“Golly, Myr! Better alert the authorities. Here we have a proven case of telekinesis! You’ll be famous, hounded by the press!”
Without bending her knees, Jada bent down and picked up a hairbrush that someone left on the porch long ago. She held it like a microphone and said in a deep voice, “We are here on the porch where college student and aspiring artist Myrtle Parcittadino has just exploded a jar using only the power of concentration. Tell us, Myr, where did you get the power to move things with your mind?”
I thought about how the jar had just kind of crumpled under my gaze. I thought about the postcard in my back pocket, and I thought seriously about an answer for Jada.
“It’s my moon time,” I told her.
Moon Time
“Moon time” was Margie’s way of saying menstrual period. She always maintained that a woman’s monthly cycle was beauteous and miraculous, something to be celebrated and consecrated. She liked to tell Bobbie, Sheila, and me about an order of nuns who embroidered flowers, geometric patterns, and sacred verses on their menstrual pads.
“I’d like to do that too,” she would say wistfully, “but I would have to spend all my time just stitching and stitching.”
Margie was proud of her copious flow. It wasn’t unusual, she told us with mock humility, for her moon times to last six or seven days. Mine seldom lasted less than a week, but I didn’t brag. I thought that was between me and the Goddess.
I remembered Margie holding forth on this topic at one of the early coven meetings.
“Your moon time is your time of strength, when your mystical powers are at their height,” she told us. Coven meetings were different from ceremonies. We still met in The Den at Margie’s, but the piano was undraped. The lights were on, and we had another white votive candle burning to symbolize the glow of the Goddess. I thought this one was vanilla scented, but it was hard to tell because Mrs. Martin had provided the coven with a platter of blondies, and the aroma that filled the room might just as easily have come from them. Sheila, Bobbie, and I consumed these gifts of the Goddess’s bounty and attended to Margie’s lecture.
“You can learn to recognize the energy of the Goddess concentrated in your muscles at this time of the cycle. During your moon time, be aware of a tightness in your lower back and abdomen. This is stored Goddess-energy.”
“Sounds like cramps,” I said.
“Myrtle, you live in a patriarchal culture. You have been conditioned to perceive Goddess-energy as pain, all the more so because you respond to the energy with tension instead of joy.
“When you feel the Goddess’s strength coiled in your belly, try to welcome the sensation instead of automatically reaching for the Midol. Open yourself to the experience. Let the Goddess-energy flow through you with your menstrual blood. If you celebrate your power instead of stifling it, your moon time will be a time of joy and pleasure for you!”
“Definitely,” said Bobbie. “It’s true about the Goddess-energy. I read where women are four times more likely to win the lottery if they buy the ticket during their period.”
Sheila nodded in solemn agreement. “My aunt once told me that her biggest bingo winnings are always when she’s got her period.”
“So the Goddess is a gambler?” I asked.
Margie ignored my irreverent tone and seized the opportunity to teach.
“The Goddess is not a gambler, but her energy can influence the physical sphere. Many menstruating women find that their energy affects their surroundings. Lights burn brighter, dishes break, books fall open to special pages, things like that. Many of us are slightly telekinetic all month, and the Goddess amplifies our power at our moon times.”
Warm Jungle Rain
Jada wearied of the sun tea investigation and went back inside. I swept the ruins of the jar into a dustpan with the brush Jada had used to interview me.
Jada went out to rehearsal. I stayed in and enjoyed the solitude.
The next morning I awoke from a vivid dream. I dreamt I was in the jungle, standing under the broad leaf of a banana tree. It was raining hard, and the leaf above me magnified the sound of the rain. It didn’t keep the rain off me, though, and I felt it on my thighs.
That’s when my eyes snapped open and the sound of the rain became the shower running across the hall.
I cursed my alarm clock. It must have allowed me to sleep into Jada’s bathroom time. When Jada went into the bathroom she stayed there for two hours. Besides completing the usual elimination and hygiene tasks, she shaved her legs, plucked her brows, and waxed her bikini area. She conditioned her hair, revitalized her skin, and moisturized her lips. She applied color to her cheekbones, lacquer to her toenails, and lenses to her eyeballs.
I knew all this because she had often tried to recruit me into her cosmetic cult. I resisted, but she was devoted and never missed her morning ritual. Weekdays, it lasted from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. That meant that if I woke up at 7:01, I had to wait till 9:01 to pee. For this reason I always got up at 6:40, occupied the bathroom for twenty minutes, and then relinquished it to Jada.
I had overslept. Ordinarily this would have been annoying, but now it was alarming. What in my dream was warm jungle rain between my legs, in reality was fresh red blood. My poor maxipad lay in a great big puddle of blood all around. Oh pity the maxi, all covered in gore. It couldn’t absorb one milliliter more.
All my supplies were in the bathroom. I would just have to interrupt Jada’s bathroom time and hope to escape without a lecture on the benefits of exfoliating regularly. I put on my robe and stepped into the hallway.
Jada sometimes did stretching exercises in the shower; she said the hot water loosened her muscles. I heard her doing them now. Beneath the sound of the shower turned on full blast was a quiet thump-thump.
I tapped on the door and said to it, “Jada, I just have to come in for a minute, okay?”
No answer. I was sure she couldn’t hear me over the water, so I opened the door and called into the steam, “Jada, I have to come in and get something, okay?” and entered the bathroom.
I rummaged around in my drawer for what I needed. Jada’s boxes and jars of beauty products were encroaching on my storage space, but eventually I unearthed my pads. At that moment the water stopped running and I heard the shower curtain open behind me.
I started to explain, pads held high to show Jada my justification for being there. “Not to invade your privacy, Jada, but I’m bleeding profusely, and I just had to get in here and … Omigod!”
I had turned around to see Jada take two towels off the rack, wrap one around herself, and hand the other one to Goat.
I lunged for the door, smashing my shin on the toilet. As I threw my arms out to catch my balance, my pads went sailing toward the tub.
Rock climbers need quick reflexes. Goat reached out and picked my pads from the air before him.
He held my pads out to me and I took them just as casually as if he had the towel around his waist instead of draped over his neck.
“Nice catch,” I told him.
This time I made it through the door without bumping into any bathroom fixtures. The air in the hallway was sweet and dry after the humid and strangely pungent bathroom. I leaned against the wall and waited for my heart to slow down enough that I could make the four steps back to my room without collapsing. Behind me and through the wall I heard Goat and Jada.
“Is she okay?” said Goat.
“Oh, sure. You probably gave her the thrill of a lifetime,” said Jada.
“I think she was really embarrassed.”
“Well, she shouldn’t be. It’s no big deal,” said Jada. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Jada’s words to live by.
I heard them walk toward the door, which sent me to my room in a hurry. I still needed the bathroom, but I couldn’t face them in the hallway.
Back in my room, I searched for my clock with the idea that I would punish it for subjecting me to that scene. But when I found it, it read only 6:50. My seldom-worn wri
stwatch confirmed the time. I hadn’t invaded Jada’s bathroom time; she had invaded mine.
Green Eggs and Ham
I was not nearly cool enough to be seen in Horton’s after 10:00 a.m. Horton’s was a coffee shop with a grill and a Dr. Seuss motif. Posters of the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat were a real draw, and by midmorning every day the staff of the university’s alternative newspaper had taken possession of the two front tables. From then on, you couldn’t get so much as a cup of Yertle the Turtle soup in that place unless you were a student activist, a member of an indie band, or seeing one or more of the above. Once the VIPs were served, there simply wasn’t any more seating.
Jada and Goat had no trouble getting a seat at Horton’s. Not only did they have sufficiently high coolness quotients, they were in tight with Seth and Julie, the editors of the alternative paper. In theory, Goat and Seth were roommates. They shared a tiny apartment a block or so from our sublet. Julie lived with about six other women in a high-rise on the other side of campus. In practice, Julie and Seth usually stayed at the apartment, and Goat usually stayed with Jada. The four of them often hung around Horton’s between classes.
But at least I was free to enjoy Horton’s cuisine anytime between 7:00 and 10:00 a.m. Once I again had access to the bathroom, I showered, dressed, and went to Horton’s for breakfast.
“Good morning, Myr!” said Sam. I had been devouring plates of Sam’s green eggs and ham since the previous September.
Sam was the most dapper fry cook I had ever seen. Today he was spiffy as ever in tan slacks, a neatly tucked chambray shirt, and, as usual, a tie that would make a circus poster look monochromatic. His taste in ties and his outsize mustache made him look more like a children’s TV personality than a restaurateur. Sam had taught elementary school for seven years before retiring to open his omelet shop.
“So, when are you going to lend me one of your beautiful pictures to put up in here?” Sam asked when I sat down at the counter.
“It would be arrogant of me to hang my work among such immortals,” I said, nodding toward a picture of the Lorax.
“No, I’m planning to take the Seuss stuff down for a while,” said Sam. “Horton’s is going to host an art show. There’s going to be an opening next week, with hors d’oeuvres, champagne, the works! I feed a lot of artists, and they’re always talking about how hard it is to get a place to show their work. A lot of the nicer coffee shops in the city host art shows, and I thought, Horton’s could do that.”
Sam was smart. The artwork would bring in new customers, and, if any of it sold, Sam would get a share of the price. It seemed crass to mention money, though, and I was sure Sam had motives more lofty than lust for filthy lucre.
“You’re like one of those eighteenth-century salon patrons,” I told him, “providing a space for art and ideas to flourish.”
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to do that. That’s what teaching was like, for a while.”
Cold, fresh whole milk: there’s nothing like it. I like it even better than chocolate milk. It is the perfect complement to a Hop on Poppy-seed Muffin, which was what I was having that morning. I licked off my milk mustache and asked, “Why did you quit teaching?”
Sam shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Little things just added up until I knew I had to make a change. I remember one day I found Trina Fenton, the smallest kid in the class, sitting on the floor underneath her desk, sobbing her little heart out. You know what was wrong? Ron Hastings wouldn’t be her boyfriend. It was too cruel. Seven years old and she’d already cast herself as Eponine in the Les Misérables of second grade. Pathetic. And there was nothing I could do to comfort her. At least here I feed people.”
Should I put jam on my muffin, or butter? I preferred butter, but the jam was right there on the counter. I looked through the packets. If there was strawberry, I’d use the jam; if not, I’d ask for butter.
Sam startled me by swiping the salt shaker and talking into it. “Earth to Sam, come in, Sam, you’re boring Myr, please terminate current transmission.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. I settled for mixed fruit jelly and opened the packet. “I’m just enjoying the cuisine.”
Sam placed a little crock of butter on the counter. “Try this, it’s better on those than the jelly.”
The butter became one with the fluffy muffin. Then the buttery muffin became one with me.
Sam said, “Anyway, I’d really like you to bring over a drawing. You’re bound to make a sale, not to mention the exposure you’d get.”
“Oh, thanks, Sam, but I don’t think I have anything ready to show right now.” I popped the last sweet muffin morsel in my mouth.
Sam replied without looking at me. He was putting something together below the counter, and his eyes were on his work. “Nonsense. I’ve seen your sketchbook. You’ve got real talent. Those sketches you did of the campus in winter? They’re sensational! They would sell in a minute! I know I would buy one.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it. I gotta get going, though. My class starts in fifteen minutes. But before I go, I’d like to order …”
Sam made a flourish and placed a foil-wrapped package on the counter. “Here you go, Myr. One Fox in Socks Lox and Cream Cheese Sandwich to go!”
I grinned at Sam and said, “I’m very impressed. How’d you know?”
“I wanted you to have some midmorning comfort food,” said Sam.
“Thanks. I could use it. I’m having a bad day.”
Sam made a big show of checking his Cat in the Hat wristwatch. “Myr,” he said, “it’s only a quarter to eight in the morning. Don’t you think it’s a little early to make that kind of judgment?”
I told Sam about Jada and Goat’s unscheduled and unorthodox use of the bathroom.
Sam was sympathetic. “Well, you know what they say,” he offered. “Eat a live toad for breakfast and nothing worse will happen the rest of the day.”
I picked up my sandwich and waved it around. “I think I prefer this.” I drained my milk glass, put my money on the counter, and started to go. “See ya, Sam.”
“Bring me a drawing,” he demanded as the door shut behind me.
Good ol’ Sam. After class I curled up on a sun-warmed concrete bench and surrendered myself to the salty lox and the creamy cheese, an appetizer. My next class, biology, wasn’t for three hours, plenty of time to gather sustenance for an afternoon of hard study.
Happily, the campus was surrounded by a ring of delis, bakeries, taco stands, and purveyors of fine chocolates. I made several purchases.
Boston Fern
Curb cuts are important. Not only for wheelchairs and strollers, but for people in my position. I had eaten so much that my tummy bumped against my knees with each step. I needed to take small ones. Preferably toward home.
I navigated my dirigible body back to the house and through the front door. There I was treated to a view of a two-headed, eight-legged creature, part llama, part Goat, undulating on the couch.
“Oh, sorry, guys,” I said. “I didn’t see you there. I just …”
I’m glad Margie made me read the Earth’s Children series by Jean M. Auel. Otherwise I would not have known what was going on in my living room. The books are about Ayla, a member of a goddess-worshipping society that flourished at the dawn of humanity. Ayla furthers civilization in many important ways. She domesticates the horse, invents the bra, and, in chapter after exquisitely detailed chapter, discovers the joy and wonder of human sexuality.
The activity on the couch put me in mind of the passage in which Ayla’s boyfriend “tasted her tangy salt.”
Jada kept up with her assignments, but she didn’t do much recreational reading. Goat read a lot; he always had a copy of Climber’s World or Extreme Sports Digest in his backpack. He didn’t read much fiction, though. So it seemed unlikely that either of them had read any Auel. They must have arrived at the idea independently. You had to admire that kind of creativity. Still, it was a poor choice of venue.
“Hey, folks, come on. That’s what we have a bathtub for,” I said. No answer.
That was okay. I didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries. There was homework to be done. I tossed my stomach over my shoulder so it wouldn’t drag on the steps and climbed up to my room.
I had five still-life drawings due by Friday morning. I put a mug and a tennis ball on either side of my Boston fern. Then I found my big drawing pad and art-supply box. I settled in across the desk from the fern composition with a pristine expanse of sketch paper before me, charcoal, erasers, and other supplies at the ready.
I didn’t feel like doing the assignment. I leafed through my old drawings instead. In between some uninspired sketches of tables and chairs from last semester was something I had drawn months ago and completely forgotten.
The drawing was of Keith Capri as a satyr, half man, half goat. Done in charcoal, it was all in shades of gray, but even so, the eyes looked sparkling blue. I had seen the subject of the portrait padding shirtless between the bathroom and Jada’s door often enough that I could draw his torso very accurately. The figure on the page had muscular shoulders, tiny dark nipples, and a line of curls descending from his navel. Below that he had furry haunches and legs ending in sharp, cloven hooves.
Like the mythological satyrs, the Goat in my drawing radiated sexual energy. He tossed his hair; he pawed the ground. It was probably the most kinetic picture I had ever drawn.
I looked at the picture of Goat. There was more to his nickname than rock climbing. Goats are notoriously rutty animals. And they’ll eat anything.
I sketched in a pair of long, arched horns emerging through Goat’s curly hair. I finally understood the meaning of the word “horny.”
I flipped back to the untouched page. Time to draw the fern. I held my charcoal above the paper and tried to portray light, green, airy. It was no good. I felt heavy, puce, full. I couldn’t draw with my jeans cutting into my middle anyway.
Myrtle of Willendorf Page 2
