The Adventures of Flash Jackson (32 page)

“Look and ask yourself, young woman,” said Miz Powell. “What is it about this image that disturbs you so?”

“Snake,” I croaked.

“Yes, indeed. A snake. And what else?”

“Woman,” I said. I was suddenly reduced to monosyllables. “Woman snake.”

“And there you have it,” said Miz Powell. Her fingers burrowed into my forehead like drill bits. “Woman snake. But why should that bother you?” she asked. “Snakes are part of nature, are they not?”

“Please,” I said.

“This bothers you,” said Miz Powell, “because that woman is you, Haley Bombauer.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. That woman is you, and your mother, and your grandmother, and all of them before. And it's me. And Letty. You know us and you trust us. Yet why do you reject this simple truth? Why do you go on with this stupid stuntman fallacy, pretending you're someone else? And why do you hate snakes so much? What do they represent?”

I couldn't speak anymore. Tears had long been streaming down my cheeks, and I was choking back sobs.

“Snakes represent
you
,” said Miz Powell. “They are your totem animal. They are your true self.”

“Shut up!” I said.

“Say hello to Lilith, my dear, as conceived by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” said Miz Powell. “Say hello to the oldest and most powerful demon of them all.”

I grabbed the picture and threw it across the room as hard as I could, and the sound of the glass tinkling into a hundred pieces was a glorious one indeed. Then I got up and ran from the house—
we
got up, I should say, because even though I was scarcely into my first trimester, I was already cognizant of the little being growing inside me, and I knew that it was aware of me too, not as an individual but only aware of me as dimly as we ourselves are aware of the universe, and of all the strange things that exist in it, most of which we have not yet even begun to understand.

I was not a woman-snake. I was not this Lilith person. I was me, and I hated snakes. And at that moment, I hated Miz Powell.

Yet, I couldn't help asking myself as I ran along the road back home, why had something about it rung true? What about it made sense? Why did I know deep down that Miz Powell was right, just as she always was?

S
even months later, I was out on the porch of the old Grunveldt house—now
my
house—swabbing away cobwebs with a mop. I had bought the place with my share of old Fireball's invention money, knowing that even though Mother and I seemed to be getting along better these days, I would throttle her if we lived together. I was getting too old to put up with her anymore.

When the Grunveldts were still alive and the house was for sale, there had been more than a few parties interested in buying it. But now that the family was gone, it was as if there was a force field around the place. The For Sale sign had disappeared while I was in the woods—probably stolen by vandals—and now no one wanted to come near it, except me.

The house had decomposed. Once it was a kingdom of cleanliness. Mrs. Grunveldt was of that generation of women who rarely stepped outside, who believed a woman's world was bounded to the north by her front porch and to the south by the kitchen step. Women like that took housecleaning seriously. She turned domesticity into an art form. My childhood memories of the Grunveldt house were of stepping onto wooden floors so slickly waxed that one sneeze would send you
shooting backwards like a rocket. And if you happened to touch the always freshly scrubbed walls with a grubby hand, Mrs G. could identify and convict you by your fingerprints alone.

Maybe she found cleanliness cathartic. Or maybe—and this is more likely—she thought she could compensate for her abnormal child with a supernormally clean abode. These kinds of bargains are often made between mothers and the rest of the world, though the world isn't usually aware of it.

Now the house had fallen into disrepair. When I moved in, it had been just over a year since the Grunveldts died, but in that short time dust had fallen like snow over everything. Windows had been broken. Doors had warped. The forces of filth, kept at bay for so long, were dancing on Mrs. Grunveldt's grave.

Since the age of four or thereabouts, as soon as I was old enough to understand what gender I was, I had looked at women like Mrs. Grunveldt and my mother and shuddered at the fate that awaited me, a cursed girl. Housebound, driven to near madness by the confines of their existences, their only successes vicarious, through husband and male children. What of my poor mother, then? With no husband to be proud of, and no sons to beam upon, she resorted to the only form of child rearing she understood for girls: molding me in her image. Even as a tiny girl, I wasn't having any of it. And underneath the surface, beneath the still waters of that placid mind, she understood. I knew now as I had never known before that her frustrations were not at my recalcitrance but at her failure to recognize the dangers of her own life before it was too late. It would drive me mad, too, to see a daughter of mine figure out a way to be a woman
and
a person. I would probably think to myself,
Why doesn't she share the secret with me?

Perhaps it wasn't too late for her, though. After all, it never really is too late for anything.

 

Cleaning the inside of the Grunveldt place had occupied a good portion of my first two trimesters, and allowed me to ignore the snow
that had come early again this year. Frankie's spirit, mournful and starved for conversation, followed me through his former home as I went through the sweep-mop-dust phase, and then through the paint-everything-that-doesn't-move phase. I talked aloud to myself sometimes, to let him know I knew he was there, but I was not about to start humoring him unless he really started causing problems—throwing things around, et cetera. I didn't think he was going to be that kind of ghost. I didn't think he would turn out to be much of a ghost at all.

“Damn these spiderwebs,” I said aloud, for his benefit. The mop made a gritty, ripping sound as it caught on the splinters on the underside of the porch roof.

Now, starting my third trimester, I was having to face up to the disheartening revelation that I wouldn't be able to do any more heavy work until the baby was born. For the second time in my life, I was “disabled.” Not that being pregnant was turning out to be a bad thing—I was rather enjoying it. It was certainly better than having my leg in a cast. It was weird and fun and magical, in a way, and so far I hadn't suffered much. But heavy lifting or pushing could easily cause the placenta to dislodge from the wall of my uterus, and that would have been the end of the baby. And suddenly I wanted this baby more than I'd ever wanted anything in the world.

What about my theater?
I heard Frankie's spirit demand. Hard to tell whether it was really him or only an echo of that old conversation that was still bouncing around the place.

“What theater, Frankie?” I asked.

The theater of the human spirit. The theater for the Indians. I want you to build it
.

“Oh, Frankus,” I said, “one bloody thing at a time, all right? I'm trying to accomplish something here.”

Silence, though he was still there. He knew when he could push me and when he should leave me alone.

 

In the kitchen, hanging over the table, was a copy of the picture Miz Powell had shown me that traumatic day in her living room. I dusted this picture every day, whether it needed it or not. The snake, she'd explained, is the oldest symbol of feminine power in the world. It's not a
female
power—it's a
feminine
power. Miz Powell was very clear on this point, because men and women alike have feminine energies within them—as well as masculine ones. People were too obsessed with gender these days, she said. Really, there weren't nearly as many differences between us as we liked to pretend.

Who was this Lilith, anyway? Miz Powell, ever the walking mythological dictionary, was only too happy to explain. Lilith was an ancient figure, so old she had already been worshipped in half a dozen cultures by the time the New Testament was written. We know most about her from the ancient Hebrews—she was, in some versions of the story, Adam's first wife, before Eve.

Originally, according to Miz Powell, God had created Man and Woman as one being, an androgyne that was complete in itself. But an androgyne cannot reproduce with itself, and so they were split down the middle—one half being the man, Adam, and the other half being Lilith.

“And this, of course, led to the First Argument,” Miz Powell said. “Because the two could not agree on who should dominate. Adam felt that he should be Lilith's superior, and Lilith felt quite the opposite. When he tried to force her to submit, she became angry, uttered a magic word, and flew into the air.”

“What was the magic word?” I asked her.

“The true name of God,” Miz Powell said.

“Which was?”

“Don't look at
me
,” she said. “If I knew that, I would have flown away long ago.”

“And then what happened to her?”

“According to myth, she kills human babies in their sleep,” she told me. “The girls before the eighth day of life, the boys before the twen
tieth, which was when they used to circumcise them. Also, Hebrew parents used to warn their sons that when they masturbated, Lilith became pregnant from their seed and gave birth to demons.”

“Lot more effective than the old hairy-palm rule,” I said. “So you really think I'm like this…person?”

“Demon.”

“Demon?”

“The
point
, my dear,” said Miz Powell, “is that if the masculine and feminine halves would have accepted each other as equals, there never would have been any sort of disagreement at all, and we would be living in a world of perfect harmony. But for some reason, they couldn't do this. Later, God made Eve, and as she was made out of pure dust—Lilith being made out of filth and sediment—she was somehow more receptive to Adam's authority. When the masculine and feminine are integrated in a
person
,” she said, looking directly at me, “conflict is removed, and great things can be achieved. But rare indeed is the individual who has that kind of courage. That is what I'm trying to tell you. That, and the fact that you have the same energy she has. The same spirit.”

“I'm flattered,” I said.

“Don't be,” said Miz Powell. “Just understand. You must remember that every irrational fear has some basis in the unconscious. Perhaps it's just an ancient instinct that's more prevalent in some than in others. Or perhaps it's something else. A symbol, if you will. And snakes are positively
loaded
with metaphor and meaning.”

“So Lilith was the snake in the garden of Eden?”

“Lilith has been many things, my dear,” said Miz Powell. “There are goddesses similar to her in Hindu culture. The Israelites knew about her even when they were nothing more than a bunch of simple nomads, thousands of years ago. She is everywhere. She has a
job
.”

“Which is?”

“She is that which does not surrender,” said Miz Powell. “She is indomitable.”

In other words
, I thought,
she is Flash Jackson
.

 

It was directly as a result of this conversation that, several weeks later, at the end of my second trimester, I steeled myself, drove into town with Mother, and bought a snake. Just a little one, mind you—none of your Amazonian anacondas for me. I wanted my baby to live to a ripe old age, not to end up as a headline on a supermarket tabloid. He was only a milk snake, colored in brilliant reds and yellows and laced with black, no longer than my forearm when all stretched out. He was to be fed one baby mouse every other week, and he would live in an aquarium in my bedroom. This was how I was going to begin the process of overcoming my snake-o-phobia, or whatever the hell you call it.

(Note to self: Look up the name for fear of snakes. Write it on a piece of paper, chant the spell of getting rid of things. Burn it. Eat the ashes. Do this while holding the snake. That's the only sure way.)

“What are you going to name him?” Mother asked.

“Who?” I responded. “The snake or the baby?”

“The snake,” she said.

“I'll have to think about it,” I said. Naming something implied ownership, even more so than handing over the cash and taking it home. Sorry. Not “it.” “He.” Or possibly “she,” since it was hard to tell with snakes.

“And as long as we're on the subject, what
are
you going to name the baby?” she asked. “There's only three months to go, you know.”

“Oh really, Mother?” I said. “I had no idea.”

“Don't get sarcastic. I was only asking.”

“I haven't figured that out either. Furthest thing from my mind.”

“Don't you think you ought to spend some time thinking about it?”

“Don't you think you ought to mind your own business?” I asked.

 

But I am getting ahead of myself. When I was around two months' pregnant, I had walked up the hill to the Shumachers', where Brother had been boarded. I stopped and chatted a while with Mrs. Shumacher
and her daughters, but the conversation was awkward.
Did they know about Adam?
I wondered. No, it seemed that they were merely unsure of what to say to someone like me, someone who could take off and live in the woods like a mystic, someone who was, in their eyes, a witch. I was going to have to get used to this hesitation, even in people I'd known all my life. It was appropriate. A witch does not socialize readily. She must be treated with some degree of respect and standoffishness. My fuzzy scalp, which I didn't bother concealing, must also have shocked them—no sane woman would do such a thing. So, after several minutes of stilted conversation, I asked to pay up what I owed for Brother's feed and stable space, said I probably ought to get going, and asked casually, as a throwaway question, if Adam happened to be around, because there was something I wanted to ask him.

He was behind the barn. Every large dairy farm has a manure pit outside the milking area, which the droppings of the cows can be shoveled or sluiced into. It collects over the course of the year and makes excellent fertilizer, which can be sold, which is therefore as good as gold. Nothing is ever wasted on a farm. Every so often the pit has to be emptied, however, and this is not the most pleasant job in the world, as it entails standing in piles of old cow shit as deep as your hips.

This is where I found Adam now. He wore a pair of Wellingtons to protect his legs, and a handkerchief over his mouth. His shoulders and back gleamed with sweat as he shoveled it into a wheelbarrow, which he would then roll up a ramp and dump into another pile on the ground that was already chest-high. He didn't notice me. I watched him work for a while, gauging my feelings. Admiration of his strength. A warm memory of what had happened in the woods. Some sort of palpable connection, twanging between us like a rubber band, that meant he was the father of the child I was carrying.

“Adam,” I said.

He stopped, turned, and looked at me. On his face I saw the same expression that had been there when I surprised him in the woods,
chopping down the tree. Shock. Was I always destined to be surprising this man? Would he ever be glad to see me?

“Hello dere,” he said.

“How's it going?”

He shrugged. “Pretty busy,” he said.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

I sat down on the edge of the pit, my legs dangling over. The smell of cow manure has never seemed unpleasant to me, though I prefer that of horses, which is sweeter. He leaned on his shovel and looked at my feet.

“You home now?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You lost your hair?”

“I shaved it off,” I said.

He nodded. He seemed to have difficulty meeting my gaze.
Is it going to be this way with everyone from now on?
I wondered. Adam looked around again, everywhere except at my eyes.