Suzette Elgin - Native Tongue

At Barren House, the women were silent with the silence that comes of sudden shock and no warning to ease it. Aquina had gone white and shrunk against a wall as Thomas spoke, and she stood there shaking — not one of the others even looked at her.

Barren House could not, could not possibly, undergo an investigation by professional law enforcement officers. It would be quite a different matter from just having to keep their secrets from the occasional male who dropped by to settle some sort of family business or deliver a message… quite a different matter from distracting ordinary visitors with one of their elaborate “needlework circles” in the formal parlor. The men who would come to Chornyak Barren House now were not casual visitors, they were trained investigators, and they had every reason to believe that they were after a dangerous secret — whatever there was to find, they would find it.

And there was a tremendous lot to find, if you really knew how to search.

There were, for example, Faye’s surgical instruments and medical lab, all of which would have been cause for serious suspicion even in the residence of a man, if he had no medical degree to account for them. For such things to be in the possession of women was absolutely illegal. Especially those items whose only use was for performing abortions or clearing up after them.

And there were the herb cupboards. Not just the ones that were poisonous. There was also the one that contained one of the world’s most efficient contraceptives, smuggled in at terrible risk by an underground railroad of sympathetic women from all over the world.

There was the rest of the contraband. The forbidden books from the time of the Women’s Liberation movement, that were permitted only to adult males. The forbidden, cherished videotapes… blurred and scratchy now, but no less precious for that. All the forbidden archives of a time when women dared to speak openly of equal rights.

There were the books of blasphemy… that were not even known to exist. The Theology of Lovingkindness. The Discourse of the Three Marys. The Gospel of the Magdalene , that began: “I am the Magdalene; hear me. I speak to you from out of time. This is the Gospel of women.” Those books were hidden here. Hand-lettered, and hand-bound, in covers that read Favorite Recipes From Around the World . They must not be found.

And there were the secret language files. They would mean nothing to the detectives, of course. But if they were carted back to the main house for the men to examine and explain, they would know what they were…

And that was not all. That was by no means all of the secret and forbidden things that were hidden in the walls and the floors and the nooks and crannies of this place where women lived always without men.

It wasn’t that the women of Chornyak Barren House were afraid of paying the penalty for their crimes. They could face that prospect, as they had always faced it. It was the loss , the terrible loss… Every Barren House would be searched then. The boards of the floors taken up. The flowerpots dumped out. The grounds dug up. And the only source the women of the Lines had, for so many things that made the difference between a life that was unbearable and one that was only miserable would be gone. Things that women needed, things that women were forbidden to have, things that had taken scores of years and danger to accumulate — they would be gone. And the women would have to start all over again, with the men watching them to be sure they failed.

It could not be allowed to happen, and that was all there was to it; there wasn’t any room for argument. The only question was: what could they do that would prevent it?

Out of the long silence, someone finally spoke, tentative, her voice thin with strain.

“Maybe we could manage,” she hazarded. “Of all women on this planet we are the most skilled at communication and the most practiced at deception. Perhaps we could manage to mislead the police… do you think we could? They are only men, like any other men.”

“Trained to search,” said Grace. “Trained to ferret out secrets.”

“And looking for a certain kind of person, who could get pleasure from poisoning little girls,” said Faye. “A psychopath, or a sociopath… so far gone in her madness that she feels no need even to be careful. We all know the profile for that sort of madwoman. If we try to ‘mislead’ the men, in this situation, they’ll learn things about us that we’d forgotten even existed to worry about. And we will destroy the Barren Houses. No, Leonora… we can’t manage. Not possibly.”

They talked it to death, ignoring Aquina still huddled by the wall but now collapsed forlornly like a bundle of rags. She had brought this on them all, and that was a burden heavy enough to collapse anyone. There was nothing that they could do for Aquina, even if they’d had time to concern themselves with her.

“We must come to a decision, quickly,” Susannah said after a while, and the other murmured agreement. “The children tell us that the men won’t get to us until tomorrow morning — but we can’t count on that. It could be a ruse… they could knock on that door this very minute. We have to decide what we are going to do.”

Like Thomas, they finally tackled it as they would have tackled a problem in linguistic analysis. They set out all the data and they formulated certain hypotheses. They proposed certain solutions, and examined each one swiftly for its merits and its flaws.

“Remember,” Caroline cautioned them, “once they find out that there is even one secret here, that is the end — they’ll worry at it until they’ve turned up every scrap we have to hide. And what they don’t understand of the things they find, Thomas Blair Chornyak most assuredly will.”

“The only real defense we’ve ever had,” said Thyrsis, grieving, “is that no one has even taken us seriously. The men have always thought we were silly females, playing silly female games… they must go on thinking that.”

“We can’t just be unusually silly?”

“No.”

They tolerated it while Aquina proposed alerting all the Barren Houses and burning them down to the ground to destroy the evidence, and let her realize for herself as she babbled that the result would be the same utter catastrophe, only done even more quickly than the men would be able to bring it about.

“You can’t keep them from finding things,” said Grace slowly. “That’s going to happen, if they look.”

“And that is the crucial point,” said Caroline. “That is exactly the point. Now we have the question that matters: what would keep them from coming here at all? What would make them call it off, not start looking?”

When they said nothing, she sighed and went on. “Well, I can tell you. Just one thing.”

“And what is that?”

“If they thought the problem was solved. If they thought no investigation was needed, you see… because they already had their poisoner, without need to search for her.”

“Ah!” cried Faye. “Yes! That would do it! One of us has to confess, before they can start looking!”

“Convincingly,” said Caroline, nodding. “Not just ‘oh, I’m sorry, officer, I did it with my little potions’.”

“But who ? It won’t go easy with her… who?”

Aquina stared at them as if they’d lost their minds and declared that that was not a question for discussion. This was her fault, she was responsible for it, and it had to be her. And they told her to just shut up.

“You’d say too much, Aquina,” said Susannah, trying in spite of her deep anger at this careless foolish woman to be gentle. “You’d be sure to. You’d go all political, and you’d make a speech. And first thing you knew you’d have said one word too many… I’m sorry. It can’t be you, Aquina.”