The Mothering Coven

by Joanna Ruocco

  “Would you care for some soup?” asks Mr. Henderson.

  X

  Agnes’s research is not going well. Why can’t she focus on the extraterrestrial origins of whale lice, their marvelous voyage, how they came to settle in the ventral pleats and lesions and eyefolds of the old right whale whose wax burns even now in the lantern?

  “Someone needs to bake the birthday cake,” says Agnes. She opens the oven door. She puts her arm inside the oven and waves it around. She wouldn’t call it hot. That would be an exaggeration.

  “It’s pleasant,” says Agnes. “Like a dry spring day in Yorkshire.”

  It reminds Agnes of something.

  “The Hotel Robin o’ the Wood,” says Agnes. But wasn’t it all rain, rain, rain?

  Dorcas is dropping two huge scoops of vanilla ice cream into a tall, frosty glass. The glass fizzes over.

  “Root beer!” exclaims Agnes. “But it’s before dawn!” Dorcas slurps defensively.

  Every morning, the sun comes up later. The days are narrowing. Slivers of light.

  On Axel Heiberg, the three months of darkness have already begun. What would Agnes say about root beer on Axel Heiberg?

  Dorcas imagines Bertrand on the Trans-Siberian railroad. She has reached the end of the line. She climbs out of the sleeper car. She pushes off from Siberia in a skiff.

  “Auf Wiedersehen!” calls Bertrand. Soon she bumps up against the frozen seas. The penguins come out from their igloos to greet her—Dear Bertrand!—and the leopard seals come out of their igloos to eat the penguins, but then the good cheer takes them, and they hold off, waving: Dear Bertrand! Erdbeer Käsekuchen Eis for everyone!

  Why shouldn’t there be penguins in the North Pole?

  “The Great Magnet,” thinks Dorcas. “It pulls us all.”

  Bertrand may be drinking root beer right this very moment, sitting on a stump in the soundless forests of Axel Heiberg. Or it may be that she is not drinking root beer. It may be this:

  The sun will not rise over Axel Heiberg and Bertrand will not rise. Bertrand will lie very still and cold, dark hair silvered with frost, lips ultramarine and her skin the circumpolar colors: cyan blue, cyan green. The condensation from her breath froze all around her in the night, and Bertrand lies entombed in ice on Axel Heiberg, between the three sisters Kidney, with a bottle of root beer on her grave.

  [:]

  Fiona runs into the kitchen. She has just stitched the fringes to the left arm of Mrs. Borage’s white leather jacket. The fringes are thin and green and numerous. It took a great deal of work. Fiona needs to eat a handful of raisins. Raisins are how she maintains her power.

  Fiona is descended from King Solomon. All of his descendants derive their power from raisins.

  She bumps into Dorcas. Is Dorcas in a shamanic trance?

  “The peregrination of flightless birds,” intones Dorcas.

  Fiona stares at Dorcas. Is Dorcas saying what she thinks Dorcas is saying?

  “We should form a motorcycle gang?” whispers Fiona. Dorcas does not answer. She is eating Fiona’s raisins, although Dorcas is descended from Ham.

  [:]

  Agnes pays no attention to the Theta waves in the kitchen. She is remembering the rope ladder leading up the sarsaparilla tree into the Hotel Robin o’ the Wood. At the Hotel Robin o’ the Wood, the guests wore horned helmets. Agnes would like to wear a horned helmet at Mrs. Borage’s party, but her helmet was lost, decades ago, over the Atlantic, or stolen at O’Hare, by baggage handlers.

  Was one of the baggage handlers at O’Hare wearing a horned helmet?

  “Yes,” remembers Agnes. A tall woman with lustrous eyes and a deep, dark gap between her two front teeth. Agnes had mistaken her for the Venus of Willendorf. Looking back, she recognizes the dent in the helmet, and the silver pentagram, the logo of Hotel Robin o’ the Wood.

  The Venus of Willendorf wouldn’t wear a helmet advertising the Hotel Robin o’ the Wood. Not when there is a Hotel Venus of Willendorf.

  “The hospitality industry is not more interesting than paleo-zoology,” says Agnes. “But at least I don’t have a degree in it.”

  [:]

  Dorcas is thinking that she might like to credential as a shaman. Bryce has so many things stuck to the walls and the refrigerators. Dorcas imagines a large certificate with crimped edges above the mantel. Her name embossed in runes.

  The best schools for shamans seem to be concentrated in Roskilde, Denmark.

  “I could take a correspondence course,” thinks Dorcas. Should she complete the requirements and also become a Minister of Culture? Dorcas thinks she would enjoy taking the course called “Drylægens Natmad.” She is fairly certain that translates to “The Veterinarian’s Midnight Snack.”

  Midnight is neither AM nor PM. It is something in-between. Do the veterinarians diagnose the witches? Can they change them back?

  Dorcas decides to go for a walk in the center of town where there are fewer things to think about.

  X

  Mr. Henderson stands in front of the Country Store. Instead of his cobwebbed cookie jar and the four blue mugs and the rack of thick dishes, there is a wicker cornucopia in the window. It is filled with bottleneck gourds. There are fake red maple leaves scattered around and also twiggy artisanal soaps. Mr. Henderson rubs his long jaw. He takes a deep breath. He enters the Country Store. The store manager gives him an envelope of ten-dollar bills. The store manager is happy. The market has revised its opinion of Mr. Henderson’s pottery and so has the store manager.

  “Why don’t you make us a line of clever salt and pepper shakers?” asks the store manager. The sky is the limit with clever salt and pepper shakers!

  “The pepper could be a thundercloud,” says the store manager. “And the salt could be the other kind of cloud. A sunny cloud.”

  [:]

  Now Mr. Henderson has enough money to buy more muesli and soup and a bag of marshmallows for Mrs. Borage. He also buys vanilla pudding.

  “To keep the wolves from the door,” says Mr. Henderson to the young woman at the check-out. It is a joke. The young woman does not smile. She has not seen the sixteen dogs in Mrs. Borage’s garden. Even if she had, though.

  “I’m rusty,” thinks Mr. Henderson.

  Mr. Henderson walks all through the town carrying his groceries. His elation fades away. Walking through town is never uplifting. The town is a vortical center of the Universe. There is a great deal of downward suction. Everyone Mr. Henderson passes has extremely bad posture.

  Mr. Henderson sees Mrs. Borage standing on the little patch of lawn outside the library. He is about to call “Hallo!” but then he senses that something important is about to happen. Mrs. Borage is standing perfectly still, staring at the statue of Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher is very large and stern, even sitting down. She is wearing a high-necked dress and holding an enormous book open on her knee. She is exactly halfway through the book.

  If Mr. Henderson were a sculptor, he would have carved the book the same way, so that Dorothy Canfield Fisher was reading the very middle.

  “It is the decision that requires the least courage,” thinks Mr. Henderson.

  Is Mrs. Borage going to turn a page? She is reaching towards the book.

  Mr. Henderson has to cover his eyes.

  [:]

  In the kitchen, Ozark has just caught her toast on fire. She holds it with metal tongs.

  “Thought is impossible without the illumination metaphor,” concludes Ozark. She shuffles her flashcards. She has gotten the units wrong. What units are best for the episteme? Watts? Lumens?

  [:]

  Mr. Henderson’s teeth are chattering. The inside of his garage is rimed with ice. Ms. Kidney is shaving ice into a metal bucket with a Hirschfänger.

  “Don’t mind me,” says Ms. Kidney. “I’m performing a minor operation. Just call me Dr. McGillicuddys. Or Doc, if we’re familiar. Or, Gilly. Eh, Gilly?”

  Mr. Henderson kicks his wheel. He
holds the lump of clay between his hands.

  “Clever shakers?” thinks Mr. Henderson. He imagines clay figurines, Ann Lee and Joseph Meacham, Ann in a glazed white bonnet, Joseph in a matte black suit. He imagines shaking them over his tomato soup.

  “I am niche-less,” thinks Mr. Henderson. His creaky legs are getting tired. The wheel spins slower and slower. Ann Lee topples. Mr. Henderson has made a little pile of clay into a little pile of clay. He inspects it for some trace of endeavoring. The clay feels warmer than before; there is that. Mr. Henderson puts his cheek against the clay.

  “It’s pleasant,” he thinks.

  When Mr. Henderson wakes up his back feels very stiff. He has a feeling it’s the middle of the night. Mr. Henderson steps out of his garage. There is a full moon above the Security Spray Complex. In the bright moonlight, the bricks look very red and the broken glass in the windowpanes is sparkling.

  Mr. Henderson has thought about using bricks from the crumbling wall of the Security Spray Complex to build a new kiln. Apparently, someone else has had the same idea.

  “Hello,” waves Mr. Henderson.

  “Hello,” waves Bryce. Her wagon is nearly filled with bricks and she keeps waving. Her palm stings fiercely with the residues of security spray. She waves frantically. Mr. Henderson drops his hand. He realizes that he is standing in the shadows. Should he drag his recycling to the sidewalk early this week? He thinks she has just room enough in the wagon for his soup cans.

  [:]

  There are so few things to think about in the center of town that Dorcas has fallen asleep. Luckily, she is still walking back and forth in front of the library. Dorcas jolts awake. Did anyone see her? Was she talking in her sleep? She half remembers a hoarse voice belting out the Dansmarks Radio interval signal. It’s a lovely song, but the notes are entirely out of her range.

  “How embarrassing,” thinks Dorcas. No wonder Hildegard sleeps hidden beneath the stairs with the door locked fast.

  The moon is high in the sky and the street is empty. Dorcas climbs the hill above the elementary school. There are no children on the playground.

  “How do they keep the children inside on a full-moon night?” wonders Dorcas. “Do they drug them?”

  In the moonlight, she notices that someone has painted a bright pink arrow on the side of the white church. The arrow is enormous. Dorcas would not be surprised if there were jættes roaming on a night like tonight.

  Is that a jætte there? Gnawer of the moon? Giant of the gale blasts? No, it’s a woman on stilts rolling a stripe of pink paint across the white courthouse.

  [:]

  Mrs. Borage is playing her fiddle by the river. Her fingers are starting to burn. She is generating so much heat that she has lifted a little off the ground. You wouldn’t notice it. Mrs. Borage snaps the last string on her fiddle. She lets her bow arm drop. She feels vital and defiant. After all, she is hovering above the earth. Should she break her fiddle on her knee? Should she howl? Should she jump nude into the river?

  Not until her birthday. Why wait your whole life to turn one hundred if you can jump nude into the river at ninety-nine?

  Dorcas hears a distant splash. Something is displacing massive amounts of water in the town creek. A hippogriff? A manti-core? Dorcas hopes it has a very thick hide, nothing porous, no mucous membranes, a tight drum of a creature, generally insensitive to pain. The town creek is all security spray, except where it runs over the railroad tracks. There it is also creosote.

  X

  The day after a full moon, we are especially tired. Fiona eats raisin after raisin in the kitchen, but she still looks wilted. Even Hildegard is tired. There are no brain waves coming from the room beneath the stairs. Bryce draws a straight line across the door. She draws another straight line. Somewhere, far in the distance, the lines will reach a vanishing point.

  Has Hildegard disappeared? Bryce slips a pixie stix beneath the door.

  “Crunch time,” says Bryce, loud enough for everyone to hear. After crunches, sit-ups. Toe touches. Cool down neck rolls. Mrs. Borage’s oversplit is almost as deep as Ozark’s. Dorcas bends her knees and puts her hands on her shins.

  “Not every body is meant to front-fold,” says Ozark. Mrs. Borage has assumed the lotus position.

  “We should all have heavier hands and feet and heads, from a mechanical perspective,” says Mrs. Borage. She thinks of the human, how weight concentrates at the proximal parts of the limbs and trunk. She thinks of the pendulum.

  “Elegantly done,” murmurs Mrs. Borage. “Best in show.”

  [:]

  Agnes steps in a puddle on the carpet.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” says a voice.

  “Could it be?” cries Agnes anxiously, looking at the puddle. “Snegurochka?”

  Dorcas looks up. Agnes is standing in the corner of the parlor, talking to her feet. Dorcas looks at her own feet. The Seine is murky today and the dark-haired woman is huddled in a cloak.

  “Could what be?” wonders Dorcas. She isn’t going to ask her feet. Has Agnes lost her mind?

  Ozark comes into the parlor. Agnes is muttering into the corner.

  “A whispering wall!” thinks Ozark. She’s never noticed the room’s acoustic curve. She looks swiftly at the other corner, the charred toast hanging from the hat stand. Is the hat stand whispering to Agnes? It can’t be the cockatoos. They’ve flown away at last. They are outside, roosting in the cairns.

  “Maybe Ganzenland is the cockatoo Valhalla,” thinks Ozark. “Maybe it is in the Atlas of Death.”

  [:]

  In a book, a paleozoology book or a book of witchcraft, she can’t tell which, Agnes finds a recipe for musk otters.

  A few cotton rags, two renal pores, a scoop of bloomy rind from the cheese jug, rainwater, chicken urea, ox blood, a pennyworth each, a dark corner, plenty of dust….

  Cheese jug? We haven’t had a cheese jug in years.

  “There were still milkmen when this thing was written,” says Agnes. “Mrs. Borage was in a dirndl.”

  It would have been a lovely gift: otter gauntlets and overcoat.

  “I can order them,” thinks Agnes. She looks around the kitchen. Everywhere, stacks of magazines. Has the house gotten smaller? Agnes peeks into the dining room. Weren’t there flying buttresses? Spandrels? Wasn’t there an oeil-de-boeuf? Wasn’t there a wing-shaped table? Someone has shorn the tassels from the curtains.

  Bryce is sitting cross-legged by a pile of soup cans. She is pin nailing strips of aluminum to the drywall. She needs to make a decision.

  “Sodom by the Sea?” asks Bryce. “The Ashtabula Horror?”

  “The Ashtabula Horror,” says Agnes.

  “I like Sodom by the Sea,” says Bryce. “It is more of a party theme.”

  Agnes admires the mosaic, the aluminum trusses and pop-sicle slats, but why television dioramas? Why not shoeboxes?

  “At least with shoeboxes, you get shoes,” thinks Agnes.

  [:]

  The action has moved to the kitchen. It must be time for lunch. For Agnes, it is a working lunch. She is researching vermilions, the tiny lions crushed by the thousand to color the crimson velvets of Versailles. Her heart isn’t in it. Vermilions had many hearts. Of course, they have been crushed to extinction.

  “The Sun King,” notes Agnes. “His talons rouges.” She eyes the scuffed heels of Mrs. Borage’s high-heeled boots. Should she paint them crimson? Of course she should. Is Bryce thinking the same thing? Bryce winks at Agnes. She has a metal filing in her eye.

  “Tomorrow,” announces Mrs. Borage. “I am going to be a centurion.” She shakes her head. “I find that nearly impossible to reconcile with my pacific lifestyle. Do you expect any upheaval, dear?”

  Dorcas thinks. Mr. Zimmer did deliver that alarming letter. Where is it now?

  “Bryce glued it inside the oven,” says Fiona. About time! The bare gray walls inside the oven made it seem like…

  “Like we regret life,” says Bryce. She is flattenin
g spoons.

  “I need an intellectual regimen,” thinks Ozark. She puts her fingertips to her temples.

  “My brain feels strange,” says Ozark. What’s the word? She shuffles her flashcards. Empedocles? Bacon? Aqua vitae? Ozark slumps over the kitchen table. She fears there is something broken in her intelligence, or at least, badly sprained.

  “Crossword puzzles,” advises Mrs. Borage. “They increase the mental elasticity.”

  “For example, my corpus callosum,” says Mrs. Borage. “It has assumed the lotus position.” Mrs. Borage is eating Mr. Henderson’s prunes. She holds up a prune.

  “The third eye,” she says to Ozark. She chews it thoughtfully.

  “Would you like one?” she asks. She reaches in the bag.

  “Oh,” says Mrs. Borage. “I’ve eaten all of them.”

  “It’s okay,” says Ozark.

  “Now I have a hundred eyes,” says Mrs. Borage.

  “Like Argus Panoptes,” says Ozark.

  “Like a scallop,” muses Mrs. Borage. She checks the refrigerator. Has Agnes made one of her scrumptious bivalve custards? No. Would it be in the freezer?

  Mrs. Borage unwraps a popsicle.

  “It tastes pink,” says Mrs. Borage. “It is delicious.”

  [:]

  In every nation, crossword puzzles are designed for a different category of ideal players. In England, ideal players are Mountbatten-Windsors. In the United States, they are retired sea captains.

  “What’s the opposite of NNW?” asks Ozark.

  “SSE,” says Fiona.

  “Let me have a turn,” says Mrs. Borage. She studies the rows of empty boxes. They look like see-thru apartment blocks.

  “The tri-cities!” says Mrs. Borage. “Cologne-Trier-Salzburg.”

  [:]

  No nation designs crosswords that target the argot peculiar to paleozoologists. The mountain stronghold of Venusberg designs circlewords for witches. The letters go around and around, in spirals. Agnes wouldn’t get to use “futhark,” perhaps ever, if it weren’t for the circlewords.

  [:]

  “Filthy excretions of sheep, the sweat of their auxiliary concavities, shall they cling about the surface of the tongue…”