Hunters and Gatherers Read online

  Martha drained her cup and poured another.

  “Instant migraine,” Titania warned, moving into the party.

  Martha spotted Hegwitha talking to two women and a girl of about thirteen. One of the women was a lank-haired blonde with a parched marsupial face. The other was older, maternal, squat as a Toltec statue, in a peasant shawl and homespun orange dress, her gray hair parted dead center and pinned up with a silver clip.

  The girl was stuffed into a tight white cowboy outfit, satin miniskirt, blouse, fringed vest, a cowboy hat pulled low on her round pretty face. Girls her age didn’t dress like that, not the ones Martha saw on the subway, crowds of kids in baggy jeans, faded flannels, and team caps worn backward. This girl had her own style, impossibly defiant, especially at an age when everyone dressed alike, when the impulse was to hide your body, an impulse this girl resisted, though she had the sort of body girls most wanted to hide: large-breasted, with fleshy pink arms and plump knees peeking out from under her shiny skirt. Her lips were fixed in the permanent pout of a surly child whose idea of good behavior was to ignore everyone she could, and annoy and punish the few who insisted on her attention. She was at a stage that Martha recognized right away. And her heart went out to her, though she knew the girl wouldn’t want it.

  “I work in radiology, at Roosevelt Hospital,” Hegwitha was telling the group. “So I was lucky. When I got cancer, I knew all the really good doctors. And even then, they screwed up at first. They sliced me open from stem to stern before they figured out what was wrong.”

  Martha saw, clear as a photograph, the scar down Hegwitha’s chest. Being the only one who had seen it gave her such intimate knowledge, so much shared history with Hegwitha, that they could have been old friends. How mean of her to want to distance herself from Hegwitha, especially now that Hegwitha had just revealed this tragic fact about her life.

  A brief pause greeted Hegwitha’s announcement. Then the girl said, “Cancer. Oh, gross.”

  Everyone, including Hegwitha, stared at the girl in horror until the lank-haired woman said loudly, “Sonoma! That’s the most unenlightened, unconscious, punitive thing I’ve ever heard. Cancer isn’t gross. It’s a disease like any other. And it’s evil to make cancer victims feel that it’s disgusting.”

  The girl, Sonoma, looked at the ceiling. “Dull, Mom,” she said. “Okay. Fine.”

  “Freya,” Hegwitha addressed the blond woman. “This is my friend Martha. And this is Martha’s daughter, Sonoma. Oops. I mean Freya’s daughter, Sonoma.”

  “I wish,” mumbled Sonoma. “Anyone would be better than Mom.”

  “Oh, no! I’m sure I wouldn’t be!” What instinct had made Martha defer to this sullen girl’s mother? More of the same useless empathy: she could imagine how it would feel to hear your daughter say she’d rather be raised by a stranger. But how could Martha really know? She’d never been able to imagine herself as the mother of a child, not even during one horrific week when she’d thought she might be pregnant, and told Dennis, who’d said it was wonderful news, and then didn’t come home for two nights. Martha had been very relieved when her period came. Ever since she’d turned thirty in March, she’d tried not to think about children. The subject was like a precipice, and she wisely avoided the edge.

  “And this”—Hegwitha indicated the woman in the Frida Kahlo getup—“is Bernie. Bernie’s a therapist.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Martha.

  “Bernie’s short for Bern-is.” Bernie rearranged her shawl and gave it a kindly maternal pat. “B-e-r-n-i-s. Originally it was Bernice, but somewhere along in my training I realized what it was costing me to have a name with ‘nice’ on the end. I felt I had to be nice all the time, so I changed it to is. I am. Bernie is. Many of us took new names when we found the Goddess.”

  Freya snorted. “Titania, for example. Imagine naming yourself after a fairy queen who fell in love with a guy in an ass’s head. Though I guess you can’t blame the woman after fifty-some years as Maxine.”

  “Well,” said Bernie. “Which one of us hasn’t fallen for our share of jackasses?”

  “Is Freya your Goddess name?” Martha asked politely.

  “Yes, but I was born with it. I didn’t have to change it.”

  “And you, Sonoma?” For a moment, Martha was afraid that Sonoma wouldn’t answer and would leave her dangling, humiliated, in front of the other women.

  Wondrously, the girl replied. “I was born in Sonoma county. Really original. Right?”

  Freya said, “Not born. Conceived. Sonoma’s father and I were making a—as it turned out, disastrous—tour of the California vineyards.”

  Was Sonoma the disaster she meant? Everyone stared at the ground.

  “Sonoma, dear,” said Freya. “You’ve already eaten thousands of those little fried crackers.”

  Sapped by contempt, Sonoma barely had the strength to sigh with exasperation. “Chill, Mom. These crackers aren’t half as fattening as the wine you’re chugging.”

  “Chugging’s overstating it, dear.” Freya turned to Martha. “Especially with this wine. I cannot believe the swill Isis serves—and expects us to drink. The toll on our stomachs and livers is bloodcurdling to consider! Naturally, I adore Isis, but the woman is accident-prone. By now there could be a small private army of women who have saved her life. And she always glues herself to her latest savior. Though eventually she discards them when the next lifesaver comes along.”

  Martha knew she was getting a warning—a warning or insult or both.

  Freya said, “I can’t count the times she’s almost drowned or set herself on fire. If I were Isis, I’d dress exclusively in a lifejacket and asbestos.”

  “Asbestos is bad for you,” Hegwitha said.

  “I’m aware of that,” said Freya. “You know, I did an installation in Stockholm in 1988. I called it Fire and Water Women, and entre nous it was half about the Holocaust and half about Isis’s brushes with death. Though naturally no one got that—nor did I mean them to.”

  “Oh, are you an artist?” Martha said.

  Freya gave her a weary look. “I’m Freya Wunderlich.”

  “Oh, right,” said Martha, as if she had just called up Freya’s whole resume. In fact, she dimly remembered Freya Wunderlich’s name, perhaps from a story in Mode about why women artists so rarely became rich or famous.

  Then suddenly they all felt that silent summons to attention that had energized the crowd of women earlier on the beach. The women returned to the low table and sat cross-legged on pillows as a slight, angular woman flitted about, saying, “All right, ladies. Please. Quiet. Lights out.”

  “Starling,” said Sonoma. “You are such a Nazi.”

  Starling switched off the overhead light and joined them at the table. Dark, with bright blinky eyes that were at once timid and disapproving, Starling resembled the wife of a witch-burning Salem judge far more than a coven member. Only cruel or stupid parents could have named her with such aptness, though probably, Martha realized, Starling was her Goddess name.

  While Martha had been distracted by the bad wine and the strained conversation, someone had set the low table with dozens of stubby white votive candles in glass dishes. A complex system of mirrors and crystals lasered rainbows off the statuettes and bowls of pink roses in water.

  “Feel free to put a token on our altar,” Isis said. “Anything you want charged up—jewelry, crystals, your car keys.” The women dug in their pockets and extracted combs, roots, daggers, stones, onyx eggs. The spontaneous generation of objects reminded Martha of films in which gang members agree to surrender their guns, and an entire arsenal materializes out of nowhere.

  Joy put one of her crutches along the edge of the table, and Diana, her redheaded girlfriend, set down what appeared be a terra-cotta hot plate incised with grooves delineating a naked woman’s breasts and belly. The women bowed their heads and put their hands over their bellies, a gesture Martha approximated by folding her hands in her lap. She made herself untw
ist her fingers lest she seem to be wringing her hands. Some of the women shut their eyes, others stared at the table.

  Some fresh intensity communicated that this silence was meant to go deeper and signify more than the one on the beach. Martha hoped this didn’t mean it would last longer. What was she supposed to be thinking about? Was her mind meant to be empty? It was so unnerving to be peaceful and quiet with strangers.

  This silence should have come more readily than the silence on the shore. It should have been easier to avoid getting restless or anxious, easier to concentrate without the distracting roar of the surf or the shouts of swimmers having fun or drowning. But peace did not descend as planned. Martha stared into a large crystal, where a beam of light twisted like the gooey bubbles in a lava lamp. The air felt damp and close. Martha pawed the rough Bedouin robe, unsticking it from her body.

  She didn’t think she could stand it, being made to keep silent. Who were these women to force her to sit here and waste her time with their fruitcake crystals and silly rites and contraband pre-Columbian art? She could be eating veal paprikás and watching TV with Gretta’s parents! She could just get up and leave and walk out and never see these people again!

  Through her mounting irritation and panic, Martha heard Isis say, “The static is incredible. We are all just buzzed.”

  Martha looked around, intrigued to learn that what she’d thought was a personal problem might be a group event.

  “Let’s try chanting,” Isis suggested. “Nothing too heavy.”

  The women began a nasal, bleating “ma ma ma.” Martha couldn’t make herself do it; luckily, no one noticed. The drone had the eerie Balkan power of wailing Transylvanian women mourning Vlad the Impaler’s death. But the chant kept faltering, and the women seemed tense and inhibited, like partygoers singing “Happy Birthday” without ever quite getting on key.

  Suddenly, the phone rang loud—twice, three times—and kept ringing.

  “I knew it!” said Isis. “We were waiting for something. That was why we were having trouble silencing and centering.” The women made gentle cooing sounds, pleased to find that they’d mistaken their natural ESP for ordinary distraction.

  When the ringing didn’t stop, Starling cried, “Jesus Christ! Goddamn answering machine never comes through when you need it!” She stood, upsetting a bowl of roses. Water spilled onto the table. A spasm of wiping and blotting accompanied her exit.

  No one spoke till Starling returned. “Goddamn travel agent,” she said. “He said he knew he could reach us out here, since it’s Labor Day weekend. Apparently there’s some wrinkle with the four-wheel-drive vehicles for our trip.”

  What trip? Martha wondered. No one paused to explain. They were all going somewhere together, and Martha wasn’t invited. But why would they have asked her along? She’d only just met these women. There was no reason, no reason at all for Martha to feel hurt, nor, for that matter, any reason for Martha to think of herself as so cold and cerebral when she was always getting her feelings hurt by every tiny thing. She was terribly oversensitive, Dennis had often told her, usually just after he’d made some harsh or sadistic remark.

  Starling said, “That pig travel agent—”

  “There are female travel agents,” said Joy. “We could have worked with a woman-owned business. A penis is not required equipment to arrange for a four-wheel-drive vehicle.”

  “Not at all,” agreed Titania. “A telephone and a fax are sufficient.”

  “Maybe Joy should be dealing with it,” Diana suggested. “She’s the one who’s going to be driving.”

  Joy glared at Diana. “You deal with it,” she said.

  “Ladies, please,” said Bernie. “I’m hearing a little hostility here.”

  Starling was practically shouting. “That jerk thinks because we’re women he can do whatever the hell he wants. I’d like to see him interrupt a priest in the middle of mass…”

  With a rueful smile, Isis offered one limp hand to her friend. The effect on Starling was sudden and dramatic. Her eyes filled with the milky calm of someone coming out of a seizure.

  “Well, exactly,” Isis said. “Isn’t that the point? The male God sends you straight to hell if you whisper in church. But Goddess knows the sacred is in the interruptions—the crying baby, the ringing phone, the mail person at the door. Divinity is in the practical: the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning. How much smoother our lives would be if we accepted that, if we could believe the answering machine was broken for a reason, in this case to explain to us why we couldn’t get centered.”

  Everyone stared at Starling, who was smiling shyly, proud that the fit she’d thrown had become the occasion of a spiritual lesson. Martha was impressed by the effortless grace with which Isis had accomplished this, by her kindness to Starling, and by her desire to make someone look better instead of worse.

  There was something so soothing about how Isis saw the world! You certainly would be happier if you reached a spiritual level which let you see a broken answering machine as a sign from God. Er, Goddess. Martha envied believers their serenity, their faith that an eye was on every sparrow, a hand on every steering wheel as the speedometer crept up past the limit. How jealous she was of the rosaries draped over rearview mirrors and appearing from purses and pockets when an airplane pilot warned, in those confident tones that fooled no one, of turbulence up ahead.

  Spiritual comfort and the peace that passeth beyond understanding were not among the options offered by First Lutheran of Bloomington, which Martha had attended sporadically as a child, and where the best one could hope for were the covered-dish suppers. Martha’s mother went to church without pleasure or conviction, but as another misguided attempt to “do something as a family.” Martha’s father came along, grumbling, and fell asleep, often noisily, during Pastor Jensen’s sermons. Martha stared at the pastor, unable to hear a word as she warded off comical images of him marching in holiday parades in his Cub Scout leader uniform: the stupid hat, the pointy kerchief, the vast expanse of dimpled knee between his khaki shorts and knee socks. The catch in his throat when he said the word “God” made her skin crawl with embarrassment.

  And that was it for religion, except for a month in high school when Martha read Franny and Zooey and repeated the Jesus prayer, waiting without the least success to see a blinding light. In college she took a religions course from a German theologian who lectured in a warbling chirp with her eyes shut tight. Martha never believed in God, not even as a girl, and later listened with envy and covetous curiosity to her Catholic friends’ merry nostalgia for faked confessions and vicious nuns.

  For a few months she’d had a boyfriend who meditated in a spare bedroom, empty but for a poster of an Indian swami in sunglasses and a top hat. At first this seemed exotic but then grew rapidly less charming. Why was she so hard on him? He’d been one of several men who confidently predicted that Martha would always be unhappy because she always had to analyze and dissect every little thing that anyone (by which they meant themselves) happened to do or say. They were right! Why couldn’t Martha quit thinking and exchange her niggling trivial doubts for the bliss of total submission, for the blessed certainty and trust in some higher consciousness large enough to do her worrying for her?

  What bliss it would be to surrender your griefs, your passions, and your will, to trade them in like an old car for confidence and calm, to become like the Goddess women and float on a cloud of faith that a broken answering machine was a message from your guardian angel sent to teach you heavenly patience and spare you annoying calls that might otherwise ruin your day!

  For weeks after Dennis left, Martha called home from work every hour to see if he had phoned, though this made no sense at all; he could have called her at Mode. The computer male voice said, “No messages,” with what began to sound like triumph. Holding the receiver, Martha had sat very still as prickly shudders of disappointment coursed from her scalp down to her toes…

  “Okay, forget it,” Isis said. “Le
t’s lose the moment of silence. The best thing about priestess ritual,” she informed Martha and Hegwitha, “is, if it doesn’t work, bag it. There’s no rule book, no expectations, and we’re writing our own sacred text every minute of our lives.”

  The women laughed, gravelly caws of relief, and once more Martha was pleasantly surprised to find that her personal insufficiency was, in fact, a collective event.

  Isis said, “I’d like to start by welcoming you on this Harvest Night, which by Goddess’s grace falls on Labor Day weekend, so we can honor the harvest and our grandmothers who fought for the labor unions. And every woman who has ever been in labor birthing a child—which, the sisters tell me, isn’t called labor for nothing.”

  “You can say that again,” Titania agreed.

  “Blessed be,” chorused the women.

  “Goddess,” said Isis, “tonight you have sent us two new priestesses.” The women smiled at Martha and Hegwitha, genuinely welcoming, though welcome came more easily to some of them than others. It was a stretch for Freya and teary-eyed Diana, but all except Sonoma were trying, and Martha felt grateful and moved. How little it took to make one feel fractionally less unhappy!

  “This is not a sorority,” Isis went on, “with a torture initiation. No one swallows goldfish or gets naked and streaks town. Nor is it a convent; nobody shaves her head. Nor Esalen, where gangs of balding, paunchy New Age guys think initiation is getting to grope our tits. This is a priestess circle empowered by the feminine, by kindness and awareness of others’ feelings.”

  True, Martha thought, women hadn’t invented goldfish-swallowing or war. But women had other cruel rituals and barbed weapons at their disposal. Look at little girls in the schoolyard! And just last week, on the bus, she’d heard a woman telling her friend, “That gray hair looks good on you. I mean it, you look younger. We were all wondering when you would stop dyeing it that toxic dog-doo brown.”

  “Women,” said Isis, “are like the child in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes.’ We see the truth and say it, no matter what the cost. One of the things we know is, any initiation is torture. The double horror of being new—and being put on the spot!