Book of O'Kells: Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell

by Michael Conniff

  September 4, 1973

  You wouldn’t have come back unless you were guilty, I say to Scarlett. Would you? I turn to The Tommies in the basement. She wouldn’t have come back, would she? Why would she? This is no trial. We can’t put her in jail. She’s right about that. So why did she come back? Why? That’s the question! “Answer it!” The Tommies hiss. “Answer the question!” I say she’s here because she’s done something terrible, something terribly wrong. She came back because she knows she’s guilty as sin! “It’s not a crime to sleep with a man!” Scarlett cries. “I know we’re not married. I know that. But even that’s not a sin any more unless you’re some kind of blue nose or something. I haven’t committed any crime. I mean, what are you going to do? Put me in jail?” I tell Scarlett we can do much worse. I tell The Tommies that no one is to have their hair done at Scarlett’s Hair Wave any more. I know she’s the only hairdresser left in town, I say, but we don’t need to be doing our hair any more to look good for men, for them. That’s part of our sickness, I tell The Tommies, and this is part of our getting well. We need to feel good about what we see when we look at each other, when we look inside each other. Scarlett is weak, I tell The Tommies, and there’s no room for weakness in our world any more. They look at me like they know I’m right.

  September 9, 1973

  Why do you think you’re puking? I say to Linda Connolly on the stand. Why do you have to throw up? Why do you all hate yourselves so much? “Confess!” The Tommies hiss in the basement, like steam escaping from deformed radiators. You might as well, I say. “I’m sleeping with him, too,” she says. “With Eli. With Mordechai’s son. With a Cushing. What more can I say?” Linda Connolly throws up all over the basement floor.

  September 11, 1973

  “They’re not puking because of why you think,” Eileen Bell tells me. “They’re not purging.” They’re not? “Not any more.” Why then? “Are you blind? Dollars to donuts, The Tommies are all pregnant by a Cushing. By the same Cushing. By Eli Cushing. History is repeating itself, Eleanor, just like it always does.” Of course. How could it be any other way?

  September 13, 1973

  Mordechai’s son Eli is in the basement, head down, scratching away as always at today’s puzzle. “Ten letters down for hair of a religious nature. Beginning with a ‘D.’” Dreadlocks, I tell him. He sits in the chair at the front of the room, the crossword on his lap, the grid in his forehead that much deeper. You know why you’re here, I say. “I’m here because I want to help your cause.” You do? “Yes. I very much do. It’s the least I can do, actually.” Then tell us about what you’ve done. “What have I done? You mean who have I done.” You need to name names, I say. Eli Cushing looks around the basement at The Tommies. “Hell,” he says. “You name it.”

  September 16, 1973

  Scarlett returns to the stand for more punishment. I ask her how it feels to know your lover is screwing anything that moves. “He’s a pig,” she says. “All men are pigs.” Truer words, I tell her.

  September 17, 1973

  The Tommies take their turns on the stand to be deprogrammed. They are all ready for detox by the dozen, ready to confess over and over and over again to sleeping with Eli, with a Cushing, because they have no choice, no life, no future until they purge themselves of all Cushings and all men. A piece of cake. Now we can start over with a blank slate.

  September 21, 1973

  Earth to Eleanor! I just realized the benefits of Cushing randiness. A new generation, ready-made, has fallen, with a plop, into my lap. Let them eat Johnny Cake!

  October 12, 1973

  History is repeating itself again. All The Tommies say they slept with Mordechai’s son Eli, but not all of them are showing. Some of them, spiritual heirs to the Had Nots, are lying. “Let the latest Had Nots have their fun,” Eileen Bell tells me. “It won’t last. It never did before.”

  October 19, 1973

  Eileen Bell was right. The ones Eli failed to fuck are the ones who want to do him in now. “But what should we do?” they want to know. You can do nothing, I say. Or you can just wait until he’s dead drunk.

  October 30, 1973

  I call Charles Evans to make my next investment in the town. “First a bakery,” he says. “And now some kind of hospital? I need a rhyme or a reason.” There is none, I tell him. That’s the beauty of being filthy rich.

  November 6, 1973

  “Mordechai’s son was so drunk he sunk in the canal like a rock,” a Tommie tells me. Upon that rock, I say.

  November 7, 1973

  Well, I tell Chief Dan Snyder, Eli Cushing must have got all those bruises when he fell down dead drunk into the canal. That’s the only possible explanation I can see. I can’t for the life of me see how else a full-grown man could have ended up dead like that, with all those ugly bruises head-to-toe. “Sounds about right to me,” Chief Dan says. “A man gets stoned, well, there’s just no telling.” You take care of the details, I tell him, and I’ll take care of you. “God is in the details,” Chief Dan says.

  November 9, 1973

  I watch while they shove Eli Cushing into the oven. Then I go with The Tommies to the cemetery on the bluff with the last remains of a Cushing male in two Briody & Daughter coffee mugs with snap-on tops. I can feel his ashes, still hot, through the mugs, like steaming cups of coffee just poured. The Tommies are showing late and low with his children in their bellies, and their hair is a beautiful chopped-off mess since we put Scarlett’s off-limits. The wind is blowing so hard above the canal that when I dump out the ashes they fly downwind before The Tommies have a chance to duck. Even so, with the last of Mordechai’s son sticking to their cheeks and their chins, this still feels like a baptism or a birth, like the second coming of The Tommies.

  December 1, 1973

  Now that the Inquisition is over I can use the Briody & Daughter Bake Shop to make sure The Tommies are eating what they need. I want to create a state dedicated to our well-being, a welfare state of total dependence on me.

  December 4, 1973

  No one will ever gorge on Johnny Cake any more. We will never sell it again, and we will serve it up only when The Tommies meet, a sliver apiece, the closest thing to Communion. We never forget we came to life because of the rape of a woman by a man.

  December 15, 1973

  “Your grandmother had the right idea about men,” Eileen Bell tells me in the last moment of her life. “Fuck them.”

  December 17, 1973

  The funeral for Eileen Bell is a coming-out party for The New Tommies. I lead the procession along the man-made ditch to the wake at the Briody & Daughter Bake Shop. Everyone eats Johnny Cake, just a sliver in memoriam, and everyone keeps it down.

  December 22, 1973

  Constance Briody was clean. Constance Briody was pure. I tell the Tommies what Eileen Bell told me on her deathbed, that Constance Briody never slept with Mordechai Cushing. I make the whole story up out of whole cloth. We can canonize Eileen Bell now that she’s gone and make her one of the Founding Mothers of our movement. We will build a shrine to her constancy along the canal. Saints be praised!

  December 27, 1973

  The smell of Tommie vomit is still in the air.

  December 31, 1973

  Charles Evans calls to tell me the deed is done, that I am now the proud owner of a small private hospital in the last town along the canal. “What have you got up your sleeve?” he wants to know. Baby girls, I tell him.

  January 3, 1974

  With no time to waste it’s time for the best-laid plans. I decree that all Tommies who are pregnant must submit to a battery of tests at the hospital to ensure the health of their babies.

  January 26, 1974

  The tests show that it’s much worse than I thought, with far too many baby boys on the way. We really do live in a man’s world.

  February 6, 1974

  Eli Cushing was the only Cushing man left in the last town along the canal for a reason, I remind The Tommies in the baseme
nt of the Cathedral. I rant about the hereditary weakness of the Cushing men, of their inherent inability after Thomas Cushing to produce their own male heirs. I remind them the male babies born to The Tommies never live more than a day or two, and that we need everyone to come clean, to abort the male seeds if we are to build a new life, a new world for our girls in the last town along the canal. “But I’ve always wanted a child,” Linda Connolly says. “I’ve always wanted a boy.” Not in this town, I tell her in front of The Tommies. Not in this life. I tell her she must give in to the greater good or get out of town.

  February 20, 1974

  “All right!” Linda Connolly says in the basement to The Tommies. “I’ll give him up! All right? It’s all right. Really. I really want to. I do. It’s for the good of everyone, for the best.” Then she vomits all over the floor.

  March 1, 1974

  All The Tommies in town get new bowl haircuts. We look like Roundheads, like religious fanatics, but at least it’s an improvement on our chopped-off hair. The purging of the past is complete. Now we are ready to binge on the future.

  March 12, 1974

  I was right. Two of the Tommies, including Linda Connolly, miscarry the Cushing males before they can abort on command. The rest of The Tommies carrying male Cushing heirs give in to me because they see no reason to take a chance. Thank God for abortion, I tell them.

  March 14, 1974

  I expect Linda Connolly to be devastated, but instead she’s become a new woman. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” she says. “My body wanted nothing to do with Cushing men.”

  March 17, 1974

  Will. The only man I ever loved, bless him. The only man I will ever miss. I miss my brother every day, but especially today.

  May 1, 1974

  The Eileen Bell Lying-In Hospital For Women has been modernized, upgraded, made ready for the new Cushing blood we’re injecting into the town. The rest is history or will be soon enough.

  May 9, 1974

  The Tommies are going into labor now with our baby girls, with our future in their hands. Our first, named Belle and born to Scarlett, is beautiful, of course. Cushing girls are always so beautiful, if I do say so myself.

  May 21, 1974

  Our baby girls come in a flurry, in a hurry, like they can’t wait to be with their sisters and their mothers and their aunts. We count their hands and legs, their fingers and the toes on their tiny feet. There is a purity to them, a perfection that belongs to all of us. We share the same blood, the same life, the same world of our own making.

  June 2, 1974

  When I came to this godforsaken town, I had to convince the children born of The Great Fornicator’s Sons and daughters and granddaughters to live a life without men, with nothing but love for one another. Now we have done the impossible. We have created a new generation of Tommies from scratch. Just watch our smoke.

  June 6, 1974

  The Constance Briody Memorial Nursery opened this morning. We will raise our girls together in the building on Main Street that used to be Canal Light & Power. Our girls will have the best of everything, the best medicine, the best education, the very best care, and all the love a town full of mothers can bring to the party. Some might think of it as brainwashing. I call it cleansing the palate before the main course.

  July 1, 1974

  I am going to buy up everything that matters in this godforsaken town. I know a bargain when I see one, and this town is one big bargain, bottom to top.

  July 11, 1974

  I will foreclose on all the men who own businesses in the last town along the canal. For five cents on the dollar, I can wipe them right off the face of the earth.

  July 22, 1973

  “More good money after bad,” Charles Evans says as he releases the funds. “What in the name of God are you trying to do?” I can’t even begin to tell you, I tell him.

  August 8, 1974

  I buy the Queen Mother for a song. I’ve always wanted to own my own home.

  September 7, 1974

  I own the bank now. And the hospital. And the television and radio stations. And the newspaper and of course the bakery. And the Queen Mother. I give Tommies minority stakes in the stores here, with yours truly the controlling investor.

  October 9, 1974

  I can buy anything I want so I buy a bar on Main Street. I’m going to call it The Main Drag and it’s going to be FTO, For Tommies Only.

  October 10, 1974

  The Tommies are still vomiting, even the ones who just gave birth. I have no idea why.

  October 12, 1974

  Charles Evans arrives unannounced. A mistake, I tell him. “Perhaps so,” he says. “But I know that if I asked your permission you would say no. And I had a fiduciary responsibility to come. Not to mention a personal obligation to you as an old friend. I could no longer accept my fee sight unseen when it is my duty to save you from yourself.” What are you? I say. A lifeguard? “I would first like to see your Queen Mother. I would like to know how you could spend that kind of money on what sounds like a trumped-up motel.” Consider it done, I say. I stay in the Constance Briody suite, but you can have the Eileen Bell across the hall all to yourself. “All I want is a firm mattress, no cockroaches, and a phone that gets a dial tone.” I tell him the Queen Mother features the finest Princess phones.

  October 23, 1974

  “All right, all right,” Charles Evans says. “I’ve seen quite enough. Enough! But I do have one question. What have you done to the women in this town? Are they all AC-DC or what-have-you?” No, I tell him. DC only. Direct Current. Very direct. “Well, congratulations, then,” he says. “You’ve done it. You’ve created a hell on earth for men. It’s your dream come true, I suppose. May God have mercy on your soul.” So glad you could come, I say.

  November 22, 1974

  There’s still so much to do here—to set up the farms, the schools, the businesses. Sometimes I wish there was a man around to lift up a bag of cement. But we have our ways.

  December 10, 1974

  Our baby girls are growing into little people, with little hands, little ears, and little feet. Will they ever be so perfect again?

  December 25, 1974

  I want my girls to be as tall or taller than any man, and every bit as strong. What I want for The Tommies is for their children to be Tomgirls, pure and simple. Is that so much to ask?

  January 1, 1975

  The obvious finally occurs to me. If my half-brother Tom is so evil because he is so inbred, because he was all Cushing, a real bastard in every way, then why can’t we turn that inside out and create the perfect race of women on purpose? Why settle, I ask The Tommies, for a town that’s owned by a woman, that’s run by women? Why not create a new world with the Cushing in all of us as the starting point, instead of the be-all and end-all? Why the hell not? We don’t need men. We just need their sperm, and we know they come cheap.

  February 1, 1975

  Miracles never cease. Sliv, of all people, arrives in the last town along the canal. “My Missus, she passed on,” Sliv says. “But I’m not ready to cash in my chips just yet. I mean, in the old days, you had the door and the chains and you needed somebody with half a brain to run that elevator. There was like an art to it, getting it to come out just right, the door even with the floor on the first swipe. But now it’s just buttons that any monkey can push, and I ain’t no monkey, Miss O’K.” I can see that, I say. “And it just wasn’t the same without your Ma there, either, God rest her soul. It was just me sitting there all alone all day, a baboon pressing buttons, with nobody really needing me. I thought you might need some help, to be honest. I’m okay with my Social Security, my pension, what I got coming. Pay me what you can pay me, or don’t pay me at all. It don’t matter. I just thought you might need someone to help with the heavy lifting.” If I had ten more like you, I tell Sliv, I could move the world.

  March 17, 1974

  “Miss O’K?” Sliv says. “I never seen so many baby girls in my life. Is t
here something in the water in this town?” Not yet, I say.

  April 5, 1975

  One other thing, I say to Sliv. Just ignore what I say. It’s just politics. I don’t mean the half of it, anyway, and it really doesn’t mean anything. It’s like arguing about religion. “I can’t listen to any of that stuff, anyway, Miss O’K, tell you the truth,” Sliv says. “In one ear, gone tomorrow.”