Call Me Ishtar

by Rhoda Lerman

  This was the major destruction of my heavenly body, when I reordered the universe and created new forms by the nuclear power of my fires. Job, torn and wounded after he left the cave, did not interest me amorously and I simply used the old method to reproduce. It’s much easier. I sincerely hope this will clear the matter up for you. Please advise if there are further questions.

  Love,

  ISHTAR

  Void, you know.

  It was the beginning again. I’ve forgotten most of the details and your Bible with its silly comments about cubits and gopher wood is no help. I believe I have already explained to you that Chaos is predetermined. The earth was without form. There was no light. There was no darkness either. It was spring of the world year and I had swept away all that was unholy, unruly, imperfect and noisy. How oft is the candle of the wicked put out? And how oft cometh their destruction upon them? The earth shall rise up against you … that kind of number I had done.

  This last age I had worked too big. The preponderous beasts and low-browed men had ceased to be amusing. I had not created a proper balance between beast and vegetation. Half of the pea-brained dinosaurs had died of constipation. The smell was ungodly. But the people did nothing for it. They gloried in my ecstasies and forgot me. The men were aggressive and mean. The women, tricky and devious. No washing of hands, no dedication of first fruits, no playing of Ishtar instruments, no baking cakes to me, no dedication of sexual act. I couldn’t remember the last time a man had poured his semen in my holy groves to nourish my trees. Selfish.

  Well, below, the waters shimmered in my terrible red light. Here and there floated old forms of animals and men. The waters were murky with the churning and burning and shit. Soon I would have a good mulch for the new plantings. In the meantime, I had washed my hair, put lotion on my parched skin and lay down to rest before regenerating everything. Just as I closed my eyes, I heard a noise from below.

  Void is void. There should be no noise. I thundereth marvelously from my golden couch. “That’s all she wrote!” The noise stopped, then picked up once again. Tiny feet on wood. I cursed and descended, changing into a great raven with terrible jaws of death and destruction. I was ready to tear eyes and throats. I lifted the darkness from the face of the earth and, swooping low, saw four little red eyes wide with appropriate terror. Coming closer, I could see their small furry unusual bodies huddled on that utterly ridiculous boat. I have no idea what gopher wood is. I knew it was Noah’s boat and I had been foolish enough to teach him shape-changing. You will remember that his people were closer in time and spirit to me and could affect some of my powers. They were directly related to the Tuatha de Danaan of early Ireland. The animals, whatever category they were, scurried away as soon as I saw them. I had to descend into the murky depths, the molten glass waters, etc., etc. I could see nothing. I changed to a dove so as not to frighten them away again. I remembered the light. “Let there be light,” I called. Sun, stars and moon I remembered, but still I could see nothing of Noah and his stupid dull wife. I’m certain this was her idea to outsmart me.

  “It’s all over,” I shouted from Chaos. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  I blew the winds to the corners of the earth. Nothing. “Why do you persist? There’s nothing here for you. You will be archaic. I have no time to turn over rocks and mountains seeking you.” Anyway there were no rocks and mountains.

  I heard their footsteps again, larger, heavier. I did the “let there be dry land” bit and caught them on a hilltop. I went to touch them with my rod of destruction but Noah looked up at me with those sad little eyes and twitching whiskers and grew his ears, as I watched, hovering, a good six inches into the air, then hopped down the hill with his wife. I held back laughter. Where next I saw them they had changed again, extending tails, adding legs, shortening fur and I each time changed into a new shape to run after them. “Let there be grass,” I called out marvelously so they would be confused. I was also. I did not know what grass was yet. I changed shape into a wolf-like creature. But suddenly, as I found them, they were different, high, long-legged beasts leaping on hillocks far from me, gracefully. I wanted to leap with them.

  “Noah,” I called, “why are you running from me? I shall consume your bones. Your seed shall not knit. What will you eat?” Oh! Grass.

  As I neared them, they spotted themselves, added leather, subtracted tails, multiplied joints, added spikes. I was fascinated. I changed into a still larger creature with legs like cedar trees and an indestructible skin—not to be outdone. I tried to stomp them. Stomp. Stomp. I lengthened my nose. As soon as I was ready to stomp them, snatch them, sever them, electrocute them, they would change. I had to laugh at their deplorable fantasies. Soon, jaws open, tusks at the ready, I was almost upon them but the new shape was so utterly graceful I could not tear them. Truly something in the nuclear blast as I shifted poles this time must have extended the edge of Noah’s consciousness. He was far more imaginative than he had been before, with a good sense of aesthetics. Usually I burn up so much oxygen, aside from the radiation which completely overturns the genetic character of the age, the minds simply disintegrate and the few remaining creatures become low-level cave dwellers. I try not to miss anyone but they do have ways to hide. I was sorry I ever taught shape-changing to this Noah. I was tired. I went back up to my couch in Chaos, yawned and stretched. There was still time since there was no time yet and I would destroy them later. I watched Noah in his new shape. His loins were skillfully sleek and lean. They shone with perspiration as he raced. His ankles were thin and his parts were voluptuous. “Hey, Noah,” I called from Chaos. “Let us be fruitful and multiply.”

  He stopped and communicated with his wife. Damn.

  “Here.” I plucked a feather and dropped it toward them as a sign of peace. “Tell her to go back to the ship and sweep up whatever is unholy with this feather. Tell her to sweep up everything into a wooden spoon.” They argued. Jewish women, you know, still do this on Passover, sweeping up the unholy food before the Night of Watching … feather and spoon. “Send your dull and stupid wife to the ship or I’ll take away the sun. I’ve got a bottle of strawberry wine, Noah,” I called charmingly. “Meet me on the mountaintop.” He turned his wife into a large marsupial with a pocket in her belly and she hopped away unhappily. “You watch,” I warned her, “and I’ll turn you to salt.”

  I brought down my seven cakes which man must eat before he knows the Goddess and stretched out on the top of Ararat. Noah was naturally unsure of himself in my presence, but we drank and giggled until our heads were confused. We laughed a great deal and played with the clay around us, nipping off pieces. I teased him into shaping something foolish and ridiculous and if it made me laugh, I would breathe life into it.

  “What shall we make, Ishtar?” Noah now addressed me familiarly, for he had known me by this time. I used his semen to plant flowers which he bundled into my hair.

  “Hay while the sun shines.” I made honeyplants, caper-plants, grains.

  “I can’t think of anything.” Noah braided my hair and blew on my neck.

  I twisted bluebells into his buttonholes. Sorry about the buttonholes.

  I found it difficult to think also. “Big,” I said foolishly. “Big and blue with, with … Oh God, I can just imagine it how stupid it will be … with tiny eyes.”

  He nipped off a large hunk of clay and rolled it. I am really ashamed that I, Progenitress of Heroes and Mother of the Gods etc., etc., could have done what we did. I who lay cornerstones and set seasons. I …

  We made a whale.

  Our sides split with laughter. The wine we emptied into each other’s throats and with his shoulder, Noah slid the whale off the mountaintop into the sea. The splash was wonderful.

  “Do you want another, Ishtar?”

  “I guess so.” I conceded. We made pairs of things, huge, tiny, capricious things. We were screwing around and we were soused. Totally soused. Noah was good and imaginative.

 
“We must be serious.”

  We passed the wine. I lengthened the course of the sun. The earth was warm beneath us. I nipped clay. Noah nipped clay and as children we modeled in pairs. We changed form often ourselves.

  I a cow.

  He a bull.

  “Let’s do it now, Ishtar.”

  I a ewe.

  He a ram.

  “Now?” I asked. “Can you still?”

  I a mare.

  He a stallion.

  I a lioness.

  He a lion.

  “Again?” We spoke together.

  “Ah, Noah, I am wasted. No more.” I sighed prettily.

  “We could try.”

  “There are enough,” I said, pointing to our models, which we lay on a new scarp of schist, later to be called Precambrian. We had a zoo of creatures. I lengthened the shadows over them and they grew and I looked upon them with the Eye of Life and they lived. “I’ve had enough and you have no more. Advance when you are winning; retreat when you are losing.”

  “We could try, Ishtar.”

  “Try and try again is the worst form of hubris, Noah. Shall we dance?”

  We danced to “By the Time I get to Phoenix.” We danced very slowly in the sunlight across the scarp and where our shadows fell, forms sprang up in pairs and danced as we did, slowly circling with us, softly not to disturb. I smiled upon them and they disappeared by twos into the new forests and the new seas and the new plains and into those places where they would find comfort with each other for the night. It was one Creation I relish whenever I remember it.

  The present position of the neutron star that survives the supernova is Right Ascension 08h33m7, declination—45°00´ (epoch 1950). In 9000 b.c. the supernova would have passed overhead at latitude 48´ South; at other times, the most northerly latitude at which object would have passed overhead was 37´ South. Hence, the Southern Hemisphere would be the Prime area to search for possible evidence. However, Northern Hemisphere records from Europe or the Orient, where the supernova may have been seen near the horizon, might also exist.

  Hi. This is what everyone watched for on Pass Over. Sometimes I came peacefully with milk and honey, manna and dew. And sometimes I came burning and ending things. That little Easter sunrise service you have was pure gratitude.

  Besides the archaeological interest involved in deciphering any records of the Vela X supernova, the event may have biological import. It has been suggested that cosmic rays and X rays from supernovae have had genetic impact on the flow of evolution. It would certainly have been a spectacular event in the experience of anyone who witnessed it. Does anyone recall what gopher wood was?

  “Listen, love, so we can remember, I’ll do one that looks like you,” I offered.

  “And I want one that looks like you.” We agreed then to reproduce. Among other reasons, it is why I feel kindness when I look upon my people.

  We were wasted. Noah looked down upon himself hanging limply, what had been so voluptuous. When he recovered from his drunkenness and found himself in the arms of a kangaroo, he remembered what he had done with the Angel of Death … and castrated himself.

  Well, blame it on the kangaroo. I didn’t ask for it. I think he, if I recall correctly—these things have a way of kaleidoscoping—tossed it into the sea where the whale was. It gave in. The seven dwarfs have forbidden me. I am quite busy tidying their beds.”

  “Are you a prisoner, then, here?”

  “Oh, no! They are very kind to me.”

  “Aah, that too may be a prison. I offer you from my basket a lovely apple. An apple of wisdom.” Ishtar held out the apple.

  “I am forbidden. I cannot speak to you.”

  “Tell, Child,” Ishtar leered at Snow White. “Do you sleep with all those ugly little men?”

  “Please go away, old Mother.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” answered Ishtar, half turning. “I shall rid myself of my lovely apples soon. Aaah.” Ishtar turned back. “I shall give you one.”

  Snow White stretched out her hand greedily to take the apple. She slammed the half door closed before Ishtar could speak the directions for eating an apple of wisdom. Inside there was a choking noise and a tumbling of furniture. Ishtar gazed at the closed shutter with a dreadful look and laughed bitterly.

  “Foolish child. There must be ritual in all this.”

  A prince woke Snow White from her drugged sleep. He took her home to his castle and told the entire kingdom she would be his new Queen and the old Queen would die. A soldier rode ahead of the wedding party commanding the people to kneel for the new Queen as she passed through the street. Ishtar, hearing, uttered a curse. At first she would not go to the wedding but she had no peace. Jealous and despairing, her stomach acid with anger, Ishtar entered the banquet hall of the castle that had once been hers.

  The new Queen giggled over a tumbler of ale. “Keep your wisdom, Old Mother.”

  The prince motioned to a page. Iron slippers had been put upon the fire and they were brought in with hot tongs and set before Ishtar. She was forced to put on the hot shoes and dance until she dropped dead.

  Wearily, Ishtar returned to Carnac. She wandered through the stones stretching into the moist sky. The ocean still hissed. As the moon slid behind a mountain of cumulus clouds, Ishtar rested her forehead against the rough flank of a phallus. “Aaah, what will become of my children? Ritual must precede wisdom. Where is my Star?” She lifted her long woolen skirts and slid her vulva down the seaslimy ridge of a leaning stone. She reached her ivory arms to the sky, shivering, longing for her Star to return. Then she descended into the long barrow under the earth leading to her chambers.

  Someday she would find the right woman to take over the wisdom. And the world. She curled up on a stone and slept before her Star.

  3

  ISHTAR SAT ON A BENCH IN MIAMI’S BAYFRONT PARK. SHE SMILED at the purple silvered pigeons cooing at her sandaled feet. A young man wandered along the palm lined walk, into a grove of blood red hibiscus, and she watched him stretch his mouth to accommodate a small gleaming gun. The pigeon perched on Ishtar’s ivory shoulder jumped slightly at the explosion. Someone called the Law. The Law arrived in a truck with cages, careening down the narrow palm path into the grove where the young man sat upright, tomato red, against a palm tree trunk. Two policemen jumped from the truck.

  “Holy Mother uh God.”

  Ishtar, unseen, nodded graciously.

  “He wants a blanket, Jess,” the older policeman spoke laconically.

  “He gone for sure?”

  The older policeman prodded the boy’s hip with the toe of a black polished leather boot. “Jess, you git his wallet for me, hear? See if he’s anybody.” He walked away to lean against the truck.

  The younger policeman kneeled, pushed back his goggles, extracted a wallet gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. “Thirteen bucks, liberry card out Dania way, Monkey Jungle ticket, punched.”

  “Git the blanket.”

  The boy coughed suddenly, erupting a stream of blood over the policeman, who leaped backwards, wiped his boot off with a handkerchief, balled the handkerchief and tossed it behind the palm.

  “Got some on your pants too, Jess. They gonna want a cleaning.”

  “God damn.”

  “Kid, ain’t he?”

  “Likely 22, 23. You got K2R on the truck?”

  “Blood always wants dry cleaning. Well now, Jess, we call the coroner or the ambulance?”

  “Ambulance means we gotta ride down to Jackson with it. It’s on to four now. I go off at half past.”

  “Since when we ride with red blankets?”

  “Since the sergeants got sensitivity trained.”

  “Shit, git the goddamn blanket on to him and call the coroner and tell him he don’t have to hurry long as he gets on about half past.”

  “Jess, how bout you drive on out to call, hear? So you can pick up a couple a cokes? And if you see a Pat Boone poster up, take it down for my kids, hear?”


  As the cage truck pulled away, the older policeman took off his helmet, wiped his forehead with a sleeve and put one foot up against a palm tree behind him. He balanced his helmet on his raised knee and fingertapped it aimlessly.

  Ishtar, the Great and Terrible Mother, whom they had not seen, heard the young man moan from under the blanket. Her pigeons cooed peacefully in answer. Ishtar picked up her Burdine’s shopping bag with its hot pink and orange suns and walked to the Bandshell because she did not want the Law to ask her questions or find the Pat Boone and his Choir of White Christian Businessmen poster in her bag. The aimless tapping irritated her. She tore a feather from the purple breast of a pigeon and cleaned her teeth of pumpernickel seeds with the stalk.

  “Cacogenics,” she announced to the sky. “That is the problem here.”

  At the Bandshell, the Youth for Christ Club of the Allapattah Baptist Church was cleaning the stage and the dressing rooms. The last night Jim Morrison and the Doors had desecrated the Park with their performance and this night Pat Boone and his choir were coming to Miami to save the children.

  Ishtar watched a young boy scrape Jim Morrison’s semen from a footlight. She sat in a front seat and smiled at him and he blushed at her great beauty. She let her feathered thighs fall open and exposed herself to him. He stopped cleaning the footlight. She stretched out her thin hand for his Easy-Off. The boy smiled and passed the can to her. She sprayed it into his eyes.