Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [46]
She felt Luciente pressing on her clearly for the first time since they had let her out of seclusion: not those brushes of presence that rose and faded but the solid force of concentration bearing around her. She resisted. To sit on the porch was still new, in a convalescent pleasure like the first time out of bed after a long illness. Still, she felt Luciente pressing on her and it was like, oh, refusing to answer the door to a friend who knew she was at home. How could she think of Luciente as a friend? But she had begun to.
“Me too, in truth,” the voice formed in her mind. “I’ve missed you.”
“Why don’t you take shape? Nobody’s out here but me.”
“Shut your eyes. Let’s go into my space. Today, in my year, the weather is better.”
“Do you control the weather?”
“The sharks did in the 1990s—pass the term. I mean before us. But the results were the usual disasters. It rained for forty days on the Gulf Coast till most of it floated out to sea. Let’s see, the jet stream was forced south from Canada. They close to brought on an ice age. There was five years’ drought in Australia. Plagues of insects … Open your eyes.”
They were standing in Luciente’s hut in sun streaming through the south window, which was open and covered with a fine-mesh screen. “You must still have mosquitoes!”
“They’re part of the food chain. We bred out the irritant … . About weather, when it gets disastrous, sometimes we adjust a little. But every region must agree. When a region is plagued by drought, grasp, we usually prefer to deliver food than to approve a weather shift. Because of the danger. We’re cautious about gross experiments. ‘In biosystems, all factors are not knowable.’ First rule we learn when we study living beings in relation … . You’re looking thin!” Luciente reproved her, leaning close.
“You say that like it was bad. Isn’t thin beautiful to you? I’ve been dumpy for three years. Not that I don’t look as lousy as I feel in that bughouse.”
“Jackrabbit is thin beautiful. Bee is big beautiful. Dawn is small beautiful. Tilia is creamy orange beautiful.” Luciente nodded at her cat, who stood up expectantly. “Tilia told me you’re stupid, and I explained that people of your time did not talk with cats.”
She remembered the orange cat stalking away. It stared at her boldly now, with malice she felt. “People of my time talk to cats, dogs, hamsters. To parakeets and goldfish. Lonely people talk to the wall. Listen, the bughouse is full of women who started talking to the Blessed Virgin Mary because their old man wouldn’t listen.”
“I mean in sign languages. For instance, Tilia and I talk sign language based on cat signs but modified—because many things must be said between cat and human different from what is said cat to cat.”
“Oh? What do you talk about? The taste of raw mouse?”
“Much is simply expressing affection, anger, disappointment. I want, Tilia wants. Fish, milk, yogurt, to go out, peace and quiet, catch the mouse, don’t touch that bird. Groom me. Let me work. Tilia does have a strong aesthetic sense and comments freely on flimsies and even on costumes. The last coverlet for the bed Tilia loathed and buried so persistently—that shit-covering gesture—that I had to trade it for another.”
“Could you speak to her now? Ask her if she believes in God or what she thinks about public nudity.”
“You don’t believe me!”
“Either you’re putting me on or you’re crazier than I am.”
“I’ll teach you how to meet a cat. Cats are formal about introductions. I got flack last time. Look Tilia can express feeling puffed. If Tilia takes