathe.

  Rosebud’s running full out now. She’s streaking through the pasture grass like a silver wind.

  And then, she’s gone and Heddi is screaming, “Yes! Yes! YES!” and jumping in the air and shaking her fists like a madwoman.

  “Yes! Yes! She’s loose!” She kicks up a small whirlwind of dust, as she spins and leaps and shouts.

  “She’s loose! She’s loose! She’s FREE again!”

  Heddi throws back her head and howls like a wild thing.

  Ondine

  They all just sit in amazement when Heddi finishes her story. She’s told it with such verve and passion that Ondine is sure that she’s not the only one with tears in her eyes.

  Heddi has an odd look on her face, half-pleased, half-stunned, as if she’s amazed herself with such a passionate telling.

  It’s Ondine who says, “And you want one of us to follow that?”

  Everyone chuckles. They start to move and stretch and heft themselves up from their chairs and the floor. Sophia goes into the bathroom. Betty starts dishing out the flat Skip-and-Go-Naked Punch from the dishpan. Pearl cackles over by the candy machine and says, “Maybe we outta have a snack on some a them peanuts.”

  Ondine looks at the clock and realizes that two hours have sped by. It’s close to 11:30. Heddi’s p
lan to make time pass has worked perfectly.

  Betty

  Lunch is pretty dismal. They’re all trying to conserve. They have chips again, Hershey’s chocolate with almonds and some of Pearl’s warm punch.

  They vote that after the next person tells her story, they’ll have a mid-afternoon snack. Betty’s isn’t the only stomach that’s rumbling now.

  So, they’re all settling back in and Heddi’s looking around for the next person who’ll be brave enough to tell her story. No one makes a peep. They won’t even meet her eye. So, to her own amazement, Betty raises her hand and says, “I’ll go next, Heddi.”

  Betty really doesn’t mind because she has this story that is really amazing about her neighbors, Bud and Angela. For years, Angela’s been filling her in on the goings-on at their house and, in this case, Betty took part – to some extent.

  “Well,” Betty starts off, “this isn’t a story about me at all, really. But I think it’s interesting enough for you to tolerate. It’s about my neighbors, Bud and Angela, and their son, Bernie. I’m like Heddi...if you’re bored, just let me know.

  “I’ll start kind of in the middle, so you get the feel for how things are for them. It seems like there’s always some kind of turmoil over there because of Bernie...”

  “What’s that sound?” Bud asks. He’s just shambled out of the bedroom after sleeping off his job on the night shift at Anheuser Busch.

  “It’s Bernie,” Angela says, not wanting to say much because she’s right in the middle of Oprah and the transvestites.

  “So what the hell’s the matter with him? He got his dick caught in the silverware drawer again?” Bud is almost shouting now because the noise of Bernie, from the kitchen, is rising in volume.

  “He’s being a car alarm,” Angela says, waving her hand to shush Bud. One of the transvestites, in a gold lamé floor-length dress slit to the thigh, is starting to tell his story and he’s so beautiful, she just has to hear how it all came to happen this way for him.