Commune of Women (39 page)

Heddi feels the strangest sensation, a powerful electrical surge through her armpits, as if every pore has opened and is squirting sweat. There’s a strange metallic taste back in her jaws and her breath is coming in short gasps. Her whole body, like Sophia’s, suddenly knows that Death is lurking.

Now she can hear it, too. It’s a faint, whispering scuttle of feet in the hall outside, and then silence. They sit staring at one another, eyes wide in alarm, watching Sophia from odd postures, as if frozen in a game of Statues.

Slowly, a kind of thaw comes over her. “It’s okay,” she mouths, “they’re gone.” And as a woman, they release a collective sigh of relief.

She creeps over, circling them in closer with a gesture of her arms.

“Something’s happening. I don’t know what. I feel it, though,” she whispers. “The energy’s definitely changing.”

She looks around their bedraggled circle like a general marshalling her troops. “Now is the time of greatest danger. Anything can happen. You have to prepare yourselves.”

She looks at each of them, in turn. No – not looks –
gazes
. Her eyes seem to go right through Heddi’s into her brain, as if she could read her readiness for self-defense there – or for death.

“Things will happen fast, once they start. Very fast. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to defend ourselves. Everything depends on keeping that machine barricading the door. If there’s gunfire, that won’t be easy. If there is, get down on the floor. Get into the corners, away from the door...”

When she comes back to herself, she is still lying on the floor and her screams have turned to sobs. The Brothers were right. She is no warrior – but for the first time, this brings her no shame.

She knows what they are doing, those cowards! She knows that the Brothers are tired of waiting for something to happen, for someone to pay attention to them. This is the thing they promised her that they would not do under any circumstances. And whom have they chosen to carry out their insane plan? Jamal! The kindest, gentlest, most poetic of them all. The one who will not resist.

And when he is gone
they
will still be alive, full of their conviction that they are brave warriors. They are sacrificing him on the altar of their own arrogance and cowardice.

And this is also retribution: Jamal and she love one another. The message is clear. There is no place for love in the warrior’s world. The lover will be sacrificed. He is a useful example.

And how did they convince him? By lying! By telling him she was dead. So cowardly, these men who think themselves brave!

And suddenly, she realizes that they planned this from the beginning. Otherwise, how would there be the explosive vest? The work is so delicate; she should have been the one to make it. No, they made that thing without her knowledge because they always planned to do this. That is why they made the vest so it could not be removed. It is their revenge against her happiness; against her very existence among them.

Somehow, she finds the strength to pull herself up by the edge of the desk. Jamal was moving very quickly. He must be near his target now.

Her heart feels as if it will explode. She holds onto the chair to keep from collapsing and forces herself to look at the video screens, barely breathing as she scans them.

Please Allah-God! Please! Let that terrible vest fail! Please do not let Jamal be killed in this horrible way!

At last she finds him, crouching behind an airline counter very near the main entrance.

She looks at the clock. It is just five o’clock. She turns to the television and the news is just beginning...

Of course! That is how they have planned it! How stupid she is! The live news coverage of every major television station in America is focused on this building. The Brothers will give to them the explosive news for which they lust!

Now it is like a tennis match. She turns her head to see Jamal. She flips it back to see the newswoman, with her blonde hair blowing in the dry Los Angeles afternoon. She turns back to Jamal. Again and again. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion.

She sees him take something white from inside his vest.

She hears the reporter say, “Good evening from Los Angeles International Airport, where we are in the fourth day of a standoff with terrorists who are still holding an estimated 65 hostages...”

She sees Jamal stand from behind the counter and straighten the wadded white thing that is just a rectangle of white cloth.

She watches as the TV camera pans over the front of the terminal, the tanks, the hunched SWAT teams, the men in black jackets with
FBI
in big white letters on the back.

She sees Jamal begin to walk toward the doors.

She hears the newscaster say, “So far, there has been no sign of willingness to negotiate...”

She sees Jamal’s hand touch the metal bar of the door handle.

She hears the woman say, “FBI officials at the scene...”

She strains to see his form as the doors swing open, as he becomes shadowy and vague through the glass and then disappears, as the door shuts.

She turns to the TV where the blonde has stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open. “Oh my God! This is amazing... Can we get a camera on that? Hurry! Ladies and gentlemen, someone has just emerged from the terminal, waving a white flag!”

A blurry image of a man all in black walks out from the shadows of the entrance, one arm raised and waving the white cloth.

Faintly, she can hear men yelling, “Down! Get down!” but the figure does not get down.

Slowly, he moves forward, still waving his flag, an isolated figure on the desolate plane of concrete, as alone and lost as a crash victim in the desert.

“He’s ignoring the orders to get down, ladies and gentlemen! He seems to be moving almost in a trance...”

X leans toward the screen, straining to clarify the cloudy image.

“He seems to be shouting something! Can we pick that up on the mic? Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first big break in four days. This is apparently one of the terrorists and he seems to be trying to negotiate...”

And then X hears his voice. It is unmistakably Jamal’s and, though distant and faint, she and the viewing audience of millions can hear his words distinctly. “We will wait no longer. We demand a plane and safe passage to Libya. Otherwise, in fifteen minutes, we will begin executing hostages...”

His words are cut off. A group of armored men rushes him and just as they tackle him, before her horrified eyes, Jamal simply disappears, with horrific noise, in a cloud of smoke.

Suddenly there is the most terrifying explosion!

The entire floor rises under them like the back of a huge, shrugging beast and then subsides. Acoustic tiles rain down from the ceiling. The lights dim, brown out and go black. Thick dust fills the air, leaving Heddi choking for breath. All around her, she hears screams and wailing.

Then above the coughing and sobs, she’s aware of an immense silence, as if the world has simply stopped turning – as if whatever it is that has happened has killed all life.

She raises her head and looks around.

Pitch blackness.

She hears bodies rustling, moaning, the scrape of grit and tinkling of broken glass.

Then miraculously, a light appears from over by the candy machine! She turns toward it, dazed by it like a moth. She can see nothing but it. It blinds her. But she feels a surge of life, of gratitude, as if it were an epiphany of God Himself.

Then there’s a gravelly cackle, “I been luggin this ol flashlat round fer years, thinkin the day’d come when I’d surely need it, an it looks lak today’s the day!”

The Brueghel! God love her!

Pearl shines her light around the room. The first one Heddi sees is Erika, half-blown off the couch, her left leg hanging to the floor, her body buried in acoustic tiles from which dust wafts like a cloud of smoke.

The light sweeps to the right and there’s Betty, her head completely white, as if someone had upended a flour canister over her. Her eyes are so big and dark, she looks like an electrocuted owl. And mercifully, she seems to have been shocked into silence.

The beam sweeps on, toward the door where there’s the most amazing sight – Sophia, with her entire body bent beneath the weight of the toppled drink machine that leans at an angle more prone than upright. Her eyes are about to pop out of her head from the strain.

“Quick!” Heddi shouts, without thinking of the noise. “Everyone help her!” She pushes herself up from the floor, feeling broken glass embed itself in the heel of her hand.

Her legs are gelatinous. She doesn’t walk. She
wavers
towards the door. Other forms emerge from the darkness, weaving in the same direction.

Arms reach out. There are grunts. Someone says “Shit!” through gritted teeth. Slowly, ever so slowly, the machine rises, balances a second on its back edge, then rocks backward, slamming into the doorframe. The remaining glass cascades from its front window with a tinkle like wind chimes.

Sophia is breathing hard. She nods her head, mouths, “Thanks,” too winded to speak. And then, Heddi sees her tense again...!

When the explosion comes, it is so huge and violent that X cannot believe what she is seeing. The floor buckles beneath her feet. The television and all the monitors go black. She is thrown violently to her right. The ceiling lights flicker, go brown and then blink out. She crashes to the floor, screaming to Allah to let the walls fall in and bury her.

Finally, she sees that a little light has come on over the door. It fills the room with an ugly red glow.

She does not know for how long she has been lying there. Her head aches terribly and when she puts her hand to the back of her skull, it comes away covered in blood that looks black in the lurid light.

She tries to sit up, but something is wrong. Then she sees that the monitors have all toppled to the floor, pinning her right leg. She cannot feel it and almost wishes it would hurt.

She lies back and tries to think.

So this is it! This is the glorious action of the Brothers – death, destruction, dust, terror, injury, despair. She knows from making bombs that this explosion is bigger than any she might have prepared. This is a concentration of C-4 of terrible force.

She wants to cry but no tears come. They are all expended. There are no tears left.

She sits again and begins to shove at the nearest monitor. As its weight slowly rocks backward across her leg, the pain follows. Suddenly, it bolts through her and she opens her mouth to scream but all that comes out is a groan – a terrible sound, barely human.

She cannot formulate a plan – her mind is too chaotic – but in some strange fashion, she knows what to do; what is her destiny. All she has to do is to get her stubborn animal body to cooperate.

Somehow, she manages to get to her feet in the chaos of ceiling tiles and monitors. In the red glow from the emergency light, it is a scene straight from the Christian’s Hell.

She staggers through the wasted equipment. Wires are ripped from the wall and one is arcing quietly to itself, a greenish, jagged bolt of pure energy amid the jumble.

She has a secret and now it’s time. If she had told the Brothers, they would have laughed at her – even Jamal.

With filthy, numbed fingers, she unbuttons her pants and drags them down around her thighs. Wrapped tightly around her waist, the secret is warm and fitted to her body like an embrace. She pulls at it blindly until an end falls loose and she begins to unwind it. It is wrapped around her twice.

She sets it aside, pulls up her pants and re-buttons them. Then she holds her prize up in the red light for inspection. It is the shawl her mother embroidered for her years ago, black and soft, with cross-stitch in red, green, and white, the Palestinian colors, making a wide geometric border. Red strawberries are strewn over the black field, like delicious hope sprinkled over a grave.

Her good luck piece.

She bends forward and wraps the shawl around her head like a woman wrapping wet hair in a towel, and winds the ends around and around until she can tie them in a knot.

It is her crown and she wishes she had a mirror. She wants it to be very impressive.

This is for you, Mama, and for my aunties and Cousin Sharona. This is for all the women in all the camps, wherever they are...for all their suffering, for all their patience, for all their love.

As she hobbles through the rubble searching for her assault rifle, she can feel the blood beginning to saturate the back of her crown.

They are all staring at Sophia by the light of Pearl’s flashlight. She’s standing like a sibyl about to pronounce a prophecy.

And yet there’s something animal-like about her, too. In Sophia’s stance can be seen all the years of her wanderings in the woods, as her nerve-endings turned hypersensitive and she learned from the animals the arts of self-preservation.

Ondine has never witnessed such a transformation. It feels like Sophia might suddenly rise up on owl’s wings or leap like a deer. She feels a slow creep of gooseflesh, just looking at her.

Sophia is like a dancer, poised on the balls of her feet, rocking slightly like a leaf lifted by wind. Her eyes are staring but not at anything in particular. Her entire body is like a tuning fork that’s been struck and is vibrating. Her nostrils dilate, as her head rears back and she cocks her ear toward the door.

Sophia sweeps them all with her gaze and it seems as bright as a searchlight. Ondine thinks she sees an actual beam emitted from those eyes, piercing the curtains of dust.

“
Down!
” Sophia hisses. “Get down! Into the corners!”

They all start to move jerkily, strobe-like, through the curtains of dust.

Ondine collides with someone; Betty, by her doughy bulk. Her face is powdered white, her eyes huge, by the intermittent light of the flashlight’s beam. Ondine grabs her by the elbow and drags her toward the corner at the end of the couch. She comes unresistingly, like a tired child.