Silence and the Word (20 page)

The women certainly are pretty, in Berkeley,
in the springtime. Campus chicks in blue jeans and T-shirts and
bandanas; skin in shades you’ve never seen off a TV set. Lots of
skin—they don’t seem to feel the cold that’s shuddering your skin.
You are determined not to pull the sweatshirt out of your backpack,
not to shiver in this dark green tank top with the scoop neck that
shows your ample cleavage for the benefit of any cute chick who
might happen to like tall redheads who probably still look like
farm girls.

You’ve been cruising Berkeley for weeks now.
Days working over on Shattuck, over at the games store that seemed
really surprised to have a woman actually want the job. Boys and
their toys. Evenings on the street, up and down, occasionally
smiling at a woman with short dark hair and long legs, the kind of
legs that could reach back and wrap all the way around your neck as
you bump and grind, oh yes. Smiling at her and she smiles back and
your heart does the thump-thing and then she keeps going down the
street, or asks you if you have the time and then keeps going and
you’re back to walking the street again wondering where the hell
women go to get laid in this town.

Up past the hippie chicks, up past the man
who tries to sell you beads for your hair at three times what it
would cost in Franklin, all the way up to the campus, turn and
start walking down again. Maybe it’s time to get up the nerve to go
into the city, into the Mission, find one of those girl-gyms, those
dyke-diners you keep hearing about, uh huh. You walk down past
Cody’s, past Moe’s, hover in the window of the poster shop, scope
out the new New-Age books at Shambhala.

It sure would be a lot easier to walk into
one of those diners with a beautiful woman on your arm, a pretty
little thing like that dark-skinned girl behind the counter, the
one with the long black hair braided down her back, with the tight
white shirt that outlines breasts the size of softballs, the one
walking out to take something out of a window, the one smiling at
you through the glass. Right. And now she’s going to turn away or
come to the door and ask if you wanted to actually buy anything or
were just planning to hang out there and scare away the customers.
You brace yourself, and then she stares at you real serious, and
then she winks. Long and slow, and you can’t believe what you’re
seeing, and you check to make sure you’ve got your pink triangle
earring in where she can see it and oh yes, it’s there, and then
she’s coming to the door and it’s “I get off in fifteen minutes.
Want to buy me coffee?” and you are stumbling over yourself to say
yes.

Fifteen minutes and the coffee shop and her
name all slide by in a blur—you’ve forgotten her name but you can’t
admit it, so you just keep smiling and hope and pray that she
doesn’t think you’re a total twit, a ditz, a baby dyke without a
clue. After coffee you’re walking down the street and you tell her
all about your last relationship and how bad it went, doing your
damnedest to convince her of your dyke credentials until she grins
and says “Hush—now is
not
the time” and then she pulls you
into a doorway and starts kissing you. She is at least a foot
shorter than you but she’s up on her toes and pulling you down with
no hesitation and the kissing is easy, so easy and hot you’re
melting into it and then the door you’re leaning on starts to open
and you realize that that her hand is on the doorknob and her key
is in the door and this is, of course, her door to her apartment
and she’s taking you upstairs, woohoo!

She kisses you all the way up three flights
of stairs and her hands are all over you, over the tank, under the
tank, under your bra to cup your breasts, squeeze your nipples,
pull you up the last steps with her fingers tight on your nipples
and her mouth latched to yours and you are tumbling into her
apartment and closing the door with your bodies ’cause your hands
are too damn busy to spare. She breaks long enough to turn on the
light and light some candles and incense and turn off the light
again and then you are falling to the futon in the living room, lit
by candles, the room is full of candles and statues and flowers and
incense. You’re a little dizzy but when she pulls off your shirt
and bra and starts licking a nipple you have to know, you say “Hang
on,” and “I hate to ask this” and “What’s your name again?” and
wait for her to throw you out.

She laughs instead, and says “Kali, my name
is Kali” and then she gets this wide grin and lies back on the
futon and says “Kali is a goddess, you know? Worship me… .” You’ve
never touched a goddess before, but your mama didn’t raise no fools
and so you skin you and her out of clothes as fast as you can,
before she has a chance to take a proper breath or change her mind
and then you’re kissing her. Sucking on her toes and calves and
knees and thighs, up around her clit, up her curving stomach and
softball breasts, down to fingers and up again, kissing and sucking
and licking until your mouth is dry and her skin is wet and shaking
in the wavering light of what seems a hundred candles.

You worship her with mouth and hands, you
slide a finger in her cunt and then another until they are slick
and salty and you bring them up to your mouth and taste them, lick
them with Kali’s eyes on you, glittering, and she breathes “More”
and you go down, you breathe on, lick and suck her clit, slide two
fingers in again, thrust back and forth and she is writhing beneath
you, she is silent but her body speaks. It whispers and moans and
whimpers and screams and she is almost almost there and you can’t
quite do it, you can’t get her there, you can feel the crest
waiting there, the last lap, the last mile and you’re not going to
make it, you’re not good enough and you are ready to lay your head
down on her stomach and cry if she will permit it.

You stop, removing the once-thrusting,
now-sore fingers. She whimpers, and your stomach churns and you
take a deep gasping breath. Kali opens her eyes then and sees you
and she is not angry. She is twisted in on herself, she is bathed
in sweat, dripping in the candlelight and she says, “It’s okay” and
takes a deep breath and you can see that she is going to try to
come down, to relax, to let it go and dammit, that is not good
enough, you know you can do better than this and then inspiration
hits. You slide back down, your mouth is on her again, on that
sweet-salty mound, on that wet nubbin, and while you lick and she
convulses silent again, starting the climb again, your hand reaches
out and grabs a candle.

Your eyes are closed against her skin but you
can feel the slim, cool shape of it, bubbled with old dripped wax,
long and hard and untiring. You wave it in the air to put it out,
you wait for it to cool as your tongue tickles and touches,
twisting to penetrate every crevice, every inch it can reach and
when it is exhausted, when it feels that it is about to break in
two, to shatter into a thousand pieces, that is when you reverse
the shape in your hand and slide it into her, into her dripping
cavity, sliding it smooth and hard into her and Kali gasps beneath
you and her hands come down to your shoulders, her fingers dig into
your skin and you know that you guessed right. You push and pull,
thrusting hard and fast until finally, finally her back arches, her
hips convulse and she freezes still and silent for an endless
aching time and even if your fingers and tongue fall off you are
not going to move one inch in the wrong direction. And then she
relaxes.

She pulls you up, after a time, and you make
love in all the clever ways that two young dykes in the prime of
their strength and stamina can, and she discovers how easily you
come, how even nipple-sucking can do it, and she says that she
might forgive you for that someday. Hours pass, and the candles are
long burned out, and you are settling down to sleep but can’t quite
get comfortable, there’s a lump, a bump in the sheets under your
hip and you realize that you’ve left the candle there and are
surprised it’s still in one piece and you reach down and pull it
out and in the thin moonlight you realize that it wasn’t a candle
after all.

A statue of a goddess, a naked goddess, and
the bumps you took for dripping candle wax are breasts and curved
hands, many hands, and you catch your breath, wondering if you have
committed some form of sacrilege, if Kali will recoil in shock,
horror, dismay and she must see it in your eyes because she laughs
and laughs and eventually, gently, explains that she is not
religious, definitely not Hindu, that her family was in fact
Catholic.

She herself had turned atheist long ago, and
got the statues from the New-Age bookstore for free. She tells you
that she only kept them around ’cause they were pretty and they
seemed to turn on the chicks and you blush and are grateful for the
thinness of the light. She also said that even if she did believe
in the goddess, she didn’t think She would have minded being deep
inside a woman’s wet cunt. Then she confessed a secret, that Kali
was only her work name after all, that it impressed the bookstore
clients. Her true name was something she took seriously, and she
never told it to lovers unless they stayed around long enough for
breakfast. And when you’d gotten over being embarrassed and amused
and slightly shocked, you told her that you thought you could
probably arrange that.

limb-tangled, sweat-rank, they speak in
whispers:

a haze of wedding white mosquito netting

lies across their vision, swelling belly, his
hand

pressed against her flesh, legs spreading

to deliver one, two, a dozen—fecund

explosion, and oh, the joy, the terror; her
heart

thumps, hard. it waits only for their
readiness.

there are broad bright rooms, towers too,

dream-spires reaching up, high-windowed,

stained crimson cobalt silvered starred

broken, ivy-tressed, rose-thorned,
falling

down the stone wood glass walls, to the

lakeshore, the forest verge, the pulsing

beat of a screaming city, feet quick
quick

on the summer hot pavement, breaking

fast on a cold morning, chai steaming,

two pairs of hands clasped around

a single cup. the house is infinitely
large,

refuses to be bound to a single location.

she laughs, and agrees—there is no need

to decide right now, he with one hand
tracing

a line along her cheek, another pressed

against her heart, that infinite expanse—

no end to her love, so why should

there be limits at all? he says,
i
want

to live forever in your arms.
as
quick

as breath, their doom spoken, aloud.

one day they will die, will rot; each

day she wakes, aware of the body’s new

creakings, the encroaching layers of
flesh,

the hardening habits of mind, practice

giving rise to both rigidity and skill.
she

does not regret the years, she is calmer,

more joyful with every passing breath,
eager

to see what comes next, what
possibilities

open (her thighs, her arms, her heart)

when only forty, thirty, twenty years

are left to you. she does not know it
yet,

but this is why she will leave him, in the
end.

mortality does not frighten her, and he,

he is small and hurt and terrified,
howling

into the unforgiving darkness,

lost and lost and lost.

It started with a phone call. Sarah had been
expecting the call, but it was still a shock. She had learned over
the last few years, as friends succumbed to old age, and to one or
another disease, that there were limits to how well you could
prepare for death. It was usually cancer, of one type or another.
Cancer had gotten Daniel, too. It was hard when it was someone
you’d loved.

“He’s gone.”

“I’m so sorry, Ruth.”

“Can I come out? Tonight?”

“Of course.”

“The next flight down arrives at 8:30.”

“I’ll meet you at the airport.”

Sarah put down the phone, meeting Saul’s calm
eyes as he walked out of the studio, wiping paint-stained hands on
his pants. She bit back brief irritation at his calm. He and Daniel
had never quite gotten along, though they had tried, for the sake
of the women. Saul had been quietly pleased when Daniel’s career
had taken him to Seattle, though not so pleased when Ruth joined
him there, a few months later. Saul had locked himself up in his
studio and painted huge dark canvases, ugly compositions in a dark
palette: black, indigo, midnight blue. But Ruth had been happier
with Daniel than she had ever been with them, happier married and
with children on the way. Eventually Saul had bowed to that
truth.

Old history.

Sarah said, “I’ll pick her up. You go ahead
and finish.”

Saul nodded, stepping forward and leaning
down to kiss her forehead gently. “You okay?”

Sarah managed a smile. “I’ll be all right.
Ruth didn’t sound good, though.”

“No.” He opened his arms then, and she
stepped into them, heedless of drying paint. She rested her cheek
against his chest, wrapped her arms around him, desperately glad
that he was healthy. Some arthritis, a tendency to catch nasty
colds; nothing that couldn’t be fixed by keeping him out of the
studio for a few days. After this many years, she could manage
that, at least, even if she had to scold like a shrew to do it. She
rested in his arms a moment, breathing in his scent, cinnamon sugar
under sharp layers of paint and turpentine. He kissed the top of
her head, and then let her go.