Woman On The Edge Of Time (17 page)

Except of course they weren’t. Nobody here knew what that meant. They just acted as if they were. They were kissing and hugging and Otter was beginning to weep. Innocente finally turned from her perhaps embarrassed fumbling with the floater
to let people greet her. Even she did not seem to find the embraces or the tears upsetting. Luciente had left Connie to hug Bee, and both of them were crying. Big fat tears rolled down Bee’s broad face. Imagine Claud crying! Even when they sentenced him, he had grinned and shrugged and said out of the corner of his mouth, “Shit, could be worse. Time’s hard, but you do it, and it’s gone.” Once again they reminded her of children, even the men. Only Innocente did not weep, stubbornly eager.

Blowing her nose on a big multicolored handkerchief, Luciente clambered back to her. “Ah me, ah my,” she was sighing as she came. Bee and Jackrabbit were embracing now, that skinny rambling kid who was Luciente’s lover too.

“Luciente, sometimes a child must have to do without mothers. If someone dies? If someone goes away? What would happen to your child if suppose you went to California? Is there still a California, or did it fall in the sea? Are you allowed to go, or do you have to stay here? Anyhow, could you take your daughter, or wouldn’t your comothers let you?”

“Ay, so many questions! Fasure I can go if I want to. How would I work well, how would I contribute to my village if I didn’t want to be here? We try not to leave when we’re mothering. But if I comped I had to go, Dawn would stay. Because to leave would be a terrible uprooting. Then if the child was old enough, person would choose a third mother. If not, we’d volunteer. Every child has three. If we die, the same.” Luciente blew her nose again, emphatically, in the handkerchief of complex and gaudy pattern (a gift handkerchief, Connie thought: I bet people still give each other handkerchiefs when they can’t think of anything else).

The drifting to and fro, the greeting and well-wishing, the embracing and weeping, the patting and hugging and hand clasping, rose to a frenzied peak and Bee, Otter, and Luxembourg in their finery climbed into the floater with Innocente. Luxembourg was piloting. They all waved and shouted. Baskets of lunch were handed in and what looked like a bottle of champagne. “Come back with a strong name!” “Till when, Innocente! I’m going next week!” “Take care!” “Have a powerful dream!” “Don’t fix on lonely!” “See you in a week!”

At last the floater, painted with a swirly design in pastels, put
out a bag apparatus above it and rose slowly, gracefully, and quietly. It soared to perhaps a thousand feet and then sailed off, with another device turning and twittering on it. Smoothly it paddled off through the air silent as a balloon and was soon gone. Once again Luciente blew her nose in the handkerchief of many colors and stuffed it in a pocket of her shorts as Jackrabbit strode from the eddies of leavetaking to hug her. Yes, they were not like Anglos; they were more like Chicanos or Puerto Ricans in the touching, the children in the middle of things, the feeling of community and fiesta. Then, after all that carrying on, everybody walked away cheerful enough, serene. Jackrabbit sauntered with his hand cupped on the nape of Luciente’s neck.

“Luciente, that handkerchief—was it a present?” Connie asked.

“This one? Fasure, from Dawn for Mothers’ Day. Dawn made it p’self!”

“Mother’s Day?” She laughed. “You still have Mother’s Day!”

“We have tens and tens of holidays,” Jackrabbit boasted. “For famous liberators. For important events, like the domes-ticking of corn and wheat. The turning of the sun north and south. Famous struggles … Didn’t your society use rituals to body what you thought good? Like your football games, parades, public executings—”

“We didn’t do that! That was the old times, way before.”

“I thought on your primitive holies—”

“TV, you mean? At least we had regular programs!”

“Didn’t you view bombings, burnings, stabbings? Shootings of people? In every group, spectaclers body ideas of good. Always people try to be good as they see it, no?” His free hand waved.

They were strolling down the hill toward the village. “I don’t know. We have a religious idea of being good—a bit like what you call good, being gentle and caring about your neighbor. But to be a good man, for instance, a man is supposed to be … strong, hold his liquor, attractive to women, able to beat out other men, lucky, hard, tough, macho we call it, muy hombre … not to be a fool … not to get too involved … to look out for number one … to make good money. Weil,
to get ahead you step on people, like my brother Luis. You knuckle under to the big guys and you walk over the people underneath … .” She shrugged wearily, passing the huts crawling with grape vines and roses, the orchards hung with small green fruit, the covered tanks where fish were spawning under translucent domes. Growth seemed to swarm over the land. “Good? My mother was good. What did it get her except to bleed to death at forty-four? Looking like she was sixty.” She wished sharply for a cigarette, but she had not seen any here and she remembered Luciente’s fear. “I was never able to do good enough to feel good, never able to do bad enough to do me any good.”

An older woman came up beside them, holding out her hand to Connie. “I’m White Oak. I work in the same base as Bee and Luciente. You’ve been pointed out to me and, grasp, we gossip about you. But we’ve never met. My child named perself this month too—I mean the one who was my child. That one is Thunderbolt now, and we can’t talk for another seven weeks.”

“Thunderbolt!” Luciente savored it. “I hope we’re not in for a summer of titanic names. Leaping Lightning. Stupendous Fireball. The Earth Dances, The Stars Stand Still. Heroic Revolutionary Fervor. Mao Susan B. Ferenzi. Freedom Through Constant Struggle.”

“I suppose you selected Luciente right off,” Jackrabbit crooned, giving her hair a tug. “I suppose you were too sensible, even at thirteen, ever to pick a silly name.”

“Actually I called myself White Light when I came from my naming, so you see I haven’t drifted far. But to confess, I went through the usual oddities. When I was first with Diana, I called myself Artemis.”

“Actually the twin of Artemis was Apollo. Or did you want to
be
Diana?” Jackrabbit moved beside them, loose-jointed, shambling. “You wanted the moon, Luci, instead of recognizing yourself a creature of the broad pragmatic day.”

“I was Panther for a while myself,” White Oak said. “As if I’d ever see one, except on the holi. And Liriope—that’s a plant we were breeding for erosion control on the old blast sites when I was first in our base.”

“I fancy that one,” Jackrabbit said. “Liriope …” He leaped
ahead to assume a position as flowering plant, head hung back, mouth open, arms arched above his head.

“Venus flytrap,” White Oak said. “Don’t tease
me.
I remember too well when you moved here, you were going through a name a week.”

“Lord Byron, One Who Crests the Wave, Dark Moon, Wild Goose …” Luciente crooned.

“And I walked into the fooder one day and you told me you were going to give me my name of the week, Wild Porkchop. That was the first time I noticed you. Now you’d better forget—I’m meaner than you are!” He hopped to Connie’s side. “Did you never have another name? Or do you just keep changing that second name?”

They were walking a broad path beside the tidal river. Every twenty feet wooden benches stood. White Oak took a seat at a table, inviting them to stare at the flow of the currents, the tide washing slowly in. A high in the water Goat skimmed past them, going downriver against the tide.

“It’s funny, but the way you talk reminds me of people in … in the institution where I’m locked up … . A lot of the time we don’t talk to each other there, but there are … fewer fences than outside. Anyhow, in a way I’ve always had three names inside me. Consuelo, my given name. Consuelo’s a Mexican woman, a servant of servants, silent as clay. The woman who suffers. Who bears and endures. Then I’m Connie, who man aged to get two years of college—till Consuelo got pregnant. Connie got decent jobs from time to time and fought welfare for a little extra money for Angie. She got me on a bus when I had to leave Chicago. But it was her who married Eddie, she thought it was smart. Then I’m Conchita, the low-down drunken mean part of me who gets by in jail, in the bughouse, who loves no good men, who hurt my daughter … .”

When she stopped short, the others were silent but did not seem scared or judgmental. As usual, Luciente spoke first. “Maybe Diana could help you to meld the three women into one.”

“I had a waning self in me when I was thirteen. The things I wanted, I didn’t think I should want, so I put them out of myself to plague and threaten me.” Jackrabbit spoke with an ironic lilt, but not an irony aimed at her. “I tore so, I saddened
I’d gone through my naming. I wanted to return to the children’s house, with my mothers ready to fuss when I called them. I had begun to train as a shelf diver, but I didn’t want to do that; at the same time I couldn’t feel what I did want … . You don’t at core believe you’re three women—that’s a useful way to talk about your life. But I did believe the ocean was trying to drown me, cause I felt swallowed by the training … .”

“What happened to you?” she asked him.

“I went mad with fear. In the madhouse I met Bolivar and he was good for me in learning to say that initial ‘I want, I want.’ I had played a lot as a child with paints and with holies and I felt … most alive then. I had to do that in the center of my life. I had to follow my comp through and even push it. So Bolivar and I went to study with Marika of Amherst. Then I studied in Provincetown with Blackfish. You see, I’m a needy type and every time I lack, I add on. The next time I jagged, I grabbed Luciente.”

“You came from Fall River?” White Oak asked him.

He nodded. “I moved here to be with Bolivar.”

“Our gain.” White Oak grinned. “Not for your winning disposition always, but you make pretty things and strong holies. In the shop yesterday I was screen-batching the new tintos of Luciente turning her belly up to the sun.”

“White Oak, you graze me,” Luciente said. “How can you say it’s my belly?”

“Person has a good belly,” Jackrabbit said. “I like good round bellies. Like yours, White Oak.”

They were flirting right in front of Luciente and nobody seemed to care. White Oak must have been twenty-five years older than Jackrabbit, although they were so athletic it was hard to tell for sure. White Oak’s hair was abundant and worn loose, but she had a network of deep laugh lines around her eyes and mouth.

White Oak’s kenner made a noise. “Here I am, White Oak,” she said to it.

“Zo, are we running to crack the new test today or not?” A sharp voice rose from her wrist. “We’re limping with Bee off till three and Luciente off till who knows when.”

“Flying.” White Oak sighed. “Since coordinating this six, Corydora watches the clock as if it could couple with per!”

“No slinging mates. Corydora’s doing a good job,” Luciente said. “Even if person does try to hand me guilt on a plate about being called up for the time proj. Too bad you lugs have to stiff it twice as hard.” She made a mock-pious face.

“Corydora’s your boss?”

“We coordinate by lot,” Luciente explained as White Oak jogged off. “For sixmonth at a time.”

“Why do it that way?” Connie asked. “Some people know how to run a lab, and some people don’t, right?”

“Whenever we decide we’re ripe to join a work base, we fuse as full members. We share the exciting jobs and the dull jobs. We don’t think telling people what to do is a real world skill. Now, joining a base … Some people stay on where they study. Others go away to study and then come home—”

“Place matters to us,” Jackrabbit said. “A sense of land, of village and base and family. We’re strongly rooted. People of your time weren’t? So I’ve been told—lacking Luciente’s time traveling. On per it’s wasted, too. I bet that one talks a blue streak in your century and looks at nothing.”

Connie laughed. “Where I am now, there’s not much to see … . You … went mad a second time?”

“Jackrabbit’s jealous of my assignment. Jackrabbit catches like you, but person transmutes everything! … I always choose catchers!” Luciente frowned at her big strong hands.

“I’m jealous of everybody’s gifts. I want to be everybody and feel everything and do everything. Wherever I am, where I’m not plagues me. As long as I don’t have to get up too early in the morning to do it all.” He stretched languidly. “The second time I was mad, Diana helped me. I’m
sure
Luci has talked about Diana. At great length.”

“We’re jealous of each other’s past,” Luciente said with sudden gloom. “We’ll have to have a worming someday.”

“I don’t dread a worming, all that attent … . Diana was just emerging from per own journey down, and was more helpful than I can easily say. I only needed twomonth and I came out with a stronger healing than the first.”

“Do you tell everyone you meet that you’ve been mad twice?” She resented his casual, almost boastful air. She lugged that radioactive fact around New York like a hidden sore. To find out she had been in an institution scared people—
how it scared them. Not a good risk for a job. They feared madness might prove contagious.

Jackrabbit looked into her eyes with piercing curiosity. “Why not? Why keep that from you any more than studying with Marika?”

“In my time you’d be ashamed … . When people find out, they pull away so fast I can see it. Jerky. Afterward, if they have to deal with me, they’re thinking all the time that I might suddenly go berserk and start climbing the walls or jumping out the window. Or they don’t believe anything I say.”

“People of your time confuse me, for they seem neither strongly inknowing nor strongly outgoing. Except in couples. Unstable dyads, fierce and greedy, trying to body the original mother-child bonding. It looks tragic and blind!”

Luciente said quickly, “I’ve known Connie for some time, and I wouldn’t call per blind. Connie has a high capacity to respond to others. We should not sound arrogant because we have a more evolved society—we came from them, after all!”

“More evolved!” Connie snorted. “I’d say things have gone backward!”