Hunters and Gatherers

by Francine Prose

  And now, it seemed, Martha had progressed from junior high dances to high school parties. She recalled marijuana smoke wafting up from finished basements and the chill of dread she felt going down those carpeted steps. She smoked dope from water pipes along with everyone else, but never got high enough to laugh at the puzzling jokes or to marvel at the farfetched connections everyone thought so amazing.

  The sun was setting rapidly. Martha imagined Gretta’s parents waiting for her for dinner, keeping warm a comforting pot of veal paprikás and dumplings.

  Suddenly Martha shivered. Oh dear God, it was autumn. Why did autumn evenings always make her think that the rest of the world was cozy and happy at home or dressing to go to parties to which she wasn’t invited?

  Four robed women set a card table in front of Isis and, with the feline grace of stagehands, covered it with a red cloth and an array of objects: a shell, a branch, an animal skull, fruit, feathers, candles, statuettes, a blue glass vase stuffed with dried flowers. Bowing her head, Isis joined her hands so her fingertips pointed down. Then she stepped in front of the table, knelt, and scooped up some sand.

  “I call upon the Goddess of the west, the Goddess of the earth,” she chanted.

  In unison the women repeated, “I call upon the Goddess of the west, the Goddess of the earth.” Isis tossed the sand into the air, and the women said, “Blessed be.”

  Isis said, “I salute the Goddess of the east, the Goddess of the water,” and waded into the frothy edge of the waves, knelt, and flung up some foam.

  “The ocean’s freezing,” Martha whispered, proud to know one thing Hegwitha didn’t. “Plus there’s a killer undertow. I’m a pretty strong swimmer, and I lasted about five minutes.”

  But the cold and the undertow were only part of why Martha had got out of the water so quickly. She’d had a depressing fantasy about accidentally drowning and everyone, including Gretta, assuming she’d killed herself.

  Martha said, “Naturally, I was an idiot for thinking I’d found my own private beach, for not knowing that everybody was swimming elsewhere for a reason—”

  Hegwitha said, “I love this ceremony, don’t you? If men had invented it, the ritual would probably involve dismembering tiny babies and tossing them into the ocean.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…” said Martha. “I mean…” The awkwardness that made Hegwitha seem supercilious and censorious, together with her great eagerness to be informative and helpful, so intimidated Martha that she could hardly speak.

  “Get real,” said Hegwitha. “You know you wouldn’t have just wandered into a group this size of men.”

  Isis was waving an eagle feather, saluting the Goddess of air. Finally she raised a fetish that looked like a bandaged drumstick and turned out to be a torch she ignited with a silver lighter. The torch flared up with a startling whoosh. Isis turned to face the north and invoke the Goddess of fire.

  Now Isis motioned to the white-robed women, who again picked up the scarecrow dolls and waded into the ocean, along with four more women, each of whom carried in her arms a light balsa-wood canoe. They set down the boats at the edge of the sea and laid the scarecrows in their hulls. The women knelt in unison and gave the boats a push. Isis, still bearing aloft her torch, followed the boats into the ocean.

  Soon the soaking hem of her robe dragged against her legs, which, along with the undertow and the resistance of the water, made Isis falter. The crowd barely breathed as she paused, rocking gently with the waves, then regained her balance and trudged farther out.

  The balsa boats and their scarecrow passengers had floated beyond her, but Isis pursued them doggedly, plowing through the water, while the breeze played mischievous games with the torch and her hair. There was a flurry among the boat-and-scarecrow bearers, clearly asking themselves and each other if they should go help Isis. But, as if she’d sensed this, Isis turned toward shore, her face a stony gargoyle of rage and concentration. She grasped the torch in both hands. No one took a step.

  Her hesitation had given the boats even more of a lead, and once more Isis charged after them into the mounting waves, which by now were waist-high and strong enough to knock her backward. Martha was struck by the zeal with which Isis pursued the boats: courageously, unflinchingly, unworried by how she must look.

  Then one of the women cried, “Blessed be,” and a murmur went up, “Blessed be,” because the waves had died down, and the boats bobbed in place, as if waiting for Isis. With an eerie gull-like shriek, Isis cut through the water, reached out and grabbed the boats, and set the scarecrows aflame with her torch.

  As the effigies and then the boats caught fire, a cry went up from the onlookers, the shrill warbling with which Arab women send their men into battle. Perhaps the difficulty of making this noise was what distracted the women and made them slow to realize that the waves had started up again and were tossing the boats in toward Isis, who was dodging and leaping backward to stay clear of the fiery ships.

  Once more Isis shrieked, more genuinely than ceremonially. The women gasped as they watched her sink beneath the water. An instant later she resurfaced, a billowing red flower, then vanished and reappeared again, farther out to sea.

  Before anyone else seemed to understand that Isis was in real danger, Martha braced herself against the cold and dived into the water. Chilly, unafraid, she swam toward the burning boats. The ocean felt like panels of silk, slipping along her body, and the salt in her mouth and on her skin was stinging and delicious. Only now did she recall how much she loved to swim, the freedom from thought and self-consciousness that was always denied her on land, the sense of having found at last an element where she belonged, and where all that mattered was buoyancy, breath, and forward motion.

  Martha swallowed water a few times until she got beyond the waves, which were neither so high nor so strong as they had appeared from shore, nor was Isis so far out to sea as Martha had imagined. Martha found her easily, though she’d floated away from the burning boats. What drew Martha was the red of her robe and the frantic, windmilling splashing, the helicoptering spray and foam of a huge water bird taking off. Then Martha was inside the waterspout, deflecting Isis’s punches.

  Senior Lifesaving came back to her, and she remembered how in extremis you were permitted to haul off and slug the struggling victim. Each time Isis hit her, Martha wanted to hit her back. Instead she hooked her arm around Isis’s neck and towed her in toward shore.

  The girls she’d saved in lifesaving class had been compliant and weightless, but Isis was like an elephant that had made up its mind to drown. Soon, though, Isis understood that she was being helped, stopped resisting, and, when Martha looked at her, managed a watery, terrified smile. Isis’s teeth were chattering, her hair was plastered to her skull. The red ribbon had slipped off her forehead and dangled around her neck.

  By now they were in water so shallow that they had to stand. Martha put a steadying arm around Isis as they waited for a wave to wash over them. All at once the shoals were crowded with running, splashing women, jumping in the water with ecstatic abandon; their joy came from Isis being safe and from the thrill of flinging themselves into the icy sea. Laughing, sputtering, embracing, they surrounded Isis, gently guiding her in toward the beach, gently elbowing Martha away.

  Slumped across their shoulders, Isis staggered forward. Gracing them with wan, luminous smiles, she thanked them and told them she loved them. Then all at once she stopped so short that there was an awkward pileup, and she looked around her, theatrically searching the crowd.

  Finally, she found Martha and beckoned and stretched out her hand. She made everyone wait until Martha came forward and took her place in line and joined the long column of women marching arm-in-arm out of the sea.

  ISIS MOONWAGON’S BEACH HOUSE was a massive shingle-style Victorian, encircled by swirling verandas and spiked with cupolas and turrets. Climbing roses covered the fences, and a vegetable patch bordered the garden path—red chard, collards, dark green kale, Brussels
sprouts twisting on giant stalks like the eyeballs of undersea creatures—rioting over the edge of the walkway, luxuriant but controlled.

  Interplanted cabbages, lavender, and nasturtium narrowed the path so that the small group who’d come up from the beach had to break into smaller groups to get from the garden gate to the porch. Martha was struck by the grace with which the women avoided minicollisions and oversolicitous stalls, just as she’d been impressed before by the wordless ease with which these women had winnowed themselves from the crowd on the shore.

  How unlike the Darwinian scramble of daily life at Mode! Every year, the magazine gave a chic, high-profile Christmas party at which, just when the merriment was reaching a crescendo, Martha would spot some celebrity hostess moving from group to group, whispering invitations into the ears of the chosen few, who would later go on together to some marvelous dinner. Sometimes they whispered into ears that in theory were listening to Martha, who was not supposed to mind, just as she was not supposed to mind when Mode gave other, still more chic and exclusive parties to which fact checkers were not invited.

  But nothing remotely like that had happened on the beach. At the moment of leaving (hastened by the fact that everyone was soaked and shivering), no one lingered, unasked and unwanted, on the edge of some inner circle, forcing the chosen to wait until the uninvited caught on. Everyone seemed to belong to some group whose members swiftly agglomerated like atoms drawn by invisible currents of molecular attraction. The only uncertain ones were Martha and Hegwitha, who were standing near Isis when the exodus began and had hesitated until Isis told them to come along.

  It was obvious why Martha was included among the women straggling over the sand toward Isis Moonwagon’s beach house. She’d saved Isis’s life! But why was Hegwitha here? She’d stuck to Martha like a barnacle as soon as Martha came out of the sea, crying, “Martha! Martha! Are you okay?” repeatedly calling her name, proprietary, familiar, and, as far as anyone knew, Martha’s dearest friend. There was no way, short of brutality, to explain that they’d just met. Martha knew it was selfish and childish to mind Hegwitha’s presence, and, besides, she felt like a larger person for allowing Hegwitha to crawl under the mantle of glory that seemed to have fallen on Martha’s shoulders.

  Luckily, no one seemed to hold Martha responsible for Hegwitha’s perpetual air of injury and smoldering resentment. Nor did anyone object aloud, though a palpable shudder went through the group, when Hegwitha turned her back to the wind and lit a cigarette. In case there was any doubt about the sincerity of Martha and Hegwitha’s welcome, Isis waited for them at the start of the garden path and steered them toward the house. But the path proved too narrow for the three of them, and Martha felt guilty for liking it when Hegwitha had to drop back.

  Ambling beside Martha, Isis appeared to have made a miraculous recovery from her near drowning. Though her hair and her clothing were dripping, evidently she’d warmed her inner self with her own radiant inner warmth. Her teeth rattled faintly from time to time, but not enough to keep her from saying:

  “A genius gardener named Natalie Cornflower comes over from Riverhead. After she finishes weeding, she chants to the plants for an hour. Everything in the garden is nutritious or medicinal. A universe of healing—a lifetime, cradle to grave. Comfrey to ease labor pains and digitalis to…well…Plant knowledge has always been women’s knowledge, from the time of the gynocentric hunter-gatherer societies. Witches were burned because male physicians were so threatened by female healers. Hags on broomsticks was their metaphor for women in the trance states they’d cook up from the kitchen garden.” Isis plucked a lavender flower that she crushed under Martha’s nose.

  The pungent perfume filled Martha first with pleasure and then with envy of Isis’s garden and house. Well, what normal person wouldn’t covet all this light and beauty and space, especially someone who happened to live in a dank one-bedroom closet where the smell of curry had long ago lost its charm and where she was often awakened at night by the clatter of mice (Martha hoped they were mice) at play in her silverware drawer?

  Isis sniffed her fingers, then shook the petals from her hand. “Oh, don’t you wish we could just revert to that pre-agricultural stage, when the most essential knowledge was the names of plants, which herbs cured which diseases, natural uppers and downers, and you never doubted the usefulness of each little thing you did! Every woman a doctor without the trauma of medical school! Imagine if we could time-travel back to the matriarchal era when women ran the world and everyone lived in peace!”

  “I guess,” Martha agreed. Then, because Isis seemed to be waiting for more of a response, she said, “Your house is amazing! I didn’t know anyone had so much space on Fire Island.”

  Iris wrinkled her nose and looked away, giving Martha the impression that she had rudely called attention to something she wasn’t supposed to notice—perhaps the discrepancy between Isis’s hunter-gatherer dreams and her real estate holdings.

  “It’s not just my house,” Isis said frostily. “It’s all our houses. That is, it’s a sacred protected space for those who follow the Goddess. Do you know what we call it?”

  “No,” admitted Martha.

  “We needed a name for the place where we came together to worship. We meditated on how ‘seminary’ derives, linguistically, from semen—a place where men could go and not waste their semen.” Isis shook her head and rolled her eyes, still pink-rimmed from the salt water. “We decided to call it our ovulary.”

  “That’s…great,” Martha said.

  “Yes, well,” Isis said. “It’s amazing what the group mind can do that we’d never imagine alone. So much of our work depends on sharing time and skills. Natalie does the gardening for free. Who can count the hours donated by the women who made those boats and harvest dolls? The only way we can function financially and spiritually is by the nonhierarchical sharing of talent and sacred space.”

  The women did seem to feel quite at home—to be staying there, in fact. No one lingered on the porch, waiting for Isis to ask them in. They went directly to their rooms, presumably to change clothes.

  “I’ll get you two some dry things.” Isis hurried away.

  “Gosh,” said Hegwitha. “Isis is so considerate! She almost drowned, she must be dying to get dry—but she’s thinking of our comfort first. I don’t think I can smoke in here, do you?”

  “No,” replied Martha curtly.

  “Well, sorry for asking.” Hegwitha stalked off without giving Martha a chance to say something conciliatory: cigarette smoke didn’t bother her, but Isis might not like it…Hegwitha stood outside the front door, muttering and smoking.

  Martha drifted from the dark baronial foyer into the summery front parlor, with its glossy wood floors, antique kilims, and groves of potted ficus trees and fat-leafed serpentine plants. Tall windows interrupted the spotless white walls with thrilling views of the ocean. Carved tables supported arrangements of basketry, Kashmiri brass, Chinese porcelain. The orchestrated clutter recalled the homes of Victorian adventurers: steamer trunks overflowing with moth-eaten rugs and fake objets for which the traveler had been overcharged everywhere on the Grand Tour.

  The room’s centerpiece was a huge low circular table painted with red-and-black Arabic calligraphy and surrounded by tapestry pillows and sausagelike bolsters: the ideal setting for warring tribal chiefs to eat a sheep’s head and talk peace.

  Turning, Martha saw Hegwitha inching into the room, then stopping to contemplate a niche draped with a silk piano shawl. In its folds nestled crystals, geodes, seashells, votive figurines: museum-quality African sculptures and pre-Columbian terra-cotta.

  “What a great altar,” Hegwitha whispered. “What gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.” She watched Martha eyeing three large black cats prowling a minihabitat of ornamental grasses in oversize vases. “Don’t worry. Many women have been healed of their allergies with the help of the Goddess.”

  “I’m not allergic!” Martha said, just as Isis reappeared. Over eac
h of her arms was a towel and an embroidered black Bedouin caftan. One robe was much prettier than the other; Martha edged toward that one.

  “The fabulous thing about robes,” Isis said, “is that one size really does fit all, pregnant and unpregnant, though, of course, those poor women were always pregnant. Often you see robes that have been patched and handed down through generations. Then men came along and gave us unecological Seventh Avenue and the insane idea that we should slash and burn our whole wardrobe twice a year.”

  “Believe me, I know!” Martha exclaimed, hoping to draw attention from her greedy lunge for the better robe. “I work for a fashion magazine.” She wished Isis would continue her attack on the fashion industry, so that Martha could reveal herself as a serious person who had given the subject some thought. The reason she could work at Mode with anything like a clear conscience was her conviction that fashion wasn’t only about infecting women with rampaging insecurities and unruly consumer desires; it also involved creativity, choice, and self-expression and benefited the economy without promoting mayhem and murder. And her job did seem remotely—marginally—worthwhile. She did believe in language, in accuracy, facts, those tiny building blocks of truth…

  “Oh?” said Isis. “Are you a writer? Many of us are writers. Writers, psychotherapists, artists—or some combination thereof.”

  “No,” Martha admitted. “I’m a fact checker.”

  Isis looked disappointed but caught herself and took Martha’s hands. “I can’t thank you enough. I thought I’d had it out there. I was drowning, choking…and then I felt the most astonishing peace, and I knew the Goddess was with me. It was very much a rebirth experience. I feel deeply renewed…Well! Aren’t we glad this isn’t ancient China, where if someone saves your life you practically belong to that person? If that were true in New York City, people would never help anyone…as opposed to practically never. I want you to know how grateful I am. You’re welcome to stay with us here unless there’s some place you have to be—”