Joanna Ruocco: The Mothering Coven

Ozark does! She winds the cockatoos at night for practice. She likes to hear them sing about Ganzenland in deep, rich voices, as though Ganzenland is where the cockatoos belong. Every time she creeps to the hat stand in the darkness, Ozark expects that they’ll be gone, the whole flock out the window. She has not been able to locate Ganzenland anywhere in the episteme. But does an island of cockatoos belong in the episteme?

It’s too cold to go outside in just her spangled leotard and tights, so Ozark puts on Bertrand’s gambeson. Ozark climbs up the rubble of the Security Spray Complex. She can look out at the lights of the town. What does she know about the town?

It is latitude 42N52, longitude 73W12.

“It is one of the vortical centers of the universe,” thinks Ozark. But there are so many of them. It might not mean anything. She takes out a piece of paper and makes a guest list. If the episteme and the guest list were a Venn diagram, the area of intersection would be very, very small. The episteme has a smaller inventory than Ozark originally thought.

Ozark hears distant cursing. It sounds like “bung-less barrel saunas.”

There is Ms. Kidney, sneaking up the street. The wind has just swept her Russian hat off her head. Up it goes. Ozark blinks in surprise. Is she imagining things? It is hard to imagine Ms. Kidney. She is so voluble and Ozark’s imagination is mostly pictures.

“Neck pimples,” yells Ms. Kidney. She kicks Mr. Henderson’s garage door. Her wild, steel blue hair is blowing every which way.

“Not a brindle, ponies,” shouts Ms. Kidney. She is shouting at her dogs. They are standing silently on the sidewalk, two by two. Ms. Kidney disappears through Mr. Henderson’s garage door just as Mr. Henderson comes out onto his porch. He sees his garage door swing open and slam shut with the wind. He sees the dogs lined up, looking at him. The soup is still frozen on the sidewalk, only now it is white, like cream of mushroom.

[:]

Ms. Kidney is staying for Mrs. Borage’s birthday party after all! Of course she is. Ozark has the urge to hook her legs behind her neck for joy, but she hesitates. She does not like to trigger muscle memories from her days as a contortionist. Ozark turns somersaults instead. The muscle memory this triggers is not specific to contortionists. Everyone turns somersaults. Certainly, ev eryone on the guest list. Ozark writes “Ms. Kidney” in purple letters. Now it’s back to her inventory.

She has reached “Magellan,” as is inevitable. Before Magellan the ships sailed over the thunderous falls that marked the edges of all the oceans.

“Magellan did something,” thinks Ozark. “He invented hydroelectric dams?” Ozark tries to remember about hydroelectricity. She taps her pen on the paper. Snow is settling on the paper. Ozark shivers. Her face has grown numb. She suspects there is some accumulation on her face, on the bridge of her nose. She remembers when the circus caravans drove through Buffalo, the little towns on the outskirts of Buffalo, and the helpful yellow signs, Bridges Freeze Before Roadway. She remembers Magellan in the Channel of All Saints, how he was starving there, how he gave up all hope. It was All Saints’ Day, and crying, Magellan ate his entire cargo, 26 tons of cloves. After eating 26 tons of cloves, Magellan was unable to form any words. He tried to move his lips but his face was still and astonished.

“Even much later, when he was discovered by the men and women of the Philippines, his face remained frozen,” says Ozark. “That is why they called him Dumbfoundland and claimed him for Lapu-Lapu.”

Dorcas flexes her retinas. So far, so good. She blinks. She looks to left, to the right. Dorcas has returned safely from her first shamanic journey! She is standing in the corner opposite the hat stand. Her fingers tingle. Why? Her arms are stretched above her head, palms up. She lowers them. Her feet tingle too. Why? She looks at her big bare feet with the Fauvist toenails. Of course! The vibrating boundaries of opposing colors!

Are they Fauvist? Dorcas squints at her feet, far away, on the carpet. There’s the Seine, ultramarine, pink flowers floating, and beneath the blue currents, green sea cucumbers and purple anemones, and on the grassy bank, a dark-haired woman in a violet dress and red hat, scattering white and gold sand. Or is it birdseed? Dorcas gasps. Her whole body is tingling. Why?

“You’re not dancing,” calls Bryce. Her smock has spots and swirls of vivid color and her bare feet are moving too quickly to decipher the designs on her toenails. They are just a bright flash glimpsed through chair legs.

Dorcas isn’t much of a dancer. She hops behind Bryce, around and around the wingback chairs. She feels grit on the carpet. Sand? Birdseed?

“Keep going,” cries Fiona. “Don’t stop.”

“Let’s dance all night,” cries Bryce.

“Like spinsters everywhere!” shouts Fiona, although, of course, Mrs. Borage is a dowager.

[:]

Who did Mrs. Borage vote for, those many years past?

She voted for Leon Czolgosz, a mirage from the deserts of Poland. She remembers that he won and won and won and won and for sixteen years there was a dune-forest in Washington.

We sit in a circle on the carpet, eating cinnamon toast from a large platter. The cinnamon toast is very hard and brown, with clear butter dripping. Everyone is chewing cinnamon toast. Mrs. Borage listens to the reports of cinnamon toast. The burnt cinnamon smells oddly like gunpowder.

“Taken orally, and at low velocity, gunpowder extends the life expectancy,” remembers Mrs. Borage. Bryce jumps to her feet.

“Fireworks!” shouts Bryce.

In the rubble of the Security Spray Complex, Ozark has found the remnants of a Gypsy encampment. It is a snow covered flannel backpack. The rest of the encampment has vanished without a trace. Ozark is suddenly afraid that her inventory is suffering from logocentrism. Shouldn’t there be more untraceable encampments? More vanishings?

She unzips the flannel backpack. It is filled with delights, beers and spray paints, cigarettes, a Jacob’s ladder of prophylactics, all kinds of sparklers, bombs, and rockets. Luckily, there is a pink lighter in the front compartment. Ozark never carries a lighter, or loose change for that matter, or tissues. Something has always worked out.

Mrs. Borage sees a woman climb onto the battlements. She is hurling flares into the sky. Do the flares make an eight-pointed star?

Yes, the lesser conjunctions of Venus shower down, glowworms and ashes.

[:]

Everyone looks at the platter on the carpet. It is empty.

“Do you remember eating anything?” asks Dorcas.

The parlor is a mess. The wingback chairs have been tipped over; the card table is broken; the tank has shattered, and the clown-fish! They lie dry and dead on the carpet. Bryce flips over the nearest card. It is from the pinochle deck. A young man, with a feather in his hat, and a mustache. He doesn’t look healthy. The love disease.

“Am I disgraced in fortune?” wonders Bryce. She opens up the daily paper.

“Align with the syzygy,” reads Bryce. What kind of horoscope is that?

“I just wrote it because I like the word ‘syzygy,’” remembers Bryce.

What did she write for Mrs. Borage?

“This one is inspiring,” says Bryce.

“You shall rend the veil of the phenomenal world,” reads Bryce. She looks at Mrs. Borage expectantly.

“Inspiring,” nods Mrs. Borage. Which veil is Bryce referring to?

“She must mean the vale of tears,” thinks Mrs. Borage. “They always mean the vale of tears unless specified.”

[:]

Agnes comes back with cinnamon toast. It is terrifically burnt. “Thank you!” says Dorcas.