by Starhawk
She fed the woman a spoonful, placed her hand again on the swollen belly, and waited. Moaning, the woman closed her eyes. Madrone focused on the honey again, strengthening its power to contract the womb. A wave shuddered through the woman’s belly and she began to gush blood, introducing an iron taste to the air. Madrone was ready with the right elixir to bring the womb clamping down and stanch the flow.
She called for more honey, honey with garlic steeping in it, and visualized blood cleansing itself, white cells surrounding the alien organisms, as she called up the taste of healing drugs. Once again she turned her own sweat into the homeopathic drop that changed and cured.
“Keep feeding her this,” Madrone said. “A spoonful every hour. I think she’ll be okay.”
“What did you do?”
“I wish I could explain it to you. I’m not sure I even know myself. And I’m too tired, now.”
“You’ve been sitting here for hours, no wonder. Come out, let her sleep, and eat something.”
They emerged again, into the room where Hijohn was waiting.
“I’ll bring you some food,” Beth said.
“How’d it go?” Hijohn asked.
“Okay. I learned I could do something I didn’t know I could do. A bee thing,” Madrone said. “But I’m drained.”
“Can you travel? We could cover a lot of ground before dawn.”
“Do we have to?”
“Or stay the day here. Not too safe.”
“If I can eat first.…”
Beth brought soup and potatoes and bread, and Madrone ate ravenously. Hijohn had had one dinner, but he did not decline a second.
“Must you go?” Beth said. “You could sleep the day here—you need some rest after that.”
“Not safe,” Hijohn said. “Not for us, not for you.”
Beth looked distressed. “Isn’t there anything else I can offer you?”
“A bath,” Madrone said. “Just a quick one.” They had plenty of water to drink at Katy’s, and she kept herself clean with sponge baths, but full immersion was an undreamed-of luxury.
Beth hesitated. “That’s a little awkward.”
“That’s okay,” Madrone said politely, concealing her disappointment. “Don’t worry about it.” Had she ever really lived in a place where she had taken for granted her right to shower daily?
“We’re not rich, like Sara and her friends,” Beth explained. “The students here come from the rapidly vanishing middle class. Nursing is one of the few jobs still open to women, and the girls I take in expect to work rather than marry. Oftentimes their fathers won’t support them, or they begrudge them every penny. So we try to keep costs down. That means we’re very sparing with water.”
“It’s really okay,” Madrone said again, sorry now that she’d asked. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“It’s just that we keep a strict water log, and if I drew a bath for you I’d have to explain it. Baths are for special occasions, like birthdays or graduation. A shower, now … you could take a quick shower.”
“I’d love that.”
Beth looked questioningly at Hijohn, who shook his head.
“I washed in the sink. That’s wet enough for me.”
“I’ll set the meter for you, and get you a towel,” Beth said to Madrone. “It’s late, so the women should be in their beds, but let me scout the hallway for you in case someone’s coming back from a late shift.”
“The noise of the shower won’t wake them?”
“They’re used to it. They all work night hours from time to time.”
The bathroom was white and clean, with old-fashioned fixtures, including a toilet that flushed with water. It appeared, however, to be flushed as seldom as possible. Beth closed the lid and showed Madrone how to work the shower.
“You press this button here, and it holds back the water. So you can wet down, and then stop the water while you soap up, and then you should have enough time to rinse clean. The water shuts off after five minutes.”
“I’m an expert at short showers,” Madrone assured her. “My grandmother considered a long shower to be a sin akin to leaving food on your plate.”
“Leave the stopper in, if you don’t mind,” Beth said. “We catch the waste water, use it to scrub the floors. But be careful, it makes for slippery footing.”
“I’ll be fine.”
The water was hot, and Madrone let her fatigue wash away with the spray that played over her body as she counted sixty seconds. Then she turned off the water and soaped herself, scrubbing at the ingrained dirt on her elbows and knees, and rinsed. At home they showered carefully and conserved water voluntarily because it was sacred. Here they did the same, because it was expensive, and the meter cut you off if you transgressed. Perhaps it was just as well. If she’d had unlimited access to water, she might stay in the shower all the remaining night, ruining their chance to escape before dawn.
She dried and dressed, wishing she could wash her ragged shirt and threadbare pants. They had a tear in one knee. Maybe Beth would lend her thread and a needle and something to wear while she mended them.
She opened the door a crack and checked the hallway. All clear. Quickly, she ran back to the basement room. Beth and Hijohn were deep in conversation.
“It’s the children,” Beth said. “So many of them aren’t on the Lists and can’t get so much as a painkiller if they need it. I try to help as many as I can. Some of the students here work with me. Sometimes they can get pills, prescriptions left over when somebody dies, supplies that a clerk gets careless with. But the danger to them is great. If they were caught, they’d go to the pens.”
“We can get you boosters, anti-infectins, anything you want if we know how to recognize it,” Hijohn said. “No problem. We pull raids all the time.”
“What would you want in return?” Beth asked.
“Some doctoring, from time to time. A place to hide out once in a while. And you could let people know who’s helping you. Carefully. We want them to thank the Web for their kid’s life and support us.”
“I think we have a deal,” Beth said. She turned to Madrone and smiled. “You were right about wanting us to meet. We can help each other. Do you feel refreshed now?”
“Much better. If I could just have some sewing things, to mend these pants?”
“I’ll get them for you.”
She went up the stairs and returned with a needle and thread and a skirt for Madrone to wear while Beth herself repaired the rips. Madrone leaned back, closed her eyes. Soon, soon they should go; she shouldn’t fall asleep. Better to wake, talk, ask questions.
“Beth, while you were still in practice, you must have used the boosters. What are they? How do they work?”
Beth sighed. “My specialty was gynecology. Some of our patients were on boosters, but twenty years ago, that wasn’t yet the norm. Even then, the Corporation was very cagey about their precise chemical composition. Oh, we knew they worked by stimulating the immune system, possibly by encouraging the T-cells to reproduce more rapidly. They were a by-product of research on the immunodeficiency diseases, after all. And many of us suspected they might have adverse side effects or, at the very least, would produce dependency.”
“They do,” Madrone said.
“The Corporation was extremely reticent to divulge any of that information, except to its own doctors. Those of us who worked independently were left out in the cold.”
“What was it like for you to lose your license?” Madrone asked.
“Like a nightmare. Oh, we saw the reports of the law on the vidscreens, my partner and I, but we really couldn’t believe they could kick women out of medicine, that they could get away with it. I had a small practice with Mary, who was also my lover for fifteen years. Does that shock you?”
“Does what shock me?”
“That I had a woman lover.”
“Should that shock me? It’s quite normal back home. My grandmother had a woman lover for most of her life. And I’ve
had a few myself.”
Beth threw a glance at Hijohn, but his face remained neutral. “The Web has no position on homosexuality,” he said.
“High time it got one, then,” Beth said. “You can’t tear this system down without destroying all forms of repression. But I was telling you about my license. We had a meeting of the Women’s Gynecology Association, and we all decided unanimously to ignore the new Family Purity laws and continue to practice. We figured they couldn’t prosecute us all. We were wrong.
“Things went along okay for about a month. And then one day, in the middle of clinic, there came a loud knocking on the door. I was examining a young woman and I told her to dress quickly. By the time we got out into the waiting room, it was filled with a dozen police and an equal number of wailing women. Mary and I didn’t resist arrest; we let them handcuff us and march us out to their car and take us down to the station, where we expected to be booked and released. You see, we were still thinking like physicians, members of a powerful class, used to being treated with respect.”
Beth’s eyes were focused on her mending and her words followed the jerks of her needle as she pushed it roughly through the cloth.
“Instead, they stripped us naked and had us bend over so they could peer up the cracks in our asses. They dressed us in prison clothes and locked us up in separate cells, where we remained for a week. When our lawyer finally reached us, he advised us to sign a confession, take the Oath of Repudiation, recant. I took his advice. To this day I can’t say if I’m sorry or glad. They staged a huge public ceremony, a thousand women professionals paraded before the vidcams to parrot their oath and display their humiliation. They lit a huge bonfire, downtown it was, just outside the entrance to the Central Mall, and we each walked up and placed our licenses and diplomas in the fire. So we survived. Mary refused, and I never saw her again. I try not to speculate on her end.”
I don’t want to hear any more stories, Madrone thought. I don’t want to take on the burden of Mary’s ghost, like my mother’s ghost, like the spirits of how many women healers, burned Witches, priestesses defiled? Suddenly Madrone wanted desperately to get out of Beth’s house, out of the dark basement room that in her mind reeked of women’s blood and the faint sweet smell of tropical flowers.
They left two hours before dawn. The woman Madrone had healed, whose name she never learned, was resting quietly, her fever down, her pulse stronger.
“Just keep giving her that honey ’til it’s all gone. And after, just regular garlic honey. She’ll make it. I’ll be back, if I can, but that’s a big if.”
“Come back when you can,” Beth said. “If there’s ever help I can give you, I will.”
Already in May, night was the only sane time to travel in the sun-scorched hills. Their route lay across the freeway, and Hijohn hurried them along, making the most out of each dark minute until Madrone wanted to scream with weariness. He showed no sympathy for her.
“You been across that bridge. Want to try it in full daylight, get yourself shot?”
She couldn’t argue with his logic, even though she wondered to herself whether falling off the bridge from fatigue would be much better. But they made it over. The narrow scaffolding had by now become so familiar it no longer scared her.
Hijohn led her down a side canyon and up again on the fire road to the crest of the hills, racing against the dawn. Just as the sun’s first searchlight rays reached over the hill’s rim, they slipped down a twisting, hidden trail that wound like a tunnel beneath overarching stands of dry brush. Madrone slid in the dust or scraped along on her bottom, but Hijohn moved surely, as if each foot had a separate contract with the earth to support his moving weight. Full light found them at the bottom of a canyon, concealed by trees from the houses that loomed above. The air was fragrant with sage, and the nearly dry streambed was occasionally puddled with mud. They rounded a bend where a stand of pale, mottled sycamores threw heavy branches up in an open-armed embrace of the sky.
Madrone stooped down to bury her hands in the cool mud. Where the water pooled, only an inch or so deep, a clump of giant cattails raised their proud stalks eight feet high. Their presence stunned her. What were they doing here, these giant plants of the wetlands, making do on so little, just memories and promises of water?
“Here,” Hijohn said, indicating with a toss of his head the dense shade under an arching live oak, whose blue-green leathery leaves concealed the green buds of acorns to come. She followed him under to nestle in a clear patch he made among the leaves.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Always,” Madrone replied.
Hijohn smiled. “Try this.” He indicated a wild grass, running its feathery fronds between his finger and thumbnail to produce a light sprinkling of minute seeds. Madrone imitated him and found that they crunched under her teeth in a tantalizing way.
“Good?” he asked.
“It’s sort of like eating,” Madrone admitted. “A few hours of this and I might collect a mouthful.”
“You can get a lot of good protein this way,” Hijohn said. “And we’ve got all day.”
“Que nunca tengas hambre.”
“What does that mean?”
“ ‘May you never hunger.’ It’s what we say back home.”
“Nice,” Hijohn said. “It’s a nice sentiment. May it come true some day.”
“That’s a nice sentiment too.”
Madrone stretched out on the ground. It felt almost soft under her, embracing, welcoming. She could sleep now, and rest, and then, when she woke again, think about what she’d done and what it might mean.
“Madrone?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got to tell you something.”
“What? What is it?”
“News. Beth told me; she said it came on the vidnets while you were doing your healing.”
“Tell me, Hijohn.”
“The army in the North—they say they’ve entered your city, taken over. They’re declaring a great victory.”
No, Madrone thought. It isn’t true. It can’t be true. They had known all along the invasion must come, and yet she still could not wholly believe it. The City must still remain, green and watered, her refuge, her safe home.
“Do you trust the vidnet reports? Do you think it’s true?”
Hijohn shrugged. “Could be. Could be true, could be lies. But it’s likely to be true. I’m sorry.”
She buried her face in her arms for a moment. Her disbelief dissolved away, leaving her suddenly sick with worry. Maya, Lily, Bird—where are you? Why can’t I reach you? How do I go on, weak with fear for you? And for me? But the spirit world was silent.
“I’m afraid,” Madrone said softly, lifting her head. “I’m so afraid for them all. I want to go home.”
He reached over and placed his hand on hers. It was warm and woke forgotten hungers. She was aware of his battered, stubborn body, breathing and sweating so near to hers, walking proof of life’s implacable tenacity.
“You’re fighting for them here,” Hijohn said. “Helping us, working with us—it’s the best thing you could do for them.”
“But I can’t see them, touch them, know what’s happening to them. Oh, Goddess, what am I going to do?”
“There’s nothing much you can do, except what you’re doing already. So we’ll just keep on.”
“Aren’t you ever afraid?” she asked.
“Of course. Often. It’s normal to be scared. Nobody wants to die. I don’t even want to get beat up one more time, if I have a choice about it.”
“But you never act afraid. You never show it.”
“What good would it do to act afraid?” he asked. “It wouldn’t change anything.”
“I’d feel like I had company. I’m afraid all the time.”
“That’s because you’re smart. Nobody sane is brave.”
“You are.”
“No, I’m not. I just do things. Being afraid or not afraid—it’s not important. You just do thi
ngs.”
What she wanted to do, suddenly, was to let her healer’s fingers trace his scars. Diosa, she thought, I need comfort. It’s been too long since I’ve been touched and held and loved. I need somebody else’s arms around me to stop me picturing Bird’s face twisted in pain, Maya’s body lying broken on the pavement. Oh, stop, stop it! Better to think about Hijohn, alive beside her. Was his hand on hers just for comfort, or was he asking, promising more?
“How do you do things?” she asked. “How do you survive what they do to you? And then keep on living in this world?”
He turned and looked at her. His eyes were a dark brown, and as they met hers she felt a rush of excitement through her body, ringing down through all her hollow places like the sound of bronze bells.
“There’ve been times I’ve wanted to die,” he admitted. “From pain, or hopelessness, or fear. Fear of pain. But that passes. In the end, pain is not important. Living is.”
“Living in a world full of murderers and torturers?”
Hijohn shrugged. “They’re not so different from you and me. They just don’t have the same vision to hold on to. Without a vision, human beings are nasty creatures.”
He was not like Sandy or Bird or even Holybear, whose energies were always sparking and flying and playing around them in colors. His were contained, a cool frosted indigo like the clumps of tantalizing, inedible berries in the scrub. She couldn’t read him, couldn’t divine his intentions or desires.
