COMMUNE OF WOMEN

by SUZAN STILL

  She squeezes the trigger.

  The first of the Brothers falls.

  She steps out from behind the wall.

  She aims and fires again, and again.

  Before they even know what has happened to them, Najat’s Brothers have found their reward in Glory.

  Ondine

  When it finally comes, it’s too chaotic to understand. It’s all noise and shouting and crashing. Ondine holds onto Betty, as if she could keep them both from exploding from terror.

  The drink machine topples inward and a rush of outside light spotlights Sophia, as the falling machine pushes her from her stand at the door. She’s screaming, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

  She staggers backward to plunk down in the orange chair, as the invading force bursts in with an explosion of gunfire.

  They come charging through the door, as if the machine were not even there. There are blinding lights and all Ondine can see are silhouettes surging through billows of shifting dust.

  “Get down!” she screams at Sophia.

  But Ondine doesn’t know if she does because, suddenly, there is a huge man standing in front of her. He’s got a headlamp on and it’s shining right in her face and she hears herself shrieking, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! God! Please, don’t shoot!”

  There is shouting and screaming all around her. She glances around in panic, but all she can see are standing walls of backlit dust and huge black figures careening through them, casting blue-white beams as they go.

  It’s a scene from Dante’s Inferno. She lowers her head onto her knees and waits to die.

  Betty

  As they come through the door, the angel’s arms hold her tighter.

  Betty’s screaming, “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Help us. Please!”

  And wonder of wonders – she starts to laugh because she said “us” and not “me”!

  Can you believe it?

  It took all this to open her shell!

  She thinks she’s pooped her pants – like any new creature would.

  She’s about to die and she feels unaccountable joy!

  Heddi

  She’s lying with her head in Matilda’s lap and Matilda is crooning to her. She feels comforted. The dream is subsiding. Order is being restored.

  No. That’s not right.

  She’s on the floor and riot is going on all around her.

  “OW!” Someone steps on her foot, hard.

  Heddi sits up, enraged.

  “You son of a bitch!” she shrieks. “Watch where you’re stepping!”

  And then, there’s a blinding light in her eyes and someone is kneeling next to her; someone huge and padded, like a hockey player or a large beetle.

  “Sorry, m’am,” a baritone voice says. It sounds young and genuinely apologetic. “Are you okay?”

  Heddi looks blindly into his headlamp, in the general vicinity of where she thinks his eyes should be and summons her most ironic and bitichiest tone.

  “Oh! Never better!”

  Pearl

  Well, the Good Lord done give Pearl a long life an a passel a trouble. She’s been round the Horn seven times, seen it rain, sleet an snow, been ta ten goat ropins an a hog-callin contest, but she ain’t never seen the lak a this!

  All hell and tarnation done sprung loose everwhar!

  Theys all these big fellers trampin ever which way, raisin dust an flashin lights ta blind the dead.

  That Heady, she’s a feisty one. She’s a-reamin out some young buck big as a buffalo an he’s back peddlin, even though he’s big enough ta squish her lak a ant.

  Over thar, in t’other corner, theys the Onion, cradlin Betty lak a baby. An Pearl cain’t believe these ol eyes a hers, but she thinks Betty’s a-laughin!

  Maybe her poor ol brain finally done tripped over the edge. None a this seems lak it cain really be happenin.

  The only one calm is Sophia, which ain’t no surprise. She’s a-settin thar jes waitin fer the pandemonium ta die down. That thar is a gal ta be stranded on a desert island with, jes lak she says bout Pearl.

  From what Pearl cain gather, they has jes done been rescued. These here fellers ain’t the tearists. Theys the good guys.

  Soons she cain catch her breath, she intends ta ax em what the hell took em so long.

  Najat

  They are treating her like a hero!

  They have believed everything she has told them. It amazes her, how easily lies come to her lips. She, a good Moslem woman, and she speaks these things as if they were Allah’s truth. How devious the mind and body of humankind are! Is there ever a bottom to their will to deception?

  The women have helped her dress. They’ve hidden her black fatigues and guns. They are afraid that the SWAT team, when it comes, will shoot first and ask questions later.

  They believe Najat when she tells them that she took clothing from a dead terrorist in order to do what she has done. They fuss over her because her head wound is still bleeding and she is feeling faint.

  Now, she is not just a liar with a ravenous stomach and a weak bladder, but a murderer, too.

  But she will not stop now. She knows, now, what is her mission.

  Outside somewhere, very close, is the one who led them astray. They blamed Father Christopher and the Imam, but Najat alone knows the truth. That one in the FBI jacket who speaks on television as the leader – he is the one who planned this entire catastrophe.

  She has no doubt that he is enjoying this event. He does not care about the lives that are lost or the damage that has been done to the living. He cares that his plan has succeeded. He cares that his pride is magnified. Maybe he cares that he has done the bidding of another, even higher than he.

  She carries, now, a dead woman’s purse. In it, she has her handgun.

  She is not herself any longer. Jamal is dead and, with him, she has died, too. Now she is only the warrior-woman, Najat.

  She will find that man. And she will kill him.

  Heddi

  The daylight, when they come out of the building, has faded to dusk – which is a good thing because even the low light is blinding after so long in the room. The electric blue dome of the sky seems immense and even the smoggy old Los Angeles air flows into Heddi’s lungs like a freshet.

  Her legs were so wobbly they wanted to put her in a wheelchair, but she refused. So here she is, emerging on the arm of the same young officer who almost crushed her ankle.

  He can’t apologize enough, but frankly if he’d cut the damned thing off, it would have been worth it.

  She can’t believe the nightmare’s over!

  Over to her left, there’s a smoky crater where the bomb went off. Her escort – Curt is his name – says one of the terrorists did a suicide bombing. He says they don’t know yet how many people are dead but probably quite a few FBI types and some news people. He’s quite chatty, is Curt, once his testosterone subsides.

  Heddi feels unaccountably gay and blithe.

  Down at the end of the walk, she sees a mob of news people. There are lights and microphones and cameras – and they’re all aimed at her.

  At them – the others are hobbling out behind her.

  Can you believe it – her fifteen seconds of fame and she looks like this! She smoothes her hair with a trembling hand.

  Betty

  Thank God they offered her a wheelchair so she can sit on this ooze, instead of having it run down her legs! She can smell herself and it’s embarrassing.

  But when they come out of the building, the smell of burning – what? Wood? Plastics? Flesh? Maybe all of the above – hits Betty hard. On her left, a smoking hole still has little fires burning in the bottom of it, like one of the pits of Hell. Firefighters are swarming all over it.

  How could she even worry about her puny concerns? She’s alive! And there are so many who aren’t.

  Up ahead, Heddi is limping along on the arm of one of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. They’re chatting as if they were at a garden party.
Even filthy, limping and disheveled, Heddi moves like a princess.

  Betty guesses they teach you that early on in families like hers.

  Families...will all their families be waiting? It’s too much to imagine that Betty’s will be.

  Imagine the families of those who were killed today! They’ll wait and wait and their loved ones will never come home. It’s too terrible!

  Heddi turns back toward her and calls gaily, “Smile, Betty, you’re on Candid Camera!”

  Up ahead there’s a solid wall of media people. To Betty’s exhausted eyes, they look like a medieval mob armed with pitchforks.

  “Isn’t there some way to avoid this?” she asks over her shoulder to the officer pushing the chair.

  He doesn’t even answer. Maybe he doesn’t hear her. Maybe he just thinks that, in a free nation, victims must be re-victimized by the press. Maybe he’s thinking about his dead comrades. Anyway, he keeps on pushing her inexorably toward the mob.

  They’re almost there when she hears a voice yelling, “Betty! Betty!”

  She’d know that voice anywhere!

  She scans the crowd up ahead. Suddenly, she sees him! He’s pressed up against a low retaining wall that divides a ratty little garden of shrubs and grasses from a parking lot.

  “LARRY!” she screams. But it’s not really a scream – it’s more like a great rosebud of sound unfurling from her, opening its petals like moist, welcoming arms.

  He vaults over the wall and comes running down the walkway full bore, even though the officer walking with Heddi holds out a restraining arm. Larry just dodges around him and keeps running, shouting, “Betty! My God, Betty!” and he’s close enough now that she can see he’s streaming with tears.

  And only then does she put her head down on her chest and sob for joy.

  Ondine

  The HRT officer is very nice and Ondine thinks he’s still trailing along behind to make sure she doesn’t collapse in a heap, but she wants to walk out of the terminal under her own steam.

  She must look like a refugee from the Blitz.

  The evening wind swirls around her, as she starts up the walk, lifting her auburn hair out around her in a Medusa’s aura.

  Has she reached the age when she actually can turn men to stone with a glance? If so, this is the moment to test it out.

  A mash of media forms an impenetrable wall up ahead and Heddi and Betty are heading toward it, but Ondine just has to stop and look around.

  There are some big bunches of grass waving in the wind, making a seething sound like water boiling. There’s a deep hole on her left that’s filled with shattered, completely unrecognizable debris that is still fluttering with weak flame despite the fire hoses aimed at it.

  The sky is that brilliant, unearthly, Maxfield Parrish blue that comes sometimes on a fair evening after the heat of the day subsides.

  She takes a deep breath and even though it’s tainted with smoke and smog, the air tastes like champagne.

  She feels completely ungrounded, as if her feet could lift off and she could soar away on the wind like Mary Poppins.

  I’m alive! I lived!

  God alone knows how or why.

  But it’s true.

  The media frenzy up ahead doesn’t faze her. She doesn’t expect Kyle – or God forbid, Richard – to be here. But if they are, that’s fine, too.

  Her soul has already left the scene. It’s gone on ahead and is already roaming Tante Collete’s garden, pruning shears in hand, or sitting at the piano in the music room picking out a Chopin waltz, or bundled up, striding into the wild wind on the beach.

  There is where her mallets are and her chisels, her pots of pigment and her sable brushes. The stone studio sits empty, like a temple awaiting its Muse.

  The first thing she wants to do, though, is find whatever’s blooming – Christmas rose, maybe, or even just holly berries – and place it at the foot of the fauntain at the demoiselle’s doorstep.

  She will never understand why she was spared when so many have died. All she knows is she’s going to take her life in her arms and make love to it. She’s going to paint it in all the colors of the rainbow, and sculpt it so that even when she’s long gone, the evidence of her soul’s passion for life will endure.

  So help me God, I will never...NEVER...take this life for granted again!

  Pearl

  Well, the Lord giveth an the Lord taketh away, her Granny use ter say. They ain’t no accountin fer the ways a the Lord, He that dwelleth in Mystery an Mat.

  But this here, somehow, it jes don’t seem fair. A body’s got ter rail at the Almaty over this.

  Thar she sets, upright as a post, stronger then three oxes.

  Pearl cain’t hardly look on her. But she’s gotta cuz the others has done gone an went an Pearl’s the only one left.

  “Oh, Honey, I’m jes gonna pat yer hair inta place a bit. Wipe that blood from yer cheek.

  “How beautiful you look...jes lak one a them statues out in front a the justice court.

  “I wish it woulda been me. Hell! I’m older then dirt an meaner then a box a snakes. Ain’t no reason, no how, that I should live an you not. The Lord’s sent me many a mystery in this long life, but this here one is mysterious beyond all get-out.

  “Theys sayin I gots ta go now, Honey. The others has done gone and went, and I sure hate ta have ta tell em what’s befallen you. I sure hates ta leave you, but I don’t suppose it’ll be long fore we meet again. The Good Lord cain’t be stern enough ta keep me here much longer. He’s meant ta be a just God. A kind God, or so they say.

  “They’s out in the hall, the one what done it an his boss, an that poor kid’s gettin the reamin-out a his lifetime! He’s blubberin an sayin he thought you was a tearist cuz yer so big. He’s cryin lak a baby, sayin it ain’t natural, a woman being so large. Huh! What d’ya suppose he knows, anyways, bout what’s natural in a woman?

  “They’s packin that colored gal off now. They say she’s alive – an that’s all yer doin. She’d be long gone, if’n it warn’t fer you.

  “Honey, you done nothin but give us all gifts an now, I’ll be damned if’n you din’t give me one more. I gots mah tears back. An from the feel a thins, they’s back in Spades.

  “The Lord bless you, Girl. Let a kiss from these poor, withered ol lips send you off ta Paradise whar the Lord knows you belong.”

  Sophia

  It’s a firefight. Automatic weapons fire on all sides, rattling off ammo in a steady chatter. A tree on her right is engulfed in flames and birds are screaming, as they flap chaotically out of the fire, their feathers burning.

  Over the roar of battle, she can hear John’s voice like a buoy clanging in a storm: “To me, men! This way! Take cover over here!” And she sees the men crouching toward him, firing as they go.

  And so does she. She’s drawn to his voice like iron filings to a magnet. In spite of bullets and mortars, it’s the embodiment of warmth, the haven of her soul.

  She crawls the last few yards, a hail of bullets whizzing over her like angry hornets. She can see him there, hunkered behind a fallen log.

  He turns and sees her. A look of shock and joy convulses his face. He mouths, “What the hell...?” and Sophia grins.

  Surprise!

  Their eyes lock, as she crawls the last few feet and then she’s in his arms and he’s holding her so tightly that she can barely breathe. And she sees with amazement that he has a bullet hole right through the center of his forehead, just like hers. She puts her finger up to it and touches it just to make sure.

  “You, too?”

  “Me, too.”

  His arms hold her tighter. She feels she could simply melt into him like butter into toast.

  “What do we do now?” She’s getting confused.

  Everything is whirling around and even the ground underneath her is heaving, as if to throw them off.

  “Let’s blow this place. The party’s getting rough,” John says. “What d’ya say?” She looks up at hi
m, trusting as a child.

  Sophia nods dumbly, then whimpers, “But what about the enemy?”

  “The enemy?” He looks at her with puzzlement.

  “Yes. You know – the enemy? The Cong?”

  “Oh,” he says in dawning understanding. “Oh Honey... there’s no enemy. It’s just...just...” He waves his hand vaguely at the blaze of battle. “Just a bunch of men, fighting.”

  He stands and pulls her up after him. The entire jungle glade is a chaos of sound and fire and lethal projectiles. He points to their left. “Let’s go that way.”

  And they walk away hand in hand, completely unscathed.

  Once they’re in a quieter spot, he stops and pulls her to him. “God! I’ve missed you!”

  And he kisses her and there is no end to it. They seem to just spiral out into space, locked together, their two hearts fusing like two pieces of molten metal.

  “Where are we going?” she gasps when they come up for air.

  “Where else, darlin’?” His eyes are full of mischief and he smiles that smile. “Let’s go home!”

  Acknowledgements

  First & foremost, my thanks to Lou Aronica, publisher of the Fiction Studio imprint, whose vision & courage have made this book possible.

  Also, thank you from my heart to:

  My husband, David Roberson, the most multi-faceted, energetic & conscious person I know, who has loved, supported & encouraged me in more ways than I can count; my parents, Abram & Marjorie Still, for gifting me the mountain; Glenn Taylor, whose trust & belief have been transformative; poet Roxanne Williams, whose A Gossamer Heart is winging healing around the world, for the loan of Andrew the Book Angel; Reggie Kramer, whose creative fire lights up the darkest places; Fur Children Lilli, Sophia, Panda, Misha, Teddy, & Persephone, for taking me for my daily walks; Javier Aguirre for 30 years of dance, song, harassment, laughter & adventure – no hay palabras; the Dream Girls, Sandy Alarcon, Gael Amend, Debbie Dodge & Pam Marino, for demonstrating that a loving, supportive commune of women is possible; Greg Ford, for courage in honoring the Geneva Conventions even when his government didn’t; James Hillman, whose archetypal understanding opens a view of patterns underlying life’s seeming chaos; astrologer Laurence Hillman, for challenging me to create something solid that I could throw at him--this book is the result; Charles Ladley, who taught me the outhouse trick & shared his grandmother; Madniz, great captive spirit & poet, for demonstrating that nothing can destroy the power & sanctity of the human soul; Cheryl Fitzpatrick Keegan, who danced with the fairies--Godspeed, darling; Kathy Meyer, whose How to Shit in the Woods first showed me that a woman can succeed in writing; Susanne Nishino, who loves this Earth with such passion; Ralph Squire, President of the Subtle Energy Research Institute (SERI), for his fearless quest into the space where religion & science meet; Melanie Stewart, for teaching this old dog new media tricks; Carolyn Takhar, my one, only & favorite sister, whose Tibetan Life Spring brings healing to the planet; Johanna Treichler, whose generosity will never be forgotten; John Van Dam, for his intelligence & his patience; Mary Christmas Van Winkle, one of the last to remember the old Miwuk ways & songs--fly with the spirits of the wind; Joan Wade, whose beauty, intelligence and chic are only surpassed by her steadfastness as a friend; Wang Kai, shining light in China; Hope Werness, companion in creative overload; & to Jean Ashford, Jack Avery, Barbara Baer, John & Tita Barnett, Vonna Breeze-Martin. Sylvie Carnot, Mary Clan-cy, Sarah Coehlo Webster, Ann Coyle, Carol Culpepper, Brian Fowlie, Dorothy Heron, Sister Mary Sean Hodges, Christie Holliday, Judie Kavanaugh, Carole & Amber Logue, Marcella Sirhandi & Kathleen & Sally – there’s always a space in my heart for you; also, to Barbara Aronica Buck, who made the creation of this book’s cover a joyful process; Meryl Moss of Meryl Moss Media Relations; M.J. Rose of Author Buzz; & award-winning photographer Robert White.