Hunters and Gatherers

by Francine Prose

  Martha and Sonoma watched Isis’s moon-worship rite, which involved a great deal of genuflecting and swaying and flailing her arms. At last Isis wrapped herself in a blanket, then turned toward the ramada, and called very softly, “Sonoma?”

  “Goddamnit,” said Sonoma. “If it’s not my mom, it’s her.”

  Isis kept calling Sonoma’s name in a voice that soon lost its low vibrato and grew so vexingly insistent that Martha hissed, “Answer her, Sonoma!”

  “Huh?” Sonoma’s reply was more of a grunt than a question.

  “Oh, thank the Goddess,” cried Isis, running over. “I was so worried. Your mother shouldn’t have said those awful things when we were all sitting there nude and defenseless. The sweat lodge is a place to leave behind our negative feelings, not somewhere we go so our moms can reinforce them.”

  “Forget it,” said Sonoma.

  “Oh, hello, Martha,” said Isis.

  “Hello,” Martha said.

  “Sonoma, dear,” said Isis. “Are you coming back to the sweat lodge or not?” Isis knew that impatience wasn’t helping her case, which only made her more desperate to have things settled at once. Martha understood the impulse. She’d had a bad habit with men: when she felt they were ceasing to love her, she began asking questions that were veiled requests to get her feelings hurt. Near the end, she’d asked Dennis if something was wrong with her laugh, and Dennis had looked at her strangely and said, Well, it was sort of tight.

  But Isis wasn’t in love with Sonoma. She just wanted Sonoma to admire her, to think that she was cool. That was the power youth conferred: it meant something if a child liked you. Did only women feel that way? Only women without their own children? Freya didn’t seem to care if Sonoma was fond of her or not. It was shocking to Martha: how much she wanted Sonoma’s approval. The conversation they’d just had pleased her beyond all measure.

  “Christ, no,” said Sonoma. “I wouldn’t go back in that torture chamber for a zillion bucks.”

  “Please,” said Isis. The word hung in the air. She didn’t care—she hardly knew—that Martha was present, listening. “I’ve seen purification sweats do miracles, bringing people together. It would be so good for you and your mom—”

  “I doubt it,” Sonoma said.

  “People have visions,” said Isis. “Experiences that change them. Something from another world that’s shown to you alone to help you live your life.” How like Isis to see a vision as personal attention, like a livery driver sent to get you at the airport or a waitress conversant with your dietary restrictions. Sonoma must have been used to it. Freya talked like that, too.

  “Right,” said Sonoma. “Uncontrollable hallucinations are really going to help me make it through eighth grade.”

  “The only gift I wish for you is faith that your life will get better and plenty of those rare moments when everything seems marvelous just as it is.” Isis’s tone was valedictory. She was bequeathing Sonoma a testament, if Sonoma would only take it.

  “Sorry,” said Sonoma. “Forget it. Would you get off my back? You’re as bad as Diana nagging me to go get lost in the desert.”

  Isis laughed her throaty laugh. “Well, then, good night, ladies. See you in the morning. Wish me luck!”

  “Good luck,” Martha called after her as she headed back to the sweat lodge.

  After a moment Isis called, “Thank you. Blessed be.”

  “Blessed be,” mimicked Sonoma. “Give me a fucking break.”

  IT WAS DAWN BEFORE Titania got back to the cabin. Martha’s fury at being awakened was compounded by the special ire of being roused by someone returning from a party she hadn’t attended.

  Titania fell asleep at once, and soon the rhythm of her breathing was grating on Martha’s frayed nerves. Now she understood why insomniacs suddenly turned on beloved snoring spouses and smothered them with pillows. This retreat was doing nothing for her spiritual development. Martha counted the hours till she could leave—two days in which to find a way to avoid the solo vision quest. But what was her hurry? Staying here kept her from having to face reality, a word, she’d noticed, always used to mean something unpleasant.

  She couldn’t have imagined that her mood could sink any lower until she went outside and recalled that there wouldn’t be breakfast. The clearing was empty. The women must have been sleeping off their night of life-changing visions. An occasional wisp of smoke puffed up from the sweat lodge, as from the smoldering ruins of a city charred and razed in battle. In the morning light the hut looked less furry and unfriendly, less like a slumbering dangerous beast than like the burrow beneath which the beast is peacefully sleeping.

  Only then did Martha notice Isis sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up and her back against the sweat lodge. Isis had her eyes shut but must have sensed Martha’s presence. She looked up and beckoned her over.

  “Have a seat,” she said.

  Once Martha would have been flattered by the invitation. But last night Isis had talked to Sonoma as if Martha weren’t there, and Martha had realized how superfluous she was to Isis, little more than an orange-haired speck bobbing past the edge of her vision. A stronger person might refuse to chat and pretend to be going off to commune with the desert, and Isis would respect that person’s need for personal space. A weakling like Martha, however, sank obediently onto the sand.

  Isis said, “I’m so zapped with energy I’ll never sleep again. I can’t describe what happened in the lodge last night, the flood of knowledge and healing that descended on us all. Rita was magic, guiding us through levels and waiting while we visited every avatar of the divine, from the growling dogs guarding hell to the highest Athena mind. Sometimes the hut was so crowded with entities it was like a rush-hour subway. Lights were whipping through the air: the special effects were amazing.”

  Isis paused long enough for Martha to mumble, “That sounds terrific. Was everyone having visions?”

  “Not everyone,” said Isis. “Freya claims she saw fireworks, serpents from Norse mythology—and a jaguar of her own. But she’s so competitive with me, it’s hard to know what’s real. Bernie said she felt warm blankets falling on us, wrapping us up together. Isn’t that pure Bernie, loving and smothering at once?

  “But the most mind-blowing moment came when Rita summoned us from our visions and led us in a group chant. Time stopped. I don’t know how long we chanted, but when we finished, a cloud of pure love had settled around us. Joy went and hugged Diana. And guess what? They’re a couple again!”

  “What about Hegwitha?” asked Martha.

  “Hegwitha?” repeated Isis. “What a dear precious warrior!”

  By now the others were appearing from their cabins and filling their lungs with desert air and grinning dazedly up at the clouds. Converging, they embraced one another and shook their heads in wonder, as if their shared experience had obviated the need for words. They hardly seemed to touch the ground as they floated over to Martha, who felt obliged to stand up and ask them how the sweat lodge had been.

  Unbelievable, the women said. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Who knew you could get so high without alcohol or drugs? Though they all echoed some version of this, Martha sensed a difference between the women who’d had visions and the ones who hadn’t.

  Rita skipped the small talk and pleasantries and shifted straight into high gear: “The sweat lodge is the hamburger of the Native people’s spiritual life. But we say that the vision quest is the filet mignon.”

  “Is filet mignon a Native American cut?” Titania whispered to Martha. Titania wasn’t one of those who had met their spirit helpers, and Martha felt faintly guilty for having so resented her snoring.

  Joy and Diana stood with their arms entwined while the others came up to congratulate them on their rapprochement. Martha was shocked by how easy it was to hug them and say, “I’m so glad for you.” But some lingering shred of integrity made her ask, “Where’s Hegwitha?”

  “She’s sleeping,” Diana said, apparently without a tr
ace of remorse for having toyed with Hegwitha’s heart. “She had a fabulous sweat. We joined hands and made a circle around her and worked up all this great healing energy, praying for her to stay in remission.”

  “To stay in remission?” Martha repeated.

  “Yep,” Diana said. “All she needs is three more years to be considered cured.”

  Martha had to muscle down an almost overpowering impulse to inform them that they’d squandered all that great healing energy praying for a lie. But if Hegwitha hadn’t told them, certainly Martha shouldn’t, and, anyway, she could hardly imagine a less appropriate moment to do so.

  “Hush,” said Diana, because now Hegwitha had come out of her cabin and was squinting in the morning light. Martha was struck by her pallor. Hegwitha lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, and came over. Diana gave her a friendly hug, as did Joy and Martha.

  Joy said, “That was an amazing sweat. My mind was totally blown. Hegwitha, there’s no way you could get sick again after something like that.”

  Hegwitha evaded Martha’s glance. Martha walked away.

  MUCH OF THE DAY was spent preparing for the vision quest. The morning was devoted to locating your power spot, finding the patch of desert where your spirit guide could find you. Rita talked about her first parents and the generations of ancients, all very genealogical, like the begats in the Bible. As a child, Martha had read the Bible for sexual information. The affairs of the patriarchs and kings hinted at adult secrets, and even those lists of begettings made her feel strangely aroused. Perhaps that too was evidence of an inner spiritual life.

  As Rita talked about the ancestors’ bones singing under the desert, Martha scanned the hills above them for some likely-looking hollow in which she could spend her vision quest hiding unobserved. Her idea bf a power spot was one from which she could look down and make sure that Rita’s RV was still there.

  In the break that followed the power-spot discussion, Martha went over to Hegwitha and asked, “How do you feel?”

  Hegwitha still couldn’t look at her. Neither knew how to talk about Hegwitha’s lying to the group: a lie of omission, maybe, but a serious one nonetheless, allowing the women to keep praying for what was already lost.

  “Like shit, pretty much,” said Hegwitha.

  “Physically or emotionally?” asked Martha.

  Hegwitha said, “Really, Martha, I can’t believe you’ve been into the Goddess since August and it hasn’t occurred to you that the two things are connected.” Starting with that eventful day on the beach at Fire Island, Hegwitha had been her first teacher in this new religion, and now even Hegwitha was giving up on educating Martha.

  In contrast, Rita’s pedagogical energy was apparently limitless. Already she was reconvening the group for a talk on spirit helpers—the available options in visitors from the other world. Brother Beaver, Sister Spider, Cousin Coyote, Uncle Black Bear—each relative came with a story, stories which blurred in Martha’s mind and made her feel cranky, like a child at a toy store, weepy from the pressure of too many choices.

  Rita ended the afternoon session with a sobering lesson on orienteering and first aid. She advised them to let Father Sun guide them in his journey west, or else wait for night and head toward the Great Bear constellation. Brother Scorpion and Sister Rattlesnake didn’t want to mess with humans, but if they did, the women should get back to camp a.s.a.p. They might want to bring bandannas to use as emergency tourniquets and clean penknives for making cuts so they could suck out the venom.

  “And speaking of poison,” said Rita, “our spirit feast is tonight at seven.”

  Almost twenty-four hours had passed since they’d eaten. Martha had expected wakefulness and hunger pangs but instead got deep depression and a depleting afternoon nap, without the sense of achievement she’d gotten when she’d starved for a day to get thinner so some man would like her, or like her a little more.

  The room was warm and shadowy; outside it was growing dark. The smell of roasting meat cheered Martha until she remembered the upcoming feast.

  Titania must have gone out. Martha was alone. Her hair was so greasy her scalp ached; her skin was sticky with oil. The lack of running water was starting to take its toll. If she’d gone into work at Mode like this, her coworkers would have assumed she was having a nervous breakdown. Did that mean they noticed her, cared more than the Goddess women, or just had narrower standards for grooming and dress? Now Martha wouldn’t be going to Mode looking any way at all. There was nothing like getting fired to make you appreciate your job, nothing like getting left by a man to make you love him more. And if she did fall out of favor with the Goddess women, Martha knew she would come to feel that they were the sanest, kindest, most fascinating people the world had ever known…

  She opened the door and stepped into a cloud of barbecue smoke. A whole cow was roasting over the fire on a spit attached to a crank that Scotty turned until the animal’s hooves pointed straight down, at which point Scotty let go and the cow rolled over with a sudden thunk that startled Martha and that Scotty found extremely amusing.

  “Big cow,” Martha said.

  “Sure is,” Scotty replied. “Native people used to stuff themselves with meat before their vision quests. They would pump up that layer of fat till they had enough to burn for weeks, or, in cases like Rita’s, enough to burn for a good while longer.”

  Martha was slow to understand and then she could only stare. Was she meant to join Scotty in a fat joke at Rita’s expense?

  No wonder Freya nagged Sonoma: she was just passing on the damage. Even Scotty had the male knack for making women feel ugly. Dennis was a genius at it—Martha saw that now. Why would anyone choose to be with someone who pretended to think you were pretty but later made you believe you were committing a crime by leaving the house without a trash bag over your head?

  Poor Rita! Martha was having one of those moments when the curtain suddenly parted, showing you someone else’s life for the tragedy it was. It was not unlike the flash of sympathy she’d felt last night for Sonoma. The trouble with those revelations was how quickly the curtains closed, how soon you forgot whatever you’d seen and your heart hardened again.

  Scotty said, “I guess there’s some big eaters in your group.” Were they still on that? Was he complimenting their appetite for life or calling them fatties like Rita?

  “Some,” Martha said.

  Scotty said, “I should have been one of those guys who guess your weight on a midway. I like big girls, in Rita’s league. Most guys secretly do. No one likes bones but a dog.”

  And now was Scotty informing Martha that she wasn’t his—or most guys’—type? Was he suggesting, for health and aesthetic reasons, that she put on extra weight? What was this male compulsion to give you beauty advice? The first time Dennis said she’d look better if she got some sun should have been a tip-off: his concern was for this summer’s tan, not next year’s melanoma. And whose advice were you meant to take if men told you opposite things? Dennis’s considered opinion was that Martha should be ten pounds thinner.

  “What do you weigh?” asked Scotty. “Hundred nine? Hundred ten?”

  Asshole, Martha thought. But she had to give him credit. He had guessed exactly. Though that was what she’d weighed at home. She probably weighed less now.

  “How big is the cow?” asked Martha.

  “Before or after cooking?” asked Scotty. “Pounds and pounds of suet have already dripped into the fire. Native people would save it and use it to make candles. It’s another sign of how the white man’s fucked up our culture that I’m standing here watching it soak in the ground.”

  But Scotty was a white man. Was he pretending to be an Indian? Or had some Native American genes been driven into hiding by Scotty’s blondness?

  Just then, Rita hurried over and pried Scotty’s hand loose from the barbecue crank.

  “What crazy stuff has Scotty been telling you? Scotty, baby?” Her voice turned cajoling. The Goddess, women would have died befo
re they talked like that to a man. “Scotty, honey, go stir the dinner?”

  Scotty grinned and gave Rita a pat on her blue-jeaned behind. Then he trudged over to the fire and lifted the lids off the pots. He stirred as if he knew his way around a vat of chili.

  He said, “Jesus, there’s enough shit here to feed an entire troop deployment—”

  “Gee,” said Bernie, who had wandered over. “I hope Scotty isn’t comparing our vision quest with a war. Though we are a sort of army, I guess—”

  Martha said, “I hope he isn’t comparing our food with shit.”

  Joking with Bernie at Scotty’s expense provided a brief spell of comradely warmth. Rita couldn’t have heard them, but still she glared at Bernie and Martha, then went back to watching adoringly as Scotty prepared the meal.

  While the other women studied Rita for spiritual direction, Martha observed the power dynamics between Rita and Scotty. It was Scotty who carved the cow, carried the meat and chili to the table; Scotty who fetched the tub of coleslaw from the trailer, where, Martha hoped, it had been refrigerated; Scotty who filled his plate first and sat down and began to eat. But it was Rita who rang the bell and called, “Okay, chow down, ladies.”

  Joy hopped over to Rita and set down her crutches so as to form a barricade between Rita and the food.

  “Just a darn minute,” said Joy. “No one said anything about having a man at the spirit feast. I thought we decided he could be around for the storytelling and then he’d be gone. We’ve been more than patient, no one’s said a word. But some of us have real objections to male energy interfering while we nourish our bodies for our vision quests.”

  “Right on!” said Diana. “Let’s be up-front about this. If he eats here, we don’t.”

  “I’m sure we could compromise,” Bernie said. “Maybe we could wait until Scotty’s through, and then eat.”