Woman On The Edge Of Time (24 page)

Saturday her excitement strummed like a wire. She noticed every visitor. So that was Sharma’s husband, the one she was always accusing other women of sleeping with—that awkward sleepy-faced middle-aged boy who kept gaping around him but never looked into any of their faces. Introduced to him as she passed—Sharma was proud of having her husband visit—she tried to meet his gaze but he stared unwaveringly into her torso, breast high. She mistrusted him instantly. Yes, she felt he had another woman already, who cooked his breakfast and laundered his shirts and lay in his bed. She could feel that coming off him. Sharma knew too. Connie fled.

Weekends were bad unless a patient had visitors. The locked door of the ward hardly budged, not for the unpaid labor called industrial therapy, not for OT, not for group therapy, not for the doctor on his galloping visit.

The evening medication did not work on her. Her adrenaline
hummed in the dark ward like a generator and it burned off the Thorazine and the Seconal like fuel. She was dreadfully alert and bored. How many, many hours must wear away before dawn could stain the high windows? How many more hours of the day must flow, a river of lard, over her before Dolly would appear? Dolly must be persuaded to start trying to get her out of here, before Luis signed whatever release the doctors were after. But don’t push Dolly; to reestablish contact was everything. Everybody outside had freedom and power by contrast. The poorest most strung out fucked up worked over brought down junkie in Harlem had more freedom, more place, richer choices, sweeter dignity than the most privileged patient in the whole bughouse.

She opened her mind to Luciente and waited. Nothing happened. Time crawled like ants over her clenched eyelids and nothing stirred. Hey, Luciente! she thought. Oye, where the hell are you? Don’t shut me out! She imagined Luciente in bed with … Bee?

A sluggish presence eventually touched her. “Mmmm, it’s me—Luciente. A moment.”

“Am I interrupting?”

“Not expecting you … silly with wine and marijuana. Wait. Will clear and return.” The contact faded.

Guiltily she turned on her cot Butting into Luciente’s pleasure. At the same time a dour envy lapped her mind. Saturday night was a big night everywhere, even in the future. Everybody was having a good time, everybody in the world, in the universe, everybody but her, alone and bored. Everybody was loving everybody else, everybody was drinking wine and smoking dope and dancing and sitting on each other’s laps and whispering in each other’s ears. Everybody was kissing their children good night and tucking them in and going back to the guests at the long table laid out with the remains of roast suckling pig, lechón asado, as at Dolly’s wedding, everybody but her.

“Here I am,” Luciente said. “Come through now. I’m coning.”

“Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. Go back to your party.”

“Why shouldn’t you come? I didn’t think of it, but … why not? Everybody here says it would be lovely to invite you.” Luciente gave what felt like an abrupt impatient brutal tug on
her and she was clutching Luciente by the upper arms and standing in a warm night lit by floating bulbs a few feet over their heads, lights like big pastel fireflies, some steady, some winking on and off as fireflies do, but all with that cool light.

A rabble of kids ran by screaming and laughing, carrying streamers that clittered and clattered in the noise of their running, children in bright butterfly costumes with their faces painted. Two dogs chased them, barking, one with ribbons plaited into its high plumy tail.

“We’re entertaining Cranberry. We won a decision about the dipper routes.”

She stepped back to examine Luciente, who was wearing a backless dress of a translucent crimson chiffon that tied behind her neck. The skirt was cut diagonally, quite short on one side and medium length on the other. “I’ve never seen you in a dress.”

“It’s my flimsy for the evening—Jackrabbit designed it … . A flimsy is a once-garment for festivals. Made out of algae, natural dyes. We throw them in the compost afterward. Not like costumes. Costumes circulate—like the robe Bee wore for naming? Costumes you sign out of the library for once or for a month, then they go back for someone else. But flimsies are fancies for once only. Part of the pleasure of festivals is designing flimsies—outrageous, silly, ones that disguise you, ones in which you will be absolutely gorgeous and desired by everybody in the township!”

“That must be what yours is for.”

Luciente threw up her hands. “At a festival, why not be looked at?”

“What about me? Can you dress me up?”

“I don’t have a flimsy for you.” Luciente looked grief-stricken. Then she snapped her fingers. “All is running good. You put on Red Star’s flimsy. Red Star ordered it but that person had an accident picking cherries and is healing at Cranberry. We’ll get per flimsy from the presser for you.”

Luciente scooped her along and they dodged through groups wandering the paths of the village, people in wild and bright, in delicate and fanciful flimsies, carrying wine bottles and passing joints and eating small cakes that left a scent of spice on the air, trailing flowers in leis and in hair and beards,
playing on flutes and recorders and guitars and stringed instruments strange and twangy, high and shimmery in their sound, beating on drums and sets of drums and carrying along objects that sputtered sound and light and scent.

The rooms of the children’s house glittered and footsteps echoed down the stairways, laughter and shrieking flew out of every crevice. Adults and children in their flimsies played a game of catch with floating objects that moved in slow-motion S’s. In a room full of tools and devices Luciente addressed a machine. “Produce the flimsy ordered by Red Star.”

Out of the slot a garment slowly protruded, like a paper towel feeding itself from a roll. Luciente grabbed it and shook it out. “Here! Put it on.”

“Here?” She glanced at the busy hall.

“I’ll turn my back,” Luciente said with exaggerated patience, and shrugged to the walls.

The garment was a jiggling thing made of small bubbles, weightless and loosely bound together so that they swayed and bounced and gathered the light as she moved. The garment lay lightly upon her shoulders but did not touch her body elsewhere. She felt very naked under it.

“That’s clever.” Luciente eyed the flimsy, circling her. “Marvelous the way it shivers and moves. You backed into luck.”

“It isn’t … transparent?”

“Transparent? Hardly at all. Come!”

In the fooder many of the panes had been removed so the breeze off the river could blow through the dining room, where small groups still sat picking at the remains of the meal, gossiping and smoking and drinking. One table was singing together in a foreign language, beating time on the tabletop.

“What did you have?” she asked with the passion for food of the institutionalized.

“Would you like leftovers? Of course. I’ll set up a plate.”

A cold cucumber soup flavored with mint. Slices of a dark rich meat not familiar to her in a sauce tasting of port, dollops of a root vegetable like yams but less sweet and more nutty—maybe squash? Luciente had told her they bred squashes here. A salad of greens with egg-garlic dressing. Something rubbery,
pickled, hot as chili with a strange musky taste. Young chewy red wine.

“Remember, this won’t nourish you,” Luciente said mournfully, stealing a taste from her plate. “The bread is gone. We bake it fresh daily. Was a graham fruit bread and every bit was gobbled.”

“Who cooks? What is this meat?” she asked between bites.

“Roast goose. We take turns. Hawk—the person who was Innocente, remember?—and I spit-roasted the geese. By rotation every night we have a chef and four assistants.”

“Who cleans up?”

“Mechanically done. Nobody wants to wash dishes.”

“In my time neither. Does it really work?”

“Better than people, more patient. For washing dishes, we are willing to spend precious energy.”

“Couldn’t a machine cook too?”

“Fasure. But not inventively. To be a chef is like mothering: you must volunteer, you must feel called. Myself, I have no gift and only help in the kitchen. But Bee is a chef and at the next feast, person will make the menu and direct—the feast of July nineteenth, date of Seneca Equal Rights Convention, beginning women’s movement. Myself, I play Harriet Tubman. I say a great speech—Ain’t I a woman?—that I give just before I lead the slaves to revolt and sack the Pentagon, a large machine producing radiation on the Potomac—a military industrial machine?”

“Oh, is that how it happened?” she said. “In what century was that battle?”

“Grasp, that’s the essence of it. History gets telescoped a little. The kids get restless if the ritual runs too long. They like best the part where they sack the Pentagon. Everybody joins in and then at the bottom are little honey cakes with quotes from revolutionary women baked in them and stories of their lives, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Then we all go party.”

“That’s only two weeks away. Do you have a big holiday every two weeks?”

“We have around eighteen regular holidays, maybe another ten little ones, and then the feasts when we win or lose a decision and when we break production norms. We like holidays—
a time to remember heroines and heros, to loose tensions, to have a good time, to praise the history that leads to us—”

“Like Harriet Tubman sacking the Pentagon?”

“Zo, that does body vital ideas in the struggle … . The history you people celebrate—all kings and presidents and Columbus discovered a conveniently empty country already discovered by a lot of people who happened to be living here—was just as legendary … . Did you enjoy the food?”

“You eat well here anyhow.”

“Very important! Enough food, good food, nourishing food. We care a lot that all have that. Nobody born now anyplace on the whole world, Connie, is born to less in any areas we control.
They
still have the space platforms, the moon, and Antarctica. Myself, my favorite holiday in the whole year is Thanks-making. Then we fast for twenty-four hours and go around asking forgiveness from everyone we have offended in the year past. It comes right at the end of fall harvest, when all our crops are in except a few root crops we winter over, and the greenhouse stuff. Then we feast and go around the fooder breaking bread together, eating slowly and for hours. Wine and turkey and—oh, it takes another day to sleep it off!”

By the time Connie finished her nibbling, almost everyone had drifted out of the fooder, and they followed after. In the tall trees outside the children’s house many swings had been put up, conventional, one-person swings, trapezes, two-and three-person swings like cages, round swings, swings people lay in. From all the swings and trapezes, children and middle-aged people and an old woman with long white hair were hurtling through the air, calling to each other like a forestful of monkeys.

“That’s Tecumseh.” Luciente pointed to a girl hanging by her bare feet on a trapeze, flipping over and over as if her body had no bones. “Tecumseh won a first today in gymnastics. How graceful and fluid person is!”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen, I think? Tecumseh waited till only a couple of years ago for naming.”

“So you do have sports. You said you taught kids not to compete, but she won a first.”

“But to try to do things well! That’s fun … . A child playing alone will still try to jump higher than that child jumped
yesterday, no? We don’t keep back from saluting each other for doing well. We want each other to feel … cherished? … It’s a point of emphasis, no? Maybe always some cooperating, some competing goes on. Instead of competing for a living, for scarce resources, for food, we try to cooperate on all that. Competing is like … decoration. Something that belongs to sports, games, fighting, wrestling, running, racing, poemfests, carnival …”

In the meadow near the floater pad people were playing games that involved contact or a lot of running around or a lot of acting up and yelling. Some were games with things, like soft collapsible swords, pillows that spilled light bubbles when they broke. People were gliding on big wings off the hill by the river, and every so often someone fell in, settling into the water and then swimming to shore as the wings dissolved.

“You make a lot of things that fall apart quickly. They did that in my time also. Called it planned obsolescence.”

“Playthings, flimsies, some pretty things we make for a moment. They’re called butterflies. But objects we make for daily use, we make to last. It would be a pity to use up scarce copper or steel on a machine that worked poorly.”

“Ummmm. Luxury items are made for once only and the necessities to last?”

“Not exactly.” Luciente stopped in front of a glass wall that mirrored them to admire her dress, turning to and fro like a child in a new suit. “Luxuries fall into two categories: circulating and once-only. Look, they’re playing web. There’s Jackrabbit and Bolivar.”

About ten people were playing with long luminous cords, which they fixed somehow at intervals and wove in and out so that a great dully glowing web was created in which people got caught. A box would be built around them before they were aware or could dash out, and then they were apparently a prisoner until embraced and let out when everybody was so trapped but one. Jackrabbit was hopping among the strands, leaving a nimble zigzag wake.