Lilac Mines (22 page)

Marilyn is skeptical. She's sitting on one of the church pews, and even though she's wearing a flowered halter-top and jeans and Mexican sandals, she looks almost prim. “So you're saying the little girl who got lost in the mine was a lesbian? They didn't even
have
lesbians in the 1800s. Women were considered their husbands' property. They…”

“Don't be so literal, Marilyn,” Petra says. “I'm just saying that Lilac is a spirit of female-ness. And that kind of…
radiates.”

“Petra, you are trip,” says Gapi, coming in from the kitchen. It's late afternoon and chilly outside, but the church is still warm from the sun. The stained glass Virgin Mary casts a long shadow over the women's beds: her blue robe rippling over Gapi's sleeping bag, her halo turning Sylvie's white sheets golden, the baby Jesus resting on Petra's pillow.

“I love séance, man,” Gapi concludes.

“Woman,”
corrects Petra.

Marilyn has a college friend who sends some Afghani pot that allegedly possesses near hallucinogenic qualities. Petra and Imogen light candles and lay out an old army blanket in the mouth of a mine entrance. Not the main one, which Imogen says is frequented by high school kids and sheriffs with roving flashlights, but a smaller, more hidden entrance further up the mountain.

“This is so spooky,” breathes Petra. “Or at least it will be when it gets dark.” The sun is low and orange, giving the scrub oaks and manzanita a shadowy, burnt look.

“This is the best part of town,” Imogen agrees. “Sometimes I come up here to sit and think. It gets real quiet, and you feel like if you listen hard enough, the mountain will just tell you what to do.”

Petra likes Imogen. She's more relaxed than Jody or Jean or Sylvie. Petra loaned her
The Feminine Mystique
and Imogen stayed up all night reading, curlers in her hair and flashlight in her hand. Tonight she wears light blue polyester pants and a striped, boat-neck shirt. She is thin with wide, graceful hips.

“Who all is coming tonight?” Imogen asks, taking a beer from the cooler in the Lavender Menace's trunk.

“Well, Gapi and Marilyn, of course. Three of Marilyn's friends from Berkeley are driving out. Don't worry, they're like us. Meg said she might come with Sunny from San Andreas. And we invited Jean and Sylvie, but Jean seemed a little… skeptical, and Sylvie seemed a little freaked out about the whole ghost thing.”

“Good old Sylvie,“ laughs Imogen. “You just gotta give 'em time. That's a pretty good group, though.”

Not long after the sun goes down, Petra spots a pair of headlights bobbing up the hill, followed by another, closer-set pair. The first car opens and five girls in beads and fringe and pink and orange and red bounce out like clowns. Gapi and Marilyn and three women Marilyn knows from the days before she transferred to NYU. Essie and Emily are a couple, plump arms and wavy brown hair draped over each other as if they are trees planted inches apart. Linda is a short girl with short, dirty-blonde hair who flutters around Gapi like a moth all night.

Sylvie opens the door of the second car gingerly, and peers out at the group from behind a curtain of limp hair. Jean jumps out of the driver's side and extends her arm for Sylvie, who is wearing brown pumps on her small feet. Meg arrives late, on the back of a motorcycle driven by a leather-clad butch who introduces herself as Sunny. She lives up to her name, helping herself to beer and joking around with Jody, who comes as soon as she gets off work. Petra hopes Meg will hit it off with Marilyn or maybe Linda, anything to lure her away from these stifling, archaic roles. Petra thinks of Meg as her older sister, and big sisters are supposed to do things first, not linger in the past.

The night is moonless, and Petra thinks about all the shrubs, rocks, and other things sitting in the dark, watching them with night-creature eyes.

“Who want to get high?” Gapi asks, waving her bag of tightly rolled joints.

“Gapi, you're the coolest,” says Linda, reaching her arm around Gapi's waist and putting her head to Gapi's huge breasts.

“I'll try it,” Meg says. She already smells like alcohol, warm and alive.

Petra cups her hands to block out the breeze as Gapi strikes a match, and takes the first hit. And the second, eleventh, and twenty-second as each joints makes its rounds. She loves the moist, scratchy feeling in her lungs. She loves how everything becomes a good idea. She loves Imogen's long black eyelashes.

“Let's get started,” Petra says. “I can feel something in the air and I don't want to lose it.” She also wants to give the women something to focus on rather than each other's miles-apart clothes and mannerisms. They duck into the mineshaft and form a circle on the blanket. Candles flicker from little pockets in the rough rock walls.

Petra crosses her legs and clears her throat. The women follow. She feels their bright eyes on her. Waiting, giving her power. A swirl of cold wind moves through the cave and sweeps out again. Petra takes the hands on either side of her—Imogen's rough brown hand and Gapi's short-nailed olive hand. Imogen gives her an encouraging squeeze. A candle winks, or maybe an eye. For the first time since being with Francine, Petra feels something deep, ancient.

“Spirits,” she says in her strongest voice, “we are the women of Lilac Mines. We are calling you on this sacred night, All Hallows Eve. We are humble, Spirits. We want to learn from your wisdom. Reveal yourselves, or your
self
if there is only one of you.”

Petra checked out a book called
The Dark Arts Through the Ages
from the tiny library next to the post office. The librarian, who looked as if she might practice the dark arts herself, glared as she stamped the card. Petra read a few chapters, but it was unnerving to open the book in a church after dark, so she hopes the spirits will guide her in proper séance etiquette.

“Will you pass me a beer?” someone whispers.

“Lilac, is that you?” giggles someone else.

“Shh!” hisses Marilyn.

Petra decides to get to the point. “Lilac Ambrose, we, the women of the town of your namesake are calling you.”

Of the, of the, of the. She likes the chain, how the world contains them like a big Russian nesting doll. The wind plays the crannies of the cave like a harp. Petra's eyes are squeezed shut, and she can hear the wind play her body, too, plink-plinking her heart and strumming her ribs.

“I can hear her!” someone exclaims. Petra snaps her eyes open. It's Sylvie, of all people, her mouth an O like a cave.

“They're planting ideas in your head,” Jean grumbles, or maybe she just thinks it. Petra might be able to hear thoughts right now.

“No, ssshhh, I heard her, I swear.” Sylvie lets go of Essie's (or maybe Emily's) hand and grips Jean with both hands. “She said… well, it was this long, low noise, like
ohhh.
But I think she was saying
love.
She wants us all to love each other.” She looks around with green, green eyes. Petra wants to cross the circle and touch her.

Petra stands up, swaying a little. She walks outside the circle, past Gapi and Linda and Emily (or maybe Essie). She reaches the Lavender Menace parked inches from the mine entrance, and its long purple cat nose and chrome grill smile at her. Then she looks up at the windshield. Lilac is there, in the passenger seat, staring straight at her. She is a hardy-looking girl in a calico dress. She has thick, banana-blonde hair that falls in waves over the mutton-sleeves of her dress, and wide-set, light brown eyes. She puts her feet on the dashboard and smiles. She looks like the kind of girl to raise six kids and live to 80, not get lost in a mine at 15.

I will sit next to her,
Petra decides,
I'll just ask her, once and for all.
She opens the driver-side door, but as soon as she's in, Lilac is gone.

“Lilac! Lila-la-la-la-la.” Petra lies on her stomach across the glove box and tries to peer under the car, where there is only night. The Lavender Menace is floating. When she sits up in the driver's seat, her head swirls. Meg and Imogen stand in front of her. Their bodies merge together, into one coffee-and-cream-and-curves femme, then pull apart again.

“You okay?” Imogen asks.

“Yeah, yeah. I saw her. Then she disappeared. Got pulled under the car, actually. I think she's trying to say… I think she was murdered. Someone mowed her down and threw her body in the mine. She just wanted to live this long, great, fun life, and outside forces—patriarchal forces—wouldn't let her.”

“This is too much.” Meg puts her fingers on her temples.

“No, I'm serious, I saw her. She was wearing one of those old-fashioned dresses and she had blonde hair. well, she looked a little like me, actually.”

“No, I mean
this
is too much.” Meg waves to the flickering mine and the broken circle of women, all waiting. “I can't be here. This place is just too. Al and I came here… “

Sunny is behind her now, hands on Meg's shoulders. “Good lord, not again. She left you, what, five years ago? Don't be such a drama queen.”

Meg yanks herself away from Sunny's grip. “Fuck you.” She reaches in the pocket of Sunny's leather jacket and pulls out a silver jingle of keys. She gives the bike a few kicks as Sunny moves from shock to annoyance to calculated nonchalance.

“Meg, come on, stay,” Petra protests. She touches the sleeve of Meg's green sweater, and Meg shakes her away. “We need you.” Petra hovers in the sky above them. From that height, she and Meg are little girls in play clothes. Meg with her curled ponytail and drama-plagued Barbie dolls, Petra dancing around her, thrilled that this important older girl wants to spend time with her, wants to tell her why the girls in her own grade are ugly witches. Meg takes off down the mountain, and Petra thinks she can see something filmy and blonde following her. Lilac or Little Petra.

“That girl should not be driving,” Imogen says seriously. “She shouldn't even drive when she's sober. Jody, you better follow her in the car.”

“I know,” Jody says, extracting herself from the circle.

“No, no, it's okay,” Petra assures them. She puts her hands on Imogen's worried face. Her hands look like pink stars. They could all be friends if they're quiet and listen. She's sure of it. The bead inside her head rolls into her throat, cold on her tongue, out her mouth and into the world. Everyone has one bead and together they form a necklace. “She's fine. Lilac is watching over her, I saw her.”

“No offense, Petra, but Meg needs more than a ghost to help her out. That girl's got enough ghosts,” Jody says, climbing into her Edsel.

“But the world is a necklace,” Petra explains.

“You are high, woman,” Imogen says.

Petra wakes up to the mine's rock ceiling. For a minute she thinks that it's the floor of the mine, and that she is Lilac, dead and floating above it. Then she sits up and looks around. Emily and Essie are a knot of sleep beside her. Linda and Gapi and Marilyn are wrapped in the army blanket. Gapi is snoring. Jody and Imogen are in Jody's Edsel. When Petra stands up she can see Sylvie and Jean curled in the back seat.

The morning is thin and golden. Petra stretches to release a kink in her shoulder blade. There's gravel stuck to her cheek. Her paisley blouse is twisted around her torso. Then she remembers: Lilac. She definitely saw her. Except she also smoked more and stronger pot than ever before. Shit.

“Petra?” Marilyn sits up, pulling a strand of wooden beads from her tangled hair. “What's that smell?” She wiggles her small bunny nose.

Petra's face feels frozen, but she sniffs. “Bacon, I think. What….?”

She and Marilyn walk around the corner, where the mountain retreats like regret after the jut of the mine. There is Meg, prim and fresh in a wool wraparound skirt, white blouse, and meticulously applied red lipstick, kneeling beside a camping stove. She flips strips of bacon and smiles as if this is June Cleaver's kitchen, not the side of a mountain. Her eyes are bloodshot, but a thick line of black eyeliner provides sufficient distraction.

“You came back!” Petra exclaims. She can't wait to tell Meg about Lilac, how she's watching over all of them.

“Sunny broke up with me,” Meg says matter-of-factly. “Jody followed us and I caught a ride back with her.” She chases a stubborn strip of bacon around the grill with her metal spatula.

“Oh, Meg, wow. Like, who was Sunny anyway to tell you how you should feel about Al?”

“She said I was too hung up, but she was just itching to break things off. I've known for weeks.” She shrugs. “It's fine. I'm over it. There are other butches in the sea.”

“You know what your problem is, Meggie? You keep waiting for a butch to save you.” Petra looks at Marilyn, who nods in agreement. “No man will save you, and no one woman will save you. Especially not one who barely knows she's a woman. But
women
—plural—we could. Come live with us at the church, you'd see.” She's asked before, but maybe now Meg will understand.

Meg stands up, puts her spatula hand on her hip. “I really don't need you to tell me what my problem is. You don't have the faintest idea what my problem is.”

Marilyn looks uncomfortable. She's a theorist, not a front-lines woman. Petra counters, “If anyone knows, it's me.” History is her trump card. She's seen Meg beg and brownnose and turn cartwheels in the snow, all the things she'd never do now.

The women are clustering, lured by bacon and conflict. Jean grabs a strip straight from the grill. It doesn't seem to burn her fingers. “Why don't you back off, Petra?” she challenges.

“Meg doesn't need her ex-girlfriend to defend her,” Petra says, arms are crossed in front of her, hardly the welcoming embrace of feminism. She takes a deep breath and tries again. “Meg, come on, just stay with us at the church for a little while. It will be fun, like a slumber party.” She turns to face the women who've gathered behind her. “You
all
should. Seriously—you said rent was getting high in Berkeley, right? All of you,” she looks at Essie and Emily, who are holding hands and looking at each other, “all of you should go home, pack, and come right back. Think about it: no men; no women who, uh, support patriarchy; and no rent. The church is big. You could just pull up a mattress. And then we'll have enough people to really enact change. We'd be a real women's colony.”