League of Lilith, The: A thriller with soul

by Sugrue, Rosalie

  There is an adjusting of body and bedding. “My earliest memories are of my brother … all my early memories centre on Chris. We were sent to the first home together. He was a couple of years older than me — a rough little bugger.” He says it with a sort of warmth that Pauline takes as affection. Fish stares at the panelled ceiling and shudders inwardly at the violence his seven-year-old brother was capable of. Pauline doesn’t see his face twitch. “Dunno how long that one lasted but we went to another family in Greymouth. I guess we were moved because of Chris, he gave the other kids hell. When the foster parents got fed up we got moved on.”

  His mind darts to the era when he was the one left to absorb Chris’s explosion of rage, and he senses now, as he did then, the foster parents’ relief that it wasn’t their own children taking the hostility Chris dished up. These thoughts he doesn’t disclose. Pauline waits patiently. “I guess I was around eight when the fourth or fifth Grey family finally got it sussed they would never be able to sort out Chris.”

  Memory stirs a cauldron of murky incidents, from threats whispered in his almost sleeping ears, to being bullied into doing things he didn’t want to do and being blamed for things he didn’t do — and how being punished for Chris’s crimes was a better option than being punished by Chris. A distinct incident bubbles to the surface: looking straight into ten-year-old eyes and begging, begging, pleading for mercy, nearly suffocating on his cries for Chris to stop. Chris didn’t know how to stop. All Fish says is, “They sent Chris away somewhere,” and blinks at the moisture sitting in the outer corner of each eye.

  His voice makes Pauline think of paper being slowly scrunched. There is a tightening in her chest and something expands uncomfortably in her throat. Instinctively, she shuts her eyes and wonders if she will regret asking about his childhood. “Did you know where they sent him?”

  “Must have been some kind of borstal type institution for out of control kids — he sent me a birthday card for my ninth birthday. It was made with macaroni stuck onto cardboard. I kept it for years. It was the only time he wrote. He died in prison aged 19. Anyway, I dunno how I felt when he left me in Greymouth.”

  Fish feels a narrow streak of coolness slide down his hot face. He didn’t know how he felt, he couldn’t verbalise it then or now, but he does remember the crying, inconsolable crying, for weeks, in the house, at school, at rugby practice, and eventually only in the house because he was too wrecked to go anywhere.

  “Foster-home life got a bit easier after Chris went but the system is far from perfect. I’d passed through three or four more families by the time I was 14. Most of them good people I suppose, trying to do their best for this wretched, skinny little bugger. I fell in love with every mother, but never managed to let them know that I loved them.”

  The silence stretches as Fish remembers messing up, dropping things, losing things, breaking things, being the fault in every home. “Thank God I was never a bed wetter, lots of the foster kids were.” Flashes of different women bounce in his head, women coaxing and coercing, women shouting and slapping, women losing their rag and crying their mothering failings to their husbands and the husbands teaching him a lesson.

  “I missed each family when I was moved on. Every house had its own horrors but leaving was worse.” The unknown ahead was pure terror. He briefly visits his 11-year-old self considering suicide and not knowing how to pull it off. God, you’re getting morbid. Pull yourself together. “It wasn’t all bad, there were fun times and well intentioned folk who tried to be kind.” Fish realises with a gulp of surprise, the dominant recollection of his childhood is tears — his own and those of the people he disappointed. He should stop this right now, but he can’t, he’s never told this stuff to anyone.

  “My life changed at age 12. Her name was Nadia. She went to a private school, her folks were quite well off, lived here in Christchurch, not sure how I ended up over here, maybe the Coast had run out of families who would take a terror like me. Well, Nadia was 15 and had lost a younger brother to asthma a year earlier. Her parents were strict church folk, Baptist. Rigid as bloody flagpoles those Baptists.” Pauline’s hand gently massages his tight stomach. “While the parents were busy trying to save my soul, Nadia accepted me as I was. She talked to me like no one had ever talked to me and I adored her for it. Of course, this saga has a bloody tragic end. Do you really want to hear it?”

  “Don’t leave me dangling, Fish. Endings are important. Besides, I want to understand the things that made you the man you are.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The lovely Nadia used to slip out at night. I was on to that pretty fast. One night I followed her. At 12 I had no fashion sense but I knew the gear she had on was not what a 15-year-old Baptist lass should be wearing. I discover she’s into nightclubbing. Opposite the club is this burnt-out shop. I could get in round the back and climb to the second floor. There was this boarded up window where I could watch the street through the gaps. After a while I see her go off with this boyfriend who is years older than her. I followed her pretty much every Friday night for a couple of months. I could tell she was drinking too much or had got into drugs or something. Being there it felt like I was protecting her. I knew that guy was up to no good. Finally I had it out with her, told her that I knew about her Friday nights and I would tell her parents because that bloke was bad. She was furious. It was none of my retarded 12-year-old business and if I ever breathed a word of her nights out she would say I had been touching her cunt and I would be sent to prison. She didn’t talk to me for ages after that. Her parents didn’t notice. They were having their own problems. The death of their only son to asthma had driven a wedge between them that the Baptist God couldn’t budge. And once again I’m thinking I must be the problem. Then Nadia tells me she’s pregnant and is having an abortion. She has the money but needs my help. I had to wait for her at this place and get her home. She was real sick and nearly fainting. Her parents were out and I got her to bed.” He shakes Pauline’s grip and brings his hands to his face to smother the memory that won’t be smothered. “The damn abortion killed her. She died that night, bled to death. The parents knew I had something to do with it and jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

  Pauline holds his silence in the hand that creeps back to hers. “Guess that was as bad as things got,” he concludes.

  “Oh my poor darling,” murmurs the woman who loves him now.

  “I was moved on, of course, but one day Nadia’s mum came to see me. She came to my room and talked quietly for a few minutes. Said her husband had taken his own life. Then she attacked me, tried to kill me, or so it seemed. She rained blows, kicks, and scratches. It seemed like a reasonable response. It hospitalised me. It hospitalised her too, but a different sort of hospital.”

  Pauline is not afraid of terrible things. Terrible things happen and the terrible needs to be told. But the aftermath of terror is not a place to dwell. She must move him on. “When did things start to look up for you, lover?”

  “Aged 14,” he responds confidently. “I got a summer job as a shed hand. They made me a rousie, turns out I was a natural at throwing a fleece. It was five-thirty start and a nine-hour working day. Some of those guys sheared a regular 200 sheep a day in their stinking black woollen singlets and sacking moccasins. The ringer made a point of doing more. Hard men, all of them, but they were the most comfortable folks I’d ever come across. And those bloody, stinking sheds and the freezing shearers’ quarters the best accommodation ever. I still love those places. The blokey-ness is real special. What’s more, the women know their place — feed the workers and clean up.”

  Pauline gives him a thump in the solar plexus.

  “By 15 I was full-time on the gangs and between seasons I mustered, cut hay or whatever. Fancied meself as a regular cocky. I met good bastards and bad bastards but on the whole they were bloody good blokes. Some had wives they returned to, some lived on the job. The landowner was the law and the ganger, the head shearer, was the boss. The graf
ters had their own code: it boiled down to don’t be too loud or too quiet, don’t be too proud or too modest, keep a low profile. Religious, robber or rapists, it didn’t matter. If you didn’t rock the gang boat, the gang looked after you. I fitted that sort of living. It suited me right down to my new boots, paid for with me own money. I made sure I never raised an eyebrow in any direction. Past life and past crimes didn’t count if you got on with the job. The only exception was that you couldn’t hurt a kid. This was a mystery to me. Some of those blokes had kids they totally neglected but if it came out some guy had ‘hurt’ a kid he was put off. Turns out, ‘hurting a kid’ meant fucking them. Those shearing gangs were the first real family I ever knew.

  “Of course, by the time I’m a randy 18 I meet Jemima, daughter of a wealthy cocky. He owned half the bloody McKenzie Basin. I fell for Jemima hook, line, and sinker. She dropped out of uni and spirited me back to the West Coast to live in a commune, north of Westport. The next couple of years were a blur of vegetables, acid, sex, and the teachings of guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Jemima eventually got a bit clingy and I was pleased to off-load her on a chap with a hoity-toity accent. He was keen to score a large slice of her father’s cake so returned her to daddy. As for me, I enjoyed the easy access to available women. Discovered I was good at sketching and they were queuing up to be my life models. Accelerated from the reclining nude stuff to some rather creative action poses. The guru didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all, and suggested I move on. I saw the possibility of a future in art so I actually committed to earning some dough and doing a course at art school. Did a psych paper while I was about it. But I quit, study wasn’t my thing and … city life was getting uncomfortable. It seems I’d fathered a couple of kids to different women. So I returned to the Coast.”

  “And that’s when you met Katrina’s mother?” Pauline asks softly.

  “Yeah, met at an art fair up Barrytown way.” Fish smiles at the memory. “Fair knocked me socks off she did, and I knocked her off and all. My Irish Kathleen took me home to Ross. Not only was she a great looker she was a damn good potter. We lived in a caravan. After a while linked up with other arty types and settled into a free and easy commune of struggling artists. Then Kathleen fell pregnant.”

  She fell pregnant! You had nothing to do with it? Pauline keeps her thoughts to herself.

  “I’d told her I wasn’t the marrying kind, right at the start.” His tone is defensive. “I saw her through the pregnancy but I knew I’d make a crap father. So I moved on, back over the hill. And that’s enough goddamn story-telling for a hundred nights.”

  Pauline nuzzles against the wetness of his cheek. His instinct is to recoil but her nuzzling is nice. A defence response tells him he should roll her over for another round. What the hell are you trying to prove? There is no fooling a witch, not one like Pauline. Hidden pain is an open book. Besides, he doesn’t want another root, he feels drained, exhausted. God damn it, I must be getting old. Passing up on seconds for sleep!

  ~ ~ ~ | ~ ~ ~

  20 — Gomer

  Thursday, 4 June

  Sarai has moved from cotton and silk kaftans to high-necked, flowing gowns of velvet. Her air is regal as she surveys her final class of the first semester. “During this course we have looked at a sample of women mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures. We have noted that women in scripture are systematically denied voice. Our reading has been a reading of gaps and silences, a feminist reading under girded by a hermeneutic of suspicion. Only by so reading can we find understanding of what it may have been like for women in their circumstances. But the exercise has more importance than merely seeking to understand how it was for ancient women. Our material comes from what we term Holy Scripture and as such has shaped concepts of right and wrong for centuries. Most Hebrew scripture was written through a patriarchal lens. Marriage in ancient Israel was not a partnership of equals and thus these scriptures reinforce the ancient cultural perceptions. Nowhere is this portrayed more vividly than in the 14 chapters known to us as Hosea. Ms Finley, what can you tell us about Hosea?”

  “He was a minor prophet who lived in the eighth century BCE,” obliges Rochelle, ever reliable with pre-lecture required reading. “It was a time of political unrest just before the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 721 BCE.”

  “Exemplary, Ms Finley. Ms Wakelin, you may be able to share with us the general theme of the minor prophets?”

  The Goth stirs herself to a look of half-interest. “They urged repentance and prophesied doom and gloom.”

  Sarai awards a brief nod and continues. “Though written in the typical punitive genre of the Minor Prophets, Hosea has an individual slant. It suggests that God/Yahweh has the possession and control over Israel that a husband has over a wife. Hosea implies that the male nurtures the female and females cannot be trusted. But it gets worse, much worse. It is a text of violence against women and children.”

  Philippa raises her hand.

  “You have a comment, Ms Tombs?

  “I don’t see how you can say that. Hosea is illustrating the love of God, likening God to a loving husband who takes his wife back after she has sinned.” Philippa fails to keep the anger out of her voice.

  “Let me explain, Ms Tombs. The voice of the narrator is fused with the voice of God and his prophet, seducing the unwary. Hosea’s underlying concern is to contrast Yahweh’s positive male fidelity with Israel’s negative female harlotry. In so doing he introduces themes of degradation to females and denies their positive role in reproduction and nurturance. God’s image as husband in this writing is that of abusive husband.” Sarai surveys the faces turned toward her. “Any further comments?”

  “Your opinions are only that, opinions,” flashes Philippa.

  “If you read the supporting texts, Ms Tombs, you would see many fine minds share these opinions you suggest are mine.”

  Hana raises a hand. “Gomer behaved disgracefully. Are you condoning prostitution?”

  “As feminist scholars are quick to point out, Hosea chose Gomer to wife because she was a harlot. She kept nothing hidden from him.” Sarai moves behind the large desk. “In the first chapter of the book of Hosea his wife Gomer conceived and bore a daughter.” Sarai reaches under the desk and pulls out a life-sized baby doll wearing a pink gown. She cradles it in her arms and talks to it. “My lovely girl, flesh of my flesh, my joy, my delight, each finger perfect, each toe a thing of beauty.” She kisses the toes.

  “It looks so damn real,” whispers Kat. Jen is gazing enchanted.

  “Hosea’s God demands the baby be named Not Pitied.” Sarai pauses, watching the confused expressions as this sinks in. “When Gomer had weaned Not Pitied, she conceived and bore a son.” Sarai gently places the pink-clad baby on top of the desk and draws out another. She holds the doll dressed in blue level with her eyes and declares, “A son, my husband’s desire, great rejoicing for the whole family.” She cuddles the babe against her shoulder and gently pats his back before rocking him in her arms and continuing the story. “Hosea’s God demands this child be cursed with the name Not My People.” The students look uncomfortable. “The cult of Yahweh did not meet all spiritual needs.”

  “Cult!” The word spits from Philippa’s lips as involuntary as ejecting a mouthful of poison.

  “You will remember, Ms Tombs, there was a time when the Ashera was worshipped in the temple and represented beyond by poles and green trees. The women baked cakes for the Queen of Heaven and honoured her new moon Sabbats. A god who delights in blood offerings is unlikely to win the hearts and souls of those women.”

  Philippa folds her arms, knocking a pen to the floor.

  “Toward the end of the book ascribed to the prophet Hosea are these words, I am the lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, you know no God but me. Yahweh speaks verses extolling himself and making threats to those who choose other Gods, finishing with, Samaria shall bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the swo
rd, their little ones shall be dashed to pieces.” Sarai spins on her heel and flings the baby in blue against the block wall. It falls with a sickening thud. Before the class can recover the pink baby is held high and dashed to the floor.

  For a long minute there is not a sound in the room. “Beware of believing every word of the Bible as sacred and inerrant. Critique everything you read.” No one flexes as much as a finger-joint. “Despite the violence Hosea is so fond of describing,” Sarai continues, in a change of tone that permits the class to relax, “sprinkled sparsely, but rich in feminine imagery, is a vision of peace and healing, a radical revisioning of the divine in its relationship to the world. Perhaps the abused wife was able to influence her husband’s writings. The concluding words of Hosea’s scroll speak of a God who is like an evergreen cypress, and concludes with those who are wise understand these things. I suggest to you that this is a coded message.”

  Her eyes glide the rows in a leisurely fashion but pause long enough to prompt Darlene to turn pink. Jen and Kat simultaneously find a need to check their notes.

  “I wish you well in your exams,” concludes Sarai. “As you prepare, consider: whose story is told, whose agenda is fulfilled, which characters are disapproved of by the narrator. Bear in mind: who speaks? Who sees? Who acts? Whose interest is being served?”

  ~ ~ ~ | ~ ~ ~

  Jen and Kat trail behind a group of their classmates. It is Darlene’s idea that they have an end-of-term coffee at the Alibi. Sarai emerges from her office as they troop by. “Jen and Kat, just a minute, please.”