The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk

  But it was Madrone she was thinking about. Stop, rest, breathe, continue. Just like backpacking. Climbing the flanks of some mountain, looking for visions. Or trouble. Three long breaths, then renewed effort. That was the way to do it.

  The girl was just plain worn out. And that wasn’t a figure of speech, she feared. Worn out like a pair of blue jeans rubbed so thin between the thighs and patched so much on the knees that there was no way to fix them anymore. Used up. Ready to be discarded. Lying in bed for nearly a month now and still insisting, every time anyone asked, that she was fine, just fine, only needing sleep.…

  Gratefully, Maya reached the door that led into the upstairs kitchen. She opened it and emptied her basket into the vegetable sink. After all these years, she was still pleased by the fact that her kitchen had two separate sinks, one for cooking, one for cleanup. She looked around the room with satisfaction. She could almost see the ghosts at the big round table in the center, Johanna expounding some educational theory, Rio stuffing cereal into a baby’s mouth, Alix rolling out a pastry, and Ben cooking some elaborate Szechwan concoction. Which was the baby who would only stop crying when they all sang rounds in three-part harmony? And wasn’t it Brigid who always wanted the silly one—how did it go?

  My mama makes counterfeit whiskey,

  My daddy makes counterfeit gin,

  My sister makes love for ten dollars,

  My God how the money rolls in!

  That was an old song even then, because certainly back in the nineties, when Brigid was a child, ten dollars wouldn’t have bought even the most down-and-out hooker. Why, she remembered walking down Haight Street when she was—what? Seventeen? Back in the sixties, and men would cruise by in cars and offer her twenty, even back then. She had been righteously insulted, of course. She did it for free or not at all.

  Rolls in, rolls in,

  My God how the money rolls in, rolls in …

  She was humming aloud as she washed the vegetables, chopped up an onion, and set it to simmer in a soup pot full of water. What was the tune from originally? Some of that tomato sauce would go good in the soup, and she would make Madrone eat. “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” That was it.

  Bring back, bring back,

  Oh, bring back my bonnie to me.…

  My bonnie. My Johanna. My Rio. My Brigid. My Bird.

  Stop it, she told herself. The truth is—then she laughed, remembering how Johanna used to tease her about that verbal habit.

  “And just what is the truth?” Johanna used to say. “Tell us, O wise woman, what the truth is.” That was because, after Maya’s books became known, Johanna used to worry that she’d get above herself.

  But the truth was—and shut up, Johanna, she said to the air—she was worried sick. There was an expression for you. That was all they needed, for her to get sick.

  She chopped carrots and zucchini and celery and squash. The zucchini were overproducing as they always did, practically shouting at you as you walked by, “Here, eat. Please. No, take, there’s plenty more. It’s good for you.”

  Take, eat. This is my body, this is my blood. Jesus as Jewish mother—why had she never thought of that connection before? She would have to discuss it with Sister Marie.

  Generations of her own Jewish mothers hung around the room as she cooked, perched precariously on light fixtures and window frames. Maya could hear them, scolding her. “Look how skinny the girl is. No wonder she collapsed.” “Why didn’t you feed her?” “Didn’t you ever tell her to slow down, get some rest?”

  “But she wouldn’t listen to me,” Maya said to them. “Now go away, you old bats.”

  But the truth is, she thought, I do feel responsible. I let her take care of me; I should have taken care of her. I’m a spoiled old woman, and she’s too good for her own good. How does a child of Rio’s line turn out to be practically a saint? Although come to think of it, maybe she simply inherited his taste for martyrdom.

  I’m not responsible for her, she said, partly to herself, partly to the ghosts at the table, Rio and Johanna, who gazed at her with eyes that neither blamed nor absolved. She saw them, not as the old woman and man they had grown to be, but more like they were in their early forties, mature but still vigorous: Johanna dressed in that blue suit she always wore when she needed to address some board or committee and look respectable, Rio in his work clothes with dirt on his hands. Madrone’s a grown woman. But I feel responsible, Maya admitted. Somehow she had failed, failed Johanna and Rio, failed herself. Madrone was the last—what was the word? Scion. Or did that only mean boys? The last scion of their triad—barring Bird, who could scarcely be counted on. And Maya should have looked after her better.

  “Don’t be a fool, old woman,” Johanna said, but Maya brushed her away and persisted. Because if Madrone died, who was left? If Madrone herself could not survive, how could they expect that anyone would? Let alone the city, a green island in a toxic sea.

  Maya put the kettle on. She would make tea, take some to Madrone, and leave some to placate the spirits. They preferred coffee, but that was just too bad. No one’d had coffee since the Uprising twenty years ago.

  “It’s not a failure of nurture I’m talking about,” she said, sitting down at the table with the spirits of the dead. “It’s a failure of inheritance. We’ve passed on a world that’s impossible for the best of them to live in.”

  “Was it any better for us?” Rio asked.

  “We made a life,” Maya answered. “We used to sit in comfortable living rooms, talking about the end of the world. How the dolphins were dying in the South Atlantic or how the incidence of birth defects was rising near toxic waste dumps. Oh, I’m not saying we didn’t try. All those years of organizing and marching and getting arrested for causes. We did our best. But it wasn’t enough.”

  “There’s no child in this city who goes to bed hungry,” Johanna said. “There’s no living soul who doesn’t have a home. That’s one thing we worked for.”

  “And we had a few other minor victories,” Rio added. “To name one, no one blew the world up in a nuclear war.”

  “Yet,” Maya said.

  “Maybe it’s something connected with her having a body,” Johanna said to Rio. “This sudden onset of cynicism. You know—hormones. Digestion. Shit like that.”

  “I’m not a cynic,” Maya protested. “I admit the beauty of this city. It has a beautiful beating heart. It cares for its own, and for the stranger. Its streams run with clear water, and the trees that line its pathways bow under the weight of fruit anyone is free to pick. And yes, we had a hand in shaping it. But what does that mean if it can’t survive?”

  “It means it existed once,” Rio said, “and so it is possible. Undeniably possible.”

  “But that’s not enough for them, the young ones,” Maya said. “They’re different from us. They don’t see this city as some precarious achievement, like attaining the summit of Kanchenjunga. To them, this is base camp. Just a starting point toward heights they have yet to reach. And it’s home, all they know. They can’t philosophize about its destruction; they just hurl themselves in front of the avalanche. What do you think Madrone is doing? How else do you account for Bird?”

  “They’re preservationists,” Johanna said. “They have something to save. We were more arrogant. We wanted to remake the world according to our vision of what should be.”

  “And we did it,” Rio said. “Partly.”

  “That’s like a partly successful pregnancy,” Maya said.

  The kettle whistled. “Stop wallowing, girlfriend,” Johanna said. “Bring us some tea and quit feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Maya put dried mint leaves into the Chinese pot she had bought fifty years ago on Grant Avenue. It was yellow, with a curving dragon wrapped around its side. She set cups in front of her shadowy friends.

  “This is an early visitation,” Maya said. “It’s not even Rainreturn yet. El Día de los Muertos is weeks away.”

  “Madrone’s got a wedge
stuck in the gates between the worlds,” Rio said. “So we took advantage. You seemed so lonely.”

  “I am lonely. Why shouldn’t I be? You’re dead. Madrone’s semiconscious. Everybody else is gone.”

  “Strike up the sad violins,” Johanna said. “Why don’t you feed my granddaughter, pull her back from the edge?”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Surely you must have learned something in your overlong life that can help her choose.”

  “Choose what?”

  “Whether to live or die.”

  Maya fixed a tray for Madrone. She spooned soup into a porcelain Japanese bowl and set out toast and butter and napkins and a rose from the garden in the little Limoges vase she had bought many years ago on a trip to France. Maybe the little luxuries of life could seduce Madrone back. Or maybe Prince Charles and Lady Di could do it, their faces staring solemnly out from the surface of the bed tray.

  Madrone lay in Nita’s big four-poster bed. They had moved her down to the same floor as the kitchen, so Maya wouldn’t have to climb so many stairs. Maya set down her carefully balanced tray. Madrone’s eyes were closed; she was either asleep or determined to appear so. Where is she wandering? Maya wondered. What strange dimension between the worlds? She looks so small, like an ant carrying a burden too heavy for her. And I ache to share it, Maya thought, but I can’t. For one thing, she won’t let me, and for another, she’s grown beyond the stage where she can hand her burdens over to the older ones. I’m part of her burden now. And Maya suddenly wished she were light, a husk of herself, easier to carry.

  Or maybe I’m too much husk already, all shell, no meat. Maybe that’s why I’m not reaching her. I hold out a cartoon of myself, old and crotchety and faintly amusing, mothering her and badgering her. But that role, too, is just another of the disguises we all cling to, posturing and scrabbling and marshaling our achievements so as not to have to look into reality’s raw heart and see the wheels of the universe grinding down into dust. I know that, even if I can’t seem to stop doing it. I knew it at seventeen, on one too many hits of that pure 1960’s Owsley LSD. Far too young. I would have gone crazy for sure if Johanna hadn’t come to me in the locker room and cupped her hand around my naked breast and saved me with the one thing that could cross the abyss. Touch. The touch of the heart. How can I bring that to Madrone?

  Madrone opened her eyes and looked up at the canopy embroidered with moons and stars. They made dancing patterns, networks of light in colors impossible to translate, that merged with the crystal webs behind her eyes. She wanted to stay where pain and weariness and emotion were only twists in the kaleidoscope of light. Her work was here, on this plane, now. The spirit knife in her hand allowed her to change the patterns, stirring them up to fall in new designs. Changing lives, changing fate. Easy.

  She felt Maya’s presence intrude on her peacefulness. The older woman’s worry and fear burst around her like fireworks, exploding from a center to rain colored stars. Madrone watched the lights dance with detached fascination. It was so unnecessary, if Maya could only understand.

  “Sit up,” Maya said. “It’s time you ate something.”

  Madrone didn’t really want to eat; food took her away from the patterns. But the force of Maya’s determination gripped her and propped her up. Arguing would be even more of a distraction, and while she was distracted, people would die. Maybe that didn’t matter, really, but then that was why she had the knife, to fight off death. She couldn’t put it down. Bright sun was streaming in through the big bay windows. Nita had hung crystals on the glass, and the sunlight made rainbows dance around the room. Rainbows of light, like in the web world, and when Madrone closed her eyes she could still see them, feed on them. They were better than bread.

  Maya opened a window and hung out a card on a string.

  “What’s that?” Speaking was a great effort. Madrone could see the words as she could see her own breath on a cold day. They wove a pattern of color and then dissolved.

  “A sign announcing your unchanged condition. Just as if you were the Queen of England. Saves me running up and down stairs five times a day.”

  “I’m sorry,” Madrone whispered. She was sorry that Maya couldn’t understand the lack of need for her fear. She was sorry that the colors around Maya’s body were so disturbing she couldn’t help but will the old woman away.

  “Hmph.” Maya snorted. “You’re not sorry. If you were, you’d pull out of this half-astral state, get some food in you, and stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.” You would let me in, you would return to human form.

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “You lie. I can’t see exactly what it is, but I see you doing something. Half the city has nominated you for sainthood. They leave offerings on the front steps, burn candles. Sick women claim they dream of you and wake up healed. Mothers about to give birth see your face and their wombs open. Meanwhile, you lie here, going into a decline in the worst Victorian manner.”

  “I’m just having … conversations. Really, I’m fine.”

  “If you say that to me one more time, I will personally slit your throat.”

  Madrone closed her eyes again. She wished Maya would just go away and leave her alone. Maybe if she drifted back to sleep.…

  “Don’t go back to sleep on me now, young lady. I’m talking to you. And besides, you need to eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “The hell you’re not. Eat your soup.” But this isn’t how I want to be with her, Maya thought. She is fading away, dying, and I can’t break through. I can’t reach her with my anger or my love.

  Madrone obeyed, sipping the soup in grim and determined silence. Food was an anchor, chaining her back to the world. Lightly, and only for a short time. The energy the soup brought her was a pattern as hunger was a pattern as each disease was a pattern as life was one and death was another and they were all, each of them, so beautiful and complete in themselves that it took enormous will to choose one over another.

  She had that will, but it was flagging. And maybe that was okay.

  “It’s okay to die,” she said to Maya, setting down her spoon. She said it to make the fireworks stop, but it had the opposite effect, setting them whirling and bursting around her.

  This is my karma, my suerte, Maya thought. I should have been nicer to my own mother, should have understood why she didn’t want me taking drugs and sleeping with strange men.

  “No,” Maya said, and burst into tears. They were great spheres of light dropping from her eyes, opening into fields of white on white, like snow falling on a glacier. “Please eat. Eat something. One more bite.”

  “But the snow is so beautiful,” Madrone said.

  “But the snow is cold, baby.” Maya had no idea what she was talking about, but she reached forward anyway to clasp Madrone’s hand. Her hand was cold; it felt like one of the flexible ice packs they used to keep in the freezer for Alix to lie on when her back gave out. “Where you are is so cold.”

  The touch of the heart, Maya thought. If Madrone could feel that, it could save her. And if not, there was truly nothing Maya could do except to let her go. Losing and finding and losing again. Loosing her.

  Cold was a pattern too, like a pinwheel of lace spinning in her back. And suddenly, Madrone wanted to reach for the warmth of Maya’s hand. Maya’s touch was a glow of fire that shattered the ice crystals around her. It was a living pattern of its own that throbbed with a red-blood beauty, beating like a heart. She could feel Maya’s pulse. Her own blood sang weakly in her body as it moved and traveled the web of her veins.

  “I’m cold,” Madrone said. “I’m so cold.” She wanted to be warm again, and human, wanted to taste hot soup and walk on two feet over the dry autumn grass. But that isn’t for me anymore, she thought. In letting it go she could save it for others and stay here, in the cold place between the worlds. Yet even here, Maya’s terrible pain pierced her.

  “Eat,” Maya said. “The soup is hot
. It’ll warm you.” She sat on the bed beside Madrone and slid her arm behind her shoulders, cradling her.

  But soup was not what she wanted. Maya’s arms held her like chains, dragging her back to the heaviness of form. And what she wanted was the warmth of light, the burning, flesh-dissolving white heat, the center of the flame.

  Maya’s arms clasped her like twined serpents. “How dare you?” Maya said. “How dare you believe there is nothing more for you in life?”

  But that’s not what I believe, Madrone thought weakly. The serpents tightened their grip. She only wanted to shed her skin, to break free.

  “I don’t want soup,” Madrone said. “I want—”

  “I know,” Maya said. “You want what we all want, the breakthrough, the total dissolution of boundaries and separations, enlightenment by the great straight upward path. And I am so angry at you!”

  “I took the knife of Cihuacoatl,” Madrone said, so softly that Maya had to lean close to hear her. “But I can’t cut the cord. I can only make designs.”

  Maya had no doubt that Madrone made perfect sense to herself. “You had a vision?” she asked.

  Madrone nodded her head, slowly, and then squeezed her eyes tight, as if the motion had pained her.

  “And now,” Maya said, “you’re trying to refuse it.”

  “No,” Madrone whispered, “I’m trying to carry it. But it’s heavy.”

  “You would prefer, maybe, a lightweight vision?”

  “This is how I’m carrying it.”

  “Bullshit! This is how you are trying to drop it like a hot potato. You’re running so hard from it you’re running straight out of life. I’m so disappointed in you! I thought Rio’s granddaughter would have more guts, and Johanna’s granddaughter would have more sense.”

  “I have guts.”

  “Then turn around. Oh, I see exactly where you are, Madrone. You’re a long, long way down a long, long road, and at the end is that beautiful beckoning light. And it seems so easy—no, not just easy but right, and dramatically perfect, to leap right through the center of it. I know. I’ve been there. And behind you is nothing but the shit that’s heavy to carry.”