Lilac Mines

by Cheryl Klein

  “No offense, Petra, but Meg needs more than a ghost to help her out. That girl’s got enough ghosts,” Jody says, climbing into her Edsel.

  “But the world is a necklace,” Petra explains.

  “You are high, woman,” Imogen says.

  Petra wakes up to the mine’s rock ceiling. For a minute she thinks that it’s the floor of the mine, and that she is Lilac, dead and floating above it. Then she sits up and looks around. Emily and Essie are a knot of sleep beside her. Linda and Gapi and Marilyn are wrapped in the army blanket. Gapi is snoring. Jody and Imogen are in Jody’s Edsel. When Petra stands up she can see Sylvie and Jean curled in the back seat.

  The morning is thin and golden. Petra stretches to release a kink in her shoulder blade. There’s gravel stuck to her cheek. Her paisley blouse is twisted around her torso. Then she remembers: Lilac. She definitely saw her. Except she also smoked more and stronger pot than ever before. Shit.

  “Petra?” Marilyn sits up, pulling a strand of wooden beads from her tangled hair. “What’s that smell?” She wiggles her small bunny nose.

  Petra’s face feels frozen, but she sniffs. “Bacon, I think. What….?”

  She and Marilyn walk around the corner, where the mountain retreats like regret after the jut of the mine. There is Meg, prim and fresh in a wool wraparound skirt, white blouse, and meticulously applied red lipstick, kneeling beside a camping stove. She flips strips of bacon and smiles as if this is June Cleaver’s kitchen, not the side of a mountain. Her eyes are bloodshot, but a thick line of black eyeliner provides sufficient distraction.

  “You came back!” Petra exclaims. She can’t wait to tell Meg about Lilac, how she’s watching over all of them.

  “Sunny broke up with me,” Meg says matter-of-factly. “Jody followed us and I caught a ride back with her.” She chases a stubborn strip of bacon around the grill with her metal spatula.

  “Oh, Meg, wow. Like, who was Sunny anyway to tell you how you should feel about Al?”

  “She said I was too hung up, but she was just itching to break things off. I’ve known for weeks.” She shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m over it. There are other butches in the sea.”

  “You know what your problem is, Meggie? You keep waiting for a butch to save you.” Petra looks at Marilyn, who nods in agreement. “No man will save you, and no one woman will save you. Especially not one who barely knows she’s a woman. But women—plural—we could. Come live with us at the church, you’d see.” She’s asked before, but maybe now Meg will understand.

  Meg stands up, puts her spatula hand on her hip. “I really don’t need you to tell me what my problem is. You don’t have the faintest idea what my problem is.”

  Marilyn looks uncomfortable. She’s a theorist, not a front-lines woman. Petra counters, “If anyone knows, it’s me.” History is her trump card. She’s seen Meg beg and brownnose and turn cartwheels in the snow, all the things she’d never do now.

  The women are clustering, lured by bacon and conflict. Jean grabs a strip straight from the grill. It doesn’t seem to burn her fingers. “Why don’t you back off, Petra?” she challenges.

  “Meg doesn’t need her ex-girlfriend to defend her,” Petra says, arms are crossed in front of her, hardly the welcoming embrace of feminism. She takes a deep breath and tries again. “Meg, come on, just stay with us at the church for a little while. It will be fun, like a slumber party.” She turns to face the women who’ve gathered behind her. “You all should. Seriously—you said rent was getting high in Berkeley, right? All of you,” she looks at Essie and Emily, who are holding hands and looking at each other, “all of you should go home, pack, and come right back. Think about it: no men; no women who, uh, support patriarchy; and no rent. The church is big. You could just pull up a mattress. And then we’ll have enough people to really enact change. We’d be a real women’s colony.”

  “Are you serious?” squeals Linda. Gapi looks nervous. “Wow, I don’t know what to say. I mean, God, yes, of course.”

  Essie (or Emily) doesn’t take her eyes off her girlfriend. “We could do that, right, babe? I know you’re more of a homebody than I am, but remember what you said after the last rally, after we made all those signs and then Mark Lannan took credit for everything? This could be our big chance.”

  Emily (or Essie) nods. “Let’s not think about it. Let’s just follow our intuition, babe.”

  Petra lunges at all three with open arms, and she can feel their muscles relax into her hug, the way people always do when she touches them. She loves their squirming girl-energy. She laughs into the tangle of arms and breasts and beads and hair. Their voices ring through the mountains like church bells. The rest of the women gather around the camping stove. Jody rubs her eyes and tries unsuccessfully to pull the wrinkles from her blue work shirt.

  Meg points the spatula. “Petra, last I checked, it wasn’t your church to give away.”

  “It’s not anyone’s,” Petra replies. “It’s like the American Indians—they knew no one could own the land.”

  Jean steps in, her eyes the color of a brewing storm. “But you’ve lived there less than four months, and we’ve been there for years. I’m really tired of you and your hippie friends drinking my beer and telling my girl she’s ’oppressed’ and deciding that we have to rotate chores even though you don’t even know where to find the dump when it’s your turn to take the garbage there.”

  Meg glares at Petra from beneath her false eyelashes. “I like keeping to myself. It’s nice, you should try it some time.”

  “Maybe we should let Jody and Imogen decide,” Sylvie whispers. “They’ve lived there the longest.”

  Jody smacks her own cheeks to wake up. “Uh. Well. It would be pretty crowded with ten people.”

  “Jo, we could do it,” Imogen urges. “There’s plenty of floor space and we could all chip in for expenses. With more people we could replace that broken window.”

  “I don’t know,” says Jody.

  “Come on,” Petra says, looking at Imogen. Her waxed hairdo has survived the night, although it seems to have shifted a few inches to the right.

  “Jesus, Jody…” Jean looks at her fellow butch.

  “We’ve always taken in anyone who needs help,” Imogen says. “I don’t see why Petra’s friends would be different.”

  “My girl has a point,” Jody says, looking at Jean.

  “Maybe there’s some kind of compromise…” Imogen offers.

  But Petra doesn’t want to compromise. She doesn’t want to be part of a halfhearted movement, a halfway-there generation. Apparently Jean doesn’t want to compromise either. She grabs Sylvie’s wrist. “Fine. I’ll make it easy. Sylvie and I are out of there. We’re too old to be living like freaks in a communist commune anyway.”

  “That’s redundant: ’communist commune,’ ” says Marilyn, blinking from behind her glasses.

  “That,” says Jean, “is exactly why we’re moving out. We don’t need correcting, you little co-ed bitch.” She pulls Sylvie toward the cluster of cars. Meg follows them with long strides, muscular calves flashing beneath her skirt. Soon she passes Jean and Sylvie.

  “But Sylvie, remember Lilac and love?” Petra calls.

  Jody runs after them.

  “Don’t run after them, Jo,” Imogen calls. “If they’re gonna be like that…”

  Jody looks over her shoulder. “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  This is how it has to be, Petra realizes. The old retreating and becoming whatever it will become. New bright food setting the table. There’s no place for Jean or even an enlightened Sylvie in Petra’s perfect world. Maybe not even for Meg. This makes her sad, but it feels non-negotiable.

  Lilac, what happened? she asks, looking up at the clear early November sky. When she had a boyfriend, doing drugs with him made sex better, more significant. But she doesn’t like that she cannot extract beaming, sacrificed Lilac from marijuana loopiness and the mine-deep division of her friends.

  A REGULAR FESTIVAL<
br />
  Imogen: Lilac Mines, 1971

  They have a week to make the world, and when Imogen looks at Petra, she thinks they just might do it. Petra is standing on a wobbly ladder, stringing Christmas tree lights around the rafters of the church.

  “But it’s our house,” Jody keeps saying. “If this festival is going to be big, I don’t want everyone traipsing through with their muddy feet.”

  “The personal is political,” Petra keeps saying.

  This will be the first (First Annual, Petra says in capital letters) Lilac Mines Festival, organized by the Lilac Womyn’s Colony. There is a carved wooden sign over the church identifying the latter, and a spray-painted bed sheet announcing the former. Imogen was worried that the Colony sign might attract unwanted attention, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. When they were just squatters, they periodically had to shoo away other would-be squatters—hitchhikers and campers. Now that they are a real place with a name, people grant them space. Whether it’s out of respect or scorn, Imogen can’t tell. Her boss, Dr. Tracy, said, So you’re living in that Women’s Club? Imogen nodded nervously. She’d worked for him for years, and he’d never asked anything personal, other than what her favorite sexual position was. Well, he snorted, I guess that explains why you’re such a tight little wench.

  Petra owns the church. She had enough money to make the down payment, and her father helped her with the paperwork. There was a heated discussion about whether the women wanted to perpetuate such a patriarchal capitalist system as the buying and selling of property, about whether Petra would assume more than her fair share of power as a result. But the truth is that they all sleep easier knowing that the sheriff can’t kick them out, and Petra sort of runs things anyway, although Imogen and Jody, 32 and 33 respectively, are regarded as wise old matriarchs.

  “Jody, switch on that light,” Petra instructs. It’s a blue-pink April afternoon, the air hesitantly warm. The tiny bulbs make soft circles of light—red and yellow and green—on Petra’s white dress. Her wavy blonde hair is pulled into a low ponytail, and her round cheeks are pink as always. She has a Heidi-like innocence that fascinates Imogen, as if she were raised in a field of flowers and kissed each winter by soft, clean snow.

  “Oh, you know what we need?” Petra says, climbing down from the ladder. She grips Imogen’s shoulder for support. “Paper lanterns! I was reading one of those horrible, oppressive ladies’ magazines the other day, and in between all the articles about making nice dinners, there was a story about how to throw an oriental tea party. And there were the most beautiful Chinese lanterns. Or Japanese, maybe. Wouldn’t they be gorgeous in here?”

  “Japanese,” says Imogen. “My neighbors had one when I was a kid. But where would we get them?”

  “What’s so terrible about making a nice dinner?” Jody wants to know. She coils the remaining lights and wrestles them back into their box.

  “What’s not terrible about it?” Petra laughs. “I don’t want to do it, do you?”

  “Well, I guess not, but… ”

  Lately, Jody has acquired a subtle awkwardness. Imogen can’t quite place it. It’s as if Jody just woke up and noticed—really noticed—her own big body, which used to move like a tree in the wind, solid and slow and tall. Now she’s skittish, easily offended. Imogen will come to recognize this certain brand of fear on the faces of men and white people when they see that gender and race are not facts after all. But the first place she sees it is behind Jody’s freckles; she seems confused and vaguely betrayed.

  On their way to May Company, where Petra is sure they’ll find paper lanterns, they pick up Meg, who is recovering from her second breakup with Kay. All of her recent butches have been deep-voiced, fond of all things motorized, and in unmitigated awe of Meg. It’s hard for Imogen to understand devastation over such indistinguishable women. But Meg’s face makes her believe. The lines of disappointment thread across her forehead, deepening with each new, predictable blow. Each time Jody whispers to Imogen, We’ve got to make sure she doesn’t stay cooped up in her house. Not that she would, but for the sake of the family, Imogen makes sure. Meg, their unruly teenage daughter.

  May Company has table lamps with fat bottoms and brocade shades. Tall brass floor lamps. Faux Tiffany lamps that make an unsatisfying thump when Imogen raps on their plastic shades. But no Oriental paper lanterns. Meg does seem cheered by the hunt. She models an olive-green velvet shade. “Shall I wear this to the festival? I think the fringe will keep the sun out of my eyes nicely.”

  Petra giggles and grabs a wicker shade for her own head. “How about this one?”

  Meg poo-poos it with a flick of her hand. “Wicker was last season.” She’s kidding, but there’s a flicker of genuine hurt on Petra’s face. It’s the look Imogen’s little sister used to get when Imogen’s dolls were mean to Lynette’s. Imogen saves this moment, puts it in her pocket for all the times Petra is bossy and over-confident.

  She spots a clerk folding tablecloths on her knees. “Excuse me. I’m looking for this certain kind of lamp. It sort of looks like a white paper globe?”

  “A lamp made out of paper?” The clerk can’t be older than 17. She’s wearing a short plaid dress over jeans, and her straight black hair is in two long pigtails, like Marcia Brady in negative.

  “It’s Japanese.”

  “Sounds neat.” The clerk nods, keeping the beat to the gum she is chewing. “But we don’t have anything like that here. Lilac Mines isn’t very exotic, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Imogen can hear Meg and Petra laughing and talking in the lampshade aisle. They fight all the time, but Petra worships Meg too much to stay away, and grudges require an even keel Meg isn’t capable of.

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Imogen says. “Do you know where we could find them?”

  “Nuh-uh. I mean, like, San Francisco maybe.”

  “Well, thanks anyway. Hey, my friends and I are putting together, like, a big party. If I give you a poster, can you put it up in the store?” Imogen opens her big canvas bag and unrolls one of the posters. They used the letterpress in the old abandoned newspaper office, which is easy to break into if you slip through the door that connects it to the post office. Essie, who was an art major, made a linoleum block of a woman wrapped in vines. She said it was a goddess, but Imogen thought it looked like Eve. The vines curl above her head and spell out “1st Annual Lilac Mines Festival.” The last part of “Festival” is slightly crowded.

  “Neat,” says the clerk, looking at Eve in her stylized fig leaf. “Is it, um, a nudist festival or something?” Imogen can tell from the girl’s face that she half wants it to be.

  “No, but there’s gonna be poetry and music and crafts, things like that.”

  “Oh.” She grabs a roll of tape from behind the counter and presses the poster to the window, so that it faces Calla Boulevard.

  “Hey, you can’t do that,” thunders a man’s voice. Imogen and the clerk whip around to see a man with very little neck and a badge that says Manager. “I don’t care whose puppy is lost, you can’t put anything in the window without clearing it with corporate.”

  The clerk gathers herself. She opens her mouth and then closes it. Imogen watches her wrestle with a Marcia Brady sort of decision: be good or be groovy. “Come on, Mr. Jones,” the girl says. “It’s just a regular festival. There’s going to be music and, um, poetry—”

  But suddenly the manager’s attention is diverted. “What in tarnation? Hey! You!” He turns to the aisle behind them, where Meg is doing a Charlie Chaplin walk with a shade-less floor lamp as her cane. Petra sits cross-legged on the floor, cracking up, her laughter more dramatic than Meg’s halfhearted impression. Can’t take these kids anywhere, Imogen thinks.

  “Sorry, sir.” Petra purses her lips and blinks her denim-blue eyes at Mr. Jones.

  But Meg looks genuinely annoyed at the interruption. “Hey, we’re just shopping for a lamp.”

  “Right.” Mr. Jones crosses his arms over his big be
lly.

  “We can use our new lamp however we want,” Meg protests, ready to go to battle for this bit of theater.

  “You’re telling me you’re going to buy that? You hippies never made an honest dollar in your life.”

  As if they all share one life. As if Meg, in her knee-length polyester skirt and patent leather pumps, is a hippie. The straight folk of Lilac Mines don’t know the difference between hippies, lesbians, and lesbian feminists. Imogen can’t blame them, she’s still learning the nuances herself. Sometimes their ignorance works in the Colony’s favor: they’re seen as wild girls-who-will-never-find-a-man if they keep this up. Imogen studies Mr. Jones in his short-sleeved shirt and crooked tie. Are they are both more and less dangerous than he thinks?

  Meg glares at Mr. Jones. She sees a fire that no one else sees, and she’s ready to walk into it headfirst. “You want fucking honest?” she demands. She grabs Petra by the lacy collar of her dress and pulls the bewildered girl toward her. She plants a long, hard kiss on Petra’s lips.

  Imogen is as paralyzed as the clerk and the manager. They are like a photo from the future. Something is horribly wrong yet makes perfect sense. Two girls in dresses. Two shades of long hair mingling on close-pressed shoulders. A flash of something like envy pulses through Imogen’s body. Petra moves her arms like she’s trying to find the beat of a bizarre new song. Imogen wants to hear it, too. She opens her mouth. To sing. To kiss. What comes out is, “Meg. Stop it!”

  “I’m going to call the police right now,” growls Mr. Jones. “I’ve had enough of you hippies thinking you own this town.”

  The kiss breaks, and Petra, her face flushed, begins furiously pushing her hair behind her ears, which is what she does when she’s trying to make sense of something quickly. Meg just stands there defiantly, high-heeled feet wide apart on the durable carpet. Imogen knows she’s still the voice of reason here, and she hates it. “C’mon, Meg, we gotta go.”

  “We don’t have to go anywhere.” Meg looks at Mr. Jones with dead brown eyes. “Call the cops, I don’t care.”