Hunters and Gatherers (12 page)

Diana said, “I can’t think of anything more important than a real aloneness experience, than communion with Mother Earth, gazing into the mirror of nature, praying for a vision.”

“In the Sonoran Desert?” said Titania. “This is not Fire Island, Diana. This is cactus. Scorpions. Rattlesnakes. This is walking up the wrong arroyo and dying of flash floods and thirst and starvation.”

“Serial killers,” said Joy.

“You’re not kidding,” said Starling. “The whole Southwest is full of crazed drifters with private arsenals.”

“What’s wrong with snakes?” said Diana. “They were important symbols in the ancient Goddess religions. The matriarchy embraced all of nature and didn’t privilege one creature above another.”

“That’s right,” said Hegwitha. “It was patriarchy that gave the snake a bad rap because of men’s neurotic conflict about their penises.”

“Penis,” said Joy. “Singular. Martha, you’re awfully quiet.”

“I don’t mind the idea of snakes,” Martha said. “I just don’t want them near me.”

Sonoma said, “I wouldn’t go out in the desert alone. Not for a million bucks.”

“No one’s asking you to,” said Freya. “In fact, you’re not allowed to, young lady.”

“Not allowed by who?” growled Sonoma.

“By
whom
,” corrected Freya.

“It would be great for Sonoma,” said Diana. “A menstruation ritual vision quest. When a Papago girl comes into her moon time she goes to what they call a little house, and the grandmothers educate her in female magic, and the village dances all night.”

“Diana, darling,” said Titania. “We’ve been over this ad nauseam. That Papago girl doesn’t go to the little house just to learn female magic. She goes away so the sight of her won’t make all the husbands impotent and sour the milk and ruin the crops.”

“Titania’s right!” said Bernie, with a conciliatory smile meant to smooth over their little tiff on the subject of age.

Freya said, “Some tribes bury pubescent girls in pits of hot stones for three days. I did a lot of reading about this when I did my
Biocycle-Sphere Menstrual Hut
installation in Edinburgh.”

“Not the Navajos,” said Diana. “They have a four-day party.”

“When you have a daughter,” said Freya, “
you
send her into the desert.”

What personal stake did Diana have in Sonoma’s vision quest? Why did she keep mentioning it, though Sonoma showed no interest and grew more sullen than usual when Diana brought it up?

“Can we stop harping on this?” said Sonoma. “I am
not
going out in the desert.”

“Diana’s projecting,” Joy said. “She’s the one who wants to do the vision solo. She wants to go into the wilderness where she doesn’t have to eat for three days and no one will criticize her and she can feel good about it.”

“Stop it, Joy,” said Diana. “You know, Goddess worship is supposed to be so nonhierarchical, but when real decisions have to be made around here it’s always Isis and sometimes Starling. If they want to do a solo, the rest of us will do solos, too. And if they don’t…”

Hegwitha leaned forward. From that first day on the beach, Martha had noticed that questions of power and hierarchy were of great interest to Hegwitha, who often seemed to be weighing her ideals of a purely egalitarian Goddess-centered society against the more practical exigencies of life in New York and Fire Island. The nearness of death had done nothing to help her transcend all that. But who could say how anyone would or should act in Hegwitha’s situation?

“
Reisefieber
,” said Isis.

“Excuse me?” Starling said.

“
Reisefieber
,” Isis repeated. “Travel anxiety. Freud coined the term. One of the very rare occasions on which he got it right. It was based on his observation that everyone gets nervous before a trip, because every journey is linked in our minds to the final journey of death.”

“Air travel especially,” Titania said.

Isis said, “Katherine Mansfield wrote in her journals that whenever she left for a journey she would get her house in order as if she were never coming back.”

“Cool,” said Sonoma.

“That’s so beautiful,” Bernie said.

“A little morbid, if you ask me,” said Joy.

“I don’t know,” said Isis. “The point is, we don’t have to struggle about vision work now. There will definitely be alone time. No one’s going to make anyone stay with the group every minute. But Maria has so much to teach us, our time with her will seem too short, and we won’t want to go off and miss this great opportunity. If the rest of you had met Maria, you’d know what I mean. Anyway, Goddess religion was never about individual vision so much as about the collective healing power of the group.”

“That’s fine for you to say, Isis,” said Diana. “You’ve already had your vision.”

“Yes, well.” Isis sighed. “We’re not in competition about this. And the vision experience can be overrated. I realize I’ve said this before, but when I saw the Goddess in her chariot over the ASAP convention, it seemed somehow so Ordinary, so integrated with the rest of life, it could have been the Goodyear blimp—”

“That reminds me,” interrupted Freya, “I heard the funniest story. There’s this immensely overweight woman sculptor—you’d recognize the name. She was working in her garden, and she heard some workmen across the way saying: Look at the Goodyear blimp! She ran inside and got her husband, and he came out, all set to punch out the workmen for insulting his wife. But just then he looked up at the sky—”

“And saw the Goodyear blimp,” said Titania. “Fabulous. I love it.”

Sonoma said, “Why are you always telling fat stories? Why can’t you do anything but torture me about my weight?”

“I’m sorry, Sonoma,” said Freya. “I thought it was a funny story.” To the other women, she said, “Her father had no sense of humor either.”

“Look who’s talking,” said Sonoma. “Laugh-a-minute.”

“Sisters,” said Isis, “be kind to each other. Please.”

Joy said, “I know this trip will heal us in important ways. Just getting out of the city, back to the natural world—or as close to natural as the lack of ozone allows. And being around wise women who live in harmony with Turtle Earth, women respected in their tribal cultures, passing wisdom from mother to daughter. How could that not be good for Freya and Sonoma? And for me and Diana, to be around women living together—”

Diana said, “Joy makes Native American religion sound like couples therapy.”

“I don’t,” said Joy. “You know I’m not into couples therapy. You always find the thing I hate most and tell me that’s what I’m into.”

Isis said, “If you’d met Maria you’d know that anything is possible. There were people at Bolinas who swore that they’d seen her turn
into
an eagle, which of course is her spirit guide and the sacred name of her clan. She is so charismatic! You want to throw yourself at her feet. The first time I met her she told me that for a thousand years before the coming of the white man, her people had a song, and its lyrics said the white men would come and kill the earth, and Native people would not be able to stop it. Needless to say, I just nose-dived into a pit of white-woman guilt. But Maria said the most liberating thing. She said, ‘Were you at Little Big Horn, Isis? Why should
you
feel guilty?’

“After that I felt completely empowered, capable of anything. This was at the ’89 Bolinas Conference on Earth and Spirituality. After I met Maria, I volunteered to teach a second Goddess workshop for free.”

Bernie said, “We don’t doubt that Maria’s terrific. But I worry that some of us may be bringing unrealistic expectations to this trip.”

Joy said, “
That
’s therapy talk.”

Isis said, “No, really. I’m glad Bernie brought it up. Maybe we should go around the room and share the expectations we’re bringing to this journey. We could use the Talking Stick.”

“The Talking Stick!” cried the women. They were always so glad for a chance to use religious paraphernalia—the sweet enthusiasm of little girls deciding to bring out their favorite dolls. Sometimes when they did visualizations, nurturing their inner children or vision-traveling as a group to some sacred Aegean temple, they reminded Martha of children closing their eyes and playing pretend.

Isis took the stick first. “I’m looking forward to having time to learn from Maria, to absorb her magic and wisdom and make it my own.”

“Blessed be,” said the women.

Isis passed the stick to Joy, who said, “I guess I already said what I thought this trip is going to be about.”

“Say it again,” said Isis.

“Well, about Maria,” said Joy. “And also about healing—especially for me and Diana.” Hastily she handed the Talking Stick to Bernie.

Bernie said, “I love Tucson. And the desert. And there’s always so much to be learned from Native American cultures.”

Diana took the Talking Stick and said, “Well. To learn from Maria. And to learn from the desert and solitude and nature.”

She gave the stick to Freya, who said, “For me there is always the hope of finding something to use in my art.”

When Titania got the stick, she smiled and shook her head. “I usually know what I want,” she said. “But I am trying to go slower in my life journey. I have no expectations about what I want from this trip.”

The women applauded decorously. “Good attitude!” said Bernie.

Sonoma took the stick and held it. There was something lethal, Martha thought, about the stubbornness of children who knew that time is their secret weapon and that they can outwait and outlast the most patient adult.

“I don’t know,” Sonoma said. “I’m going because Mom’s going, I guess.”

“Is that all?” said Freya. “Because if that’s all, we can find someone for you to stay with. Don’t you have
any
thoughts about this? Most likely you are the only lucky girl in your class missing a week of school to go to one of the most beautiful parts of America.”

“I
like
school,” said Sonoma.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard
that
,” said Freya. “Well, you can stay home if you wish.”

Sonoma was silent for a few moments. “The desert could be cool,” she said. “I’ll go.”

“Thank you kindly!” said Freya.

When Hegwitha’s turn came, she said, “I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was hoping to discover some magic cactus or desert weed—the Native American cancer cure. Beyond that, it always helps me to get back into nature and get in touch with something that will be here after I’m gone.”

Finally it was Martha’s turn. Did they take it for granted that she was going? It was harder for her—she wasn’t like them, a self-employed therapist or artist or writer who could just cancel clients or put the newest creative project on hold. She said, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to expect. I mean, considering I’m not going,”

“You’re
not
?” chorused the women.

So the women had assumed she was coming along. It would seem petty and silly to say that no one had asked her.

“The money…” murmured Martha. “Besides, I don’t know if I can take time from work…”

“The money is a nonissue,” said Isis. “In cases of genuine need, we can draw on our Astarte Travel Scholarship Fund. And as for the time off from work…Well, the Goddess will have to arrange it!”

But perhaps the Goddess knew that Martha was only pretending to believe in Her and therefore refused to help persuade Eleanor, Martha’s boss, to overlook the fact that Martha had six more months of hard time at
Mode
to be eligible for a week’s parole. Martha had never felt less divinely guided as she began her feeble petition with a half-dozen excellent reasons why Eleanor should say no.

As Martha spoke, Eleanor’s face seemed to grow a sort of protective caul, a film that might be gruesomely torn by the slightest tic. From behind this unstable crust, Eleanor watched Martha struggling to explain why she needed to go to a private…seminar…with a Native American medicine woman. How insane of Martha to have imagined that the truth would set her free! She should have invented a sick parent or some grave condition requiring expensive diagnostic tests; she’d heard enough from Hegwitha to fake a full-body medical workup.

In the fluorescent glare of Eleanor’s cubicle-office, Martha saw her association with the Goddess group for the walking nervous breakdown it was. The Goddess women and the
Mode
staff might have been warring armies or competing football teams identifiable by their uniforms: the
Mode
army in black miniskirts, Lycra, and clunky shoes; the Goddess team in tie-dye, paisley, beads, and tinsel headbands.

Though someone had once assigned—and killed—the piece on Goddess worship, the young
Mode
staffers probably didn’t know that Goddess religion existed. Sometimes, just to experience a twinge of humiliation, Martha imagined telling the art-department girls what Isis and her friends believed. The basic concept of matriarchy might not seem so exotic:
Mode
, after all, was a misogynist’s nightmare of a matriarchal society. But the Goddess women would say that the editors at
Mode
had embraced corrupt male values, while the ancient matriarchies were based on tender loving care. Goddess civilization was nonhierarchical, whereas the
Mode
masthead was as stratified as the angels in
Paradise Lost
. In the matriarchies, you could change your job at will, and if you needed a week off to consult the oracle at Delphi…

“Arizona?” said Eleanor. “What area code is that?”

“What
area code
?” said Martha.

“Oh, never mind,” said Eleanor. “I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

“You’re right,” said Martha. “It’s impossible. I really shouldn’t go. It would be tough to have one less fact checker around right before the issue closes—”

Eleanor sighed. “When I said I didn’t think it was going to work out, what I meant by
it
was
you
. I meant you, at
Mode
.”

“Me?” said Martha. When had they progressed from talking about vacation to talking about
her
? She’d had this experience with men: some boundary was crossed and, before you knew it, an abstract conversation escalated into a personal assault. Was Eleanor firing her? Was this happening? Couldn’t they just slink back to the start of the discussion when Martha had no vacation but still had a job?