Call Me Ishtar

by Rhoda Lerman

  One does not deal with power lightly. I have burned compelling incense which my Jamaican maid gave to me and brought Robert home at midnight from distant places. He drove and when he arrived, to my terror, three times in succession during the span of a fortnight, insisted he had simply decided to come home. I have not told him exactly why he had returned. I have made a pencil lift itself in the air and turn around. This also frightens me and I will not try it again. I do not want to be susceptible. Once I admit to my power, I admit to all sorts of spiritual dark browed enemies who may wish me ill. Mack’s mother, who is an accomplished Cook of the Week and has black strega eyes, may have guessed how hungry I am for her son. I avoid her.

  I have always had a pre-pubic fantasy about power. My fantasy began at the time I was wearing someone’s Boy Scout pin and being tied up in basements in cowboy and Indian games. Still, far into puberty, when I am tied by my own fears to the dentist’s chair or the gynecologist’s table, I escape by dwelling on this wakened, still satisfying dream.

  The dream is: I am a queen, tying handsome, rude, crude and nude men of pagan origins to posts, ordering them beaten while I suffer, visibly in conflict but nevertheless watching because it is my duty to inflict this suffering upon them and upon myself. Hatred smolders in their smoldering pitiless eyes and then, forgiving, I heal one in my room, a palatial syconium, and give myself to him in sorrow, contrition and Brueghel abandonment. Come and I will heal thee. I suppose it is one of the reasons I so want Mack, because he does suffer and, related to Robert as I am, he suffers indirectly at my hands. Robert is rather inhumane to them all. I truly hope Robert’s judgment falls upon their heads. I know the seven Demons are out to get Robert but it will never happen. He is much too strong. Anyway, my dream is quite a dream for a little girl. And it is lasting. Even when the dentist flashes his X ray into my genetics, and I receive his death while he wears a rubber apron and leaves the room, even then I use the dream to escape. It is possible, now that I think of it, that the dentist’s X rays are the cause of my son’s fangs and the reason why he can not cut a straight line with his first-grade scissors. However, I must attend the dentist because I can not be both cunning and lingual, which is my hope, with four month old fermenting rye bread seeds in a decaying mouth and so eventually, armed with my dream and my growing power, I will sit in his chair. Not this week.

  Ishtar stroked the wolfhound’s back. She went into the office and called her maid. The smallest dog was due for a shot and needed to be taken the next morning to the veterinarian’s. She had forgotten to leave that message. The band took its place on the stage. Jimmy returned to the projection room and Ishtar sat on a spring backed couch, stroking the wolfhound and considering the sad children below. Her son was well, although the maid thought he had begun working on another tooth. Ishtar was not happy. She wished to sit quietly with Mack. When she had glimpsed him, he was surrounded with groupies touching him, rubbing near him. She had seen the ugly groupie again, near him, but not next to him. She had begun to notice the girl who always lingered just outside the inner circle of the painted lovely girls around Mack. And Mack? What was his interest in Nino? Was that what held Mack from her own arms? No. She refused to consider it. The door shut beyond her. The set was over and Jimmy had left again for the back room where the groupies visited the band between sets. It was why the boys were in so great a hurry to finish playing. And the poor hungry children waited in the heat below. Ishtar felt grief rise in her chest. She stood and called to them from the tiny window of the projection room. They did not hear.

  HANSEL AND GRETEL

  It was winter in the Black Forest. There was no sunlight. The people in the towns, hungry and cold, strayed deeper and deeper into the dark forest for wood and food. Ishtar heard often their boots, heavy, Teutonic, stomping across her paths. Although hunting was necessary once the peoples broke the original taboo and ate meat, Ishtar had never learned to like hunters. She had watched one from behind an elder tree near her ginsengbread house, trapping her cat. Screaming at him would have betrayed her house. She bit her lips. The house was for the children whose lives she hoped to illumine and whose stomachs she hoped to fill. She had baked long in preparation for this time and the house, rich and fresh, was standing ready for them. The children would come soon. She sorrowed for her cat.

  It had happened before. The people were reduced to eating cats; they would next eat their children. And yet these children, with the same dark blood as their fathers, would be better eaten and gone, would they not? Ishtar, shaking her head in her mirror, remonstrated with herself. “Not the children. I am here to save them.”

  At last, one night, she heard the crying of children in the forest. She smoothed her hair and sent a snow white dove to lead the children to her house. They came and with great excitement, Ishtar listened as they broke off bits of her house. There had been so little ginseng left and with one cat gone and most of her stores run out, she had only the precious gemstones left for magic. But the gemstones, so hidden in the terrible forest, so far from the sun, could produce little power from the heavens. Ishtar prayed that what the children received from her house would be enough. With their thick-necked redfaced fathers, these children needed ever so much lightness to balance their over-dark blood. Ishtar made her voice soft and leaned out the door.

  “Nibble nibble gnaw. Who is nibbling at my house?”

  “It is only the wind,” a child answered.

  Deceitful, they were, and easily turned to thievery. They would need much help. And yet they were the first and if she were kind to them, the other children of this dreadful country would come and eat from the sweetness and partake of the light.

  Ishtar called pleasantly into the night. “You may tell the truth, children. I know you are hungry.”

  They looked at her without trust. She smiled. They dropped their eyes. Their mouths were sullen. Their eyes were slitted.

  “Dear children, who has brought you here? Do come in and stay with me. No harm shall happen to you.” Ishtar took them both by the hands and led them into her house. Then she set good food before them, milk and pancakes, with sugar and apples and nuts. Afterward two pretty little beds were covered with clean white linen and Hansel and Gretel lay down in them and thought they were in heaven. They were of course closer than most people.

  Ishtar worked hard, cooking them every sort of meal and adding her recipes to balance the children’s systems. “Why are you afraid of me, children? I will not harm you.”

  They would bow their heads and continue to eat. Gradually they became more trusting and looked directly at her. They were not, however, grateful and their eyes were smaller than most children’s. One day, Gretel placed her warm little hand within Ishtar’s own. The child’s lips trembled. “In the town, the mothers and fathers are cooking their children. First they cooked the dogs, then the cats. Then if a child is bad …” She and Hansel looked sideways at each other. Ishtar felt great compassion for them.

  “Come,” she said with spirit, “I will show you my jewels to cheer you. These are jewels with which I draw power from the sun and the planets.”

  “You aren’t going to eat us?”

  “Heavens! I have a house of food. I do not eat children.”

  “Even on Passover?”

  “That’s an anachronism.” Laughing, Ishtar poured aprons full of her jewels on the kitchen table, her precious emerald tablets, her magic egg amulets, her scrolls of lapis lazuli and a collection of dead men’s teeth. The children cast sidelong glances at each other. Ishtar said nothing to Hansel although he had pocketed an emerald and his eyes were small as pig slits. Ishtar gathered up the jewels quickly. She hoped, soon, fed and happy, Hansel would return the emerald. Knowing the son, it was believable that the parents were capable of eating their offspring. It was the times and the blackness of the forest and it had been too long since the races of man had mated with her daughters. The divine strain was becoming weaker and weaker. Which was why Ishtar had returned.
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br />   Ishtar asked the children every morning: “Do you feel sweeter now or still angry?”

  Every morning, they answered: “Angry and hungry.”

  But still, they seemed sweeter and Gretel often offered Ishtar her hand and Hansel, without being asked, fetched wood for the fire and fed the cats. Soon she would have to send them back to tell other children about the house in the forest where they too could find food and happiness and safety. Perhaps the girl would stay and help with the baking. There would be much to do if the rest of the children came and much to do if she were to bring light to the people of the Black Forest. Ishtar was happy with her work. Each night she tucked the children in gently, wrapped hot sweet buns under their pillows and a dish of chocolate mousse by their nightstands. She sang them to sleep.

  Hansel asked again and again to play with the gemstones. Gretel begged to learn the magic of the oven and the many colored vessels in the kitchen above the athanor. Finally one rainy afternoon, Ishtar, with Gretel’s hand in hers, said, “Gretel, tomorrow I will teach you my baking secrets so you will never again be hungry or lack wisdom.”

  Hansel asked also to learn the baking. Ishtar felt it was wrong but he pleaded so and his eyes seemed so much softer than those first narrow eyes, she promised the next day to light the athanor and teach them a few of her secrets. “Tomorrow morning, first thing,” she promised them as she tucked them into their little beds.

  When Ishtar awoke to her mourning dove’s call, she saw the two children stuffing gemstones into their pockets. All the colored glasses in the laboratory were shattered.

  “Stop!” she called from her bed. It was useless. Her feet and hands were tied with the thongs of her own sandals. She distended an eye and pulled the other into a slit. She cursed. She howled. Hansel dragged her to the oven and Gretel, sweet Gretel, gave her a push that drove her far into the athanor and shut the iron door and fastened the bolt. Ishtar howled horribly at them from behind the grates. “You have betrayed me. I fed you. I gave you my secrets. Ingrates!”

  It was Gretel who threw in the match. Ishtar no longer cared. They were not worth her while. The children ran home through the forest, their pockets bulbous with jewels.

  Forever after, their children and their children’s children and their children after them told the story of how Hansel and Gretel threw the wicked woman into the oven and took all of her wealth. Everyone in the Black Forest wished in their black hearts they could do the same. They finally did.

  Ishtar never returned there.

  I have often done better with children than those Teutonic thalidomides. And it is within the children where the energy lies. These children now, of the Inferno, below me, are sad and waiting. I feel that I am, in some way, expected. And it is this expectation which stirs the power in me. I call to them again. A few hear me.

  “Rise, oh my folk,” I call to them from the projection room over the noise of the jukebox. “Rise, oh my folk, from the dust of the earth.” Some look up. “Rise, oh my folk, from the checkout counter at the A&P, from the greasepit at Midas Muffler.” I have more of them attentive now. “Rise and garb thee in raiments, in see-throughs and tight bells and midriffs baring your first fruits, stuff your holy 32A padded apples into highrise bras and glue your lanuga eyelashes on and drape yourselves …” The jukebox is turned off. “… and drape yourselves on the steps of the sukka bandstand and suffer succubi, and raise your childlike voices that turn shrill in your demiurge and the hemisemidemiquaver of your voices shall reach the great ones in their pavilion.” They are giggling, but attentive for I too have a nice rhythm.

  “Hey, you. You with the mustache. Eat me. Eat me. You want head? You want to go down on me?” I am speaking their language now and they are quite attentive. “Beat your hosanna in the meat market marked with Magic Markers proclaiming the Demons. And yes, there they are on their pavilion near the bar, neath the ladies and gents, and the folk from the dust of the earth worship them because someday, someday, they may be great.”

  “Why not?” they call up to the wall of the projection booth. They cannot see me.

  “Why not?” I answer. And flashing the words on the walls with a bounding ball I lead them in singing to Moses. “Go down,” the ball bounces. “Go down, Moses.” They sing, aware of the entendre, and I sadly slice the wolfhound into bloody quarters with the misericorde from my shopping bag, aneling him with Three-in-One oil as the children sing.

  “Bright oil, pure oil, shining oil, the purifying oil of the gods, oil which softens the sinews of man,” I murmur. “With the oil of the incantation, I have made thee drip. With the oil of the softening which is given for soothing, I have anointed thee. The oil of new life I have put on thee. Depart now.”

  I lay each of his parts at the legs of a stack table covered with tortoise shell Contact paper and build a small fire of papers before the table. I address the soul of the departing dog: “For your strength, I shall heal your master’s lameness,” and then I leap over the fire and the stack table clumsily, but effectively. It has been a long time since I have made that particular leap. I am sorry I do not have a captive or a simple puppy to sacrifice at this time. And no river to toss them into. I need the strength derived in this way. But, these are new times. I sprinkle water and oil from the light projector basin onto my forehead and then I prepare an entertainment for the children. I turn in the same place, my arms stretched above my head and I call down for them the Skirts of Heaven onto their walls. I play curtains of auroras for them across the dance hall. As the curtains open, enlarge and burst like coronas into myriads of vertical colors flooding the room, the children gasp appreciatively and wave up to the projection booth. They know, although there is only a small hole in the wall, that a specialist is above.

  “The aurora borealis,” I begin rather pedantically, “is the orgasm of the Queen of Heaven, as a thunderstorm is the orgasm of her lover. Her orgasm is multifaceted and beautiful. His is singular and terrifying. Even noisy.” I allow my voice to sough over their backs. “These are the Skirts of the Queen of Heaven on your walls. I am the Queen of Heaven, the Great Goddess, et cetera. There is no sin beneath my skirts. Sin, my babies, is a fantasy.” I turn the aurora up into its high frequency electric blues. “The original sin was my murder. That is when sin began, when the first wife, the first mother was banished. But I am back.

  The children stir restlessly. “Listen not to their tales of original sin. The church hangs you up and shakes you down as they did me from the Tree of Life, for I am the apple and it is I that must be eaten for knowledge and joy. But they rip you off too. Sign nothing. Promise nothing. Don’t sell your soul for their redemption. You have no sin. Remember the Hostess. Jesus is bad hash. Partake of me.” I shift the blues to purples and finally to the iron ore red of the mother lodes and down to the umbers and blacks of nighttide. The children become silent as the colors change; their faces lift expectantly.

  As I rotate the light of dawn on the Eastern Wall, their faces wait as cornucopias to be filled with the sweet fruits of my knowledge. I love them.

  “I am the apple, my loves. Paradise, the Garden, the Star of David, the Star of Bethlehem, the Star of Solomon, Lady Luck, even Lucifer. But I didn’t fall. They ripped me off. Now they offer you stale wafers and false wines, but no sweet fruit, no ale, no cakes, no solace. I am the alewife; I am the Hostess who bakes; I am the mother. Tell them that you know me. Tell them I am back and have told you the truth.”

  They laugh, clapping. “Good show.”

  I squirt the entire container of Three-in-One oil, in the basin and add pigments wildly. “Here. Here is what happened.” On the side walls I show them foolish Adam, thick-lipped and dough-faced, chasing a sow through a lonely forest of ferns. The children roar as Adam mounts the sow and dives away from the bite of her tusks as she fights him from her back. “Don’t jest,” I tell them. “How do you think we domesticated animals for you. Adam, after I subdued him with my love, it was given to him to love the animals.” Adam is hea
ving, working hard on the sow, who snorts and bucks obstinately.

  The children shout encouragement. “Go to it, Adam. Go to it.”

  “And now, here he is coming back to my Garden. See how tired the poor man is, legs wobbly, shoulders hunched, scarred. Surely humping wild beasts is a job fraught with danger and I did feel sorrow for him. There he comes now, followed by the rutting females. The work is not over with the cows, the pigs, the dogs. It was then my job and the job of my women to soften the beasts with food and affection. And see, first the female animals, then the males follow them into the Garden. Our first flocks. I nearly lost Adam over a she bear but he escaped and we chose to leave bears wild. Men were more in demand than bears. I myself loved the lion and the steed. But my love doesn’t truly domesticate. Adam subdued all these beasts with his only weapon and within time, flea-ridden, spent and odiferous, he would return to me. I had my sacrifices too. This last Creation, yours, was the most difficult. Yes? A question?”

  “Cats?” they call up to me.

  “Yes, cats. Cats came curiously but were never subdued. There, there!” My voice breaks with excitement as I remember. “See my sons? They are half-divine. Cain and Abel. Your idea of blue blood is not without basis. And see how they hold their mother? Was I not lovely then and divine? They being much cleaner and more sentient than their foul father, who was not in any part divine, I took pleasure from my sons. And their father … see how he ruts the ground with his foot in his jealousy. “Ha!” I shout at the wall. How I despised Adam. “Ingrate. Narrow-minded hot-buttocked tree dweller!” I change the picture to an open plain. Things will be sad now and I steel myself. “Now see, see how he turns son against son and I weep there by the yucca, beautiful even though ravaged with the grief of my son’s murder. No one, not even his father, shall take my son again. No one. Adam, you see, had hoped to have me for himself by killing off his sons. Nice man. But I am for all mankind. So I departed. See me leaving? Do you like that gown? The heavens collapsed of course. My Star fell and I wandered desolately. Aah, how long …” My voice fades out. It is terribly dramatic and the children are with me.