In the Details

by H. Claire Taylor

  A slow rising hum filled the room, and Jessica shut her eyes against the stupidity of this practice they had learned yesterday. The group om was the way the leaders got everyone’s attention at the end of a meal, starting it themselves, expecting those who noticed them to join in until the whole damn place felt like living inside a gong. Had it bothered her so much before the bits of Jimmy had been dislodged from her ass?

  Caren stood on the small platform at the front of the dome, if such thing could have a front, and waited until all eyes were on her to begin speaking. The robes she wore were ones Jessica hadn’t seen before. While Jessica’s closet was packed with a colorful assortment that felt like a celebration, only now, as Caren stood before them in head-to-toe white robes, looking like a Clorox poster child except for the ornate swirls of red stitching along the hems, did the lack of white in anyone else’s wardrobe occur to Jessica.

  An itch flared in the back of Jessica’s mind. The Chief Galru’s robes reminder her of something, but she couldn’t—

  Fuck. Jimmy. They reminded her of Jimmy.

  BUT YOU’RE RIGHT. DEFINITELY NOT A CULT.

  Shut up. It’s just the detox that’s making me think about him. They’re nothing alike.

  BLESS YOUR HEART.

  A tingle moved through her that felt invigorating before turning into a thousand tiny pinpricks.

  Stop that.

  Clenching and unclenching her fists a few times to work through the last effects of God’s passive aggression, she refocused her attention on the front of the room.

  Caren had each hand tucked in the opposite sleeve, giving her a monkish air of wisdom as she breathed in with her diaphragm, breathed out, breathed in … It was hypnotizing like a lava lamp.

  Finally, after nearly thirty seconds of silence, she spoke, “Sisters. I can feel the tension in the air after this morning’s detoxification. I promise once these slights and hurts work their way from your body you’ll feel fresh and new again.”

  Jessica doubted that. The moment she saw Jimmy again, she was sure her glute would clench right back up. No amount of work she could do on herself would make Jimmy less of a pain in the ass.

  “We hold in our anger because society shuns us for expressing it. We’re told to be good girls, to do what needs to be done no matter the cost to self. And do it all with a smile!” The shit-eating grin she plastered on her face reminded Jessica of the expression gorillas wore prior to a fight. “So we hold it in our bodies, store it away until it poisons us, turns to depression, anxiety, cancer. And how are we supposed to lead others when our own bodies have turned against us?”

  Meg leaned toward Jessica and whispered, “I thought she was full of crap, but I’m starting to like her.”

  “And while our own bodies are turned against us, so are the bodies of others. Men view our bodies as their property to regulate, control, and use …”

  Her mind jumped to the stalker. He viewed her as his property for sure, something he should dominate and control by making her afraid to leave her bakery, and then by making her afraid to be inside it alone. He’d desecrated her sacred space one too many times, and now she was here, having fled from the one place she used to feel a sense of control.

  Well, somewhat of a sense of control.

  “And when we stand up for ourselves, they call us hysterical and disparage us for finding our voice until our voices hold no credibility with those in power.”

  Jessica’s glute clenched.

  Caren continued, “They hurt us, they control us, they legislate us, they rape us …”

  A BIT ONE-SIDED, DON’T YOU THINK?

  Jessica ignored Him. She was enjoying the heady rush of indignation too much to let Him try to drag her down.

  “We all have these stories, don’t we?” Caren asked.

  Meg was among the first to shout a wild affirmative, and Jessica, who’d felt like slapping someone since the body prodder found her Jimmy Dean muscle, settled on slapping her own hand again and again until her palms stung.

  “I’ll tell you why they do it!” Caren declared. “Because they’re scared. They’re scared of us. They’re scared of our sacred feminine power! They blame us for their own weakness, going back to the Garden of Eden!”

  Whoa.

  That itch in the back of her mind became a flashing red light, but she threw a blanket over it and continued clapping because it felt amazing.

  “You hear it again and again. Men claim any woman who is tired of the mistreatment simply wants to lock all men underground and use them for their seed. Who here has heard that line before?”

  Most of the room raised a hand.

  Wait, what?

  OH YES, IT’S QUITE COMMON.

  How have I not heard that before?

  YOU DO NOT FREQUENT THE INTERNET ENOUGH.

  “However, this hyperbolic fear is simply another male fantasy. To sit around doing nothing while women bring them to orgasm again and again and then skirt the responsibility of child rearing?” She shook her head in disgust. “Don’t you see? We’re subjected to the toxic fantasy of men nonstop, even in their dismissal of our right to equality.”

  “Yeah, fuck them!” came a shout from the crowd.

  Caren pointed to the shouter. “You. Come up here.” She motioned her closer, and the woman was more than happy to jump up and join on stage.

  Caren was easily a foot taller than the round Latina in purple pants and an orange top, and she put an arm around the woman’s shoulder, facing her toward the crowd. “Tell them your story.”

  And so began a string of testimonials, one after the other, different verses of the same song, not unlike Jessica’s visit to the Nu Alpha Omega house. At the conclusion of each, Jessica joined in with the raucous applause and even indulged herself in shouting “Screw him!” a few times. Jessica felt herself get swept up in the brash expression of emotions. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt, to be able to share in a common sense of misery and triumph, to let everything she felt flow through her and out rather than holding it back—fifty-eight hundred dollars was a steal for this.

  But when one woman shouted, “You shoulda torn his dick off and fed it to him!” The stretching band of ebullience in Jessica’s chest snapped, and already on a roll with shouting everything that came to her head, she shouted, “Whoa there!” and looked around for the source of the particularly horrifying yell. When she couldn’t locate it and realized even more violent things were flowing forth from the mouths of women who had seemed quite pleasant just minutes before, Jessica’s buzz was officially killed. She looked at Meg for a sign of recognition that maybe that was a little much.

  Nothing.

  She looked at Evan.

  Still nothing. Any resistance to the ritual these women might have had before had been buried by bloodlust.

  Okay. This has gotten out of hand, hasn’t it?

  IT HAS.

  Should I try put a stop to it?

  HELL NO. THEY’LL TEAR YOU APART.

  Then what should I do?

  WHATEVER YOU FEEL LIKE DOING.

  Well, she certainly didn’t feel like yelling anymore. Not if it made her sound like some of these psychopaths.

  “Castrate the pig!” shouted Evan at the conclusion of another woman’s testimony.

  Oh. Shit.

  MORE LIKE ‘OH SLOP.’

  This is … how did this …?

  Never would she have believed she’d find herself on this side of the fervor, yet here she was. Or here she had been. She’d come close, but she hadn’t become completely carried away. She easily could have, and probably would have, if not for the fact that she’d been the recipient of similar hate for, oh, most of her life. She guessed it was that fact that kept her tethered while the women around her flowed freely in the emotional currents.

  Caren’s warm radiance and charisma became almost frightening when held up in this new context. The way she engendered trust with her audience, played to their emotional weaknesses, gave them perm
ission to lose themselves completely …

  I’m just being oversensitive because of my detox. Jimmy got dislodged from my ass and now he’s running through my bloodstream. I need to stop projecting.

  The spirit of the room was unnerving, but it wasn’t as bad as White Light. Not yet.

  She let herself settle into it a bit more. What did the shouting hurt, anyway? It wasn’t like they were going to stampede out of the place and hunt down every last man in a hundred miles. And it wasn’t like Caren had dragged an eleven-year-old child up in front of everyone to be their emotional whipping boy, unlike some people.

  After thanking the last speaker and gently ushering her toward her seat with a hand on her lower back, Caren returned to the stage. “Can you feel that? That heat rising in your veins? That desire to destroy, to crush, to maim?”

  Jessica did nod along with everyone on this, because, oh hell yeah, she could feel it, even if she were wary of it. She wasn’t even sure if it was hers or the people next to her’s, but it was there, like a molten blanket draped over all the women, connecting them even as it burned their flesh.

  Caren lowered her voice. “That’s not yours. That’s the toxic self-loathing you’ve been force-fed your entire life seeping from the deep parts of your soul, working its way through your bones, your organs, your muscles. The rage might feel like yours, but it’s only a side effect of your body trying to dispel years of self-hatred you’ve ingested, condensed, and stored away. Our vessels are made for peace and love, not bitterness, not anger. The wounds are open now—force out that which does not belong to you!” The scream that followed would have churned Jessica’s stomach if she’d eaten anything heavier than fruit. The rest of the women followed suit until the dome became an echo chamber of agony.

  Jessica gave it a shot, blurting out a quick wail that made her feel like a real idiot. She tried again and it felt less insane. On the third attempt, she started to understand the appeal. When was the last time she’d allowed herself to be this loud? When was the last time she wasn’t worried about being noticed? Even with Jameson, when she was supposed to be embracing the attention people paid her, she hadn’t felt entitled to be loud. What an indulgence!

  The shouting died down once Caren motioned for someone to bring her a chair and took a seat on the stage. More than a few women were weeping, and Caren allowed them to continue as she spoke again, much softer this time, like she was telling a bedtime story. “You may not believe this, but I used to be married to a man who refused to work a steady job, who stayed home all day and didn’t lift a finger to help raise our three children. And I’d gobbled up so much of the patriarchal lies that I didn’t even know there was another way. I would drop the kids off at school, work full-time at the tech company I ran—this was back in the dot-com gold rush—pick up the kids from school, cook them dinner, and put them to bed. Sound familiar? I was living the life of a single mom while a man leeched off me day and night. He might as well have been locked underground and milked for his semen.” When she chuckled, the audience allowed itself one as well. “And to top it off, he was cheating on me. Quite prolifically, I might add.

  “I didn’t have this retreat to escape to, but you know what I did have?” She paused. “I had love. Not self-love, oh no. Hank had fed me so much poison that I actually thought I had won the lottery when I’d married him. What saved me, oddly enough, was a man from out of town dropping into my life, reflecting back to me my own value, and urging me to chase after what I deserved.” She paused, beaming out at the crowd. “I know, you didn’t expect that. It was a man who started my transformation, who liberated me from the ignorance and captivity. I’m still baffled by that myself. But it goes to show that love is the antidote. Period. This man worshipped my body, if only for a short time, and that love of another planted the seeds for self-love to grow.” She sighed. “He wasn’t perfect by any means, and as you can tell, he didn’t stick around. But if we want to be healthy leaders, we must learn how to accept the good and reject the bad without tossing the whole of them aside for a few faults. We must be discriminating.

  “This next part is important: It’s not men we hate, but a twisted idea of masculinity so many worship. It’s a small but important difference there, and if we’re not careful, our anger will blind us to the subtleties of it. Which is why we must not move on from here while that poison remains within us. Beings of the moon like us can just as easily absorb the lies of toxic sun energy and use it against our sisters.”

  The crying had stopped, and the room was silent like a grave.

  OKAY, SHE LOST ME A LITTLE BIT THERE.

  “Who here has ever been in love?”

  Hands raised tentatively around the room, and Caren nodded, closing her eyes gently. “Yes, you know, then. You know how love can make you feel worthy. And that’s why we must show it to the people around us.

  “Love from a man was what freed me to finally leave my husband behind. It freed me up to sell the business just before the crash, which freed me to move outside of the city and to buy this ranch and start this retreat, which brought all of you here today. One single act of love from the least expected place.”

  IT WASN’T A SINGLE ACT, I CAN TELL YOU THAT.

  Jessica could hardly begrudge Caren an affair. If she were in that position and some charming Casanova came along and offered to bang her brains out, she couldn’t say definitively that she wouldn’t be all-in.

  “You may be tempted to hold on to this anger you feel now—it feels like power, doesn’t it?—but you have to let it go. Only then will you have room in your body to accept the love you need and to give the love that could make all the difference to the life of another.”

  Okay, this sounded more acceptable. She didn’t understand all the moon and sun stuff, but there was no one shouting about human castration, so she could get on board with it.

  And yet, when Caren stood, raised her hands, and began to lead the room in a group om, Jessica couldn’t shake the lingering fear that the om would change into a sooie.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Jessica’s calf twinged the moment she caught a whiff of fresh-baked muffins. Her knee bounced anxiously as she sat cross-legged on the handwoven alpaca rug, waiting for the plate to move around the ten-woman circle. What muffins had to do with discovering her spirit animal, she had no clue. Nor did she care. Because muffins had everything to do with her own happiness. It was one of the things she’d discovered in this retreat for self-discovery, and by day three of the thing—day two of no simple carbs—she didn’t even give two shits if that muffin was entirely bran.

  Her head had stopped spinning from the day before after a good night’s sleep, and she’d woken up, drank her smoothie like a good little camper, felt slightly less awkward about farting loudly in digestive yoga (everyone did, which was why they kept the doors open for a cross breeze), and, prior to entering into this teepee, had begun to wonder if she was finally losing her craving for baked goods.

  “Just one piece,” said the leader of the exercise when the plate made its way to her and she tried to take two. “Trust me, one piece is all you’ll want.”

  Bullshit it was. The cravings came back with a vengeance, and she scoffed at her earlier thought that she’d moved on.

  “Don’t eat it yet,” the leader, Gloria, a silver-haired woman with tan, freckled skin, instructed.

  Are you kidding me? Jessica stared longingly at the fluffy treat pinched between her fingers. It was definitely blueberry. Praise whoever!

  “This journey is going to feel abrupt. That’s just the nature of it. But I guarantee you’re perfectly safe, and there are no risks involved. Unless, um … is anyone pregnant?”

  A woman raised her hand, smiling pleasantly.

  “O-kay,” said Gloria. “You gotta go.” She thumbed toward the door. “And leave the muffin.”

  That was an especially cruel thing to do to a pregnant woman, Jessica decided. If anything, they should give the woman the rest of the
plate to go.

  Once the mother-to-be had left the teepee, Gloria resumed her instructions. “Keeping in mind that you are perfectly safe, I want you to avoid resisting the journey. Just go with it. That’s the only way to ensure a peaceful encounter with your spirit animal.”

  Evan raised her hand before speaking. “Do some people have violent encounters with their spirit animal?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happens to them?”

  Gloria opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it, paused, and said, “Just don’t resist the experience, and you won’t have to worry about it.” She inhaled, setting her hands, palms up, on her knees, and on the exhale, she spoke again. “Now you’re free to eat your portion of the muffin”—Jessica popped it in her mouth right away, hardly chewing before she swallowed it down—“whenever you’re ready to embrace the ayahuasca journey.”

  Only a small bit of mush remained in Jessica’s mouth. “Ayahuasca?”

  The guide nodded. “Yes. It’s an ancient medicinal—”

  “I know what it is. It was in the muffin?”

  “Yes, just a small dose. I can see you’re considering fighting it, Jessica. You really, really shouldn’t. It’ll be fine.”

  Jessica’s eyes were wide, her pupils dilated, and the drugs hadn’t even hit her blood stream yet. “Bet it won’t.” She didn’t know much about the particular drug, but she hadn’t forgotten about the mushrooms and the burning cactus and Danny on top of her … “Is this anything like mushrooms?”

  “Somewhat. But much stronger.”

  Jessica tapped her fingers on her knees and fought the urge to run. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” She wanted to question the legality of it, but then she remembered the iffy jurisdiction and figured she had her answer.

  Gloria crawled a few steps across the circle, leaning close to Jessica’s ear. “If you can’t calm down, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the circle. You’ll ruin the collective vibrations.”

  Jessica nodded. It was probably too late to vomit this back up, and honestly, she could still taste the muffin and preferred that over the sour acidity of bile. “Yeah, okay. I’m fine.” She addressed the rest of the women. “We’re fine. We’re all fine. I’m gonna meet my spirit animal and it will all be okay!”