Rainbow Gap

by Lee Lynch

  The women looked at one another. Cullie plucked a flea from her dog, studied it, and cracked it dead.

  Donna declared, “It is your cause, Berry. You’re a woman like her, like us, aren’t you?”

  This made her think of Jaudon, who was so often not recognized as a woman. She and Jaudon didn’t have to worry about children or getting sterilized and they expected the state wouldn’t let them adopt.

  Yet, a desire to help came naturally. “Why does the gosh-darned government do these things to people? Wouldn’t it be smarter to sterilize the men?”

  “Exactly Allison’s point,” said Perfecta.

  Mercie said, “You’re willing to meet Allison, aren’t you?”

  “Of course, but…”

  “We’ll talk more.” Donna changed the subject.

  Samantha got her aside as they readied to leave and asked how she could be a nurse and not want to help Allison. Berry escaped outdoors.

  On the porch Perfecta lifted her graceful arms to the sky. “Look at this sunset, burning yellow with pink around it. Like it’s pulling a blanket over the sun to go to sleep.”

  Berry touched Perfecta’s arm. “You should be a poet.”

  Perfecta made a soft tee-hee sound. “When the kids are in school, I do housework and make up a few words.” Perfecta indicated Mercie beside her. “Mercie puts the words to music on her guitar.”

  “You’ll both play for us sometime?”

  “Oh, I hope you will,” said Judy Fish. “And, Berry, I love the bottle tree out there. So colorful.” She was pointing to a sun-silvered cedar snag left standing, its shortened branches adorned with all manner of bottles.

  Samantha said, “So pagan.”

  “The Vickers always have bottle trees,” Berry said, trying to ignore Samantha. “The bottles capture any evil spirits that might come their way.”

  Samantha gave an exaggerated shudder and backed away. “Why think about evil spirits?”

  Cullie stayed on the porch and whispered, “I spotted the other bottle trees out back. I wouldn’t live in a place without one. Growing up, our driveway was lined with three. That’s my favorite.” She pointed to a tree Bat had adorned with beer bottles and, separately, their caps.

  “My housemate’s brother was only twelve and claimed he took the beer bottles from someone’s trash.”

  Cullie winked. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

  Kirby made a mess down on the ground. Cullie kicked it under the porch on her way to a worse-for-the-wear Chevy pickup. This woman is pure country, Berry thought.

  Cullie blew an air kiss and said, “Smooch!” The dog sat on her lap as Cullie wrestled the steering wheel, backed out to Pineapple Trail, and crept onto Eulalia Road, forcing a man in a station wagon to brake behind her. The driver, in his wide-brimmed hat, looked so much like Eddie Dill, Berry thought it was him for a second. He needed to get shut up in a bottle.

  Berry was late to studying so put off talking to Jaudon and Gran about the Millar woman. Would the Vicker property be at risk if a federal fugitive was caught on their land? Could Bat be forced out of the military? Would she, Berry, be arrested and denied a nursing license?

  She considered avoiding the group outside of class, but that wasn’t her way. She owed Allison Millar, a braver woman than she was. The question was, how much did she owe her?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jaudon hadn’t been around enough that week for Berry to talk with her about the fugitive, and the women were pushing for an answer, so she agreed to meet this Allison person with the group.

  Between classes one day, Berry made room for herself in the front seat of Cullie’s pickup. Cullie was in the truck bed. Donna drove them over the trolley tracks into the Ybor City section of Tampa. They were spiriting Allison out of the redbrick boarded-up cigar factory where she was hiding.

  Berry looked at the truck seat, wondering where they would put the woman.

  “We have it covered,” Cullie said through the open rear window from the canopy. “You stay put and act innocent if we get stopped and you’ll be okay.”

  “Where’s your dog?

  “My precious coconut? I didn’t want to put her in danger.”

  Berry considered the danger they wanted to put her family in.

  Cullie seemed to read her mind again. “People can take care of themselves when bad stuff happens. What would my helpless animal do without me?”

  “Heck, I’d take her.” Berry had no doubt the handsome Westie was trainable. Zefer would help. Better Kirby than a radical.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Cullie told her.

  Donna’s voice was small and tight. “Here we are.” She pulled into an alleyway and stopped on the far side of a loading dock.

  Cullie looked at Berry, her eyes, for the moment, humorless. Forehead wrinkled, Donna nodded. Without unnecessary sound, Cullie opened the canopy and dropped the tailgate. “Stay put, you two.”

  “You’d think she was talking to her dog,” Donna said.

  From the extended side-view mirror she watched Cullie run, bent at the waist, and vault to the metal door of the loading dock. She raised and lowered it real quick. As soon as Berry looked away the truck bobbed down. She heard two thuds and the tailgate latch. Donna accelerated to the end of the alley and kept to the speed limit as she left the city.

  Donna drove east up and down numbered county roads, making sure they weren’t followed, all the way out to Salem Church Road, north onto Old Lecoats Road. Berry fretted they were heading for Pineapple Trail. They didn’t go near it, yet ended up two miles away at the fancy manufactured home park south of Gran’s land. Donna punched in some numbers at the gate, drove through, backed into a driveway, and stopped at a triple-wide manufactured home on July Lake. “Look at these lawns,” said Berry. “Do they measure every stalk of grass and cut the blades with scissors?”

  Cullie grunted. “Northerners are so wasteful. Do you have any idea how much water the lawn must suck up?”

  The garage door opened. Three wood storks took flight at the sound, black faces a stark contrast to their white feathers.

  A grim Donna drove the truck inside. The small, insubstantial-looking fugitive jumped out of the back, followed by Cullie.

  “We should be filming this. It’s like a Mission Impossible show,” Berry said.

  Donna was already out of the truck. “Oh, sure. Let’s bring attention to ourselves so the authorities can arrest us all.”

  Startled by its loudness, Berry turned to see the garage door rolling down behind her. “Well, shut my mouth. I’ve never seen one of those electric garage doors in a private house before. These folks are living in high cotton.” It seemed fitting for a hideout; she expected they wouldn’t need the Vicker place.

  The living room was enclosed by windows on three sides, with views of the lake. What did they do in hurricanes? She answered herself: they paid someone to cover the windows with heaps of plywood. The fancy place was intimidating and she was as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

  Allison sat with her back to the panorama. Her eyebrows were drawn together and her eyes were on Cullie. She wore makeup. Cullie introduced her to Allison with a bow and a flourish of her hand.

  “You’ll be staying here until Berry opens her home to you,” Donna said.

  Berry couldn’t believe the nerve of Donna. “That hasn’t been decided yet. You couldn’t pry me out of this picture-perfect home if you sent in the Marines to get me.”

  “My aunt will be back Thursday. Allison has to leave before she gets home.”

  She looked toward the nasal voice. It was Larissa Hand, Larissa the kisser, smoking in one of those high-backed rattan armchairs. Her heart rate shot up and she forced herself to breathe again. This was where Jaudon’s brief temptation lived?

  Mercie said, “Berry, you haven’t met Lari yet. She’s been looking for a women’s group.”

  Berry was fit to be tied. She’d worked hard to forgive the treachery of this vixen,
yet she could not deny the bile of fury and hatred that filled her heart. She clamped her eyes shut and squeezed the pillow she held, afraid she would throw it at Lari. She eyed the table lamp next to her, a bigger temptation.

  And was this what Lari called a trailer park? It was an estate-like manufactured home community. The house was modern, elegant, the grounds kempt. Lari must think we’re bottom-dwellers.

  They glanced at each other. Donna asked Allison to tell her story. Cullie had disappeared.

  Allison sat back in her chair and looked up at Berry. There was a fierce, strong, and exhausted air about her, in her cheerful skirt of white and yellow checks, an embroidered white blouse, and a yellow headband holding back her straight, waist-length brown hair. Berry wondered how the woman kept so clean and neat on the run. She looked more like a young church mom than an agitator.

  Allison smoothed back her hair. “Did you know parts of Canada have forced sterilization programs today? Sweden and some US states too.” Her accent was in fact Georgia, thought Berry, but not country. “It’s the Native Americans, the people of color, the poor and undereducated who are targeted.”

  “The United States?” Berry didn’t believe her.

  Allison adjusted her hair band. “It’s one of the worst ways women are oppressed. I needed to start somewhere to educate the public. Puerto Rican women were once targets of compulsory sterilization in their own country and who knows if they still are.” She paused as if anticipating an argument. “Not for mental illness or birth defects or criminal behavior, but to keep the population down. I wanted to start by exposing what went on in Puerto Rico.”

  Berry was again by turns angry and hugely sympathetic. She didn’t understand why Allison hid. She resented sitting in the same room with Lari. She admired what the others called clitzpah, but she preferred the idea of changing the world quietly.

  “Can’t we make any decisions for ourselves? I don’t want to have kids, but that’s my choice.” Allison jabbed her own ribcage with an index finger. “Mine alone. Nurses in PR were trained for a while, as standard procedure after childbirth, to tie the tubes of any woman with two or more kids. A second physician checked to verify it was done. What an obscenity.”

  This wasn’t making sense to Berry, “Did you go into hiding to get support? Why not face the charges? They sound weak.”

  Allison looked at Donna. “Didn’t you tell her?”

  Donna looked flustered. “I wanted her to meet you first so she wouldn’t think you were some crazy radical.”

  “Are you leading me down a garden path?” Berry asked. “I don’t like this one bit. Cullie, you drive me home. Or I can walk from here.”

  “No,” said Donna. “The last thing we need is one of us getting raped out in an orange grove. Won’t you listen to Allison?”

  “I didn’t commit any crime, Berry. They started out charging me with impeding pedestrian traffic and I’m not big enough to impede anything by my lonesome.” Allison held her hands out, palms up, a hapless look on her face. She saw why Allison was admired: her passionate convictions and full-throated ardor cloaked her feminine slightness. “They’re trying to silence me by pinning a real crime on me.”

  As Berry listened, she caught Lari checking Allison out. The new woman did have a compelling combination of demure prettiness and adamant talk. Did she take drugs too?

  “The apartment I was crashing in was raided. The cops found bomb-making materials. I didn’t know the people and they were out of town. Yes, they’re nationalists and I sympathize with them, but I wasn’t one of them and armed struggle is not my thing. Armed snuggle is more my style.”

  The other women, never taking their eyes from Allison and her look of delight, chortled as one.

  This was very foreign to Berry. “You’re willing to spend the rest of your life hiding?”

  “Y’all won’t catch me going to jail for handing out educational flyers and sleeping on the floor. I’m a feminist and a lesbian, not a mad bomber.”

  “A lesbian?” Cullie was back from smoking a cigarette with a surprised smile on her face and in her eyes.

  “Didn’t I tell y’all? Is that a problem for you?”

  “Heck, no,” Cullie said. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I’ve been the state lesbian long enough, amiga.”

  Donna was squinting at them with what appeared to be horrified interest. Lari moved into Berry’s line of vision. Berry realized much of her anger came from Lari’s presence and this made her both hostile to and protective of Allison, who was such a small woman with such a big mind and heart, but also the reason she was in this uncomfortable place.

  “How long will you need to hide?”

  “To be honest, Berry? As long as it takes my lawyer to separate me from the bomb makers’ cases. The cops think I can lead them to their hideout. They don’t believe I know nothing.”

  “No timeline?”

  “More’s the pity, no,” Allison said. In a flash, her eyes got brighter and she spread her arms in excitement. “But if you’ll take me in for a while I’ll be so good to you. I’ll clean your house and feed your pets and mow your lawn if you have one. I’ll wash your car, your dishes, your dog. I am so tired of moving and moving. And so bored. I’m a nurse—I can write your school papers for you.”

  Berry raised her hands in amused surrender. “Enough of your monkeyshines.”

  No, Allison wasn’t a mad bomber, and she might be fun to have around. Allison made her want to smile and learn and talk about all this. She’d failed to awaken Jaudon’s interest in women’s rights. Allison was capable of converting a pack of good ole boys to feminism.

  “Do you have any idea how very much I miss the South?” said Allison. “Being back here is a relief that flows through my whole body.”

  Cullie’s arm was around Allison’s shoulders. “I think I love you, Little Miss Clitzpah.”

  Berry paused. Out of nowhere she found herself wanting Cullie to think she was a Miss Clitzpah too. She promised, “I’ll knock this around with my family.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jaudon was in pajamas when she got to the kitchen. Zefer leapt to greet her. The dog had made a fast transition from life tied to a rope to a love hound, as Berry called her. Jaudon pointed out that anyone would become a love hound around Berry. It had been hard on Jaudon when Muddy died of old age, but Zefer was the perfect cure.

  “Come on, Jaudon.” Bat pushed her down into a chair. “Berry made us blueberry pancakes.”

  She smacked his hands off her shoulders and gave Berry a big grin. “Now this is worth missing sleep for—my big brother’s home on leave and your special pancakes.” Berry had insisted on a family breakfast. Jaudon set two alarms to get up by eight after studying until three a.m.

  The pancakes steamed on her plate. She spread butter and poured too much syrup out of the yellow Steen’s can. “Nothing better,” she told Berry and filled her coffee cup a second time.

  After she finished she went to take her dish to the sink. Berry stopped her.

  “You are so tuckered out, and there’s no rush to get your license, Jaudon. Let me clear up here. Don’t go anywhere—I need to talk to you all.”

  Now she had come of age, Berry had a delicate toughness about her. She was a very deliberate person, always weighing pros and cons and looking for the wisest choices. She’d almost never dashed up the tree house ladder as a little kid—Berry always fixed her clothes for modesty and to protect them from tears and soil. If Jaudon had never met her before this day, she’d recognize at first glance a woman who got the job done, whatever it was, and handled the personalities and obstacles with persistent, sensitive determination.

  Yet the last few nights had been close to sleepless for Berry, thinking about putting Allison up. Would Lari be hanging around smoking illegal drugs? She concluded Lari’s presence was a bigger risk than anyone ferreting out Allison. After she dunked the last dish to soak she explained her thinking to them.

  Gran said,
“For pity’s sake, bring her on over, Berry, as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t my house, but we need to help these people who speak up about what’s wrong. If they’d done the same thing to poor farm workers here, there wouldn’t be a Gran Binyon.”

  “I don’t know,” said Bat. “I work with plenty of Puerto Rican soldiers and they’re great guys, but PR’s a teeny scrap of an island and if they keep going the way they are…”

  “Bat.” Berry stood at the stove, spatula in one hand, the other on her hip. “Think what you’re saying. If you get married, what if you and your wife want a big family?”

  “This is the US of A, Berry. Like Gran was saying, nobody’s sterilizing us.”

  “But they are, Bat. They’re doing it to people they don’t think are fit,” Berry told him.

  “You’re talking about retards?”

  “Oh, Bat,” said Gran. “I think you’re a mite tetched yourself, thinking such backward thoughts.”

  Berry was annoyed at this dumb cluck of a man. “What if you were born, say, deaf, and the people in Washington, DC, were afraid your kids would be deaf too and they passed a law to sterilize you?”

  “Don’t be a ninny,” Bat said, mopping syrup off his shirt. “They wouldn’t, not to folks like us.”

  Berry took the sticky napkin from Bat and gave him the wet dishrag. “What if some man gets into office in Washington, DC, and decides the whole state of Florida is contaminated from the fruit bug sprays so our kids might have birth defects. Would you take a chance of having kids?”

  “I might.”

  Berry scowled. “Would you want to make that decision or let them?”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Bat.” Jaudon let a fist fall hard to the table. Berry was surprised, but she should have known Jaudon would speak up for her; she always did. “You know you’d want the decision if it was your parts they were cutting up which they wouldn’t be because the lawmakers are men.”

  “Hush your mouth, Jaudon. I get what Berry’s saying and no, nobody’s going to keep me from being a daddy if I want to be. I’m worried harboring a criminal at home will get me kicked out of the service.”