Hunters and Gatherers

by Francine Prose

  “Cool,” Sonoma said.

  “Wait a minute,” said Starling. “Some of us have feelings about women-only rituals. A special thing seems to happen when it’s pure female Goddess energy—”

  “Some of us just hate men,” said Joy.

  “Not!” Sonoma said.

  “The teaching of the sacred way,” Rita said, “is that it’s wrong to hate.”

  “We’re getting off the subject,” said Starling. “Which is having this guy at our healing retreat.”

  “I can’t stand it,” said Diana. “The minute we try to do anything, to reclaim our spiritual power, a man appears out of nowhere to tell us how to do it.”

  “My sense,” said Isis, “is that Scotty won’t be doing much of the actual telling.”

  “Scotty helps with the storytelling,” Rita said. “Little details—”

  “Little!” Scotty said. “Try it without me, Rita babe. Go ahead. I dare you. Try it.”

  “This is bullshit!” said Diana.

  “Please,” said Isis. “My impression is that Scotty is at most a sort of stagehand—”

  “More bullshit,” said Joy. “One minute a guy claims he’s just a delivery boy humping incense to the Goddess temple, and the next minute he’s the Pope, outlawing birth control and abortion.”

  “Right,” said Hegwitha. “One minute a guy’s watching the Dionysian priestesses perform the ancient mysteries—”

  “I didn’t think there were male observers at the ancient rites,” said Freya. “Wasn’t there some danger of getting torn limb from limb?”

  “Not at all!” said Isis.

  “That’s male propaganda,” said Diana.

  Scotty had put down the smudge pot and turned off the tape recorder. His lower lip had a sullen Elvis droop: sexy and moronic.

  “Poor Scotty,” said Bernie. “The poor guy, hearing us talk about him like that.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for Scotty,” said Hegwitha. “Women get that shit all the time. Western civilization is based on rituals excluding women.”

  “Then if we know how it feels,” said Bernie, “why would we do it to Scotty? Isn’t that falling into the trap of the exclusionary male-power trip?”

  Isis said, “Well, I don’t see how this young man’s presence can stop us from listening to Rita’s stories. If we’re so easily distracted, maybe that’s telling us to work on our concentration. Anyway, I’m sure we can compromise. I don’t imagine Scotty will be around when the heavy stuff begins.

  “Rita…?” Isis’s tone was at once coercive and wheedling. “We’re not going to have Scotty with us for the sweat lodge, are we? I think some of us might have a problem wearing nothing or just a bathing suit—”

  “Oh, no!” Rita said. “Scotty won’t be at the sweat lodge.”

  “Too bad!” said Scotty. No one returned his menacing leer, though he looked around expectantly.

  “Excellent,” said Isis. “Perhaps we should agree that Scotty is welcome for the storytelling. Then he has to go away when we do our rituals and ceremonies.”

  “All right,” said Rita. “We can do that.” She checked with Scotty, who nodded.

  Rita walked to the edge of the circle and glared over the women’s heads. “Once upon a time, there was a girl who was not afraid. A rich woman in her village died. Someone had to care for her house. And only the girl was willing to do it, because the house was haunted.”

  Scotty crossed behind Rita and threw some powder on the fire. Blue flames shot up.

  “Oooh,” chorused the women.

  “Awesome,” said Sonoma. “What is that shit, do you think?”

  “So the girl,” continued Rita, “went to live in the dead woman’s house. The first night she heard voices. ‘Help! I’m falling! I’m falling!’ The girl wasn’t scared. She said, ‘Go ahead. Fall.’ And”—Rita paused—“a skeleton dropped in her lap!”

  “Yikes!” Diana said.

  “Then,” said Rita, “the girl slept—in the dead woman’s bed. Suddenly she opened her eyes and saw the dead having a party.”

  Scotty turned up the boom box, and the chanting got louder. Rita shouted over the noise. “Everywhere skeletons were dancing and drinking rum and smoking cigarettes!”

  “Yum,” Hegwitha said.

  “The little girl joined in, drinking and smoking. She saw a man with no eyes, a woman with no head, but she wasn’t afraid. Finally she was partied out and fell asleep.

  “The next morning a woman rode up to the house—an ugly woman dressed in black on a black horse.”

  “‘Are you the brave girl who spent the night in my house?’” This was Scotty talking in a spooky, quavering falsetto.

  Rita went on: “The little girl said yes she was. And the woman said”—Rita waited a minute till Scotty picked up his cue—“‘Brave little girl, you may have my house and land and animals and clothes. I must go back to the graveyard now. Everything is yours.’”

  “So,” Rita said, “the girl put on the dead woman’s clothes and rode into town, and the people saw her wearing the clothes and riding the dead woman’s horse. They got scared and ran away. And she was left alone in the town—the town belonged to her.”

  It took the women a while to realize that the story was over. There was a smattering of applause.

  “Isn’t that wonderful!” Diana said. “You never hear stories about brave girls—only brave boys. It just goes to show how much respect the Native people had for the feminine.”

  The others looked disappointed. Perhaps they’d expected a story about how the girl came to be fearless, full of improving pointers on how courage could be attained. But what could be learned from Rita’s tale about spending the night with the dead? Clearly it was about the practical advantages of bravery, but what good did it do the girl at the end—living alone in a town she owned because everyone else had vanished?

  “Second story,” said Rita. “A young man was traveling in the desert. He was not a hunter. He liked powwows and fiestas. The only weapon he carried was a heavy club.”

  Rita paused as Scotty walked around the circle with a studded club, a cross between a baseball bat and a medieval weapon. He showed it to the women like evidence at a trial. One by one, the women averted their eyes with distaste, or in some cases with a light shudder, reflexively flirtatious.

  “Oh, dear,” moaned Bernie. “I can’t believe she lets him run around loose with that thing!”

  “As he traveled over the desert,” Rita said, “a rattlesnake crossed his path. He hit it once in the middle, and the snake slid into the brush. At last the man came to a village he’d never seen before—and right away he began to feel strange. Just then a man came out and invited him to meet the chief.

  “In the chief’s house, a young girl with a bandage around her waist sat against the wall. The chief said, ‘Young man, why did you beat this girl this morning?’

  “And the man said—”

  Scotty sounded disconcertingly convincing in the role of the young man: “‘Hey, what girl you mean, man? I never beat no chick.’”

  “You’d almost think he’d said it before,” Titania whispered.

  Rita cleared her throat. “The chief said, ‘Woman, is this the man who beat you?’ And the girl said, ‘Yes, with that very stick.’ And the young man said—”

  Scotty said, “‘I mean it, man. I never saw this girl. I never hit a woman in my life.’”

  Rita said, “Since it was the young man’s first offense, the chief agreed to let him go. When the young man got back to his own village, he told the medicine woman what had happened.”

  Scotty turned up the boom box louder in preparation for the finale and threw more powder on the fire.

  “The medicine woman,” said Rita, “told him that every animal has its own soul, its own laws. She said, ‘When you injured the snake in the desert, the chief of the snake people called his council to deal with the snake’s complaint. They took human form to punish you—but you were lucky this time. Never a
gain hurt an animal that is not doing you any harm.’”

  This time the applause was heartier.

  “I love it,” said Isis. “A story about woman’s rights and animal rights, together.”

  “Isn’t that always the way?” Bernie said. “Everything is connected.”

  “Last story,” Rita said. “‘The Funeral of the Squashes.’”

  Scotty changed the tape, and they heard a keening dirge like that of the women calling the dead at the mission in Tucson.

  “Once upon a time,” Rita said, “a woman planted a garden. She harvested squashes, what our people call calabazas. She filled her house with gourds—orange, yellow, and green—and that very evening the woman took sick and died.”

  “Yes.” Bernie nodded. “Calabazas means squash.”

  “Soon,” Rita said, “the woman found that she was at her own funeral. There were lots of people, but she didn’t recognize any. What was even stranger was that the mourners were singing a song, ‘Calabazas, calabazas, calabazas’ and eating squash. At dawn the mourners left, the woman awoke. She discovered that she wasn’t dead. But all her squashes were gone.”

  Once more there was an awkward pause. The storytelling was over. Now the women applauded wildly. Rita and Scotty bowed.

  “What do you think that one was about?” Titania asked Martha. “Vegetable rights?”

  “Maybe about not wasting food,” Martha said. “Maybe something like that.”

  “Lordy,” said Joy. “My mother was into that one.”

  “Any questions?” said Rita.

  No one asked what the stories meant. No one said a word. Several of the women were glaring pointedly at Scotty.

  “Cheers, ladies,” said Scotty. “I can tell when I’m not wanted.” He took his vial of magic powders and left.

  Only then did Hegwitha raise her hand. “Excuse me,” she said. “But I was wondering…You said before that Native people use stories to heal disease…”

  You could feel the women’s desire to tell Rita that Hegwitha was really sick, sense their dread that Rita might sound flip or dismissive. But Rita probably knew that; probably many who came to her were ill.

  “Stories are for teaching,” Rita said. “Little Sister Herbs and Plants are for healing. Later we’ll talk about Little Sister Herbs and Plants. Indigenous peoples knew herb magic that could cure any disease.”

  “Oh, goody,” said Hegwitha.

  “When will we have our sweat lodge?” said Starling, always the schedule checker.

  “Later we have sweat lodge,” Rita said. “Now we have spirit drumming.”

  Rita went to the trailer and returned with Scotty, lugging a heavy conga under each arm. It took him several trips to bring out all the drums. Then he wrapped his knees around a conga and played a long aggressive solo before slinking back to his lair.

  Rita spoke about the importance of drums in indigenous cultures. She described how drumming attuned us to the Great Spirit, how it quieted our chattering brains and opened our ears to our animal teachers, the thumping of Brother Beaver and Little Sister Rabbit. She began whacking at a large furcovered drum, accompanying herself with guttural cries. Between drumbeats, she brandished her drumstick, encouraging the others to join in.

  “Find that special drum partner that is you,” Rita said. “Among all those drums, one is calling your name.”

  Isis chose the biggest drum, Freya the next largest. The others prayed for guidance, then chose their drum partners from a heap of nearly identical tom-toms. By the time it was Martha’s turn, all the drums were gone. Two large rattles lay on the ground. She bent and picked them up.

  It was not clear that shaking rattles could put you in touch with the Great Spirit. Perhaps that was why she felt like the one sober guest at a drunken party, or as if she were playing the triangle in her grade school band, watching the others with their gleaming flutes and soulful clarinets, while she made the pathetic clinks grudgingly scored by composers to preserve the fragile self-esteem of unmusical children.

  At first the women watched Rita for direction, but soon forgot themselves and relaxed. As Rita’s drumming grew more frantic, the Goddess women flailed at their animal hides. Their jaws drooped and their eyelids clenched with effort. They rocked their shoulders and shook their heads. From time to time one of the women would break into a manic solo.

  Watching the firelight play on their faces, Martha was alternately annoyed at them and furious at herself. She was the Goddess archetype that the women liked least: the Athena type, the rationalist, always thinking, always judging. But what was wrong with thinking? That’s what she wanted to know. What seemed wrong to her was what she thought, how cramped and unpleasant it was. How could she look down on these poor souls who needed this so badly, who had been so damaged and were being given a great gift: a half hour—surely no longer, she hoped—of forgetting their pain and problems. Martha caught Rita looking at her and smiled weakly and shook her rattles.

  Martha noticed that Sonoma had thrown away her drumstick and was pounding her drum with her fists. Her eyes were shut, her mouth open; a thin trail of drool slicked her chin. As she gripped the tom-tom between her plump spread knees, unattractive pink wedges of thigh pouched out around the rim.

  Sonoma was such a difficult girl, selfish, stubborn, spoiled, permitted complaints and cruelties no adult could get away with. But Martha was an adult and was shocked at her own harshness, her lack of feeling for this sad child briefly escaping the prison she shared with a mother whose parameters ranged from boasting about her career to nagging Sonoma about her weight. The shameful part was that Martha secretly suspected that her dislike for Sonoma was really about Isis, who, ever since the incident with the statue at the mission, had fixed on the girl with the absorption she’d once reserved for Martha.

  The women were drumming so feverishly that Rita had to go around and grab each one by the shoulders, like clock pendulums she had to stop by hand. The women looked sleepy but rested, and Martha crankily observed the blurry gazes of postcoital gratitude they bestowed on Rita.

  Then Rita announced that it was time for spirit dancing. “Our dance is a way of thanking the Earth, our Mother, whom we dance on with our feet to call our spirit helper. That is one thing I hope you will all do this week—find your spirit helper, or let your spirit helper find you. It may be a sacred animal or symbol, a power that keeps you from danger—”

  “Some of us already have that,” Freya interrupted competitively. “We call her Goddess.”

  Rita said, “Your spirit guide can be a creepy crawler, a creature from any part of the world. One of mine is an African and another a slant-eyed Chinese who likes to stand on his head.”

  Joy edged closer to Martha and said, “That’s the grossest, most racist thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” But Joy snapped to attention when Rita said, “When you have a spirit guide, you don’t need a radar detector. You can do ninety, and your spirit helper will tell you when a cop’s hiding behind the billboard.”

  “Far-out,” said Joy. “That’s my kind of spirit guide.”

  Rita slipped another tape into the boom box and turned up the volume. Dervish drumming and shrill Middle Eastern flutes Dopplered off the mountains—most likely some New Age men’s group, reinterpreting Native American chants to express their resentments toward their absent fathers.

  “Close your eyes,” Rita ordered. “Dance your connection to Mother Earth, touch her veins and her roots, reach for healing—”

  Though Martha should have known better by now, she was still amazed that these women she’d known for months—women who drove and cooked and held important jobs and were writers and therapists with money, fame, and success—were capable of throwing back their heads, lifting their arms, and spinning like born-again evangelicals or locked-ward schizophrenics. She felt at once mildly contemptuous—and horribly alone. It was bad enough shaking rattles when everyone else was beating drums; not dancing along with the others was something else altogethe
r.

  Suddenly Martha heard a scream.

  Isis sank to the ground.

  Rita shut off the music. The women clustered round Isis.

  Starling said, “Goddamn it! Of all the goddamn places in the world to have a medical emergency.”

  “Don’t move her,” someone said.

  But Bernie was already cradling Isis’s head in her lap, and within seconds Isis opened her eyes and smiled and wriggled her shoulders. She looked around, disoriented, then burst into sobs.

  Through her tears, Isis said, “First it prowled around me—this…giant friendly jaguar. I was scared. It started to pounce. But then it reached out its paw, and I knew it wanted to help me. A sinking sensation came over me—that’s when I screamed and blacked out.”

  “Your spirit helper,” Rita pronounced. “You have found your spirit helper.”

  How like Isis to meet her spirit helper before anyone else! Martha wondered if the others minded. Isis had already had her vision of the moon goddess. Or maybe that was how it worked, as with multiple childbirths: each vision made it easier to have the next and the next.

  “You were a member of the jaguar clan. Perhaps in some other lifetime.” Rita sounded extremely relieved: Isis’s vision had done wonders for her credibility. Rita must have been nervous about a week with these high-powered New York women who didn’t appreciate getting stuck with her instead of Maria. For the first time Martha felt real sympathy for Rita—a feeling that should have come earlier, say, the first time she saw Scotty.

  But straight on the heels of this new compassion came great swells of irritation. Because now they were really in Rita’s power, and Isis had put them there. It no longer seemed likely that they would leave early and spend the extra days around the pool in Tucson. They were in for the desert walk, the sweat lodge, the fasting, and the vision quest.

  “Tomorrow,” Rita said, “we will greet Dawn Spirit Rising with drumming. We will meet here at five-thirty and drum Father Sun up over the horizon.”

  MARTHA REACHED BENEATH THE covers and, languorous and ecstatic, scratched the lumpy flea bites encircling her legs like anklets. The bright air streaming in through the screen brought with it the fresh turkey-stuffing scent of sage. For a few blissful seconds she imagined she might be happy, until a less benign breeze blew in a ragged flurry of drumbeats.