Hunters and Gatherers (3 page)

But nothing remotely like that had happened on the beach. At the moment of leaving (hastened by the fact that everyone was soaked and shivering), no one lingered, unasked and unwanted, on the edge of some inner circle, forcing the chosen to wait until the uninvited caught on. Everyone seemed to belong to some group whose members swiftly agglomerated like atoms drawn by invisible currents of molecular attraction. The only uncertain ones were Martha and Hegwitha, who were standing near Isis when the exodus began and had hesitated until Isis told them to come along.

It was obvious why Martha was included among the women straggling over the sand toward Isis Moonwagon’s beach house. She’d saved Isis’s life! But why was Hegwitha here? She’d stuck to Martha like a barnacle as soon as Martha came out of the sea, crying, “Martha! Martha! Are you okay?” repeatedly calling her name, proprietary, familiar, and, as far as anyone knew, Martha’s dearest friend. There was no way, short of brutality, to explain that they’d just met. Martha knew it was selfish and childish to mind Hegwitha’s presence, and, besides, she felt like a larger person for allowing Hegwitha to crawl under the mantle of glory that seemed to have fallen on Martha’s shoulders.

Luckily, no one seemed to hold Martha responsible for Hegwitha’s perpetual air of injury and smoldering resentment. Nor did anyone object aloud, though a palpable shudder went through the group, when Hegwitha turned her back to the wind and lit a cigarette. In case there was any doubt about the sincerity of Martha and Hegwitha’s welcome, Isis waited for them at the start of the garden path and steered them toward the house. But the path proved too narrow for the three of them, and Martha felt guilty for liking it when Hegwitha had to drop back.

Ambling beside Martha, Isis appeared to have made a miraculous recovery from her near drowning. Though her hair and her clothing were dripping, evidently she’d warmed her inner self with her own radiant inner warmth. Her teeth rattled faintly from time to time, but not enough to keep her from saying:

“A genius gardener named Natalie Cornflower comes over from Riverhead. After she finishes weeding, she chants to the plants for an hour. Everything in the garden is nutritious or medicinal. A universe of healing—a lifetime, cradle to grave. Comfrey to ease labor pains and digitalis to…well…Plant knowledge has always been women’s knowledge, from the time of the gynocentric hunter-gatherer societies. Witches were burned because male physicians were so threatened by female healers. Hags on broomsticks was their metaphor for women in the trance states they’d cook up from the kitchen garden.” Isis plucked a lavender flower that she crushed under Martha’s nose.

The pungent perfume filled Martha first with pleasure and then with envy of Isis’s garden and house. Well, what normal person wouldn’t covet all this light and beauty and space, especially someone who happened to live in a dank one-bedroom closet where the smell of curry had long ago lost its charm and where she was often awakened at night by the clatter of mice (Martha hoped they were mice) at play in her silverware drawer?

Isis sniffed her fingers, then shook the petals from her hand. “Oh, don’t you wish we could just revert to that pre-agricultural stage, when the most essential knowledge was the names of plants, which herbs cured which diseases, natural uppers and downers, and you never doubted the usefulness of each little thing you did! Every woman a doctor without the trauma of medical school! Imagine if we could time-travel back to the matriarchal era when women ran the world and everyone lived in peace!”

“I guess,” Martha agreed. Then, because Isis seemed to be waiting for more of a response, she said, “Your house is amazing! I didn’t know anyone had so much space on Fire Island.”

Iris wrinkled her nose and looked away, giving Martha the impression that she had rudely called attention to something she wasn’t supposed to notice—perhaps the discrepancy between Isis’s hunter-gatherer dreams and her real estate holdings.

“It’s not just
my
house,” Isis said frostily. “It’s
all
our houses. That is, it’s a sacred protected space for those who follow the Goddess. Do you know what we call it?”

“No,” admitted Martha.

“We needed a name for the place where we came together to worship. We meditated on how ‘seminary’ derives, linguistically, from semen—a place where men could go and not waste their semen.” Isis shook her head and rolled her eyes, still pink-rimmed from the salt water. “We decided to call it our
ovulary
.”

“That’s…great,” Martha said.

“Yes, well,” Isis said. “It’s amazing what the group mind can do that we’d never imagine alone. So much of our work depends on sharing time and skills. Natalie does the gardening for free. Who can count the hours donated by the women who made those boats and harvest dolls? The only way we can function financially and spiritually is by the nonhierarchical sharing of talent and sacred space.”

The women did seem to feel quite at home—to be staying there, in fact. No one lingered on the porch, waiting for Isis to ask them in. They went directly to their rooms, presumably to change clothes.

“I’ll get you two some dry things.” Isis hurried away.

“Gosh,” said Hegwitha. “Isis is so considerate! She almost drowned, she must be dying to get dry—but she’s thinking of our comfort first. I don’t think I can smoke in here, do you?”

“No,” replied Martha curtly.

“Well, sorry for asking.” Hegwitha stalked off without giving Martha a chance to say something conciliatory: cigarette smoke didn’t bother
her
, but Isis might not like it…Hegwitha stood outside the front door, muttering and smoking.

Martha drifted from the dark baronial foyer into the summery front parlor, with its glossy wood floors, antique kilims, and groves of potted ficus trees and fat-leafed serpentine plants. Tall windows interrupted the spotless white walls with thrilling views of the ocean. Carved tables supported arrangements of basketry, Kashmiri brass, Chinese porcelain. The orchestrated clutter recalled the homes of Victorian adventurers: steamer trunks overflowing with moth-eaten rugs and fake
objets
for which the traveler had been overcharged everywhere on the Grand Tour.

The room’s centerpiece was a huge low circular table painted with red-and-black Arabic calligraphy and surrounded by tapestry pillows and sausagelike bolsters: the ideal setting for warring tribal chiefs to eat a sheep’s head and talk peace.

Turning, Martha saw Hegwitha inching into the room, then stopping to contemplate a niche draped with a silk piano shawl. In its folds nestled crystals, geodes, seashells, votive figurines: museum-quality African sculptures and pre-Columbian terra-cotta.

“What a great altar,” Hegwitha whispered. “What gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.” She watched Martha eyeing three large black cats prowling a minihabitat of ornamental grasses in oversize vases. “Don’t worry. Many women have been healed of their allergies with the help of the Goddess.”

“I’m not allergic!” Martha said, just as Isis reappeared. Over each of her arms was a towel and an embroidered black Bedouin caftan. One robe was much prettier than the other; Martha edged toward that one.

“The fabulous thing about robes,” Isis said, “is that one size really does fit all, pregnant and unpregnant, though, of course, those poor women were always pregnant. Often you see robes that have been patched and handed down through generations. Then men came along and gave us unecological Seventh Avenue and the insane idea that we should slash and burn our whole wardrobe twice a year.”

“Believe me, I
know
!” Martha exclaimed, hoping to draw attention from her greedy lunge for the better robe. “I work for a fashion magazine.” She wished Isis would continue her attack on the fashion industry, so that Martha could reveal herself as a serious person who had given the subject some thought. The reason she could work at
Mode
with anything like a clear conscience was her conviction that fashion wasn’t only about infecting women with rampaging insecurities and unruly consumer desires; it also involved creativity, choice, and self-expression and benefited the economy without promoting mayhem and murder. And her job did seem remotely—marginally—worthwhile. She did believe in language, in accuracy, facts, those tiny building blocks of truth…

“Oh?” said Isis. “Are you a writer? Many of us are writers. Writers, psychotherapists, artists—or some combination thereof.”

“No,” Martha admitted. “I’m a fact checker.”

Isis looked disappointed but caught herself and took Martha’s hands. “I can’t thank you enough. I thought I’d had it out there. I was drowning, choking…and then I felt the most astonishing peace, and I knew the Goddess was with me. It was very much a rebirth experience. I feel deeply renewed…Well! Aren’t we glad this isn’t ancient China, where if someone saves your life you practically
belong
to that person? If that were true in New York City, people would never help anyone…as opposed to
practically
never. I want you to know how grateful I am. You’re welcome to stay with us here unless there’s some place you have to be—”

“We’d
love
to!” cried Hegwitha.

Isis awarded each of them a separate lambent smile. “It’s always so icky to ask: Are you two…together? This is the last place to feel self-conscious about it. As priestesses, we’re free to love whomever we wish. Some of us are gay, straight, asexual. I’ve been celibate for years. I’ve been working to achieve total omnisexual receptivity, so that just walking around is like having sex with the rocks and trees and plants—”

“No, we’re
not
together!” said Martha, so vehemently that Hegwitha and Isis flinched. “I should tell you…I didn’t even know Hegwitha…or anyone…I was just hanging out at the beach, and I saw the women gathering, so I decided to come over…”

Isis smiled. How absurd of Martha to imagine that
she’d
decided. “Don’t we think the Goddess sent you? I don’t suppose there can be any doubt about that, do you?”

Of course not! Martha shook her head. Then she said she wasn’t sure she
could
stay over, she was visiting a friend’s parents, she would have to call and—

“Well,” Isis interrupted. “We can play that by ear. For now, you two go and find empty rooms. When you’re dry and comfy, come have some hot mulled wine.”

Isis directed Martha and Hegwitha down a corridor, past closed doors through which floated an aquatic murmur of voices. At last Martha found an open door and an empty bedroom. Hegwitha slipped in after her.

“No point messing up two rooms,” Hegwitha said. “Especially if you’re not staying.”

“I didn’t say I
wasn’t
staying,” Martha snapped. “I have to make a phone call.”

“Whatever,” said Hegwitha. She shrugged and turned her back and crossed her arms and lifted her T-shirt. She was facing the mirror, and before Martha could turn away she saw, reflected in the glass, Hegwitha’s large pillowy breasts and an immense lumpy scar bunching up the center of her chest, like a pulled seam the length of her rib cage.

Martha slipped on Isis’s robe, which capaciously swallowed Martha’s body and spit out her head. Before sliding her arms into the sleeves, she reached up under the robe and shucked off her wet shirt and swimsuit.

Hegwitha regarded her with disdain. “I know what kind of girl
you
were. One of the prissy girls who knew how to change in the locker room so nobody saw an inch of skin, while the rest of us tripped on our underpants and flashed the entire gym class.”

How repressed and pathetic this made Martha sound: modest, prudish, withholding. And how unfair to be blamed for what wasn’t her fault. Some people liked showing their bodies; others simply didn’t, and covering up was as natural as blinking in bright light. Summers, during college, Martha’s friends had gone skinny-dipping. You were not supposed to be ashamed; you went numb and took off your clothes as if you were at the doctor’s, until the water covered you, hid you, and you were safe. You were not supposed to look, though Martha’s boyfriends always did—not at her, whom they could see any time, but at other girls. No wonder Martha liked swimming. It was like sex, in a way: a brief respite from self-consciousness—from consciousness altogether!

Dennis had loved to look at Martha, who always found it flattering until the morning she’d awakened to find him staring at her thigh. She craned her neck to see what he was gazing at: a small tangled nest of blue veins that he continued to scrutinize, and they watched together as her white flesh curdled and puckered in front of their eyes.

“In the matriarchies,” Hegwitha said, “everyone ran around naked. The fig leaf was a male sky-god invention. Men despise female bodies, they’re the ones who have made us ashamed…”

But if modesty was a conditioned response for which they could thank the male sky god, why had Hegwitha mocked Martha for wanting to hide her body? And hadn’t Isis said that these chafing and all-concealing black caftans were a female creation? Martha lightly struck her forehead to silence the pesky fact checker blithering away behind it.

“What’s the matter?” Hegwitha said.

“Nothing,” said Martha. “Really. Saving Isis was exhausting, I guess. Even though I’m a pretty good swimmer…”

Hegwitha sneered dismissively—and with good reason, thought Martha, embarrassed to have boasted about her athletic ability.

“I must be really out of shape,” she said.

“I’ll leave you alone,” said Hegwitha. “That’s obviously what you want.”

“No, not at all,” lied Martha.

But Hegwitha was already gone.

Martha glanced in the mirror at her pale globule of a face with its cap of iodine-colored hair bubbling up from the neck of her caftan. Then she took a deep breath and left the room and nearly plowed into a woman lurching down the hall on crutches.

Martha had noticed her earlier, coming up from the beach. Sinewy, boyish, with metal-rimmed glasses and steely short hair, arrested at indeterminate age between twenty-five and forty, she wore a baseball cap turned backward, black jeans, and a T-shirt printed with Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein. She backed up and shut her bedroom door with the tip of a crutch.