Call Me Ishtar

by Rhoda Lerman

  She speaks. “I didn’t invite you. Or your low-class friends. And you look stupid in your long gown. No one’s wearing that length. Rabbi, do something.” There is a shaking and rocking of the wonderfully carved high back chair in which the rabbi is imprisoned.

  “If there is mayonnaise in your chicken livers, it won’t freeze. There will be no bar mitzvah if you continue to stop me. Your liver, your baby orchids, the boiled salmon, the watermelon baskets will all rot.” Beverly’s head disappears. She is a practical woman.

  “Bring me the rabbi.” I rub my hands together. The rabbi’s face is apoplectically red and pastry-puffed as my two musicians bring him to me and stand him, on his weak bandylegs, before me. With a rubber blackboard pointer from the Sunday School Wing I snap the band of the rabbi’s Patek Philippe watch.

  “Witch,” he hisses. I have heard that before.

  One arm behind me, I lunge and shout and lift the hem of his robes. He wears saddle shoes and maroon socks woven with gray clocks. A few children giggle. For their further amusement, I place the rubber tip between the rabbi’s eyes and cross them. They laugh. I reward them with a smile. “He leads you to God in golf shoes.”

  “Crazy woman!” he parries thunderously. “You desecrate my pulpit.”

  “See, children. Your rabbi wears a dress.” I cross my arms over my chest as saltiers. My voice raises in thunder better than the rabbi’s. “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak, and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. I am Ishtar, the Lady of the Book of the Hidden Temple. I am the Lilith of your folk tales and the Queen of Sheba. I am the Ashtoreth that your Solomon, as they say, went up after. Wow. I’m wisdom. I’m the bride in his song. I am the Shekina, the succubus. You name it. I’m it.”

  “You weren’t invited, Ishtar. I didn’t invite you.” Beverly is weeping. I am sorry.

  “Your grandmothers braided their bread for me, the Weaver of Fate. They baked a tiny cake for the Sabbath bride each time. Remember?”

  Someone begins to clap. I find a wizened face in a powder blue suit. “My secrets have been churned into the sea and ignited in the rocks but I live still. You, grandfather,” I call to a distant liverspotted face. He pauses in his ritual prayer. “Grandfather, do you know why you daven in such a way, rocking on your feet?”

  “Always.” He answers and continues to rock.

  “Your grandfather copulates until his spirit passes into mine. Your ancestors baked cakes in my form to send their children into the arms of my ecstasy. We gave you mushrooms and manna, honey and mead. You have Sara Lee. What does she do for you? Any more than the rabbi? She saves you a little time. I offer you eternity.”

  I drink from the water glass on the pulpit and pour the remainder over the altar.

  “I raise the cake and I raise the penis. To heaven. And this man …” I flourish at the rabbi. “He raises your pledges and offers you flat matzohs. Now figure out why that bread was unleavened. It was, when I was denied for a piece of real estate, a sin to raise the bread. Right?”

  No one agrees. They only stare. I lift the rabbi to a coat-hook and he hangs trophied by his cuffs. His twenty-five-year diamond cuff links glitter under the eternal light His little legs dangle among the rich velvet pelts hanging from the walls around him. He wriggles, enmeshing himself further. The ushers attempt a storm. They fail. Mack plays “Go Down, Moses,” from above. Nino shakes the sistrum. The rabbi spits and misses me. I point to him and I begin to teach slowly. “His dress is a woman’s, in honor of the woman he once served. His hat is that of a baker for it was his role, as priest, to attend the baking of ceremonial bread.” I run the pointer, head to toe, prodding ungently. “His body is sheathed also as a penis, his hat, the glans … shit, Rabbi, stop wriggling. You become blue. His hat the glans, purple, dyed by the menses of my virgins and his body was anointed with the semen of my devotees and he raised himself upward into the Holy of Holies and entered me, penetrating the vulva of heaven. And no one got in with socks on.” I squirt Three-in-One on his forehead and robes. “And his tephillin? Once a shoe, the box of my secret. The sperm was within it, wrapped in parchment with my many names, wrapped in the sinews of the cow. What else then should be a sign between your eyes if not your manhood and its dedication to me? The pelt on the altar: from the Ram, my husband. The fringes on your shawl, from the goat hairs tufted thirteen times on the sacred trees where men dedicated their semen. Right, I gave at the grove. The eternal light is my Star.”

  “Knock it off, Ishtar, that’s enough,” Mack calls from above.

  “You have denied woman. You have denied time and you live half-lives in terror of death, joyless and lost. Today, here, someone prayed for a gross order of maple rockers.”

  There is a distant gasp.

  “Filth. Witch!” The rabbi has loosened himself slightly.

  A hand is raised from the bar mitzvah class. “Does that mean that the, uh, dresses and wigs that the English judges wear … is that from you too?”

  “Yes, the law was in my house.”

  “Oh.” He is satisfied with the answer. I am pleased with the question. I would like to remain at the pulpit and teach them. I can not. David is restless. Mack is awry and Beverly will not last much longer and she is needed as a witness.

  “Okay, my people. We will reopen Paradise. No Moses in between. No astronaut swinging golf clubs, flaming or un, to keep us out. Come. Raise yourselves.” The congregation stands at the lifting of my hands. The grandfather, finished praying, waggles his happy fingers at me. “Come. Bring me your torn souls and your broken hearts. Join your mother and join heaven again to earth.” I think I am crying. I am very good at dramatic scenes. I pour the remaining Three-in-One oil on the altar and light it with a wooden match. The congregation howls with terror. The fire, naturally, does not consume. “Come,” I call over their shouts. “Come sit in my vulva and I will heal thee. Come, David. You will be a man.”

  Isn’t that well spoken? They are not convinced. But they are impressed. I sit on the pavilion carpet below the smoking altar and speak softly to David. I hold him steadily by his thin shoulders with his back to the congregation. His mother has lost all her rhythm. She flaps and contorts beneath Sonny, who seems to be enjoying himself. An elderly aunt from Cleveland gasps for air. I have forgotten much of the original ceremony, but I never lose track of the ultimate. “This is my body, David. A temple for your worship. These are my thighs, David, a Torah for your knowledge. This is my vulva, David, as is the word between the thighs of the Torah: the big secret. You shall know me.”

  He trembles. I pause as the aunt collapses along the length of a pew and others slide down to accommodate her prostrate bulk. The grandfather waves again in recognition.

  You recall the ceremony. “Blessed be thy feet that have brought thee in these holy ways. Blessed be thy knees, which I kiss that shall kneel at the holy altar. Blessed be thy organ of generation, which I kiss without which we would not be. Blessed be thy breast, which I kiss formed in beauty and strength. Blessed be thy lips, which I kiss that shall utter the sacred names.”

  Droplets, like dew, of perspiration are on David’s forehead. His face is pale and he bites his lower lip.

  “My thighs are friendly,” I assure him. Among other sensory areas, his eyes are engorged with fear. I put his mouth to my breast to quiet him and gently I open his golden Farah slacks, keeping his back to his parents so they can not witness his sweet erection and great discomfiture. The father, I notice, although I am also busy, lunges forward to stop us but he is rather excessively tripped with a crozier. Other croziers jam into the tasseled shoes of the band of ushers. “Disgrace! Abomination!”

  “Enjoy,” the grandfather adds.

  “Molesting a minor,” someone with a legal background protests.

  I continue, swinging my legs out from the pavilion around David’s lithe body and wrapping my hands about his back, much like a honey bear climbing a delicate succulent tree, carefully and hungrily. The grandfather has assumed Dav
id’s new rhythm. He is with me too. I watch him, holding David as I watch. They sway in long forgotten ecstasies, eyes closed, sputum running lazily from a corner of their mouths. The bar mitzvah class beneath the stained glass memorial windows giggles and sighs alternately. All else is quiet now. Except for the Cleveland aunt and the strangling rabbi, no one in the entire congregation misses a shiver of David’s glen plaid jacket and his golden Farah slacks as he looks into the eyes of heaven and, as is a boy’s way, dammit, completes his momentary, sudden, initiation. My thighs, although friendly, are abysmally lonely. I touch the damp edge of his prayer shawl on my heel. I drop my skirts elegantly and lead him to the altar now, where the Torah lies ready for him. He places my shoe on the pulpit. Shocked into a profound silence and the inherent respect for the open ark, box, coffin, shoe, holy of holies et cetera, you understand now the relations of these containers, the people are still.

  If you don’t know the relationships, be assured that electricity is only energy looking for a place to go and I am the place to go and am so represented by the above-mentioned.

  “Whore!” They wave their fists at me. They shout to gain courage. My heroes did this.

  “Witch!” On ramparts and hills before battle, begging for my strength and power.

  Beverly’s eyes are schistoid, pure quartz. Her pearly makeup is mica flaked now, dry with rage. The spines of her feathers are cracked. I am sorry for her but she is useless, having sold herself.

  “Go now, David, as a man, for you are truly, in the sight of all, a man. Go now and read the Torah to your people. Someday, for your sons, there will be new laws.”

  “I love you,” David tells me quietly. “But you ruined my bar mitzvah.”

  I laugh at him so that others may not hear. “You are too too practical, David. May you go down in history.”

  David chants now, opening the deep secrets between the lovely scrolls. His cheeks are flushed and his tongue nervous. He shifts back and forth across his forehead with his free hand and sings over ropy saliva. At his pauses, I curse the dying rabbi. I move to the background ready to slip out unseen. I leave, parting curtains, I whisper further curses to the rabbi.

  I am stopped. A boy catches my arm. “Come to my bar mitzvah.”

  “No, darling,” I whisper, terribly anxious to leave before the spell is uncast. “Ask your mother. Who else but a mother?” He smiles crookedly at me. I present him with my other shoe and walk barefoot out the side door after burning my name just once in the blue and gilt dome of the Temple. When the congregation is in the Social Hall eating boiled salmon and picking fruits from watermelon baskets and all the children are dancing in the parking lot, I burn with my furca the doors of the Temple, sealing them and the rabbi forever. The people have already forgotten him. Actually they haven’t and there will be a lot of trouble a little later. By itself, truthfully, the electric organ in the organ loft explodes and its pipes, as they burst, plotzing in pleasure, howl maniacally and go sailing, like golden spaceships, through the memorial windows, stained. I see through the broken windows that the doors to the ark are split asunder. That’s really a nice touch, a little overdone, though. I go quickly down the sidewalk. I hum “Go Down, Moses.” It was a good day. Isn’t there anybody around, I ask discreetly, who would like to make me a woman? Above me, a telephone pole crackles, but that is ridiculous. Let my people go, but hold on to me.

  I circle around the parking lot and watch for a while from the neighbor’s garage. Claire sits in a booth in the parking lot healing a line of old members from the congregation and handing out mimeographed secrets to the young. There are occasional silly shouts of “I’m healed.” “It’s a miracle.” She refuses payment from the grandfather but a musician, watching also, puts out his hand. It is Nino. I do not like him. I am beginning to like Claire. Kind of. She gives everyone slips of cardboard printed with their fortunes. Still, she smiles lasciviously at Mack. I do not like her. Often.

  The music is good and I dance, twisting and turning, by myself, behind the garage. I would like someone to dance with.

  19

  Many moons ago when animals and people married each other, Bear fell in love with a chief’s daughter. He pined for her. His heart cried for her. Woodpecker, who wanted to have Bear’s teeth on a necklace, saw Bear pining.

  “Bear, why do you cry?”

  “I love a beautiful maiden. I don’t know how to tell her.”

  Woodpecker stood on one foot on Bear’s shoulder. “Give her your tail. She will rub it softly on her cheek or scratch her back with it. She will soon want to rub her cheek on all of you and scratch her back on all of you. And she will love you.”

  Bear tied his tail to a tree, ran around and around the tree and then ran away from the tree. He cried. The tail wore off. He wrapped it up in fresh tobacco leaves and brought it that night to the tent of the Indian maiden. The Indian maiden was standing under the moon. Bear danced toward her and dropped the tail at her moccasins. She screamed. Her father ran out of the tepee with a shotgun and shot Bear in the shoulder. He screamed. Bear ran back to the forest to Woodpecker.

  Woodpecker said, “Oh, Bear. I have made a grave error. She screamed because you frightened her. Did you smile at her?”

  “Yes,” Bear answered, his head hanging down.

  “That’s why. That’s why.” Woodpecker jumped from shoulder to shoulder on Bear’s great back. “Those teeth! You frightened her with those teeth. Next time go without your teeth. Smile at her and she will say, ‘I love Bear.’”

  “Take out my teeth?”

  “It will hurt, but think how she will love you.”

  Bear tied vines to his teeth and Woodpecker bound the vines to sky high branches in his tree. Woodpecker shouted, “Run, Bear, run!”

  Bear ran until he had no teeth left in his head. Woodpecker and his wife and his woodpecker children gathered up the teeth.

  “Now, Bear, go and dance and smile for the beautiful maiden you love.”

  Bear, his gums bleeding, ran through the forest to the camp. There he hid in the bushes until the moon rose and the maiden came out of her tepee. Bear smiled, although it hurt, and danced into the enclosure. The maiden screamed. Her father ran out with his shotgun and shot Bear. Bear did not scream. He died. But he heard the maiden say before he died, “‘I love Bear. We will eat Bear tomorrow.’”

  Woodpecker and his wife and children strung the teeth on a beautiful necklace for Woodpecker and from that day on Woodpecker was very wise and had many many children.

  The moral of the story is: Save your teeth because if everyone in the world has a woodpecker, which I am beginning to suspect, you’re going to be glad you kept them.

  My son is learning to waterpick from Robert. It is weakening his gums. I do not like this. I must already replace two permanent teeth and I am not quite certain, with the air polluted and the force field out of balance, if I shall be able to do that particular material reproduction. The waterpick also soaks his clothes.

  Robert comes in for breakfast. I play with the cats while he prepares his eggs. I am sorry for him. I love him. Truly. I would like to love him. He is miserable and beaten. He eats his eggs without pleasure. “I can’t replace them.” He speaks to no one. “I can’t replace them.”

  I offer him a steaming platter of blueberry muffins. Thoughtlessly he accepts. He opens one. The butter melts over the parchment within. He licks it off. The parchment reads Cupcakes. He says nothing. He eats the muffin.

  I wait.

  “I’m insured. The band’s making plenty of money.”

  My son enters the kitchen. There is blood on his Snoopy sweatshirt. The waterpick is dangerous. Robert reads to both of us from the dentist’s publication. He has warned us to care for our teeth. “What I will attempt first is to remove the tartar or calculus within the pocket that has accumulated on the root surface of the tooth. This is called subgingival scaling or therapeutic root planing. As we continue with these weekly sittings of root planing, we will also s
crape the lining, the infected lining of the pocket. This is called intra-crevicular curettage.” Robert sits at the table, considering the damage to his machines, and cleans his teeth with a round-edged toothpick. My son stares at his movements.

  Robert stares at me. I begin to rub my gums obediently.

  I destroyed twice last night. Ordinarily, in order to create, I destroy. Of course, in order to destroy, I create. Cyclical. This night I destroyed not only to create but to satisfy a certain vindictiveness. My first act was minor and resulted directly from boredom, sexual frustration and feminine caprice. Robert and I, assuming serious faces and moderate clothing, attended an Independent Parent-Teacher’s Organization meeting. It was a long and dull meeting, made duller by the fatuous suggestions offered to raise money for the purchase of a combination washer-dryer needed by the physical education teachers. I deride the title. The children learn nothing of importance physically from them. The parents of this Country Squire crowd suggested bake sales, box lunches (I giggled at this point and Robert pinched my arm), an after school movie, a roller skating party or newspaper collections. I had sat patiently through the foolishness, my arm smarting, tying braids in the prayer shawl Robert had agreed to wear for my amusement under his Harris Tweeds. I, of course, as a baking mother have earned a modicum of success and recognition at this school. I am known. I have been recognized for my Santa Claus cakes in molds which I decorate with colored sugars and icings. They have, on occasion, unfrosted, resembled the vast serene face of an Olmec god. I fill in his ancient cracks with icing and repair him with toothpicks and carry him to the children on Holy Days. None of the children want to tear the face apart, but then, as the cake sits, beckoning and appetizing on the teacher’s precisely laid out desk, they, atavistic, descend upon the god cake and I remember. I deliver gingerbread men that often bear close resemblance to the Kens and Barbies of other households. I deliver these forms as often as I can find an occasion. Another mother, a good Catholic, supplies the Hi-C and the napkins. I was actually offered the position of Grade Mother as a reflection of their gratitude for my fine baking, but graciously reneged, not wishing to limit my effectiveness. In apology, I sent in shirt boxes stacked with raisin-nippled double-breasted hot cross buns without the cross. At any rate, I am respected here and I raise my hand. Others are speaking heatedly.