It wasn’t until the next day that Kate found the chance to do what needed to be done. She thought of doing it at night, after her mother had gone to sleep. But Laurie stayed up notoriously late, and besides, the sounds might wake her. And she thought of doing it at lunchtime, while Alicia’s acolytes were squeaking and whispering together. But she wasn’t sure how long it all might take, and she wanted to be there with Alicia when it happened. So she waited until after school, with Laurie still at work, when she could get rid of her books at home, change to a dark red dress, and head for the small park near her apartment building.
She found a wide rock to stand on and for nearly a minute she did only that, stand there, waiting for a woman walking a dog and a man on a bicycle to move out of sight. She held her whistle in the palm of her hand and stared at it. It was really cute, she thought, a silver tube about an inch and a half long, with the labyrinth design marked into the metal on the side. Maybe she shouldn’t do it. Maybe she should just run home before Laurie could catch her all dressed up. But then she thought of poor Alicia, and how she alone of all the people in the world could help her. She blew on the whistle as hard as she could.
She realized she was expecting a crack of thunder when it didn’t happen. In the silence, she turned around and saw Mother Night walking toward her across the grass, with Cara and Lillian close behind. Kate jumped off the rock and ran to put her arms around her godmother. “You’re late,” she said. “I mean, I thought you’d come right away.”
“My apologies, Kate,” Mother Night said. “I will try to do better next time.” She wore a knee-length dress of layers of thin silk, green and blue and gold, all shining through each other like a series of screens. Her circular hat shone a dark red, the same color as Kate’s dress.
“I need your help,” Kate said. She told her about Alicia, her fear of dying and her “stupid weird ideas,” and how Kate tried to tell her the truth but she just got angry, and even when her father died she just wouldn’t listen.
Mother Night said, “I will speak to her if you choose, Kate, but she will not believe me any more than she believed you.”
Kate shook her head. “No, it’s not that.” She noticed Lillian staring at her.
“Are you saying you want me to take her to see him? I definitely would not recommend that. It would upset her more than it would please her.”
“No,” Kate said. “I want you to bring him back.”
Lillian smiled slightly. Cara rolled her eyes. Mother Night said, “Back?”
“You know, back. Back from the dead. Alive.”
Mother Night shook her head, very slowly. The sun, directly behind her, lit first one side of her face, then the other. “No.”
“No?” Kate repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I cannot do that.”
“You can.”
“No.”
“You’re lying. It’s not true. You just don’t want to help me. This is the only time I’ve ever asked you for anything.”
“I do not lie, Kate.”
Cara put her hand on Kate’s shoulder. “Believe her, kid. I’ve known her for a long time, and she always means what she says.”
Kate twisted away. “I don’t care.” To Mother Night she said, “You’re my godmother. You’re supposed to help me.” Mother Night didn’t answer. “You’ve got all your…your cars and motorcycles and balloons and everything, but you won’t even help me keep my friend. You’re just a fake!” She turned and ran along the path toward the street.
Lillian called, “Kate?” and took a step, but Cara grabbed hold of her wrist. Lillian turned. “Uh-uh,” Cara said and shook her head. Lillian shrugged and stepped back.
At home, Kate frantically removed her dress. She grunted as she worked the gold chain with the whistle off her neck. “Stupid, stupid,” she said, and threw it at the wall. She glanced at the clock, making sure Laurie wasn’t due home for half an hour. Then she began to cry. She cried in big gulps, adding occasional high-pitched screams. “You’re supposed to help me!” she cried to the air. “You’re my godmother. You’re supposed to do what I say!”
When Laurie got home, she found Kate in the living room, reading a girls’ mystery story. Though Kate didn’t look up, she could feel her mother appraising her. Please, Kate thought, just go away. I don’t want to talk. I’m fine, I’m fine. Can’t you see that?
“Sweetheart?” Laurie said. Kate kept herself from rolling her eyes as she looked up. Laurie said, “Umm…what would you like for dinner?”
“I don’t care. Spaghetti’s okay.” Laurie nodded and turned toward the door. “I’ll help,” Kate said, surprising herself.
Kate was cutting a cucumber when Laurie came over and stroked her shoulder in that tentative way she had, as if her daughter frightened her. “You know,” she said, “you really are a good person. And good people—sometimes people don’t understand good people. Or they use their goodness as a way to hurt them.”
“I guess,” Kate said.
“I think maybe your friend Alicia has some problems.”
“You mean about her dad dying?”
“Well, I think she may have had them before that. And people with problems—sometimes it makes it hard for them to accept someone else’s goodness.”
Kate looked down modestly. “I know,” she said.
Her mother stroked her shoulder again. “I’m sure you do. Maybe someday Alicia will understand that you just wanted to comfort her. But for now, I think you’re going to have to leave her alone. I’m sure there are lots of other girls to be friends with.” Kate nodded. And then, as if she realized that wasn’t enough, she put her arms around her mother and laid her head on her mother’s chest.
Looking down at the red waves of her daughter’s hair, Laurie thought of Jaqe, and how proud she would have been of Kate, and of Laurie, who had worked so hard, given up so much, to make the child worthy of the mother who had given her life. And yet, barely noticeable, a queasiness pulsed through the love and the pride.
Kate had already made up her mind not to speak to Alicia, not ever again. When Alicia returned to school Kate did her best to consider the chair behind her empty, and when Alicia stood before the class to thank them for their “heartfelt caring” and to tell them of the “beauty and splendor” of her father’s funeral, Kate just stared out the window.
She decided as well to ignore her godmother. She wrapped the chain around the whistle and laid it in the jewelry box, alongside Alicia’s silk square. “The two people who have hurt me the most,” Kate whispered to herself.
She did not see Mother Night for nearly a month, and when she did, it happened through no intent of hers. She and Laurie had traveled to Grandma and Grandpa Lang’s for the weekend. After a Saturday of shopping trips and presents, and Laurie’s reports of Kate’s achievements, Kate had gone to sleep in Jaqe’s old bedroom, with her mother in the room next door. She had gone to bed smiling, for Laurie had whispered to her the story of her and Jaqe’s compromise with Mr. and Mrs. Lang’s demand that Laurie not sleep in Jaqe’s bed.
Sometime in the middle of the night Kate opened her eyes. Lying sideways, she stared at a blue darkness in the middle of the moonlit room. It reminded her of the sky around the dying star her godmother had shown her. Only when the darkness moved did she realize she was looking at fiber, a dress, a body. “Stand up,” Mother Night said.
Kate’s heart began to push against her chest as if it were trying to escape. Absurdly, she wished for a moment that she had kept her protective whistle. She got up and stood beside the bed.
Mother Night stood with her back to the window. She wore a long blue dress, old-fashioned and prim, with buttons up to the neck, and lace-up boots that disappeared under the hem of the dress. For once, she wore no hat. Her dark hair, its redness faintly visible in the moonlight, rolled down her back, much longer than Kate had ever suspected. Kate began to shiver. The thought of running moved her eyes to the door. She yelped when she saw Cara leanin
g against the wall. Cara nodded once, and cocked a finger at her.
“We are going out,” Mother Night said. “Please put on your shoes and socks.”
“Out?” Kate said. “It’s the middle of the night.” Her godmother said nothing. “I’m not allowed. What about my mom? She’ll have a fit.”
“We will return before she wakes up.”
“But what if we wake her when we leave?”
“We will not wake her. Nor your grandparents.”
“That’s not fair,” Kate said. “You can’t just—just come and take me whenever you want and—and put a spell or something on my mom. It’s not fair.”
A slight smile pulled at Mother Night’s mouth. “Nevertheless,” she said, “I am doing it.”
Kate pulled on her white socks and her running shoes. They looked dumb, she thought, under her flannel nightie. “Won’t I get cold?” she asked.
“Cara will give you her jacket.”
Walking down the stairs between her godmother and Cara, Kate wondered what would happen if she screamed. Instead, she stayed silent until they had left the house and were crossing the lawn to Mother Night’s limousine parked at the edge of the grass. Kate fell back a little to whisper to Cara, “Is she going to punish me?”
“Punish you? For what? You haven’t done anything.”
“Then where are we going?”
“Mother wants to give you a gift.”
They drove for hours, it seemed, to a woods at the edge of a housing development Kate had never seen. They left the car and quickly moved out of sight of the houses. The trees became dense and dark. If they left her there, Kate wondered, would she ever find her way back? Suddenly they came into a small meadow. Despite the lateness of the year, thick grass rose up around Kate’s legs. Looking at the trees from the open air, they appeared even denser than when she was traveling through them. She wished she could have secretly left some trail behind her.
Her godmother said, “Kate, look at me.” Kate turned her head as far to the side as it would go. “That will not do,” Mother Night said. Her hand on Kate’s cheek gently turned Kate’s head to face her. She was squatting down with her long dress tucked under her knees. With a shock Kate saw that Mother Night’s head was lower than hers. If Laurie bent down like that, it brought her and Kate to eye level. Kate had never realized how short Mother Night was.
“Now you must listen,” Mother Night said. “I will show you how to become a healer.”
“Healer?”
“Yes. Because of your concern for people’s anguish about death.” She grabbed hold of some weeds growing beside them. “Do you see these plants?” Kate stared at them. They were tall, about five feet high, with a thin stalk and small branches holding clumps of purple berries. When Kate looked up, she noticed that these plants grew all through the meadow. Her godmother said, “Remember the look of them. When you get older you will come to this place and harvest them, several at a time.”
“How will I find it?” Kate asked. “I mean, the place.”
“When the time approaches, Cara will show you the path in the daytime, and you must memorize it. For the harvest you must come at night, during the full moon, for the moon will increase the plant’s potency.”
“Potency?”
Mother Night slowly pulled the plants in her hands loose from the ground. She shook them slightly to loosen the dirt from the roots. “This is what concerns you,” she said. “The root. You will take the roots and clean them and cut them in pieces and soak the pieces in alcohol for six weeks. When you have removed the pieces, this will create a solution called a tincture.”
Kate glanced at Cara, who told her, “Don’t worry, it’s easy.”
“When someone becomes very ill you will go to his or her bed. You will look for me in the room. If you do not see me anywhere, then the illness is minor and you can suggest ordinary healing to the person. But if I appear in the room, you must look where I stand.”
“Where you stand?”
“Yes. Now remember this carefully. If you see me by the foot of the bed, you will tell people that you, and you alone, can heal them. Then you will give them the tincture. Three drops in water three times a day for three days, and they will become better. But if you see me by the head of the bed, then you must tell them nothing can be done and they should prepare for death. You will sit beside them, and speak to them of dying. And they will believe you and find peace. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Kate said. “Do I have to do all these things?”
Mother Night stood up. Smiling, she stroked Kate’s cheek. “No, Kate darling, I do not compel you to do anything. I give you this knowledge as a gift, a companion to the knowledge you already possess as my goddaughter. You may use it as you wish. But I must tell you—as with Alicia, people’s fear of death will call to you. Their yearning will seek you out.”
Kate said, “I guess.”
Mother Night laughed and hugged her. “Good. Then we will return. You do not need to think about these things for now, Kate. They will stay with you, and when you become an adult you may decide for yourself what to do with them.” She put a hand on Kate’s shoulder and guided her back toward the woods.
Just before they left the meadow, Kate turned and looked back. To her surprise, she saw small bright lights on many of the trees at the far side of the grass. At first, she thought the trees were on fire. Then she realized—candles. Each flame was a candle, perched on the branches and burning in the night. Kate was about to ask about them when her godmother moved her into the woods, and the fires vanished from sight.
One
The Secret in the Brown Bottle
The sign read “Opening to the Great Mystery: Death as a Partner in Healing. A Workshop with Kate Cohen.” Kate nodded her approval. They’d made the poster a good size, she thought, and given it a prominent place near the entrance, just where your eye would fall if you were standing and catching your breath after coming in from the cold.
“How do you like it?”
Kate turned her head to look at Eleanor Hofstra, programming director of the Open Circle Conference Center. Eleanor was tall, though still an inch or two shorter than Kate’s five-foot-ten. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, pretty with a round face and tight black curls. She wore a short green sweater, embroidered with pink and yellow flowers, over a long gray woolen skirt and soft brown boots. Kate smiled at her. “It’s great,” she said. “I love it.”
“I hope the graphics turned out okay.”
“They’re perfect. I’m really happy you were able to use them.” Along with her bio material and press photo, and the publicity texts for her “performances” (a term she used only to herself), Kate always sent a small group of images taken from her collection of mythic representations of death.
“Oh, of course,” Eleanor said. “They’re so…so evocative. I must tell you, everyone here is so excited that you’re doing this.”
Thanking her yet again, Kate began to move toward the lounge and the ornate brass samovar filled with green tea. Why did she ever agree to teach in the Northeast in winter? She could be sitting in the tropical sun now if she’d just done a better job of scheduling. Or even Africa, or New Zealand in the middle of summer (except that none of the offers she’d gotten included enough money to make it worth the trip). At least, she thought, they did the place up right. Polished hardwood floors with Persian rugs in the workshop rooms, large potted plants in the dining room, food you actually could enjoy, a large stone fireplace in the lecture hall and a smaller one in the lounge, and a bedroom with a view over the tops of the pine trees to the mountains. No wonder people from the cities poured out here to spend $420 each on a weekend workshop. Enjoy life while you learn about death. Well, why not? Kate was glad she’d come early and could stay a day or two afterward if she wanted.
Sitting on one end of an overlong couch, Kate warmed her hands on a mug full of hot tea. She was wearing a long loose velour top, extra thick and soft, over c
otton tights and heavy socks. Laurie had given her the velour top. She smiled as she thought of her mother, and the last time she’d seen her, standing up at a Lesbian Justice meeting, saying that lesbian mothers would die before giving up their children. Afterward, Kate had told her what a great speech it was, and added, “Who would have thought we’d both end up as public speakers?” Laurie had laughed and said she was hardly in the same league as her famous daughter. “Maybe,” Kate had said, “but what you speak about really matters.” Laurie had looked startled, and then, as she so often did, changed the subject.
At the end of the couch, Eleanor leaned toward her. “I just have to ask you,” she said. “Where did you get such wonderful hair?”
Kate laughed and moved her head slightly, rolling her hair against her shoulders. She said, “I’m afraid all the credit goes to some gene locked away in my chromosomes. And where those come from will have to remain a bigger mystery than what happens after we die.” Actually, she thought, she could get the information if she wanted it. Laurie and Mark had offered her the sealed information when she was eighteen. She’d turned it down then and wasn’t about to change her mind now.
“Oh,” Eleanor said. “Oh, I’m sorry.” She blushed again, forcing Kate to look away to keep from smiling. Kate’s family history, or lack of it, was well known—her anonymous father (though she allowed people to think the sperm came from a “bank,” a term which always made it so much more respectable), her mother who’d died before Kate could know her. A television journalist had suggested once that Kate’s exploration and acceptance of death had come from the need to understand the loss of her mother. Kate had contradicted her—gently, of course—and spoke of the love and dedication she’d learned from Laurie.
“You don’t have to apologize,” Kate said to Eleanor. “I’m very happy with my genes. Whatever their source.” She leaned back and took a sip of tea. “Mmm, it’s really lovely here. Do you live here full-time?”
Godmother Night Page 31
