CHAPTER 29
It was just past the sixth month, the twenty-sixth week expiring as the vans drove up: small vans, personal, but carrying all that her Corn Sisters felt was worth transferring. Twelve of them: each presorted into a threesome, moving into their assigned spots, for the moving plan was detailed according to astrological exactness...each selected according to Zodiac sign, each located according to star-point...groups representing the elementals: fire, air, earth, water; others, the Four Winds; add the Sacred Numbers…the day, itself, was an equinoctial celebration: proportional of light and darkness… Dalores was number Thirteen: catalytic, cabalistic, alien, a Cloud of Unknowing—herself, the transforming agent...what was The Corn about but transformation in terms of a transubstantiation—of flesh into mind into soul into spirit into…that is why they came...to discover and explore the sequential into.
The house—so many had said, so many with psychic sensitivity, spiritual openness, shamanistic talents—the house is a “special place”…so to be within it each had to become special...here, discussed and debated and fracturing many evenings with early morning break-downs, walk-outs, bad feelings…special as in “set apart” as in the need for a “purification” but leery of how males had “chosen” themselves and “purified” themselves.
“But this is a time of a Great Turning. Turning away. Turning within. Turning towards. It’s this Turning Towards which is unknown to us. Maybe,” she was an inspired one, everyone agreed that Bertha had changed: grown, blossomed, molted, into a Seer—she called herself, “Witch. I’m just a witch.” She was seeing with a “special sight” but of such fogginess that she inveighed her Sisters to criticize her, to knock off the mud from the diamonds she had been granted “by the Great Mother!”...to wash and wash and wash thoughts, ideas, images, feelings until “We all see.”
Collective sight. Communal seeing. Bertha trusted such.
As they entered the house they came as Virgins. Not as to hymen but as to heart. “Purity of heart.” It meant many things: the two with pre-teens dedicated them to their father’s care—one divorced and bitter, one of painful, anguishing departure…those involved in relationships of any sort: husband/wife, Significant Others, Life Partners, these were “set aside”—for a time: “lay down your life…?” Not unknowing of the pain, not unaware of the thrice-hooked-barb, “You’re just imitating the worst in male spirituality!”
But they—each and all having seen, collectively and communally, that they had been called, summoned, indeed, invoked by that presence which was inside Dalores—her within which needed to be called to come forth…it was this imagining, of whom the child in her womb was: daughter, mother, son, father?…as she grieved so was she grieved back: hearing, sensing, knowing, imagining what she says to them now as she places her hand upon her belly, as they all place their common hand: “The One is Many. The Many is One.”
It was this presence of hope and despair, of the paradox of calling as being called, within such a full embrace of such an empty, dissolving disappearance that they entered the house...itself a pang-inflicting act of parturition.
It was not that they removed themselves from the “real world”. Rather they sought to practice a “being in the world, not of the world” discipline. Not unaware of the slipperiness of both “in” and “of.” For it was a spiritual direction employed by the religions which had oppressed them...burned them at the stake. Yet, “How else can we proceed?”
“In” and “of” they redefined and reimagined in terms of their most intimate selves. “The personal is political” was a verbal pennon hoisted by most feminists of the day. For The Corn Sisters the “is” was the crux of the matter.
Crux in terms, itself, of a crucifixion. For they boldly grasped that their just being “in” the house was threatening to everyone. To Establishment and Left Wing males. To Straight and Lesbian women. To Christians and Jews and every religion of biblical or patriarchal stripe.
But mostly: a threat, each to the other.
The daily threat was of dying. Of being killed, murdered, tortured and slain by the Other. “Seek to become yourself as you become her.”
It was the Other who was you.
The daily threat was of birthing.
“You” who had mistaken her as separate from you, as other in terms of cut-offness, in terms of alienness—“The Father God is the Sky, but they turned him into a monster from another planet. A not human. A superhuman; supernatural.”
It was for them to find the divine, the spiritual, the whole “naturally”—the fullness, the abundance of the term in each Other.
To look at each Other and not see the death which the Fathers had trained them to see, had forced them to imagine. “Forced. Because your body tells you otherwise. Each month we pass through the dying. Our whole physical life, our birthing life, gives the lie to their sense of dying. Their annihilation.”
As they leave the house each day, so they struggle not to leave. To bring the house with them. To be that holy place...a shekinah, a living tabernacle. To be so through Intention.
Intending—not just thought, not just a remembering, rather an imagining—imagining oneself as fuller...robust, as in one place with more than one presence…evoking this through skin: the skin shared with the earth: the skin of air—so a fragrance of one within the threesome: Alicia’s slight muskiness, her love of animals and her delight in splashing musk over her lover and lovers, this carried in a treasure of cloth, a scapular beneath a blouse, sniffing and calling forth her insights, her imaginings…the skin of sight—her way of looking, Janet the potter: throwing the world into shapes and forms, always moving from a day’s encounter with a thought, a vision, an embrace and re-visioning in clay: wearing earrings, necklaces, brooches that she fired, touching them to make her present...the skin of taste—Anna’s way of “cooking”: “You’re sweet potatoes, Karen,” and the merriment becomes contagious, Anna and Karen having shared a night together, all now knowing Anna’s imagining: her licking of Karen’s skin, licking her as if collecting her inner essence which seeps up: “Rises like a broth,” so Anna proclaims: her method, her way, a taster, with cooking imagination...so she has Janet mold amulets of food: sweet potato for Karen, tomato for Miranda, chili pepper for Red Fox, and as the amulet touch lips, the fullness intensifies…the skin of skin: the lover’s recall, what two had shared together, exchanged, ripped from each other and then re-clothed, just to touch the fingertips—a kiss, a sniff, a pressing upon a cheek, and the moment is reimagined: intended.
Intending the robust body.
“Of” what world? For the “of” itself expressed their belief, their hope, their search for other worlds: more plenteous worlds, multidimensional in ways unknown, inexpressible.
And Dalores was one of these “of’s.”
Pregnancy.
“What is it?”
“A state of being?”
“A mystery?”
“Life’s self-deprecating joke?”
“Horror and Pain!”
“The death of the male.”
Dalores rubs her tummy. Her Sisters so rub—theirs and hers. Each in procession, touching, rubbing.
Not wanting Dalores to be alone.
In the sense of being abandoned.
If Frank had known, would he have abandoned me?
“Men know no better. It’s all they have.”
“How can we be certain we’re different?”
“Because we have escaped.” Bertha.
Escape—it was what had brought The Corn together in the first place. Just having found themselves in a room, each having a particular story about their own particular “room”—in a room realizing that others—one or two, sometimes more—were plotting an escape…not calling it “escape” but drawing lines which converged, intersected, congealed as a route, a pathway, openings of secret passageways…drawing with political lines: “Liberation!” “Freedom!” “Equal Pay!”...dr
awing with spiritual lines: “The Holy Spirit is female!” “Goddess!” “The Earth is Our Mother!”...drawing with sexual lines: “My Body, My Self!” “My Sister, My Lover!” “Love the one you’re with!”
“This house was my escape route.” She had had long hours with Dalores talking about Frank. Yet, the heart endlessly hurt even though the remembering was freeing.
“You all got here. Maybe escaping. Maybe to escape.”
“Speak on, Sister. Speak as you See,” several urged; common prayer.
“My Sister, my Love”...she smiles towards Dalores, enigmatic both ways: “I’ve escaped to her body.” Pause. Saying what must be said, but feeling the razor blade slice her: slice off her lips, slice off her nipples, slice off her pubic folds—the grappling hands of the Torturer, Burner of Her Flesh: Friar Otto is present, but Bertha steadies herself, strengthens herself through intending Dalores…“He gave me his cock,” mock laughter, snide tittering all around at the humor of “gave”...“and I received him. Pleasured him. Drank him.
Of course, I didn’t see it that way, back then...I must celebrate him...celebrate him as a mysterious agent of Her presence—The Goddess be praised!—for it was when he took me,” subdued smiles, eager ears, “that I first spied Her.” Collectively, they are seeing Her, seeing Her as each had glimpsed when being with a him.
“How? I don’t know. He accepted me. Received me. Drank me.” Hesitation, fear, emptying, kenosis, yanking: “Frank devoured me. We devoured. He became pregnant!”
There never had to be an exact conclusion or a summary statement or a bulleting of what had been said and not said…there simply had to be an opening...Bertha had opened, not Frank but Dalores…“I found you there.”
Dancing—it was her way, so she came before them all, creating by the uplift of her face, the splay of her feet, a space: she dances, Bertha is dancing—arms which slowly rise and fall, bird wings, long, liquid lines, up and down swirling her shawl she pivots slightly, slowly, turning full circle by small movements...she alights upon Dalores’ shoulder, sharing the play of the shawl, coos: a very soft baby sound, small, ever so wee...with it begins her flock of breathing, up and down and around Dalores who rises upon the softness, upon the quiet of the huffy invitation—she becomes hard: rock, the firmament, raising her arms straight above her head, an arrow, solid...the shawl is stuck upon her upraised hands, finger impaled as ever more softly does Bertha move about so harder—intense, dense—a diamond does Dalores become...fierce of face, soul leaking from her eyes in pearl drops as she presses herself within—strains most fiercely, mightily, a face of repulsion, resistance, abhorrence—warding off bird sounds, scarecrow to comforting coos—but they are bound: snagged by the shawl...this now what they share, all which they share, only what they share—umbilical cord and hangman’s noose…they are the steely hardness of the cock, the projectile, the blade—steel silence: the immobility of a bullet—portending shattering of bone, puncturing of heart, stealing of breath…they are tableaux: an imagination which grips the Sisters...an inexplicable play of hard and soft, but yet so explicable...generating heaps and heaps of images, remembrances, vivid daydreams, nightmares! Then in an eye blink Bertha flits, then flies, then swirls, then cyclones herself with sound rising from hum to drone to whistle to crooning...Yyyyaaaaaahhhhhh! crackles and booms and thunders them into a magical exchange of roles—the shawl wraps itself fully around Dalores and she plunges, melts, rains and puddles on the floor—flesh spread in mist of soul: legs and arms posturing softness, yielding and Bertha locks her arms across her chest and onto her shoulders, buckles with the grace of a babe faltering upon first walk and lands, settles, plops to languish as rock in her middle—water and stone, stone and water—water stone stone water...devoured, the not devourable.
All the Sisters clap and hoot and holler, cry and laugh: imagined.
As the Sisters laid down in their threesomes, so was Dalores by herself—alone within a robust embrace which drenched her bed with desire. “Frank was useful.” So, had Dalores said, shocked by the simplicity of the statement...the direction the statement clarified..the celebrating it kicked off… thanks-giving: how they began and so ended, with a ritual of thanks-giving...tonight, of a “Thanks-giving for Frank,” each imitating him—an imitatio dei imitating: remembering, recalling, “making him present” in and through and with them, as each became Frank as cunnilingual lover...worshipper at the Goddess’ Throne...refreshing himself at Her Font of Wisdom—bold adventurer passing through her Gate of Heaven…being him as they consumed him, inhaled him, swallowed him, returned him, reincorporated him, reimagined him as that part of themselves of which each was the whole—“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
Frank as male just a part—significant, important, valuable, essentially useful...yet full and robust only as they imagined him.
Intending. Imagining. Giving-thanks. Sign posts on their escape route.