Eupocalypse Box Set

by Peri Dwyer Worrell

  “Do you mind?” D.D. had a clean T-shirt from her backpack, and she gestured with it. Cindy snorted, but turned her back, and D.D. yanked the curtain shut between them. She dressed and opened the curtain.

  Cindy was right there, and she put her hand on D.D.’s neck. “How’s that collarbone healing?”

  D.D. slapped her moist hand away almost reflexively.

  “It’s the right collarbone, not the left,” she snapped, louder than she’d intended, and she saw Sister Greta react out of the corner of her eye. “And I would appreciate it if you’d keep your hands to yourself!”

  Sister Greta was by her side, ready to separate them, but Cindy was gobsmacked for only a second and then tossed her head. “Jeez. I was just checking on our patient!” She rolled her eyes.

  “That was kind of you, Sister Cynthia.” Sister Greta patted Cindy’s shoulder. “Will you please attend to Andrea Morris’s rash? I’ve cleaned it, but it still needs ointment.” D.D. now noticed the little girl did indeed have a florid rash visible on her face and arms where they showed outside the sheets. Cindy sauntered over to do as she was told.

  Sister Greta turned her attention to D.D. “How is the collarbone?”

  “It’s still sore, but the hot soak last night really helped. Sorry I raised my voice.”

  “It’s alright, dear. Sit down.” Sister Greta sat on the bed and indicated for D.D. to take the aluminum guest chair next to it. “Sometimes, when something really horrible happens to a person, it can make them prone to irritable outbursts.”

  “I was thinking about that. PTSD, you mean?”

  “Well, yes. There are, er, particular vulnerabilities in the case of women.”

  “Rape, you mean?”

  “Well, yes. I thought you might want to know that you’re not pregnant.”

  D.D. almost laughed. “I should hope not! I had a tubal ligation after my daughter was born.”

  Sister Greta literally recoiled.

  Oh, Catholic, right. “My OB-GYN said it was best not to have any more children. He said it was a miracle I was able to have the one.” Sister Greta relaxed.

  “As for…”

  “I wasn’t raped. Recently. And let me tell you something: I had some friends years ago, a couple. Nice people. Their kids were about the age of my daughter, and we used to have playdates. He made a killer guacamole. She helped me stencil my dining room.

  “She had been gang-raped and thrown out of a car by a gang of teenagers when she was sixteen. He had been in Central America, and would never say who he was working for when he was there. He had back problems, but who doesn’t? One night, we’d all been drinking a little and he sat in a straight-backed chair in my dining room. He settled into it and almost immediately let out a gasp.

  “Okay, so nothing odd, right? But then, he just started sobbing, totally broke down, and she helped him into the living room. He lay on the sofa and told me he had been a prisoner, and the people who held him—he just said they were ‘not very nice people’—used to bend him backwards over a straight-backed chair while they were torturing him.

  “The two of them had one of the strongest marriages I’ve ever seen. They both respected each other’s trauma, and it made a bond between them. They held each other when they woke up from nightmares, and they picked up the slack for each other when one of them was overwhelmed by fear or hadn’t slept in days.

  “So, I guess what I’m saying is, yeah, I’ve been traumatized. I’ve experienced more violence in person in the two years since things changed than in my entire life, Before. But it’s B.S. that violence and terror and mutilation’re somehow worse for a woman because she can be raped. For one thing, men can be raped too, and I don’t know if my friend was or not, because I respected him too much to ask him to tell me more than he was ready to. But you know what’s really brutal? The way women who get raped are treated afterwards. Like they’re less than human now, like the rape changed them permanently in some way that only women who are raped can be changed.

  “And you know what else is brutal? That men who’re beaten and tortured and maimed and sometimes raped too, that they’re given ‘respect’ for it and expected to be stoic and shake it off, when they’re actually quivering and sobbing inside. Terror is terror. Violence is violence. And self-defense is self-defense.

  “I was lucky. I’ve been lucky to come through the past two years alive and relatively unscathed. I know that. The numbness that comes over me when things get violent probably helps me, and I know where it comes from, and it’s none of your business. But I think the main thing that’s kept me sane is that I had the ability to defend myself. And even though I might have failed at that in some ways…my bones were broken and I was bruised and bleeding and almost unconscious…at least I had some degree of control and self-determination.”

  The older woman quietly regarded her through steel-blue eyes beneath her wimple, with her hands in her lap. When she was sure D.D. had finished, she said, with formulaic religious spiritual pacific nun-like gentleness, “I understand. I’m sorry for prying.”

  Cindy was standing behind her, though, pulling a side-eye face with pressed lips that said D.D.’d gone way too far. She stopped mugging and took the bowl of cloths Greta had used out of the room.

  “I’d like to move out into the guest quarters, if you’re ready to release me?” said D.D., trying to sound humble.

  “I don’t see why not. You seem to be making a good recovery.”

  Indeed, other than the sore lump in her shoulder, some deeper cuts and scrapes that were still scabbed, and the yellowish mottling of the larger bruises that hadn’t resolved, D.D. was basically well. She was skinny from not eating for a month, but the seabutter and honey would no doubt take care of that.

  “Erm…do I have to pay anything to stay here? How does that work?” D.D. folded Selene’s nightgown and tucked it into her knapsack. She fastened it to carry over to the guest quarters.

  “Well, you’ll have to discuss that with Mother Laura. The Order has always had a tradition of receiving guests. But since the machine sickness, we’ve been accepting women from the community to stay here under rules that are…somewhat different than specified by Saint Benedict. If you want to stay here indefinitely, you and she have to come to some sort of understanding. Before you go, it’s traditional to pray with our guests. Shall we pray?”

  Not wanting to be rude, D.D. sat back down in the chair. She followed Sister Greta’s cue and bowed her head over her folded hands. She was curious as to what form the Catholic prayer would take, but Sister Greta merely sat silently with her for a few minutes.

  D.D. took the prompt to breathe calmly and reach out for the great I AM herself. She was not religious. Her parents hadn’t been either, but she’d explored Eastern religions in College, went to her ex’s Episcopalian church when she was married, and participated in the generic Asian meditation included in some of her martial-arts classes. Throughout all the faiths, she’d encountered the same sense of presence—serene yet unspeakably ferocious, kind yet inconceivably stonehearted, silent, and yet reverberating through all of living and dying.

  She was calmed and uplifted when she and Sister Greta raised their heads.

  Greta surprised her by kissing her gently on the forehead. “Peace, child. And check back with me in two weeks about the collarbone.”

  “Thank you, Sister Greta. I’m really grateful for all you’ve done for me.” I truly am.

  D.D. went out into the vestibule where Selene lingered. “That all your stuff?”

  “Well, no. I guess the rest is on my little four-wheeler, wherever that wound up?”

  “Oh, it’s in the stable. Well, let’s go. I have cleaning duty at the guest quarters today. The nuns are going to lunch now. They do their Bible reading prayer mealtime thing at breakfast and lunch, but they eat with us at supper.”

  “Wait! I’m supposed to talk with Mother Laura about staying here.”

  “What day is today? Come here.” Selene led h
er down the hall. “This is Mother Laura’s office.” She indicated a wooden door with a glass window in it, on which was lettered MTR LAURA INGRAHAM, OSB. “And here’s her appointment scheduler.”

  The paper on the clipboard had days of the week and times laid out on it in a grid. “What’s today, anyway? Tuesday?”

  “Friday, actually.” I completely lost track.

  “Friday…” she found that Mother Laura’s next opening was the following Tuesday, at three o’clock in the afternoon.

  “So, you’re a guest at least until then. Might as well enjoy it.” Selene clandestinely pinched D.D.’s thigh, and D.D. managed neither to flinch nor to look around for observers. This is too weird.

  #

  D.D. did enjoy the next few days. Lacey measured her and stitched up a bathing suit like Selene’s, a series of soft cotton triangles of fabric that tied behind her neck and back and at the hips. D.D. helped in the garden and even mucked out two of the eight horse stalls before begging off from further pitchfork work due to her aching collarbone.

  She cleaned up the ATV and refueled it (her jugs of ethanol fuel were undisturbed) and added some lubricant to the crankcase which the ladies assured her worked better than any of the vegetable concoctions she’d used so far. “The seabutter is fizzed through sphagnum and mixed with filtered beeswax. Try it!” Deanna had urged. That was the biggest problem with running alcohol-fueled engines since the machine sickness had destroyed all petroleum: engines had to have oil changes every fill-up or two, and they still ran hot and were prone to seizing.

  D.D. even rode horseback a couple of times. It had been years since she’d sat on a horse, not counting her rescue, much of which she’d been too delirious to remember. But she remembered the basics, and she admired Selene’s practiced ease on the gaited golden horse she called a Tennessee Walker. They explored the long sandy trails in the woods and fields around the monastery. “Riding the trails on horseback helps keep the pathways open. They’re getting so overgrown.”

  The next four nights, once everyone else was sleeping, Selene slipped into D.D.’s room or D.D. slipped into hers. D.D. reveled in their encounters, exploring her with fingers, lips, and tongue, pressing and releasing, nipping and rolling in sensuous, dancelike lovemaking. Yet when the rooster crowed in the deep darkness before aurora, they separated, and in the day, pretended nothing had ever happened.

  Tuesday rolled around and D.D. was in the guest quarters kitchen with Deanna, rolling out a dough made of ground, dried kudzu root and seabutter to make biscuits for lunch. Selene came in with a little crease between her eyebrows and nose on each side, but she wouldn’t say anything in response to D.D.’s questioning look, waving it away with her hand.

  Later, D.D. walked alone to the main building for her appointment. She got to Mother Laura’s door. She’d met the abbess and been welcomed by her at dinner one night; she seemed a nice enough woman: serious but pleasant-looking, middle-aged, and with smooth dark skin and close-cropped, kinky hair. D.D. assumed the meeting was a formality, and she’d be assigned some tasks around the monastery for the duration of her stay. I’d like to stay a while, until the soreness is gone and I’ve put some of the weight back on. Maybe until Spring?

  But outside the door stood Sister Greta, looking serious, and Cindy, not meeting D.D.’s eyes.

  Uh, oh. What’s up? The door opened, and Mother Laura’s last appointment walked out, a Sister D.D. had seen but not interacted with. She gave Mother Laura a kiss on the cheek and left. Mother Laura pulled herself erect and scowled at D.D., then gestured all three of them into the office.

  It was set up like a principal’s office at school—small uncomfortable chairs across the big desk from the bigger office chair. At Laura’s command, the three women took a seat. The Mother herself remained standing.

  “Miss Davis, I am informed that you may have committed a grievous sin here at our monastery, where we have taken you in as a guest and cared for your wounds.” Mother Laura began, her diction clear, her bell-like tones stamped with the r-less imprint of educated African-American speech.

  Make her say it, dammit. “What sin would that be, Mother Laura?” she shot a glance at Cindy and Greta, who sat obdurate.

  “I will ask you, and I expect an honest answer: did you have homosexual relations with one of our other guests?”

  “Yes, I did.” D.D. flushed with anger and embarrassment, fear on Selene’s behalf close behind.

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “Are you willing to renounce such behavior and never behave this way again?”

  That’s the question, isn’t it? I’ve never been one who liked being told what to do. I even hated clicking “submit” on web page forms! She hesitated. “No. I can’t promise that.”

  “You understand that you may not stay here under those circumstances?”

  “I do.”

  Mother Laura nodded at the two nuns. “You may leave now.”

  D.D. got up to follow, but Laura said, “Not you.” She nodded at the chair, and D.D. found herself sitting obediently from the sheer force of the dominant woman’s personality—now turned full-blast on D.D., a fire hose, taser, and pepper-spray of disapproval all in one.

  “It is important that you understand that what you have done is a grave depravity. You have risked your immortal soul’s salvation by indulging these disordered inclinations. And you have tempted another into participating in the same violations of natural law.”

  D.D. felt tears start down her cheeks. She gulped hard to steady her voice. The attempt was unsuccessful, and she quivered, “Thank you for that information. I’ll be leaving now.”

  “Wait! This discussion is not over.” The Darth-Vader command tone in Laura’s voice was powerful, but D.D. shook it off and reeled numbly into the hall and out the door, not deigning to make eye contact with Cindy, who stood at a small distance to savor her humiliation. Greta, at least, was nowhere to be seen. Small mercies. I can still remember her as kind.

  D.D. allowed sobs to wrack her and tears to incise her cheeks as she walked the path to the guest quarters. She opened the door to the cozy retreat. Selene was not there. Lacey looked like she was about to speak, but Deanna put a hand on her arm in caution and looked away. So that’s how it is.

  D.D. stomped to her little room and stuffed her knapsack haphazardly. She left Selene’s nightgown and the bathing suit Lacey had made her, neatly folded on the bed.

  She strode out to the stable. Her ATV was still there, boozed up and ready to ride. She opened the stall gate, lashed her pack onto it.

  Just as she was about to swing her leg over the seat, Selene showed her face. She stood with one hand on the top rail of a stall, her lithe body as poised as ever, her eyes sad as D.D. hadn’t seen them.

  D.D. battled the urge to go to her, to wrap up in her arms, to cry on her shoulder and drown in her kiss. Instead, she asked, “Are you going to catch Hell for this?” Flicked her a glance, looked away.

  “No,” Selene said breathily. “I own this barn and all these horses. The Church is nothing if not pragmatic. I suppose…” she gazed out the barn door into the distance. “they’ll make out that you corrupted me somehow. I’ll have to do penance. I’m sorry, D.D.”

  “Yeah, well. As we used to say growing up, that and a buck’ll get you on the subway.”

  D.D. sat on the four-wheeler and started it up. It chugged a little but settled into a smooth growl. She grabbed her rifle from its holder, checked the action, and slung it across her back. The accelerator twisting under her hand felt good, felt powerful. She rolled past Selene without another word or gesture.

  Outside the barn door, she called, “Here, kitty, kitty!” The yaller dog emerged from the side yard and jumped atop the luggage box behind D.D. She continued onto the path to the main road. A Bible verse, of all things, flashed to her mind:

  And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the d
ust of your feet.

  Circle Back and Land

  D.D. headed east, parallel to the Gulf Coast. She had a paper map which had been unclaimed in the guesthouse, and using that, began to work her way towards the Audubon Bridge over the Mississippi. She didn’t know what she’d do if it were closed, or occupied by some would-be government gang collecting tolls. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. She laughed shrilly, a sign that she was still shaken by her treatment at the hands of the “Sisters,” driving into the breeze of her passage down a long straight stretch of dirt road. Kittykitty responded to the hysteria in her voice by licking her ear.

  The roads that had been dirt Before were generally better traveling than the ones that had cradled a ribbon of now-decomposed asphalt. She’d learned this earlier in her travels. It was late afternoon when she left, wintertime but fortunately not rainy. She kept pushing east until long after she should have stopped for the night. Finally, she threw down a tarp in a deer nest at twilight. She shared a few crumbs with Kittykitty, who slipped off to hunt voles and field mice on his own.

  Once she was lying down in the dark, the ghosts of her past that Mother Laura had summoned came back to haunt her. She remembered her first love; she fifteen and eager to dispose of her virginity, Dennis a worldly-wise (or so it seemed) sixteen, and more than willing to help. They used to find little niches like this one in the unmowed corners of the parks, around the backs of alleys they’d slip their supple teenaged bodies through chain-link fence to get into, or (her favorite) on a blanket on the roof of his apartment building, the sun in its blazing heat bringing out the contrast of his brown skin with her pale whiteness.

  One day, he lay on one elbow after they’d made love, stroking her sleek, firm adolescent body, and said, “One day, we’ll be married and have a daughter. She’ll have café-au-lait skin and eyes as green as yours.” D.D. smiled now, remembering.

  Then she remembered Yvonne, Dennis’s mother, who had figured out their oh-so-transparent lies and gumshoed them up onto the roof. D.D. in her bra, picking up her shirt to pull it on, turning and coming face to face with Yvonne’s furious demand that they come downstairs right now!