Tar Baby

10

AFTER THIRTY YEARS of shame the champion daisy trees were marshaling for war. The wild parrots that had escaped the guns of Dominique could feel menace in the creeping of their roots. During the day they tossed their branches; at night they walked the hills. At dawn their new formations challenged the wit of the chevaliers. Their brothers over on Dominique knew nothing of the battle plans for they were in a rain forest tamed for tourists that came by bus from the Old Queen Hotel, gallant and royal since 1927. Now she was dying from behind. Her front on Rue Madelaine was still seacap white and the columns at her entrance showed no signs of wear. Yet at her great round-skirted rear among breadfruit trees and lime, the cells of a motel were growing. A concrete Y-shaped thing with patios the size of a card table extended from the dining room from whose forty-seven windows diners once gazed at breadfruit trees and lawn. Now they looked at workmen, concrete and patios the size of a card table. Beyond that were the hills of black Dominiques, and beyond that spectacular mountains of rain forest. The road that cuts through the mountains is a regular tourist attraction. Breathlessly steep and winding, without benefit of guardrails, it offers a view of God’s hair, hibiscus, magnolia and oleander, poinsettia and jacaranda. Away in the distance under pink immortelles is an occasional dead plantation, now a hotel with marble dolphins and air conditioning pumping purity into two-hundred-year-old stone. The mountain road descends on the other side of the island to a coastline of cliffs and grottos where fishing villages lay. No marinas here, no golf courses, for here the winds do not trade. They are hot and capricious and the fishermen design strange sails to accommodate them so they can sell their grouper, tuna and bonito to the dead plantations, and the Old Queen Hotel where Jadine sat alone at a table for four.

“Crème de menthe,” she had said because the words seemed nice and right and she wanted to say them aloud. And when the waiter returned she regretted it immediately and ordered vermouth. She had called L’Arbe de la Croix. Ondine had answered.

“Where are you?”

“Queen of France, but I missed the ferry, Nanadine. Can somebody come?”

“Well, yes, I reckon so. But it might take awhile.”

“I’ll wait. Tell him to come to the Old Queen. If I’m not in the lobby, ask for me in the dining room.”

“You by yourself?”

“Of course. Hurry, please, Nanadine?”

Of course I’m by myself. When haven’t I been by myself. She was alone at a table for four, proud of having been so decisive, so expert at the leaving. Of having refused to be broken in the big ugly hands of any man. Now she felt lean and male, having left quickly with no peeping back just in case—no explanatory, loophole-laden note. No last supper. New York had agreed with her exit. A cab right at the door, an uncommunicative driver who took her directly to the place she was going to; Raymond at home; his studio available for the night; a short line at Chemical Bank and Air France ready to go. Aloneness tasted good and even at a table set for four she was grateful to be far away from his original-dime ways, his white-folks-black-folks primitivism. How could she make a life with a cultural throwback, she asked herself, and answered No way. Eloe. No way. Not for all the cadmium yellow and Hansa red in the world. So what if she was alone. So what if when she went away, no one stayed home and remained there all while she was gone and was waiting when she got back.

But he had put his finger on the very bottom of her foot. He had opened the hair on her head with his hands and drove his tongue through the part.

THE MULATTO didn’t talk; he hummed a Creole hit and drummed a little on the steering wheel. As they passed Sein de Veilles, Jadine’s legs burned with the memory of tar. She could hardly see L’Arbe de la Croix when they got to it, the trees leaned so close to the house. She dashed into Ondine’s kitchen, kissed her and said, “Let me get my stuff together first. I’ll be right back down and we can talk. Is Margaret here?”

“Upstairs,” said Ondine.

No one answered her knock at Margaret’s door, but she saw a brighter-than-hallway light falling from Valerian’s door and went toward it. Inside, heaped on the twin beds, on the dresser, the chairs and even on the bed table were clothes. Suits, ties, shirts, socks, sweaters and pair after pair of men’s shoes.

“Valerian?” she called out.

Margaret stepped from the closet-dressing room, her hands full of empty hangers.

“Well,” she said, genuinely surprised. “The prodigal daughter. What did you do to your hair?” Margaret looked flushed and sparkly, her movements directed and sure.

“Something different.”

“It’s wonderful looking,” said Margaret coming toward her, hand outstretched to touch Jadine’s hair. Then she stopped and snapped her fingers twice. “We used to call it…oh dear…” She closed her eyes. “Poodle-cut! That’s it. Poodle-cut,” and she laughed with such pleasure that Jadine had to smile.

“I’m sorry about leaving you with so little notice. I don’t want you to think I didn’t appreciate your helping me out last winter.”

Margaret waved her hand. “Don’t mention it. It was a lousy time for everybody.” She sat down on a cluttered bed and began to unbunch the hangers.

“Are you all leaving?” asked Jadine.

“Leaving? No. Why?”

Jadine looked at the clothes.

“Oh, no. I’m just straightening out this unbelievable mess. You wouldn’t believe the things that man has accumulated. Eight shoe trees in his closet and only two of them actually in shoes. And look. Linen slacks. Linen. Never worn and so yellow now they can’t be. I never knew what a clotheshorse the man was. See here?” Margaret fingered the garment label. “Silk, and here, virgin wool. Look here, one hundred percent cotton. All his undershirts too. He won’t wear nylon or tricot. None of the man-made fibers. Everything he owns has to be made by Mother Nature. But what a mess. It’ll take me days to get it all sorted. I can’t expect Sydney to do this. It’s not his job really. Ondine’s either. I really could use you now, Jade, but I don’t suppose you’re staying.”

“No. I’m going back tomorrow.”

“France?”

“Yes.”

“Will you marry that fellow? Mr. Sealskin?”

Jadine sighed. “No.”

“Oh? Why not?” Margaret folded the slacks over padded hangers and laid them carefully on the bed. Now she was sorting shirts, smelling them for mildew, examining them for tears, missing buttons, frayed collars. She didn’t seem interested in an answer to her question so Jadine didn’t give her one, didn’t tell her that she hardly knew what the word meant. Instead she asked how Valerian was.

“Better,” said Margaret.

“He’s not sick, is he?” asked Jadine.

“He says he isn’t, but he trembles sometimes and won’t go in to town to see a doctor.”

“This is no place to be sick in, Margaret. Maybe you should get him back to Philadelphia.”

“Of course I will, if it gets really bad.” She looked at Jadine as though hurt that her judgment about what was best for her husband was doubted.

“And Michael, how is he?”

“Oh, you don’t know, do you? He got in. Berkeley, I mean. The semester begins next week.”

“Then you’re not going out there?”

“Oh, no. Michael’s an adult, Jade. Thirty. I can’t go traipsing around the world looking after him when there’s so much to do here. You see the mess these clothes are in.” She had finished separating the shirts into three piles and had begun on the sweaters. “Jade,” she said; she held a blue V-necked sweater to her chest. It was nothing like the blue of her eyes. “Sometimes in the morning he can’t do everything he used to. You know: buttons, zippers. I have to tie his shoes even. Yesterday I washed his hair”—she smiled—“with Kirk’s Original Castile Soap. He doesn’t like Breck.”

Jadine stared.

“Sydney’s going to teach me how to shave him and maybe together we can get him to let us cut his hair. God, is he stubborn. Worse than a child.” She laughed lightly, indulgently, and went on sorting, piling, like a confident curator who knew the names of everything in his museum, while Jadine watched saying to herself, And he thinks Valerian made me.

ONDINE picked up a screaming lobster and threw him into a pot of boiling water. She held it down with a wooden ladle to make it die faster for she was in the mood for death. It had been an hour since Jadine had come in and kissed her, all smiles and speed. Ondine didn’t like her new hairdo: fluffy, frothy as though it was important to look like a schoolgirl. Now she was back in the kitchen, looking subdued.

“What’s come over Margaret?” asked Jadine. “She’s working her butt off.”

“Do her good. Him too.”

“But she talks about Valerian like he was a patient, or a baby.”

“People do what they have to, I guess, and take payment where they can.”

“What’s she mad at him for? She’s the one who stuck pins in her baby.”

Ondine wiped sweat from her forehead with her free hand. “She didn’t stick pins in her baby. She stuck em in his baby. Her baby she loved.”

“That’s a description, maybe, but not a reason. He gave her everything she ever wanted. Remember that little Triumph? And what about—”

“He kept her stupid; kept her idle. That always spells danger.”

“Now she’s the master, not him?”

“Master, patient, baby—it don’t matter. He’s still the center of everything.” Ondine withdrew the lobster and got right down to it. “You ran off with him, didn’t you?”

“It’s over, Nanadine. I don’t know what got into me.”

“You could have told us.”

“Maybe. But everything was so messed up here. I mean that was some Christmas.”

“You still could have told us.”

“Well, if it will make you any happier, it was a mistake. A mistake of the first order, believe me. You know I never worked so hard in my life to keep something going. I’d never done that before. I never cared whether a relationship worked or not, you know. I mean if it worked, it worked; if it didn’t—later. But this time I worked my butt off and all I got for it was a black eye and the rent. So—” Jadine slapped the table with her palm marking the end of the affair. “That’s that.”

“He hit you?”

“Yes, among other things.”

“He actually hit you?”

“It’s over, Nanadine, besides, I hit him too.”

“I should hope so. I should damn well hope so. Oh, baby, baby, how could you run off with a…”

“Let’s don’t talk about it. I left and that’s that. One thing though. If he calls here, you don’t know where I am, and if he comes here…”

“Comes here?”

“Well, I don’t know, he might. Anyhow, don’t tell him where I am.”

“Where are you?” asked Ondine.

“I’m going to get my stuff and go back to Paris.”

Stuff, thought Ondine, meant mainly the fur coat. She wondered if her niece would even have come to say goodbye had it not been that the sealskin coat was there. “Then what?” she asked.

Jadine shrugged and changed the subject. “How’s Valerian?”

“Hanging on.”

“Did she really do all of that to her baby?”

“She really did.”

“Wow. And she’s not bugging you anymore?”

“Not at all.”

“So what’s your situation here?” Jadine’s voice was serious, but there was pleading in it too. (Please don’t need me now, not now. I can’t parent now. I cannot be needed now. Another time, please. I have spent it all. Please don’t need me now.)

“Same. They want us to stay. Mrs. Street does anyway, and he don’t say much one way or the other. Sits in that greenhouse all day listening to music.”

“Do you want to stay?”

“Do we have a choice?” asked Ondine, looking carefully at the ringlets on Jadine’s head.

“Sure you have a choice. You can work other places or not at all. You want to come with me to Paris?” Jadine’s shoulder ached for a second as she remembered hanging out of a second-story window on Ninety-third Street.

“Girl, don’t play with me.”

“I’m serious.”

“Jadine, we done what we could for you because—well, what I mean to say is you don’t owe us nothing. But, well, I never told you nothing. I never told you nothing at all and I take full responsibility for that. But I have to tell you something now.”

Jadine lifted her head and looked in her aunt’s eyes.

“Jadine, a girl has got to be a daughter first. She have to learn that. And if she never learns how to be a daughter, she can’t never learn how to be a woman. I mean a real woman: a woman good enough for a child; good enough for a man—good enough even for the respect of other women. Now you didn’t have a mother long enough to learn much about it and I thought I was doing right by sending you to all them schools and so I never told you it and I should have. You don’t need your own natural mother to be a daughter. All you need is to feel a certain way, a certain careful way about people older than you are. Don’t mistake me now. I don’t mean you have to love all kinds of mean old people, and if it’s in your mind that I’m begging you for something, get it out. I ain’t.”

“Yes, you are, Ondine.” Jadine’s voice was steady. “You are asking me to parent you. Please don’t. I can’t do that now.”

“I am not asking you that. I’m just saying what a daughter is. A daughter is a woman that cares about where she come from and takes care of them that took care of her. No, I don’t want you to be what you call a parent. Not me, and not Sydney either. What I want from you is what I want for you. I don’t want you to care about me for my sake. I want you to care about me for yours.” She reached out to touch her niece’s hand, but something made her stop short of it.

When Ondine said, “You didn’t have a mother long enough,” blood rushed to Jadine’s skin the way it always did when her motherlessness was mentioned. But she spoke gently and steadily to Ondine. “No, you don’t, Nanadine. You want me to pay you back. You worked for me and put up with me. Now it’s my turn to do it for you, that’s all you’re saying.”

“Turn? Turn? This ain’t no game a bid whist…”

“There are other ways to be a woman, Nanadine,” Jadine went on. “Your way is one, I guess it is, but it’s not my way. I don’t want to be…like you. Wait. Don’t look at me like that. I’m being honest with you now and you have to listen! I don’t want to learn how to be the kind of woman you’re talking about because I don’t want to be that kind of woman.”

“There ain’t but one kind. Just one, and if you say another hateful word to me, I’ll…” She stopped.

“What? Hit me? Would you, Nanadine? You’d hit me too?”

The older woman was quiet. Her niece, her baby, her crown had put her in the same category as that thing she ran off with. And now she was going on talking, explaining, saying, but Ondine never heard anymore. The volume of her heart was up too loud.

When Jadine went off to finish packing, Ondine sat patting the table with her right hand, her chin resting on the fist of her left. She didn’t know what she expected. What she was expecting her niece to do or think or feel. But something more than she had seen. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I just wanted her to feel sorry for us, she thought, maybe that’s what I expected and that’s a lowdown wish if ever I had one.

Sydney came in and stopped her thoughts. “That her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Off again?”

“Yep. Paris.”

“Where’s he?”

“She dumped him.”

“I could have told him that.”

“So could I. Go up and say goodbye to her. She’s making tracks tomorrow if she can.”

Sydney sat down and unclasped his bow tie. “She ask you for any money?”

“Nothing dangerous. Just a few francs for the shuttle. She had a thing full of those what you call traveling checks. Go on up and see her. I’ll take him his tray.”

“She wants to say goodbye, she knows where I am.”

“Sydney, don’t be like that.”

“But I am like that. She didn’t do well by us, Ondine.”

“She’s young. She’ll settle.”

“Age ain’t got nothing to do with it.”

“She’s not a savings account, Sydney. You don’t get interest back.”

“Ought to.”

“It’s more different for them than it was for us. There’s a whole bunch of stuff they can do that we never knew nothing about.”

“And a whole bunch they don’t know nothing about,” he answered.

“Well, maybe you right. Maybe it don’t pay to love nothing. I loved that little boy like he was mine, so he wouldn’t grow up and kill somebody. And instead of thanks, I get meanness. Disrespect.”

“Let’s not go into that no more.”

“He’s okay now. Doin fine. But I’m not responsible for that, no. I’m responsible for not telling nobody. She accused me of not liking her enough to stop her. You go figure that out. Then I take another one in my heart, your brother’s baby girl. Another one not from my womb, and I stand on my feet thirty years so she wouldn’t have to. And did without so she wouldn’t have to. And she couldn’t think of nothing better to do than buy me some shoes I can’t wear, a dress I shouldn’t, and run off with the first pair of pants that steps in the door. Now explain me that.”

“I can’t explain nothing no more. It didn’t used to be this way. Seem like folks used to take care of folks once upon a time. Old black people must be a worrisome thing to the young ones these days.”

Ondine went to the oven and removed a baked potato. She put it on a plate and the plate on a tray. Then she went to the refrigerator and removed a wineglass that had been chilling there. Sydney watched her movements.

Ondine got out a napkin. “She said she didn’t think he would, but if he did call or come looking for her we shouldn’t let him know where she is.”

“He better not set foot on this place.”

“From what she says he beat her up some.”

“Then I hope he does come,” said Sydney. “I’ll put that bullet in him for sure.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You mistake me if you don’t think so. I’ll shoot him the same minute I see him and explain later.”

“This is not your property, Sydney.”

“No, but it’s my home. If this ain’t my home, then nothing is but the grave.”

“Well, we’ll be there soon enough.”

Sydney thought about that. “You think she’ll bury us, Ondine?”

“I think we’re going to have to bury ourselves, Sydney.”

“Well, in that case the shroud may as well be comfy.” He picked up the rattan tray and, since he was a genuine Philadelphia Negro mentioned in the book of that name, he reclasped his bow tie and adjusted his cuff links before he left the kitchen and went to the greenhouse. He noticed that the bricks that edged the courtyard were popping up out of the ground, leaning every which way. Urged, it seemed to him, out of the earth, like they were poked from beneath. Cement, he thought, is all that will keep this earth still. This place dislocates everything. I’ll get that mulatto to fix them right this time. And something serious had to be done about the ants. They had already eaten through the loudspeaker wires and he had had to transfer the entire system to the greenhouse: turntable, receiver, records. Sydney was grateful to the ants because he really hated vacuuming or polishing doorknobs while the music boomed through the house. He preferred silence for his work. Now he was free of it and Mr. Street had it all to himself. Still, if ants will eat copper—something serious had to be done. If it’s not one thing it’s another, he thought, and either he was shrinking in his old age or the trees were jumping up overnight. The roof of the washhouse was completely obscured by a heavy branch. That mulatto may buck if I tell him to cut it down, he thought. Better get somebody from town.

The greenhouse was sunk in violins and Valerian, seated at a seed bench, did not hear Sydney enter. He was drenched in music and although his fingers shuddered occasionally, his head-of-a-coin profile moved accurately to the tempo. Sydney tapped him on the shoulder and he turned.

“Your lunch, Mr. Street.”

Valerian motioned for him to put the tray down, his fingers describing a wavy arc in the air.

“You letting this place run down, Mr. Street.”

“What’s that?” asked Valerian.

Sydney walked over to the record player and lifted the arm away. “I said you letting this place run down. Used to be pretty in here. You letting it go to pieces.”

“It’s my place,” said Valerian. “Turn the music back on.”

Sydney did not move, but said, “You don’t grow nothing in here anymore.”

“I like it this way, Sydney. Put the music back.”

“Then you should take care of it.”

“That’ll do, Sydney. Hand me the mail.”

Sydney picked up the stack of letters, circulars and catalogs and held them out to Valerian, but the dancing hands could not receive them. “Want me to open them for you?” asked Sydney.

“No. Yes.”

Sydney pulled up a stepping stool and sat down next to Valerian. “You should take care of yourself, too. You need a haircut.”

“I prefer it long,” said Valerian.

“No, you don’t. You just don’t want to go into town. The mulatto’s here today. If you won’t let me cut it, let him take you over.”

“What mulatto?”

Sydney slit open a letter with a penknife. “The one Dr. Michelin sent over. A mulatto. Been coming awhile now. He can take you over to get your hair cut.”

“Not today,” said Valerian. “Not today; later, Sydney.” Valerian turned toward the tray and tried to pick up the knife and fork. He succeeded but could not manage to make them do anything else but wave there in his hands. Sydney put aside the mail, and stood up. He took the knife and fork from Valerian, broke open the steaming potato, and scooped out a forkful. He blew on it and then held it in front of Valerian’s mouth. Valerian closed his lips and looked into Sydney’s eyes. He tried as best he could to see what was there, what was really there. He wasn’t sure, but he believed he saw kindness. He opened his lips and swallowed.

“Good,” said Sydney. “That’s good. It’s not too hot, is it?”

Valerian shook his head and opened his mouth for more. He chewed for a little while and then said, “Sydney?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did you…ah…”

“No, sir, I didn’t. I heard about it same time you did.”

“Ondine never told you?”

“Not a word.”

“I hear them in the kitchen. Talking, like they used to.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember? How they used to gossip in the kitchen back then?”

“I remember.”

“He’s all right, isn’t he?”

“Michael? Oh, yes, sir. He’s fine.”

“I’m thinking of going back. I think I should leave this place and go back to Philadelphia.”

“What for?”

“I don’t like it here anymore. No reason to be here now.”

“No reason to be anywhere, Mr. Street. But I’d think carefully on it if I was you. Ondine and me, we like it down here. Philadelphia winters can be hard on old people. It’s nice and warm down here. Quiet too. We like it fine. Would you like a sip of Chablis now?” He put down the fork and went to the small refrigerator for a bottle of wine.

“No,” said Valerian. “Not now.”

“I would,” said Sydney. “I’d like a glass myself.” He worked the screw into the cork. “You sure you don’t want any?”

“I said no.”

“How are your bunions, Mr. Street?”

“Corns. I don’t have bunions. I have corns.”

“How are they?”

“Sydney, you are drinking my wine.”

“Next time that mulatto comes, I’ll tell him to bring you back a pair of huaraches.”

“I don’t want any huaraches.”

“Sure you do. Nice pair of huaraches be good for you. Make your feet feel good. This time next year, you’ll thank me for em.”

“What do you mean, this time next year? I’m going back.”

“I figure we’re going to be here a long time, Mr. Street. A good long time.”

“What’s happening here. Something’s happening here.”

“Don’t agitate yourself. Rest your mind.” Sydney put down the wineglass, and went to the record player. He held the arm over the record and turned to Valerian. “We’ll give you the best of care. Just like we always done. That’s something you ain’t never got to worry about.” He placed the arm carefully in the groove and turned the volume up high. Valerian smiled then, and his fingers danced lightly in the air.

THE AIRPORT in Dominique is a long building made of pale yellow concrete blocks. If you didn’t know you were in the Caribbean, the paper in the ladies’ room would tell you. To an American the contempt in which the rest of the world holds toilet paper is incomprehensible. It is treated as though it were, in fact, toilet paper. Jadine stepped out of the stall and stood before the tiny mirror over the sink. She sudsed her hands generously with a piece of her own soap and rinsed them carefully. She wrapped the soap in a piece of wax paper, returned it to her traveling bag, from which she took a tube of hand lotion. She creamed her palms and the backs of her hands, then with tissue wiped away the lotion that had gotten under her fingernails. Unhurried at last, with thirty minutes before flight time. The frantic scampering over with. She had run away from New York City with the same speed she had run toward it. New York was not her home after all. The dogs were leashed in the city but the reins were not always secure. Sometimes walking with their owners they met other dogs and if they were unspayed and unchecked you could see a female standing quietly under the paws of a male who had not even spoken to her, just sniffed for purposes of identification. She thought it could be a shelter for her because there the night women could be beaten, reduced to shadows and confined to the brier patch where they belonged. But she could not beat them alone. There were no shelters anyway; it was adolescent to think that there were. Every orphan knew that and knew also that mothers however beautiful were not fair. No matter what you did, the diaspora mothers with pumping breasts would impugn your character. And an African woman, with a single glance from eyes that had burned away their own lashes, could discredit your elements.

She still had plenty of time to take two Dramamines, comb her hair, check her makeup, but this ladies’ lounge was not designed for lingering. She was doing her eyes when a girl came out of the stall next to the one she had used. She had a short mop and a plastic pail of various cleansers in her hands. She wore a green uniform which looked even greener beneath her russet wig. Jadine glanced at the wig in the mirror and then back to her own lashes. The girl stopped dead and did not take her eyes off Jadine, who was flattered but wished she would not stare so. Then the girl approached her.

“You don’t remember me?” she asked.

Jadine turned around. The wig was so overwhelming it was awhile before she recognized her.

“L’Arbe de la Croix,” said the girl.

“Oh, wow.” Jadine smiled. “I didn’t recognize you. What are you doing here? You work here now?”

The girl nodded. “You took the chocolate eater away,” she said.

Jadine closed her smile and turned back to the mirror. There was nothing like an islander; they never had any chat—or manners for that matter. Conversation with them was always an interrogation and she was not about to explain anything to this child.

“He was going to send me a wig, he said.”

“Looks like he did,” said Jadine.

“Not this one. I have a picture of the other one. It’s at home. Is he coming back? Can you get it for me?”

“No,” Jadine answered.

“You kill him?” asked the girl in a very matter-of-fact tone.

Jadine slung the huge, lightweight traveling bag over her shoulder and removed her coat from the top of the stall where it hung. “I have to go now,” she said.

“Thérèse said you kill him,” the girl insisted.

“Tell Thérèse she killed him.”

“No,” said the girl, perplexed. “Thérèse has magic breasts. They still give milk.”

“I bet they do,” said Jadine.

“But there is nobody to nurse them.”

“She’s not looking in the right places,” said Jadine. Black pearls of hair were visible at the wig’s edge. The girl’s eyes were wide, still, the curiosity in them was the only thing that kept them from looking like an animal’s. A deer, thought Jadine. She has the eyes of a curious deer. She wished once more that she had had real talent—she’d like to draw her—deer eyes, wig and all. Suddenly she reached into the side pocket of her traveling bag. A few francs were shoved in there and she dropped the whole lot into the girl’s plastic pail. “Bye, Mary, I have to go. Good luck.” Jadine pushed open the door and was gone.

“Alma,” whispered the girl. “Alma Estée.”

ABOARD the 707 Jadine had free use of the seat next to her. Not many passengers in first class. She checked her five luggage claim tickets stapled to the envelope that held a copy of her one-way ticket to Orly. Everything was in order. As soon as the plane was airborne, she reached above her head to adjust the air flow. Bringing her hand down she noticed a tiny irregularity in the nail of her forefinger. She opened her purse and took out an emery board. Two swift strokes and it was gone. Her nail was perfect again. She turned her sealskin coat lining side out and folded it carefully into the empty seat beside her. Then she adjusted the headrest. The same sixteen answers to the question What went wrong? kicked like a chorus line. Having sixteen answers meant having none. So none it was. Zero. She would go back to Paris and begin at Go. Let loose the dogs, tangle with the woman in yellow—with her and with all the night women who had looked at her. No more shoulders and limitless chests. No more dreams of safety. No more. Perhaps that was the thing—the thing Ondine was saying. A grown woman did not need safety or its dreams. She was the safety she longed for.

The plane lifted itself gracefully over the island; its tail of smoke widened, then dispersed. It was evening and the stars were already brilliant. The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rain forest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do—the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organization so tight and sacrifice so complete there is little need for males and they are seldom produced. When they are needed, it is deliberately done by the queen who surmises, by some four-million-year-old magic she is heiress to, that it is time. So she urges a sperm from the private womb where they were placed when she had her one, first and last copulation. Once in life, this little Amazon trembled in the air waiting for a male to mount her. And when he did, when he joined a cloud of others one evening just before a summer storm, joined colonies from all over the world gathered for the marriage flight, he knew at last what his wings were for. Frenzied, he flies into the humming cloud to fight gravity and time in order to do, just once, the single thing he was born for. Then he drops dead, having emptied his sperm into his lady-love. Sperm which she keeps in a special place to use at her own discretion when there is need for another dark and singing cloud of ant folk mating in the air. Once the lady has collected the sperm, she too falls to the ground, but unless she breaks her back or neck or is eaten by one of a thousand things, she staggers to her legs and looks for a stone to rub on, cracking and shredding the wings she will never need again. Then she begins her journey searching for a suitable place to build her kingdom. She crawls into the hollow of a tree, examines its walls and corners. She seals herself off from all society and eats her own wing muscles until she bears her eggs. When the first larvae appear, there is nothing to feed them so she gives them their unhatched sisters until they are old enough and strong enough to hunt and bring their prey back to the kingdom. That is all. Bearing, hunting, eating, fighting, burying. No time for dreaming, although sometimes, late in life, somewhere between the thirtieth and fortieth generation she might get wind of a summer storm one day. The scent of it will invade her palace and she will recall the rush of wind on her belly—the stretch of fresh wings, the blinding anticipation and herself, there, airborne, suspended, open, trusting, frightened, determined, vulnerable—girlish, even, for an entire second and then another and another. She may lift her head then, and point her wands toward the place where the summer storm is entering her palace and in the weariness that ruling queens alone know, she may wonder whether his death was sudden. Or did he languish? And if so, if there was a bit of time left, did he think how mean the world was, or did he fill that space of time thinking of her? But soldier ants do not have time for dreaming. They are women and have much to do. Still it would be hard. So very hard to forget the man who fucked like a star.