Godmother Night

by Rachel Pollack

  Jimmy put his hands on his hips. “Oh, they pushed you,” he said.

  “Jimmy, we can still be friends,” Kate said. But she knew it wasn’t true. Not because of the market. Jimmy would get over that. There was something else. Jimmy was shorter than her. How did that happen? Jimmy was always taller than her. Always. No, she thought. What Jimmy was always was always ten. And Kate—Kate was nothing always. Nothing, as long as she stayed alive.

  “I hate you,” Jimmy said. “You’re not a friend. You’re the enemy.” Suddenly, he bent down and grabbed a small stone from the street. He threw it at her, hitting her in the shoulder. And then he turned and ran away.

  Cara took a step, but Mother Night stopped her. To Kate, her godmother said, “I’m sorry, Kate darling. Are you all right?” She touched Kate’s shoulder, and then her cheek.

  “I’m okay,” Kate said. She looked up and down the street. Jimmy was gone, along with the rest of them. Nothing remained of the market but a pair of pink plastic sunglasses with one earpiece missing and a book lying face down in the street. The cover of the book showed a tiny woman with wings waving a magic wand at a garden. “I’m okay,” Kate said again. Kate could hear people—non-dead—laughing and calling to each other.

  Mother Night nodded. “Then we had better get you back to school.”

  Before leaving, Kate bent down and picked up the stone Jimmy had thrown at her. She looked at it for a moment—it was gray with all sorts of white lines—then put it in her pocket.

  As she sat down silently in her godmother’s car Kate thought to herself, I’m never going to die. I don’t ever want to die and get stuck, like Jimmy. I’ll just tell Mother Night. I don’t ever want to die.

  The car and the motorcycles moved through the streets.

  Three

  The Courageous Knight

  Before they said goodbye that day, Mother Night gave Kate a tiny silver whistle on a gold chain. “Keep this with you always,” she instructed her. “Hide it in your purse or your pocket or wear it around your neck. If you find yourself in trouble just blow on it gently, and wherever I am I will come to you.”

  Kate blew on it, first softly then harder. A soft trilling note floated into the air. “Will you be able to hear that?” Kate asked.

  “Of course. Didn’t I say I would?”

  Kate nodded. She thought again of the accident, and how she would need to keep the whistle close anytime she rode in a car or even the bus. Would it work backward? If she died before she could use the whistle, or if she became paralyzed and then bled to death, could her godmother bring her back? Or would she say, Why didn’t you call me? Kate wondered if she should tell Mother Night right then to make sure that Kate never died. But when she looked up and saw her godmother and the MGs watching her, she just said, “Thank you,” and put the whistle deep into her jeans pocket.

  From that day on, Kate turned away from the dead. If she was out with Laurie and Louise and she saw dead people carrying on in the street she no longer winked at them or gave a secret wave with her fingers, but instead turned away and began speaking about school or current events or gossip from the children she knew. When Mother Night offered to take her to parties she refused, only shrugging when Mother Night asked why. Soon she found she noticed the dead less and less, and one day she was coming home from shopping for sneakers with Laurie when she realized they’d gone to the busiest part of town and she hadn’t seen a single non-living person. She smiled brightly and whistled a little as she cut up celery and radishes for a salad. And yet, to her annoyance, she found that what she really wanted to do was cry.

  She decided to pay more attention to Laurie. After all, wasn’t Laurie the center of her non-dead life? Kate began asking about customers at the store, or the latest hot books. She considered this the best approach to her mother. She’d once heard Louise say that Laurie “should just go ahead and marry the store, the great love of her middle age.” In fact, Laurie was a partner now. Mark had taken her into ownership with him when the store moved around the corner to a larger space.

  Kate had realized how much this meant to her mother when Laurie had celebrated by taking out a bank loan and buying all new furniture for her and Kate. About the only thing she’d kept was a single vinyl-covered kitchen chair which she placed in a corner of the kitchen. Sometimes Kate would walk into the kitchen to find her mother sitting in the chair and staring into space, only to have Laurie jump up as soon as she noticed her daughter. Several times Kate wondered if she should ask about the chair—did it mean anything? And why did Laurie keep it? But that nervous look on Laurie’s face whenever Kate caught her sitting in it told Kate to drop it. Safer, she thought, to keep to the store, and books.

  At the housewarming for the new store, Kate went over to the section of women-loving women books set up by her mother. Laurie was very proud of this section. A couple of times Mark had said that that section alone had brought in enough new customers to allow them to expand. If she could just choose the right book, Kate thought, if she could just demonstrate her interest in the right subjects, she could show her mother how much she loved her.

  Briefly—very briefly—she looked at a book called What Do Lesbians Do? Filled with drawings and even diagrams of women touching and licking each other, it instructed would-be women-loving women who couldn’t figure things out for themselves. Kate would have liked to study it but didn’t dare. This definitely was not the right book, she thought. As she put it back, she thought to herself how none of the drawings looked anything like Laurie or Louise or any of their friends.

  For a while she looked at a novel about a couple of women from two hundred years ago who’d gone off into the wilderness to build their own house and start a farm. But she couldn’t see her mother ever digging up potatoes or anything, so she put that one back as well. Finally she decided on a book called Street-Action Womyn, a manual of wild things any “womon” could do to “disrupt the patriarchy,” such as making a rubber stamp saying “Lesbian Tender” and stamping it on dollar bills before leaving them as tips in restaurants. The cover showed two women about eighteen years old, stripped to the waist, with their faces and breasts painted blue and red and gold. And they were eating fire! Each one was pushing a flaming torch into her mouth. Kate thought how she didn’t know living people could do such cool things.

  But when Kate brought the book to her mother, saying in her best casual style, “Oh, by the way, Mom, could I get this book?” Laurie didn’t give Kate a hug, or even smile at her. Instead, Laurie just held the book a little away from her and squinted at it a moment before she said, “No…no, I don’t think so. Maybe when you’re a little older.”

  Kate was about to protest that she already knew more about “Lesbian stuff” than any book could possibly tell her, when she noticed Louise looking at her and rolling her eyes as she shook her head. “Okay, Mom,” Kate said. It didn’t matter, after all. There were other ways to get close to her mother.

  Maybe she needed more of a school-and-family approach. She started watching for amusing events at school, writing them down in her composition book so she could share them with her mother. She asked Laurie to help her with her homework, even to suggest topics for compositions or science projects. She would sit next to Laurie on the couch and lean against her so that Laurie would have to put her arm around her while they watched family comedies on television.

  On the weekends, instead of putting off her mother’s suggestions for outings, she began to request things. At first, she tried to think of what Laurie would like, but all she came up with was bowling and miniature golf. And then one Friday, when Laurie asked what Kate would like to do on Sunday, it struck Kate that she could choose something she really liked. Nervously, she told Laurie about an exhibition of contemporary still lifes she’d read about in the newspaper. “I’d love to go see that,” her mother said.

  They looked at paintings all afternoon. From picture to picture Kate pointed to things she liked and didn’t like. She talked abou
t the colors, and the difference between the weird stuff and the pretty stuff, and how sometimes the weird stuff, like a picture of medical instruments lying in a basket of fruit, was cooler than the pretty stuff. She kept talking even when they left and went for a fruit fizz at a health-food restaurant. “You should try painting,” Laurie said. “You’ve got that set I gave you.”

  Kate shrugged. “That’s okay,” she said. “I just like to look.”

  Kate began to ask Laurie about her life. She tried asking about Grandpa and Grandma Cohen, whom Kate had never met, but that didn’t work at all. Laurie just changed the subject, or got up and started cleaning the apartment. So Kate asked about Jaqe. She made sure to call Laurie “Mom,” just in case Laurie might worry that Kate would stop loving her if she knew more about her “real” mother. She needn’t have worried. Once Laurie started, she talked every day about Jaqe. She told Kate of the things Jaqe liked to eat or wear, about places they visited, about trips they took.

  “You must have loved her a whole lot,” Kate said. Laurie nodded and told Kate about the dance where she and Jaqe had met. She told her how Jaqe had won the prize for most beautiful woman and then called Laurie to dance with her. Kate imagined her two mothers, the dead and the living, swirling about the floor. “That’s so romantic,” she said.

  After the subject of Jaqe, Kate tried to ask about Laurie’s other girlfriends. Laurie claimed she hardly remembered them. Anyway, she insisted, they didn’t matter. Only Jaqe mattered. Kate looked at her mother a little suspiciously. She was pretty sure that Laurie had gone out on dates recently. Even if her mother would only say she was “going out for the evening,” there was something about the way she dressed, and especially the looks Louise gave Laurie, that made it clear Laurie was at least experimenting. Kate certainly didn’t mind. It was eleven years, after all, and Kate had never even known Jaqe. But if Laurie didn’t want to talk about it, that too was fine.

  They moved on to Laurie’s political career. “Tell me about the DCC,” Kate said.

  “What?”

  “You know, the Dyke Central Committee.”

  “Jesus, where did you hear about that? Oh, right, Louise. I’ll kill her.”

  “It’s okay,” Kate said. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m real good at keeping secrets.”

  “I just worry about you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kate said. “No one’s going to take me away from you. I promise.”

  Laurie sighed. “I guess after eleven years I should start to relax.” She began to talk about her activist days, the marches and demonstrations, the stunts, the Valentines sent to female teachers. “It was really all just a game,” she said. “And I guess sometimes not a very nice one.”

  “I think it was great,” Kate said. “I wish I could go back in time to see you.”

  Laurie grinned. “Maybe I could dig out some pictures.”

  “Wow,” Kate said. “Could you? Please?”

  It took a few minutes but Laurie found an old album. There she was, shouting or raising her fist or waving a sign. There was even a picture of Laurie in a tuxedo dancing with a beautiful longhaired girl in an evening gown. “Oh my God,” Kate said, and grabbed the book from her mother. “I love this. You look so cool. Who are you dancing with?”

  In a flat voice, Laurie said, “Just a friend of mine,” and Kate knew the conversation had ended.

  Kate’s campaign hit its roughest moment on a Sunday afternoon in a wooded park overlooking the river. She and Laurie had gone there for a picnic, complete with a wicker picnic basket. They’d chosen that spot because Laurie had told Kate she used to go to the park sometimes in college, before she’d met Jaqe. She’d go there when she felt unhappy, she said, and sit by the river to think sad thoughts. “Can we go?” Kate said instantly.

  Laurie laughed. “Sure.”

  The day before the picnic, Kate decided she wanted to give her mother a present. She wished she could go sneak downtown to the department stores, but there was no time so she decided to give Laurie something of her own. She began looking through the drawer where she kept her treasures.

  When she first saw the rock she couldn’t think what it was doing there, with her charm bracelet loosely wrapped around it. Then she remembered. Jimmy had thrown it at her. The day Mother Night broke up the market. She looked at it closely.

  It was really kind of cool. If you looked at the lines in a certain way, they formed pictures. On one side it looked a little like a tree, on the other a boat with someone standing up and poling it along a river. Kate wrapped it in blue tissue paper and wrote out a little card. “To the World’s Greatest Mom.”

  The park was all hills and woods, the most natural in the city. They followed a trail to the very top, where the trees gave way to a small lawn leading to a cliff, with the water nearly two hundred feet below them. Even though there was a railing, Laurie made Kate promise not to go anywhere near the edge.

  Laurie spread out a green blanket she’d bought in a Goodwill shop. The week before, Mark had got in a book on picnics, and while Laurie couldn’t afford champagne or thousand-year-old eggs, and didn’t believe Kate should eat marmalade or chocolate truffles, she did bring scones and imported mineral water. She’d even made cucumber sandwiches. Kate seemed to love it all, marveling when Laurie pulled out a thermos and served hot peppermint tea in real china cups. They sat on the blanket and wiped their mouths with cloth napkins and pressed their lips together to keep from laughing.

  Now that the time had come for the present, Kate wondered if she should wait until she could get to a store after all. If she didn’t have enough money, Mark or Louise could lend her some. Her face must have shown something, because Laurie squinted at her and said, “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

  Kate plucked the stone from her pocket and handed it to Laurie. “Here,” she said quickly. “This is for you.”

  Laurie grinned, and grinned wider when she saw the card. Hurriedly Kate said, “It’s not much, really. It’s just something I found.”

  “It’s wonderful,” Laurie said, holding the rock up to the sun. “What great markings.”

  Kate scurried over. Seeing that Laurie was looking at the boat side, she said, “See? This one’s like a boat. With someone pushing it. With a pole.” Laurie nodded. “Look at the other side,” Kate said. When Laurie had turned it over, Kate said, “And this one’s like a tree.”

  Kate was so excited that she didn’t even notice the change in Laurie’s face. A moment later, however, she could hear the difference in her mother’s voice. “Where did you get this?” Laurie demanded. “Where the goddamn hell did you get this?”

  Kate backed away. “I found it.”

  “You’re lying. Goddamn it, don’t lie to me. Who gave this to you?”

  Kate was breathing hard. “Nobody,” she insisted. “I found it in the street.”

  “Did she—did—who gave this to you?”

  “Nobody!” Kate shouted.

  “Shit,” Laurie said, and jumped up. She strode to the edge of the cliff and threw the stone as far as she could out over the river. When Laurie turned she looked all scared, and Kate didn’t know if she should run. Instead, she just watched as Laurie squeezed shut her eyes, then opened them wide. Laurie started to say something, but nothing came out that Kate could hear. Finally Laurie took a deep breath, raising her shoulders and dropping them. “Honey,” she said. She stopped, took another breath. “You really found that?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “I told you I did, didn’t I?”

  Laurie nodded. “In the street, you said. What street? Where was it?”

  “I don’t know, just a street.”

  There was silence, with Laurie looking at the ground. When she looked up, she seemed about to cry. “I’m sorry I…threw away your present.”

  “I chose it special for you. I wrapped it and everything.”

  Laurie came over and put her arms around her. “I’m really sorry. It just—it reminded me of something.”

 
; Kate squirmed loose. “That doesn’t mean you can just throw it in the water.”

  Laurie sighed. “I know. I’m very, very sorry.”

  Kate knew she should let her mother go. What she’d come for after all was closeness. But she couldn’t resist saying, “You scared me. I just wanted to give you a present.”

  “I know,” Laurie said again. She looked forlorn, like a beaten child.

  Kate got up and went over to stroke her mother’s hair. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re still the world’s greatest mom.”

  “Even if I shout at you and throw your presents away?”

  Kate gave an elaborate shrug. “Sure,” she said.

  Kate could not decide if her campaign with her mother had worked or failed. Sitting alone in her room, she considered the situation and decided not to pursue it. Instead, she would move on to the wider non-dead world. Children, she thought. It was time to make friends.

  Kate was never very good at friendship, at least not with living kids (and she wondered now if even the dead kids only pretended to like her because she was Mother Night’s pet). Some kids wouldn’t even talk to her, and a few times girls whispered and giggled as she passed them. Kate didn’t mind very much. She had better things to do. On the rare occasions when somebody invited her to a party she often just sat and read a book or played with a toy until some adult came and pushed her to join a game. She always did her best to win, and usually did, just so she could ignore their surprised congratulations and go back to her corner.

  There were always one or two kids who thought of Kate as their friend. They were the weirdos, the kids no one else wanted. Kate knew they chose her as an easy target, someone even more of an outcast than themselves. Again she didn’t mind. It gave her someone to talk to during recess and lunch on the days her godmother didn’t come for her.

  Kate’s unpopularity bothered Laurie much more than it bothered Kate. She pushed Kate to go to parties, to invite kids over to play, to join clubs and teams. She would ask Kate if she wanted new clothes, whatever was fashionable, and when Kate rolled her eyes Laurie got mad and said it was okay to be popular, you didn’t have to look different.