Hunters and Gatherers Read online

  Joy said, “Watch, just watch Hegwitha go up in front of the cabin and somehow get everyone switched around so she can sit next to Diana. Speaking of switching seats—here’s Bernie!”

  “Joy!” said Bernie. “What are you doing here? Get back to your seat. Every lungful of this you inhale will keep you in that cast another week.”

  Joy rose obediently. As Bernie settled into the empty seat, she said, “We all feel awful about you and Hegwitha being stuck back here, so everyone’s table-hopping to unload their guilt without having to take the giant step of actually offering to swap.” Bernie looked deep into Martha’s eyes. “I won’t like it, but I’d be willing to trade seats with you.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Martha said.

  “Oh, I have the most wonderful feelings about this trip!” exulted Bernie. “I’ve seen journeys like this work therapeutic miracles. I’ve seen people leave home in shreds and come back whole. So many of us are in pieces, sleepwalking through our lives while our victim self drags around all its pain from the past. I love the group meditations, like the one during takeoff, sending energy out into the world. Look—here’s Titania!”

  Rising, Bernie squeezed Martha’s hand. “We’ll share more about this later.” Wasn’t everyone awfully eager to get up and leave, to be rescued and replaced by whoever came down the aisle?

  Sitting down, Titania said, “If this were a humane world, they’d bring the drinks cart to the smoking section first, on the theory that these are nervous types who need their alcohol sooner. I know I do. In fact, if they don’t bring it around pretty quick, I may have to trash this plane. I’ve just had the most upsetting experience—I’m positively shaken!”

  “What happened?” Martha asked. What was going on up there in nonsmoking?

  “Well!” said Titania. “It was during the group meditation, which I did with my eyes open. I was looking out the window—and suddenly my daughter’s face manifested in the clouds. You do know that for six years my daughter’s been a follower of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon? I assume everyone knows everything in our little hotbed of Goddess gossip.”

  “I heard…” Martha stammered.

  “Of course you have,” said Titania. “Probably you have also heard that it was all my fault, the consequence of my neglecting my child while I got my business together. Don’t imagine I haven’t thought that. What did I do to deserve seeing my child shelling shrimp in a Moonie seafood processing plant? Even if you believe that they come into the world fully formed, or that some force—call it the Goddess—is in charge, even so you know you’re to blame. I would disintegrate completely if I let myself remember when she was a baby and we would just stare at each other until the world disappeared.”

  “Oh!” said Martha. The sound seemed to have been squeezed out of her by a sharp painful memory of staring into Dennis’s eyes.

  “Anyway,” Titania went on, “I was looking out at the sky, and I saw my daughter, telling me that everything was fine, that she was happy and didn’t blame me. I know I’m the last person you’d expect to hear this from. I’m not some fruitcake like Diana! I’m a very grounded person. My entire chart is earth signs. And I’m seeing visions above the clouds!”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Martha, longing to call her mother, whose house they might be flying over at this very moment. But the halting conversation she and her mother would have would only leave Martha feeling more alone and unhappy.

  “I know it is,” said Titania. “I guess. But I keep thinking I should be happier. If you’d seen something like that, wouldn’t your mood improve? Isis saw that chariot, and it was so empowering that she built a career around it. Speaking of Isis, here she comes…”

  For this portion of the trip, Isis had forgone the robes and animal teeth. A thin, self-possessed blonde in a gray silk suit, she turned heads as she strode down the aisle.

  “Isis! Come join us!” Titania said, though there were no empty seats. “Sit.” Titania rose suddenly. “Ta-ta, ladies! Ciao!”

  “I suppose Titania’s told you about her vision,” Isis began. “This could be a breakthrough. She’s been working toward something like this. Not that you’d ever guess. Who would suspect that under that competent-businesswoman Athena head-type exterior is a caring feeling person? There’s such a mixture in our group, that’s what makes it exciting, like stirring chemicals in a beaker and drinking what comes out. It could be the elixir of wisdom—or it could be poison. Every time we take a journey we see its mythic dimension, Persephone going to Hades before she could return to Demeter. I wonder how deep we’ll have to go before we can start resurfacing.

  “Of course, with a group the problems multiply exponentially. Everyone is bubbling away in some personal pressure cooker. Joy and Diana breaking up, Freya and Sonoma ready to kill each other, Starling totally stressed out from making travel arrangements, Titania seeing her daughter in the clouds—it could be straight downhill from here.”

  Isis paused expectantly. Did she want Martha to promise her that the trip would be fine? But why was she asking someone who’d never traveled with the group?

  “And with everyone in crisis,” said Isis, “we’re heading miles into the desert, up into the mountains to some funky Native American outpost that may not even have plumbing, let alone a pool or a sauna, though I assume there will be a sweat lodge.”

  “A sweat lodge?” Of course this had been mentioned, but Martha had chosen to ignore it. She hated the idea of the heat, the stifling dark, and the possibility of having to go naked.

  “Oh, you’ll adore it!” said Isis. “It’s the most healing and centering experience I’ve ever had in my life.”

  Just then the Latina mother whom Martha had noticed in the airport came wobbling down the aisle, teetering on her stiltlike heels as her small son pulled her along. The boy looked troubled, but his mother’s face was enviably serene, free from random anxiety or paralyzing doubt. She knew exactly what her mission was, what she had to do now, and her child announced it to the whole plane: he had to go to the bathroom.

  “I DON’T GET WHY WE’RE here,” said Joy. “This is a private ceremony. These people are grieving for their dead, and we’re rubbernecking like it’s the changing of the guard at Buckingham fucking Palace.”

  They were standing on a rise overlooking the desert between the Papago graveyard and the Mission San Xavier del Bac. Far off, the skyline of Tucson winked in the fading afternoon sun. It was All Souls’ Eve, and a priest and a small choir of Papago women were chanting the names of those who had died since this time last year. Martha was amazed by how many names there were, and by the voices of the women, keening, otherworldly, as if the dead themselves were singing. A crowd of spectators had gathered, but the priest and the singers were corralled off from the crowd, like a dusty patch of marigolds inside a low picket fence.

  “And that mission!” Joy went on. “The so-called white dove of the desert! It’s like some Navy destroyer floating off the Persian Gulf.”

  Two women—German tourists—wheeled around and glared. There were many Germans among the New Age sightseers in attendance.

  “Anthropologists!” said Joy. “Their problem is, they can’t tell humans from research subjects. Your birthday and your funeral are chapters in their thesis.”

  Last night, when the Goddess women checked in at the Tucson Siesta Inn, Hegwitha had arranged it so that she would room with Diana. Martha wound up with Joy, who’d become a sort of stand-in Hegwitha: the person Martha walked and talked with when everyone else was taken. But Hegwitha had asked so little of her, as compared to Joy, who made Martha listen to her complaints about Diana and the trip, which so far had consisted of aimless drives past fast-food joints and car lots.

  All day they’d been crammed in the suffocating heat in the rented van they’d got from the travel agent—a beefy cowboy named Pete, who met them at the airport. As soon as Pete tossed them the keys and disappeared in his Range Rover, the van stalled briefly, ominously, and began to overhe
at. While Joy pulled over and waited until the engine cooled, Starling called the travel agency and yelled at Pete’s answering machine.

  Supposedly familiar with Tucson, Bernie was their tour guide. But the city had changed drastically, and she kept getting them lost and becoming so distraught that they couldn’t get angry—or show it.

  Somehow they located the art museum, where they spent half an hour inspecting fiber hangings, giant ropy webs like string bikinis for prehistoric creatures (Titania said that was what happened when a male took up weaving), while they waited for Freya to locate a curator she knew. Eventually Freya and a tall boyish man emerged, only to excuse themselves and slip off to lunch at the Cielito Lindo, a name the curator pronounced in such a way as to extinguish all hope for ordinary mortals without advance reservations. The rest of the group dined on rubbery enchiladas and mortarlike refried beans at the picturesque but expensive and touristy Mi Hacienda.

  “I don’t know,” Bernie said despairingly. “This place used to be simple and good and cheap.”

  “It’s fine,” said Isis, and the others said, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.”

  “One ‘fine’ would have been sufficient,” said Bernie. “It isn’t fine, and I know it.”

  When the conversation resumed, Joy turned to Martha and said, “One thing about women is, they don’t get their rocks off humiliating each other in public. A bunch of guys would still be giving Bernie shit for how crappy this place is.”

  From down the table, Martha heard Sonoma say, “Hooray! I’m so glad Mom’s not here! I can eat all the tortilla chips I want.”

  After lunch they piled back into the searing van. Isis led them in an imaging session, while Joy tried to revive the engine.

  Joy said, “That jerk had better give us another van before we head out for Maria’s.”

  The others were straining to picture themselves whizzing down a cool tree-lined highway. They hardly heard the ignition when it finally kicked in. Before long, they were navigating the boiling rapids of Tucson traffic.

  They had just gotten lost for the third time on the way to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum when Diana finally figured out that the Desert Museum was a zoo.

  She said, “I don’t go to zoos.”

  Hegwitha said, “I don’t either.”

  “They’re barbaric,” Diana said. “Totally inhumane. It’s like taking the family for a Sunday outing to Alcatraz. This stuff about creating a protected natural habitat for indigenous species makes me want to puke.”

  “Everything makes her want to puke,” explained Joy.

  Diana chose to ignore that. “First they steal the land from the Native Americans who lived in harmony with the animals, and then they nearly exterminate them and lock up the survivors behind bars.”

  “Not bars,” protested Bernie. “Moats.”

  “Don’t be naive,” said Freya, who had rejoined the group, energized by her lunch with the curator. “Zoos will be there whether we go to them or not.”

  “Is there an admission charge?” Titania asked. “I would think that would make a difference—whether or not we’re paying to support an animal prison.”

  “As I remember,” Bernie said, “it was quite costly.”

  “Fabulous,” said Starling. “How’s the jeep running?”

  “Borderline,” said Joy.

  “This is serious,” Isis said. “It seems foolish to begin a retreat by doing something that some of us find morally iffy. Let’s take a vote about whether to go to the zoo.”

  “Goody!” said Hegwitha. “Let’s vote.”

  “It’s not a zoo,” Bernie said weakly. “It really is a museum. There’s a section about mining and the most marvelous film of a volcano—”

  “How many for going to the zoo?” Starling interrupted.

  Bernie, Freya, and Titania were for the zoo. Diana, Hegwitha, Isis, Starling, and Sonoma voted against it—and finally Martha did, too. Once again she was conscious of acting for the wrong reasons, not from concern for the animals but because she hated the idea of visiting the zoo with a bunch of grumpy Goddess women. Joy abstained from voting. She was concentrating on driving and, like most people having car trouble, was unreachable by normal means. They knew that Joy would have voted for the antizoo position. Perhaps she had abstained to avoid being on the same side as Diana.

  The antizoo faction carried the vote. Now what would they do? The most thrilling thing, Bernie said, was to hike or drive through the Saguaro National Monument. But no one trusted the car to brave the desert in this heat. Otherwise, the major attraction was the Mission San Xavier del Bac. But they were saving that for the evening, when they would go there for the Papago ceremony in honor of All Souls’ Eve.

  Back at the hotel, the women decided to swim in the pool. Joy asked Martha to help her make a protective sleeve for her cast from a trash bag and duct tape.

  After Joy left, Martha reveled in the air conditioner’s soothing whir. Muffled voices seeped in from the carpeted hall. She recalled the day when she’d pretended to enjoy being alone on the beach at Fire Island; now she actually treasured her moments of solitude. How could she not be grateful to the Goddess women for having restored her pleasure in her own company?

  Martha ventured onto the terrace overlooking the pool, gingerly avoiding the cracks in its concrete floor. Below, the landscaping impersonated a Zen pebble arrangement around a shriveled cactus and two puckered aloe plants. Had she lived in another place, had another job, Martha might have wound up in a hellish Southwestern condo not unlike this hotel. Another job? What other job? At least she would have a job. Martha remembered her meeting with Eleanor and went back inside and lay down.

  She stretched out on the cool woven spread and played with the remote control, settling on a medical program about valley fever, a chronic lung disease contracted from breathing desert air. Martha took a deep breath, and down in her chest something snagged and burned. She rolled onto her side to study a catkin of hair and dust that clung to the air conditioner. She watched it flutter in the breeze until she dropped off to sleep.

  She awoke in time to shower and dress and ride out to the mission, where now the afternoon heat was reversing all the good effects of the shower. Martha eyed the dust devils blowing great swirls of valley fever at her. She concentrated on the ceremony, the priest, the wailing old women, the cantoras, who, Diana said, were descended from the Meso-American priestesses.

  Finally the singing stopped. The priest inscribed three crosses on the air between himself and the congregation, then hurried, trying not to run, up the path to the mission.

  “Look at that jerk,” said Joy. “Checking back over his shoulder to see if the Indians are gaining on him.”

  “That was so powerful,” Bernie said. “If we had a ritual like that, I’d be moving more easily through the stages of mourning Stan. The way their dead are still with them—”

  “Very much with them,” said Diana. “The Papagos believe the dead hang around for three days and three nights. They leave their doors open and set out food and deal them in at card games—”

  “And the only ones who come through those open doors are the anthropologists,” Joy said.

  “Oh, cram it,” said Diana. Being able to say that to Joy was a tonic for Diana, who, just since the start of the trip, already seemed less bleary and resentful. Martha hoped that Diana and Hegwitha were becoming an item.

  “Let’s go to the church!” cried Freya, running up, slightly breathless. “The crucial part of the ceremony is about to begin. The Indians file past the altar, past the wooden statue of their saint, and they try to lift it. They believe that only those without sin will be able to pick up the statue. Only the pure in heart will have the strength to move it, and the others—the sinners—can’t budge it with a crowbar—”

  “We heard all about that, Mother,” said Sonoma. “Diana told us sixty times in the van. What planet were you on?”

  “Sonoma, dear,” interceded Bernie. “I think Di
ana was talking about that at lunch when your mother wasn’t there. So that’s why she didn’t hear it.”

  “Yes, that was at lunch,” Titania said, and they all fell silent, darkly contemplating the latex tortillas they’d eaten while Freya was savoring her wild-mushroom-and-blue-corn tamales.

  “Right,” Sonoma said. “Mom was out there hustling her career while we were eating shit. As usual.”

  “Oh, sin, sin, sin,” mused Isis. “What a phallocratic concept. The god with the scales and balances punishing wrongdoers, in this case with the public humiliation of being unable to heft some penile wooden object that babies can probably pick up in one hand.”

  “How heavy is the statue?” asked Sonoma, tipping her head back slightly, braced for whatever fresh idiocy the adult mind had cooked up.

  But Freya was already rushing up the hill to the mission, and Sonoma’s question went unanswered as the others followed. A group of Papago men in jeans and straw hats paused to watch a parched hot breeze lift Freya’s, Titania’s, and Isis’s filmy skirts.

  “They think we’re their ancestors’ ghosts!” Starling said.

  “I doubt it,” said Diana.

  Inside the mission, the cool air was thick with spicy botanical incense. The walls were painted a checkerboard pattern, red and yellow and blue cubes ascending in dizzying diagonals.

  At the main altar a priest was saying mass, assisted by two yawning acolytes and ignored by the crowd milling near the side chapel, the source of a steady drone and buzz of movement and hushed conversation. Babies were crying, mothers genuflecting to spit-wash children’s faces, while a long procession inched through their midst toward the side-chapel altar.

  There were occasional flashes as rude anthropologists or sightseeing boors took illegal snapshots. As if to compensate for their bad manners, Martha tried to be discreet as she studied the unreadable patient faces awaiting their turn in the chapel. Which were the secret sinners steeling themselves against public exposure, against the statue betraying them, turning to lead in their arms? Martha’s own conscience was demoralizingly clear, except for having had evil thoughts about Dennis, Lucinda, Eleanor, and, all right, some of the Goddess women…